The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  Had Dotan finished brewing it?

  Yes. There it was, with a new, bright-white label among the yellowed ones. She snatched the bottle from the shelf. Pulling the Book from her pack, she took a step backward, accidentally knocking into the strange iron sphere by the apothecary table.

  It rocked, the glass contraption inside shattering. Bits of glass collapsed, tinkling, inside the metal ball.

  She winced, wondering if anyone had heard the noise. It was so delicate. What could it be for?

  Laying the Book on the table, Sefia put her hands to the sphere, stilling it. For a moment, she waited, listening for footsteps in the corridor.

  No one came.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, she straightened and removed the Book’s leather casing. She hadn’t seen it in weeks, since she’d given it to Aljan, and the sight of it now was like seeing an old friend she’d thought she’d never see again.

  As if of their own accord, her fingers traced the on the cover.

  Answers. Redemption. Revenge.

  The symbol had changed her entire life . . . and Archer’s. The symbol was the reason she’d found him, the reason they were together, the reason he was destined to die.

  Carefully, she uncapped the bottle of nightmaker and poured it onto the covers. The clear fluid was almost syrup-like in its consistency, a long, slender thread of poison trailing between the mouth of the bottle and the Book’s surface.

  Taking care not to touch it, Sefia took a scoop from the tabletop and smeared the liquid across the cover until it became a thin sheen. Then she flipped the Book and applied the poison to the back cover as well.

  As she was rewrapping the Book in its waterproof covering, she heard a noise in the doorway.

  She didn’t stop to think. In the lair of the enemy, she didn’t have time to think.

  She reacted.

  She teleported . . . and appeared in the doorway, one of her knives embedded in the boy’s chest.

  A boy?

  Just a boy.

  Tolem staggered back, his eyes wide behind his spectacles, his dark hair seeming to wave in a nonexistent breeze.

  His brown skin was going ashen. His white shirt was going crimson. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  Then he fell facedown on the apothecary floor, and he didn’t stir again.

  It took another second before Sefia realized what she’d done.

  The boy wouldn’t have been a threat. She could have subdued him another way. She could have let him live.

  He could have lived.

  She backed away, stumbling against the iron sphere, making the broken glass contraption shift and crunch inside. She was running out of time: the longer she lingered, the greater the chance she’d be discovered . . . again. And she shuddered to think what the Master Administrator would do if he caught her.

  Swaddling the Book carefully in its leather casing, Sefia took one last look at the boy on the ground and summoned her magic, teleporting back to the Library.

  The light had shifted. That was the first thing she noticed. The second was the soft drift of voices, echoing slightly under the domed ceiling.

  “You love her like her mother loved her father,” Erastis was saying. “Their love was so great, they destroyed an institution that had lasted for thousands of years.”

  Archer had been caught. Sefia hefted the Book in her arms as she dashed through the aisles of books.

  “The Guard hasn’t been destroyed,” Archer said.

  There was a pause before the Master Librarian asked, “Hasn’t it?”

  Stonegold. Sefia recounted the dead. The First. The Apprentice Administrator, dead on the apothecary floor. Once a society of eleven readers, the Guard now numbered only seven.

  “Their love was the beginning of the end for us,” Erastis continued. “What will you and Sefia destroy in your love for each other?”

  Before Archer could reply, Sefia found them by the steps. Archer’s pack was nowhere to be seen. Had he already planted all the explosives? She skidded to a stop with the Book extended in her arms. “Please,” she said, “let him go.”

  The Librarian’s eyes widened as he recognized the shape of the Book within the folds of its waterproof wrapping.

  “You know who he is,” she continued as Erastis got to his feet, his gaze never leaving the Book. “Help me save him. If there’s a way, you’ll find it. You can have the Book. Just help me, please.”

  The Master Librarian didn’t stop to think. If he had, he might have wondered where she’d been while he was catching Archer in the Library. He might have wondered if it was a trap. He might have wondered what her real motives were.

