by Peter David
There it was, just as the coachman had described. Spread out before them was a small valley that miraculously had taken shape right in the heart of the mountains. Neither of them would have thought the town could possibly be there if they hadn’t been practically right on top of it.
The coachman had further been correct about it seeming as if the town had grown directly out of the sides of the mountain. There were small buildings in the valley, but there were also homes that appeared to be built right into the mountain itself. There weren’t many, scarcely a handful. “Why would anyone live here?” said James wonderingly. “For that matter, how would they? Where do they get food? It’s too cold for anything to be grown up here.”
“I don’t know,” said Thomas, “but what I do know is that we’re not going to find out anything standing right here.” With that pronouncement, he headed toward the nearest building, which could reasonably be taken as an inn considering it had the word “Inn” scrawled on a sign that was dangling outside, flapping in the breeze and banging up against the building.
They entered and were promptly greeted with a chorus of, “Close the door!” because the wind was blowing so stiffly that it nearly ripped the door right out of Thomas’s hands. James stepped in behind him, and Thomas forced the door shut. There were several people, scruffy-looking men, scattered about the run-down interior, which consisted of a few tables and chairs, most of which looked a bit crooked. With the door safely closed, the men took the measure of Thomas and James, snorted collectively in disdain, and returned their attention to their drinks. A tavern wench, with a large bust and larger attitude, approached them with a swaying motion as if she were on the deck of a ship. “What can I do fer ya?”
“We, uhm”—and Thomas glanced around—“were hoping to get a room for the night.”
She looked them up and down. James thought she was trying to decide whether they were going to cause problems or not. “One room left upstairs,” she finally said, apparently concluding that they were harmless. “Second door on the right. Tight squeeze, but it’ll do ya ...”
Suddenly, without any warning, she slammed her foot down on the floor. “Stupid wee beast!” she snarled downward. Then she looked back to the boys. “Got some vermin running around under the floorboards and in the wall. Ain’t gonna be too bothersome for ye, is it?”
Thomas shook his head, and James did likewise. “No, not at all,” said Thomas, and he reached into his purse and extracted the requisite two silver coins. He flipped them to the wench, who scrutinized them and then bit down on one of them. “You’re supposed to do that for gold, actually,” said Thomas.
She glared at him. “Telling me how t’do my job?”
“Nuh-uh,” he said quickly. She didn’t appear completely satisfied with his hurried response but chose not to press the matter. “Also, I was wondering if you might point us in the direction of someplace called the Library?”
“It’s at the top of the stairs.”
“Stairs?”
“Go out the door,” she said, “look straight across the valley, and ya can’t miss it.”
“Okay, well . . . thank you,” said Thomas. “We’ll just put our things in the room and—”
“Actually, we’re in kind of a hurry, so we’ll drop them off when we come back,” James said quickly, and then he pulled Thomas toward the door. “Just keep the room ready for us; we’ll be back before you know it.”
“I doubt that,” she said, and that sounded rather ominous to James as they exited the inn.
“What was that about?” Thomas said in irritation the moment they pushed the door shut behind them.
“You really want to leave everything we own in the world in that room so that anyone could just walk out with it?”
Thomas was about to toss off an annoyed response, but then he paused and saw the wisdom in James’s words. “All right, good point. So where are these stairs that she was talking ab . . . ?” Then his voice trailed off, and James saw where he was looking.
Directly across the valley, just as the wench had said, was a flight of steps. It seemed to go on forever, up the side of the mountain, and there was a fog bank that obscured whatever was at the top. They were just barely able to make out a vague shape that looked like a large building, which James took to be the Library they were seeking.
“Oh, perfect,” muttered James. He turned to Thomas. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Thomas affirmed, and James had to acquiesce. After all, they had gotten this far, so what was one flight of stairs? One incredibly long flight of stairs?
“Fine. No problem,” said James.
BY HALFWAY UP THE STAIRS, JAMES WAS ready to throw himself back down. By the time they had made it three-quarters of the way up, James was ready to throw Thomas back down and then sit and point and laugh derisively as Thomas’s sure-to-be-broken body thudded and thumped all the way back to the ground. He knew that it was an illusion, but it still seemed to James that no matter how much closer they drew, the end was never in sight. His breath became increasingly ragged, and his temper frayed.
Thomas, by contrast, remained in disgustingly good spirits. “Almost there,” he said for what seemed the tenth time. Each of the stairs creaked under their footing, and James continued to be concerned that one of them would snap under their tread. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending upon one’s point of view—the stairs held up, and the Library remained attainable.
“Well—” Thomas started to say at one point, and James turned to him, and snapped, “If you’re going to say, ‘Almost there,’ Thomas, I swear to—”
“Actually, I was going to say, ‘We’re there.’ ”
“What? Oh.” James had been looking down for a time, focusing on his footing and keeping his face shielded from the increasing wind. They had reached a landing, a widened platform that was just a few steps shy of the top. “Okay, well . . . good. That actually went way more smoothly than I—”
“Don’t move.” Thomas was speaking very softly, and James had to strain to hear him. “Not a muscle.”
