Abruptly the floor rose in a long ridge between them, forcibly separating them and throwing them to either side. Irene tried to stagger to her feet, but her head was spinning too badly and she only managed to get to her knees. Lady Guantes straightened, coughing and clutching at her throat where Irene had hit her.
Lady Guantes was closer to the painted door than Irene was. But she couldn’t silence her. “Door, open!” Irene shouted, her voice cracking as she struggled to be heard over the scream of the computers.
Other doors within earshot flew open, booming as they wrenched themselves free of their locks and slammed into walls. But this one, the closest one, the most important one of all, tried to resist her. Even frozen by whatever Lady Guantes had done, Alberich’s will was still set against hers.
And the pendant at her throat was burning into her skin.
She managed to stand and ran for the painted door, but Lady Guantes moved to intercept her—and fell with a crash, as Kai caught her ankle. As she passed, Irene kicked her in the ribs to keep her down and grabbed the door’s handle with one bloody hand. “Open!” she screamed, yanking at it.
It swung open—and to Irene’s vast relief, Vale and Catherine were just a few steps away on the other side. Beyond them, she could see that the towering lines of bookshelves were shaking. The air was now full of dust, falling books, and churning swarms of flies—but her friends were there. Alberich hadn’t killed them or imprisoned them somewhere, miles away. She allowed herself a moment of hope that they might escape this nightmare after all.
Vale and Catherine had clearly been waiting for any opportunity to get out of there. They both surged for the door and stumbled into the archive together, while the door strained in Irene’s hands.
She let it go, and it slammed back into position. The ambient chaos was beginning to ebb within the archive, now the door was closed. As the two worlds slid apart again, it was as if a tidal wave had started to recede, running back down the beach.
Throughout the archive computers were shutting down, their blazing screens darkening to black and their whirring fans falling silent. The image of Alberich greyed out even further, blurring to static and then—finally—to nothingness.
“Are you all right?” Irene began to say to Catherine, drawing a deep breath, but then there was a clanging in her head. It was louder and more discordant even than the cathedral bells, and she found herself on her knees, clutching at the pendant around her neck. It wouldn’t move. It was fixed to her flesh. She found herself unable to form words—for all languages, even the Language, were beyond her grasp. And she could sense something, something horrifying, settling into her head like a maggot. She wanted to scream as she felt it worming its way into position and making itself comfortable. Lady Guantes had broken Alberich’s other links to this world by shutting down his computers. Now he was clinging to the only link he had left—the pendant—and through it, her.
She tried to fight back, but she had no idea how. She could only watch in terror as the horror spread. The thing inside her swept through her mind like decay, its spores corrupting every helpful thought or idea into colonies of itself.
But if I can still think, then perhaps I’m still here? she wondered stupidly, as those very thoughts blurred and slowed.
“Winters!” Vale had her by the shoulders and was shaking her, but she could hardly feel it. It was as though the sensations were being reported to her from a great distance. “Fight back, woman. You’ve fought worse. Remember—you still have free will!”
How amusing of him to think so. That wasn’t even Irene’s own reaction. That was Alberich’s thought seeping through her mind. She felt it split for a moment into a whole layered set of thoughts about Victorian Christianity, English hypocrisy . . . and the cold certainty that anything and everything could be broken if one had the right tools. Then it coalesced into a thin stream of mockery that ran through Irene’s thoughts like metal veins in rock.
Catherine tried to pry the pendant off Irene’s chest, protecting her hand with a fold of her dress. But the pendant clung to Irene’s skin as though melted in place. Irene heard herself manage to scream at last, but it was like hearing someone else’s voice.
And soon it will be, Alberich said inside her mind. It will be my voice and my body. With this body, I won’t need Lady Guantes and her doors, and the Library itself will be mine for the taking . . .
“Alberich!” Vale’s fingers tightened on her shoulders, and he looked squarely into her eyes. “You’re there. I know it. Release her, man, or you’ll have killed your own daughter!”
