Libyrinth

by Pearl North

  He’s trying to get a better view,” Clauda observed as Nod scrambled to the top of Haly’s head. “Hey Nod, can you see anything, are we pursued?”

  “Are we pursued, are we pursued?” said Nod unhelpfully.

  “Aw, he wouldn’t know an Eradicant from a wallow rat,” said Haly, snatching him from her skull and plunking him down on the horse’s rump.

  Toward nightfall they came to the edge of a wood, the trunks of the trees like black fingers raised against the glow of the setting sun. Their horses stumbled as they rode them into the shadows of the branches.

  “Can’t we stop?” asked Clauda. “Don’t Eradicants sleep, too?”

  “I think I heard somewhere that they do,” grumbled Haly.

  Selene nodded, her face lined with weariness. “We’ll make camp in the cover of the trees, but no fire.”

  They spread their saddle blankets in a clearing, and Clauda brought bread, fruit, and dried sausage out of her basket. With a large, sharp cleaver, she sliced the sausage and handed each of them a palm-sized piece. They ate in silence, and afterward Haly fed apples to the horses. When she returned, Clauda was already snoring. “Get some sleep,” said Selene. “I’ll stay up and watch.”

  “Beasties sleep, beasties sleep, Nod watches,” said the imp from somewhere in the branches above them.

  Selene glanced at Haly, and she shrugged. “I guess he doesn’t want to be caught by the Eradicants either,” she said.

  Selene tilted her head doubtfully, but her eyes were already closing. “He sounds more alert than the rest of us anyway,” she murmured, lying down.

  Haly shifted on the hard ground, trying to find a comfortable way to support her head on her arm. They’d ridden all night and day; she should be too tired to care about the sticks and rocks beneath her, but she twisted and turned, and got up several times to rearrange her blanket.

  It was the silence, she realized. All her life she’d been surrounded by the voices of the books—muted at times, but ever present. Now that they’d stopped riding, the silence pressed in upon her, impenetrable as the thick walls of the Libyrinth.

  “Selene,” she whispered to the dark form beside her.

  “What is it?” Selene’s voice was muffled with weariness.

  “After we get The Book of the Night, we’ll go to your mother’s palace in Ilysies.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it a very beautiful palace? Are there soft beds? Will there be wine, and a fire?”

  “Most certainly, and the bounty of her lands on the table.”

  “Olives?”

  “Olives and cheese, and a goat slaughtered for the return of the daughter. Now get some sleep, we travel again in a few hours.”

  The wind rustling the leaves slowly died away, and darkest silence crept in among the trees. Haly lay on her back, exhausted, waiting for sleep to take her. But it would not come. She heard Selene drop into the deep, steady breathing of sleep, and still she lay awake.

  The night was cloudless, and she could see through the branches of the trees the stars shining in a multitude of light. She searched among them for the constellations she knew, and found the Mouse. Palla, the crèche nurse, used to tell her a Mouse story when she was small: There had once been seven blind scholars who set out to conquer Time. But they were struck down for their folly and turned into mice who, though they no longer knew what Time was, were even more at its mercy than they’d been as humans.

  Living creatures were at the mercy of other things besides time, Haly thought. With a sigh she got up and walked a short distance from their camp to squat among the bushes.

  When she returned, not even the deep, soft breathing of Clauda and Selene or the snorts of the horses broke the stillness. As Haly groped her way toward her blanket, she saw a deeper darkness curled around Selene’s motionless form like a tentacle of the night.

  Haly squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them, staring harder, but the apparition did not dissolve. In fact, it appeared more solid than ever, its curving shape defined by a vivid absence of light. She glanced around the camp and saw more tentacles. Clauda was almost completely enveloped in them. Her entwined form shifted across the ground in a series of rapid jerks. The tentacles were dragging her away.

  Nightmare horror welled up in Haly’s throat and burst past her lips, but her scream made no sound. She lurched forward in dreamlike disorientation, fighting against a sudden lethargy, trying to reach Clauda to pull her free. Before she could take a step, her left foot went numb. Haly looked down and saw a tentacle slithering up her leg. Her calf went numb, and then her knee. She tried to drag herself away from it, but sleepiness overwhelmed her, and she found herself lying down without consciously deciding to do so.

