Divine Apostasy Book 12 - Chapter 82

Chapter 82

[Author’s Note: I’m a little worried I overcomplicated this chapter and the next. Hopefully it’s okay but let me know in the comments if I went off the rails. Also, I changed the rules of the Conclave a bit so what you read here is correct and I’ve gone back and fixed the initial directions. Thanks!]

Ink Lord Numarrow’s movements, while precise, seemed off somehow, like a marionette operated by an expert puppeteer.

Numarrow patted his robes, becoming increasingly frantic. “Where is it? Where's my journal? And my Emblem of Domain?” His voice rose with each word, the arrogance giving way to genuine distress. “You can't just force me back and not return my possessions.”

“I can,” Echo said, her voice firm and commanding.

Numarrow straightened and bowed. “Of course, Mistress. My apologies.” Under his breath he continued to complain. “There are rules. Protocols!”

“I have your things,” Ruwen said, stepping forward. “All of them.”

Numarrow's attention snapped to Ruwen, and for a moment something flickered in those dead eyes. “You. You're the one who...” He trailed off, his expression shifting through confusion, anger, and finally settling on calculating assessment. “You killed me.”

That shocked Ruwen. His Ink Lord Wraps hid his features which only left the sound of his voice and possibly his posture and movements to identify him. Tremine had made Numarrow sound like a genius, and perhaps that extended into seeing and remembering such details.

“That's in the past,” Ruwen replied. “You have a second chance.”

“At what?”

“Life. We need your help.”

Numarrow laughed, which turned into a cough and ended with a mass of phlegm he spit in Ruwen’s direction.

“My help?” Numarrow said, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his robe. “You murder me, stuff my corpse in a pocket dimension I assume since I’m not waking up in the Red Temple, and now you want my help?” He turned to Echo. “I demand you release me.”

Echo tilted her head, as if studying her thrall. “No.”

“What do you mean, no? I’m the Ink Lord of Malth. Chosen by the almighty Izac himself. You risk the ire of god by stealing one of his followers.”

“You're undead,” Echo corrected. “And you belong to Death now.”

Numarrow's mouth opened and closed several times before he managed, “This is highly irregular.”

Tremine stepped forward, his scholarly tone cutting through the tension. “Numarrow, we're in the twelfth Conclave. There's a riddle that needs solving, and only your expertise can solve it.”

Ruwen thought Tremine’s pandering was a little heavy handed, but Numarrow didn’t, as he puffed up at the praise.

“Of course you do,” Numarrow stated. “All helpless without me, that’s a certainty.” He smoothed the front of his robe. “What’s this talk of a Conclave? What idiot would convene a Conclave after the eleventh was such a disaster.”

“I did,” Ruwen stated.

Numarrow rolled his eyes. “Shocking,” he said sarcastically. Then his eyes narrowed. “You stole me Emblem of Dominion didn’t you. You insufferable thief!” He turned to Echo. “This is intolerable! He has stolen my authority.”

Ruwen summoned one of the emblem’s he’d taken off the three Ink Lords that had tried to kill Lyra. He flicked it with his thumb, and it spun upward.

Numarrow stared at it with obvious desire, following the emblem all the way back into Ruwen’s palm. Ruwen passed his right hand under his Void Band and dropped the journal Lylan had found on Numarrow’s corpse.

The sight angered Numarrow, who gritted his teeth and clenched his hands. “That is mine.”

Rami had long since absorbed the journal’s contents, including the passwords to bypass the guardian of Izac’s private library.

Ruwen placed the Emblem of Dominion on top of the book and held them up. “Agree to do your best and you can have these with my thanks.”

“What kind of person steals from a man and demands their help to recover what is rightfully theirs to begin with?”

“I didn’t make the rules,” Ruwen responded. “I’m just shelving the books I’ve been given. You are no Ink Lord. I took that from you. Now I’m offering you the chance to reclaim your title.”

Numarrow turned to Tremine. “The Archive in Malth?”

“I was ignorant of your state until now, which means the other Ink Lords are as well. Rumors swirl about your absence these past three years but—”

“Three years!” Numarrow yelled, interrupting Tremine.

