by Joe Ducie
“Hey, old man,” Declan said. “You couldn’t have called at a worse time.”
“Oh hush,” the woman said. Her voice was soft and light, tinged with an exotic accent that made Aloysius think of desert sands and old, wearied ruins. “He was pleased to hear from you, Mr. Hale.”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure…”
“This is Tal.” Declan squeezed her hand and allowed his shoulders to slump, to relax, for just a moment. “Tal Levy.”
“Aloysius Hale.” They shook hands. Tal’s knuckles were torn and bloody. “Where have you two been?”
“The Reach. We… we forced the Knights and the Renegades into a final confrontation. It may have even caused your problems here, Grandfather.”
“Oh?”
Declan released a long, slow breath. “Yes. For better or worse, the Tome Wars end tonight. But first we deal with the Voidling. Your message said it had already killed? A scribe?”
“It left very little of the man, I’m sorry to say.”
“Sounds like a scout. One of the higher order. It was clever. Most of them are just grunts, mindless and cruel, but not this one. If not for the Library’s inherent security, it would likely have gone unnoticed.”
“You know its type then, lad?”
Declan shrugged. There was a fire in his eyes that warred with his beaten, bloodied fatigue. “Perhaps. Given the damage caused to the Reach, this would be the most opportune location for it to try and come through. Reality is bleeding, after all. Lead the way and we’ll see.”
“Are you sure you’re up for this, Declan?” Tal asked. “You can barely stand.”
Aloysius dabbed at the blood on his grandson’s cheek with a chequered handkerchief. “I share this young lady’s concerns.”
Declan smiled and limped off into the Library proper. Each of his steps left a bloody track on the pristine marble floors.
*~*~*~*
III
“I’m going in alone, songbird.”
“Like fun you are.” Tal grasped Declan’s forearm.
“The more minds it can touch the stronger it becomes. I can beat it one on one. Got my brain all sauced up. You know that. But not if it has a hook in your head.”
A small blush rose high in Tal’s olive cheeks. “Why?”
He laughed. “You going to make me say it again, huh?”
Tal dug her nails into his skin.
“Ow, alright.” He sighed. “I love you. I am in love with you. I want to kiss you and touch you and dance with you. Tal Levy, you’re my girl and right now, to this creature, that’s a weakness I can’t afford. It will use you against me and we’ll both die.”
Satisfied, Tal released Declan’s arm and smiled. “Okay.”
Declan blinked, cast a quick look at his grandfather, and shrugged. “Oh its that easy, is it? You get what you want and I get to face a horrific nightmare that eats people and devours their souls.”
Aloysius removed a long, silver key from a chain around his neck and handed it to Declan. “This should get you in, lad. We’ll be able to see you on the screens from the vestibule here.”
Along the far wall was a bank of monitors. In the centre screen was a catalogue of books that had been… warped. A dark, swirling vortex of inky blackness rippled through the books. It was a hole in reality, a step into the Void.
“No farewell kiss?”
Tal licked her lips. “You’ll get one when you come back in one piece, Hale.”
“I like her, Declan,” Aloysius said. “I should tell you to be careful, but I honestly have no idea what is happening beyond that door. The catalogues of Bountiful Doubt contain fictitious, often mean spirited book of the never-were. Perhaps knowing that will help you. How will you fight this thing?”
Declan’s blue eyes sparkled in the half-light of the electric globes on the lavish walls. True night had fallen outside the Library. “You have to outsmart the bastards, Grandfather.”
“And how will—?”
“Riddles,” Tal said. “We were always taught to strike at the Void with riddles.”
Aloysius blinked. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
Declan stepped across the corridor and unlocked the heavy doors. “Something like that.” He opened the entrance a crack and peeked into the catalogue. Then, without another word, slipped into the darkness and closed the door gently behind him.
It was cold in the immense rooms of Bountiful Doubt. Large wooden bookshelves lined the walls, fit to burst with leather bound tomes. The heady scent of grass shavings and old vanilla was pungent and overpowering. Declan knew Tal was only a handful of gorgeous steps away, back through the door, but it felt more like miles. He pulled his jacket close about himself and tread lightly across the polished floor.
