"Apprentice!" Craugh roared.

Juhg strode angrily.

"If you so much as take another step, I swear by the Eternal Darkness that you will hop to do it."

"Then do it," Juhg called back, not believing he'd dared to say such a thing. He kept walking, looking for the nearest bush to dodge behind before the wizard could cast such a spell. Perhaps summoning magical stairs out of thin air was child's play, but surely turning a dweller into a toad took more effort.

Of course, Craugh had spent hundreds of years perfecting the toad skill.

And unfortunately, the nearest bush big enough to hide a dweller was nearly twenty paces away. Juhg would have preferred a tree or a solid piece of statuary. He suddenly found himself wondering if a magic spell could be outrun. Without tilting his head down, he kept watch over his feet, waiting to see if they changed in any way or started turning webby.

"Apprentice," Craugh said.

Juhg cringed, certain that he was going to be blasted in the next breath.

"Please."

Please?

Please!

What magic spell included the word please? Especially uttered in that almost-pleading tone of voice? Wizards commanded magic; they didn't ask permission of eldritch forces.

Please? There is no please in magic.

"Apprentice," Craugh called.

"What?" Juhg croaked in immediate response. Croaked! He put a hand to his face, expecting to find a hideous visage covered in warts and rough skin. Instead, he felt his own face. At least, he thought he did. He wouldn't know for certain until he looked into a mirror. Craugh crossed the distance separating them. He stood and peered down at Juhg with his hands still behind his back. "I need to talk to you. It would ... help ... if you would take the time to listen."

Help, Juhg told himself, trying not to read anything harmful in the wizard's statement. There's no chance of being turned into a toad if you're helping.

"Listen," Juhg said.

"Yes." Craugh peered down at him. "Listen." He hrrumphed in obvious displeasure. "That's something you and your master share: an obvious reluctance to doing something that won't get you killed."

"Or turned into a toad," Juhg said.

Craugh waved that away.

"Or turned into a toad," Juhg pressed.

"Very well." Craugh sighed and clasped his hands behind himself again. He acted as though the concession cost him a great deal. "But I assure you, that last promise is extremely conditional on your behavior toward me."

"All right."

"I'll put up with no further disrespect."

"Nor will I." Feeling immensely lucky, but still unwilling to give in on the matter, Juhg pushed himself to his feet. He waited a beat, expecting to be blasted or turned where he stood, then-when that did not happen-brushed himself off.

"Walk with me," Craugh said. "I think better when I'm up and moving."

Juhg fell in beside the wizard and tried in vain to match the human's stride. In only three short steps, he was hurrying to keep up, taking two and sometimes three steps to every one that Craugh took. At the very least, Juhg hoped that the wizard's newly healed leg would pain him enough to go slower.

"As I said, I talked with your friend, apprentice."

"You mean Raisho."

Craugh shrugged. "Yes. I mean Raisho."

Juhg stared at the flower garden, remembering how frivolous he'd once thought the area to be. The Librarians managed gardens to the east, and there were several small lots inside the Library's inner courtyard where table vegetables were grown year-round. Even though some of the flowers were edible, none of them were particularly filling.

"Raisho told me something I found ... unsettling," the wizard said.

Juhg waited. Actually, there were any number of things that Raisho could have told the wizard that might have been considered unsettling.

"He told me you planned to sail with Windchaser when she lifted anchor," Craugh said.

Juhg made no reply and actually let himself fall a step or two behind.

Craugh stopped so suddenly that Juhg almost ran into him.

Stepping back, Juhg thought quickly, wondering how it was that Raisho came to tell the wizard something that he had told Raisho in confidence. He blinked at the wizard, seeing the first streaks of lightning stirring the dark clouds. Full evening was upon the island now, and twilight gathered strength, turning from the gentle purple of amethyst to the deep ochre of bruised flesh.

"I made him tell me," Craugh said, as if guessing Juhg's unanswered question. "He had no choice. I'm not easily turned from something I want."

Juhg met the wizard's gaze and struggled not to look away.

"Is that what you're planning to do?" Craugh demanded.

"Yes," Juhg answered.

"Why would you do something like that, apprentice?"

Exasperated, Juhg asked, "Why do you insist on calling me that? I have a name. I am not your apprentice. Even when I was the Grandmagister's apprentice, he never called me that. Only you."

Craugh folded his arms before him, his staff clutched in his right fist. "Because you are an apprentice. You are Wick's apprentice."

"I was a Novice Librarian in the beginning," Juhg said. "But I have gone past that. I am a First Level Librarian."

"No, you're not."

Anger stirred in Juhg and he couldn't help giving vent to it. He was no longer a scared little dweller shackled to a mining chain gang.

"You abandoned that posting," Craugh said before Juhg could speak.

"I didn't abandon it."

"Yes, you did. And went charging off across the ocean just like you're preparing to do again."