  Tentacles slid up her body, destroying sensation as they went. Silence enveloped her; she could not even hear the rush of her own blood. Accustomed all her life to hearing things, this absence of sound sent a wave of terror rolling through her to disturb her imminent slumber. In a surge of panic she stood, whipping her torso from side to side and shaking her legs to dislodge the darkness. Despite her efforts, a tendril still spiraled up her leg, and with fingers stinging with the return of sensation, she gripped it and tried to pry it off.

  It was a mistake. As soon as she touched it, her hands went numb again, and again the wave of sleepy nonfeeling rose up to engulf her. Haly bit her tongue. Faintly she felt the spark of pain, and she bore down, using it to anchor herself in wakefulness.

  She released the tentacle and forced her nerveless legs to back her farther away from the thing. She stumbled and fell, her shoulder crunching against a fallen branch. She rolled, both her legs now entangled in numbing blackness, and groped for the branch. Grasping it awkwardly, her teeth still bearing down on the tip of her tongue to prevent herself from losing consciousness, Haly beat at the thing entwining her legs. Doubtless she struck herself as often as the tentacle, but she couldn’t feel the difference.

  Over and over again she flailed at it with the stick; the absence of sound, of feeling, and the near invisibility of her opponent made it difficult to gauge her success, but eventually the tentacle slipped away like a receding shadow, leaving in its wake the pain of her bruised and gouged legs. She stood up, her tongue awash with agony and the taste of blood.

  The tentacles dragged Selene from the clearing now, too, and Clauda had already disappeared among the trees. What had become of Nod she did not know, but the horses were also entangled. As she watched, one of them lurched to the ground. The tentacles around it slowly dragged it across the ground in spasmodic jerks. Haly trembled. She knew what this was now. A Devouring Silence. She had thought it no more than a tale Palla told to frighten the children, but no. It was real. One of the most dreaded machines of the Ancients, it would devour her friends if she did not stop it.

  Using her branch to fend off tentacles, Haly frantically searched the clearing until she found Clauda’s basket. She rummaged through it and her hand closed around the wooden handle of the cleaver. With her stick in one hand and the cleaver in the other, she ran from the clearing, taking a path perpendicular to the direction in which the tentacles dragged Clauda and Selene. She gave the tentacles as wide a berth as she dared, and then she turned and headed toward their source.

  As she ran she slashed out at shadows with the cleaver, and she continued to bite down on her aching tongue, fearful that every branch and leaf that touched her was a nerve-deadening tendril. Twice she had to stop to hack away a real tentacle. She ran until her lungs burned. A terror that she had overshot her target seized her. But there, just ahead in a clearing not much smaller than the one they’d camped in, she saw the profile of an enormous face lying flush with the ground.

  It was twice as wide across as Haly was tall. Its monstrous tongue thrust from its lips and split, and split again and again and again, to form hundreds of tendrils of unlight with which to stun its victims and drag them back to its waiting maw. But here, at the mouth, the tongue was only one massive t
hickness.

  Haly circled around the clearing until she was above the thing’s forehead. She crept closer. There were lines carved in the ancient steel face, lines curving and spiraling across the brow and cheeks. She reached the ring of soil that the Devouring Silence had turned up when it had tunneled there from underneath the ground to strike at them.

  Beyond the chin of the monster, she saw two human-sized coils of tentacle and a smaller third one lurching ever more rapidly toward the mouth. She didn’t have much time. Clutching the hatchet, she ran across the forehead, leaped over the left eye, and planted her feet on the cheek. She lifted the cleaver up and swung it down on the tongue. It felt like chopping through tough muscle, like the stag she’d helped Clauda butcher once. A metallic shriek pierced the silence of the night and Haly gripped the cleaver tighter, chopping at the monster’s tongue until at last she severed it. It flew apart into thousands upon thousands of tattered rags of blackness, which fluttered away into the sky and took the night with them.