“What?” He looked around. “What are you—?”
“I said don’t move!” His voice dropped even lower, to barely above a whisper. “We’re being hunted.”
This time James did not respond orally. Instead, slowly, he turned his head in order to look in the direction in which Thomas’s gaze was fixed. There was a snowbank positioned about ten feet away from them, and it didn’t seem especially threatening as near as he could tell.
But then the snowbank moved ever so slightly, and then it rippled, and then it stretched and flexed its muscles, and that was when James realized that the snowbank had two small, yellow, vicious eyes that were staring right at Thomas and him. They narrowed as James made eye contact with them, and then he was able to discern the large head at the front of a sinewy body that was clearly ready to pounce. It was some sort of large cat, and its lips drew back in a snarl to reveal a fearsome row of teeth.
James’s legs trembled, and suddenly that hideous home from which he had fled was starting to look a lot better to him. He remembered being told that animals could smell fear. If that was the case, this one was smelling pure, stinking terror.
“When it leaps,” Thomas said, never looking away from the beast, “you go to the left, I’ll go to the right.”
“And we’re doing that . . . why?” James was surprised by the evenness of his own voice.
“It’ll be distracted, indecisive, for just a moment, and—”
While Thomas was busy explaining, the great cat leaped with an earsplitting screech designed to freeze its prey in its tracks.
It was partly successful, because although Thomas immediately leaped to the right as planned, James was riveted to the spot. The roaring beast came straight at him, and the only thing that prevented it from crashing into him and digging its claws into his flesh was Thomas’s lashing out with his foot as he flung himself away, catching James in the hip and knocking him aside.
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The white-furred cat landed between the two of them, its oversized head snapping this way and that. James saw that the creature wasn’t solid white; there were small black spots all over it, faint but possible to see since it was close enough.
After a second’s uncertainty, the creature apparently decided that James was the easier target. It whirled, its tail snapping straight out, and James saw its haunches go tight in preparation to leap upon him. He fumbled at the short sword dangling from his belt, and then the cat lunged for him.
James braced himself for the charge, and then he heard a scream of pain and was surprised to realize it wasn’t his own voice. The cat was staggering and a still-trembling crossbow bolt was sticking out from its rib cage. James might have been the easier prey, but Thomas was now the more immediate problem, and the beast clearly was deciding to attend to him. Thomas was trying to nock another bolt as quickly as he could, but he was rushing. In his haste, he dropped the bolt and it clattered away from him, rebounded off the edge of the stairs, and fell away. There was no time for him to pull another from the quiver, and yet it didn’t stop him from trying.
And just as the beast was about to attack Thomas, James’s sword came clear of its scabbard. He swung it around, part desperately, part blindly, and he got lucky. The blade sliced across the cat’s back right leg, severing the large tendons and hamstringing it. The beast screeched, this time not out of any desire to terrorize its victims but instead in pure agony. It tried to twist in midair, landed hard, and its hindquarters collapsed.
“Hah!” shouted Thomas. Disdaining the crossbow, he instead withdrew his sword and moved forward, preparing to put it out of its misery.
But James remembered that there was nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. Before he could shout a warning, the cat pushed off with its still-functioning left hind leg and cleared the distance between it and Thomas with a single thrust. It knocked Thomas off his feet and down he went, the sword tumbling from his hands. The creature was all of six inches away, and it brought its claws upward, ready to strike, and given one second, it would have torn away Thomas’s face.
James tried to stab forward with the sword, knowing that he was going to come up short. Which was why he was as surprised as anyone could have been when the beast fell forward and lay there, unmoving. Its body shuddered once and then exhaled its last. For a moment James thought it was some sort of trick and then realized the absurdity of that. What possible reason would the cat have for trying to fool them, presuming it was even capable of such sinister thinking? Thomas had been totally helpless.
Nevertheless, James picked up a hard, cold stone and threw it with all his strength at the unmoving cat.
It continued to unmove.
He looked up to Thomas. “How did you do that? How did you kill it?”
“Me? I thought you did it.”
James returned his short sword to its scabbard and crouched next to the animal. He saw something protruding from the base of the creature’s skull. “What the hell—?” he said, and touched it gingerly. “It’s a hilt.”
“Of a dagger?”
“Other than our hovel being mortgaged to one, that’s the only kind of hilt I know.” He looked around nervously. “But where’d it come from? An invisible creature, maybe—?”
“I think it more likely that it was thrown.”
“By who?”
“Whom.”
“By whom?”
“Couldn’t say.” He looked around, squinting, trying to see some evidence of anyone else around. There were enough shadows to hide a dozen knife-throwers, and if they were not of a mind to be spotted, then they were going to remain unseen. He called out, “Whoever you are, we’re very grateful! If you want to come out so we can thank you properly . . . ?” His call received no reply. “Ooookay,” he said with a shrug after several moments of no response. Then he started to reach for the knife, but James grabbed him by the wrist, and said urgently, “No! Don’t!”
