It changed their brains.
The process had ultimately been a great success, for it had spawned a race of beings whose mastery over their surroundings was virtually absolute. I should say our, for I am one such, strange as it can still seem at times. But what if that same process sent some of them insane? It was a circular state, if true. Their own madness polluted the energies that filled them, twisted it until its presence was pure, screaming agony, and that sent them further insane until all they could do was destroy themselves in their urgency to escape it.
The thought makes me shake so badly I can hardly hold my pen.
We were not given long to reflect upon any of this, for the vision vanished in a whirl of colour and a different scene shimmered into view. A greenhouse, remarkably large and soaring to impressive heights overhead. Flourishing greenery covered most of the clear glass walls, and I saw neat, compact trees everywhere, heavily laden with fruits both familiar and strange. The air was pleasantly warm, and smelled delicious.
I realised with a frisson of surprise that I had been there before, the last time I had visited the Library. Back when it was still on Orlind, and Galywis was still the Master there (albeit deranged). This was his greenhouse, his beloved fruit trees. I could picture him, standing in the little clearing in the centre, delightedly offering us an armful of fruits.
I relayed this to Meriall and Gio — noting in passing that Ny still had not reappeared. What had become of him? I tried to sense him but he was nowhere nearby.
I was on my way to Pense when he abruptly faded away. So did the others. I spun, heart pounding, looking for any sign of where they had gone, but... nothing. I could neither see nor sense them.
I was alone.
My muscles moved of their own accord. I slouched slightly, my shoulders rounding, and I began to fidget, like I couldn’t bear to stand still. My head turned this way and that, eyes darting anxiously, alert for any sign of intrusion. I have never been paranoid like that, never stood or behaved like that — what was happening? I could feel my heart racing in my chest as I strained to override whatever had taken control of my limbs, but I could not.
Sorry, said Galy’s voice in my head. He said more, a muddled garble of faint, barely audible, haphazardly spilled syllables which I could not comprehend. His voice rose with a growing urgency as he desperately tried to communicate, but I could understand nothing. Time seemed to freeze around me as he struggled to make himself heard; the air grew heavy and still, and nothing moved.
‘Galy,’ I said at last, speaking low. ‘Calm. I cannot hear you, you must show me.’
Well, he did. The strange sensation of suspension faded, colours brightened again and my mind snapped to alertness. I tried to accept the loss of my autonomy, forced myself to relax. It was petrifying to lose control of my own body, but at least it was Galy — he could mean me no harm.
I retained this comforting belief for a good two minutes. When I heard a quick footstep behind me, I tried to turn, but too late. Arms wrapped around me, strong and paralysing, crushing me so hard I could not breathe. I struggled ferociously, but I was too tightly held to escape.
I felt the cold touch of sharp metal against my throat. A line of fire blossomed there; blood flowed in a shocking, hot flood. My limbs weakened all at once, strength flowing out of me with the blood that poured down my chest, soaking my shirt.
I barely felt myself collapse as the arms released me, leaving me to fold limply to the floor. Vision faded and I knew no more.
I was not dead, of course, or how could I write this account? But so convincing was the charade that I was surprised to wake, an unknowable time later, sprawled still upon the floor of Galy’s greenhouse. I flexed my limbs experimentally, and was relieved to find that they responded once more. Shaking and nauseated, I climbed to my feet, sweating with the remembered horror of apparent death.
Or rather, murder. I was murdered a little while ago. And yet, I was alive. Was it my own death I had experienced, a future event yet to happen? Was Galy trying to warn me? The prospect shook me so badly I could not breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t stand still. I paced frantically as panic rose, gulping desperately for air the moment my throat ceased to constrict.
‘Minchu.’ Ah, the blessed relief of Pense’s voice as he found me at last and swept me up in his arms, squeezing me almost as tightly as those terrible arms had moments before. This embrace, though, was welcome. I buried my face in his shoulder and waited for the panic to pass, confident now that it would.
Pense was shaking, too, almost as violently as I was.
