The Library: The Complete Series (All 8 Books) (2013)

by Amy Cross

  "I believe they can."

  "And this is my fault?" Claire continues, turning to me. "All of this is because they want me?"

  "Don't let it go to your head," I tell her.

  "Maybe Gum was right," she says. "Maybe I should just accept my fate. I mean, my life isn't worth a whole world. I'm just one -."

  "Wait!" I say, turning to her. "Gum? Did you say Gum?"

  "He's the Emissary of the Forbidders," she replies.

  "No," I say. "I have met the Emissary of the Forbidders, and it was not Gum. Not unless..." I pause, as I realize that Gum must be up to his old trick of 'borrowing' new heads whenever he gets the chance. I should have killed him when I had the chance, instead of spending so many years out in the wastelands of the Library, recovering from my injuries.

  "He looked like your friend Daniel," Claire continues. "Remember, the guy from the Library?"

  "Daniel?" I take a deep breath as I realize that Daniel must have been killed by Gum. "I shall deal with Gum in an appropriate manner when I find him," I say eventually. "For now, it matters little what he or anyone else says. The most important thing is to get you away from the Library, so that I might find some way to defeat them."

  "But if I..." She pauses for a moment. "Vanguard, I don't want to cause all this death and destruction. I don't want to have a whole world burn just because someone wants to get hold of me, especially if they're just gonna find me some other time anyway. If it'll save lives, and if it'll save this world and maybe my world, then I'll do it. I'll do whatever they want."

  "Do you honestly believe that your sacrifice would stop the Forbidders?" I ask, as the ground shakes again. "Their anger knows no bounds, Claire. Their panic is absolute and unrestrained, spreading from one world to the next. If you surrender to them, they'll take you with them to their own world and they'll try to use you, but eventually they'll realize it's not working and they'll panic again. They'll come back, and they'll keep coming back until time itself runs out and darkness overwhelms the seven worlds. Giving them what they want is not an option. We must either die, or defeat them."

  "But how are you going to fight them?" she replies. "There's only one of you!"

  "I'll find a way," I tell her.

  "Have you got a plan?"

  I shake my head. "But don't worry. By the time I face them, I'll have thought of something." Another ball of white fire crashes into the Library, closer than ever. Shelves are being cracked apart, and fires are raging. The full rage of the Forbidders has been unleashed, and the Library is entering its final moments. From horizon to horizon, smoke and flames rise up from the burning shelves. "Come on!" I shout, pulling Claire along the aisle. We make our way as fast as possible to the nearest perimeter wall, and then finally we find a small door that leads out into the orchard that surrounds the Library. We won't be safe out here for long, but there should just about be time to get her on her way before the wrath of the Forbidders reaches this far.

  "This is where I started," Claire says. "I woke up here!"

  "Not here," I tell her, pulling her along as I head for the trees, "but somewhere like here. Fortunately, there's more than one way to break through from one world to the next. The Forbidders tend to use brute force, ripping great links through the void, but -" A massive impact shakes the ground, and I turn to see that the white fire of the Forbidders is spreading rapidly across the Library. This is it; this is the day of death and destruction that I've dreaded for so long. "There are other ways," I continue, turning back to Claire and forcing myself to focus. "Small, subtle ways. Ways that are known only to a few. After all, how do you think Sharpe got you here in the first place?"

  "I can't leave you like this," Claire shouts, as another explosion shatters part of the perimeter wall, sending pieces of stone flying across the grass. "This is my fault!"

  "It's not your fault," I tell her. "You were just a book, sitting on a shelf, minding your own business."

  "But if I give them what they want -"

  "It still won't be enough!" I say. "No matter what you do, the darkness will still be out there and eventually the Forbidders will become scared again."

  "So I'm supposed to just run away?" she replies. "You want me to just turn and run and hide?"