  Clauda, Selene, and Nod sat up, blearily looking around in the dawning light. From the woods Haly heard the horses snorting and brush rustling as they righted themselves. With an odd, detached clarity, she watched Selene take in the Devouring Silence and herself standing on it with the cleaver in her hand. Selene’s eyes went wide with shock and her mouth drew back. She let out a long, low murmur, “Bountiful Mother . . .”

  Haly opened her mouth to tell them what happened, but her swollen tongue stopped her words. Blood ran down her chin. She staggered to the chin of the monster and stood swaying, suddenly finding it difficult to work out how to move her arms and her legs in order to climb down. The pain in her tongue was very bad. The cleaver slipped from her fingers. She heard it hit the iron face as if from a distance, and wondered what had become of her stick. The trees wheeled against the lightening sky above and she realized she was falling.

  Clauda caught her. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, getting her shoulder under Haly’s arm and helping her take a few steps away from the face. “You’re okay. Come on. By the Seven Tales, a Devouring Silence . . .”

  Then Selene, too, was at her side, with Nod perched upon her shoulder. “What happened to you?” she said, her voice tense with fear.

  “She cut off the tongue, the tongue,” chirped Nod. “It flew away.”

  “Open your mouth,” ordered Selene. “Let me see.”

  Squeezing her eyes shut against the pain, Haly unlocked her jaw. More blood poured from her mouth. The taste of it made her nauseous. When Selene probed carefully at her tongue she cried out but managed not to pull away. “You’ve bitten it,” said the Libyrarian. “Not quite clean through, by the looks of it. It’s bad enough, but it could be worse. A poultice of accar leaves will stop the bleeding and stave off infection.”

  Her swollen tongue wrapped in accar leaves, Haly sat on the ground and watched as Clauda and Selene dug up the Devouring Silence. The bitterness of the leaves made her want to gag, and her tongue seemed to fill her whole mouth; a feeling like suffocation.

  When Clauda and Selene at last unearthed the Ancient machine, they used branches cut from the trees to prop it up and flip it over onto its face, revealing the ridged, flexible underbelly with which it propelled itself underground. Squatting in the middle of it, Selene sliced through the underbelly with her knife. She reached in, felt around for tense moments, and then, with a grin, withdrew her black-streaked arm and held up the glowing amber ovoid of the machine-monster’s power source.

  An Egg. Wonder washed over Haly and she almost forgot the pain of her tongue. She had never thought she would see a real Egg. Her face radiant, Selene jumped from the carcass and came toward her, holding it out to show her. It was about the size of Haly’s two hands clasped together. Selene handed it to her. It was warm. A tracery of copper or bronze or perhaps something else entirely wound around its smooth, glowing surface. It was beautiful, and it could power the Libyrinth’s defunct heating system for generations to come.

  The Vault

  As they traveled, the plain grew rockier. Three days after their encounter with the Devouring Silence, they came to a place where large slabs of red stone jutted up out of the ground at all angles. “We must be close,” said Selene. “This is the Tumbles. We’re on the western edge of the plain.” For most of the day they wound their way through the maze of striated, wind-scoured rocks.

  Weary atop her horse, Haly let the wind’s voice lull her. Her enforced muteness compounded the lonely silence of the plain. Her tongue was healing, but Selene had advised her not to try to talk, and in any case, the accar leaves prevented it.

  As the wind blew through the jumbled, tilting slabs, it took on a voice of its own, sometimes whispering, sometimes singing, sometimes howling. When the wordless murmuring became muted, comprehensible language, she thought at first that she was asleep and dreaming. “Everyone celebrates but for myself, who must work. But I can hear their songs from my window and they strengthen my resolve.” “Heat to the boiling point in a double boiler over, not in, boiling water, one-half cup dark molasses.” “ ‘How is he?’ ‘Weak. They are quite pitiless.’ ”

  The voices were faint but discernable. Haly sat up in her saddle, eagerly looking around. They were at the far side of the Tumbles. On either side of them a large slab of rock jutted up, slanting, to form a rude archway above their heads. Beyond stretched the flat, pebbly plain once more. Haly squinted against the afternoon sun. A circular mound rose from the ground not far away. She might have mistaken it for a low hill, but when she looked at it, the voices became more distinct. “I was awakened by the waves dragging at my feet.”

