Llandry

by Charlotte E. English

  Considering that we had seen her standing right outside Galy’s fortress and had not tried to communicate with her, I cannot honestly say that she was wrong. I wondered, fleetingly, whether the energy collectors were relevant at all, or if they had simply been used as bait to draw us to Sulayn Phay. ‘But where is “here”?’ I said. ‘Is this still part of your Library?’

  ‘It is a… model, of sorts.’ Dwinal looked out over the gorgeous forest, the hard lines of her face softening a little. ‘It is Orlind, as it once was.’

  ‘A model.’ Ori repeated the word flatly, and folded his arms. ‘It is an extraordinarily realistic “model”, not to mention unusually life sized.’

  Dwinal shrugged. ‘A plan, then. A layout, a blueprint, whatever you wish to call it. It is a vision, a projection. Not real, but adept at pretending to be so. Before a permanent site was chosen for the Library which came to be called Orlind, several locations were considered and projections built. This is the one that was selected.’

  ‘And lovely it is,’ said Pense. ‘But why are we here?’

  ‘We need your help.’

  Ori laughed. ‘Oh, do you? And why would we help Krays’s wife?’

  Dwinal gave a mirthless smile. ‘You assume that my former husband’s goals must be mine, and I can have no separate aims. It is a common mistake. A wife must support her husband in everything, of course.’

  Ori folded his arms. ‘Even if you had nothing to do with anything he did, we still have no reason to trust or help you.’

  ‘No reason?’ Dwinal looked pointedly at Gio.

  ‘You’ve only used and betrayed your grandson,’ Ori said in disgust. ‘He is another good reason not to trust you.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Ah… why don’t you tell us what you want?’

  I received a look of reproach from Ori for that, but it had to be said. It was of no use locking verbal swords with Dwinal all day. She had a good reason for luring us to her Library, and I wanted to know what it was.

  Dwinal nodded to me, and exchanged a glance with Hyarn. ‘The Library of Orlind has long been a bone of contention among my people,’ she began. ‘It has been the focus of severe conflicts in the past, as you will know. In more recent years it has largely faded from notice, broken as it is. But now the draykoni are returned. Master Galywis’s achievements have been much talked about and there are those — my former husband among them — who look once more to Orlind as a beacon of hope. Some would see it restored to its place as Master Library, and used once more for the kind of visionary projects Galywis dealt in. Others would take up my husband’s work and try to surpass even Galywis’s supreme creation — for which they would also require the use of that Library. It will not be long before you will begin to see other Libraries making exploratory incursions there, in pursuit of some one or other of these ideas.’

  I exchanged a worried look with Pense. This was unsettling news indeed. When Lokants interfered in our Worlds, they invariably caused a great deal of trouble.

  ‘Others disagree,’ continued Dwinal. ‘I disagree. I believe the Library of Orlind has long been a liability, not just for your worlds but for ours as well. My people are disintegrating into factions and the strife could destroy us, as it almost did once before. There could be another war, and it will tear up your Worlds as it will fracture mine.’ She grimaced. ‘I am Lokantor for Sulayn Phay, but my will does not entirely hold sway here. Some of my people are of my own opinion, others opposed. The strife has already begun, and I cannot guarantee that I can hold Sulayn Phay out of the conflict.’

  An inscrutable look passed between Dwinal and Hyarn, and Hyarn took up the tale. ‘Galywis was beyond help,’ he said softly. ‘Believe me, we tried to assist him. We tried to remove him from the Library, which was of paramount importance, for it is the Library and his long residence there which destroyed his mind. But he would not be moved, he would not be helped. He was too far gone. When he began destroying his own creations, we knew it was too late for him. He had to be stopped, and in the end there was only one way to achieve that.’

  The softness of his voice did not blind me to the coldness of his logic, and I could not help feeling a shiver of revulsion and horror at his words. ‘So you just killed him?’

  Hyarn’s gaze flicked to me. ‘I didn’t “just” kill him. It is the worst thing I have ever had to do, and a deed for which I will never be able to atone.’ His mouth hardened into a grim line. ‘But it had to be done. It was the only way to separate him and the Library from one another, and protect our people’s single greatest achievement. Left unchecked, he might have destroyed all of you.’