Numarrow whipped around to face Ruwen. “What kind of monster are you? You kept me tucked away for three years!”

“I didn’t have an Emblem of Dominion to give you until now,” Ruwen replied.

“Well, I suppose that’s acceptable. A scholar of my caliber must retain his titles if our academic structure is to have any meaningful relevance.”

Numarrow turned to Echo, who remained hovering, silently observing the exchange. Numarrow tilted his head slightly in respect. “If I reject this circus, will the Mistress force me help?”

“No,” Echo responded. “But I will need to find another to serve as my Ink Lord. Perhaps one of the leprechauns I left behind.” The Aspect of Death tilted its head, as if considering.

“Mistress, there’s no need to look for another Ink Lord. I am obviously the most qualified and will, despite my better judgement, help this thieving murderer.”

Numarrow turned back to Ruwen. “I agree to help. Now give me my things.”

Ruwen held them out and Numarrow stepped forward, snatching the items away. Numarrow pressed the Emblem of Dominion against his chest where it glowed with cold blue light. The Emblem of Dominion folded on itself, turning a dull black. Thin white runes appeared and Ruwen glimpsed the Tower of Death etched onto the surface.

“Fascinating,” Numarrow breathed, examining his hands as shadows coiled around them. “I can feel it. Something far larger than the Archive of Malth. Something ancient.”

Echo floated forward, her expression hidden behind the blackness of her hood. “You're the first Ink Lord for the Library of Final Passage.”

Echo grasped her scythe with a skeletal hand and touched the blade to Ink Lord Numarrow’s forehead. Shadows crawled across the floor, and gathered at Numarrow’s feet. He yelped when the shadows pulled themselves upward using his robe. In a blink they’d spread across his whole body.

The shadows transformed into interlocking bone plates. Thin runes pulsed across the surface before the armor melted into the shape of a black robe. Ruwen could tell despite the cloth appearance, the previous armor from the bone plates remained.

Echo released her scythe. “Death collects every ending, every last breath, every final moment. A catalogue stretching for eternity.”

Numarrow straightened and, for the first time since his awakening, smiled—a terrible expression on his undead face.

Ink Lord Numarrow bowed to the Aspect of Death. “The Library of Final Passage is delightfully morbid.”

Echo drifted backward as Numarrow turned and studied his surroundings for the first time. “These are in the Kinslick stacks. Why are we in the Overdue section?”

“We’re lost,” Tremine said simply.

“No surprise. You mentioned a riddle.”

“It’s to help locate somebody called the Archivist,” Ruwen said and then repeated the riddle the library had provided.

Where knowledge sleeps in crystal dreams,
And starlight bends to mortal schemes,
Seek the place where silence screams,
And find what nothing truly means.

Numarrow turned to Tremine. “Normal rules?”

Tremine shook his head. “No. The summoning ritual wasn’t followed, and we were all transferred directly into the library. A Perception Wyrm entered the Conclave and the library’s defenses are active. As you can see the library now allows much larger groups for protection. The Archivist will only sell access to restricted sections for twenty-four hours. After that he’ll only speak with the number one ranked Ink Lord.”

“Exit criteria?” Numarrow asked.

“The Archivist will provide the location after twenty-four hours, which means initially only the top-ranking Ink Lord will have that information. The Black Pyramid Emblem of Dominion serves as the key to unlock the exit. Everyone can exit immediately except for Ink Lord Starfield who needs to wait an hour.”

“What’s the purpose of the hour delay?” Numarrow asked.

“Almost certainly something akin to the Gemini affair,” Tremine replied.

Numarrow pointed at Ruwen. “Is his emblem worth more?”

“Ten times,” Tremine said softly.

Numarrow tried to whistle, but his undead lips were far too dry, and it came out like a wheeze.

Ruwen raised a hand. “Can you explain the Gemini thing?”

Tremine adopted his lecturing tone without knowing and Ruwen suppressed a smile.

