by Galen Wolf
As Severan got within twenty feet of the floor, still on the rope, Mehefin's head clicked up. Severan shouted down to her. She didn't reply. Then he said, "What's the matter with her eyes?"
Mehefin's scintillating rainbow eyes were dead - the color of ash. But she moved.
"She can't see you," Gaijann said. "She's blind." Then he looked at Torina. Now they were close they could see that Torina's face was bloody and smashed. One eye was closed, the other was the same shade of grey as Mehefin's.
They were nearly at the bottom of the rope. "Wait, boss," Gaijann said. "Something's wrong."
On its slab at the top of the podium, the Library's brain pulsed and the colors in the room went from yellow to white to brown.
Severan didn't wait. He dropped from the end of the rope, taking most of the weight of the landing on his good foot.
Gaijann dropped after him, lighter and lither. Both of the women faced them. They started to move forward.
"Mehefin," Severan said. "It's me."
Her blank eyes did not flicker. Her dull mouth did not speak. Still she came closer. Behind her shoulder, the fractured visage of Torina leered.
"Torina," Gaijann said. "What happened?"
The remains of the two women advanced slowly towards on Gaijann and Severan.
Severan turned, puzzled, to his friend. "What?"
Gaijann frowned. "They're dead."
Both men stepped back. Severan said, "But they walk. Is this Morah's work?"
"Morah is in there," Gaijann pointed out to the sea of black writhing shapes that covered the floor of the cavern below the podium and its steps. "She's not doing any work anymore."
"Then what?"
The women were close now. Gaijann loosened his vorpal dagger in its sheath. Severan balled his mighty fist. The hurt wrist had been partly healed but was still swollen and misshapen. "I don't want to hurt them," he said. He scanned the podium and saw the hand and eye that Morah had dropped, lying in a thin pool of congealing blood. Then he looked back up at Mehefin. She was close now. Her arms opening, as if she would embrace him. He stepped back.
"Careful, where you're putting your feet, big guy," Gaijann said. "We don't want to become food for the blood-worms."
Severan looked back warily over his shoulder, but still stepped down and away from Mehefin. Her mouth was open, hanging dryly; her terrible dead eyes staring.
Torina moved towards Gaijann. She was more obviously dead. Her arm was twisted. There was a grinding of bones as she moved her dragging leg.
"I don't know what's going on here," Gaijann said.
And then, to their surprise, a grating voice came from Mehefin's mouth. It had a rough, mechanical sound as if each syllable was being produced with effort. "Come to me," it said.
Severan stepped up and away from Mehefin, towards the Library's heart.
Gaijann went with him. When the assassin got close to it, he glanced away from the advancing Mehefin and studied the thing that ruled this place. The black seeds up close were some kind of organ, made of a fibrous jelly, deep in the quivering guts of the thing. There were fine filaments within the jelly that might serve as a kind of nervous system. He saw that the slab the jelly thing stood on had markings - perhaps a kind of writing. Mehefin was close.
Gaijann touched the plate with his forefinger and suddenly there was a jolt of knowledge. He pulled his hand away but the connection remained and an intelligence poured in. It was non-human but it had the flavor of the images and poems that intruded into his mind at other places in the Library. It gave him information that was colored and tasted of things he had never imagined before. He heard its voice like discordant music. He felt its malice.
"Severan," he shouted. "The Count has transformed himself into a microscopic hive mind creature. There are a multitude of him."
"How do you know?"
"The Library just told me. I guess it betrays everyone."
"So, that's the power he wanted." Severan watched Mehefin get closer.
"He's moving the women. They're not alive; he's infected their corpses."
Gaijann's knife was ready in his fist, crackling plasma blue.
Severan's face was strained with grief. He was looking at Mehefin; once she'd been beautiful, but now she was something horrible beyond anything he knew. She was lost to him; as Oriel had been.
Gaijann said, "If we touch them they will infect us too."