  I felt a little faint at that prospect. It seemed a ridiculously far-fetched statement, but as soon as I thought of the field of dead draykoni in Ayrien, hidden under that vast meadow of putrid flowers, I had to revise my ideas. What other power could have achieved destruction on so large a scale, and covered its tracks so effectively to boot? My stomach twisted and my heart bled at this vision of Galywis, but I could not reject the possibility of its truth. I did not want to accept Dwinal’s visions of future war, either, but there is no doubt that the Library of Orlind has spawned violent conflicts in the past. Could I reject her fears?

  ‘We need to talk to Galy,’ I said faintly.

  ‘We hope you will,’ Dwinal replied. ‘See, we were not prepared for what happened after the death of Galywis. That he could bond with the Library even after his body was gone seemed inconceivable to us. But so it came to be, and our solution only made the problem graver. Now Galywis and the Library of Orlind are forever entwined, and I fear they are both made stronger by it. And more dangerous, for the madness of Galywis’s mind infects the Library, and the Library’s brokenness exacerbates Galywis’s condition. It is the worst of all possible outcomes.’

  I began to feel an uneasy premonition, one I saw reflected in Pense’s face. ‘What do you want us to do?’

  ‘You want your island restored, do you not?’ Dwinal looked at Gio. ‘So my grandson tells me. It is corrupted, and its corruption is spreading into your realms. Is that the truth?’

  ‘It is,’ I said, ‘and the effects will be grave indeed if we do not mend it.’

  Dwinal nodded. ‘It is the Library’s presence there which causes the disruption. It is the rotten fruit in the barrel, and its decay is too advanced to be reversed. If you would prevent the farther spread of that decay, then it must be removed. And its removal will also divert the possibility of a war which neither of our peoples want.’

  ‘Removed,’ said Ori bleakly. ‘You mean destroyed.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dwinal stared him down, unmoved. ‘That Library’s continued existence causes nothing but trouble for all of us. It must be destroyed, and forever. But Galywis will listen to nobody. Nobody but you, that is.’

  I felt sick. ‘You want us to turn on Galy.’

  ‘By any means necessary.’ Dwinal turned her cold stare upon me, and I am sorry to admit that I quailed a little. Her ruthless commitment to her purpose was intimidating, to say the least. ‘Talk to him. Perhaps you can get him to see reason, somehow. Perhaps there is lucidity enough left in him to hear the sense of your argument. Believe me, all of us hold Galywis in the highest possible respect, and his loss is a great blow to our people.’ Her voice softened a touch at last. ‘But he was lost long ago. He is no longer the Master Lokantor that we knew, and all his genius is turned to destruction. If he will not see reason… then you must do whatever is necessary. Trick him, trap him — anything.’

  ‘Betray him,’ Ori said coldly. ‘Say that to our faces, if it is what you mean.’

  ‘If you see it as a betrayal, then yes: betray him. For he has betrayed you. You sought the killer of your people: we have given him to you. Do what you must, to protect both your Elders and your island. And we will do as we must, to protect our people. An alliance between us is vital, if our separate ways of life are to be preserved.’

  I mentally revised my assessment of all the decisions we
have had to make in the past few moons. Few of them struck me as either so grave, or so impossibly difficult, as this one. ‘How can we know that you speak the truth?’ I said desperately. ‘We have heard so many tales, so many points of view… they cannot all be true. How can we know?’

  Dwinal looked at me, and I thought I detected a faint note of sympathy in her cool gaze. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. ‘Talk to Galywis,’ she advised. ‘He trusts none of his own people any more, but he trusts you. If you ask him for the truth, I believe he will give it.’ She indicated the lush island before us with a sweep of her arm. ‘In the meantime, I encourage you to explore this projection. It is an accurate vision of your beautiful island as we found it. Perhaps it could be a vision of the future, as well as the past.’ She glanced briefly at Gio and added, to my surprise, ‘Whatever you decide, do look after my grandson.’

