The Lost Library of Cormanthyr

15

"What is that book that you work in so diligently?"

Baylee looked up at the question and saw Cordyan Tsald watching him. He closed the leather-covered book and marked his place with a finger. He held a quill in his other hand. "A book."

The watch lieutenant stood before him, dust covered her riding leathers as it covered them. A handkerchief hung around her neck, her lower face white against the dirt-encrusted upper part. "I've watched you work in it for the last three days of this trip," she said. "In my line of work, curiosity is generally considered a boon, but to have to carry it around inside you when you cannot guess at the answer is hard."

In spite of the dark mood that had hung around him since leaving the forgathering three days ago, Baylee smiled. And when the effort felt so good, he couldn't be totally antisocial. "I know the hazards of curiosity."

"I'm sure you do." She made no move to come any closer, standing a few paces from where Baylee sat in the fork of a tree above her head.

The forest was quiet around them, filled with the bright, quick movements of colorful birds. Nearly a hundred paces away, a mountain lion paced them, working out her own curiosity. The big cat had followed them for the last two hours. Baylee judged she would soon stop, coming to the edge of the territory she claimed as hers.

In the distance, Ciwa Cthulad, Calebaan, and the watch members sat around the remains of the midday feast they'd just shared. Cthulad enjoyed his tea, and had laid in a goodly supply, finding a kindred spirit in the watch wizard. It was an humble table the members of the watch sat with the rangers, mostly journey cakes, sweetmeats, and jerked meat they had been supplied with from the forgathering. Baylee had added to it with berries and nuts he'd gathered before the others had gotten up.

You should not be so stand-offish, Xuxa chided from higher up in the tree.

Baylee looked up to where the bat hung upside down, regarding him with those white, pupil-less eyes. You should stay out of things. Over the last three days of hard travel, the azmyth bat had taken time to point out that the watch lieutenant was also a good looking woman, and to make the occasional disparaging remark about Jaeleen. He knew that most of the conversation of that ilk was meant to distract him rather than to offer any real attempt at encouragement.

It wouldn't hurt to talk to her, Xuxa insisted.

"She talks to you?" Cordyan asked.

"She," Baylee growled in irritation, "won't shut up. She's worse than the mother I never had."

"You had a mother," the watch lieutenant said, shaking her head.

Knowing the woman didn't understand, Baylee said, "I'm sure I was born to a woman, but Fannt Golsway was the only parent I ever knew."

"I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"They didn't tell you everything about me?"

She shook her head. "I saw the likeness of you that Golsway had in his rooms."

Baylee was taken by surprise. "I wasn't aware that he had a likeness of me." He'd never sat for a painting, and the old mage had never mentioned getting one of him. "Are you sure it was me?"

"Yes," she replied. "It was a very good likeness." She wrinkled her brow, perplexed. "It was signed by someone named ‘Vi.'"

"That's not a name," Baylee said. With the understanding came a return to the sharp hurt he'd first experienced when he'd heard of Golsway's death, but it was also a bit of a balm. "Those are Golsway's notations, not a signature. He drew the picture."

"Golsway drew that picture?" Cordyan seemed genuinely surprised. "He could have been a very well paid artist if he'd wanted."

"He was a man of many parts," Baylee admitted. "But the only things he ever drew were things he wanted to-" He stopped short, his voice suddenly thick with emotion.

"Only things he wanted to what?"

"Only the ones he wanted to remember," Baylee finished.

"I see. I'm surprised you didn't see this picture. It held a place of prominence in his private rooms."

"I've not been-" Baylee stumbled over the word home. "I've not been back in some time."

"The housekeeper told us there had been some discordance between yourself and Golsway."

"Back to work, lieutenant?"

Cordyan smiled. She poured water from her waterskin onto the handkerchief and rubbed the back of her neck. "I never stray far from it."

"There were some problems," Baylee admitted. "I think we were on the verge of working them out."

"What problems?"

Baylee gazed down at her. "And if I choose not to answer?"

She shrugged. "Then I have more to wonder about when we resume our travels."

