by Troy Hooker
“Highly unusual,” Gus said quietly.
“Could be the reason why you don’t have a schematic of the library,” Lillia suggested.
Without consulting the others, Sam attempted to pull the shelf back. Seeing it wasn’t opening, Gus and Emma joined him, but it wouldn’t budge.
“There has to be a secret switch or something,” Gus conceded.
“Yeah, ‘cause this is so a haunted mansion,” Lillia snorted. “Why don’t you try one of the book levers?” she said snidely.
The others ignored Lillia’s skepticism and immediately began pulling out the books in the shelf. After a minute or so of examining each book and Lillia nearly laughing herself silly, they gave up. Dust now hovered like a cloud above them.
Emma began chastising Lillia for her lack of support, and they argued back and forth while Sam and Gus searched the shelf for more clues.
Letting out a muffled sneeze from the dust flying off the books, Sam was suddenly reminded of Chivler and his dusty old bookstore.
“The journal…” he thought aloud, remembering the strange drawings that now curiously resembled the old library tucked in the pages between the journal entries. He pulled out the old worn journal Chivler had given him from his backpack.
Gus poked his head out from the far side of the shelf and, before he could finish the sentence “What journal?” his expression turned to a look of horrified surprise followed by child-like excitement as he saw the winged creature stamped into the cover.
“Oh wow! Where did you get that?” he yelled, snatching it from Sam’s outstretched hands and then gently opening its fragile binding.
“Uh, Chivler gave it to me,” Sam uttered, surprised at the sudden attention. “I haven’t had a chance to read much of—”
Gus stood open-mouthed.
“I can’t believe you have it!” he said. “It must have … I can’t imagine how …” he stuttered.
“So what? He found a journal. What’s it good for?” Lillia said.
“I believe it’s the journal the PO has been searching for … the one they think someone broke into Chivler’s to find! The journal of Julian Lawrence!”
Lillia replaced a book neatly on the already disorganized shelf, for which everyone else eyed her questioningly.
“The banker with the dreams?” she asked. “The one they think was a prophet, right?”
Gus ignored her, his eyes searching the pages of the book he had taken from Sam.
“Other than his dreams,” he paused for a moment, distracted by a certain page in the leathery contents, “it can’t be …” he trailed off, nose still buried in the dusty source.
“Gus. Back with us please,” Emma said gently.
Gus was shaken out of his trance suddenly, knocking over the remainder of his Gunia drink, of which wasn’t much left, but as it splattered across the floor, the cup bounced on the stone floor with a clang.
“Right! I knew it!” he exclaimed. “I can’t believe it. Remember what Boggle said about his assistant ‘Jules?’”
“Jules is short for Julian … Julian Lawrence!” Emma exclaimed.
Lillia was dumbfounded.
“Didn’t see that coming.”
Gus paced in front of the dusty shelf.
“He must have been standing right here in this library over two hundred years ago.”
“And?” Lillia stood.
Gus scowled.
“Well, then I would assume that the break-in and Chivler’s disappearance would certainly now be the doing of a Dark Watcher or Metim.”
“For the journal? Why would they care about it?” Lillia asked solemnly.
Gus didn’t look up from Julian’s journal, but after a moment, walked over to the bookshelf and drew out a series of letters in Light on the wall near the hidden entrance, a small sliver of Light trailing behind his finger.
“Because of this,” he said with finality.
Immediately upon its last letter, the Light trail following his finger blinked out and a low rumble could be heard behind the bookshelf, which shook violently with the noise. Less than a moment later, the shelf creaked and groaned once again, then slid away from the wall to reveal the outline of the door in the wall. They waited, Gus’s finger still in the air next to the wall, until a plume of dust blew from the outline of the door, then the door swung slowly inward.
A blue stone now glowed brightly above the frame of the hidden door, unseen to them when the shelf was in the way. Carefully they moved forward toward the dark entrance, covering their mouths to keep from inhaling too much of the dust cloud, which also stifled their congratulatory cheers upon Gus’s accomplishment.
***********************
Emma begged to be first into the library’s bowels, her renewed confidence from the wolves incident helping to quell some of her previous fears. She stopped in the door frame below the blue stone, holding her hand in front of her for a moment. At first, nothing happened, then, a blue glow began to emerge from her palm. It began to flow out of her hand, then as she closed her fist, it crept back, forming an irregular-shaped globe of Light that stuck to her palm, pulsing with flowing blue Lazuli light.
They all watched her in awe as the globe increased in size and intensity, then weakened, then swelled again to the point where it was nearly too bright to look directly at. Then she opened her eyes and turned, the globe still glowing in her hand.
“I was thinking I could do this in the garden. I guess it’s not so hard after all,” she smiled at them, then disappeared into the entrance, the glow following her and illuminating the long narrow hallway.
Lillia and Sam followed her, but Gus lagged behind, and out of the corner of his eye, Sam could see him holding his hand outstretched in front of him, attempting to produce his own Light globe. A small flicker shot from his hand, but then disappeared. He sighed heavily and followed them into the entrance.
