The Crooked Key, Chapter 5: The Library of the Cat
The Crooked Key by Kyle Marquis
“If I bleed to death down here,” the duke said, “I will return to haunt you.”
“No you won’t,” the banisher said. “You lack that particular quality of rage that allows for consciousness to persist after death, sustained only by hate and need.”
“Do I have that particular quality of rage?” Skaithness asked.
“No. Here we are.”
They were back in the tunnel with the hanging witch-signs, illuminated once again by Skaithness’s cuirass.
“Banisher, this old duke has seen a few libraries in his time, and—”
“The people of the Glyphic Islands raised great monoliths long ago, because in those years, when the laws were all different, the dead were even crueler than they are now. They needed to be placated. Deceived. They needed to believe they were still alive. Paintings on the walls could fool some of them. Totem images worked on others. But then they would look down at their rotting flesh and realize what they were. So the people of the Glyphic Islands—”
“I know what a mummy is, boy,” the Emmer Duke said. “I have—I think I’ve already mentioned this—been to a library.”
“They had libraries too,” the banisher went on. Skaithness, at least, seemed engrossed with his telling. “And they learned to build guardians to protect those libraries. The Glyphics were strong then in the years of their empire, half gods or more, and their guardians were both powerful and wise.”
The smirk drained from Duke Uleino’s face. He knew about the wisdom cats: lions and panthers crossbred with women to produce immortal guardians of knowledge. Some managed to reach the Emmer Lands. And—with hexguards being what they were, and the world having all changed since they were created—they became demons, flesh-eating monsters made of secrets and enigmas. Banishers killed the last one a hundred years ago, but not before she made a pyramid of skulls and scrolls. They carted her library back to Castle Nysse and hid it underground.
“Don’t be so frightened, Duke Uleino,” the banisher said. “The wisdom cat here won’t kill us. Though if she cannot help us, the guardian worms will definitely kill us.”
While he spoke, Eilo shifted back and forth, trying to find the right place to stand so he could see the library. He was of mixed minds about this sort of conjuring: at times it felt like witchcraft, which the banishers did not exactly oppose but did not practice either, especially after what had happened to other groups of hunters who had tried to fight fire with fire. But it’s not like any power worked through him. It was a simple application of knowledge, no different from fighting an enemy with the sun at your back, or drawing a hex mark to hedge out a barrow child. And he had used the trick all the time to access the secret library in Castle Nysse.
Though he needed to concentrate on the scratches on the walls, the banisher kept looking at Skaithness. No ordinary person could crush a man’s neck like that, and then toss him aside one-handed like a terrier flinging a dead rat into the gutter. Did the power reside with the young woman in the armor, with the armor itself, or some combination of the two? Was the armor somehow mechanical in nature, like Duke Uleino’s pocket watch—wound once in the morning, then providing steady action all day, only on a higher scale—or was it some kind of spirit-work? Or was it some new thing? He had tried to ask her already, without success.
The banisher shifted his gaze one last time. It was not witchcraft, he told himself, but it felt very much like how witchcraft must feel: a sudden snapping into focus, a painful clarity of thought and spirit. And there, flanked by scratchings that suddenly revealed themselves as writing, was the new doorway.
“Goodness!” Skaithness cried. “How marvelously unexpected. A magic door. Is that a dead weasel?”
Eilo approached the tabernacle. The Egg of Eime was apparently much like this, though presumably less damp and better lit. Two small columns held up a baldaquin of rotten cotton. Between the columns lay a form so meticulously wrapped in painted linen that Eilo was impressed by Skaithness’s guess.
“A cat,” the banisher said. “A small servant from whom I will ask a small favor.”
“You better not want money,” the cat said. She stood up, shook herself off, and regarded the banisher with a woman’s painted face. Everything except the face was covered in linen wrappings that shimmered in three colors—gold, green, blue—as she moved. A moment ago she had been a dead, wrapped-up thing; now she seemed more alive than any of them.
“We seek wisdom, O spirit of scholastic inquiry,” the banisher said. “We seek the sacred—”
“Knock it off,” the woman-headed cat said.
