'Is he underneath?' Nai asked, looking at the paved ground at the base.
'Encased within the rock,' the Litse replied, not trying to hide his annoyance. 'Treat it with care, this library was founded according to his writings – my ancestors were charged by him with keeping the memory of Leitah alive.'
'Encased within the rock?'
Amber could see Nai assessing the monument, trying to work out how it had been made. He's not like Isherin Purn, he realised, necromancy isn't about power for this one. He's just so inquisitive he doesn't know when to stop!
'It must have been done in the city then,' Nai concluded. Without warning he reached up and hooked his fingers on the top of the monument. Their escort gave an indignant screech but Nai ignored him, pulling himself up so his head was above the level of the monument.
The white-eye pulled a javelin from his waist and raising it, ready to throw until Amber grabbed his arm.
'Nai, get down,' Amber ordered, The white-eye tried to twist out of his grip, but flight required him to be slender and light-boned, like a hawk, and Amber had the advantage of weight on his side. The Litse hissed in frustration and went fpr his dagger, at which point Amber gave him a hefty shove that sent the youth reeling backwards, wings unfurled and outstretched as he tried to regain his balance.
'Did you recognise the unknown soldier?' came a voice from the steps. Kastan Styrax stood there, in front of a mixed group.
Amber dropped to one knee.
'Well? I can see there's a face carved on the top, is it anyone you recognise?' Amber could hear the laughter in his lord's voice. Throughout history the Menin had never been able to resist bating the fussy, humourless Litse. For some reason it pleased Amber to realise his lord was not immune to that impulse, a rare glimpse of humanity in one normally remote and unknowable.
'Rings a bell, my Lord,' Nai replied cheerfully, prompting Amber to wince at the necromancer's blithe irreverence. 'I'm not saying I've got drunk with the man, but there's something about the eyes that's familiar.'
Their guard gave another squawk of outrage, but this time he only looked up at the steps for instruction. There was another Litse white-eye beside Lord Styrax, bigger than Kiallas, with flashes of gold on his ornate armour. He was watching the proceedings with a frown, but he so far he had refrained from getting involved. Now, as he started down the steps, Lord Styrax said quietly, 'Heel, Gesh.'
It was the first time in a while Amber had seen his lord out of armour; even a white-eye as strong as Kastan Styrax would find a full suit tiring in this valley, so he had opted instead for something more suitable for a nobleman. He wore an expensively tailored cream tunic with red braiding, and red leather cavalry boots, as strange a sight on a white-eye as the rings he wore, diamonds and rubies flashing from his scarred left hand. Behind him walked General Gaur and Kohrad. The young white-eye looked less ostentatious than his father for once in a black brigandine. From the expression on Kohrad's face, he had more than baiting Litse on his mind as he stared with undisguised hostility at his father's escort. Amber could tell the slim, aloof Gesh was well-aware of the scrutiny but did not deign to take note.
'Amber, what is your strange friend's name?'
'My name is Nai, my Lord,' the necromancer said before Amber could reply, bowing briefly.
'I don't remember speaking to you,' Lord Styrax said. 'Remember your place or Major Amber will cut that lopsided grin off your face.'
Nai's smile faltered as he realised there wasn't a trace of humour in Styrax's words.
'Now, Amber: talk.'
Amber bowed to the correct depth. 'The servant of Isherin Purn, my Lord -1 mentioned him in my report, but clearly I was mistaken in my assumption he had died.' He hesitated and looked Styrax direct in the eye. 'My Lord, he has news you should hear.'
Styrax nodded. 'I understand.' He glanced back up at the entrance to the Fearen House, set behind a colonnade of eight enormous pillars standing sixty feet high. The main entrance was a brass-fronted door some thirty feet high, polished to a shine at the expense of whatever image had once been imprinted onto the metal. 'Come with me,' he ordered.
They ascended the steps and entered, Amber checking his pace to glance at the bas-reliefs of winged warriors on each side of the door before following Lord Styrax in. The Fearen House had high windows of stained glass on each of the six walls: two thin windows alongside the entrances to each wing and three enormous ones on the other walls. They filled the massive central space with tinted light, adding colour to a drab day. Above the windows were drapes of richly coloured cloth, gold-edged flags of bright red punctuating long swathes of flowing blue.
The Menin weren't the only visitors to the library. A few scholars were leaning over some of the half-dozen U-shaped desks below the dome, where lecterns on two sides were angled towards the scholar in the centre so he could study the enormous leather-bound books. Two men and a woman looked up at the sound of feet before averting their gaze quickly, at which Amber allowed himself a small smile.
The prohibition on weapons doesn't seem as effective in the presence of a man double the weight and a foot taller than a normal man.
Lord Styrax ignored the looks and continued on into the very centre of the room. Amber looked around at the huge room; he'd not before been in a temple as large as this and it was undoubtedly as magnificent as any room he'd ever seen, even if the dome above did lack the gold ornamentation he'd expect in a Temple of Death. There was the dry scent of book dust on the air, and solid blocks of bookcases protruded out into the room on all sides. Arcane symbols were carved into every available wooden surface of the bookcases and armed guards were posted at every door.
Lord Styrax had stopped in the very centre of the room. Amber caught him up and stood at his side.
'Do you know what that is?' Lord Styrax said in a soft voice. The Fearen House was as quiet as a temple at prayer, its few devotees bent silently over their icons of worship.
Amber looked at the object: a five-sided column of black granite, two feet high and one foot square, with the corners smoothed down and the whole thing polished to an almost mirror shine. In the centre of its flat top was a half-sphere which, for no reason Amber could tell, appeared to be solid gold. A tiny script was etched both into stone and gold, so small Amber had to bend down before he realised it was not a language he could read. It took him a while to work out what the language was: single or grouped geometric runes cut at one depth, overlaid with a shallower, more flowing style, like scroll-work on a picture frame – Elvish, the first mortal language, made up of a hundred and twenty-one angular core runes and five hundred and five lesser, to which the flowing script added detail, case and tense.
'It's called the Heart of the Library,' Lord Styrax said, anticipating the soldier's response.
Amber straightened again. 'Does it do anything? That's Elvish, isn't it?'
'Not as far as I can tell, and of course no magic works here.'
'Why write in Elvish then?' He frowned. 'I thought folk only used the language for magic, that it was the best representation for channelling energy? You don't write secrets in it and leave them in a bloody library where there are the resources, and scholars, to translate it.'
'The script is apparently a poem, one that is so obscure it most likely contains a code. They call it the puzzle of the heart.'
Amber looked up at his lord. Without warning the hairs on his neck prickled, as they did when he suspected he was not in control of a situation.
What sort of a conqueror gets distracted in a library, however magnificent? Karkarn's horn, is conquest not your goal?