Severan and Gaijann were almost back to back, drawing away from what was coming towards them. The women came forward.
Mehefin was close enough for Severan to punch her, but he did not hit her. Instead, he sidestepped and they began their slow waltz again, around the top of the podium.
"We can't just walk away from them forever, boss," Gaijann said. "We've got to stop them."
Torina was close to Gaijann. He imagined her dead flesh, clammy to the touch. "Poor Torina," he said. "You never deserved this." Then Gaijann ducked down and away. As he twisted past her, he cut both her hamstrings with his knife. Though she was animated by the virus, her severed tendons couldn't hold her legs upright and she crashed to the ground. Lying in a twitching heap. Her arms reached out for him, but he stepped away.
"I can't hurt Mehefin," Severan said.
"She's dead already."
Gaijann saw Severan was about to be taken into Mehefin's cold embrace. The giant's remaining eye was closed and an expression of infinite pain haunted his face.
With a cry, Gaijann vaulted against the podium and kicked Mehefin. The blow was so powerful that it sent her tumbling backwards down the steps. She lay there, struggling, and then began to rise again. Severan walked down the steps until he was beside her. Her ruined corpse stood again, reaching out for him.
"It's not her, boss. It's not her."
Severan went and extended a hand to the Mehefin thing. She took it greedily and pulled herself up. She pawed at him and he folded her in an embrace. Gaijann saw the sobbing of his boss's chest. "Severan!" the assassin yelled.
Severan bent and kissed the thing's cheek. Then, gently he led her to the edge of the podium. "I'm so sorry."
Severan pushed her into the boiling mess of the blood-worms. The slimy invertebrates reached up snapping at her to take her down among them and begin digesting her body.
"The Library spoke to me again," Gaijann said.
"What did it say?"
Gaijann gave a bitter smile. "You know the Library is cruel? It waits for eons and then gluts itself on the hates and fears of those who enter. It twists things to make everything worse. It is never true to its bargains."
"Not even to the Count," Severan said, the realization dawning on him.
"Especially not to the Count."
"The virus only infects dead flesh?" Severan guessed.
"Exactly."
Gaijann laughed sardonically. "So the Count will only ever be the god of rotting corpses and necrotic flesh." Then he grew serious. "What of your hand and eye?"
"I'll leave them here."
"But you'll be crippled."
"Then I'll be crippled." Severan reached up and touched the medallion of the Blind God that hung golden and smeared in blood on his chest.
Gaijann said, "And Torina?"
"We will deliver her to dissolution. She will become part of the mind of the Library - all her care and all her courage. Her soul will help purify it and give good where there was none before."
"I hope you're right," Gaijann said. Severan bent down and lifted the remains of Torina. He took her to the podium edge and was about to throw her into the inchoatus.
"Wait," Gaijann said. "Her healing fields are in her armor."
Severan nodded and took off the breastplate. "Yes, we can use this."
They placed the breastplate with its inbuilt healing fields on the steps and then took Torina's body between them and consigned her into the pool of whirling blackness.
Severan held up the breastplate and switched on Torina's healing fields and both men stood and wa
tched how their ripped flesh knitted slowly back together. It was not as good as Torina with her full equipment and her knowledge, but their muscles and their bones strengthened and the skin grew back to cover where it had been destroyed before.
"And now we wait until this black tide ebbs," Severan said. "Then get out."
Above them the brain shivered and pulsed.
"How long?"
"Hours. Know any stories?"
"I'm not in the mood for storytelling."
Gaijann sat down next to Severan and they gazed towards the tunnel they would use to exit once the worms were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Pitting wits against against flesh and gall
Time went by. Hours of it. Eventually, Gaijann said, "Where's the Count now do you think?"
Severan gestured all around them. "Here. On us."
Gaijann nodded. "We're covered in the virus."
"I know."
"We can't take it out into the Universe," Gaijann said. "It will find dead flesh and replicate in it until it fills whole planets. Starships will be choked with it and will carry it everywhere they go."