“We need to get past the guardian worms, but I don’t know what lineage they are,” the banisher said.
“A difficult question,” the cat said. “Very difficult.”
“I thought we were cutting out the bullshit,” the banisher said.
“Oh, I like you,” the cat said. “You’re feisty and handsome. Hold on, let’s talk more comfortably.”
In an instant, the cat transformed into a beautiful woman with skin and eyes of deep forest brown—silvery in the light of Skaithness’s glowing breastplate—and geometrically precise black hair. A diadem of gold gleamed between her eyes. Her tight, painted wrappings let the banisher make a fairly accurate guess about what she would look like without them. He found himself speculating, then remembered that she was only an illusion. Her real body was a withered, mummified cat. She seemed amused that Eilo should admire her.
“I like ‘em fatter,” the duke said. “And not as mouthy.” Then he clapped his good hand over his mouth.
“Wisdom cats shed truth like regular cats shed fur,” Eilo said. “Be careful with your thoughts, lest you reveal something important.”
“I pretend to know the difference between irony and sarcasm, but I really have no idea,” Skaithness said. Then she clapped her hands to her metal face with a clang.
“And for this gift of knowledge,” the wisdom cat said, slinking around the three of them so her wrappings trailed behind her like a dancer’s veils, “what can you offer me?”
“I can get you and your scrolls out of here,” the banisher said.
That was not the answer the wisdom cat had expected. The entire world seemed to growl, very faintly.
“A new power has arisen here,” the banisher said. “Skaithness here calls it the Mollusk Temple. I’m sure you’re aware of it—I suspect you’re aware of everything that happens within a hundred leagues. The world is changing, and new powers are testing their strength. The Mollusk Knight will find you soon. He won’t cut deals or make offers.”
The wisdom cat closed her eyes and her senses seemed to race away from her body. She sank back into her cat form, like a little statue in clay, then her tawny eyes opened again, and she said, “I have quite a few scrolls.”
“If you can put them on Skaithness’s back, she’s strong as an ox,” the banisher said.
“Am I being volunteered for some kind of livestock activity?” Skaithness asked.
“And in exchange,” the wisdom cat asked, “you’ll take me where?”
“To a clanmate of mine in the capital,” the banisher said. “I would take you to Castle Nysse, since we have a library there that once belonged to…” He trailed off, because it was a property of wisdom cats that you shared your truths with them, and he did not need everyone knowing about the secret library, even if no one had been there for years.
“There are scroll cases and bags enough,” the wisdom cat said, regaining her human shape and casting Eilo only a single wink before she headed for the newly-visible shelves. “My name is Panzu. Or at least, that’s what you can call me.”
Three walls of shelves surrounded the little baldachin. While the duke’s arm hurt too much and his breeding would not bear the indignity of packing in any case, Skaithness and Eilo helped the wisdom cat pack everything in four cedar cases.
“Not as soggy as I expected everything to be,” the banisher observed.
“I learned some tricks from the barrow children about how to stay dry,” the wisdom cat said as Skaithness tested the load. “Anyway, the guardian worms are from the line of Cavalon.”
She had left a small pot of red ink out for him, and the banisher immediately got to work on the soles of his feet, drawing the hex sign that would blind the guardian worms to his presence. He repeated the procedure with Skaithness, rolling her onto her back like a beetle, which gave Pandu time to wrap her treasures in tarps.
“Moldy old place,” the wisdom cat said. “I won’t miss it.”
“That’s the truth,” the Emmer Duke said as he pulled off his mud-splattered boots and handed them to the banisher.
“I only speak the truth,” Panzu said. “But I have other good features to make up for that.”
In minutes, the soles of four boots and two sabatons had hex signs drawn on them. Panzu returned to her cat form, too light-footed to draw the guardians’ attention, and sprinted out toward the exit.
“Let’s be careful,” the banisher said. “The signs I drew won’t last forever in all this mud, and even if the worms can’t see us, we can still be shot down by archers.”
