The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

  And with that thought, the key clicked into place in his mind and the lock snapped open.

  Too many ravens near the Time Corps house, the angry crows had said.

  Two too many.

  Two ravens.

  He had been there when his brother died. He remembered now and the memory was fresh and clear. His brother had died up on the roof of the Time Corps house, lying on the cool overlapping tiles.

  The door opened completely in his mind now, and the memories flooded back. But how? How did he have memories?

  Muninn had come. It was recent, so very recent. Only a month before. For years, Muninn had been seeking their master, the Wanderer, the Tree Hanger. The god had vanished long before, but no one had witnessed his death. Muninn had sought him, eventually seeking out the information in the Library. He had not been admitted as a scholar, for though his memories were perfect, he did not have a creative mind, one that could connect ideas in new ways. He had entered the Library as a scholar’s pet, but upon discovery, had fled.

  He had managed to escape. At the time, Muninn had not understood why he was not driven insane like others. But Huginn could figure it out. As Muninn was the embodiment of Memory, his memories were not a part of what he was, but were his entire self. The Librarian must have attempted to extract his memories, but had instead done grave damage to the raven’s very self. He had escaped intact, but mortally wounded.

  When he found his brother in Los Angeles, Muninn was weak. Huginn remembered the croak of his voice. He could barely speak. Muninn told him what had happened, and that Huginn would go on living without him. Memory was of the past. But Huginn was of the future and the present, of ideas and possibilities. He was Thought, and Thought did not age as Memory did.

  “It is long past time for me to join our master,” whispered Muninn. One moment he was crouched on the roof, then he lowered himself, sighed and was gone.

  Huginn had not wept. He was not human. But even if he had been, he knew that the pain of this loss was deeper than weeping. Tears would not cleanse his soul, for half of it was now gone.

  Muninn was still warm, and Huginn ate his brother’s body. He took his skin, his tongue, his flesh. With utmost love and respect, he took his brother into himself, absorbing him and becoming one.

  And as he consumed him, he received memories of their past. Some were to be locked away, but some were kept out, like objects on a table: the white Bast statue, the Nordic couple that looked like Santiago and Sister, all the things that Huginn had been able to remember in the past few weeks.

  And now more memories came flooding back. Their voyages and long flights together. How they had loved to explore and soar, high on the icy wind, dipping down and spinning up into the sky again. He would never fly with his brother again, but there was more. Memories of adventures and quiet times, of friendships and losses, memories of the long years since their birth. All of them flew through his mind now, stopping and forming themselves into orderly thoughts. Coherent memories.

  This statue with his brother’s voice, this infuriating thing that he had wanted to tear the eyes from had unlocked it all. And had he not also eaten his brother’s eyes?

  Something crashed into the room and Pangur Ban arched her back and hissed. The Neils rushed toward the commotion, but Huginn was aware of only one thing. He was now whole. He had his memories and his thoughts. The two pieces were one.

  Born of the same egg, now inside one body and one mind, the twin ravens lived again.

  Chapter 47

  “There are too many of some sorts of people,” Malachy said to Elliot.

  “What do you mean?” Elliot sprinkled the dough with more flour and kneaded it.

  “Copies and copies. The Library was even confused.”

  Now that got Elliot’s attention. He hadn’t heard Malachy speak of the Library itself as a person. The Librarian, yes. But never the Library itself. Or herself. For still, Seshat slept and burned upstairs, and the Librarian had returned. Why he had not come after Elliot, he could not guess. Perhaps Seshat had done something. The Librarian was insane and Seshat might be able to keep him under control to a degree.

  He didn’t want to think too much on the topic. His minutes of induced insanity disturbed him. If he couldn’t trust his own senses and perception of reality, what could he trust?

  “What do you mean, copies?” Elliot asked.

  “Twins, but doubled. And then a half of a set of twins. Doubles and halves. The Library told me.”

  Elliot wiped off his hands. “I don’t understand.”

  “We librarians can feel things within the Library. We know where things are. Your ability to do this will grow in time. Well, I could feel copies where there shouldn’t be copies. That was the men. And then there was half of two that should have been copies. That was the bird.”

  “Have you been near the Librarian? Did he do something to you?”

  “No. I have not seen him. Did you say you were from America originally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, they are from an American delegation. A raven, a cat and four identical men.”

  They were here! They had come for him. Pangur Ban and Huginn and Neil and his duplicates. Finally, at long last, they had come.

  “Where? Where are they now?” He tore off his apron, considered running to his quarters for his old shoes, and then decided against it. There was no time.

  “They sought something in the Room of Speech.”

  Elliot was about to ask where it was, but the location clicked into place within his mind. “That way?” he asked, pointing.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t know why they’d want to visit that particular room. But it didn’t matter now. They had come for him.