  But Erastis could think of nothing but the Book, which her father had stolen from him so many years ago.

  He’d taken it from her in an instant, flinging the protective casing aside, his old, gnarled hands trembling as he caressed the leather covers, tracing the cracks, the spirals of long-lost gems and their delicate gold settings. His hunger for the Book was so great he seemed not to notice the tackiness of the poison. Even if he had, it would’ve been too late—he’d already touched it.

  In his enthrallment, he let his grip on Archer slip away.

  Archer ducked in among the bookshelves while the Librarian pressed his lips to the gilt-edged pages and opened the covers.

  She was reminded of what Erastis had said to her father the first time Lon was left alone with the Book: I like to think of the Book as an old friend. Faithful, with a good heart.

  While Archer backed toward the shelves, the Master Librarian skimmed the page. His lips moved.

  What was he reading?

  What was the Book telling him?

  “Fire will visit the Library three times,” he murmured, almost too softly for her to hear.

  Her stomach dropped. The Book was warning him.

  “Sefia.” When he looked up, his eyes were filmed with tears. “How could you?”

  But as he thrust out his hand to seize her, his magic failed. The poison was already at work. He stared at his fingers, aghast, as Archer reappeared with the bombs.

  “Nightmaker,” the Librarian whispered as Sefia used the leather wrapping to take the Book from him. “No, Sefia. Please.”

  “We have to move quickly,” Archer said, binding Erastis’s hands. “I think he called for someone, but I don’t know who.”

  They walked him to the center of the Library and the curved tables where Sefia had begun her study of Transformation.

  “Think of what you’re doing,” Erastis said. “This is the only bastion of literacy left in Kelanna. This is where history lives. Where poetry and literature and philosophy reside. If you take this from us, we’ll be lost.”

  He continued to plead as she drew Nin’s copy of the Librarian’s key from her pocket and tossed Stonegold’s key to Archer, who set a bomb on one of the tables in the center of the hall and tied Erastis to one of the chairs.

  “Darion,” the Librarian whispered, his gaze on the little key in Sefia’s hand. “Is he dead?”

  Sefia traced the image of the thunderbird, which surrounded one of the vault keyholes. “Yes,” she said, “but not because of us.”

  That was at least one death that wasn’t on her hands.

  As one, she and Archer inserted the keys into the locks and began to turn. The markings etched into the vault were their guide.

  Little hawk, little hawk, don’t fly away. Archer turned his key to the image of the hawk, flying at the top of the keyhole.

  For you’re a mighty huntress with claws to catch your prey. Sefia turned hers to the thunderbird’s claws.

  The pins in the locks clicked as they turned to the lark, the beak, the owl, the thunderbird’s right and left wings . . . until at last there was a heavy clank.

  The vault door cracked op
en.

  Sefia hesitated. Inside were the pages she needed to rewrite the future. Inside was hope. And hope could be snatched away.

  Archer nodded at her. “Go,” he said.

  With a deep breath, she took the last bomb with her into the vault.

  Inside, the air was cool and surprisingly fresh. On pedestals were tarnished objects inscribed with incantations: a shield, a silver quill with a sharp blade instead of a feather, a bottle of ink that had long since gone dry. Along the walls were dozens of pages suspended in glass frames, and in the center of the vault was an empty crystal case that must have been for the Book.

  Lifting the lid, she set the explosive on the crushed velvet and pulled back the hammer. Then, with her magic, she began breaking sealed chests, cracking them open and riffling through them, searching for the pages she needed, the ones that would allow her to rewrite Archer’s future.

  At last she found them. Kneeling, she gathered them in her arms.

  When she looked up, she spied the poem—nothing grand, just twenty-four lines—mounted on the wall. The paper was burned—it must have been caught in one of the Library’s previous fires—but the words were still legible.

  THIS IS A BOOK, AND A BOOK IS A WORLD,

  AND WORDS ARE THE SEEDS IN WHICH MEANINGS ARE CURLED.