Inside Irene’s head there was a moment of sudden baffled shock, but at the same time there was comprehension. A dozen faceted thoughts tumbled through Irene’s head, and she was no longer certain if they were Alberich’s or her own. Daughter of two Librarians . . . didn’t even know she was adopted . . . able to use my wards, able to break my wards . . . with her own blood . . . a good liar . . . cunning with the Language . . . looked me in the eyes, told me she was like me . . . should have known . . . could have guessed . . .
But she had no time to study the fragmentary ideas that fell through her mind like broken glass. Instead she formed them into a single connected thought, with a surface as smooth and reflective as obsidian, and slid it between Alberich’s mind and her own. She took full advantage of his brief uncertainty and his belief in Vale’s lie. You. Me. Separate.
The pendant suddenly came free of her chest, and Catherine dragged it over her head, hurling it to one side. Irene’s back arched as she screamed again, as the last vestiges of Alberich were stripped from her mind, leaving her—her soul, she supposed—feeling agonizingly raw.
The overhead lights dimmed to blood-red and thick shadows cloaked the shelves and columns, as the tide of chaos finally ebbed to a level more natural for this world.
Irene looked around, exhausted but taking stock. The inside of her head felt as if she’d had a particularly rotten molar extracted after a great deal of pain, but there was no time to rest. Vale and Catherine were nearby. Kai and Shan Yuan had both struggled to their feet, and now that the chaos levels were dropping, they were at least the equal of normal humans. Kai had Lady Guantes in an armlock, suitably restrained, with his other arm looped round her neck.
All the Fae’s plans had come to nothing and Lord Guantes’s stored personality would be lost, with their technology denied to them and no fresh host body to commandeer. Her expression was blank, as though some animating spirit had deserted her. Was this some side effect of her broken oath, or simply the knowledge of defeat? “I suppose you want a way out of here,” she said, her tone abstracted, flat, like a child repeating the rules of a game. “We can make a deal, I’m sure.”
“Irene?” Kai asked, his tone grave, and she knew what he was asking.
She didn’t want this, but she couldn’t see any other choice. Lady Guantes had defined herself by her husband—and by her need for revenge. Any truce would be temporary, or a lie, after what had happened here.
Irene jerked her head in a nod, and Kai snapped the Fae’s neck.
It was cold comfort to know that he’d taken Lady Guantes by surprise and it would have been over in a flash. This did nothing to ease the weight of what Irene had done. And it didn’t help that neither Vale nor Catherine nor the dragons uttered a word of blame. They hadn’t made the decision. They’d left it to her.
Irene looked at Lady Guantes’s body as Kai laid her down on the floor, feeling the bitter knowledge that she’d murdered the Fae turning over and over inside her. Kai could shrug it off easily enough, as a royal dragon with a feudal upbringing. But Irene knew that she’d relive this scene in her dreams. This wasn’t why I became a Librarian . . .
The sound of running feet—multiple booted feet, coming in fast—broke the silence, and they all turned towards the noise. That was their only warning but it was enough, when the first bullet came
singing out of the darkness, for Shan Yuan to push Kai out of the way. The bullet took Shan Yuan in the shoulder, knocking him to the floor. A barrage followed, and they all scrambled for cover.
“Guns, jam!” Irene screamed as she threw herself down and out of the direct firing line, and the bullets abruptly stopped. They were trapped in the middle of an open space, their only refuge being the experimental table and the painted door, and their aggressors stood between them and the nearest exit.
“Hold fire!” That was Lord Guantes’s voice. He was concealed somewhere amongst the shadowy shelves. “Your guns won’t work—use the gas.”
The Language couldn’t repel gas effectively. “Retreat!” Irene called, scrambling to her feet and pulling Catherine with her.
Gas grenades were clattering into the area by the table, as Irene and Catherine reached the shelves opposite Lord Guantes and his men. Kai and Vale were a few seconds behind, supporting Shan Yuan between them. “Which way?” Kai demanded, most of his attention on his wounded brother.
