The Grimoire of Orozon

Vegon had spent most of his life surrounded by books.

Not merely books in the way ordinary people meant the word. He had grown up among libraries old enough that kings had risen and died while some of their shelves remained unchanged. He had studied volumes copied from manuscripts whose originals had crumbled centuries before his birth. He knew the smell of old leather, the brittle softness of ancient paper, the peculiar arrogance of scholars who believed that because something had survived long enough to reach them, it therefore belonged to them.

He knew valuable books.

He knew dangerous books.

And he knew, almost immediately, that the one resting on the pedestal before him was both.

No one else entered farther into the chamber.

That surprised him.

Jandar usually approached unexplored treasure with the restraint of a starving man discovering an unattended dinner. Zook was nearly as curious, though more likely to examine the floor before touching anything. Even Deacon had developed a tendency to move first whenever the rest of them hesitated.

This time they waited.

Perhaps the guardian's warning had finally accomplished what traps, drakes and shifting rooms had failed to do.

Vegon approached the pedestal alone.

The book was large, though not absurdly so. It could be carried under one arm if necessary, but not comfortably. Its cover had darkened with age until the material was difficult to identify. Leather, perhaps. Something treated to resemble it. Thin metal fittings protected the corners, each one engraved with lines so fine that Vegon initially mistook them for scratches.

They were not scratches.

He leaned closer.

Symbols had been worked into the metal.

Not decoration.

Writing.

Or something that served the same purpose.

“Can you read it?” Deacon asked.

Vegon did not answer immediately.

He studied the nearest glyph.

Then the next.

There were similarities to scripts he knew. Curves that suggested one family of magical notation. Repeated angular strokes that might have descended from another. Some of the marks resembled symbols used in old high-elven arcane texts, but only in the way one person's face might resemble another's when viewed from across a crowded room.

Close examination destroyed the similarity.

“No.”

Jandar made a small sound behind him.

Vegon straightened.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You made a sound.”

“I was appreciating the moment.”

“What moment?”

“The one where you looked at writing and admitted you couldn't read it.”

Vegon turned.

Jandar's coat remained torn from the drake fight, his hair was disordered, and dried blood marked one side of his face. He nevertheless looked enormously pleased with himself.

“This may predate every language you can speak,” Vegon said.

“That makes it even better.”

“Why?”

“Because now I can't read it either, and we're equals.”

“We are not equals.”

Jandar smiled. “There he is.”

Vegon turned back to the book.

Xil came nearer, although he stopped several paces from the pedestal.

“Is it magical?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't do anything.”

“I don't need to.”

That was not entirely true.

Some magic announced itself. Enchanted objects could possess a presence perceptible to anyone sufficiently attuned to arcane forces, but usually the impression was vague. A sword might seem unnaturally sharp. A room might leave the sensation that the air had thickened. A ward might create a pressure behind the eyes.

The book was different.

Standing near it felt like standing beside a closed door while something vast moved on the other side.

Vegon extended one hand but did not touch the cover.

There were layers here.

Age was one.

Power another.

Protection, perhaps.

Something in the book resisted casual examination, though Vegon could not tell whether that resistance was deliberate or simply the consequence of magic constructed according to principles he did not understand.

That troubled him more than he wanted the others to know.

Magic followed rules.

Even when those rules were obscure, they existed.

The Travel Stone beneath Tavalon had proven that ancient spellcraft could operate according to systems lost to modern practitioners, but Vegon had still been able to recognize pieces of what it was doing. Distance. Connection. Energy. Translation from one place to another.

The book gave him less.

It was like hearing a language spoken through a thick wall and recognizing only that the speaker was angry.

“Well?” Jandar asked.

Vegon ignored him.

He reached for the magic carefully.

There were safer ways to examine an unknown object than touching it, and he used every one he knew. He allowed his awareness to move around the book rather than into it, searching for the familiar structures of enchantment.

The response was immediate.

Lines of pale light appeared across the cover.

