The God of Lost Words

by A J Hackwith

  But water in the Library was almost worse than fire. Humidity played all sorts of havoc with old documents. Bindings broke down, paper disintegrated, leather gave way to mildew. Those properties might not apply to magical water and magical books, but then again, fire had still burned, even in Hell. She wasn’t willing to risk it.

  “Echo! Iambe!” Brevity raised her voice again, but the only shape that stirred from farther down the stacks was a feathered one. Rami emerged from the direction of the lobby carrying an armload of books. He’d taken his reassignment from the Arcane Wing to the Unwritten Wing in stride and had already cleared two carts of repaired books back to the stacks. Brevity could barely get Hero to do one cart a week and idly wondered if that was precisely why Rami was doing them. Besides, the haunted look he’d had since he’d returned from the labyrinth’s realm told Brevity he was looking for something to occupy himself.

  “Can I assist?” Rami asked as Brevity passed him.

  “No—yes—have you seen Echo?”

  Rami shook his head. “Should I . . . ?”

  “No, it’s all right. I’ll find her and have a . . . a word.” Brevity disliked the idea of conflict. The idea was to pull all the librarians together into a united front, after all. But perhaps if she worked out some ground rules with the Unsaid Wing, it would all go smoother when Hero coaxed the others to join them here. “Can you keep an eye on . . . things?”

  Both of them gave an involuntary glance in the direction of the closed and barred doors of the lobby. Brevity had even managed to coax the gargoyle in from the hallway, and he was dozing in a storm of static and broken physics against the doors. The wards were up and, after the first barrage, reported only light incursions testing the perimeter. Malphas hadn’t pressed her advantage after burning the Arcane Wing. Not even when Claire and Hero had left for Valhalla. The general of Hell might be patient, but it was unlike her to not press an advantage when she saw it.

  Rami nodded, and Brevity appreciated the subtle military shift to his shoulders. “I’ll keep watch.”

  She patted him wordlessly and took off down the Romance—Rivalries—Enemies to Lovers aisle, which she knew was a shortcut to the wider canyon-like intersection of shelves that ran like a main artery through the modern collections of the wing. When she didn’t find signs of Echo there, she made a cursory check of the older collections, where a majority of the vines and heavy tablets of writing from the Unsaid Wing had migrated, then checked the damsel suite—Pallas was sleeping and, Rosia informed her firmly, was not to be wakened—before poking her head into some of the rooms of closed-off collections. The air was stagnant and chill as a tomb back here, lights kept purposefully dim. The books that lived here hadn’t woken up during Brevity’s tenure in the Library, possibly not even Claire’s. The dust was still thick on the copper doorknobs, which left her reasonably confident that Echo hadn’t gone this way.

  “Right.” Brevity had winnowed through her remaining patience. Sometimes the Unwritten Wing was just too big to find someone the old-fashioned way, like a human. Brevity didn’t know how Claire put up with it. Thank gods she was still muse enough to shadowstep. It was the one perk she’d retained in Hell. It didn’t extend beyond the bounds of the Library itself, but if she kept a firm vision of Echo in her mind’s eye . . .

  She lifted her foot off the hardwood, closed her eyes, and set her foot back down into shadow. The familiar rich smell of old books got wiped away by a cold rush that always brought a tingly pink feeling to Brevity’s pale blue cheeks. She kept her eyes closed, focusing on the idea of Echo’s location, and broke into a confident run. It should be only a handful of steps at most—

  Her foot came down on nothing—a nothing even more nothing than shadows. Brevity lost her concentration as her stomach flipped and she opened her eyes. Soft shadows pooled around her, but the familiar chill of in-between places didn’t sear her eyes.

  She stood on a marble floor that was an ashy black. A circle of light lit up the floor around her but cast the rest of the room in impenetrable gloom.

  This wasn’t the Library. Brevity’s flicker-quick shadowsteps around the wing had never been interrupted before. She hesitated and stepped forward. “Hello?”

