The Indigo King - James A. Owen [56]
“Ptolemy,” John said, “we need to see your understudy. Can you take us to see him?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the mapmaker said. “He’s already condemned and in his cell, awaiting execution. I couldn’t—”
“Please,” John implored. “It’s important.”
“Well, if I were to help …,” Ptolemy began, tapping at his chin. “How might I benefit by it?”
Jack answered, turning to Ptolemy with a determined look on his face. “If we give you something of great value, will you help us?”
Ptolemy folded his arms. “What are you offering?”
“What if I can show you a land, a new land that really exists, but that no one knows about yet?”
Ptolemy’s arms dropped to his sides. “A new land? A real one?”
In reply, Jack took a stylus from a table, then grabbed a fresh sheet of parchment from a nearby stack and began to sketch. A couple of times he stood back, appraising, then kept working. Once John realized what Jack was doing, he picked up another stylus and began to add topographical details, and even a fish or three swimming in the water. When they had finished, Jack handed the sheet to Ptolemy. “There. What do you think of that?”
“Amazing!” Ptolemy exclaimed. “Where is it?”
Jack pointed to John’s notations. “Here—it lies far south of Chi—uh, Sinae.
“We call it ‘Australia.’”
“You’ll have to wait until dark,” Ptolemy explained as he traced out the route the companions needed to follow. “There will be guards attending to him through the evening, but you should be able to sneak past if you use the corridors I’ve marked. You don’t plan to kill anyone, do you?”
John was aghast. “Of course not!”
Ptolemy took this with aplomb. “Oh, I wouldn’t take issue if you really needed to. I just want to know if I have to plan ahead for anyone’s replacement.”
“Why would that be your worry?” asked Chaz. “Are you some sort of supervisor here at the library?”
“Actually,” Ptolemy whispered, again with the hand cupped to his mouth, “I’m the king. Of Alexandria.”
Chaz started to ask the obvious question: Why did they have to resort to sneaking and subterfuge to see the prisoner, if Ptolemy was in a position to simply order it?
John quickly looked at the others with a slight head shake. If Ptolemy was speaking the truth, he could be helpful; but if he was just a crazy geographer, engaging him more fully in their quest could just complicate things.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he said to Ptolemy. “We appreciate your help.”
The three companions shook hands with the geographer king and started tracing the labyrinthine path he’d marked for them, which wound through the warren of rooms. They moved from corridor to corridor, each one taking them to progressively larger rooms, most of which were filled with racks and shelves laden with scrolls. It was more than tempting for John and Jack to reach out every so often to touch one of the scrolls.
“Why so delicate?” Chaz asked. “Paper don’t break.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” John replied, still eyeing a set of scrolls that bore Egyptian seals as they passed to the next room. “This library, and everything in it, represents a collection of knowledge more complete than the world will ever see again. It’s tempting to just stay and read. To men like us, this is holy ground.”
“Right,” said Chaz, who was clearly unimpressed. “If it was so great, what happened to it?”
“The usual,” said Jack. “Catastrophe, followed by a couple thousand years of regret.”
In the adjacent structure they found the cluster of rooms where Ptolemy said his understudy was being held.
The hall was lined with identical doors set into stone. “Which one?” Jack asked. “They’re all the same. It’ll take all night.”
“That one,” Chaz said, pointing. “It’s the only one with a guard.” Without further discussion, he slipped around to the next corridor and disappeared. A moment later a second guard stopped in front of the cell door and spoke briefly to the first, who got up and began to walk directly to John and Jack’s place of concealment. The other went back