The Lost Library of Cormanthy - Mel Odom [113]
Xuxa dropped from the rigging above and took wing, speeding across the water. Innesdav is there, she cried joyfully.
Minutes later, Tsunami Dancer put into the harbor. The black robed acolytes tied the ship to the mooring anchors while the sailors unlimbered the boarding platform. It thumped solidly onto the dock.
"Baylee," one of the acolytes yelled from the crowd, "it is good to see you again."
The ranger's heart sped up as he spotted his old friend. He bounded down the boarding platform and seized the man by the upper arms. Innesdav returned the grip, the old man's strength still surprisingly strong. "And it is good to see you again, old friend," Baylee said.
"I thought perhaps you would be here yesterday."
"Blame the wind," the ranger said, feeling of higher spirits than he had since finding out about Golsway's death.
Innesdav was a half-head taller than Baylee, but thin as a post, almost looking like a scarecrow instead of a man. He pushed his cowl back, a smile on his wrinkled face. "It has been so long, young warrior."
"The years pass so fleetingly," Baylee agreed. Besides Golsway, Innesdav was the other important figure in the ranger's life. Where the old mage had been a stern disciplinarian, Innesdav had been the doting uncle, always there with a gift or a piece of candy when Golsway wasn't looking. And in those years when Golsway was most active at Candlekeep, Innesdav had provided a vast tutelage of his own, bringing to Baylee's attention fantastic stories told just for the sheer wonder and amazement of it.
"You have sent me a very interesting, if abbreviated library, my boy."
"They arrived?" Baylee asked as the acolyte dropped his arm across the back of the ranger's shoulders and guided him up the carved stone stairway that curled up around the uneven face of the crag to the citadel that waited on top.
"Oh yes, they arrived." Innesdav laughed. "I must admit to some frantic consternation when gallons of seawater seemed to be pouring into that old closet we set up to receive your journals. For the first few moments, I thought you'd been drowned somewhere and this was going to be the first notice I received of it."
"I'm sorry," Baylee said. "I couldn't tell if any water was going through with the books."
"Yes, and plenty of it. I mopped for hours. After I looked at those books, of course." Innesdav held up a hand and Xuxa flew down and grabbed the little finger of his hand. "Ah, Xuxa, and how have you been?"
Running for our lives, up against foes that we have not yet named, the azmyth bat replied, pursued and harried by the Waterdhavian Watch, and chasing after what could potentially be one of the greatest finds ever made.
"That," Innesdav said, "sounds almost like the accounting you gave me the last time you came here."
Xuxa chirped in amused agreement.
Baylee reflected on that event, trying to place the time in his mind. "That
was when we found Tchazzar's scroll, which outlined how the smaller kingdoms of Chessenta united and what the trade agreements were supposed to be."
"Exactly," Innesdav nodded. "That scroll was supposed to have been writ in the blood of the men who agreed to it. And the man who could produce it would have controlled the lineage of those kingdoms and possibly been able to step into a ready-made country ripe for the taking. If the person seizing the scroll was a good enough mage."
Baylee nodded. The story had been told for decades since the fall of unified Chessenta. But Golsway had uncovered new knowledge that had led them on a merry chase to the scroll they recovered. It now resided in Candlekeep for security reasons. There were some who said that the ghosts of the men who'd signed the document could be summoned back from the beyond to wreak vengeance on the men who'd sundered the realm they'd put together.
"Did you ever discover if the scroll Golsway and I found was truly the Tchazzar Scroll?" the ranger asked. "We checked as much as we were able.