Swords & Dark Magic

by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

  “That’s just one grimoire, Laszlo. Nothing to fear in a single drop of water, right?” She was grinning again. “It takes an ocean to drown yourself.”

  Another series of clicks echoed throughout the chamber, and with a rumbling hiss the final door to the library stacks slid open before them.

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” said Yvette, taking the words right out of Laszlo’s mouth.

  Row upon row of tall bookcases stretched away into the distance, but the farther Laszlo strained to see down the aisles between those shelves, the more they seemed to curve, to turn upon themselves, to become a knotted labyrinth leading away into darkness. And gods, the place was vast, the ceiling was hundreds of feet above them, the outer walls were so distant they faded into mist…

  “This place has weather!” said Laszlo.

  “All kinds,” said Astriza, peering around. Once all six of them were through the door, she used her key to lock it shut behind them.

  “And it doesn’t fit,” said Yvette. “Inside the cube, I mean. This place is much too big. Or is that just—”

  “No, it’s not just an illusion. At least not as we understand the term,” said Molnar. “This place was orderly once. Pure, sane geometries. But after the collection was installed, the change began…by the time the old Librarians tried to do something, it was too late. Individual books are happy to come and go, but when they tried to remove large numbers at once, the library got angry.”

  “What happened?” said Casimir.

  “Suffice to say that in the thousand years since, it has been our strictest policy to never, ever make the library angry again.”

  As Laszlo’s senses adjusted to the place, more and more details leapt out at him. It really was a jungle, a tangled forest of shelves and drawers and columns and railed balconies, as though the Living Library had somehow reached out across time and space, and raided other buildings for components that suited its whims. Dark galleries branched off like caves, baroque structures grew out of the mists and shadows, a sort of cancer-architecture that had no business standing upright. Yet it did, under gray clouds that occasionally pulsed with faint eldritch light. The cool air was ripe with the thousand odors of old books and preservatives, and other things—hot metal, musty earth, wet fur, old blood. Ever so faint, ever so unnerving.

  The two Librarians pulled a pair of small lanterns from a locker beside the gate, and tossed them into the air after muttering brief incantations. The lanterns glowed a soft red, and hovered unobtrusively just above the party.

  “Ground rules,” said Astriza. “Nothing in here is friendly. If any sort of something should try any sort of anything, defend yourself and your classmates. However, you must avoid damaging the books.”

  “I can only wonder,” said Lev, “does the library not realize that we are returning books to their proper places? Should that not buy us some measure of safety?”

  “We believe it understands what we’re doing, on some level,” said Molnar. “And we’re quite certain that, regardless of what it understands, it simply can’t help itself. Now, let’s start with your book, Aspirant D’Courin. Hand me the notes.”

  Molnar and Astriza read the notes, muttering together, while the aspirants kept an uneasy lookout. After a few moments, Molnar raised his hand and sketched an ideogram of red light in the air. Strange sparks moved within the glowing lines, and the two Librarians studied these intently.

  “Take heed, aspirants,” muttered Molnar, absorbed in his work. “This journey has been loosely planned, but only inside the library itself can the index enchantments give more precise and reliable…ah. Case in point. This book has moved itself.”

  “Twenty-eight Manticore East,” said Astriza. “Border of the Chimaera stacks, near the Tree of Knives.”

  “The tree’s gone,” said Molnar. “Vanished yesterday, could be anywhere.”

  “Oh piss,” said Astriza. “I really hate hunting that thing.”

  “Map,” said Molnar. Astriza dropped to one knee, presenting her back to Molnar. The Master Librarian knelt and unbuckled the heavy volume that she wore as a sort of backpack, and by the red light of the floating lanterns he skimmed the pages, nodding to himself. After a few moments, he resecured the book and rose to his feet.

  “Yvette’s book,” he said, “isn’t actually a proper grimoire, it’s more of a philosophical treatise. Adrilankha’s Discourse on Necessary Thaumaturgical Irresponsibilities. However, it keeps some peculiar company, so we’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Be on your guard.”