Vegon stepped back.

Deacon raised his crossbow.

Jandar drew his rapier.

The old one, Vegon noticed.

“Did you do that?” Zook asked.

“Yes.”

“Was it supposed to happen?”

Vegon hesitated.

Jandar lowered his weapon slightly. “That means no.”

“I disturbed the enchantment surrounding it.”

“So no.”

“I understood you the first time.”

The light remained.

It moved through the strange writing on the cover, one symbol after another, until the entire pattern had revealed itself.

Vegon stared.

The illuminated glyphs should have helped.

They did not.

If anything, seeing them clearly made the problem worse.

They were not random marks. There was structure. Repetition. Grammar, perhaps. Several symbols appeared in sequences separated by narrower marks that might indicate words, numbers, commands or entirely different categories of meaning.

Someone had written this deliberately.

Vegon could not read a single line.

Mills came up beside him.

The minstrel's voice had improved since the cave, though it remained rough enough that every sentence sounded as if it had traveled farther than intended before reaching his mouth.

“That bother you?”

Vegon looked at him.

“No.”

Mills nodded solemnly.

“Terribly, then.”

Jandar laughed.

Vegon considered several responses and rejected all of them.

Mills opened his book and began copying the symbols.

Vegon stopped him.

“Not all of them.”

“Why?”

“We don't know what they do.”

“They're writing.”

“So are instructions for summoning things.”

Mills looked at his page.

Then at the glowing cover.

He closed the book.

“A few, then.”

“None.”

“One?”

“Mills.”

“All right.”

Zook had moved to the far side of the chamber. He crouched beside the chest they had noticed upon entering, examining the floor around it.

The chamber itself was more elaborate than Vegon had first realized.

Their attention had gone naturally to the pedestal, but the room had been built with purpose beyond storing a single book. The red carpet ran from the false wall to the center. Carved channels surrounded the pedestal in concentric patterns, shallow enough that they might have been decorative had they not disappeared beneath the carpet and continued toward the walls.

Along those walls, narrow stone alcoves held bowls of blackened metal. Whatever had once burned in them had been extinguished for centuries.

At least Vegon hoped it had.

The chest rested inside a ring of inscriptions.

Not the same writing as the book.

Close.

Related.

But not identical.

“Don't open that,” Vegon said.

Zook looked over his shoulder.

“I wasn't.”

Jandar walked toward him.

“I can.”

“No.”

“I am much better at it.”

“That is precisely why I said no.”

Jandar stopped beside Zook and looked down at the chest.

“Magic?”

Vegon joined them.

“Yes.”

“Dangerous?”

“Probably.”

“Treasure?”

“Almost certainly.”

Jandar nodded. “Good chest.”

Deacon remained near the false wall, watching the chamber behind them.

“We came for the book.”

Everyone looked toward the pedestal.

The light across its cover had faded.

The guardian's final words seemed to enter the silence with them.

You do not know what it is you have done.

Xil was the one who finally said it aloud.

“We should decide what we're doing before we touch anything else.”

Jandar looked at the chest.

“That sounds targeted.”

“It is.”

Deacon lowered his crossbow.

“The mission was the Grimoire.”

“If that is the Grimoire,” Xil said.

Vegon looked back at the book.

He had been thinking the same thing.

They had come north because ancient disturbances were no longer isolated. Gnolls were appearing where they should not. Crystals were moving creatures through impossible distances. The lost city beneath Tavalon had awakened enough to send them somewhere none of them understood.

And Eticus had sent them toward the Temple of Orozon looking for knowledge.

A book.

A grimoire belonging to one of the ancient Scourge Lords.

Vegon returned to the pedestal.

The word grimoire was often used carelessly. Any wizard's collection of spells might earn the name from someone who knew no better.

This was not that.

He could feel the difference.

Whatever had been written inside these covers mattered enough to hide behind shifting rooms, traps, drakes and a guardian that had remained at its post for centuries.

The book had survived the Sundering.