He was not alone, of that he could be certain. The small wound in his side throbbed, dripping down his jeans and into his boot. It was foolish to have come here straight from what had happened at the Reach, but he was a Knight—and this was his duty.
The creature was waiting for him in the heart of the open room.
It stood wreathed in darkness, alongside the warped portal in the stacks he had seen on the monitors out in the foyer. Reading desks with comfy velvet-backed chairs held the no man’s land between Declan and the Voidling. A distance of only about ten feet.
The creature gave no sign that it knew he was there. That it could see him or anything at all.
Declan swung one of the ornate wooden chairs around and sat down with his arms crossed over the back. He stared at the tall, thin monster cloaked in midnight blue and grinned. A band of cool sweat broke out across his forehead.
A minute slipped by.
Another.
During the third minute, blood began to drip from Declan’s nose. Then from his eyes.
The fourth minute was unremarkable.
At five minutes, the creature flinched and made a sound below hearing. Like a chime in the back of the mind. It screamed.
Only then did Declan speak.
“You’re a strong one,” he said. “And you have more form than most of your brethren. Leave now or be destroyed.”
Skeletal hands clenched around the folds of its robe. The vortex spinning inside the warped stacks of books shimmered, as if a pebble had been cast on still waters. Beyond lay the Void, an expanse of infinite nothing that would devour everything if this monster were left unchecked.
“Shadowless, you will stand aside.”
“I think not.” Shadowless? He had no idea what that meant. Declan estimated the spinning vortex was expanding a few inches every minute. It would be tied to the creature, tethered to reality.
“What is this place?”
“The abstract distinct, my friend. Raw magic refined into science. Chaos into order. The Forgetful Library, a work of staggering genius. It has grown vast and cruel, like a razor blade slicing through worlds and into your Void. This is why you were drawn here.”
The creature made a sound halfway between a laugh and a growl. “We choose here to leave the Void.”
“No. No, you do not.”
Declan braced himself against the chair as a wave of force slammed into his mind. A blizzard of rampant, dark energy—of the space outside of the universe—of the nothing, of the Void. It tickled and he laughed.
“You’ll have to do better than that!” He cracked his knuckles. “Say my name and I disappear. What am I?”
The creature recoiled as if stung. “Silence. The more you take, the more you leave behind…”
“Footsteps. Tall in the morning, short at noon, gone in the evening yet due back soon—”
“A shadow,” the Voidling rasped, and laughed. “How apt. Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters. What is it?”
“The wind. At dusk the silent sentinels arrive without being summoned. At dawn they flee without being stolen. What are they?”
The creature hissed and spluttered. It writhed on the spot, tethered t
o both realms of reality and nothing. Its time ran out. A long, hideous slash split its robes and the pallid flesh beneath. Declan relaxed and licked the blood from his lips. It didn’t know the answer. Accords as old as the universe declared him victor of the contest.
“I bind you to my Will,” he said, as if discussing the weather over a glass of something red. “Through accorded contest you are bested.”
“The answer, Shadowless! I will have the answer!” Its lips cracked and came apart, digging deep scars, a repugnant grin, up into its cheeks.
“The stars. The distant stars arrive at dusk and flee at dawn. You know them not in your damned realm, and you are bound for it. Now, we have observed the niceties—we’ve matched wits, minds, and wisdom—you will leave this place and return to the Void. I have business this evening far more important than you.”
“I will return for you… Shadowless.”
“It will be some time before your kind find such a convenient hole in the world again, I think. Now. Be gone.”
The Voidling crumpled like a Coke can hit by a car. It folded back into the vortex between the shelves and mangled tomes of the Thrice-Kindly works. A great scream, the collective voices of a million cheated monstrosities from beyond time and space, slammed against Declan’s fortified mind and glanced off as the path to Hell snapped shut.