  The silence drew out. It was another several seconds before it broke with the crisp click of footsteps. Boots the color of dull brick stepped into the light. Malphas tilted her head. “Hello, Librarian.”

  Brevity didn’t wait for her to say anything else. She took two steps back to reach for the easy escape of the shadows. They weren’t there. The absence made her stumble, and her back slammed into an invisible barrier at the edge of the light.

  “Settle down, child, or I’ll have to get disciplinary,” Malphas said mildly.

  “I’m not a child, not to you,” Brevity said as she felt unsteadily along the barrier of the light. It didn’t feel like any ward that she’d encountered. It didn’t even feel like magic; no porous surface for her to wiggle her will into. It was as smooth and cold as the stone beneath her feet. Brevity’s pulse juddered into her throat, but she straightened up anyway. She’d had practice at being terrified, at least. “Maybe I’m older.”

  “Older than me?” That seemed to amuse Malphas. “You are an established spirit, I’ll grant you that. Not a childish simulacrum of sentience like a human. That’s why I’m affording you the respect of this.”

  “Respect?” Brevity’s laugh was shaky and weak. She hated it; she wanted to be brave. Brave like Claire, strong like Rami, clever like Hero. But she was only Brevity. Only ever Brevity. “It doesn’t feel like it,” she ended softly.

  “You were foolish enough to do your little muse trick in my realm. The Library may be sovereign, but the shadows have always belonged to Hell. I watched you do it before without caring enough to intervene. But now . . . Easy enough to divert you here. If you were Claire or that little pest of a book she keeps around and I caught you in such a slipup, you’d be burning in a pit of flame.” Malphas shrugged. She leaned on an ebony cane, and though Brevity knew it was simply for show, it gave her a wistful air, like a parent about to hand down a punishment she regretted. Grandmother of ghosts.

  The mention of Claire spurred Brevity to ask the question that she would have asked from the start. “What do you want, Malphas?”

  “Interesting question, isn’t it? First I wanted Andras, then the Library, but I must be getting weary in my old age. What I want right now, more than anything, my dear, is answers.”

  “You already interrogated us.” The swoop in Brevity’s belly was something more than anxiety, more than fear. It was the first inkling that this was not like the other encounters. This was not a short visit, brief words exchanged full of vague threats and violent promises. It occurred to Brevity that she didn’t know where, exactly, she was.

  And that no one else knew where she was either.

  “What is Claire after? You know this realm business is a fool’s errand.” Malphas began to pace, stabbing the ground with her cane more for emphasis than support. “Something has changed within the Library. Even a demon can feel it. You’re going to tell me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re the librarian. Librarians with access to books don’t get to beg ignorance.” Malphas circled like a particularly slow predator. “The books, is that it? The Library’s grown in power, not diminished since Andras’s little stunt with the fire. Why is that?”

  Brevity fell quiet.

  “And then the way the Unwritten and Arcane closed ranks so softly recently. The inventories tell us nothing, but something has changed. It’s sus—”

  “You’d have to ask Claire,” Brevity demurred, heart shuddering between her ribs.

  “No . . . I don’t think I do. The answer’s not in the Arcane Wing, not anymore.” Malphas slowed in her stalking as if a thought had caught her attention. “So protective of the one
called Hero, a simple book. But that’s—an interesting prospect. Requires skepticism, though; it will require confirmation. The books?” Malphas finished mulling to herself and narrowed her yellow hawk eyes on Brevity. “The books are the power.”

  “Books are always powerful,” Brevity said faintly.

  “No. The books are a power, and power that survives destruction is . . .” Malphas stopped, pivoting slowly on her heel. “What are books made of, little muse?”

  Brevity swallowed and held still.

  “Not cooperative?” Malphas straightened. “That’s fine. We can continue this as long as it’s necessary.”

  “I’m the librarian,” Brevity said quickly. “You’re not allowed to touch me.”

  “And I won’t.” Malphas took a predatory step and stopped just short of the light. “In fact, I plan to forget all about you.”