It had survived Orozon.

It had survived whatever had emptied this temple of everything except its defenses.

And now it sat in front of them.

Waiting.

Jandar joined him.

“You think that's it.”

“Yes.”

“That sounded certain.”

“It is not certainty.”

“It sounded like certainty.”

Vegon looked at him.

“It is the most likely conclusion.”

Jandar smiled. “Wizard certainty.”

“I dislike that phrase.”

“I know.”

Xil approached from the other side.

“We were warned.”

Vegon looked at him.

“We were warned before we found the book.”

“That does not make the warning irrelevant.”

“No.”

“What did the guardian mean?”

“I don't know.”

Xil's expression tightened slightly.

Vegon knew why.

He disliked saying those words almost as much as Xil disliked hearing them.

“I don't know,” Vegon repeated. “It could have meant entering the temple. Killing it. Crossing into this chamber. Something we did hours ago. Something connected to Tavalon. We do not have enough information.”

“Or it could mean taking that.”

Jandar looked at the book.

“It could.”

Xil watched Vegon carefully.

“And you still want to take it.”

Vegon almost denied the accusation contained in the sentence.

Instead he said, “Yes.”

No one spoke.

His own answer surprised him only because of how easy it had been.

He did want the book.

Not because it was powerful.

At least not only because of that.

He wanted to understand it.

The difference mattered to him, though he suspected it would matter much less to everyone else.

Eticus had spent years teaching him that knowledge was not harmless merely because it could be written down. Some discoveries changed the person who made them. Others changed everyone around them.

Vegon had always believed the danger was a reason for greater care.

Never a reason for ignorance.

“We leave it here,” he said, “and what happens?”

Xil did not answer.

Vegon continued.

“The temple has already been disturbed. Whatever protected this place is dead. The false wall is breached. The drakes are gone.”

Zook looked back toward the wall.

“We did make a fairly obvious hole.”

“Exactly.”

Jandar nodded. “We are subtle.”

“No one has ever accused you of that.”

“People have.”

“They were lying.”

Deacon stepped closer.

Vegon continued before Jandar could.

“If we leave the book here, we are not restoring anything. We are leaving it less protected than when we arrived.”

“For who?” Xil asked.

Vegon understood the question.

The answer mattered.

“We don't know.”

“That keeps coming up.”

“Yes.”

Xil looked at the book again.

“What if the guardian was protecting the world from it?”

That stopped Vegon.

Not because he had not considered the possibility.

Because Xil had said it plainly.

The guardian had called this its master's chamber.

That implied loyalty.

But loyalty did not imply benevolence.

Orozon had been a Scourge Lord.

If half the surviving histories were accurate, people had once crossed entire regions simply to avoid the armies commanded by men like him.

Perhaps the guardian had protected Orozon's possessions because it believed they were precious.

Perhaps it had protected them because no one else should ever touch them.

Vegon looked at the glowing symbols again in his memory.

“I cannot tell you that isn't true.”

Jandar folded his arms.

“Very encouraging.”

“But leaving it here does not solve that problem.”

Deacon nodded.

“We take it to Eticus.”

Xil looked at him.

“And if Eticus can't read it?”

“Then he finds someone who can.”

“And if someone comes looking for it?”

Deacon's expression hardened.

“Then I'd rather they come looking where the Order knows they are coming.”

That argument carried more weight than Vegon expected.

Zook had remained quiet.

Vegon turned to him.

“What do you think?”

The gnome looked genuinely surprised to be asked.

“I think the swamp hates this place.”

Jandar nodded. “Strong opening.”

Zook ignored him.

“I think the animals know not to come near it. I think the grung were keeping Mills from walking toward something he didn't understand. I think we have seen enough things lately that were supposed to be dead and weren't.”

He looked at the book.

“And I think leaving that here because we're scared of it doesn't make it safer.”

Xil considered him.

Zook shrugged.

“I'd rather Eticus be scared of it.”

Jandar smiled.