They got their bearings again when they were back outside. It was now full dark and before moonrise, but they had a cat with them. They followed her down the slope, dodging the desultory patrols of the mercenaries, and headed back to the path that led west to the Mollusk Temple and east back to the village.
“Guarded,” Skaithness said, pointing at four mercenaries who were visible as they reached the base of the hill. Three were on foot with halberds and one on a horse with a crossbow. The banisher waved for everyone to stay in the shadows of the trees; he kept his eyes on the main temple complex, but no one was visible inside or along the walls.
“Guarded by four of Trezion’s boys,” Duke Uleino scoffed. “Hardly real soldiers.”
“You’re hardly a real soldier,” Eilo reminded the duke. “With one good arm and no quarrels in your crossbow.”
“I’ll pay you three a thousand ducats each to kill those men and get me back to my castle,” the duke said.
“I’m not killing people I don’t know!” Panzu said. She was once again a cat with a woman’s head. “I don’t know Trezion or his boys, and they’ve never done me any harm.”
“Fine, I’ll do it,” the duke said, “but you’re not getting paid.” Then he walked out into the open with his empty crossbow raised. Skaithness ran after him and Eilo, not sure what else to do, followed, staying behind the armored woman.
“Drop it!” Duke Uleino said when the mercenaries noticed him. “I can put a quarrel into a gnat’s dick from a hundred yards.”
“Gnats don’t have dicks,” the captain shouted back, keeping his own crossbow ready.
“Not after I’m through with them! Drop your weapons!”
There was a brief contest of wills as the two men, one armed and one very convincing, stared at each other. Then the mercenary captain raised his hand, and carefully dropped his crossbow onto the grassy sward. It landed with a wet splat. Then he dropped down behind his horse and shouted, “Kill them!”
“What?” one of the mercenaries said. “No. He’s got a crossbow. I don’t want to get shot.”
“He’s only got one shot!” the captain shouted. “Shit, my boots.”
“Well, he can shoot his one shot at you, then,” another mercenary said. “Come out from behind your horse.”
“Gentlemen, we’re in a rush,” the banisher said, stepping around the armored woman. “Drop your halberds and no one gets shot tonight.”
“And that armored fellow doesn’t even have a weapon!” the captain shouted from behind his horse.
“That’s a lady,” the first mercenary said. “You can tell by the hips when she walks.”
“That’s what you’re looking at,” the second mercenary said, “as this man points a crossbow at us? You’re looking at hips? This is ridiculous; let’s just rush them.”
“I also have a weapon,” the banisher said. “For those of you who survive the crossbow bolt.”
The mercenaries studied Eilo’s glaive, negotiated among themselves for a moment, then dropped their halberds. The polearms, too, landed with wet splats in the muddy grass. Duke Uleino stalked toward the mercenaries, stepped around them, still keeping his crossbow aimed, then dropped to one knee and hastily swapped crossbows.
“Wait a minute,” the first mercenary said.
“Shit, I can’t believe we fell for that,” the second one said.
“Well, he fell for it,” the third one said, jerking his thumb back at the captain, who was struggling with his horse.
“Stop moving!” Eilo snapped, brandishing his glaive.
“I can’t—fuck—I can’t get at my boots. They’re on the horse. Please don’t shoot me,” the mercenary captain said.
“You jumped out of your boots?” the banisher said.
“I didn’t want to get shot,” the captain said. “I still don’t, so please, if I can just get this damn horse under control…”
“Hey captain,” the first mercenary said, “if you’re not wearing your boots, what’s protecting you from the—”
Eilo, in his scant few years as an independent banisher, had never seen a live guardian worm. And he didn’t see it this time, as it blasted him off his feet and sank its teeth into the mercenary captain. It also tore off most of the horse’s head, and knocked one of the mercenaries a dozen yards through the air. The man struck a tree trunk and Eilo hoped it killed him instantly.
“It sees us!” the banisher shouted. “Run!” For though the hex marks blinded the guardian worms to their passage, they were not like the barriers carved on village doors, which physically warded off spirits.