  PAGES OF OCEANS AND MARGINS OF LAND

  ARE CIVILIZATIONS YOU HOLD IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND.

  BUT LOOK AT YOUR WORLD AND YOUR LIFE SEEMS TO SHRINK

  TO CITIES OF PAPER AND SEAS MADE OF INK.

  DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, OR HAVE YOU BEEN MISLED?

  ARE YOU THE READER, OR ARE YOU THE READ?

  THIS IS A WORD, AND A WORD IS A SPELL—

  A PROMISE TO KEEP OR A SECRET TO TELL.

  CONTROLLING THE WORD MEANS THE POWER TO FRAME

  HOW THE AGES OF HISTORY REMEMBER YOUR NAME.

  ARE YOU HERO OR VILLAIN? A SAVIOR OR SPY?

  SOME TITLES ARE LOVELY. SOME TITLES ARE LIES.

  YOU CAN CLAIM WHO YOU ARE, NOW THAT YOU’VE FOUND YOUR VOICE.

  BUT THOSE WHO ARE CHOSEN WILL NOT HAVE A CHOICE.

  THIS IS A STORY AS VAST AS THE SEA,

  BUT ON ITS WATERS, YOU’LL NEVER BE FREE.

  NO MATTER YOUR COURSE, YOUR FUTURE IS SET,

  AND DESTINY LAUGHS AS SHE TIGHTENS THE NET.

  WORDS TO KELANNANS ARE BREATH ON A GLASS,

  BUT IF IT IS WRITTEN, IT WILL COME TO PASS.

  IS YOUR SIGHT GROWING CLEARER, THE CLOSER YOU LOOK?

  THE BOOK IS A WORLD, FOR THE WORLD IS A BOOK.

  As Sefia read the words, something stirred within her, some deep realization, splitting her open as a beam of light splits the dark.

  Reading was the interpretation of signs, her father had said, and the world was full of them. Scars, scratches, footprints. If you could tap into the Illuminated world, you could read the history of each mark as clearly as you could read a sentence from a book.

  This is.

  She remembered the first time she’d seen the Illuminated world in all its magnificence, all the little golden currents, a million of them and a trillion motes of light, all perfect and exact and brimming with meaning. It made her feel like she was peering past the edges of the stars into whatever lay beyond.

  This is. This is. This is this is this is this— She’d written it so many times before. How had she not understood what she was really writing?

  “We’re all in the Book,” she’d told Captain Reed once. “All of history. All knowledge. Everything.”

  The Book is a world . . .

  She glanced down at the pages in her hands, then back up at the poem.

  . . . for the world is a book.

  The world.

  This is a book. A book. A book.

  Sefia blinked, and the Illuminated world sprang to life before her—a never-ending sea of light, twined with bright webs of gold so brilliant they could not be untangled.

  She looked closer, not at the streams of light but at the sparkling particles that comprised them. She looked deeper.

  She saw more.

  The particles were not mere specks of light.

  They were sentences.

  They were phrases.

  They were words.

  They were letters and punctuation marks so infinitesimally small it was no wonder she’d never noticed them before.

  The world was a book. She was living in a book. She was in a book.

  And all books were written by someone.

  Maybe someone was reading her right now, and if she looked up, she would see their eyes staring down at her, following her every move. Maybe someone was reading the reader.

  Sefia looked up then, past the stone ceiling of the vault, through the mountain air, between the stars.

  And beyond . . .

  There was me, looking back at her, telling you her story.

  CHAPTER 32

  The Storyteller

  You see, I’ve been here since the beginning, watching, telling the story as it unfolds before me, and I’ll be here when it ends. (For it does end, now. When she first touched the Resurrection Amulet, Sefia forever altered the course of the story . . . and now it ends with victory . . . and loss . . . and darkness.)

  It’s been so long since anyone saw me—since the Scribes, who knew what kind of world they were in.

  Sefia’s eyes widen, just once, and I know she knows I’m here. She knows what I am, and she knows that against me, she cannot win.