"You had parents, I assume," Baylee said.

"Of course."

See? Xuxa put in. Already you're finding common ground.

Baylee ignored her. "Did you ever rebel against your parents?"

"Perhaps, at times."

"And how do you get along with them now?"

"They're dead," Cordyan replied.

The answer caught Baylee off guard. He hesitated, forgetting about the argument he'd been building toward. "I'm sorry."

"It happened some time ago," Cordyan said. "An accident"

Baylee searched her face for any signs of lingering pain, but read nothing. Over the last three days he'd noted that the watch lieutenant could keep her own counsel. "My disagreement with Golsway was much simpler than either one of us would allow it to be. I thought I was grown, and he didn't agree."

"So you left?"

"According to the Lady's teachings, each of us must find our own path. The reward of that path of independence is in how much closer you can be to those whose lives have touched yours."

"Where need and want are one."

Baylee nodded. "You follow the teachings of Mystra?"

"I am an interested observer, but not a passionate worshiper. Not yet. I take it you are."

'To be a worshiper is so simple," he said. "All you have to do is look around you. When you are taught where to look, you will see the Lady's work everywhere. Just as I see Mielikki's." Despite his first allegiance to the Lady of the Forests, he also owed a great deal to the teachings of Mystra.

"As yet, I do not share your confidence." She looked back at the group. "I'll leave you to your book." She turned to go.

Baylee watched her. Over the last three days, he'd maintained his own company. Xuxa kept him in conversation all during the day, and watched over him at night when his thoughts busied themselves while he stared up at the stars. But it wasn't the same as talking to someone who didn't know him, someone who didn't try to guess his every thought.

'Wait," he called. He capped the inkwell and replaced it in his pack.

She turned, looking up at him.

Baylee dropped easily out of the tree, brushing journeycake crumbs off his breeches. "This is a journal. I was just making notes."

"About what?"

'The things I can remember from the last few days," Baylee explained. "Conversations I can remember having with Golsway in the days before I left his house."

"May I see it?"

Baylee gave it willingly. The journal was thick with parchment, most of the pages filled with his writing. Each entry was dated.

Cordyan looked at the last page in the book that he'd been working on. Drawings covered the page on the right, while script covered the facing page. "This is the woman you saw that night?" she asked.

"As well as I can remember," Baylee agreed. He studied the drawings. He'd kept most of them simple, drawing the drow female's face from a number of angles, front, and profile.

"These are very good."

"I'm a poor artist," Baylee said, feeling uncomfortable. It was one thing for someone to compliment him on his researching skills or on his ability to recover a particularly fragmented vase even though he'd never seen it whole before.

"How can you say that?" Cordyan flipped back through the pages, finding the renderings he'd done of the circlets that had imprisoned the skeleton warriors. There were even renderings of the skeleton warrior kneeling as it had with its face turned toward the sky. The tattoo had been exploded in another view, and the whole of it drawn in as best as Baylee could imagine.

"Golsway taught me," Baylee said. "It is not so incredible. But when you've uncovered some of the masterpieces we discovered during our journeys, the way some of those artists were able to work in the mediums, whatever modest talent I may have pales by comparison."

Cordyan ran a finger along his pages of script. "Your handwriting is beautiful as well."

"Golsway never accepted anything less than my best," Baylee said. "He always told me that an explorer wasn't worth his salt if he made records no one could read."

"So what do you write in here?"

"Anything," Baylee replied. "What I think, what I hear, what I see. Any conjectures on my part. Sometimes information I can copy down from reference books."

Cordyan flipped the journal open to the first page. "You write a lot." She flipped through the pages, opening to maps of areas Baylee had walked through, seeing faces of people Baylee had seen, seeing a handful of pictures here and there rendered in ink and sometimes chalks of picturesque areas where the ranger had camped.

"It's a big world."

The watch lieutenant stopped at a page that had a drawing of the pirate ship that had attacked a merchanter Baylee had traveled aboard. "You've only been working in this journal for the last three months."

Baylee glanced at the notation on the front of the journal and saw that she was right. "Yes."

