Scholar

4

Meredi found Quaeryt in what was called the library in the Scholarium Solum. A pretentious name, not only for the repository of miscellaneous volumes, but for the location itself, suggesting that the large but decrepit old building held the one body of scholars in all Telaryn, he thought, as he brushed a moldering bit of plaster from his shoulder with one hand, while brushing the cobwebs off a tome on the shelf before him. He eased the volume out and opened it, reading the title: Rholan, Synthesizing the Esoteric and Exoteric?

While it was far from what he was seeking, he read through several pages. One paragraph did catch his attention.

Although so little is known of Rholan the Unnamer that he might as well be apocryphal, the stories and saying attributed to him are a remarkable fusion of the exoteric and esoteric, as if he were attempting to instill spirituality within the most pragmatic of human group functions and interactions.… Yet, for all the impact he has had upon history and belief, the man himself remains more evanescent than morning fog in summer.… We only know that he lived in Montagne and was presumably born there, although no records exist, and that he vanished after traveling to Cloisonyt in his fifty-third year, according to the historian Jletyr Vladomsyn …

“More evanescent than morning fog, yet he single-handedly made Lydar a bastion of the Nameless,” murmured Quaeryt to himself.

He closed the volume and continued his search, absently wondering, far from the first time, why so many books in a library supposedly used and perused by scholars had been untouched for so long, and why many had never been opened. He quickly looked at and discarded several other volumes-Time of the Champions: Caldor and Hengyst; The Five Ports of Lydar; Historical Inaccuracies in the Accounts of Tholym; Natural Remedies from Telaryn Flora.

He couldn’t help but wince at one-Imaging as a Manifestation of Naming.

In time, he did discover a volume that would suffice for his purposes-Historical Commentary on Tilbor. It had the added benefit of the title on the cover and a seal indicating it had never been opened. It might even be informative as well. Finding it was likely to be the easy part. While he could have taken it past the gate desk to the library under a concealment shield, or removed it by even more covert means, either could raise questions later, when he would not wish them to surface. He decided to try the direct approach first.

He walked to the desk set beside the locked door gate to the library and looked to the young student scholar seated there.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like to borrow this volume.”

“Sir … I cannot grant that.”

Quaeryt knew that. He even knew the answer to the question he had to ask. “Who can?”

“I’ll have to check with Scholar Parelceus, sir. He is the only one who can decide.” The youth’s voice did not quite quaver.

“Please do. I’ll leave it here with you, and come back late this afternoon.”

“Ah … he won’t be back until late tonight … after the library is locked.”

“Then I’ll come by in the morning.” Quaeryt handed the book to the young man. “Don’t break the seal, either.”

“Ah … no, sir.”

“Thank you.” Quaeryt smiled and departed.

Outside the Scholarium, the day was already hot, despite high hazy clouds.

Quaeryt turned his steps toward the harbor, knowing full well that later it would be even hotter, and the hazy clouds meant that there would be little breeze at all.

The hillside that held the Scholarium flattened into the lower city after Quaeryt had walked less than two hundred yards, just past the anomen of the Nameless that was almost as old as the Scholarium, but far less decrepit. Once he was among the welter of shops and cafes and establishments even less reputable, the last traces of the morning breeze vanished, leaving him walking steadfastly through a haze that held the pungency of onions fried in grease close to rancid; the smoke of various types of incenses, likely from one of the countries located on the southern continent of Otelyrn; the faint but acrid bitterness of elveweed; the more welcome smell of roasting fowl; and dozens of other less identifiable odors, the origins of many on which few would wish to dwell.

Quaeryt stepped past a bent old man standing beside a cart that held folded scarves, neckerchiefs, and smaller pocket squares. The vendor did not return his smile. Then he dodged around two heavyset women who balanced bundles of laundry on their heads as they strode toward the cross street that led to a public fountain two long blocks to the west.

Close to three-quarters of a glass later, and feeling far warmer, Quaeryt slowed as he approached the establishment on the unnamed street that everyone called “second street,” since it was the second one back from and north of Harbor Avenue. The sign displayed a rat in a sailor’s sleeveless jacket lifting a gray tankard. The illustration had been recently repainted. The Tellan words underneath-“The Wharf Rat”-had not. Quaeryt nodded and stepped inside.

The unlit and dim taproom was empty, except for an angular gray-haired woman in black trousers and a plain faded blue shirt-blouse. She smiled as she saw Quaeryt. “Scholar.” Except the Tellan word meant something more like “learned rascal.”

“Quaeryt. Always been Quaeryt to you, Zaenyi.” He grinned. “You always make me do that.”

“It’s a harmless game. These days, what’s harmless is good. Better than most of what passes for games.”

“Business isn’t that bad, is it?”

“It’s been better. It’s also been worse.”

“You get many Tilborans in here lately?”

“A sailor’s a sailor. If they behave and have coin, we serve them. If they don’t, Kuisad gets them to leave.” She paused. “Why do you ask?”

“I may have to go there.”

“I thought you gave up the sea when you became a scholar. Now even your words reek of the Bovarian.”

“Zaenyi … you’re cruel.”

Her smile was mischievous.

“Traveling to Tilbora,” he finally replied, “isn’t the same as going back to sea.”

“You can’t ever stay put, can you?”

“Too much of a target if you do.”

“Kuisad said you’d been named a Scholar of the Lord. Many would become Bilbryn’s apprentice for that.”

Quaeryt merely nodded to that. So many thought the historic imager a disciple of the Namer that there was little point in protesting. “It brings in a few silvers a week. Lord Bhayar’s a fair man. He’s not a patient man. He’s getting impatient. It’s not a good time for a scholar to be around. He’s thinking I might be of use studying things in Tilbora. I’m considering taking him up on it.” Quaeryt shrugged. “What should I know that’s been happening here?”