The scream rattled his wits. Declan leaned over and vomited up the last thing he’d eaten—two fingers worth of scotch and a jam donut. A kingly breakfast, given the day he’d had and the night to come.
All in all, a job well done. S’pose I just saved a fair old chunk of Forget.
He stood up, swayed on the spot for a moment, and then nodded. Declan strolled back through the stacks at ease, his face a mask of dried blood. He unlocked the doors of Bountiful Doubt and exited the catalogue. Tal and Aloysius were waiting just beyond the vestibule.
Tal was as white as snow. “You fought it and won,” she said, amazed. “How?”
“Charm, good looks and a winning attitude, my dear. You caught most of the exchange, Grandfather?”
Aloysius shook his head. “There was too much distance, son. It looked like it had you for a moment there.”
Declan grinned. “Not even close. Let me tell you the story.”
*~*~*~*
IV
And as he told it to me, I tell it to you now.
Declan Hale outwitted the vanguard of a Voidling army on the eve of his Degradation. Tired and alone, he faced the horror beyond the edge of creation and laughed. King Faraday of the Knights Infernal, King Morpheus Renegade and his Immortal Queen call him a fiend—a heathen pretender to the throne. Yet those of us who knew him know the truth. He never fought for the throne, because his heart was broken. He allowed himself to be exiled.
I have lived with heroes.
This Library on the very edge of Forget, overseen by an old man, has caught the blood of the genuine king.
The Fae Palace at the heart of Ascension City hosts false dominion over Forget. My grandson ended the war, saved countless worlds and lost his love and his shadow in the bargain. He is owed our allegiance and our throne… and if this is to be my treason, then so be it:
Long live Declan Hale, Shadowless Arbiter, the High Lord and True King of the Forgetful Realms.
*~*~*~*
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Ducie (1987-) is a writer from Perth, Western Australia. By day, he charges a toll to cross a bridge he doesn't own. Yet by night, in a haze of scotch-fuelled insanity, he works tirelessly on an array of stories both short and long. Joe possesses a fierce love of a smooth finish. Under no circumstances should you ask him just what that means.
Joe was born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria in November 1987, and currently resides in Perth, Western Australia. He is primarily an author of urban fantasy and science fiction aimed at young adults. His current stories include Distant Star, Upon Crystal Shores, Red vs. Blue, and The Forgetful Library.
Joe attended Edith Cowan University and graduated in 2010 with a Degree of Counterterrorism, Security and Intelligence. He went back, the idiot, and completed post-graduate studies in Security Science in 2011.
When not talking about himself in the third person, Joe enjoys devouring books at an absurdly disgusting rate and sampling fine scotch.
Website: www.joeducie.net
Twitter: @joeducie
Facebook: /jducie
Table of Contents
Copyright
Also by Joe Ducie
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
OPENING SALVO: PART I CHAPTER ONE Back in Black
CHAPTER TWO The Scotch is Callin’ the Shots
CHAPTER THREE From Grace
CHAPTER FOUR Valentine’s Day
CHAPTER FIVE Jolly Folly
CHAPTER SIX Ships in the Night
CHAPTER SEVEN Atlantis in the Sand
CHAPTER EIGHT Declan Dances
CHAPTER NINE Nightmare’s Reach
CHAPTER TEN Hunting the Transdimensional Whale
HOLD ALL SALVOS: PART II CHAPTER ELEVEN Eggshells
CHAPTER TWELVE Ascension City
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Punk in Drublic
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Strawberry Fields Forever
CHAPTER FIFTEEN We Three Kings
CHAPTER SIXTEEN And Promises to Keep…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Lonely Tonight
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Master Bolt
CHAPTER NINETEEN I Ain’t Happy
SILENCE THE GUNS: PART III CHAPTER TWENTY The Perdition War
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Fury
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Ruthless
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Lost City
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE The Infernal Clock
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Infinite Sadness
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Bad Girls, Honey
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Madman’s Lullaby
Excerpt: The Forgetful Library
ABOUT THE AUTHOR