  Dwinal and Hyarn left us then, with few words and no ceremony whatsoever.

  For a while, silence reigned. Pense and Ori and Gio and I could only look at each other in speechless dismay, and nobody knew what to say.

  Gio finally spoke up. ‘Listen… for what it is worth, my grandmother is known for her brutal honesty. I do believe that she speaks the truth.’

  ‘Why would she lie?’ Ori asked. ‘Maybe she has some other reason to want Orlind destroyed, and maybe we would not approve of it. But however that may be, we do not want to risk more Lokant wars spilling into our Worlds. They did enough damage last time.’ I could see that he hated to speak those words, for he looked weary and disgusted and appalled. But he could see the sense of her words, just as much as I could.

  ‘And she may be right about the Library,’ I added. ‘It may well be the source of the corruption…’ I shared the thoughts that had struck me earlier, about the Library’s sickness and the madness of those early draykoni. By the time I had finished, Pense looked grimmer than ever.

  Ori groaned, and briefly put his face in his hands. ‘Such a mess,’ he lamented. ‘The last thing I want is for Dwinal and Hyarn to be right about any of this.’

  Gio leaned against Ori’s shoulder, a silent comforting presence. It seemed to help, for Ori calmed a little at once, and awarded Gio a grateful smile. ‘I’ll be all right. But we had better be certain that the Library really is causing the problem, before we even think of…’ he trailed off, unable to finish. Before we think of colluding with Sulayn Phay to destroy Galy.

  ‘I have a theory on that,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘The pattern of corruption has spread so much faster than we thought it would, but not evenly. It has spread farther and faster in some places than in others. Is that not the truth? We have not finished mapping its reach, but the pattern there is clear enough, or rather the lack thereof.’

  Ori nodded slowly. I could almost see him putting the pieces together in his head, his quick mind having no trouble following my lead. I was more surprised that I had arrived at this conclusion before him. ‘Oh,’ he said at last, and sighed.

  Pense and Gio wore twin looks of befuddlement. ‘What is your theory, Minchu?’ said Pense. ‘Enlighten the challenged amongst us.’

  ‘I think the corruption follows the path of the Library. If the Library’s mere presence causes the disruption, what would come of Galy running off with the place? Wherever Galy and the Library have gone, they have left a trail of broken amasku behind them. Only subtly so, barely perceptible, but it is there. I have felt it.’ And I had, though I was not able to identify what I was feeling at the time. At each of those sad, pale graves I had felt traces of that kind of disturbance, like a strange footprint in the amasku.

  ‘All this can be confirmed,’ put in Pense, ‘once we return to the Seven. Avane should have more information for us.’

  I nodded. ‘We know some of the places the Library has passed through, because we saw it ourselves. And if the trail extends to all the places we have found slain draykoni, too...’ I could not finish the sentence, for it looked so black for poor Galy.

  Ori sighed. ‘Fine. If all of that is confirmed, then we will have to try to talk to Galy.’

  ‘No easy task,’ I agreed.

  ‘We will try.’ Ori leaned sadly upon Gio. ‘You are not hiding any more secrets, are you Gi?’

  Gio shook his head, emphatic. ‘No, and never shall again. I am worn to shreds with the strain of it all.’

  I could easily believe that, for he looked it. He was paler than ever, which brought the shadows beneath his eyes into stark contrast. He was a little rumpled and a little disordered, no longer the scrupulously neat and perfectly groomed man I had first known. He had dropped his air of untouchable composure, too, or simply lost it somewhere along the way. The strain was visible on him.

  ‘Let’s explore,’ I suggested. ‘This is a Library, we have time. Then we will go home and... figure things out.’

  ‘I am game for that first part,’ Ori said, his smile returning as he looked out at the trees. ‘This place is so beautiful I could almost cry.’

  Pense’s curiosity equalled Ori’s, though he was less effusive about it. He and Ori and I Changed our shape, and Gio helped secure Siggy into his flight-sling upon my foreleg. Then he climbed up onto Ori’s back.

  Here we go, Ori said as he rose into the air. I saw a look of pure delight cross Gio’s face as he experienced flight for the first time.