  “What . . . ?” The stone beneath Brevity’s feet grew hot. She had just enough time to lunge for the barrier, fingers scrambling against nothing, before the ground beneath her dissolved completely. Then she was falling.

  “An oubliette.” She could hear Malphas’s voice grow faint above her as the world tunneled to an endless fall. “Hell is for forgetting, after all.”

  20

  HERO

  There’s something that ties together the collections of the Library. Unwritten, Unsaid, Unwon, and so many more. Myrrh, they are all products of human soul, yes, of course there is that. But something more: regret. Regret lingers on. Regret fractures our souls into many. Maybe, just maybe, the counterpower to creation isn’t destruction—that’s just entropy, just natural. No, the opposite of creation isn’t destruction; it’s regret.

  It’s the stories we never tell that carry the most weight.

  Librarian Yoon Ji-Han, 1801 CE

  The oppression of the stone hallway opened up as they turned the corner. Hero could tell that by feel rather than sight. It was still dark, smothering dark. But the air took up that decompressed quality of a wide space, spawning currents and eddies of warmth and cold. A breeze skimmed the droplets of water still clinging to Hero’s cheeks, chilling him further. He hunched into his (also sodden) coat and followed Bjorn.

  A flare bloomed into the darkness, forcing Hero to shield his eyes. A small campfire crackled to life, the likes of which one might make in the wood, at the end of the day when you’re tired and bone cold and unable to go any farther. It lit up nothing but the bare ground around it, abandoned but crackling with a merry heat.

  They moved toward it by instinct, letting some of the moisture wick from their clothes. Claire tried to discreetly shake out the long locks of her hair. “How much farther to this wing of yours, Bjorn?”

  “Not far at all.” He crouched by the fire, looking half-ghost himself as he poked at the embers.

  “Not far. You said that a waterfall, one woods, and too much damned meadow back. How—”

  “Listen.” Bjorn held up a hand. “I warned you, be quiet. Listen.”

  The old man was being unnecessarily cryptic, but instead of arguing, Claire took a step toward the fire. He saw her eyes narrow as she studied it. Ember light lit her from below, softening the flickering light into something less than hellish, more sad. Hero took a knee beside her, then froze.

  The voice was so soft, so well entwined with the crackle of the fire, he nearly missed it. But straining to hear, Hero could pick out a soft hum. It rose, querulous and unsteady, until it finally started to form words.

  “Just wanted coffee. Get so damned few other pleasures in this pisshole. All the nurses and busybodies. A man deserves a little dignity.” The voice was rocky with age. Hero raised his head, alert, but couldn’t tell from which direction it was coming. He squinted, but his mind supplied half-formed faces in the dark that he couldn’t be sure were there. “Angina acting up again. This heartburn is a bitch. Where is that—just a little farther—feels warmer now.”

  Another voice bled into the first, seamless and also without direction. This one was younger. “He says if I’m quiet and good I get to go home. He brings me fries, lets me dip ’em into the milkshake like Mama doesn’t. The salt’s still on my tongue when he reaches for his belt.” The voice is distant—it could be on the other side of the campfire, or miles away. Safe, wherever it is, from the story it’s telling. “The carpet smells like my dog, Max. I want to go home.”

  “What is this place?” Claire’s voice was hoarse and hollow with horror.

  “The Unwon Wing, as promised.” Bjorn sat cross-legged at the fire now, and Hero realized he could see him better. Other fires had sprung up around them. Not close enough to see any other figures in the dark, but the fires bloomed in scattered patches for what felt like miles. They were at the edge of some huge camp, an army of ghosts.

  “Everyone has one story, one story no one ever gets to tell,” Bjorn continued, low and somber.

  “The story of how they died,” Claire whispered. Bjorn nodded.

  “Those stories are worth preserving too.”

  “Valhalla was supposed to house the wing of war epics,” Claire said.

  Bjorn’s smile was a husk of a thing. “Valhalla is the realm for fallen heroes. We listen to stories of battle, even battles you lost.”

