The Forbidden Library

by Django Wexler

  It serves him right, she thought as he stumbled over a crate and crashed headlong into a sack of potatoes.

  Mr. Black stopped thrashing about. He raised his head and gave a low, animal growl. Then he sniffed the air, like a hound catching a scent.

  “Very clever,” he rumbled. “Oh, very clever.” He straightened up, extricating his feet from the ruin of the crate. “You thought you’d have some fun with poor old Mr. Black?”

  There was a tremendous crash and clatter as Mr. Black hurled a box of flatware out of the way and closed the distance with Alice in two enormous strides.

  “I—” she had time to say, before he was on top of her. He grabbed her arms, one in each hand, and her belated attempt to escape barely moved his fingers. When he was satisfied she was caught, he transferred both her wrists to one huge hand, pulling her arms up over her head.

  “I knew my basement was infested with vermin,” Mr. Black said. “But this one is a bit larger than the others.”

  “I thought—” Alice tried again.

  “I bet I know what you thought. You thought, I’m Geryon’s new favorite, let’s go amuse myself at the expense of poor stupid Mr. Black, who doesn’t know up from down. Is that what you thought?”

  “No,” Alice said. “I was just . . .”

  She stopped, partly because she couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t tip off Mr. Black there was someone else in the room, but mostly because he tugged her wrists upward, forcing Alice to stretch and then to stand on tiptoes.

  “You were ‘just,’” Mr. Black parroted. “I’m sure. And I’m sure you thought, worst comes to worst, what’s Mr. Black going to do? Give me a paddling?” He snarled. “If that’s what you think, you don’t know Mr. Black.”

  He raised her, slowly, until her feet scrabbled at the dusty floor and then kicked helplessly in the air. Dangling like a shot hare from his one-handed grip, she felt her hands going numb, and her shoulders felt like they were about to tear from their sockets. She fumbled in the back of her mind for the thread that led to the Swarm, but every time she almost had it, she caught Mr. Black’s eyes and it slipped from her mental grasp.

  “When I tell you what I’m going to do, you’ll piss your drawers,” Mr. Black said. “And once we’re done, well, you’d be surprised how hot that furnace can get. Hot enough that when Geryon comes looking, I’ll just give him a little shrug, you see, and there won’t be anything to tell him different. You won’t be the first, not by a long way.” He gave a savage grin, showing huge teeth, and then exhaled a puff of awful-tasting smoke into Alice’s face. “But before that, we’re going to—”

  Someone started to sing.

  The music filled the room, snatching her out of her sluggish body like the gentle hand of a benevolent god. It went on for eons, an eternity, and she wanted nothing more than to lie back and glory in it. It suffused her, soaking in through her pores and bursting out again. The whole universe spun around her and danced to that glorious voice.

  And then it ended, as suddenly as it had begun. For a heartbeat Alice felt the staggering loss like a physical blow, but after an instant it faded, and the glory of the song dispersed and blew away like a fading dream. She opened her eyes, feeling oddly at peace.

  Isaac was bent over her, one arm around her shoulders and the other hand on her chin, his dry lips pressed against hers. His eyes were open, and they locked gazes for a startled moment, before Alice’s hand shot out palm-first and shoved him away so hard he stumbled.

  Apparently satisfied, Isaac scrambled to his feet and beckoned. “Come on.”

  “But—” Alice felt like her brain wasn’t quite working. “You—”

  “Come on,” Isaac said.

  Alice clambered to her feet, a little shakily. As she turned she saw Mr. Black, still standing behind her. Alice had to clamp her jaw shut painfully hard to stifle a scream. His eyes were closed, enormous hands resting at his sides, his mouth half-open in awe.

  Isaac was already halfway up the staircase.

  “Isaac!” she hissed. “Did you get the map?”

  “I couldn’t find anything that looked like a map,” Isaac said. “Come on, we haven’t got long!”

  We have to find it. If they left now, they certainly wouldn’t get another chance, not with Mr. Black on his guard. She turned back to the huge, silent figure.

  “He must keep it on him,” she said. “I’m going to check his pockets.”

  “Alice!” Isaac’s voice was strained. “We have to go!”

  Alice ignored him and edged up to Mr. Black. The top of her head barely came up to his chest, and she had to stand on her toes to get into his side pocket. When she touched him, he shifted slightly, and Alice froze in place like a startled deer. But his eyes were still closed, and after a moment she let out a breath and carried on.

  The pocket contained a handful of change and a couple of heavy iron keys. Alice left them where they were and went around to the other side, in spite of another desperate hiss from Isaac. Up close, Mr. Black smelled of coal and black smoke, as though he were a furnace himself.

  His other pocket held a thick packet of something that crinkled under her fingers. Alice tugged it free carefully, and found herself holding a piece of parchment folded over on itself many times until it was a fat square.

  “Let’s go!”

  Alice hurried after Isaac, taking the steps two at a time and slipping past him to open the door into the kitchens. Thankfully, all was still dark and silent, and they ran out the back door and into the night.