“That may be the wisest thing anyone has said.”

Vegon looked at Xil.

The cleric's expression did not soften, but after a moment he nodded.

“Then we take it carefully.”

Jandar stepped toward the pedestal.

“Excellent.”

Vegon put an arm across his chest.

“Not you.”

“Why?”

“Because you just said ‘excellent’ while approaching an ancient magical book after we agreed to be careful.”

“That proves enthusiasm, not incompetence.”

“You can be both.”

Jandar looked offended.

Vegon ignored him.

He examined the pedestal before touching the book.

There was magic there as well, though much weaker than what surrounded the Grimoire itself. He searched for the familiar structure of a trap: stored force, fire, binding, alarm.

Nothing he recognized.

That did not mean nothing existed.

He moved closer.

The others waited.

The book lay beneath his hands.

He could feel the faintest warmth rising from the cover.

Not heat.

Something else.

He placed his palms against it.

No lightning.

No voice.

No sudden opening beneath his feet.

He lifted.

The Grimoire of Orozon came free from the pedestal.

Nothing happened.

Vegon stood perfectly still.

Jandar glanced around.

“That was disappointing.”

Xil looked at him.

“I did not mean that I wanted something to happen.”

“You sounded disappointed.”

“I wanted appropriate drama.”

“You nearly died to a ghost fifteen minutes ago.”

“Yes. That was appropriate drama.”

Vegon barely heard them.

The book was heavier than expected.

Not impossibly heavy, but dense. He adjusted his grip and felt something shift inside it.

Pages.

Hundreds of them.

Perhaps more.

He lowered it carefully to the carpet.

The others gathered around.

Vegon opened the cover.

The first page was covered in the same script.

Rows of black symbols filled the surface from edge to edge, interrupted by diagrams that made even less sense than the writing. Circles within circles. Lines connecting marks that might represent stars, places, people or entirely abstract principles.

He turned another page.

Different.

Another.

Different again.

Some sections resembled spell notation, though not any notation used now.

Other pages seemed almost anatomical.

One showed a figure standing within a network of lines that extended outward toward five smaller shapes.

Vegon stopped.

Jandar leaned over his shoulder.

“What's that?”

“I don't know.”

“Five people?”

“Possibly.”

“Us?”

Vegon looked at him.

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“I don't.”

“Wizard certainty again.”

Vegon turned the page.

“Stop calling it that.”

He found maps.

Or perhaps diagrams resembling maps.

He found columns of symbols that repeated beside drawings of crystals.

That caught his attention.

He turned back.

Blue crystal beneath Tavalon.

Blue crystal in the cave.

The things moving gnolls.

The systems still operating centuries after the world that created them had fallen.

Vegon leaned closer.

“What?” Deacon asked.

“Possibly nothing.”

“That usually means something.”

Vegon pointed to one of the diagrams.

A faceted shape sat at the center of a series of rings. Lines extended from it toward marks arranged around the page.

“It resembles the crystals.”

Xil crouched beside him.

“Can you read what it says?”

“No.”

“But you think they're connected?”

“I think whoever wrote this knew enough about something similar to draw it repeatedly.”

Jandar exhaled.

“So we definitely take the book.”

Vegon looked at him.

“Yes.”

That decision felt different now.

Before, the Grimoire had been their objective.

Now it might be evidence.

Perhaps explanation.

Perhaps warning.

He closed the cover.

The guardian's words returned again.

Vegon pushed them aside.

Not dismissed.

Stored.

There was a difference.

“Now the chest,” Jandar said.

Deacon groaned.

Vegon almost told him no.

Then he looked at the ring of magical writing surrounding it.

The chamber had been hidden with the Grimoire.

Whatever else Orozon had considered worth protecting might matter.

“Zook.”

The ranger was already kneeling beside it.

“No obvious mechanism.”

“Magic?”

“That's your job.”

Vegon sighed and joined him.