Skaithness took off in great bounding leaps, the scroll boxes bouncing on her shoulders, followed by the little cat. The banisher pulled Duke Uleino to his feet just as the guardian worm wheeled around. In the darkness, it was nothing but scalding breath and the gleam of bloodstained teeth. Another mercenary died with a horrible scream as Eilo pushed the hobbling duke after Skaithness and the wisdom cat. The banisher ran through the near-total darkness, trusting in his memory of the path, and only slowed when he saw the armored woman’s glowing breastplate.
The fortress behind them was on full alert now, but the guardian worm had not pursued them—apparently it had been content to chastise Trezion’s Boys for their indiscretion.
“There you are, handsome banisher!” the wisdom cat said from atop a fallen log. “But how did you get over there?”
The banisher looked around and realized that he had run along a parallel path to the one he had taken to the Mollusk Temple. He was now separated from Skaithness and the main road by twenty feet of deep water. Also…
“Where is Duke Uleino?” he called.
“I’m here!” the duke called. “Tell that metal girl to stand still!” He hadn’t followed Eilo, and was closer to the main road than the banisher was.
“I’m coming!” Skaithness called, but the duke shouted again, “No, just stay right where you are and keep the light pointed that way, and I can see. Give me just a minute.” Eilo could hear the wet squishing sounds of the Emmer Duke wading through mud.
While the duke picked his way out of whatever mire he had found himself in, and more shouts and alarms rose from the fortress, Eilo used his glaive to prod his way back to the main path. With Skaithness’s light it took him just a few minutes.
“Turn it off,” the banisher said. “Wait, I thought the duke was already here.”
“I’m still waiting,” the armored woman said, her face pointed toward where she had heard Duke Uleino last.
“Stay here,” the banisher said, frowning and approaching the rushes where the duke should be. He parted the vegetation in front of him and saw Duke Uleino lying in the mud, clutching his neck with both hands. His crossbow was half sunken into the mud. Blood—black in the blue light—spilled from a mortal wound in his throat.
Beside him lay Lord Gloce, his face cut, one ear missing, and his bloody saber still clutched in one hand. There was a crossbow bolt in his chest, which heaved spasmodically.
“Got you, you fucking devil,” Gloce wheezed.
“I have clearly walked into the middle of something,” the wisdom cat said. She stood just over Eilo’s shoulder, on the branch of a dead tree.
“Vengeance that couldn’t wait, I guess,” the banisher said, trying not to grind his teeth. “Really, Gloce? Now?” It seemed peevish to chastise a dying man, but this was both inconvenient and rude.
“Now, after challenging him, one gentleman to another,” Lord Gloce said. “It was a fair fight, wouldn’t you say, your grace? Though over too soon. No chance for the…the back and forth…of a good duel, like the ones I used to have in my foolish…youth. An affair of tarnished honor.”
“Tarnished…” the duke managed to say. Then his hands fell away from his throat and blood gushed over his jacket.
“You killed my dogs. Unlawfully, as this banisher will attest,” Gloce said. “You insulted me, and…offered no…recompense. I was within my rights, and now you die dishonored, your grace. Don’t you…understand what that…I had to act when I saw this cat. I know what…you are, spirit of wisdom. Spirit of truth. Tell them that Duke Uleino died…in dishonor, having betrayed a fellow…noble. He died in debt. If anyone should ask, they shall learn the truth from you.”
“It will be done,” the wisdom cat said, almost automatically. Eilo felt a ripple of power that set the reeds shivering and made the water ripple.
“So don’t you see, your grace?” Gloce said, blood dribbling down his lips. “Now they’ll know the truth. Your son won’t inherit. I hand your city to your hated sister. Ah, ah what’s the use, eh banisher? He doesn’t hear me. He’s already—”
Lord Gloce kicked a few times, then pitched sideways into the mud.
“Can I move yet?” Skaithness shouted. “I can’t see what’s going on.”
“You have to tell someone if they ask, don’t you?” the banisher asked Panzu.