  They moved into the stacks in a column, with Astriza leading and Molnar guarding the rear. The red lanterns drifted along just above them. As they took their first steps into the actual shadows of the shelves, Laszlo bit back the urge to draw his sword and keep it waiting for whatever might be out there.

  “What do you think of the place?” Casimir, walking just in front of Laszlo, was staring around as though in a pleasant dream, and he spoke softly.

  “I’m going to kiss the floor wherever we get out. Yourself?”

  “It’s marvelous. It’s everything I ever hoped it would be.”

  “Interested in becoming a Librarian?” said Yvette.

  “Oh no,” said Casimir. “Not that. But all this power…half-awake, just as Master Molnar said, flowing in currents without any conscious force behind it. It’s astonishing. Can’t you feel it?”

  “I can,” said Yvette. “It scares the hell out of me.”

  Laszlo could feel the power they spoke of, but only faintly, as a sort of icy tickle on the back of his neck. He knew he was a great deal less sensitive than Yvette or Casimir, and he wondered if experiencing the place through an intuition as heightened as theirs would help him check his fears, or make him soil his trousers.

  Through the dark aisles they walked, eyes wide and searching, between the high walls of book spines. Tendrils of mist curled around Laszlo’s feet, and from time to time he heard sounds in the distance—faint echoes of movement, of rustling pages, of soft, sighing winds. Astriza turned right, then right again, choosing new directions at aisle junctions according to the unknowable spells she and Molnar had cast earlier. Half an hour passed uneasily, and it seemed to Laszlo that they should have doubled back on their own trail several times, but they were undeniably pressing steadily onward into deeper, stranger territory.

  “Laszlo,” muttered Casimir.

  “What?”

  “Just tell me what you want, quit poking me.”

  “I haven’t touched you.”

  Astriza raised a hand, and their little column halted in its tracks. Casimir whirled on Laszlo, rubbing the back of his neck. “That wasn’t you?”

  “Hells, no!”

  The first attack of the journey came then, from the shadowy canyon-walls of the bookcases around them, a pelting rain of dark objects. Laszlo yelped and put up his arms to protect his eyes. Astriza had her swords out in the time it took him to flinch, and Yvette, moving not much slower, thrust out her hands and conjured some sort of rippling barrier in the air above them. Peering up at it, Laszlo realized that the objects bouncing off it were all but harmless—crumpled paper, fragments of wood, chunks of broken plaster, dark dried things that looked like…gods, small animal turds! Bless Yvette and her shield.

  In the hazy red light of the hovering lanterns he could see the things responsible for this disrespectful cascade—dozens of spindly-limbed, flabby gray creatures the rough size and shape of stillborn infants. Their eyes were hollow dark pits and their mouths were thin slits, as though cut into their flesh with one quick slash of a blade. They were scampering out from behind books and perching atop the shelves, and launching their rain of junk from there.

  Casimir laughed, gestured, and spoke a low, sharp word of command that stung Laszlo’s ears. One of the little creatures dropped whatever it was about to throw, moaned, and flashed into a cloud of greasy, red-hot ash that dispersed like steam. Its nearby companions scattered, screeching.

  “You c
an’t tell me we’re in any actual danger from these,” said Casimir.

  “We’re tell me can’t,” whispered a harsh voice from somewhere in the shelves, “known, known!”

  “Any actual you, known, from these in danger,” came a screeching answer. “Known, known, known!”

  “Oh, hell,” shouted Astriza, “shut up, everyone shut up! Say nothing!”

  “Known, known, known,” came another whispered chorus, and then a dozen voices repeating her words in a dozen babbled variations. “Known, known, known!”

  “They’re vocabuvores,” whispered Master Molnar. “Just keep moving out of their territory. Stay silent.”

  “Known,” hissed one of the creatures from somewhere above. “All known! New words. GIVE NEW WORDS!”

  Molnar prodded Lev, who occupied the penultimate spot in their column, forward with the butt of his staff. Lev pushed Laszlo, who passed the courtesy on. Stumbling and slipping, the aspirants and their guides moved haltingly, for the annoying rain of junk persisted and Yvette’s barrier was limited in size. Something soft and wet smacked the ground just in front of Laszlo, and in an uncharacteristic moment of pure clumsiness he set foot on it and went sprawling. His jaw rattled on the cold, hard tiles of the floor, and without thinking he yelped, “Shit!”

