. . . Whensoever he made any ostyng, or inroad, into the enemies Countries, he killed manne, woman and child, and spoiled, wasted and burned, by the grounde, all that he might; leaving nothing of the enemies in saffetie, which he could possible waste or consume . . .
Chronicle of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1570
SEVENTEEN
C HARIBON was a prisoner of winter.
The heavy snows had come at last, in a series of blizzards which roared down out of the heights of the Cimbric Mountains and engulfed the monastery-city in a storm of white. On the Narian Hills the snow drifted fathoms deep, burying roads and villages, isolating whole towns. The fishing boats which normally plied the Sea of Tor had been beached long since, and the margins of the sea itself were frozen for half a league from the shore, the ice thick enough to bear a marching army.
In Charibon a small army of labourers fought to keep the cloisters clear of snow. They were assisted by hundreds of novices who shovelled and dug until they were pink-cheeked and steaming, and yet had the energy for snowball fights and skating and other horseplay afterwards. Unlike the poor folk of the surrounding countryside, they did not have to worry whether they would have enough food to see them through the winter. It was one of the bonuses of the religious life, at least as Charibon’s clerics lived it.
The monastery-city went about its business regardless of the weather, its rituals as changeless and predictable as the seasons themselves. In the scriptoria and refectories the fires were lit, fed with the wood which had been chopped and piled through the summer and autumn. Salted and smoked meat made more of an appearance at table, as did the contents of the vast root cellars. Enterprising ice fishermen hacked holes in the frozen sea to provide the Pontiff and Vicar-General’s tables with fresh fish every now and again, but in the main Charibon was like a hibernating bear, living off what it had stored away throughout the preceding months and grumbling softly in its sleep. Except for the odd Pontifical courier determined (or well-paid) enough to brave the drifts and the blizzards, the city was cut off from the rest of Normannia, and would remain so for several weeks until the temperature dropped further and hardened the snow, making it into a crackling white highway for mule-drawn sledges.
The wolves came down out of the mountains, as they always did, and at night their melancholy moans could be heard echoing about the cathedral and the cloisters. In the worst of the weather they would sometimes even prowl the streets of Charibon itself, making it dangerous to walk them alone at night, and contingents of the Almarkan troops which garrisoned Charibon would periodically patrol the city to clear the beasts from its thoroughfares.
I T was after Compline. Vespers had been sung two hours before, the monks had consumed their evening meal and most of them were in their cells preparing for bed. Charibon was settling down for the long midwinter night, and a bitter wind was hurling flurries of snow down from the Cimbrics, drowning out the howls of the wolves. The streets of the city were deserted and even the cathedral Justiciars were preparing for bed, having trimmed the votive lamps and shut the great doors of Charibon’s main place of worship.
Albrec’s door was rapped softly and he opened it, shivering in the cold wind which he admitted.
“Ready, Albrec?” Avila stood there, muffled in hood and scarf.
“No one saw you leave?”
“The whole dormitory have their heads under their blankets. It’s a bitter night.”
“You brought a lamp? We’ll need two.”
“A good one. It won’t be missed until Matins. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
“Yes. Are you?”
Avila sighed. “No, but I’m in it up to my neck now. And besides, curiosity is a terrible thing to live with, like an itch which cannot be scratched.”
“Here’s hoping we can scratch your itch tonight, Avila. Here, take this.” The little monk handed his Inceptine friend something hard and angular and heavy.
“A mattock! Where did you pilfer this from?”
“Call it a loan, for the greater glory of God. I got it from the gardens. Come—it’s time we were on our way.”
The pair of them left Albrec’s cell and whispered along the wide corridors of the chapter-house where Albrec slept. Due to his position of Assistant Librarian, he had a cell to himself whereas Avila slept in a dormitory with a dozen other junior Inceptine clerics, for he had laid aside his novice’s hood only three years before.
They crossed an arctic courtyard, their habits billowing in the biting wind. Scant minutes later, they found themselves outside the tall double doors of the Library of Saint Garaso. But Albrec led his friend around the side of the rime-white building, kicking his frozen, sandalled feet through piled snow and halting at a half-buried postern door. He poked his key into the hole and twisted it with a snap, then pushed the door open.
“More discreet here,” he grunted, for the hinges were stiff. “No one will see us come and go.”
But Avila was staring at the snowy ground about them. “Blast it, Albrec, what about our tracks? We’ve left a trail for the world to see.”
“It can’t be helped. With luck they’ll be snowed over by morning. Come on, Avila.”
Shaking his head the tall Inceptine followed his diminutive friend into the musty, old-smelling darkness of the library. Albrec locked the door behind them and they stood silent for a second, alarmed by the quiet of massive masonry and waiting books, the wind a mere groaning in the rafters.
Avila struck a light and their shadows leaped at them from the walls as the lamp caught. They threw back their hoods and shook snow from their shoulders.
“We are alone,” Albrec said.
“How do you know?”
“I know this place, winter and summer. I can feel when the library is empty—or as empty as it ever becomes, with its memories.”
“Don’t talk like that, Albrec. I’m as jumpy as a springtime hare already.”
“Let’s go then, and stay close. And don’t touch anything.”
“All right, all right. Lead on, master librarian.”
They navigated the many rooms and halls and corridors of the library in silence, tall cases of books and scrolls looming over them like walls. Then they began to descend, taking to narrow staircases which to Avila seemed to have been built into the very walls of the building. Finally they hauled up a trapdoor of iron-bound wood which had been concealed by a mat of threadbare hessian. Steep steps going down into uttermost dark. The catacombs.
They started down, the weight and bulk of the library hanging over and around them like a cloud. The fact that it was a winter-dark and wolf-haunted night outside should have made no difference to the darkness in here, but somehow it did. A sense of isolation stole over the pair as they stumbled through the accumulated rubbish in the catacombs and coughed at the dust they raised. It was as if they were two explorers who had somehow chanced upon the ruins of a dead city, and were creeping through its bowels like maggots in the belly of a corpse.
“Which wall is the north one?” Avila asked.
“The one to your left. It’s damper than the others. Keep to the sides and don’t trip up.”
They felt their way along the walls, lifting the lamp to peer at the stonework. Chiselled granite, the very gutrock of the mountains hewn and sculpted as though it were clay.
“The Fimbrians must have been twenty years carving out this place,” Avila breathed. “Solid stone, and never a trace of mortar.”
“They were a strange people, the builders of empire,” Albrec said. “They seemed to feel the need to leave a mark on the world. Wherever they went, they built to last. Half the public buildings of the Five Kingdoms date from the Fimbrian Hegemony, and no one has ever built on the same scale since. Old Gambio reckons it was pride brought the empire down as much as anything else. God humbled them because they thought they could order the world as they saw fit.”