Things got a little more interesting when Ny barrelled through into the too-small space and crashed into said desk, smashing it to pieces. The office hastily reformed to accommodate his bulk, but not before he had managed to polish off the chair and part of the wall, too. The noise he made suggested that the disaster came attended by a fair amount of pain for him, and I winced. Ny, though, lay in an inert heap upon the rapidly-expanding floor, giggling.
Oops, he cackled.
‘Stop wrecking Galy’s stuff, Ny,’ said Meriall grouchily. She was nursing a grazed elbow, and her forehead had apparently come into contact with something solid, too.
I took a look around to make sure that Pense and Gio had made it through without incident, which they had. The sense of danger had completely receded, and in the quiet and apparent calm I was able to calm a little myself. We all took a moment to breathe.
Then it was time to explore.
It took little time to establish that the office really was as boring as it appeared. All the books were unreadable and so were the papers, which disappointed me a little. How could we expect to find out anything if all the clues were illegible or written in some language none of us speaks? Even Gio was no help there, merely returning a helpless shrug when asked to investigate.
So we abandoned the office in short order. The door we had fallen through proved to have quietly unmade itself, but another had appeared opposite. We followed it, with some caution. I have no doubt that Galy means us no harm, but it is also clear that he is not wholly in control of the situation here. Or even of himself.
We went through a number of similarly featureless corridors and rooms — I won’t bore you with the details, they were thoroughly uninteresting. Eventually these gave way to some labs, which were not very interesting either.
Then we rounded a corner and ran into another person, the first we had seen since entering the maze of officy dullness. A Lokant, male, relatively young. He wore a blue coat and carried some indecipherable object, which he was referring to with such absorption that he did not appear to notice the group bearing down upon him.
Not that there was anywhere for us to go to escape him. He looked up a moment later and I braced myself for interrogation. But to my relief, he seemed as oblivious to our presence as all the others we had seen. He looked straight through us, staring into the distance in a thoughtful fashion, before returning to whatever it was he carried.
I saw his face, and almost had a heart attack.
‘That’s Krays,’ I choked out. And it was, undoubtedly, even though I had known him as an elderly man and this was a much younger version of him. His features were unmistakeable.
Pense had not made the connection, for his brows contracted in surprise. As Krays walked past him, Pense wheeled about and pursued him down the corridor, circling, scrutinising everything about him. It was a menacing attitude, not least because Pense was primarily responsible for the eventual demise of the real Krays.
The Krays-ghost — or dream, or whatever he was — vanished around a corner and Pense came back.
‘It is him,’ he reported.
‘I wonder where he is going,’ said Meriall.
‘Let’s follow him!’ said Ny enthusiastically.
‘Yes, let’s,’ I agreed, and we did. Gio said nothing, and his silence struck me as odd. I watched him trailing down the corridor after Pense, who strode out decisively in pursuit of Krays. Gio’s expression was so impassive, I couldn’t help wondering what he was hiding behind it. He must have some feelings or thoughts about the appearance of someone like Krays, but he showed nothing.
We caught up with Krays and kept pace behind him. It felt odd, openly following him like that. He really looked solid, like a real person. There was nothing about his appearance to suggest that he was only a vision, so I couldn’t shake the feeling that he would realise we were there any moment and challenge us.
He did not, of course. He walked down so many corridors, I wondered how he could possibly remember his way around. But he barely heeded his environment, so at home was he. We all passed so many doors I soon lost count, but he showed no interest in any of them until, at last, he stopped before a large set of double doors made of some kind of metal. He looked at them and they opened, without his even touching them. Through he went, and we followed.
Beyond lay a massive, domed chamber, a sudden and surprising change from the featureless offices. For a moment I could barely see, for I was struck by such a tumult of chaotic energies that my external senses were blinded by it. Amasku, purer and richer in character than I have ever before experienced. The place was drowning in it, but it was not as chaotic as I had initially thought. There was a structure to its pattern, infinitely complex. I was dazzled. I have only known its flows in the Off-Worlds, where they have been so long disordered I suppose we have never known how it ought to feel. Or how it ought to behave.
When my other senses returned, I found I had eyes for nothing but what dominated the centre: the carcass of a huge draykon.
At least, I thought it was a carcass at first. It looked half-decayed, its gleaming indigo bones exposed in some areas and covered by muscle and flesh and glittering golden scales in others. I stared in confusion at the flurry of activity around it. Many other Lokants were at work in here, doing something completely inexplicable to the poor creature. Given its semi-skeletal state I could not help assuming that they were disassembling it, and my stomach turned over.
‘They are harvesting its bones,’ I said, horrified.
But Pense stared at it with a deep frown upon his face, and finally shook his head. ‘They are not, I think,’ he said softly.
Ny took to the air. There was enough room in that place for him to fly, even with all his bulk. The chamber was certainly made to accommodate draykoni proportions. We watched in dumb silence as he flew over to the creature and circled it.
‘Are they... adding to it?’ said Meriall at last.
