LetmeoutletmeoutletmeoutletmeDOWNIneedtogodownletmeout!
‘Wait!’ I cried, frightened that Siggy would fall out just as we vanished and be left behind. Siggy, this is not the moment —
LETMEOUT.
I had to put the collector down in order to get hold of him, but I was too late. He surged out of his sling in a flurry of twisting limbs and fell to the floor.
Then he ran away.
Sigwide ran away from me.
Pense and Ori stared, as shocked as I was. ‘Did that just happen?’ Ori said in awe.
‘Maybe he was more affected by Orlind’s mess than I thought,’ I said, stricken with guilt at having brought him along. But leaving him behind would have been no better.
I ran across the lab after him, but in his wild flight he was too quick for me. He did two crazed circuits around the room at top speed, then careened madly across the floor, neatly dodging the attempts of Pense, Ori and Gio to catch him. He had stopped talking to me, and flatly ignored all my demands for his return.
‘Something is weird about this…’ I said. ‘I don’t think he is frightened, exactly. More… overexcited…’
I left the sentence unfinished because Siggy chose that moment to disappear.
We also heard Dwinal’s voice from the adjacent room, shockingly sudden, for we had not heard her approach. A look of terror crossed Gio’s face and he made a frantic we-need-to-go motion.
I felt a similar panic almost overwhelming my sense altogether. For a second I was too panicked to think, and I couldn’t breathe.
Hold fast, Minchu, said Pense, and his reassuring voice in my mind brought me out of it. I forced myself to think clearly.
Sigwide does not vanish. He is not capable of disappearing into thin air. So: either something disappeared him, or there was a more mundane explanation for his vanishment.
He was also not at all given to such fits of disobedience, and he had never run from me in his life. Therefore: he was not running from me so much as running to something else, something that had attracted his attention in an unusually powerful way. And which he considered important enough to pursue that he was prepared to disobey me.
We have to find him, I told Pense and Ori silently.
We have to go! Ori replied, shooting Gio a look of concern.
You go. The voices from the next room had not come any nearer, and I hoped I would have a few minutes to retrieve Sigwide and find somewhere to hide before they did — if they did. Perhaps Dwinal would leave again without coming in here.
Ori gave me a look of anguished indecision, then grabbed the energy collector and nodded at Gio. The two disappeared with the machine, leaving me and Pense in Dwinal’s laboratory.
I would not leave you here alone, Pense told me. I could only spare a moment to send him a wave of love and gratitude, most of my attention fixed upon the problem of Sigwide.
He had been near the back of the room when he had disappeared, in the far left corner. I could see nothing there that would explain it, but when I approached something shifted subtly in my perception, as though that corner was deeper than it ought to be.
Another step and my foot sank, the floor being apparently a few inches lower than it appeared. I almost fell, barely stifling a yelp of surprise. Pense, here.
He joined me and took my hand. We stepped forward together, and when the floor vanished from beneath our feet and the walls disappeared, we fell together.
We fell a long way, down and down. There was nothing around us but bright, white light, featureless and blinding. I shut my eyes and held tight to Pense’s hand, my heart pounding as we plummeted farther and farther, gaining speed… I knew with conviction that I had erred, we had strayed too far, we must die when we hit the ground.
I’m sorry, I told Pense, wretched with futile remorse.
He merely gripped my hand tighter.
There came a moment where I stopped bracing for impact, stopped reproaching myself, stopped regretting, and… let go. I cannot describe to you how I felt in that moment. There is such freedom in simply falling, such peace in taking what comes without fear or worry or doubt. It is perhaps the only time in my life when I have managed to feel that way.
It’s a shame that I have to be put in a position of inevitable, imminent and unavoidable death before I can manage to relax and accept what comes of my life. I may need to work on that.
Anyway, we did not die. Our rapid descent slowed and we began to float, drifting gently downwards in a cocoon of warm air. The light around us dimmed gradually until I could safely open my eyes and look around.