“It’s in my nature,” the wisdom cat said.
“Even if it—”
“Why do you care about political business?” Panzu said. “You’re a banisher. And it’s not like anyone cares about the truth anyway.”
“I try to look on the bright side of things,” Skaithness called in a sing-song, “but many, many armed men are coming our way.”
Skaithness doused her light and they ran, following the cat as she raced along the soggy road or, sometimes, took to the trees, leaping like a squirrel to stay above the water. Skaithness ran tirelessly, and it was Eilo who found himself stumbling. Their pursuers were mounted, and the banisher was not sure how he managed to outpace them. Twice, though, the road was flooded. Maybe the swamp water followed the tides, like the faraway sea, or maybe the rise of the Mollusk Temple was reshaping the surrounding landscape, but the horsemen must have run into trouble, for after an exhausting hour of alternate running and wading through freezing knee-deep water, they reached the village.
No one was about at that early hour.
“We make for the d-donjon,” the banisher said, teeth chattering. They climbed up the grassy hill, and found the oak door to the stone tower locked. The banisher sighed.
“Hold on,” Skaithness said. She pushed her finger against the lock, wiggled her hand around for a moment, and it opened.
“You’re f-full of surprises,” Eilo said, stumbling inside. The fireplace held only embers, but he managed to get it going again. While Skaithness removed her pack of scrolls and lit a few tapers, the banisher pulled off his boots, idly checked the markings (still mostly intact, for whatever that was worth), and stuck his toes as close to the fire as he dared. He used the back of his knife to scrape freezing mud off of his trousers.
Once recovered, he looked around and spotted Panzu, looking now entirely like a normal cat, on an old oak table. She was dragging something along the table with her teeth…a game hen, it looked like. A stuffed game hen.
“You don’t need to eat!” the banisher shouted.
The face transformed into a woman’s. “You can’t truly enjoy something you have to do.” But before she could turn all the way back into a cat and resume her meal, Eilo flicked his glaive, hooked the game hen, and flicked it into his other hand. He found a skewer and held the bird over the fire, warming it.
Skaithness had found cider. She handed the banisher a pewter tankard, then drained her own. Her face looked pink and healthy in the firelight, like those little wooden dolls of peasant girls that decorated inns.
“What do we do next?” the armored woman asked. Her tone implied that she was ever so excited for the next part of their wonderful journey.
“I am going to eat this bird,” he said. “Or half of it, since you should eat too. I also see some bread, if you could bring that. And then we need to go to my clanmate, Fylent Maer, in the capital. There are few banishers left, but he needs to tell everyone he can about the Mollusk Temple. That smug bastard Aklurian was right about one thing: we need to march back here with two hundred crossbowmen and as many hunters as we can find, before that place spreads like a fungus.”
“Will Duke Uleino already be in the capital?” Skaithness asked.
“Oh…right.” The banisher hastily filled Skaithness in on Duke Uleino and Lord Gloce.
“Will there be a succession crisis?” Skaithness asked.
“Over a duchy like Baristoc’s, with no actual authority?” the banisher said. “Maybe, but that’s a problem for the magistrates. I doubt we’re looking at a civil war or anything like that.”
Later, after the Battle of Old Rock, the banisher was quite clear that those were his actual words.
The game hen was finally heated through; he sawed it roughly in half with a clean knife and handed Skaithness a porcelain plate, receiving a hunk of rye bread in exchange. He could feel his toes again. They hurt.
“This Fylent Maer is a great scholar?” Panzu asked.
“He’s an adequate scholar, when he’s sober,” Eilo said.
The wisdom cat regained her human face and used it to scowl.
“But from Baristoc we can get you to one of the great schools,” the banisher said. “You’ll like it there. They’re all arguing about how and why the world is changing, and what form the change will take, and if there will be more gods and magic in the new order of things, or less.”
The wisdom cat brightened for a moment. Then she looked troubled again.
“But I am bound to confess certain truths, if pressed,” she said. “And the thing about wisdom cats that we don’t often discuss is that we’re quite cowardly. I’d rather not get executed because someone else asked me about what happened to Duke Uleino.”