‘Yes, exactly,’ said Gio, surprising me, for he had not spoken since we had tumbled through that strange black door into the first office. ‘They are adding to it. Or in other words, building it.’
His tone was a trifle condescending, but we cared not for the implied slight upon our comprehension, for we were too thunderstruck by his words.
Of course they were building it. That seemed obvious, now that it had been pointed out. My heart twisted in excitement. We were in the centre of the Library of Orlind, and here was a vision of perhaps the most important moment in its history — perhaps even the history of the Seven Realms as a whole.
The first draykoni were being designed and constructed right here. And that was surreal. If I was uncomfortable before with the idea that my race — both my races — had been conceived of and created by some other species, I was appalled at seeing the proof of it before my eyes. And also fascinated, and awed. What kinds of people were Lokants, that they could do such things? I was forcibly reminded of how little we really know about them.
Krays’s presence here both interested and bothered me. I hadn’t previously known that he was involved in this project at all.
‘Forgive me if I’m being impertinently curious,’ said Meriall, drifting closer to me. ‘But who is Krays, why are we following him and why does it matter that he is here?’
‘Krays is the person who caused all the trouble a few moons ago,’ I told her. ‘He was behind the return of the draykoni, and everything that happened because of it. He wanted to restore the Library of Orlind, the Master Library, so he could control all the other Lokant Libraries.’
There came a ripple in the air as I spoke and a kind of… buzzing, not a sound but a palpable sensation in my bones. It felt like anger, or frustration, but it was gone before I could decide.
Meriall pursed her lips. ‘Was he indeed? I might like to shake his hand.’
‘You can’t, he is dead. Pense ate him.’
Meriall blinked. ‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, a lot of people died because of
his actions.’ I felt a surprising flicker of anger towards Meriall, that she could behave like Krays deserved to be congratulated for his efforts. He had acted out of ambition and selfishness and with a ruthless disregard for anybody else’s wellbeing. How could she applaud him?
‘And for that, he can never be condemned enough,’ said Meriall. ‘But nonetheless, we are all here because of him. Not everything that came of his deeds was bad.’
I sighed, and rubbed at my forehead. A headache was threatening to emerge. I didn’t like the line of thinking Meriall was taking. Everything started with a spate of murders over the draykon bone, and culminated in a war that destroyed half of my home city. Yes, I had also rediscovered my heritage and come to know Pense as a result of the same things, but even so. How could I do otherwise but wish it all undone? It was almost like saying it was worth all those people’s deaths just so I could have better wings and a mate. I felt deeply uncomfortable.
There are more. Ny’s voice broke in upon my musings, shattering my train of thought. I wasn’t sorry. I felt him signalling off to the left, from the far side of the vast chamber. Krays had gone that way, too, and we had been steadily drifting in that general direction. We picked up our pace and hurried after Nyden, trying to ignore the crowds of busy Lokants we passed through. It is really the strangest feeling, walking through clusters of people like that and having them act like you aren’t there at all.
Several big, double doors lined the curve of the far wall, all of them thrown open. A glance revealed that each one led to chambers identical to the one we were in, and each contained another partially-constructed draykon. I saw a crimson one, a deep forest green, a silvery one and a violet-hued, all differing in size, and wondered what the intention might have been behind the variety of colours.
What interested me still more was the variation in design of each creature. The golden draykon looked fairly familiar to me: its pointed snout, slender build, wing shape and coiling tail all resembled my own, nearly enough. But these others were vastly different. One had only two legs. Another had a stockier frame and a rounded, blunt snout. A third had no wings and looked more proficient at swimming than flying, all sleek contours and undulating curves. I stared in wonder at this array, mesmerised, because here was a creative process that I recognised. I was a jeweller, once, before all this madness upturned my life. The process of experimentation, of trying design after design until you arrive at the optimum combination, was so familiar to me.
Pense had gone after Krays. I keep a little part of my mind fixed upon him at all times, when we are together, and so I still did in spite of my distraction. So when Pense got upset, I knew about it at once.
‘Trouble,’ I said tightly, and grabbed Meri and Gio. I had no idea where Ny had gone, but no matter, there was no time to worry about him now. I dragged the others after me as I dashed in Pense’s direction. If he was in danger, he might need all of us to help him.
It wasn’t until we got closer that I realised there was no fear in the feelings I was sensing from him. Urgency, yes, but nothing to justify the extent of my alarm. I do get oversensitive about Pense, I suppose.
We found him three chambers farther along, watching as Krays argued heatedly with another Lokant, in a ripple of words I could not understand. The other person was Galywis. Whatever the cause of their dispute, they were both incensed by it. Poor Galy was shaking with fury.
This room was smaller than the others, and rather bare. Its walls were covered in an odd display that reminded me of the genealogy trees in Limbane’s Library, though this was composed mostly of figures and anatomical drawings of draykon-like creatures. They changed as I glanced at them, as though the ideas behind them were being adjusted as I watched. They were oddly reminiscent of the bulletin boards back home.