‘Did someone cut your throat, a minute ago?’ I asked him when I could speak.
He nodded grimly. ‘I died. Did you?’
I nodded in reply. We stared at each other, and I saw my own fears reflected in his eyes.
‘Well,’ came Meriall’s voice. ‘That was easily the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.’
I looked round, relieved to see both she and Gio returned. Ny, too. They looked about as delighted with recent events as I felt.
‘Either we are all going to die,’ said Gio blandly, ‘Or something else is afoot here.’
That was true. It was certainly possible that we could all be murdered in the same way, but not especially likely.
I remembered the way my posture had changed, my movements subtly altered, my behaviour so different from my own.
‘I think we were Galy,’ I said in a whisper. I could barely speak, because if I was right, we had experienced Galywis’s death and that meant...
‘Galy,’ I called softly. ‘Are you alive?’
Silence. And then, mournfully and so softly I could barely hear him, Sorry.
Tears sprang to my eyes. ‘Oh, Galy,’ I sighed. He was an odd, odd soul, the strangest person I have ever known. Quite mad, not a scrap of sanity remaining, and as a Master Librarian I could not doubt that he had taken decisions in his life that I would find questionable. But I had known him only as a lonely old man, doggedly devoted to his self-appointed task of guarding his precious Library, and capable of both a surprising enthusiasm for little, bright things and a disarming sweetness in trying to share them with us.
Someone had murdered him — cut his poor throat and left him to bleed out on the floor of his own Library. Why?
And did they know that his mind had survived, if his body had not? Did they realise that he and the Library were now one and the same?
We were subdued in the wake of this news, though Galy was not. I sensed a growing urgency from him, at odds with his more buoyant behaviour of the previous day. Something had happened to him, I felt sure. Had there been a threat to the Library, while we worked our way through the corridor of doors? Whatever it was, he was anxious and eager and I was not surprised when his greenhouse dissolved around us as soon as we had deciphered his message.
I could make little sense of what followed, though. We were in a laboratory, watching as young-Krays and a Lokant woman I had never seen before worked together on a project we could discern nothing about. We saw Krays and the same woman arguing about something, presumably many years later, for they both appeared rather older. But the substance of their conversation was impossible to understand, for they spoke rapidly, and in a tongue which I could only half comprehend.
A bare, white-walled room filled my mind, featureless and empty save for a fully constructed draykon skeleton stretched upon the floor, its bones yet to flare with life.
A laboratory again, and a machine of some kind set upon a table. It looked vaguely familiar to me. A split second later it exploded, and a flurry of metal shards flew across my vision.
Then a succession of draykoni replaced the laboratory, all fully-formed and of the shape and proportions I was familiar with. Not partially completed creatures, these, or early test projects; they were finished, hale and alive. But we saw little coherence. It was more like flicking through Galywis’s mental catalogue of the beasts, contextless and confusing. I scarcely had time to note
anything significant about each draykon, save for their general size and colour. Steel-blue, carmine, ochre, night black, cerulean, violet, cinnabar, cream, russet, maroon... so many, and so fast. At length Galy either came to the end of his inexplicable list or he lost his concentration, and it was over.
Then, suddenly, everything was over. The air grew heavy with panic, and I heard Galy babbling crazily in my mind. I could understand nothing of what he said, not a single word, which frustrated me because I have no doubt that it was important.
He gave up with a scream of despair, a raw sound which tore my heart in two. The walls convulsed around us, pulsing in a way that was oddly like... well, it seemed like...
All right, I cannot find a graceful way to express this. The Library of Orlind retched around us and vomited us forth. We were expelled from its confines in a violent surge of energy, propelled some distance through mid-air before we finally hit the ground, hard.
I lay, dazed and aching, in what felt like soft moss. Pense was nearby, I sensed him close. A slightly pained turn of my head brought Meriall and Gio into view, lying sprawled but apparently whole a few feet away.
Nyden was a dark, inert mountain of flesh somewhat beyond. I was grateful that he had not landed upon any of us in the chaos of our involuntary departure.