“We can worry about the details tomorrow,” Eilo said. “We should get a few hours of sleep, then we need to tell people that their manor lord died during a fight against the Mollusk Knight’s army.”
“You’re good at not quite lying,” Panzu said.
“I’m not sure what else to tell them, though,” the banisher said. “I don’t know how strong the Mollusk Knight is. Should I tell them to pack up their belongings and flee? Would they even listen to me if I did?” He rubbed his face. “I’ll decide in the morning.”
“The morning is just a few hours away,” Skaithness said.
“I’ll sleep in an eastern room,” he said, “so I’ll wake up when the sun rises.”
Exhausted, the banisher wandered around with a lit taper until he found an east-facing bedroom that had evidently gone years without use. From the decorations, it might have been the room of Lord Gloce’s late wife, or perhaps a daughter. It would do. He stumbled around downstairs until he found a basin, stripped, washed, and then startled when he saw Skaithness standing in the ground floor kitchen, in front of the pantry. Eilo was not exactly modest, but he did not want to alarm the young woman.
But she didn’t move.
“She’s asleep,” the wisdom cat said from atop her boxes of scrolls. “Hm, you’re rather well formed, aren’t you? That physique smacks more of vanity than honest labor, though.”
“I’m going to bed,” the banisher said. “Wake me if an army of mollusks comes out of the swamp.”
Eilo dreamed of things he had never experienced and could never have experienced: his mentor as a young man, studying the glaive; the titanic wisdom cat slain by the last riding of banishers, curling around its bloody books and maps like some mythical dragon guarding its gold; his birth parents, from the Owys farming clan, pious fools who had given everything—their last scrap of grain, even—to priests of the Egg. They had starved; so had his brothers and sisters. His mentor said Eilo had been a shriveled thing when he had found him, barely alive. He didn’t remember any of that, but he dreamed it, dreamed of the hunger and the cold and the desperate zealous yearning of his parents. And the howling void that the Egg of Eime had offered them—not even spiritual nourishment to fill their souls.
The banisher awoke an hour before dawn tangled in lacey sheets. He fell back to sleep almost immediately, and saw the future, or a future: men and women dressed in bright clean colors, with intricate hats, moving in lockstep like pikemen. There was a sound like a drumbeat, or—no, like Duke Uleino’s pocket watch, relentless and inescapable. Everyone moved like armored soldiers…and in the shadows, boneless things slithered, or darted from shell to shell, hiding in bits of detritus. Some of them got up and wrapped themselves in brightly colored cloaks and walked around like men, wearing their spiky helmets, obviously not people at all, but no one seemed to recognize the intruders. Eilo tried to cry out…
Shouting from downstairs, the crash of furniture. Instantly alert, the banisher hopped out of bed. The stone was ice cold on his bare feet, but he grabbed his glaive and padded swiftly and silently down the stone stairs to the ground floor.
“Get her outside!” a voice shouted. When Eilo peaked around the corner, he saw Skaithness in chains, pinned by two hexguards with catch-poles. She fought, crashing into the kitchen table and spilling plates, but they had her. More hexguards watched, and Captain Aklurian stood in the doorway. His arm was in a sling and long rents, like claw-marks, had torn his scale armor to shreds, but his voice was steely. “Hurry!” he shouted. “We—it’s him! It’s the banisher!” He turned and drew his steel dagger.
Before the nearest hexguard could turn, the banisher’s glaive snapped out and broke the man’s knee. The hexguard fell with a horrible and gratifying scream. Fighting his way toward the catch-pole guards, Eilo dodged a steel sword, ripped a spice rack down to block off the approach of two more guards—then something knocked him across the back of the head. He fell, skull rattling on the stone floor. The banisher tried to look around, and saw another hexguard emerging from the pantry. He hadn’t thought to look there. Sloppy and stupid. He reached for his glaive, but Aklurian kicked it away, when Eilo tried to rise, another kick from the hexguard captain sent him down into darkness.
*