“The rules are constructed to maximize greed and violence. The Archivist, once you find him, will sell you keys to areas with rare books. If another Ink Lord kills you, they get your bookmarks and any rare books you’ve obtained. You don’t want to spend too many bookmarks though because after some time limit, this Conclave it’s twenty-four hours, the Archivist will only deal with the highest-ranking Ink Lord. That Ink Lord controls the duration of the Conclave because only they know the exit’s location. Powerful Ink Lords want to maximize their time in the library, while weaker Ink Lords want to escape as soon as possible. The Gemini matter added a wrinkle to the normal exit strategy, as it gave powerful Ink Lords another chance to extend the Conclave. In this case, if they killed you during that hour, not only would they get a thousand bookmarks, but the Conclave remained active until they used the exit.”

Ruwen understood. “So a powerful Ink Lord can trap everyone here, and take their time hunting down weaker Ink Lords, using the dead Ink Lord’s bookmarks to open additional areas and gaining more rare books.”

“Exactly,” Tremine said. “It means everyone wants you dead. The weaker Ink Lords because they don’t want to get trapped here. The strong because they want to stay. The Gemini Conclave was a slaughter. Fewer than half the Ink Lords survived.”

“I really hate Ink Lords,” Kysandra muttered under her breath.

Numarrow strode to Ruwen and leaned close to study Ruwen’s ears. Ruwen expected to smell rotting flesh or something similar since the man was undead, but the Ink Lord had no smell at all, which Ruwen thought just as disturbing.

“Where is it?” Numarrow asked. “Your Perception Wyrm?”

The Ink Lord that identified Rami would earn five hundred bookmarks. Ruwen assumed he wasn’t eligible, and Tremine had kept his mouth shut despite his knowledge. Ruwen needed to talk with Tremine to figure out the best strategy.

Numarrow didn’t know Rami had evolved enough to take human form and was standing right next to Ruwen.

“She’s around here somewhere,” Ruwen told Numarrow. “She has a mind of her own.”

Numarrow’s undead gaze locked with Ruwen’s. After five uncomfortable seconds, Numarrow returned to the center of the circle. He rubbed his temples as he processed the riddle. Around him, the others waited with varying degrees of patience while the Ink Lord worked through the puzzle.

Echo dismissed her Aspect of Death and many of the party members glanced at the young woman who now stood quietly observing her new Ink Lord. From their expressions it was hard to reconcile Echo’s two very different forms.

“Where knowledge sleeps in crystal dreams,” Numarrow muttered, his fingers twitching as if turning invisible pages. “Elementary misdirection. Every novice librarian thinks this refers to the Crystal Archives on the forty-third floor. They're wrong, of course.”

“Then what does it mean?” Tremine asked, leaning forward with scholarly interest.

Numarrow clearly enjoyed being the center of attention. His dead eyes swiveled to Tremine with that unnatural smoothness that made Ruwen uncomfortable. “Patience. A proper analysis requires examining each component before synthesizing the whole. This is basic methodology.”

Ink Lord Numarrow slowly paced around the circle, making sure that he had each person’s full attention. “Crystal dreams. The library contains seventeen sections with crystalline storage media, but only three where knowledge could be said to 'sleep.' The Suspended Animation Texts in the temporal wing, the Dormant Prophecy Crystals in divination, and...” He paused, tilting his head. “The Memory Palace in the consciousness section.”

“How do you know all this?” Lyra asked.

“My Ink Lord lineage is one of the longest,” Numarrow said with pride. “My previous lord possesses a library full of unique texts including everything ever written about the Conclaves. The Archive of Malth implemented the Fundamental Cataloging Principles discovered during the Third Conclave and used here in the Library of Alexandria. It began the Age of Indexing,”

Numarrow puffed out his chest. “Of the forty-seven major libraries.” He paused as if remembering something important. With a quick bow to Echo, he corrected himself. “Of the forty-eight major libraries only the Archive of Malth has sent an Ink Lord to every Conclave. Well, I’m sure that streak ended with this Conclave as Lord Izac is most certainly still searching for me. I represent Malth’s longest lasting Ink Lord, and I am far too valuable to replace after just three years.”

Ruwen studied the undead Ink Lord, fascinated that even in death, Numarrow's genuine expertise was smothered by layers of breathtaking arrogance. It would come as a great shock to the Ink Lord when he met Malth’s new Ink Lord that Jagen currently guarded.