We were high in the air over a beautiful island surrounded by a glittering green sea. The land was thickly forested and those trees were a mix of kinds: fronded with leaves of cerulean, azure and indigo, and laced with flurries of gold; vibrantly, shockingly green and as plush as forest moss; pale and ethereal and feathery, like clusters of cloud swaying in the breeze; even the broad, painted caps of my own beloved glissenwol. A grand, curving lagoon spread its sparkling waters over one side of the island, and in the centre, directly beneath us, was a building of such size and splendour that I could only stare in awe. It was a cluster of spires and turrets and towers, each architecturally unique and distinct from the rest. The walls were a pure white which shone in the sunlight, and the towers were a flurry of glorious colour.
We drifted down and finally came to rest atop that building. A little raised platform sat in the centre of the roof and upon this we landed, as gently as though deposited by a careful hand. A door was open nearby, though the interior was too dark for us to see beyond the portal.
Pense had not released my hand. We looked at each other, mystified.
‘Well,’ I said after a moment, ‘we are alive.’
‘That is always nice,’ Pense agreed.
‘What do you suppose will happen if we go through the door?’
‘We might die.’ Pense said it with a straight face, though I detected a trace of amusement.
‘Something good might happen, too,’ I said, albeit dubiously.
Pense grinned at me and scooped me into a swift hug. ‘That is the first time I have heard you not only accept but volunteer the possibility of a positive outcome. I am proud.’
I laughed, a bit ruefully. He wasn’t wrong. ‘Let’s find out.’
‘Onward to death.’ Pense released me. He made to move ahead of me in his usual protective way, but hesitated, and finally bowed. ‘Would you like to go first?’ he said instead.
I took hold of his hand again, and kissed it. ‘I think we can manage to go together.’
‘Together it is.’
And so, hands joined and braced for disaster, we approached the door.
On the other side stood a Lokant man, his hair closely cropped. His face was a little lined with age, but he was no ancient. He looked spry and fit and energetic, and he smiled at us with an attractive twinkle in his grey eyes. He was carrying a familiar bundle of grey fur.
‘Yours, I think?’ he said, and held Sigwide out to me. His smile widened and he added, ‘Little creature loves this place. They all do.’
I took back my orting, gratified and relieved by the way Siggy snuggled back into my arms. Apparently his rebellion was over. ‘Thank you,’ I said cautiously. This was one of the Lokants we had seen with Dwinal not long before, standing outside Galy’s fortress… ‘Are you Hyarn?’
‘Good guess.’ Hyarn bowed his assent. ‘Will you come in?’
‘You killed Galywis.’ I backed up a step, and now Pense did step in front of me, growing visibly taller in the process.
Hyarn held up his hands. ‘There are some things you do not understand. If you come this way, I will explain them to you.’
I took another step back, as did Pense. It was futile, for we well knew we had nowhere to go. We were on the roof of a staggeringly tall building and we could hardly fall back up to the lab again — and Gio and Ori, if they were there.
‘You killed Galywis,’ I sa
id again. ‘You crept up on him from behind and cut his throat. Why would you do that?’
Hyarn frowned. ‘That is only part of the truth.’
‘You do not deny it.’
Hyarn sighed and lowered his hands. ‘It was necessary. You will understand why, if you will permit me to explain.’
‘Then do so, but stay where you are. We are not coming in.’
‘Very well.’ Hyarn folded his hands behind his back and met my eyes squarely. ‘You will be aware that Galywis has long been mad, but perhaps you do not know of the extent of it. He lost his grip upon reality long ago, and his behaviour has become more and more out of control. You are aware that he has bonded his consciousness with the remnants of the Library once known as Orlind?’
I nodded.
‘Did you know that he has long been able to do this?’
That took me aback. I stood there, mouth agape, and finally shook my head. ‘I thought it happened after he died.’
‘We first became aware of this ability some little time ago, when he interfered in Lokantor Krays’s attempts to divert the amasku of Orlind. Galywis and the Library were melded for a time, and he walked the place around the island, remaking it according to his preferences. There is a sea in between the island and the mainland, of course, so we had thought that these wanderings were confined to Orlind. As such, his activities did not much concern us, and we were content to leave him in peace. But we were recently proved wrong.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘How could you be unconcerned when he was directly interfering in your Library’s doings there?’