“Straight ahead until we hit a wall, then sideways till we find a door—” Irene started.
“That’s not necessary,” Catherine said, sudden certainty in her voice. “I know the way out. Here.” She pointed with authority.
“We need to escape this world, not just the cathedral, and neither Shan Yuan nor I can take our true forms. If we can’t fly, how can we leave?” Kai’s eyes flicked to Catherine, and Irene heard what he wasn’t saying. We could all break out via the Library; she can’t. We can’t just leave her.
Except—perhaps—was there a way she could get Catherine into the Library? “Run first, I’ll explain later,” Irene directed.
“Lord Guantes brought me down this way before and I remember it. Follow me.” Catherine led the way at a run, flitting between bookshelves and pillars without a moment’s hesitation.
In the near darkness the archive was harder to negotiate. Irene followed Catherine as closely as possible, unwilling to let the girl get out of her sight. Vale’s lie to Alberich flashed through her mind. But it couldn’t possibly be true, so she ignored it and focused on running. She could smell acrid gas on the air—not close enough to affect them, but close enough to remind her of the danger they faced. Lord Guantes could simply lock all the doors, turn off the ventilation, and leave them to suffocate . . .
“Over here . . . there’s a door!” Catherine had just reached the edge of the vast room. She pointed to her left, at something Irene couldn’t yet see.
But as the group surged towards it, Catherine hesitated and caught Irene’s wrist. “I’ll leave you here,” she said. Her chin was set, her face full of determination, but Irene could see the panic in her eyes as voices echoed in the shadows behind them. “Lord Guantes might catch me, but he can’t kill me. I don’t think . . . My uncle would hunt him down. Or maybe I can walk out of here to another world on my own—after all, I’ve seen it done plenty of times.” But Irene knew her apprentice by now, and she knew wishful thinking when she saw it. “I’ll manage. You go,” Catherine insisted.
“Stay here a moment,” Irene ordered her apprentice—gripping her wrist, in case she decided to run off in a fit of heroism. Yes, Catherine had indeed found a door. It was labelled in various languages, fragmentary texts: no admission. Well, a door was a door, and there were enough books in this archive for Irene to force a passage to the Library.
Irene set her free hand on the handle and focused her will. “Door, unlock,” she ordered. “Open to the Library.”
Slowly, all too slowly, the lock mechanism clicked open and the door shivered under Irene’s hand. This close to chaos it was hard to make a door open to the Library. Hard, but not impossible, and she’d done it before from Alberich’s own sanctum. With great reluctance it swung open into a well-lit, pale-walled room, its shelves neatly filled with black-bound books.
The light cast by the Library illuminated the darkness, a beacon for their pursuers. Irene cursed silently. “Go through—now,” she ordered the men, then turned to Catherine. “Give me your name,” she demanded.
“You know my name,” Catherine began, then she stopped. “Oh.”
Yes. Irene required Catherine’s true name, and for a Fae that was a huge demand. It was a request for the keys to Catherine’s mind and soul. But Irene had an idea that she thought might just work. Vale had been contaminated by chaos once, and Irene had taken him to the Library to save him. She’d only managed this by using his real name. For the Fae, a true name—given at birth—had great power. No powerful Fae would reveal it, lest it be used against them—and none would ever pay that price to enter the Library. However, if Catherine trusted her . . .
“What if I don’t want to give you my name?” Catherine said, looking into the darkness of the archive. “I could run—”
“Then I’ll shut this door and run with you,” Irene said. But she knew Catherine understood their chance of escape would be vanishingly slim. “But if you can just trust me, I promise I won’t use your name against you. And I think this might actually get you inside.”
Perhaps that was what tipped the balance, besides the alternative being capture and possible slavery at Lord Guantes’s hands. Irene was offering the very thing that Catherine had wanted so much, for so long. She leaned in close, her voice barely audible as she whispered, “Talita.”