  "You were not built for war," I tell her. "Human bodies are weak. Bits come off very easily, and you have a tendency to leak blood all over the place when you're injured. Honor and valor are important, but there's no point throwing yourself into certain death just to prove a point. Like it or not, your body is human right now, and you have no place in this battle. I can throw myself at the Forbidders a thousand times if necessary, and it'll take them many years to kill me. You would die in the blink of an eye."

  "But -"

  "You have to know which battles to fight," I continue. "Trust me. Go back to your world. If we're both lucky, you'll be safe there and the Forbidders will never come looking for you."

  "I just want to help," she says.

  "You can't help me," I say. "If you're here, it's a distraction that I cannot accept. I'll spend half my time worrying about whether you've been captured, and the rest of my time making sure you're not killed. At least if you go back to your own world, you'll be safe for now and I'll be able to focus on the battle ahead." Hurrying over to a nearby tree, I search the bark for the inscription that should be here. Sure enough, I find the letters scratched into a branch, just as the ancient texts described. "You must stand here," I say, grabbing Claire's arm and pulling her over to the correct spot. "Right here. Do not move. Do not move one inch."

  "How will I know what happens?" she asks as I step back. "Will I ever know if you survived? Will I ever know if you managed to save the Library?"

  "If you live a long and happy life in your own world," I explain, "with no sign of the Forbidders coming to find you, then you'll know that I prevailed. If I fail, you'll eventually see their influence, and one day they'll find you."

  "And can I ever come back?" she asks.

  "That, I doubt," I reply, before pausing for a moment. It's strange, but in just a few short days, I've become surprisingly attached to Claire. Then again, perhaps I am merely allowing myself to become sentimental. That unexpected meeting with Fig reminded me of past failures, when I allowed people to die. For the first time in my long life as a warrior, I'm finally going to save someone. Taking a deep breath, I whisper the inscription from the tree, and the ground collapses beneath Claire. The last I see of her is her shocked face as she tumbles into the darkness.

  "God speed," I say quietly, before turning to face the full wrath of the Forbidders. There are now several spheres of white fire, burning in the sky, and the Library is being consumed by flames. Drawing my sword, I walk back to the wall and through the gate, eventually emerging in an aisle surrounded by burning shelves. Up ahead, a dark shape is moving in the flames. At first, I assume it must simply be a denizen of the Library, running for his life. After a moment, I realize that it's something else. Something bigger. Something strangely familiar. Finally, the creature comes toward me, knocking down the shelves that stand in its way. Its eyes stare straight at me, before it raises its head and roars into the burning sky.

  A Forbidder.

  It's strange, but I was sure that when I finally came face to face with such a creature, I would somehow know what to do. Instead, however, my mind has become completely blank. All I can think is that I need to hurt it; I need to make it bleed, to make it feel pain. I am, after all, a warrior; this is what I do. This is how I was born, and perhaps it's fitting if it's also how I die.

  I am Vanguard. I am a Lord of the House of Lacanth. I have slain ten thousand men. I have led armies around the entire circumference of the Library, and I'm the last of the Soldiers of Tea.

  With my sword raised, I run screaming at the beast.

  Book 7:

  Shadows on the Page

  Prologue

  A distant rumble of thunder signals impending doom. Lost and alone in the rain-soaked ai
sles of the Library, I run through the mud, desperately hoping to find a way out. With only the light of the moon to guide my progress, I soon realize that I'm just going around and around, and eventually I start to think that I've come full circle. It's as if I'm never going to find my way to safety.

  Hearing a rattling sound from above, I look up just in time to see a dark shape brush past the top of a nearby shelf. They're up there again, observing us from the heights. As rain pours down, I turn and see something moving along the aisle toward me. For a few seconds I'm frozen to the spot, before I realize that the creature is a huge tick. I turn and run, but I know there's nowhere for me to hide. This whole place is filled with nightmares, and as soon as I get away from one, I'll just run into another.