‘I said he had disrupted Lokantor Krays’s project,’ said Hyarn gently. ‘Our leader he may have been, but it does not follow that the whole of Sulayn Phay slavishly followed his whims or even agreed with his ideas.’
I felt all my recent certainty slipping away, leaving me disoriented. ‘Oh…’
‘There was a flaw of some kind with the draykoni,’ Hyarn continued. ‘Galywis knew it, of course, as did our Lokantor. I do not believe Master Galywis ever managed to isolate the cause of the madness that sometimes took hold of his creations, though it was not for lack of trying. It broke Master Galywis’s heart to see it, and when he could not mend it, he concluded the project early.’ Hyarn shook his head sadly. ‘There was talk of seeking a way to terminate all of the draykoni, for their own sake. But Master Galywis stayed his hand, and thankfully the trait seemed to breed out over time. Within a few generations it largely ceased to manifest at all.’
I remembered what Ori had said about the project’s cancellation. Here was why. Too many of those first draykoni were utterly, horrifically, painfully mad, and even Galywis had not known why, or how to help them. I could not help thinking again of the female we had seen in those long-lost laboratories and her desperate, self-destructive flight.
I swallowed, remembering Nyden’s odd way of interacting with the energies of Orlind; the way he absorbed it, melded with it in ways even I could not match. As long as his own core energy remained pure, he was largely untouched by the sickness around him. But time and excessive exposure must erode his resistance, and eventually he would take that sickness into himself and break…
Gio had said Dwinal had no real idea what she had done to the island when she removed those energy collectors. I wondered if Galywis had been ignorant, once, that amasku could be corrupted, could sicken…
Had the Library of Orlind really broken during the Lokant wars, or had the essential damage happened much earlier, and the Librarians had not even realised? Had some of those original draykoni gone mad because they were wrought from pure amasku, and born of energies already twisted and sickened beyond repair?
My mind reeled and I felt sick. There was talk of terminating all of the draykoni, for their own sake.
‘Did... did you kill them?’ I asked, horrified. ‘Our Elders. Have they been going mad again? Did you decide to end everything after all?’
Hyarn shook his head. ‘Galywis did,’ he said, gently enough, but the words still hit me like a punch to the stomach.
I wanted to reject them. I wanted to cry, Not Galy! Not sweet, confused Galywis, who had welcomed us to his beloved old girl and tried so trustingly to share its beauties. Galy, who had come searching for us when he was frightened and in danger, and looked after us so carefully – even Nyden, an Elder, but our friend. Poor, mad Galy, who had sacrificed his sanity and finally his life for the sake of his beloved Library.
But I could not, because it made too much sense. We had seen the sweet side of Galywis, but we had learned more about him since. Galy had presided over the casual destruction of any draykon prototype who went mad. There was talk of terminating every one of them, for their own sake. Galy might not have followed through with it at the time, but… burdened by his own madness, had he reconsidered?
I thought back to everything Galy had shown us himself: the vision of that mad drayk and her appalling pain; the way he and his colleagues were helpless to stop her or cure her and could only destroy her; the way the amasku had eaten through the carcass of a draykon, leaving it barren and dead in its wake. Had that been Galy’s way of showing us what he had done, and why? Had he used the Library itself to take back the energy it had granted in the first place? Nothing to do with the energy collectors, nothing to do with Krays or Dwinal or even Sulayn Phay…
Another thought struck me: the parade of draykoni he had shown us at the end, flashing by colour by colour. It now occurred to me that the hue of one of those glorious creatures matched that of the maddened and destroyed drayk. Had that been Galy’s mental library of Elders, or alyndim as they were called? Or had it been his catalogue of those who had gone mad, and subsequently been destroyed?