The chest was made of dark wood reinforced with metal bands. Unlike the furniture elsewhere in the temple, it had not decayed. The enchantment surrounding it was simple compared with the Grimoire but stronger than anything else in the room.

Preservation.

Protection.

And something that felt unpleasant when Vegon pressed against it.

“Back.”

Everyone obeyed.

Even Jandar.

Vegon worked carefully, unraveling the outer layer rather than forcing it. The magic resisted.

He changed his approach.

It resisted again.

That irritated him.

Jandar noticed.

“Should we leave you alone with it?”

“No.”

“You have the look.”

“What look?”

“The one where the box has insulted your family.”

Vegon ignored him.

The third attempt revealed the structure.

Not a trap.

A lock.

Magical rather than mechanical, though the chest possessed both.

Once Vegon understood that, the rest became easier.

He interrupted the enchantment just long enough for Zook to work the physical lock.

There was a click.

Everyone waited.

Zook lifted the lid.

Nothing exploded.

Jandar looked at Xil.

“See? We are learning.”

Inside lay several objects wrapped in cloth that had somehow survived as well as the chest.

Jandar reached for the first.

Vegon slapped his hand away.

“That is becoming unnecessary.”

“It remains necessary.”

They unwrapped the objects one at a time.

The first was a staff.

Black wood, polished almost to the point of reflecting their light. Its upper end curved into the likeness of a serpent, the carved head so detailed that Vegon could make out individual scales.

He felt magic immediately.

Different from the Grimoire.

Narrower.

Purposeful.

And alive in a way he did not particularly enjoy.

Jandar picked it up before anyone could stop him.

The serpent's eyes opened.

Jandar froze.

The head moved.

Mills backed away.

Zook drew his sword.

The carved snake slowly turned toward Jandar.

Jandar looked at Vegon.

“Is this bad?”

“Yes.”

“Very bad?”

“I don't know.”

“Could you choose a different answer occasionally?”

The serpent opened its mouth.

Tiny fangs unfolded.

Jandar held the staff farther away.

“I have reconsidered my enthusiasm.”

Vegon examined it.

The magic was easier to understand than the Grimoire, although he still could not fully explain it.

“It's bound to the staff.”

“The snake?”

“Yes.”

“Can it bite me?”

“Yes.”

“Can it bite other people?”

“Almost certainly.”

Jandar's expression changed.

Deacon saw it.

“No.”

“I haven't said anything.”

“You didn't need to.”

Jandar looked back at the staff.

“I like it.”

“Of course you do,” Xil said.

They set it aside.

The next bundle was longer and thinner.

A sword.

No.

A rapier.

Jandar became very still.

The weapon was beautiful without being ornate. The guard swept around the hilt in clean silver lines, elegant rather than decorative. The grip was dark leather. The blade itself appeared ordinary until Vegon drew it from the sheath.

Pale light spread along the steel.

Not bright enough to illuminate the room.

Enough to resemble moonlight caught on water.

Jandar said nothing.

That alone made Vegon look at him.

The former pirate held out one hand.

“May I?”

Vegon nearly refused out of principle.

Instead he passed him the weapon.

Jandar tested the weight.

His expression changed.

Not dramatically.

That would have been more like him.

He simply became quieter.

He moved the blade once through the air.

Then again.

It suited him.

Vegon disliked admitting that.

“Magical,” Jandar said.

“Yes.”

“Better than mine.”

“Yes.”

Jandar looked at him suspiciously.

“That was very easy.”

“Because it is obviously better than yours.”

“There it is.”

He examined the glowing blade.

“What does it do?”

“I would need more time.”

“Does it explode?”

“No.”

“Shoot lightning?”

“Probably not.”

“Turn into a snake?”

Vegon glanced at the staff.

“No.”

Jandar smiled.

“Perfect.”

Deacon shook his head.

“We're not dividing treasure in Orozon's hidden room.”

Jandar looked down at the rapier.

“I believe the treasure has already divided itself.”

“No.”

“It chose me.”

“It did not.”