  But I can only read what is written, and what is written cannot be changed—not even by me, a mere narrator in this tale of ink and gold.

  What is written is what is.

  And there are bombs to detonate. Conflagrations to spark. Destruction to wreak.

  Words to burn.

  When Sefia hurries from the vault, clutching the precious pages to her chest, she doesn’t look up once. I watch the top of her head, willing her to look up again, to see me, to acknowledge that I’m here.

  That I have to stand by and watch . . . all of this.

  That I am a reader, a bystander, a witness, as much as you are, and the only power I have is in the details—the quality of the light in Sefia’s eyes as she places the pages in her pack beside the Book, safely wrapped in its leather casing, the way she takes Archer’s hand, the descriptions, the turns of phrase, the carefully chosen words.

  Did you get any of my messages?

  Did she?

  I tried to warn her, when I could. Before she met the bartender in Epidram. When Harison died on the Current of Faith. Before she left Archer on that cliff in Deliene. And after.

  I would warn her now, but she couldn’t hear me. I can’t speak to her except through the Book . . . or in the Illuminated world.

  So I watch. I watch as they usher the Master Librarian into the greenhouse—he’s crying now, weeping, like he’s watching the death of a loved one, which I suppose he is—and I want to tell him I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry. I knew this would happen from the beginning.

  Fire would always visit the Library three times: once under Morgun’s watch, and twice under Erastis’s, when Mareah set fire to the shelves the day she and Lon stole the Book . . . and now, as Sefia and Archer and the Librarian stand in the greenhouse.

  Outside, the beginnings of spring are upon the mountains, and flowers are poking their heads through the last of the melting snow.

  Sefia blinks and lifts her fingers, finding the hammer on the only explosive she can see, on one of the curved tables where Erastis and June taught her Transformation.

  She doesn’t look away when she brings her hand down.

  The hammer falls.

  The firing pin strikes.

  The gunpowder ignites, and the blackrock dust burns—burns—burns—exploding outward from its canister in
a dozen whirlwinds of heat and fire.

  The explosion shakes the nearest bombs, secreted all throughout the Library, and they, too, detonate.

  Shelves burst into pieces. Stone crumbles. Statues fall. Inside the vault, the glass frame of the poem shatters, and the page is consumed by flame.

  The blast catches the Fragments, painstakingly copied, and the Commentaries, the volumes of poetry, the histories, the scientific treatises, throwing them outward in an inferno of blazing paper.

  Archer shields his eyes. Does he regret?

  Yes, of course he does.

  The fire climbs the carpeted steps, gnawing at the bookshelves, the bindings, the leather covers.

  The fire eats the curved tables, the quills. It’s so hot, the gum erasers melt. The inkwells shatter.

  Erastis, in a sudden fit of strength and desperation, wrenches out of Archer’s grasp. He’s fast, faster than he should be, considering his great age, but he’s watching something he loves die, and that gives him speed.

  Archer chases after him, but when the heat stops the boy at the threshold of the Library, the old man marches on, into the flames.

  Sefia tries to sweep aside the blaze, but it’s too strong, even for her, and the Master Librarian will not be stopped.

  The ropes at his wrists burn.

  The velvet robes too.

  And still that doesn’t stop him.

  He reaches for the nearest shelf.

  The room no longer smells like old books. It smells like scorched stone and smoke, and the volumes he pulls from the fire blister his wrinkled skin.

  At last, through the insulation of his grief, the pain reaches him.

  He shrieks as he presses the books to his chest.

  As they consumed him in life, now they consume him in death.

  Oh, Erastis.

  I’ve had almost a century with him. Almost a century to watch and know and love him. He wasn’t the kind I had to learn to love. I’ve loved him since the beginning.

  Lon would have cried, if he’d been here, as Sefia is crying now.

  As the Librarian falls, there is movement on the other side of the Library. Sefia sees it through her tears, through the smoke and the haze of heat.