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

The star charts contained within those pages were astonishingly detailed, putting current efforts to shame. Even more extraordinary was that the charts all seemed to be in pairs, like before and after images.

Before and after what, was abundantly clear, for the left-hand page was completely free of void storms. They didn’t exist before, only after what the title referred to as:

THE GREAT STAR SHIFT

The two companions began to risk touching a few other volumes at random. It turned out there was nothing at all fragile about them. This time, it was preservation magic, just as Jett had suggested earlier. Enough to protect the books from just about anything short of wilful damage, fire or flood.

They adopted the policy of flicking through a few pages to try and gain an essence of what the book was about, before returning each one to the place they found it, just in case there was some kind of system in place that currently eluded them.

Ulvarius, evil tyrant though he was, had been right about this repository of knowledge. These books were definitely from a time more than a thousand years ago, before Year Zero, and it was obvious that they were describing a world that was very different to the one they knew.

“Lost world!” Cat blurted out, suddenly.

“Random,” Jett remarked.

“No, it’s not,” she refuted. “It’s the inscription on the door – The Lost World.”

“The world that was lost when the void storms began,” Jett realised. “The time of this Great Star Shift. I think you’re right.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” he continued. “That book of star charts is obviously from shortly after it happened, which, relatively speaking, probably makes it the most modern thing in this whole place!”

Catriona’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t thought of it like that. Calin’s Tower, overseas, was the foremost public library of knowledge in the whole world. It was about a hundred and fifty years old. Some of the books in the Black Tower’s library dated back four centuries. But this book of thousand-year-old star charts, was probably the most modern thing here. Overcome by the enormity of it, she had to sit down for a moment to catch her breath, cradling the precious book of star charts in her hands.

Some of the books they opened had hastily written notes on the inside cover. The meaning wasn’t always clear, but the tone was one of urgency.

While Catriona puzzled over that, Jett explored further until he came across another door, identical to the one through which they had entered.

According to Ulvarius’ map there was only one entrance, but then, he supposed, having found one, since he couldn’t get in, what would have been the point of searching any further?

“I wonder if it needs your staff to unlock it from the inside?” he said.

Cat heard him open it, which she supposed answered his question, but as he did so, he immediately screamed for help.

Thrusting the book into her pocket dimension, she rushed to his side, where she saw him frantically pushing against the door with all his strength, trying in vain to shut it while through the gap were half a dozen skeletal limbs, pushing back. She added her own weight to the door, desperate to get it to shut, while using woodshaper and stoneshaper in concert to try and seal the doorway shut. It wasn’t working, but it did buy time.

“The passage!” Jett gasped. “It’s full of undead creatures!” and by the looks of what was trying to squeeze through, it wasn’t just undead people, but animals, too.

All at once, Cat put it together. More than three hundred years ago, Ulvarius had come here, found the repository and tried to gain entry. He probably tried for a long time but ultimately, he was forced to give up. He laid waste to the entire town, not only in revenge, but also to prevent knowledge of either the repository itself or his failure, from spreading. But, having a penchant for creating undead creatures, he hadn’t wasted the living resources. He had kept them here on guard, just in case anybody else ever found the place. Until now, Cat and Jett had got lucky – because the maps weren’t entirely clear, they had found a second entrance that Ulvarius didn’t know about. But as soon as Jett opened the door they had been left to guard, all the undead had reanimated almost immediately, and set about following their three-hundred-year-old instructions to kill anyone they saw.

But there was no way that passage was large enough to accommodate the entire human and animal population of a town. So where were all the rest?

“The lake!” Cat cried out in realisation.

“Dear gods!” Jett caught on. “The Lake of Tears is full of the remains of people and animals from Ulvarius’ time. An undead army lying dormant…until now!”

“And we’ve woken them up! They’ll kill everyone up there! It’ll be a massacre, just like before!”

“What can we do?” Jett asked, desperately.

“How do people usually destroy the True Undead en masse?” Cat returned. “Holy Water!”

Clerics used it all the time. It wouldn’t destroy them by itself, but normally, it would weaken them to the point where conventional magic or steel could finish them off. But these weren’t just any undead, they were created by Ulvarius for the single-minded purpose of guarding this place for eternity. He would have made them to last. When Dreya took the Black Tower, she managed to wrest control of the undead guards from Ulvarius’ magic, but she didn’t destroy them.

In the years since, she had experimented on a few of them to find the best method of destroying them, should it ever be necessary and she had confirmed that Holy Water was the best way, although it took a long time.

“Exactly!” Jett shot back. “Know any clerics you can call on, quickly?”

“Not anymore,” Cat answered, sadly, thinking of Mandalee. Still, that thought triggered a memory. “But if I’m lucky,” she said. “If I’m really, really lucky…”

She opened her pocket dimension, closed her eyes and