We were somewhere in Iskyr, I judged. Two suns hung in the sky, and a dewy golden light bathed the glissenwol forest we had come out in. The sight of those towering trunks and broad mushroom caps soothed me a little, for they looked so reminiscent of Waeverleyne, my home.
A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I sat up, briefly repentant of doing so when bruised muscles pulled. I saw a building half-concealed among the trees, a slim tower with too many windows, an oversized and crooked roof and altogether too many colours daubing its walls. If its appearance wasn’t peculiar enough, its behaviour certainly was, for it was fleeing into the distance.
On legs.
I watched it disappear, blinking, wondering whether I had hit my head in the fall and was now hallucinating. But no, of course I was not. That was the Library of Orlind vanishing into the trees, crashing into a sapling in its haste and almost toppling it. Galy had either completed his objective in absconding with us, then, or he had grown so spooked that he had lost his wits and fled.
The legs were a strange touch, but Galy was odd like that. He might be a building now, but he had been a Lokant for centuries, with ordinary limbs. If he wanted to move around in his new state, perhaps his befuddled mind would naturally reach for the familiar tools for doing so.
Meriall sat up. ‘Is that... the Library?’ she said faintly.
‘Mhm,’ I said.
‘And is the Library legging it, in a more literal sense than one would expect a building to be capable of?’
‘Looks that way.’
Meriall blinked, twice, and then lay back down in the moss. ‘It’s possible that I need more sleep,’ she mumbled. ‘I am not at all sure that my wits haven’t been permanently disordered.’
Gio just sat, gazing after the Library long after it had vanished from sight. He caught my eye, and gave me that flickering, sardonic smile of his.
‘What do you make of all of this?’ I asked him.
He shrugged and stood up. I did so, too, encouraged by the hand Pense reached out to assist me. I hurt, there was no denying it. I hurt in lots of places.
Much as I appreciate Galy’s efforts, I cannot help wishing that he had managed to eject us just a mite more gently once he had finished.
‘It’s a riddle,’ Gio said after a thoughtful pause. ‘As to what it means, your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Great.’ I was unable to suppress a sigh. It was ungracious of me, perhaps, but I had been hoping that Gio’s presence would be of more use to us. He was, after all, the only Lokant member of our involuntary little company. He had offered one or two useful insights, but had ultimately contributed little. He had barely even talked. He was a silent presence, following us around, sharing nothing of whatever his thoughts might be. True, he had done nothing to justifiably draw suspicion to himself, but nor had he done anything to earn our trust.
Nyden still hadn’t moved. Pense and I went over to check on him, but he was out cold, oblivious to our presence. I bent over his head, murmuring something both soothing and wakefulness-inducing (or so I hoped) and lightly touched his face.
Pense grabbed a stick and poked him with it.
‘Ow,’ whined Nyden, his scaled hide twitching mightily. ‘Stop that.’
‘You were unconscious,’ said Pense unapologetically.
‘I was not.’ Nyden was indignant as he rose, swaying, to his four legs and shook himself. ‘I was tired, and this moss is deliciously soft. I think I want some at home.’
Pense jabbed him with the stick again, earning himself a reproachful look. ‘Where were you these past few hours, anyway?’
‘Nosing around,’ said Nyden, punctuating this comment with a jaunty thrust of his undeniably pointy muzzle into the air. ‘Did you know there is a hot spring in the Library? It was almost big enough for bathing, even for me.’
Pense sighed, and shoved his hands into his pockets. It is a gesture he picked up from Tren, I think, but he only does it when he is annoyed or dejected. ‘Good to have you with us, Ny,’ he muttered.
I helped Meriall up and conducted a quick, covert assessment of everybody’s state of health. Ny was right, the moss was deep and soft, but Galy had hurled us forth pretty hard. We were stiff and hurting but we were sound, so I turned my attention to the next problem.