‘I believe he acted out of compassion,’ said Hyarn, breaking the appalled silence. ‘I have read his original accounts of the project. It always tormented him, that failure in the design and the pain it caused. It troubled him that there was no reliable way either to cure the afflicted creatures, or to — to put them out of their misery, as it were. Having at last discovered a way, perhaps it was a relief to him to use it.’
‘But — but —’ I stalled, scarcely able to put my objections into words. I took a breath and tried again. ‘Do you mean to say he has been destroying all of the alyndim merely in case they happen to go mad someday? Pre-emptive destruction is not compassion!’
‘That is a question which has much occupied this Library, of late,’ admitted Hyarn. ‘Either he has taken it upon himself to ensure that no other alyndim suffers such pain again, by extracting them from your world before it can happen — and remember that, in his own madness, that may seem to him a perfectly acceptable solution. Or, the very madness he feared and regretted has come upon some several of your number all at once, and he has merely reacted to it.’ He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘If the latter, I do not know what could have caused such a widespread problem.’
‘Galy could not kill indiscriminately,’ I said, though my words sounded hollow to me as I spoke. Was this merely useless, misplaced trust on my part? ‘He is no monster.’
Hyarn merely said, ‘Perhaps.’
‘He need not have involved us,’ Pense pointed out, and I sensed that it cost him something to speak so. He was angry in a dangerous, simmering way, and it would take very little to draw out his rage. ‘He tried to tell us what was happening, and what he was doing about it. We merely failed to understand.’
I sighed, and put a hand to my head. A dull headache was pounding there, and I had only just noticed. ‘His visions were so mixed up, so incomprehensible. Even now, I don’t know... why did he show us any of it?’
‘Good… um, morning?’ said Gio from behind us. I jumped violently and spun. He had just alighted upon the little landing platform, Ori close behind, and my heart gladdened to see them both. But Gio did not look as though he knew where he was, for he and Ori wore matching expressions of confusion. Ori also looked delighted, though, but Gio looked wary and odd
ly… hunted. His face darkened when he saw Hyarn.
‘What is this place?’ he said coldly. ‘What is going on here?’
Hyarn smiled at him. ‘Welcome, Gio.’
Gio blinked stupidly. ‘Welcome? What…?’
Someone else was descending: a woman in shabby black. Dwinal. She had swept back her wild white hair into a hasty ponytail, which made her look less forbidding, but only slightly. Hers was a hard face, devoid of congeniality. She landed directly behind her grandson and patted him on the shoulder.
‘Let me begin by apologising for Gio,’ she said to us. ‘He has always been sadly easy to manipulate, but at least he is useful.’ She was unsurprised to find us there, and instead of violently expelling us the way we might have expected, she gazed upon us with satisfaction. Even smugness. She wanted us there.
Gio stared at his grandmother in utter horror. ‘You mean you…’ He looked around wildly, and up into the distant skies. ‘This was all a set up? You used me?’
Dwinal gave him a quick hug around the shoulders. Under the circumstances, that affectionate gesture was out of place. ‘I had to,’ she told him, unapologetic. ‘This is more important than you.’
The look of betrayal on Gio’s face should have melted the coldest heart, but Dwinal was unmoved. ‘I had no idea,’ Gio said helplessly, and his eyes strayed to Ori’s face. ‘I am so sorry…’
It could have been an act, but I doubted it. His dismay was so raw, I could feel it.
Ori drew Gio closer, scowling. ‘Why are we here?’ he demanded of Dwinal. ‘What is it that you want of us?’
‘I needed to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I take it Hyarn has informed you as to the nature of the problem?’
‘I have,’ said Hyarn, still smiling.
‘Why use Gio?’ I demanded. ‘If you wanted to talk to us, you could have just told us the truth, and asked.’
‘Would you have believed a word I said?’ Dwinal asked, her pale eyes piercing and cold. ‘Would you even have given us the chance to try?’ Her mouth twisted in disgust as she added, ‘Krays’s wife, forever tainted by his glorious legacy. Could I approach those who opposed him and expect to be trusted? No, indeed. I needed to get you here, but I could only achieve that by manipulation. So be it, and here you are.’
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