  It wasn’t until they’d attained the relative safety of the fringe of the woods, halfway to the library and well out of earshot of the house, that Isaac pulled up short, leaning against a sapling and puffing hard. Alice wasn’t out of breath, but her shoulders and wrists ached where Mr. Black had held her, and her lips still tingled from Isaac’s kiss. She felt herself blushing furiously, and was glad it was too dark for him to see it.

  “What happened?” she said. “What did you do?”

  “I saw that you were in trouble,” Isaac said.

  “So why did you kiss me?”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I had to, it’s part of the spell. It makes you immune. Otherwise I’d have had to carry you, and I’m not sure I could have managed it.”

  “Oh.” Alice brought her sleeve to her lips and absently wiped them. “What did you do to Mr. Black? How long will he stay like that?”

  “I’ll have to let him go pretty soon. If I use too much power, Geryon would feel it for sure. I probably shouldn’t have done even that much.” He paused. “Did you get the map?”

  “I think so.” Alice held up the paper square. “We can—”

  “Later.” Isaac grabbed the thing from her hand and tucked it in his jacket. “We’d better get back to the library before somebody comes after us.”

  “All right.”

  Isaac pushed himself away from the tree and started forward. Alice, following behind, hesitated for a moment.

  “Isaac?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh.” He gave an awkward shrug. “Don’t mention it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A MAP OF THE LABYRINTH

  ALICE HAD WORRIED THAT they would find the bronze door to the library stuck fast, as she had that first night, but it opened reluctantly when she gave a tug on the ring. With a sigh of relief, she ushered Isaac inside and pulled the squealing portal closed behind her. She lit a match and managed to kindle one of the hurricane lamps. She offered it to Isaac, but he only smiled and put up one hand. A softly glowing ball of white light materialized in his palm and drifted lazily upward to orbit around his head.

  “That’s handy,” Alice said.

  He shrugged. “It’s just a little glow-wisp. I’m sure Geryon would dig one out for you if
you asked him.”

  Alice stared at the thing for a moment. She hadn’t realized it was a living thing, but of course it had to be. Geryon said a Reader’s power comes from the creatures he has bound to service. So Isaac had found that tiny light in a prison-book, somewhere, and . . . killed it? Alice looked down uncomfortably.

  “Geryon won’t sense it?” Alice said.

  “Not in the library,” Isaac said. “Ending can keep me hidden.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Let’s see the map.”

  Isaac pulled the square of parchment out of his pocket, and they examined it together. It was many sheets thick, folded in on itself in a complicated pattern. The outside was blank.

  “I’m not sure this is it,” Isaac said. “I’m not even sure you can have a map of a place like the library. It wouldn’t stay put long enough to draw one.”

  “Let me see it,” Alice said.

  Isaac looked down at the map, hesitated for a moment, and handed it over. It looked as though it should unfold, but whenever she tried to tease the layers apart, it resisted stubbornly. She tried to work her little finger between two sheets by wiggling it back and forth.

  “Hey!” Isaac said. “Be careful! You’ll tear it.”

  Alice frowned and worked her way around the edge. All at once, she found a place where she could get it apart, peeling two layers away from each other and opening the square like a tiny book. They felt slightly sticky, as though someone had spilled apple juice on it.

  Where the parchment had been pressed together, drawn so small she could barely make out the details, was a perfect little map. In the center of one half of the paper was the anteroom in which they were standing, with its two thick doors. From there a thin green line ran down the length of the page, into the library and snaking through a maze of shelves, crossing the crease where the map had been folded and eventually going off the opposite end of the page.

  Isaac looked down at it in the light of his glow-wisp, fascinated.

  “It must be magic,” Alice said. “Do you know how it works?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Perversely, that made Alice feel a little better. “Mr. Black said he got it from something called the Bone Oracle. Have you ever heard of it?”

  Isaac shook his head. “A friend of mine once told me that you can find practically anything, if you know which book to look in. Some world, somewhere, has what you need, and some Reader probably wrote down how to find it a thousand years ago. There have been Readers a long time, and they may lose things occasionally, but they never throw anything away.”

  “I’ve seen that for myself,” Alice said, nodding at the door leading into the cavernous library. She traced the green line on the page with her finger. “I suppose we’re meant to follow this. But what happens when we get to the end of the page?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Isaac said. He seemed considerably happier now that they were back in the library, and she couldn’t blame him. At least in here he can always hide if someone comes after us. “Come on.”

  Alice knew roughly where Mr. Wurms’ table was, and kept a watch for his light, but the line went well to one side of the little clear space where the scholar worked. For a while they walked in silence, but eventually Alice examined the map and declared they were well past and out of earshot. The library was as quiet as ever, the dust thick and undisturbed except for the trail Isaac’s coat left behind them. Alice didn’t even see any cats.

  Isaac checked the map from time to time, but less frequently as they moved on and it proved to be correct to the last particular. The path they followed ambled back and forth, apparently at random, but they stuck to it faithfully even when an invitingly wide alley offered an apparent shortcut. Whenever Alice’s arm tired of holding up the lantern, she traded off map-reading duty with Isaac, and let him lead the way for a while down the silent, dust-shrouded aisles.