The hallway was long and narrow, the walls made entirely of stone, but unlike the library where a dust cloud still circulated the disturbed books, this seemed strangely clean. No doubt they built it to withstand pretty much anything.
They followed the glowing globe from Emma’s hand in front of them, seeing no doors or openings in the hall, but as they clomped across the echoing stone floor, they noticed the numerous picture frames that held paintings of various Chancellors throughout the years, all dressed in full white-robed attire. Some of them wore red cuffs as did the Chancellor back in Lior City, but others wore the familiar colors of their representative halls. Each frame was lavishly decorated and free of dust, as if they were hung on the wall yesterday.
They moved forward toward the blank wall of stone in front of them at the end of the hall, half expecting it to open up like the library entrance did once they approached.
Emma held the glowing globe out further in front of her as they drew closer to get a look at the wall they neared, but as she did, she took a step into nothing, and suddenly the light, the hallway, and Emma disappeared into the darkness below.
It was stifling darkness, as black as the cloud of Darkness outside the City. A scream rang out, echoing down the hallway.
Emma, Sam thought, but Lillia was already there, skidding to the edge of the abyss where she had disappeared.
“Light! Gus, get a lantern!” she barked, peering down into the darkness. “Emma! Are you okay?” she called into the blackness, and suddenly the light from Gus’s blue lantern lit the hallway where the scene was taking place.
Lillia was on her knees, peering into the hole where Emma disappeared.
“Emma! Speak to me girl!”
With the dim light now available, Sam and Gus searched the spot where Lillia pointed, attempting to make out Emma’s form.
“Where is she? I can’t see her! How can you see her?” Gus panicked, waving the lantern into the darkness.
&nb
sp; Lillia snatched the light from Gus and held it lower into the hole. There, barely visible in the stone pit, was Emma’s crumpled body lying face down. For a moment it looked like she was not moving, then slowly, she turned over on her back and stared at the three fearful friends above her.
“I—I’m fine … I think.”
She checked herself over, then stood up and looked around her prison.
“It seems I stumbled into an old stairwell, except there are no stairs. Oh! Hold on.”
Slowly the secret of the stairwell began to become visible as a small blue light emerged from her palm once again. Set into the wall were steps flush against the stone, making it impossible to descend.
Emma then faded once again out of sight from the friends above her as she explored the bottom of the stairwell where it disappeared under the wall at the end of the hallway. Gus stood and hurried to his backpack a few steps away and immediately began emptying it, while Lillia handed Sam the lantern and disappeared back into the darkness of the hallway. Sam was alone to watch for Emma to return from the shadows.
Moments later and the contents of his backpack now strung all over the stone floor, Gus produced a rope from his backpack that looked just long enough to reach to the floor of the stairwell with some slack to tie it off. Looking around the bare walls, the two boys searched for somewhere to tie the rope off. As Sam and Gus worked out how to get all of them down—and then up again—Emma reemerged from under the stairwell.
“Guys, you are never going to believe what’s down here,” Emma said.
“I don’t think whoever built this wanted anyone to know what was down there,” Lillia appeared suddenly from the darkness. “It’s an optical illusion. The hole is masked so that if a person walks up on it, they can’t see the stairwell.”
“Not very welcoming,” Sam said.
“No,” Gus dropped the rope suddenly and looked around the hallway once again. “I don’t think it was supposed to be a hole.”
Then he walked over to the wall and began running the palm of his hand over the smooth stone.
“What are you looking for?” Sam asked, but Gus didn’t answer. Instead, his hand stopped suddenly about midway up the wall, and he turned and smiled at them.
“Emma, back away from the opening!” he called suddenly, then he plunged his hand into the wall, his arm disappearing up to his elbow, and then he twisted something inside. Suddenly, the floor shook loudly, and a stone ledge emerged slowly from the side of the hole, locking itself into place, and thrusting itself upward to become level with the hallway floor. The hole where Emma had fallen was gone, and the floor looked like it was meant to be there the whole time, with not even the slightest crack showing.
Keeping his arm in the hole in the wall, he turned it again the opposite direction, and the hole opened up once again, and with another twist, ten stone steps jutted out noisily from the wall until a solid stairway was visible to all.
“Nice work, Gus!” Emma called from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes, good thing we brought you,” Lillia slapped him on the back and snatched up her pack just before bounding down the steps.
Sam followed her, but not before noticing Gus removing his hand from the wall, which too looked like an optical illusion, mirroring every other part of the wall. This was certainly a place meant to be kept secret.
Once all were down the stairs, they followed Emma into the darkness under the hallway wall, which at once she dispelled with the Light from her palm.
Emma led them through a doorway, and suddenly she didn’t need her Light anymore. Inside the small but open room, there were lanterns of Lazuli, which lit up the modest stacks of books organized neatly in shelves built into each wall. On one side of the room was what looked like an elaborate workbench and a curious-looking box that strangely resembled a computer. Instead of a monitor, however, from the moment they entered the room, the shape of a woman dressed in long white gowns and a hood projected into the air above the box.