"Then we have two jobs, my friend - to get out of this Library and to cleanse ourselves of the virus."
"Except," Gaijann indicated the sea of black maggot worms that prowled just below them.
"Eventually the day will come, this black stuff will drain away, and we can walk out," Severan said.
Then they sat. Gaijann felt the hunger gnawing at his bowels. Severan must feel it too.
The hours went by. They didn't sleep and they didn't talk until Gaijann said, "I hate waiting."
"Patience. Soon we can go."
"Not so soon. And as for patience, I've never had any."
They sat for a while longer in silence. Then Gaijann said, "We could ask the Library for something that might help?"
Both of them were aware of the thing still pulsating on the plate behind them. Whenever it thought, the light in the room changed. They sat with their back to it, choosing to ignore it.
Severan muttered, "That thing is a devil. Its only pleasure is making us suffer."
"But maybe we can outwit it?"
"I'm not sure."
"You're a clever guy. I'm a sly one. Let's be crafty."
Severan stood. Gaijann got up after him. They made their way up the steps until they were right by the quivering jelly. The rooms lights flashed frantically as they approached. Gaijann felt the mind of the Library intruding on his own. He was mesmerized and dizzied by the whirling depth of the knowledge and emotions that came out from it.
He put his hand on the metal plate upon which the Library's heart rested. At once the creature's presence surged through him like electricity. Dragging his attention from what was going on in his head required a superhuman effort. He looked at Severan, whose face was down, sweat dripping from his brow.
Then Gaijann was drawn into the Library's mind again. He saw that the Library wanted to devour him; it hungered for his experiences. But he fought it. He pitted his individual will against its great group mind. Opposite him, Severan was engaged in a similar struggle. Gaijann found he could see through the Library into his friend's mind. He saw how deeply Severan was held. The Library gripped him fast. It wanted him to come inside it.
Gaijann saw how his friend was trying to free his mind, to clear it of the images that the Library sent. Gaijann stood back; his brow creased with worry. Severan's body had been mended, but the half healed stump hung limply by his side. He was still attached to the Library. Gaijann could hear Severan's thoughts.
The Library learned what Severan was. It knew what was in his heart. It offered him Oriel, and then it snatched her away. It promised him love. It promised him Mehefin.
Severan snarled and yanked up his head. "No!" he shouted at the pulsing thing.
But it still had him. "Take her," it whispered. "She is yours."
He shook his head like a dog with a rat clamped onto its throat. "No."
Gaijann put his hand on his friend's arm, but Severan had descended back into the Library's mind. Gaijann saw him fall through its dimensions, deeper than ocean trenches, wider than skies. "I will give you Mehefin," the Library whispered in his mind.
"And in return?" Severan said, for the first time listening, as if his will to resist was fading.
"After one hundred years, you will return to me. And after one hundred years you will cease to exist as you and only be us. And as us we will be everything. We will fill space and we will remain here, dead and dreaming."
And Severan thought that a hundred years with Mehefin was worth the price of an eternity of joined-ness to the Library of Xaolin.
"How will this happen?" Severan said and Gaijann heard him weaken.
"Merely wait, and I will bring her to you."
Then the giant pulled away, his blond hair wet with sweat. "No!" he said. Severan pulled back, like a man coming suddenly from a nightmare. He shook his head to clear it. Gaijann again put his hand on his friend's arm to offer comfort. "Okay?" he said.
Severan nodded.
"Come on," Gaijann said. "The black tide has receded. The silver will come soon, but let's go while we have this space between tides."
Severan nodded; he still looked dazed. "It offered me Mehefin for a hundred years."
"I know. I heard."
"But it would only trick me."
The assassin nodded.
"Foul thing."
The assassin smiled wryly."I guess we couldn't outwit it."