  “The nurses try to mask the taste with yogurt,” a young voice was saying, somewhere in the dark. It whistled around a missing tooth. “But medicine doesn’t taste like strawberries, or vanilla. They’re not fooling anyone. Mom fell asleep in the chair again.”

  “Even the battles you lost are worthy,” Bjorn said. “Winning doesn’t make a warrior; trying to live does that.”

  “This is ghastly.” Claire had her hands clenched to her stomach.

  “This is human,” Hero muttered, to his own surprise. Claire turned to look at him and he shrugged. “My story contained plenty of death. We all want our stories to mean something, or to at least be heard.”

  “Some last stories never are,” Bjorn said.

  “Lost. Town has to be over that hill. Has to be,” a voice like hoarfrost muttered. “Was cold but now getting warm, so warm . . .”

  “At least in a book, you know your last story will be told. It will be written down and lived, moment by moment, by every reader that comes along.”

  “To die over and over again,” Claire sounded horrified.

  “To live over and over again,” Hero reminded her.

  “They take the village. We run, and run, but they come again.” An old woman’s voice rang out. “This time, I do not run.”

  “Is everyone’s last story here, in your wing? Is mine? Is—” Claire’s breath caught so sharply that Hero had to glance her way. But she wasn’t injured, not physically at least. “Is Leto here?”

  “The wing holds stories, not the people themselves.” Bjorn gestured to the miles of campfires around them. “Do you see any dead here?”

  “We know where Leto’s soul is. We saw him off,” Hero murmured softly. “It’s not here, Claire.”

  “But the tale and the teller are the same,” Claire said with a feverish tone. “If Leto’s story is here, then it’s a sliver of his soul—”

  “What did you say?” Bjorn interrupted sharply.

  “The road is icy,” grumbles one voice, as another whispers, “Oh god, the turbulence.”

  Hero was abruptly reminded of this mission, the point in coming here. He glanced at Claire, but she appeared still caught in the suffering idea of Leto. He shook his head and stole the stick from Bjorn to poke at the fire. “Right, didn’t we mention? Stories have souls. Bit of a surprise to even me, really, being told all this time I was a bit of imagination and paper—”

  “Myrrh,” Bjorn muttered to himself.

  “Myrrh,” Hero affirmed. It was the code word previous librarians had used to index specific entries in the Librarian’s Log. Specific entries that cataloged
their joint efforts to unravel the secret that the Library was hiding, the reason for the Library itself. The Library didn’t simply exist because the unwritten stories of humanity were important. The Library existed because stories were a part of humanity.

  Souls.

  “If that’s true . . .” Bjorn’s brows beetled together, and then he shook himself. “I spent six hundred years tryin’ to puzzle that one out.”

  “Well, some of us are slower than others,” Hero said generously. He knew what Bjorn was really asking. “There was a fire, when Andras made his move.”

  “Never liked him.”

  “You never liked me either. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Hero grimaced and continued. “Books were destroyed in the fire. Or we thought they were, until a cistern of ink turned up. Unwritten ink.”

  “The books?” Bjorn’s voice took on a gruff kind of wonder.

  “The stories,” Claire said weakly, though she appeared to be gathering herself. She wrapped her arms around her chest, as if trying to hold on to the heat from the campfire. “The souls of the stories. Souls are immortal things. They can’t be destroyed by mere fire.”

  “Immortal and powerful, which makes them valuable to every creature of every realm without a soul.” Hero tightened his grip on the bit of wood in his hand. “And the secret is out.”

  “Hell knows?” Bjorn ventured.

  “I suspect at least Malphas does.” Claire drew her shoulders up, but Hero knew the signs. Her eyes searched the dark, a constant roving. And the fingers of her left hand rubbed at the wrist of her right. That had been the tell of her nerves ever since the injury of the ink. “I think she knows, and she’s trying to back the Library into a corner. So we gave her a feasible excuse to move against us. She’s burned the Arcane Wing.”

  “You and your friends would have sanctuary here,” Bjorn said softly, jamming his thumb in Hero’s direction. “Even this idiot.”

  “Bjorn, I’m touched,” Hero cooed.