Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

lake. They had to walk in single file, but at about ten feet high, it was perfectly comfortable. There was no need to mark their passage, as it simply continued in an unbroken straight line, sloping ever downwards.

They walked in silence, all joking suspended, as if it might disturb the blessed sanctuary of which this place somehow spoke. In time, the passage ended in a wooden door.

“If this place is as old as it appears to be, how come this door looks brand new?” Jett wondered, gently probing it with his magic. “Some kind of preservation spell?”

“No,” Cat replied, shaking her head. “Or maybe yes,” she reconsidered, “but not the way you mean. The wood looks fresh because it’s still living.”

“What? How?”

“No idea,” Cat replied, “but I can feel it through my druid magic. The wood of this door is every bit as alive as that of any tree. It may not be growing in the sense of getting larger – it’s the same size it’s always been – but it is constantly rejuvenating itself.

“Astonishing!” Jett breathed.

His light caught an inscription above the door. That was not so well preserved, and some of the letters had faded over the course of centuries. All they could make out for sure, was:

IN LOVGME RYFALYCIA

But it was still legible enough to deduce the intent.

“Surely, ‘In Loving Memory of Alycia,’ yes?” Cat whispered, reverently. “That’s not just the half-Faery druid in me talking, is it? That’s what it says, right?”

“That’s what it looks like to me,” Jett agreed.

Blessed Alycia, Mother of Nature, was a revered figure to Faery, wielders of nature magic and just nature lovers in general.

There was another line underneath, in a smaller script that had suffered even more erosion over time, such that only a single portion was still legible and then just barely.

E L ST W

The rest was lost to the passage of time and guessing the meaning was futile. There simply wasn’t enough to go on.

Logically, the next step was to open the door, but that proved to be easier said than done. Jett and Cat lent all their weight to the task, but the door would not budge an inch. Catriona tried her woodshaper magic, but the door remained untouched. She switched to stoneshaper magic to try and create a gap around the door, but it seemed whoever built this had thought of that, so it failed.

Jett had been reluctant to try anything with his wizard magic, not wanting to risk causing damage, but they seemed to have run out of alternatives.

“I won’t blast it,” he said, “but I will try a focussed fire spell. That should burn through the wood, but I’m not much of a multi-tasker, so would you mind taking over with the light?”

“Alright,” Cat agreed, and took her Crystal Mage Staff out of her pocket dimension, causing it to cast a blue light over the door.

Jett cancelled his own light spell and cast out a thin jet of intense flames. He sustained it in one spot for two or three minutes, but the wood didn’t even begin to char.

“Fireproof wood?” he breathed in wonder, as he cancelled the spell.

“I don’t think it even warmed up!” Catriona marvelled, stepping forward to carefully place her free hand on the door. “I guess this is why Ulvarius couldn’t get in.” The instant her hand touched the wood, however, some kind of mechanism on the other side clicked and the door swung open. “What the—” she cried, jumping back.

“Maybe it likes you?” Jett suggested.

“Maybe,” Cat allowed, “or maybe it’s this,” she said, holding up her staff.

“Your staff?”

Cat nodded, “Or perhaps the combination of magic and higher planar energy within it.”

“Why would that work?” Jett wondered.

“It’s just a guess,” she shrugged.

She supposed all that mattered was that they had gained entry. The how and why weren’t really important.

Stepping through the now open doorway, Cat found her breath taken away by the sight of a cavernous space carved into the bedrock of Quernhow. Carved with magic, druid magic like hers. She recognised the signs. Inside, were rows upon rows of shelves filled with books, scrolls and other documents. It wasn’t just one room, either, but many adjoining ones. Despite this, however, those ancient people had run out of space and had been forced to stack yet more volumes on the floor. Many of those stacks towered above their heads. She could see why Ulvarius had referred to it as a ‘repository of knowledge’ – calling it a library wouldn’t do it justice.

Into the silence, Jett whispered, “Well, Cat, you promised me the archaeological find of a lifetime.”

Cat raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Disappointed?”

He answered her clearly facetious question with an entirely serious, “Yes.”

Cat frowned, incredulously.

“I’m disappointed that I have only a single human lifetime,” he clarified, with tears in his eyes, “because I doubt that’s enough time to even catalogue what’s down here, let alone study the contents!”

Cat moved over to him and embraced him. “I know what you mean,” she said. “At best, I hoped to find a small hidey-hole, maybe a few dozen books if I was lucky. I never imagined all this!”

Jett gently broke the hug, stepping away to try and come to terms with what he was seeing.

Catriona, too, began to wander around, stepping carefully around the stacks, not knowing where to begin. After a few moments, though, something caught her attention: a book of star charts. It was sitting apart from everything else, propped up on the floor with its content on display, as if somebody long ago wanted this to be the first thing any future visitor would see.

“Well, whoever you were, it worked,” the druidess said softly, as if the spirit of that long dead individual might hear her, if only she were quiet enough.

Not wanting to even risk handling it, she called Jett over and asked him to use some of his levitation magic on the book.

“Good idea,” he approved. “The less we touch things, the