“You saw the glow.”

“It was glowing before you touched it.”

“That sounds speculative.”

Vegon closed his eyes.

“We can discuss ownership after we leave.”

Jandar slid the weapon carefully into its sheath.

“Agreed.”

Deacon stared at him.

“What?”

“You're wearing it.”

“For safety.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

Zook laughed.

There were other objects in the chest. Smaller pieces. Coins old enough that Vegon did not recognize the ruler stamped into them. A pair of metal containers sealed by magic. Several stones that might themselves be enchanted or might merely be valuable.

They took what seemed significant and left what did not.

For once, Jandar did not argue about the coins.

His attention remained on the rapier at his hip.

Vegon returned to the Grimoire.

They wrapped it in the best surviving cloth from the chest, then again in one of their own cloaks. Deacon offered to carry it.

Vegon refused.

“So you trust the book more than me?” Deacon asked.

“No.”

“You answered quickly.”

“I trust myself more than you.”

“That wasn't better.”

Vegon adjusted the bundle beneath one arm.

It was awkward.

Deacon watched him struggle for several seconds.

“Give me the book.”

“No.”

“Vegon.”

“No.”

Deacon took it from him.

Vegon allowed this only because preventing him would have required an undignified physical struggle.

The fighter secured it inside his pack, wrapped so that the cover could not be exposed accidentally.

Xil watched the process.

“Still time to put it back.”

Nobody answered immediately.

Vegon looked at the empty pedestal.

For several minutes the Grimoire had rested there as it had, presumably, for centuries.

Now there was only dust.

The room had not changed.

No hidden mechanism had activated.

No ancient voice had spoken.

No terrible power had risen from beneath the temple.

It would have been easier if something had.

Then they could react.

Instead, they had only made a decision.

Vegon found that more unsettling.

Mills stood beside him.

“Is it really his?”

Vegon knew what he meant.

“Orozon's?”

Mills nodded.

“I believe so.”

“You can't read it.”

“No.”

“You don't know what it does.”

“No.”

“You don't know why the ghost didn't want us here.”

“Guardian.”

“The guardian.”

“No.”

Mills thought about that.

“Good.”

Vegon frowned.

“What is good about any of that?”

The minstrel looked at the empty pedestal.

“If you knew everything already, I wouldn't have much of a song.”

Jandar called from the far side of the chamber.

“Do not write a song about the cursed book until we survive the cursed book.”

Mills raised his voice.

“What should I write about?”

Jandar rested one hand on the hilt of his new rapier.

“The sword is promising.”

Deacon moved toward the false wall.

“We're leaving.”

Zook stopped him.

“Not that way.”

Everyone looked at him.

The gnome stood near another section of the chamber, where the red carpet ended against the opposite wall.

“There are markings here.”

Vegon approached.

Symbols had been carved into the stone.

Unlike the writing on the Grimoire, he recognized these.

Not the meaning.

The structure.

Several marks arranged in sequence.

Numbered positions.

A pattern.

Beyond them, almost invisible in the wall, was the outline of another door.

Jandar joined them.

“Please tell me that opens outside.”

“I can't.”

“Lie.”

Vegon studied the symbols.

Something inside him shifted.

Familiar curiosity.

A problem.

One with rules.

After the Grimoire, that felt almost comforting.

He traced the sequence without touching it.

“One activates another.”

Zook leaned closer.

“How many?”

“I don't know yet.”

Jandar sighed.

“Wizard certainty?”

Vegon looked at him.

Jandar smiled.

For perhaps the first time since entering the hidden chamber, Vegon smiled back.

Then he looked toward Deacon's pack.

The Grimoire of Orozon was inside.

They had found it.

They had taken it.

And somewhere behind them, in a chamber now empty except for blood and ancient stone, the guardian's final warning remained unanswered.

Vegon turned toward the numbered symbols.

“We have what we came for.”

Deacon nodded.

“Now we get out.”

That, Vegon thought, might prove to be the more difficult part.