Thomas gave him a quizzical look. “Why not?”
“What if pulling it out brings the creature back to life? What if it’s supernatural in origin?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous than balverines?”
Thomas was about to toss off a dismissive reply, but then the wisdom of James’s words sank in, and he withdrew his hand, nodding. “Okay, fair enough. I mean, it’s not likely, but we can’t be too careful. Come on.” And he clapped James on the shoulder. “Let’s get up to Library before ...”
“Before what?”
“Before we find out that this one here”—and he touched the cat with his toe—“wasn’t hunting alone.”
“Now you’re the one with a fair point,” said James, and they quickly covered the remainder of the distance to the Library, both of them scrupulously watching the immediate vicinity lest another beast leap upon them.
THERE WAS BUT ONE LIBRARIAN PRESENT when they arrived. Thomas expected that there was going to be some involved wrangling necessary to gain access to the Library, but he could not have been more wrong. “Knowledge,” said the Librarian, an elderly man with a thick white beard and disheveled hair, “should be free to all. You can take all your swords and war hammers and guns constructed by the hand of man, and none of them equals the power from information that a single book can provide you.”
Privately, Thomas was of the opinion that a book wouldn’t have done them a great deal of good against the animal that had tried to devour them out on the stairs, but he was a guest there and felt that it would have been impolite to say anything. But he exchanged a glance with James and could see that his friend was thinking the exact same thing. They shared a brief smile, and then Thomas settled down to business.
He found a sizable tome labeled Creatures and Grotesqueries . The book was thick with dust, apparently not having been read in some time. When he opened it, the spine creaked with the weight of years of accumulated knowledge. And the smell of it! What was it about mustiness that caused it to smell like wisdom?
The pages were of far thicker paper than any of the books he had at home. Indeed, his old books seemed downright flimsy in comparison. He turned each page carefully, determined to make sure that he didn’t tear any of them. When he reached the section labeled “balverines,” he lay the pages down as flat as he could and began reading.
James wandered aimlessly around the Library, looking in wonderment at the shelves upon shelves of books. The Librarian walked alongside him, watching him with a raised eyebrow. “Have you read all of these books?” said James after a time.
“What would be the fun in that?”
“I don’t understand.”
The Librarian smiled through his dry and cracked lips. “The true joy of residing in this environment, day after day, is wondering what new bits of wisdom I might acquire in the process of perusing another volume in this vast and glorious collection of tomes.”
“All right,” James said cautiously, not sure that he really got it but deciding that if the Librarian knew what he was talking about, well, at least one of them did.
About an hour later he found Thomas hunched on the edge of his seat at a long table. There were now half a dozen books open to different sections, and Thomas’s lips were moving softly as he read. “Well?” said James.
Thomas did not answer immediately, and when he did respond, it was in a voice hushed with awe. “It’s amazing,” he said, “how limited my books were in their scope.”
“You’re finding a lot about balverines here?”
“I’ll say.” He dragged over one of the books he had set aside and flipped through some pages. “Did you ever hear of the balvorn?”
“Uh . . . no.”
“A monstrous beast of unknown origins. Fearsome beyond anything that anyone would have thought possible. Supposedly, in ancient times, it killed hundreds—maybe thousands—of people.”
“Until it was finally destroyed?” he said hopefully.
“Actuall
y, there’s no record of the balvorn ever being slain although one would hope that it would be long gone to dust by now.”
“One would hope that, yes.”
“However, its handiwork remains to this day. Apparently only one person ever survived the attack of the balvorn. It doesn’t say how he managed to pull that off, but he might have been better off if he hadn’t lived. Because his reward was to be transformed into a creature that was smaller, but no less vicious, than its progenitor. I’d read that they spawned others of their kind through their bite, but I’d never seen anything about this very first of the balverines. Apparently”—and he shook his head in disbelief—“there have been actual instances of people rounding up balverines and pitting them against each other in pits of battle. Which is kind of a problem since the balverines were just as likely to find a way to leap out of the pit and attack the audiences as they were each other.”
“What else?” In spite of himself, James was finding this information fascinating.
“Well”—and Thomas ran his finger along one of the lines of meticulously rendered print—“the most aggressive and dominant of the balverines are white balverines. Supposedly, the white balverines are people who were slain by balverines during a full moon, at midnight. Something about that combination seems particularly potent.” He started turning the pages of other books. “The book I’d really like to find here is something called the Omnicron. It appears to have a lot of detailed information about . . . well, about everything. I’ve checked the Library’s files, and supposedly there’s a copy here somewhere, but I went to where it should have been, and there’s nothing there. I wonder if—”
“Wait ...” James leaned forward, looking at the book over Thomas’s shoulder. “Go back to what you were saying before.”
“About what?”
“That balverines were once humans?”
“Well . . . yes. Why, what did you think?”
“I thought they were . . . I don’t know. A separate race. So being a balverine is like having a disease?”