"But we didn't give in to it either." Severan clapped Gaijann on the back. He breathed heavily. "Let's go."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: A garden of remembrance
The blood-worms had ebbed and the floor was clear before them. They found their way down the tunnel as it sloped upwards. It was a long way but eventually it would take them to the surface. They walked slowly but with purpose. The two men spoke little but took comfort in each other's presence. Then there was a sound.
Both stopped. "The black things?" Severan said.
Gaijann shook his head. "They've gone."
"The silver?"
"I never noticed them making a noise."
"Can you go stealth?"
Gaijann grimaced. "It's burned out. I'm as visible as you now."
Then the noise came again.
"Lend me your knife?" Severan said.
"Won't work for you."
Before they could say any more, the Kissag were on them. There was a whole troop of them. The quiet dark of the Library tunnel exploded in flashes of energy rifles.
"Lucky they're lousy shots," hissed Gaijann as he ducked and ran. Rock exploded and shrapnel flew around. Both men went defensive - running for cover and seeking shadows. Gaijann saw the purple buzz of his knife. He looked at Severan's single fist.
The first wave of Kissag launching themselves from the ledges where they had lurked. Their war cries echoed in the tunnel. Gaijann stepped forward from shadow and gutted the first one. It fell jerking at his feet. Severan bent down and picked up its energy rifle. It was an unfamiliar model but had a trigger and a sight. He pulled it round and fired from the hip, blasting the oncoming Kissag in the face. The lizard went down. Severan growled and turned to face the next.
Gaijann, even without his stealth, was like a lethal ghost. He stuck them like pigs. They bled. They fell and they didn't touch him. Severan was like a machine - standing fixed, gun on hip - a blinding rain of fire. The Kissag dropped in front of him and the lizards went down like bowling pins as he fired into their ranks. They screamed. They kept coming, but Severan and Gaijann killed ten then they killed twenty. They would have let the Kissag flee, but the lizards were set on completing their fractured mission: the Count had already transformed and they didn't know it. Still they came and still they died.
And then Gaijann noticed the creaking and twitching of the corpses as they began to rise. "Lady Luck! The infection - the virus, it's in the dead Kissag."
Gaijann sta
red at the lizard corpses. He heard the cracking in their limbs as the virus filled them. Then he watched as the lizards moved and began to stand.
Severan emptied his gun into the first one. The bullets smashed it to bits. The fragments of bone and the gobbets of flesh squirmed as the virus tried to organize them but, smashed and lacerated as they were, the parts merely heaved and strained and dropped in useless wet heaps.
More living Kissag came down the corridor. The first phosphorus grenade exploded and Gaijann reeled back. His visor was still intact, but Severan's was long gone and he had to endure the blinding light. Where the flaming phosphor stuck, it burned. The majority stuck to Severan's armor, some to the rocks around him.
"We need to get out of here," Severan said. "We'll die if they put down more grenades."
"You don't need to wait for me," Gaijann said, tight lipped. "Let's go."
"Rush them?" Severan said.
The assassin frowned. "You're the boss."
"Rush them."
The two leaped forward, running at their enemies. The lizards hadn't expected it. Maybe they thought the two men would lay down and die for them. Severan dropped his empty rifle and picked up another. Gaijann leapt and rolled and his vorpal blade went snicker snack as it cut through sinew and ligament. Severan blasted them with plutonium rounds and Gaijann's knife connected and dug into muscle and vein. The thump-thump of Severan's gun tore into the Kissag, driving them back.
Then it was quiet. The men stood among the corpses. The smoke rose in a thin spiral from the muzzle of Severan's rifle. Gaijann bent down and looked among the corpses for anything that might be useful. He took healing supplies and ammunition which he handed up to Severan. Severan took the bullets and put them in a bandoleer which he'd taken himself from a dead Kissag. Gaijann wiped the blades of the knife on the combat jacket of a dead Kissag and sheathed it.
"Why don't they give up?" Gaijann said.
Severan shrugged. "Still looking for the ultimate payoff? They think the library will give them what they want. Just like everyone who is lured here does."
"Like lambs to the slaughter."