“Boggle’s Holobook project!” Gus rushed over to the workbench, leaving the others to catch his backpack mid-drop and lean all their gear against the wall. “I can’t believe it’s still working after this long!”
Seeing they weren’t going to pry him away any time soon, Sam, Lillia, and Emma decided they would have a look around the rest of the bookshelves in the small room. Unlike the larger library above them, the books that lined the walls in this room were smaller, less sophisticated in their bindings, and very plain. Numerous workbenches dotted the open spaces where there were no books, each littered with various parts and inventions for different projects. Quickly it became obvious that this was Jerma Bogglenose’s secret lab, or a part of it at least.
Emma, Sam, and Lillia took it upon themselves to dig through the workbenches looking for the Watcher Stone, or evidence of it, but they had no luck and went back to the strange-looking books.
“I wonder why he would want it hidden so well?” Sam picked up a book from the shelf and scanned the dusty cover.
It was unlike any book he had ever seen. Although the cover was identical to a normal book, upon opening, the pages were like flexible glass with no words on them. When he touched the inside cover, however, the first few pages suddenly came to life with words and images that literally leapt off the page in blue brilliance.
Emma was instantly at his side, having put her own book down on a small reading table where a Lazuli lantern sat.
“All of these books have been converted into Holobooks,” she said, touching the words and letting them dance around her fingers. “I wonder if you can search for something just by asking. Say … the Watcher Stone?”
“No, you can’t. The inside pages are locked by a passcode. You are only seeing the book’s authorship information.” Gus came up beside them and pointed to the hologram on the workbench. “But she can tell us …”
Chapter Fifteen
Incident No. 497
Standing in front of the hologram box, the four friends asked the image of the robed woman various questions about the library, the books, and ultimately the Dark Legend, Prophecy of Light, and the Watcher Stone. Each time, with the exception of providing basic information about her creation date and her model type, and with multiple apologies, she always responded with, “I will need to know your entrance passcode before I can search.”
Frustrated, they sat down to give themselves a moment to collect their thoughts. Gus rifled through Julian Lawrence’s journal looking for answers while they sat, but for a long while no one spoke. They had come so far, and yet they were being stopped cold suddenly by a simple passcode.
Sam was clueless about what to offer, having not been in Lior long and not having the same experiences as the other three, but he still racked his brain for some glimmer of promise that could keep them going forward.
“All this information right in front of us and no way to see it,” Emma said glumly. “And no other doors in here that I can see.”
Sam pulled out of his backpack a napkin of dried fruit and handed some to the other three. At the strange looks he received because the fruit was not on the “official packing list,” and much to Emma’s dismay, he sheepishly told them Sayvon had given it to him before they left.
Gus sighed, chewing on a piece of dried pineapple.
“Honestly, I am surprised we made it this far. It is quite an accomplishment what we have already done.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured either we’d be dead by now or she would have lost her mind,” Lillia chuckled and pointed at Emma, who responded with an angry look in return.
“What I don’t understand is … why were people so wrong about the library being destroyed? You would think someone would have been out here to investigate regularly,” Emma said.
“Only members of the Office of Research were coming out to the Old City after the destruction … not that it m
atters, because I haven’t heard of anyone who has been out here for decades,” Gus said.
“Oh, great. I’m sure we are breaking some law coming out here,” Emma said with a scowl.
“Oh, well, I just figured,” Gus stumbled over his words, “since your folks knew we were coming …”
“Yes, and that was probably before they realized there was new growths of Darkness around the old city,” she sputtered.
Lillia leaned forward and drew in the dust that had accumulated on the stone floor.
“It just seems to me,” she stopped, then sighed as if unsure as to continue her thought. “The whole thing just seems a bit off, that’s all.”
Gus was suddenly interested.
“What do you mean, Lil’?”
“I don’t know …” Lillia proceeded carefully with her words. “I just keep thinking about the cloud of Darkness outside the City, how big it was. Gus is almost never wrong about these things, but there it was, right before our eyes.”
“City leaders have been wrong about the Darkness before,” Emma countered.
Lillia scowled.
“But if the Darkness was bigger—and newer than they thought, wouldn’t the right people know about it? I just feel there’s more to it, okay?”
While Lillia wasn’t quite making sense, what she was saying was somewhat true. It was weird. And although he hadn’t been here long enough to become comfortable with the way Lior did or didn’t do something, there was something that felt amiss. Like Lior was engulfed in some mystical cloud that wouldn’t let them see what was going on. Mr. Sterling was right.
Emma huffed loudly, sending a plume of dust that had settled on her arm into the air. “So you think there’s some sort of conspiracy in the Council? There’s no way. The leaders of our city would fight and die to help keep Lior safe. I trust them to make the best decisions for Lior, and you should too!”
“I’m not saying anything like that, but your dad did say—” Lillia understood that Emma was getting defensive and tried to change her tone suddenly, but it was too late.