  He left Malachy in the kitchen and raced toward the Room of Speech. By the time he reached it, it was empty. Many of the statues inside were toppled and a few lay in pieces on the floor, shattered stone mixed with a few black feathers. This was very, very wrong. His friends would not destroy things without cause, and unless Huginn was molting, something had ripped out some of his feathers.

  He started back down the hallway, but then paused, feeling, hoping to catch a hint of where his friends were. Duplicates and halves, Malachy had said. He felt for these things, and a tiny sensation, like a whisper, led him upstairs and down a corridor in the direction of one of the larger chambers of the Library.

  When he heard a woman scream, he ran. Then came the gunshots, five of them.

  He raced through the doorway where a heavy cloud of dust filled the chamber, obscuring the group of people. It didn’t matter, as he knew each and every one of them, even the multiple copies of Neil. It looked like there were about thirty of him. When he saw the giant sandstone scorpion with Hazel standing over it, gun drawn, he knew where the dust had come from. She leapt nimbly away as it attempted to crush her with a giant open claw. She called out to it, luring it away from a figure on the ground.

  It was Neil, and he wasn’t moving. That was what had caused Hazel to scream. But as Elliot watched, Neil rose to his knees. Another of the Neils helped him up, while five others placed themselves between the scorpion and Yukiko. She held the handle of the rolling trunk that Elliot knew held a time machine. Hazel joined Yukiko as they tried to back up toward a doorway that was blocked by a snapping stone crocodile.

  “About time,” said one of the Neils, noticing Elliot. “Here.” He handed him a gun.

  “I don’t think this is going to do us much good against statues. It doesn’t look like Hazel did much other than make a bunch of dust.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt either,” said Neil.

  Too true. Statues of two identical lions and three women, all ten feet tall, nude and bald, entered through two of the doors.

  Hazel reloaded her gun. “Get the
machine out of here!” she called to Yukiko. “Hey, Elliot’s here!”

  Yukiko looked confused for a second, and then she spotted Elliot. Her face broke into a smile of such pure pleasure that it distracted him for a moment. Neil shoved him aside and kicked the legs of one of the bald women hard, knocking her to the ground.

  Elliot glanced back at Yukiko and jerked his head to the side, to remind her to get the machine out of there. Then he fired on the statue, blasting away part of its head.

  Not long ago, having Yukiko smile at him would have made his day. She was pretty and seemed to like him. And he was happy to see her. But something had changed, and he knew what it was. She wasn’t Bennu.

  He spun to fire his gun into the face of a stone crocodile, blowing off half of its upper jaw. It thrashed toward him, attempting to snap at him, but he jumped clear. Two Neils lifted the crocodile off its feet and smashed it into one of the thick columns nearby. It shattered into four large hunks.

  “You guys outnumber the statues ten to one,” Elliot shouted to Neil. “Why don’t the others do anything?”

  “All but fourteen are Yukiko’s illusions.”

  “I can’t tell the difference.”

  “The ones actually killing the statues are me.”

  “Where’s Astrid?” Elliot asked.

  “Up there near Huginn.”

  The black raven swept down on the statues, flapping in their faces and tearing at them with his claws. Though he did little damage to them, it did serve as a fine distraction and gave the Neils more opportunities to knock the statues to the ground or shoot them enough times to immobilize them.

  Hazel shot one of the lions, and then the section of floor beneath it shimmered and the creature fell through the floor, into empty black space.

  Astrid was on the second story, and as he watched, a giant scarab beetle vanished through another Door just beside her. Elliot leapt up the stairs toward her.

  “Took you long enough,” he said.

  “Hold on,” said Astrid. “Pangur Ban is leading one of them to a clear area.”

  The white cat darted here and there, an ostrich statue on her heels. She took a great leap over an empty section of floor, and the moment she did, a Door appeared under the ostrich and it fell through.

  “Where did you send it?” he asked.

  “The void, I think.”

  The statues moved toward to the doorway to the next room, and Elliot knew that Yukiko and Hazel must have gotten the time machine through it and the statues were following.

  “We should follow them,” he said. “Unless you can get us home on your own.”

  “We all go together,” she said, heading down the stairs. “I need the machine and a quiet place to set it up. That’s how we got here.”

  The statues clustered around the doorway, and others joined them, peacocks and hippopotamuses, even an asp. The group closed in, completely blocking the door. Huginn came to perch on the banister beside them.

  “Elliot, is there a way into the next room that isn’t through that door?”

  “Yeah, but it’ll take us a while. We have to go up and around.”

  “I got it,” said Astrid. She called to Pangur Ban and made a Door. The place beyond the shimmering oval looked just like the next room, complete with Hazel and Yukiko heading down a hallway. Elliot stepped through, followed by Huginn and Pangur Ban, then Astrid.

  Then he had a terrible thought, one that might put them all in even further danger, and it would all be his fault.

  “Astrid, I need the books. If I get out of here, I need the fairy tale books and the metallurgy book that I give to us when we’re younger. They’re back in my room.”

