March Teaser 2008: Foolish Ambition

[Keebler]

Foolish Ambition


The lonely lord sat in his private sanctum, staring blankly into the runes he had just inscribed into his heavy, leatherbound journal. He idly tapped his fingers on the top of his desk, and the only sound audible over the click of bone against chalcedony was the soft, keening whine, the sound of a soul in torment, from the altar behind him.

From the back of the study, interrupting the lord’s solitude, came the sound of bootsteps in the empty corridor. He did not have to look to know that one of the household servants in charge of maintaining this library complex had come to his study.

“Speak, majordomo,” he said, not bothering to turn around. “What is it you would have of me?”

“My lord,” the servant rasped through a ruined throat, “the archivists are almost done with packing the most precious texts. The guards grow nervous as these… disturbances continue. It is almost time to leave, my lord. All that remains is… your part.”

The clicking of fingers on writing surface stopped as the lord closed the book in front of him. The majordomo stepped closer, making sure to keep a safe distance from the garishly lit altar between him and his master.

“Shall I take that journal for you, my lord? There is room yet, not all of the boxes have been sealed for transport back to His Majesty’s court. There is still time…”

The lord laughed, grim and bitter. “Time is one thing we do not lack, majordomo. It will be thousands of years before these halls are disturbed again, if my dreams are true.”

“As you say, my lord.”

The lord stood, pushing his chair out, and he looked down upon the sealed journal. For a long moment, he remained still. The majordomo took one nervous step closer. “My lord? Your journal? And the… other book?” As if to underscore his urgency, a dull, rumbling boom rolled through the chamber again. Dust sifted from the stonework above and trickled onto the desk and the floor nearby.

The lord hissed and swept the book off the desk with one angry motion. The book fell to the ground with a loud thump, and reflexively, the servant rushed to pick it up.

“No.” The lord’s voice echoed, even louder than the sounds of crumbling stone that surrounded them. “Leave it be. I am done with it. Tell the archivists to be on their way. I shall follow in a few moments. With the other book.”

The servant retreated, scuttling backwards out of the room, bowing abjectly every few steps. The lord suddenly spun to look at him and called out.

“Wait. Where is my seal?”

The servant bowed again, afraid to meet his master’s eyes. “My lord, I do not know. I thought you had it. I do not come in here myself, as you know, except in this case, when I had to tell my lord—“

“I know why you came here, majordomo. Very well. That will be all. Go, tell the archivists.”

“As you say, my lord.” The majordomo fairly flew out of the room in his eagerness to escape his master’s strange temper and the pulsing book on the altar at the center of the room.

The lord looked around the study once more. He looked at the half-emptied bookshelves, ransacked for all irreplaceable items. He looked at the fallen journal on the floor at his feet. He looked at the altar at the center of the room, the vessel of his greatest triumph and deepest despair. “Would that you had been here, my lady, perhaps I would have thought better of it,” he muttered, to no one in particular.

He shook his head and then straightened up, with an audible creak of dusty bones. He walked toward the altar in the middle of the room and the book that sat upon it, which bathed everything nearby in a ghastly red glow.

He stopped in front of the altar and reached out slowly, almost hesitantly, to touch the book. This book was larger and heavier than the journal he’d been keeping, and the binding sickened even one as inured to horror as he was. As he drew close, he could hear sibilant whispering in his mind. Down the corridor there were the sounds of running feet and shouted commands as his minions finished their preparations to abandon his library. Another rumbling roar echoed through the halls. It sounded like the very masonry was coming apart.

The lord addressed the book itself as he took hold of it with both hands. “If it were my decision, I would leave you here and hope these halls remain sealed forever. But I know that will not be true, that this library and that accursed graveyard will come forth again some day. And perhaps the only chance to reverse the damage done is somewhere else within your thrice-damned pages. Very well. Come on, you vile thing. My master awaits.”

The whispers built to a crescendo in his head as he tried to lift the book from the altar. There was a moment of resistance, as if he had been encased in unyielding stone, before the book came free from the altar. The lord shook his head and snarled as he tucked the book unceremoniously under one arm like a novice in his own academy. “Never should I have agreed to use you. The Mhoires were not worth this. I have made too many bad bargains.”

The book shivered briefly with malevolent humor. Ignoring it, the lord held his hand over the altar and spoke a few words in another language, a language even more ancient than his own. The altar shimmered as his warding spell settled over it. He stood there for a few moments more, probing at the ward with his own keenly attuned magical senses. The ward was incomplete. Flawed. It seemed that the consequences of his meddling had affected even his own casting abilities in this place.

Shaking his head, Lord Rytheran strode out of his study and ritual chamber for the last time, accompanied by the ominous rumble of shifting rock and barely audible laughter.