  “Known!” screeched a chorus of the little creatures.

  “NEW!” cried a triumphant voice, directly above him. “New! NEW!”

  There was a new sound, a sickly crackling noise. Laszlo gaped as one of the little dark shapes on the shelves far above swelled, doubling in size in seconds, its grotesque flesh bubbling and rising like some unholy dough. The little claws and limbs, previously smaller than a cat’s, took on a more menacing heft. “More,” it croaked in a deeper voice. “Give more new words!” And with that, it flung itself down at him, wider mouth open to display a fresh set of sharp teeth.

  Astriza’s sword hit the thing before Laszlo could choke out a scream, rupturing it like a lanced boil and spattering a goodly radius with hot, vomit-scented ichor. Laszlo gagged, stumbled to his feet, and hurriedly wiped the awful stuff away from his eyes. Astriza spared him a furious glare, then pulled him forward by the mantle of his cloak.

  Silently enduring the rain of junk and the screeching calls for new words, the party stumbled on through aisles and junctions until the last of the hooting, scrabbling, missile-flinging multitude was lost in the misty darkness behind them.

  “Vocabuvores,” said Master Molnar when they had stopped in a place of apparent safety, “goblin-like creatures that feed on any new words they learn from human speech. Their metabolisms turn vocabulary into body mass. They’re like insects at birth, but a few careless sentences and they can grow to human size, and beyond.”

  “Do they eat people, too?” said Laszlo, shuddering.

  “They’d cripple us,” said Astriza, wiping vocabuvore slop from her sword. “And torture us as long as they could, until we screamed every word we knew for them.”

  “We don’t have time to wipe that colony out today,” said Molnar. “Fortunately, vocabuvores are extremely territorial. And totally illiterate. Their nests are surrounded by enough books to feed their little minds forever, but they can’t read a word.”

  “How can such things have stolen in, past your gates and sorcery?” asked Lev.

  “It’s the books again,” said Molnar. “Their power sometimes snatches the damnedest things away from distant worlds. The stacks are filled with living and quasi-living dwellers, of two general types.”

  “The first sort we call externals,” said Astriza. “Anything recently dumped or summoned here. Animals, spirits, even the occasional sentient being. Most of them don’t last long. Either we deal with them, or they become prey for the other sort of dweller.”

  “Bibliofauna,” said Molnar. “Creatures created by the actions of the books themselves, or somehow dependent upon them. A stranger sort of being, twisted by the environment and more suited to survive in it. Vocabuvores certainly didn’t spawn anywhere else.”

  “Well,” said Astriza, “we’re a bit smellier, but we all seem to be in one piece. We’re not far now from twenty-eight Manticore East. Keep moving, and the next time I tell you to shut up, Laszlo, please shut up.”

  “Apologies, Librarian Mezar—”

  “Titles are for outside the library,” she growled. “In here, you can best apologize by not getting killed.”

  “Ahhh,” said Molnar, gazing down at his guiding ideogram. The lights within the red lines had turned green. “Bang-on. Anywhere on the third shelf will do. Aspirant D’Courin, let Astriza handle the actual placement.”

  Yvette seemed only too happy to pass her satchel off to the sturdy Librarian. “Cover me,” said Astriza as she moved carefully toward the bookcase indicated by Molnar’s spells. It was about twelve feet high, and while the dark wood of its exterior was warped and weathered, the volumes tucked onto its shelves looked pristine. Astriza settled Yvette’s book into an empty spot, then leapt backward, both of her swords flashing out. She had the fastest over-shoulder draw Laszlo had ever seen.

  “What is it?” said Molnar, rushing forward to place himself between the shelf and the four aspirants.

  “Fifth shelf,” said Astriza. She gestured, and one of the hovering lanterns moved in, throwing its scarlet light into the dark recesses of the shelves. Something long and dark and cylindrical was lying across the books on that shelf, and as the lantern moved, Laszlo caught a glimpse of scales.