  After you, Minchu, said Pense.

  It was bittersweet, soaring over those glorious trees. Orlind-as-was lay spread before us like a banquet of life and colour, and the contrast with the bare, dead island of my memory could not be more stark. We flew over a twinkling stream which flowed into a serene lake; the beds of both were littered with chunks of purplish, crystalline rock, tinting the clear waters with bursts of lavender colour. We saw exquisite glades, carpeted with cloudy moss and fronded with sprays of misty foliage. Some of the trees soared to unimaginable heights, and here the glissenwol were the tallest of them all, their caps sheltering delicate leaf-bedecked trees under their care. This vision of the island had been captured in late summer, perhaps, for some of the trees and bushes were vibrant with flowers, while others had already begun to bear a delicious array of bejewelled fruits. I wished it could be possible to sample some of them, for I recognised few of the species that I saw.

  And the animals! We saw them everywhere, soaring aloft or scurrying through the grasses, the mosses and the ferns of the woods. There were plump, soft-furred meerels searching for their favourite fat fruits to eat; kreeays on the wing, white-feathered and swift; curly-tailed irilapters with their iridescent wings; drauks and ortings, worvillos and woles, even a whistworm caught out in the daylight hours, quick to withdraw into its ground dwelling as we flew over.

  It was a heartbreaking picture of all we had lost with the fall of Orlind, and it brought the importance of our task into clear focus. What had become of our beautiful Seventh Realm was a tragedy. If it could be reversed, it was our duty to do all in our power to try. And it was our utterly inescapable duty to prevent a similar destruction from happening to any other part of our cluster of worlds.

  We concluded our tour at last and reconvened on the roof of the fabulous bejewelled building — a structure standing in for Orlind itself, in what had once been a hypothetical future. Pense and Ori were as resolute as I, and even Gio had changed. His confusion and wretchedness had faded, and he and Ori stood close together, clearly a united team.

  ‘Ready for this?’ Ori said.

  Pense said, ‘Yes,’ without a trace of hesitation.

  ‘I think so,’ I said, unable to equal Pense’s certainty but more than willing to try.

  Gio merely nodded. I thought he looked a little nervous, which put me in sympathy with him. Small wonder either, for he now had strong ties to both sides of this chaotic adventure, and that could only be an uncomfortable position to occupy.

  ‘Here we go, then,’ said Gio.

  I braced myself for the whirl of translocation, and took one last, longing look at the beauty and peace ar
ound me. I wanted to fix it in my heart and mind, so I could always summon it at need. The road to the renewal of Orlind would be a long and difficult one, and I wanted to have this vision always, to guide and sustain me through it.

  So we went, leaving the gorgeous vision of old Orlind for its broken and bare reality.

  And all that delicate peace I had so carefully stored up was shattered in an instant, for we arrived to find the island in chaos.

  16 VIII

  Everybody Goes Mad.

  And Some Things Explode.

  Gio transported us to a spot on the edge of the island, which was lucky because the rest of it was engulfed in what looked like a miniature war.

  Galy-as-fortress had taken possession of the centre of the island, and when I say that I mean the foreboding black castle was far larger than it had been before, and looked grimmer than ever. The battlements had sprouted long, wickedly sharp spikes which pointed outwards and upwards, aimed to discourage airborne assailants. The walls were as sheer as a cliff face and completely smooth, unclimbable. There were no doors or windows, and a moat had appeared around the base of the building, wide and deep and filled with something too green to be water. It stank, too; we could smell it even from our relatively safe distance.

  The air was full of draykoni on the wing. As we watched, a unit of ten launched themselves at the castle, teeth and claws bared, screeching curses. They were aiming for the roof; perhaps they thought they could find a way in up there, considering that’s how my group had gone in and out not long before. But they never made it. Slits opened up in the walls of the castle and missiles shot out. I could not see what they were — rocks, arrows, bullets, something else entirely? But they served Galy’s purpose. Three draykoni dropped, their wings shredded. Two others howled in pain and swerved away, abandoning the attack. The rest were forced to retreat, too, and Galy stood victorious.