"It's my business."

"You are Wick's apprentice."

"I am my own person."

Craugh bent and thrust his face into Juhg's. "What is it that you hope to find on the mainland?"

"My family."

"Lies." Craugh's eyes flashed. "You know in your heart that none of them survived the goblin mines."

"They may yet live," Juhg stated fiercely.

"Even if by some rare miracle they did live, how would you ever expect to find them?"

"I could go there."

"To the goblin mines?"

"Yes." Juhg felt tears burning his eyes. The cold winds blowing in from the south from the Blood-Soaked Sea not so very far away on the other side of the peaks of the Knucklebones Mountains coaxed them loose and he felt them dribble down his face.

"Now, there's a plan," Craugh roared.

"It is." Juhg felt embarrassed that he'd let the wizard get to him so.

"And what, exactly, did you plan on doing after you got your ankle fitted for a new slave ring?"

"That wouldn't have happened."

"That's exactly what would have happened." The wizard glared at him.

Juhg was suddenly aware that several heads adorned the top of the courtyard wall.

Without looking, Craugh gestured with the staff and called down a lightning bolt that crashed against the courtyard wall. There was sound and fury, but no stone was damaged. The heads along the wall disappeared.

"I hate eavesdroppers." Craugh frowned and resumed. "The worst thing of all is that Wick would probably have gone off after you once he heard of your capture. If I had been here at the time you'd chose to depart, I'd never had let you go."

"You couldn't have stopped me."

Craugh stared harder at him.

Bad, Juhg told himself, bad decision to say that. "You wouldn't have had any right. It was my choice to make. They are my family."

"You have family here, apprentice."

Juhg started to object, then immediately thought better of it.

"More than that," Craugh said, "you have a duty here. A very special duty that you were fortunate enough to be selected for."

"What duty?"

"To become the apprentice of the Grandmagister of the Vault of All Known Knowledge."

"There have been dozens of Novices during the time the Grandmagister has served here-"

"Hundreds," Craugh corrected.

"All right. Hundreds." Juhg knew that some of them had died during service to the Library, whether of old age or the occasional sickness that was brought back from the mainland, or they had chosen to leave the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Nearly all of the dwellers who came forward to serve in the Library only did so because of the long-standing requirements laid down by the Founders who had created the island.

Some of those reluctant Librarians had returned to the family farms and businesses after their ten years of servitude were up because they had never learned to love what they did. Others, who might have loved the books or their duties at the Library more than horticulture or trades or managing stores or services, lacked the necessary skills to advance beyond certain levels.

Juhg knew that the Grandmagister himself had spent more years as a Third Level Librarian than anyone in the history of the Vault of All Known Knowledge. In fact, Grandmagister Lamplighter had felt certain he was going to be asked to leave the Library.

But that was before the crew of One-Eyed Peggie had shanghaied him and took him off a-roving. After returning to Greydawn Moors with four books he had found in a dead wizard's tomb in the goblin city of Hanged Elf's Point, Craugh had taken an interest in the Grandmagister. As it turned out, Craugh worked to place information in the hands of the past Grandmagisters to secure books still out on the mainland. Grandmagister Frollo, the human Grandmagister before Grandmagister Lamplighter, had never shown any interest in Craugh or the tales the wizard told of books.

But Grandmagister Lamplighter had, and numerous trips to the mainland had brought back several books important to the collections at the Vault of All Known Knowledge.

"I couldn't stay here," Juhg said. "The day I realized that the reason I couldn't find my family was the Grandmagister's fault, I couldn't stay another moment."

Craugh's face hardened. "Whatever are you blathering about?"

"I said-"

Craugh lifted a hand and waved it irritably. "I heard what you said, but you need to explain yourself."

"Explain what?"

"How your inability to find your family could in any wise be Wick's responsibility."

Juhg sighed. No one is going to understand. You're going to be a toad, and no one will even know why. "My inability to locate my family is the Grandmagister's fault. But I won't stop there. I'll share the blame. I'll lay it at the feet of the last ten or twenty or thirty Grandmagisters if you want. I don't think that the problem lies solely with Grandmagister Lamplighter."

"How could any of this possibly be any lack on Wick's part?"

Knowing he wouldn't be able to simply walk away, especially not after he'd let the worm out of the apple, Juhg said, "Because he didn't give it back."

The pronouncement seemed to confuse Craugh even more. His features twitched and his eyes narrowed as he studied Juhg. "Whatever are you talking about?"

"The Library." Juhg felt the need to pace now, and he did so. But he confined his pacing to a back-and-forth pattern only a few feet to either side of the wizard.

"The Library," Craugh repeated.

Juhg nodded. "The Vault of All Known Knowledge. The Library."

"And Wick didn't give it back?"

"No. He didn't. He was supposed to."

"Apprentice..."