  She nudged her horse up alongside Selene’s mount and tugged at her mistress’s sleeve. When Selene turned to face her, Haly pointed. Without a word, Selene spurred her horse on toward the circle. “What?” said Clauda, riding up alongside Haly. “What is it?” She glanced at Haly and then caught herself. “Oh, never mind,” she said, and took off after Selene.

  Now, how do we open it?” asked Clauda. They had cleared away the dust and rocks to reveal a shallow dome of brass, its rim divided into seven sections. In each section was engraved a different pattern of dots. Selene shook her head. “I haven’t got the first idea. None of my research mentioned anything like this. I hope we’re in the right place.”

  Haly listened to them with only part of her attention. While they were clearing the hatch of debris, a book had started talking to her. She had noticed before that sometimes when she was very wrapped up in her thoughts, the books that spoke to her offered relevant passages, and so she paid attention. “It is sound that made the Ancients what they are,” this book said to her now, “and sound that is the key to most of their works.”

  “This has to be it,” protested Clauda. “What else could it be?”

  “This is it, is it,” chanted Nod.

  “Do you know how to open it?” Clauda asked him. He’d been very helpful in cleaning the dome, unusually so.

  But apparently that was the limit of his contribution for the day. “Nod only cleans. Nod knows not the minds of the Makers.”

  The Makers, Haly thought, and then the book said, “But what is sound but a vibration—a wave? Sometimes light, too, is a wave.”

  “Maybe it’s a kind of clock,” said Clauda. “There are seven sections, like the seven hours. Maybe to open it we have to press the correct hour.” She peered at the sky, taking in the angle of the sun.

  “A clock? That’s absurd. Who would seal a vault with a clock?” scoffed Selene.

  Clauda shrugged. “Well, who knows what the Ancients would do? I mean, who would make a thing that burrows underground, pops up, and puts people to sleep with its tongue? I don’t know. I think this looks like a clock.”

  “No.” Selene shook her head adamantly. “Do you see these?” She pointed at the sequence of dots along the rim. “These are constellations. They correspond to the Tales. See?” She pointed to one that had a single dot in the center and a ring
of six dots around it. “This is the Fly. And this one is the Goat.” She indicated one with two dots close together.

  “I’ve never understood why that’s supposed to be the Goat,” complained Clauda. “It doesn’t look anything like a goat.”

  “It represents the horns,” Selene told her.

  “Well, the constellations are the Seven Tales and the Tales are the hours, so maybe it is a clock.”

  “It’s not a clock, Clauda.”

  Seven tales, seven hours, seven notes, thought Haly, and the book interjected, “To explore the works of the Ancients one must align oneself with the vibrations of the world, and this world loves music like a flower loves the sun, and opens to it.” Seven notes. She raised a hand, trying to get Selene and Clauda’s attention, but they were too busy arguing.

  “What if it is constellations, then,” said Clauda. “What then?”

  “It’s a matter of figuring out the correct sequence.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?”

  “According to Theselaides, he unsealed the doors of the Libyrinth by humming the descant chorus of the Losian concerto,” said Selene.

  Yes! Music! Haly grabbed Selene’s sleeve and yanked on it. “Mmm! Mmm!”

  “Yes, I brought my copy of Theselaides with me. It’s in my saddlebag,” Selene told her. “Will you fetch it?”

  Haly shook her head but Selene had already turned back to Clauda, who stood with her hands on her hips. “So how did Theselaides figure all that out?” she demanded.

  “The declension of Arcturius Sirius to the second moon, divided by the circumference of a chuckle bird’s egg,” said Selene.

  “Huh,” scoffed Clauda. “The black science of math. You know, some say Theselaides never existed.”

  “Then how do you explain the book he wrote?”

  In frustration, Haly jumped on top of the dome and lifted her face, opening her mouth and holding her arms out as if in song.