"You travel a lot," Cordyan said.

Watching the woman, Baylee tried to figure out what she was after. He'd questioned people himself in his own line of work, and he could tell she was closing in on a thread she pursued. "Yes."

She glanced at him, handing the book back. She appeared threatening in no way, merely interested in his journalizing. "You must fill up a lot of books like these."

"Three or four a year," Baylee admitted. "Sometimes more. It depends. When I worked some of the sites Golsway and I discovered, we sometimes filled up a half-dozen such journals each."

"What do you do with them when you fill one?" she asked. "I notice you keep a light pack."

Then Baylee realized what she was after. Evidently no one had found journals like his in Golsway's house. "I have a place that keeps them for me."

"What place?"

"Candlekeep. Perhaps you've heard of it."

"I've heard of it," Cordyan said. "You've been there?"

"Yes."

"I'm told the price of admission is quite high," the watch lieutenant said. "Usually a book of some sort, and worth no less than ten thousand gold pieces. К your journals are kept there, they must be highly regarded."

"I have a friend there," Baylee said. "Brother Qinzl, who claims to entertain a certain vicarious thrill of exploration when he reads one of my journals."

"I thought you would have kept your journals with Golsway's."

"No," Baylee said. "Not since Golsway deemed that my writing was strong enough to stand on its own."

"When was that?"

"When I was fourteen," Baylee answered.

"You've written journals at fourteen that are in Candlekeep?" She seemed amazed.

Baylee shook his head. "You have to think about the time period. During those years, Golsway was much more active than he has been of late. That was one of the things we argued over. I was still willing to go rushing after the vaguest whisper, while he was more content these days to look for a big strike. When he was younger, they were all big strikes, some just bigger than others. Those early journals detailed what members of the Explorer's Society deemed important finds."

"But they were still good enough to stand on their own?"

Baylee looked into the woman's copper eyes. "If you're asking if Golsway's journals are there, the answer is no."

"Why?"

"Because Golsway didn't want to chance a loss of the information we've discovered. If Candlekeep burned down, which won't happen because the magic wards within it prevent paper catching fire within their walls, then both sets of our works wouldn't be lost."

"Where did Golsway keep his journals?"

Baylee shook his head. "I don't know."

Her copper hued gaze remained on him, weighing the answer she'd received.

"Wherever they are," Baylee said, 'You can be assured that it's a matter of record."

"Why wouldn't Golsway have told you?"

"It wasn't a matter of him not telling me," Baylee said. "I never asked. At that time, I knew everything he did. He had no secret considerations about things we'd found that he didn't share with me."

"It sounds like the two of you were very close," Cordyan said.

"Maybe too close," Baylee agreed. "If there had been space allowed somewhere along the way, maybe I would have been there when he needed me."

If Golsway could not take care of himself at the time, Xuxa interposed, you would only have died with him.

"Do you know what he was working on?" Cordyan asked.

"No. Did anyone find a journal like this one?"

Cordyan shook her head. "Not yet. A team was still investigating the premises when I was told to find you. Maybe they've found it in my absence."

Behind her, Cthulad and Calebaan broke up the conversation after the meal. The members of the Waterdhavian watch group gathered their traveling packs once again.

"Looks like we're about to get back onto the path," Baylee said.

Cordyan nodded. "I'm sorry to have interrupted your work time."

"No need," Baylee replied. "It was an enjoyable talk. I look forward to another."

The watch lieutenant walked away.

Baylee watched her, admiring the sleek roll of hips beneath the tunic's edge. She didn't walk like someone deliberately drawing attention to herself. The swaying gait was a natural part of the woman.

She turned abruptly. "Where did Golsway keep his journal at his home?"

The question almost caught Baylee off guard. He never let his features change. "There's a desk in his study. Did anyone check there?"

"I'll ask when we get back."

Baylee watched her go again. She's good, he told Xuxa. We'll have to be careful around her.

Shell only find out about Golsway's hidden precaution if you let it slip. Xuxa paused. You don't have to worry about that because I won't allow it to happen.