  “I think—” said Astriza, lowering one of her swords, “I think it’s dead.” She stabbed carefully with her other blade, several times, then nodded. She and Molnar reached in gingerly and heaved the thing out onto the floor, where it landed with a heavy smack.

  It was a serpent of some sort, with a green body as thick as Laszlo’s arm. It was about ten feet long, and it had three flat, triangular heads with beady eyes, now glassy in death. Crescent-shaped bite marks marred most of its length, as though something had worked its way up and down the body, chewing at leisure.

  “External,” said Astriza.

  “A swamp hydra,” said Lev, prodding the body with one of his clawed feet. “From my home world…very dangerous. I had night terrors of them when I was newly hatched. What killed it?”

  “Too many possible culprits to name,” said Molnar. He touched the serpent’s body with the butt of his staff and uttered a spell. The dead flesh lurched, smoked, and split apart, turning gray before their eyes. In seconds, it had begun to shrink, until at last it was nothing more than a smear of charcoal-colored ash on the floor. “The Tree of Knives used to scare predators away from this section, but it’s uprooted itself. Anything could have moved in. Aspirant Bronzeclaw, give me the notes for your book.”

  “Private Reflections of Grand Necrosophist Jaklur the Unendurable,” said Astriza as Molnar shared the notes with her. “Charming.” The two Librarians performed their divinations once again, with more urgency than before. After a few moments, Astriza looked up, pointed somewhere off to Laszlo’s left, and said: “Fifty-five Manticore Northwest. Another hell of a walk. Let’s get moving.”

  The second stage of their journey was longer than the first. The other aspirants looked anxious, all except Casimir, who continued to stroll while others crept cautiously. Caz seemed to have a limitless reserve of enchantment with the place. As for Laszlo, well, before another hour had passed, the last reeking traces of the vocabuvore’s gore had been washed from his face and neck by streams of nervous sweat. He was acutely aware, as they moved on through the dark canyons and grottos of the stacks, that unseen things in every direction were scuttling, growling, and hissing.

  At one point, he heard a high-pitched giggling from the darkness, and stopped to listen more closely. Master Molnar, not missing a step, grabbed him firmly by his shoulders, spun him around, and pushed him onward.

  They came at last to one of the outer walls of the library, where the air was clammy with a mist that swirled more thickly t
han ever before. Railed galleries loomed above them, utterly lightless, and Astriza waved the party far clear of the spiral staircases and ladders that led up into those silent spaces.

  “Not much farther,” she said. “And Casimir’s book goes somewhere pretty close after this. If we get lucky, we might just—”

  “Get down,” hissed Molnar.

  Astriza was down on one knee in a flash, swords out, and the aspirants followed her example. Laszlo knelt and drew his sword. Only Molnar remained on his feet.

  The quality of the mist had changed. A breeze was stirring, growing more and more powerful as Laszlo watched. Down the long, dark aisle before them the skin-chilling current came, and with it a fluttering, rustling sound, like clothes rippling on a drying line. A swirling, nebulous shape appeared, and the mist surged and parted before it. As it came nearer, Laszlo saw that it was a mass of papers, a column of book pages, hundreds of them, whirling on a tight axis like a tornado.

  “No,” shouted Molnar as Casimir raised his hands to begin a spell. “Don’t harm it! Protect yourselves, but don’t fight back or the library will—”

  His words were drowned out as the tumbling mass of pages washed over them and its sound increased tenfold. Laszlo was buffeted with winds like a dozen invisible fists—his cloak streamed out behind him as though he were in free-fall, and a cloud of dust and grime torn from the surfaces nearby filled the air as a stinging miasma. He barely managed to fumble his sword safely back into his scabbard as he sought the floor. Just above him, the red lanterns were slammed against a stone balcony and shattered to fragments.

  From out of the wailing wind there came a screech like knives drawn over slate. Through slitted eyes, Laszlo saw that Lev was losing his balance and sliding backward. Laszlo realized that Lev’s torso, wider than any human’s, was catching the wind like a sail despite the lizard’s efforts to sink his claws into the tile floor.