“There was an Antiagon crew in here last night. They were boasting about how they privateered a fat Bovarian merchanter. They captured something. They were free with their coins, and the silvers were Bovarian.”

“Were they truly Antiagons?”

“They all spoke that low tongue.”

Quaeryt nodded again. The “low tongue” was a bastard Bovarian dialect spoken in Antiago and southern Bovaria, mainly in Kherseilles and Ephra and the lands between. “No Bovarians lately?”

“Not since mid-Mayas.”

In the remaining half glass or so that they talked, Zaenyi didn’t add anything more to what she’d said earlier, and it was close to noon when Quaeryt left and walked the two blocks to the harbor proper. When Lord Chayar had moved the capital from Extela to Solis, he had also rebuilt the harbor. All the piers were accessed off the stone-paved and stone-walled Harbor Avenue, and all four long piers were not only of solid stone with stone footings, but were widely separated.

Quaeryt knew the kind of ship he was looking for-not the biggest, nor the fanciest, but a modest-sized, tight-rigged, and older Telaryn or Tilboran vessel in outstanding repair.

The first and southernmost pier in the harbor was the smallest, and the vessels who tied up there were either local coasters or fishermen. Quaeryt started with the second pier, even though that meant walking farther. He thought the second ship from the foot of the pier was Tilboran, what with the high sides and sturdy timbers, but planks at the waterline were green and the gunwales were neither oiled nor varnished, and she creaked too much even in the gentle swells of the harbor. While a Tilboran vessel would have been ideal, he wasn’t about to trust one whose maintenance had clearly been slighted.

Next was a sleek northern vessel, most likely Jariolan, with shorter sloop-rigged masts to deal with the force of northern gales. Quaeryt had to wonder if she was a spice trader, stopping in Solis for repairs, in order to avoid the high porting tariffs imposed by the Rex of Bovaria. Beyond the Jariolan was a bulky Ferran barque whose crew looked to be re-rigging the foremast.

“Good-looking ship,” he murmured, even if he had no intention of sailing under a Ferran ensign.

The ship at the end of the pier on the seaward side had to be Antiagon-much smaller and sloop-rigged. Quaeryt had to admit that she was trim and well-kept, but he needed a Telaryn vessel, and he didn’t like the idea of a smaller craft in the rougher waters off the eastern coast.

He trudged back down the second pier and started studying vessels on the third pier, the most likely one for his needs, since the fourth pier held both of Bhayar’s warships, used solely if the Lord wished to travel somewhere by sea, and several of the larger ocean clippers designed for faster ocean crossings and unlikely to be calling on coastal ports-even had he wanted to pay their exorbitant rates for passage.

Halfway out the third pier, he spied a ship that was close to what he sought, a three-masted barque, a few years older than he would have liked, but the care and cleanliness showed. The fantail plaque proclaimed her as Diamond Naclia, suggesting she was ported out of either Nacliano or Estisle. She might be outbound from there, but then again, she might be headed back, and if she weren’t headed north from her home port, he’d have a chance to pick up a Tilboran ship there.

The gangway was down, and two heavy wagons were blocked in place roughly opposite where the forward-hold hatch was likely to be located. The teamster of the forward wagon was unfastening the canvas from his wagon bed.

Quaeryt stopped at the base of the gangway and looked to the sailor at the opening in the railing, a mate judging from the sleeveless jacket with the black cloth stripes angled up toward his neck. “Permission to come aboard.” His words were Tellan.

“Polite now, aren’t you, scholar?” replied the mate in Tellan. “That brown shirt and trousers says you’re that, right?”

“That’s right.”

The mate gestured, and Quaeryt limped up the gangway to the area that would have been called the quarterdeck on a passenger ship.

“What can I do for you, scholar?”

“I’m trying to get to Tilbora.…”

“You are? And you’d be wanting to work your way, I suppose?”

The top of the mate’s head was barely level with Quaeryt’s nose, but the scholar wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with the sailor, not with his knotted muscles and unscarred face.

Quaeryt laughed. “I’m a scholar. I can write letters, copy manifests and waybills, total shipment values, but I’ve got a bad leg, and I’m clumsy when I carry heavy things because of it. You look to be headed back to Estisle, perhaps farther.…”

“Passage to Nacliano would be a gold, plus two coppers a day for the crew’s fare, four for the captain’s.”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t be helpful,” replied Quaeryt. “Years ago…”

“What? Cabin boy?”

“Quartermaster stryker. I can do navigation calculations, and, if you’ve got the tables, double moon triangulation … or just spell your lookouts.”

“With Artiema full twenty degrees above the horizon in the west and Erion at the zenith, and the Triad fifteen above the water…”

Quaeryt let himself grin. “You’d not be seeing the Triad in the morning light…”

A faint smile crossed the mate’s lips. “How about Artiema twenty degrees above the horizon in the east…?”

For close to half a glass, the mate asked questions about navigation. Abruptly, he stopped. “I’ll have to talk to the captain. If he agrees, a half gold, and a copper a day for fare, and you can have the bunk in the fantail storage locker. We’ll be casting off at dawn on Vendrei. No extra cost if you want to sleep aboard tomorrow night.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow to see if he agrees.”

The mate nodded. “I’m Ghoryn.”

“Quaeryt.”

After he left the Diamond, the scholar found himself smiling. He’d enjoyed the navigation exam and puzzles posed by Ghoryn.

The smile faded as he considered that, while he had the beginnings of an idea to deal with his problems, he still didn’t have a real solution to Bhayar’s difficulties, even though he’d known he wouldn’t until he’d spent time in Tilbora. Still …