Irene nodded and stepped across the Library’s threshold, still holding Catherine by the hand. They’d run out of time for half-measures. “Talita,” she ordered, “come into the Library.”
As a sensation hummed through her body, Irene felt that something had fallen into place, like a key turning in a lock. And Catherine stumbled through the doorway, her eyes wide with shock.
Irene put one arm around her, holding her up. Or was Catherine holding her up, as her knees suddenly felt wobbly for some reason. Together, they looked back through the doorway into the dark archive. Their pursuers had found them but were holding back, perhaps spooked by this door to nowhere they recognized.
Then Lord Guantes stalked into view, and there was murder in his eyes. “You—” he started.
I’m doing you a favour, whoever you once were, Irene thought. And now there’s no Lady Guantes left to bring you back again and again. It’s over. Her voice was tired as she commanded, “You perceive that you are not Lord Guantes.”
The light streaming from the Library fell across Lord Guantes’s face, and it revealed a sudden weariness. His features seemed to lack substance and reality now, as if Lord Guantes were a photograph fading out of focus. The shadow of another face appeared behind the one they knew, belonging to a different man. A man who now remembered who he was—but he was fading away, and knew it. That man inclined his head to Irene in a salute.
And then he fell to dust, leaving only his clothing behind.
CHAPTER 26
Irene slammed the door to the archive shut. “Close!” she ordered.
She turned to the others, to check they were all there—as though Alberich could have sneaked in and stolen them away while she wasn’t looking. Shan Yuan had collapsed to the polished wood floor, and Kai was tearing his shirt to shreds to bandage his brother’s bullet wound. Vale was still upright but looked shaken—understandably, given what he’d been through. Catherine (better to think of her by that name, in case of accidents) still supported Irene, but her eyes roved avidly around the room and she clearly longed to lose herself among the neat bookshelves.
Irene herself was still upright, alive, and sane—relatively. It passed all belief.
“I’ll find the nearest terminal and ask them to send help,” Irene said, with a glance at Shan Yuan. He was conscious, but the glare he shot her suggested he wasn’t happy about the way events had played out. Really, some people were never satisfied. He might have been kidnapped, imprisoned, shot, and threatened with possession—and the obliteration of his personality—but he was safe
now, wasn’t he?
She stopped for a moment to touch Kai’s shoulder, then headed into the corridor beyond. Vale was a step behind her, and Catherine followed Vale. That she’d been expecting, and she raised a hand towards the Fae girl. “No. You stay here.”
“But . . .” Catherine protested, managing to pack whole volumes of protest into one syllable.
“I know you want to explore,” Irene said, striving for patience, “but I need to report this—we’ve never had a Fae within our walls before. And I don’t want to spend the next year hunting for you if you get lost.”
The look of enthusiasm in her apprentice’s eyes made Irene realize she might have incited exploration, not curbed it. She sighed. “Please, Catherine. Wait here.”
The or else in her voice must have got through, for Catherine slumped a little and nodded, rejoining the dragon brothers.
Relieved, Irene went to look for a computer. She didn’t recognize the corridor that ran past the room. It was floored with distinctive mosaic tiles, arranged in a tessellated gold-and-brown pattern. Candles burned in sconces along the whitewashed stone walls, casting a gentle, forgiving light. She picked left at random, and two doors along she found what she was looking for—a computer terminal.
It only took her a moment to send a quick email demanding help, as a matter of urgency, and she could then turn and face Vale.
It had been a lie. What he’d said to Alberich must have been a lie.
But in his eyes she saw something far worse than complicity in a game, or guilt at an untruth. She saw a cold, compassionate pity. She managed to get out, “Why did you say what you did, back there?”
“Be precise, Winters.” The candlelight emphasised the harsh lines of his face and body—a man of will and determination but little softness. “Ask your real question. You will find it easier than your usual habit of avoiding awkward topics.”
The Dark Archive (The Invisible Library Novel) Page 29