  As I turn the next corner, I come face to face with a group of Grandapams. They're locked in battle, and to my shock I realize that they're eating one another's flesh. Pushing past them, I see the Citadel up ahead. Since the explosion, the place is in ruins, but it's the only place that might afford me a little sanctuary. Running along the muddy aisle, I eventually glance over my shoulder and see that there's nothing behind me. I pause for a moment, before hearing the familiar rattling sound above. Looking up, I see a huge dark shape leaning toward me. A flash of lightning lights the scene and I finally come face to face with the predator that has been stalking me. I'm helpless to react as the creature opens its jaws and then slams them shut around the upper half of my body.

  Sitting up in bed, I stare at the dark wall opposite. My heart is racing and sweat is pouring down my face. I turn and look across the room, but all I see are the familiar shadows of my bedroom. It's the night before I head off to college, and I've had another dream about that strange, vast library. I swear to God, every night the dream gets more and more vivid, and I wake up feeling as if I'll never be free. In fact, the dream is always much more vivid than real life.

  But it's just a dream.

  That's what I tell myself, anyway.

  Just a dream. Just a dream. And at my age, in my early twenties, I'm way too old to be suffering from stupid recurring nightmares. Damn it, I just need to get a grip and focus on the positives. It's been six months since my scoliosis surgery, and I'm fully recovered. My back is totally healed, and I'm ready to go off to college and start my life over. I just wish I could shake these nightmares. Sometimes, it feels as if I'm being pulled back to a place I've long forgotten, almost as if all these creatures and places are real.

  Claire

  One year later

  "So are you coming to the library?" asks Haley as we head down the steps. It's a bright, sunny day and the campus is buzzing with activity. Mid-terms finished last week, which means the pace has relaxed and all the tension has dissipated. It's good to get a chance to relax, even if it's only temporary. "Claire?" Haley adds after a moment. "Did you hear me?"

  "What?" I ask, turning back to her. The truth is, I was kind of zoned out in my own little world. For a few weeks now, I've felt as if there's a kind of fog in my mind.

  "The library," she says with a smile. "I was thinking of heading over to look for those books on Akkadian language. I mean, there's gonna be a rush and I don't wanna end up with the wrong editions." She stares at me for a moment, as if she's expecting me to say something. "Claire?"

  "Yeah?" I say, still a little dazed.

  "Are you sure you're okay?" she asks. "You've got this weird look in your eyes."

  "Yeah, sure," I reply, glancing over at the large, imposing edifice of the campus library. "I'm fine. We should go get the books. I guess that's a good idea."

  "Do you still feel a bit weird about this place?" she asks as we make our way across the grass. "Is that the problem?"

  "The library? Why would I be weird about it?"

  "Didn't your uncle die here?"

  "Oh," I say, as we pass into the huge shadow cast by the building. "Yeah. That." She's right. A few years ago, my uncle was crushed to death by a set of sliding shelves in the library's basement. It was, by all accounts, a bizarre and unrepeatable accident that has never been satisfactorily explained. The investigation put it down to bad luck, but only after an exhaustive study had ruled out every other possible cause.

  "What happened to him again?" she continues.

  "It was an accident with some shelves," I tell her.

  "So he was, like, squashed?"

  "Yeah," I say. "Maybe we can talk about something else, though. It's kind of... not something I really enjoy thinking about."

  "Sorry," she replies. "I thought maybe it'd help to talk about it, but if you don't want to come inside, I can go fetch the books and you can wait out here."

  "It was years ago," I continue as we head through the main door and into the building. A large, airy place with big windows and high ceilings, the campus library is usually packed but this week, with mid-terms over, it's relatively empty. Piles of books are sitting on trolleys, waiting to be re-shelved by the constantly harried and underpaid staff, who seem to be constantly run off their feet.

  "Actually," I say, stopping as we reach the door that leads to the Humanities section, "I think I want to go and take a look at something in History."

  "History?"

  "Yeah, just something that's been bugging me. I won't be long. I'll come and find you when I'm done." With that, I turn and hurry across the large open hallway before she has a chance to ask my any more questions. I like Haley, but she has a tendency to open her mouth at inappropriate times, and right now there's something I need to check. Coming to the end of my first year back at college after my operation, I feel as if I'm finally getting close to a breakthrough on a little side project I've been pursuing.