  He was grateful that she understood immediately. He would have no other opportunity to retrieve the books, and this was their one and only chance to preserve their past timelines and keep them stable.

  “How far is it?” she asked.

  “Ten minutes, if we run.”

  Pangur Ban and Huginn had already joined the rest of the group, and Elliot grabbed Astrid’s hand and ran.

  “Wait, tell me where it is.”

  “It’s near the kitchen. That way.” He pointed.

  She narrowed her eyes, and created a Door. Though the Door in front of them flashed through a series of rooms, none of them were his quarters or the kitchen. Then, a room adjacent to the kitchen appeared.

  “That one!”

  She stopped and they ran through. Elliot raced up to his room and grabbed the books. Then he took her to the kitchen where he put the books into a cloth bag that he normally used to carry things from the market and slung it over his shoulder.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  He grabbed an oven mitt and pulled open the wood-burning stove. Then he pulled a log from a wood stack nearby and handed one to Astrid.

  “The Librarian hates fire,” he said. “I think he hates it more than he hates all of us.”

  She caught on immediately, and they held the wood in the flames for the interminable time it took for them to catch fire. When the flames were strong enough, they took the logs into the nearest room.

  He pulled books from the shelves and held them to the flames. Once they caught, he flung them against the bases of other bookshelves. In a minute, he had a few fires going. He continued to toss a few other books into the flames, careful not to smother the fire.

  “I hate to do this,” said Astrid. “I hate to destroy all these antiquities.”

  “Not too long ago, I would have agreed with you,” he said. “But today, the Library burns.”

  Chapter 48

  Astrid had to forcibly pull Elliot away from the series of fires he had set. The expression of determination and fury on his face frightened her. He had always taken things in stride, remaining optimistic in the face of difficulties. But now, something had changed in him. He was two years her senior, but his time with the Time Corps meant he was even older according to his personal timeline. He didn’t look much older, but he had aged. The man whose arm she now pulled was a darker being.

  “We have to find everyone,” she said. “Now that we’ve found you, we need a place to set up the machine so I can make a Door back home.”

  “Something is coming,” said Elliot. His tone was grim with satisfaction.

  Astrid knew they wanted to draw attention away from the others with their fires. But Elliot seemed inordinately pleased with this new development, even eager.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  “You can’t feel the place like I can. The Library is angry with us now.”

  “And it wasn’t before?”

  “We didn’t set it on fire before.”

  Well, she wouldn’t wait any longer. She made a Door to the room where the statues had been attacking her friends, but it was now empty. She moved the Door to a nearby room, searching for a place that looked safe before stepping through. Then she heard rushing footfalls nearby and five men tore into the room. Two of them set to putting out the fires, while the others raced toward Astrid and Elliot. She and Elliot leapt through the Door and she closed it just before they reached them.

  “Those are a few of the librarians,” said Elliot. “Seshat must have sent them.”

  “Is Seshat the main Librarian?”

  “No, she’s his wife. I thought she liked me, but I doubt she’s so fond of me now.”

  They headed into the next room, and the next, following the trail of broken statues and destruction.

  “The Librarian’s name is Thoth,” said Elliot, “and I think he is the one who sent the Library into the void. He made a duplicate or broke off part, I’m not sure. But it grew into what it is now. I think he did it to save Seshat. She’s here burning and dying upstairs, but she’s also alive and healthy.�
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  “How can she be both?”

  “I think it’s because of the void. And because they’re gods.”

  “If Thoth can move things into the void, then that means he’s a Door,” said Astrid.

  “A psychopomp?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “But I’ve learned that not all Doors are psychopomps.” For some reason, she didn’t want to tell him about the drake just yet. It could wait until they were safe at home.

  They turned a corner and Astrid picked up on the sound of shouts. They raced down a few more corridors and found six of the Neils destroying a giant cobra statue.

  “We need an undisturbed place to set up the machines,” said Hazel as she holstered her pistol.

  “They’re sending actual people after us now,” said Elliot. “Living people. We ran into a few. I don’t think we’ll want to kill so many unless we have to.”

  Astrid caught the look that passed between Hazel and Neil. She knew that Hazel had killed once, and she wouldn’t want to do so again. Neil too would be hesitant to kill unless they were under the direst of circumstances.

  “We need somewhere remote,” said Huginn from a spot atop a nearby bookshelf. His normally glossy black feathers were dulled with dust. “If they’re heading here now, then we wait until they come. Then, when they’re gathered here, we hop through a Door to another place in the Library far from here. That’ll give us time to set up the machines and get home.”

  Making Doors here in the void was easy, Astrid thought. Her lessons with Graciela had helped her become more accurate, and her natural affinity for the void meant that creating Doors through a defined physical space, like the Library, was fairly simple. If they hadn’t been pursued by murderous statues and avenging librarians, she might call it fun.

  “I think I know a place,” said Elliot softly. “But I think the Library can hear us. She’ll send people there too.”