The room felt different. The amasku here lacked the perfect order I had sensed everywhere else. Something was deeply amiss with it. It bristled and spiked in my mind, making my skin shiver, turning my stomach nauseous. I thought back a little, remembering the collapse of the draykon whose body we had briefly inhabited, and shuddered. I could well believe that the effects of this kind of energy, so broken and disordered, could be catastrophic.
We received visual proof of this in short order.
It began with a distant roar, a tortured sound which instantly captured the attention of everybody in the room. Even Krays and Galywis stopped shouting at one another. They froze in place, eyes locked in mutual horror.
If anything, their reaction frightened me more than the sound itself.
Galywis breathed something that could only be a curse, and he and Krays leapt into action. There was a heavy metal bar upon the door which I had not noticed before. Krays ran for it and slammed the bar into place, barricading himself and Galy against whatever approached. Galy meanwhile ran around the walls in a strange frenzy, staring at the shifting diagrams with intense dismay. They shifted and changed themselves more and more quickly as he passed by them, writhing through formations like wild things.
The roar sounded again, much closer this time. The walls shook with it. Fear hit me so hard I could hardly breathe. I knew that whatever might occur was unlikely to affect me, for we were clearly lost in some kind of vision. Nonetheless the growing panic was palpable and we all felt it. Pense rushed for me, stationing himself directly before me as though he would repel all threats by bodily force alone. Meri and Gio backed up until they hit a wall and stayed that way, eyes wide. Gio was shaking.
Krays’s barring of the door, though a sensible enough thought in itself, proved useless in the end because the draykon came through the wall. That roar sounded again from mere feet away, so loud and tortured that my ears threatened to shatter and my heart twisted in my chest with fear and compassion because that was a draykon call, deranged with some kind of pain I could not understand. I only sensed that it was intolerable, that the only possible cause was madness.
Then a huge section of the wall crumbled into pieces and a draykon crashed into view, a female. Greenish coloured, not one that we had seen before. She was only partially built, for patches of her hide were missing and her inner flesh shone through, ropes of muscle and gleaming bones beneath. What there was of her hide was ripped and torn and bruised by her insane, destructive progress through the Library but she did not appear to notice or care about the damage she was doing to herself.
In fact, I fear it was worse than that. It would have been easy to assume that the maddened rampage was intentionally destructive, that she was trying to destroy either the Library or the people in it or both. But she was so crazed with pain, I felt that she was scarcely aware of her surroundings. It was herself she was attempting to destroy, ripping herself to pieces upon anything she encountered.
Everybody scattered. Krays and Galy got the barred door open again and vanished through it at a dead run, barely in time to avoid being crushed by the poor maddened draykon as she barrelled, unstoppable, through the room and crashed through the opposite wall. Gio and Meri ducked out of the way, an instinctive movement in the face of such a rush of oncoming fury.
The draykon disappeared from view. All that remained was the noise of continued destruction, interspersed with her cries of pain and fury. Both rapidly grew fainter as she receded.
I exchanged long, appalled looks with Pense and Meri. Nobody spoke.
Then, as one, we wheeled and ran after the tormented draykon.
By the time we caught up with her, they had brought her down. She lay thrashing in the middle of a pile of rubble, her poor body riddled with long metal spears. The machines that had fired the barbs were stationed nearby, but I had noticed them only peripherally before. It was not until later that it occurred to me how significant their presence was. These people were prepared for this kind of madness. It had happened before.
The draykon was screaming, and oh, it was far, far worse than her earlier rage. I felt her pain — probably only an echo of what she was feeling, but it was enough to crush the air out
of me. My muscles turned to water and I fell, sweat pouring off me as every part of my body rebelled at once.
Then she died.
The pain stopped, leaving me breathless and trembling. I got to my feet carefully, unsure if my jellied legs would hold me. There was an awful silence, heavy upon the air, and people moved sluggishly if at all.
‘What just happened,’ said Meriall shakily. She was hanging on to Gio. They were hanging on to each other, looking as shaken as I felt.
I found Pense and clutched him. We both needed comfort after that, and for a while we simply held each other. ‘I don’t know,’ I said at last, though I had some small idea. That complex, perfectly ordered amasku had warped like buckled metal around the crazed draykon as she flew, as though her very presence corrupted it more and more by the second. Or vice versa. Or both?
Was this how such corruption occurred? Was it the madness of the draykoni that bled into it, changed it, broke it? Or was it the other way around? Did they corrupt each other?
But how had such madness occurred? And why was it that the Lokants who had created such a beautiful creature were so well prepared to destroy her, too? I watched as the people of the Library picked themselves up, set about rectifying some of the mess she had made, and removed the corpse. The process was a swift one, well-ordered, as though they had done it several times before. Probably they had.
I remembered something I had heard from Galywis once before — a few moons previously, when we had stood in the ruined Library of Orlind in the presence of the real Galywis, when he was whole and sound and still a separate being from the Library. The project to create the draykoni had been his, and I could the better believe it now that I had seen him at work upon it.
He had talked of merging the Library of Orlind with the energies of our world, and steeping the first draykoni in the latter, as though they were fruit and the amasku wine. Up to the eyeballs, he said. It changed their brains.
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