  The History section is vast, filled with books on a huge range of subjects including some of the most obscure civilizations known to have ever existed. This college has one of the world's most highly regarded collections of documents and texts regarding ancient, pre-Mesopotamian cultures, but even these are too mainstream for my interests. The book I'm looking for is an old, mostly forgotten title that has been dismissed by most scholars as a hoax. Still, I'm determined to see if it contains what I'm looking for. I can't quite explain this strange impulse, but it's as if the fog in my mind occasionally lifts for a moment and compels me to keep digging into one particular legend.

  Pausing for a moment, I spot a small door off to the side, with the name Thomas J. Sharpe stencilled in gold letters. For a moment, I consider going over to knock, before I realize that it's probably just a coincidence. Continuing to make my way to the far end of the section, I remind myself that my mind has been particularly fuzzy lately. I have all these half-remembered memories and thoughts that don't seem to fit together, and I'm determined to work out exactly what happened to me. About a year ago, I had the most intense and vivid dream I've ever experienced, but lately I've been wondering whether it was a dream at all. It felt so real, and I feel as if the fog in my mind started at around the same time. To be honest, I'm a little scared that maybe I'm sick.

  Then again, since when do dreams turn out to be mentioned in history books?

  The book I'm looking for is called 'The History of the Library'. Written hundreds of years ago by an obscure European ethnographer named Barclay Smotherwood, the book purports to tell the history of a vast library that exists in an entirely different land. Back in the eighteenth century, the book caused a brief stir before it was dismissed as simply a work of fiction. Smotherwood was eventually derided as a hack, and he died in penury. Ordinarily, I'd never give such a book a second thought, but there's something unusual about the details contained within its pages. For one thing, it seems to describe the world I encountered in my dream. For another, until a few weeks ago, I had no idea that it even existed. So how could I have dreamed about this huge library that apparently exists in a far-off land?

  When I find the book, I'm not surprised to find that it's tattered and almost falling apart. It's a testament to the lack of respect that's accorded to Smotherwood's
work that such an old volume is left to rot on a shelf at the back of the History section, rather than being properly looked after and preserved. Pulling the book from the shelf, I open the cover carefully and sure enough several pages immediately fall to the floor. As I reach down to grab them, I accidentally drop the book, and all the other pages come loose as it hits the ground. Sighing, I stare for a moment at the mass of paper all around my feet, and I realize I'm going to have to sort them back into order. Unfortunately, as I start gathering them up, I realize that there are no page numbers.

  "Problem?" asks a voice nearby.

  Looking up, I see the last person I wanted to bump into right now. David Caliko is renowned across the entire campus as the grumpiest, most argumentative archivist anyone could ever have the mis-pleasure of meeting. A middle-aged man with a tall, thin body and freakishly small eyes, he looks like he's never cracked a smile in his entire life.

  "I dropped it," I say, looking down at the loose pages. "Pages were already falling out."

  "It's not your fault," he says, sounding annoyed as he kneels down and starts gathering up the pages. "You can't be blamed for your ignorance. Your lecturers should teach you how to handle old texts. You don't just grab them and start manhandling them. There's a certain level of skill involved."

  "Maybe if a book can't be opened without falling apart," I reply, kneeling down to help him, "it shouldn't be just sitting out on a shelf."

  He stares at me for a moment. "You raise a valid point," he says eventually, before looking at the cover of the book in question. "I just never expected anyone to be interested in this old thing. I doubt anyone's touched it for ten, maybe fifteen years. Some people believe it to be quite radical, while others think it's not worth the paper that was used for its production. You know, Barclay Smotherwood's reputation was destroyed by the ideas he put down on paper."

  "I know all about it," I reply, keen to avoid a long conversation on the subject. "I just wanted to see what he wrote about the library. I wanted to go through the original text."