  There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask him—what Ending had promised him in return for his help, for example, or how he had gotten in to the library in the first place—but she was wary of endangering their fragile alliance before they’d reached their goal. When the quiet had gone on too long to bear, she cleared her throat and said, “When did you find out you were a Reader?”

  Isaac pulled up short in a billowing cloud of dust. “What?”

  “Sorry. Is that not something I’m supposed to ask?” Alice hesitated. “It’s just that I only found out a couple of weeks ago, and I wondered what it was like for you. You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal.”

  “No, it’s not . . .” He shook his head. “You just startled me.” He glanced down at the map and started walking again, and Alice fell in beside him. “I’m not really sure, to be honest. I feel like I’ve always known, so it must have been before I can remember.”

  “But when did you start learning all this?”

  “As soon as I could read—normally, I mean—my master put me to work. I bound my first creature when I was seven.”

  “Seven!” Alice said. “You fought some kind of monster when you were seven?”

  “It was only a sort of lizard-fish,” Isaac said, almost apologetic. “I hit it with a stick.”

  “But you already had a master?”

  “I’ve had a master all my life,” Isaac said. “I think most Readers do. The old Readers have gotten pretty good at finding children with the talent as early as they can. It’s less . . . disruptive all around.”

  “But then nobody ever gave you a choice!” Alice said. “They just took you and said you had to be a Reader? How is that fair?”

  “It’s not a matter of fair,” Isaac said. “I am a Reader. So are you. You don’t get to choose, any more than you get to choose to be a fish instead of a person.”

  Geryon gave me a choice. Not much of a choice, really, but at least he’d offered. Alice didn’t say it, though, partly because she didn’t want to argue but mostly because Isaac had stopped short, staring down at the map in his hands.

  “This is the edge,” he said. “Now what?”

  “Is there something on the other side?” Alice suggested.

  Isaac turned the map over, but the other side of the parchment was blank. He held it up to his glow-wisp, trying to see through it, then shrugged and handed it to Alice. She looked at the creased rectangle and thought for a moment.

  Unfolding it got it to work the first time. So maybe . . .

  She tried creasing it back up again the way it had been, but it only flopped open. Then she bent it the other way, folding the section of the map they’d already passed through underneath the section they were standing in. At once she felt something happen. The page twitched under her fingers. With mounting excitement, she ran her hand around the edge and found that it would open in a new direction, at right angles to the first. She unfolded another section with that faintly sticky sensation to reveal the continuation of the path.

  She held it up for Isaac to see, unable to help a triumphant smile, and he grinned back.

  “Brilliant,” he said, and Alice found her cheeks unaccountably flushed.

  She held the map out in front of them, orienting herself, and led the way into the depths of the library.

  Before they reached the end of the second square of map, the library started to change. Shelves appeared at odd angles to the rest, forming squares or triangles facing inward or outward. The pathways started to curve, then lost themselves altogether and became only the spaces between shapes and clusters. At the same time, the books themselves started to thin out, until each bookcase bore only a couple of lonely-looking volumes or none at all.

  It was the place Alice remembered from her first night in the library, what Ashes had referred to as Geryon’s back rooms. Seeing it again made her a little nervous, and she found herself tracing the scar on her cheek with one finger. Isaac seemed perfectly comfortable, thou
gh, and she was determined not to show any hesitation in front of him. She kept her eyes on the map and her feet moving forward.

  The groups of shelves they walked by started to change. She passed one cluster that exuded frigid gusts of air tinged with the smell of new-fallen snow, and another that gave off a rumble like distant thunder and had the metallic tang of ozone. Flickering lights within one octagonal ring played green and purple against the ceiling. An enormous triangle smelled of new-mown grass, and from within an oval she could hear the faint cheering of multitudes and the ring of steel on steel. A pentagon leaked a sullen red glow and the vile stench of brimstone.

  When they reached the edge of the map again, she showed Isaac how to fold it and open it again. This time, the green line didn’t continue off the end of the page, but led to small dot in the center of a hexagonal ring of shelves some distance ahead of them.

  “That must be it,” Isaac said. “That’s where the book is hidden.”

  Alice nodded, oriented herself from the map, and pointed the way. They passed a rectangular set of shelves that leaked steam from every gap, from which Alice could hear the squeal of squeaky bearings and the low thump of an engine. She longed for a little peek at what was inside—how could just a peek hurt?—but Isaac pressed onward.

  This is all probably old hat to him, I suppose. Alice tried to imagine growing up with all this, with magic in every corner and the knowledge that you were different from everyone else.

  “Alice,” Isaac said, after a long silence. There was a hint of nervousness in his voice. “Did Ending tell you anything about what we would have to do to retrieve this book?”

  “Only that it was lost.” Alice thought back. “And that it was guarded. If it’s called the Dragon, does that mean there’ll be a dragon guarding it?”

  “No,” Isaac said quickly. “That means there’s a dragon inside the book. Whatever guards it will be on the outside.”

  “Whatever it is, it must be something awful,” Alice said, “since Ending thought it would take both of us to get past it.”