‘Galy’s afraid,’ I said. ‘And dead. Sort of. And the corruption of Orlind is spreading and a lot of draykoni are dead and maybe more are that we don’t know about and maybe some more will be if we don’t do something soon.’
Not my most eloquent speech, to be sure. I received nearly identical puzzled looks from the others.
‘Agreed,’ said Pense after a moment.
I rubbed at my forehead, feeling tired. I had no idea how long we had been stuck in the Library more specifically than too long, and it was an exhausting experience trying to keep up with it. I felt disoriented at suddenly being released, and completely confused by everything that had happened. ‘What does it all mean?’ I said at last in frustration. ‘Everything is a mess and Galy’s chosen us to solve it but we have no idea what he has been trying to say.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Meriall stoutly. ‘With five good brains between us, I am sure we can figure it out. Let’s think. What are the connections between a stack of uncharacteristically lifeless draykon corpses, a ballroom of Lokant ghosts, a library full of unreadable books, the spreading corruption of Orlind, an orchard of nara fruit, mad draykoni prototypes and that nutter they call Krays?’
‘Don’t forget watching a draykon die from the inside,’ said Gio.
‘And the corridor of doors to everywhere,’ added Pense.
And being brutally murdered, put in Ny, and added brightly, That was fun!
‘Yes, the death of Galywis,’ I said, frowning. ‘Why would anybody kill him? They must have been trying to get at the Library, surely.’
Gio nodded. ‘It always did attract that kind of attention. Powerful things do.’
Powerful things.
‘All right, so somebody wants the Library,’ I suggested. ‘Much like Krays did. He probably isn’t the only Lokant alive who would like to step into Galy’s old shoes as the Master.’
‘It did occur to me,’ said Meriall in a careful tone, ‘that Krays’s story is perhaps not over.’
I stared at her. ‘What? It has to be. He was eaten.’
‘Yes,’ she said patiently. ‘And I have no doubt that dear Pensould did an admirable job of digesting him. But he was not working alone, was he?’
I was struck with two impressions: horror at the idea that killing Krays himself might not have been enough to destroy the ambitious projects he had been pursuing, and annoyance at myself for failing to imagine the possib
ility sooner.
So. Here we are again, facing a complicated problem, with the shadowy presences of Limbane and Krays looming. The total absence of one and the death of the other might be reason enough to believe them uninvolved, but... I tend to doubt it. Lokants are tricky like that.
‘Krays was the Lokantor of a Library called Sulayn Phay,’ I said with a sigh. ‘An entire Library. You are right, it is by no means impossible that they are intent upon carrying through his plans even without him.’
‘They probably have a new Lokantor, by now,’ Gio offered.
I looked at him for a moment. ‘Those draykoni they were building. The genealogy charts, Gio. We need to see them.’
Pense gave me one of his watchful looks. ‘Do you have an idea, Minchu?’
‘Maybe. I need to see the charts.’
Gio looked more trapped than eager to help, which was disappointing. ‘Ah...’ he said. ‘All right, I will see what I can do to arrange that.’
I opened my mouth, but had no chance to harangue him further. He pulled Eva’s trick, which is to say that he looked intent for a moment and then vanished.
That Lokant thing. He just thought himself to somewhere else, or something. I have no idea how it works, but Eva can do it with about as much difficulty as breathing. Or so it appears.
‘Bye then,’ said Meriall.
‘We won’t wait for him,’ I decided. ‘Who knows how long he will be, and I am not comfortable about standing around here for too long.’ We had no idea where we were, but Galy-as-Library had passed through not long since, and whatever was plaguing him might not be too far away. ‘We need to go home and see Ori. He’s had plenty of time to read those books by now, and he might have found something. Gio will catch up with us there.’
I was a little bit surprised — and secretly, pleased — by the way everybody agreed with the plan and willingly fell in with it. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure how much Ny was even listening, Pense tends to back me up whatever I do, and Meriall would have been highly in favour of any plan which involved going home, getting a bath and her idea of “proper” food. Nonetheless, I felt decisive and resolute and maybe, just a little bit, in charge.
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