The Book That Wouldn't Burn, page 5
In any event, along with a considerable wealth of psychology, the main thing Evar had learned from Kerrol was not to underestimate his reach. His brother was flexible as water, capable of filling any hole in a conversation, flowing on, carrying nothing of it with him save for useful information, no more touched by passion or honesty than a river remembers its course.
Evar abandoned Kerrol to his reading and carried his exhaustion into the stacks. Clovis had left him too sore for sleeping. And besides, she might need help.
At the back of his mind Evar had the suspicion that Kerrol had sent him after Clovis. It was always hard to know with Kerrol. Evar shrugged it off and carried on, following the signs of his sister’s trail. She’d left faint hints at footprints in the thin layer of sooty dust that drifted here and there against the book towers.
Starval had taught him to track, though Evar could never track Starval. Second best at everything. That was Evar. And a distant second place at that. Evar didn’t even know what book he had taken into the Mechanism on that fateful day, but it hadn’t given him a skill. He’d even proven himself to be bad at escaping.
The task of escaping the chamber was one that Evar had set himself very early on, and it had occupied him wholly for years despite the others calling it an exercise in futility.
He had read many books about people who had escaped from prisons, each prison more terrible and impenetrable than the next. It seemed to him that what had set apart those remarkable individuals who did indeed win free was that they all had something to escape for rather than from. A reason to aim themselves at. Unlike his three brothers and one sister, Evar had a reason. A better one than simply an unquenchable desire to know what lay behind each of the four white doors that confined them. A better one than the ache for new horizons or the need for any company other than that of his siblings. Evar had someone to save.
The library’s silence and the solitude of his walk polished the stone of Evar’s ever-present loneliness, burnishing it until it gleamed with a high shine. Evar’s parents, everyone he had known as a child, were long dead. Time’s tide had carried them off while Evar passed the decades away in whatever place the Mechanism had held him. He had few memories of the time before. The Mechanism had reduced that to a blur.
Of all of them only Clovis properly remembered the childhood she’d had before the Mechanism took her. She had been the last child the Mechanism took. The four brothers had been lost inside it years before, on separate occasions, separated by decades. Their disappearances had been random, unfortunate accidents that their people either forgot or considered a risk worth taking for the delights offered within.
Clovis’s final day had been written too deeply to be erased. The slaughter that she’d run from was the anvil on which she had been formed and she carried the weight of it about her neck everywhere she went. It would never bow her – not Clovis, but it left her too hard for kinship, unable to bend in the ways that mattered when living among others.
Evar walked on, trying to stay focused on Clovis’s trail and on the danger posed by the Escape that could be lurking behind any of the thousands of book stacks. Despite his efforts, his thoughts kept straying to his unfinished ramp, his probably doomed attempt to reach the distant ceiling. Of late, his struggle to find a way out of the chamber had grown steadily more intense. The Escape, clothed in whatever nightmare form it could find to steal, would be scary enough, but what Evar truly feared was that he would die here in this chamber, not beneath the talons of a monster but of old age. That he would wither and die within a stone’s throw of the place he had been born, and in the company of the same three faces he saw every day. That he would see nothing, do nothing, spend his days in the same cage, and even his remains would wait out eternity in the same chamber. Lately though, something had changed, something ineffable, a wind that moved not even the smallest mote of dust had blown through the room, and Evar knew it was time to go. If not now, then never.
As a child, Evar had found a book that claimed a circle of blood could open a door. He had nearly bled himself dry drawing crimson loops on the white expanse of each of the doors that held them in. But what ran in his veins proved unequal to the task. Undaunted, he continued to hunt the walls and floor in search of secret exits. It stood to reason that amid the thousands of acres, almost all of it covered with books in columns and towers stacked to precarious heights, there might be a dozen hidden ways that had not only eluded his small family, but the many generations that had dwelt in the same prison before them.
Since Mayland’s death, Evar’s efforts had taken on a new tone that even he acknowledged carried a note of desperation. All of them believed that Mayland was dead, though his body still lay hidden out among the stacks. Kerrol and Clovis seemed to think that Starval had murdered him. Starval thought there was a good chance that Clovis had cut Mayland down in one of her black moods. Evar felt it more likely that an Escape had killed Mayland, or perhaps he had simply been the unfortunate victim of a tower collapse and they would one day find his bones beneath a drift of books.
Evar had been on Clovis’s trail for an hour or so, winding back and forth through the stacks, before he realized he was being stalked. Book towers rose around him on all sides. The stacks extended from wall to distant wall. In some areas the towers stood no higher than Evar’s knees, like a shallow sea, its waves frozen in place. Here, though, they were five books thick and twice or even three times his height, sometimes with barely enough room between their bases for him to squeeze through. Few places in the chamber offered much of a view. Despite the many acres, the sight line in most of it extended only a few yards, wrapping any venture into the interior in a sense of growing claustrophobia.
Evar had fought Escapes before with his siblings. The things leaked from the Mechanism, black ghosts seeking form among the richness of the book stacks, feeding on old ideas. Kerrol said age had finally reached into the device and cracked it.
The first Escape had emerged several years ago and whilst the frequency with which they had appeared seemed to grow, still they had been a rarity. This year, however, there had been six.
Twice, Evar had faced one alone and emerged victorious. Something was different here though. Here the library’s habitual stillness had grown brittle. The light that bled from everywhere and cast no shadows seemed … changed. Challenged. The hairs across the back of Evar’s arms prickled and a primal terror constricted his throat. Suddenly being out alone, against Kerrol’s advice, seemed less a righteous act of defiance, and more of a mistake. A potentially fatal one.
Evar moved on, glancing behind him at regular intervals. In a place where shadows held no sway the eye couldn’t take comfort in self-delusion. The blackness that flitted from behind one stack to hide behind another could have no source other than the Escape. Evar had come out among the stacks as the hunter and in some manner he didn’t fully understand had become the prey. Fear filled him from toe to head, as if he were an empty glass into which the Escape had poured all its terror in one swift action.
He started to run.
He sped between the towering book stacks of the east corner, chased by a dark malignance that meant to eat him whole. And as the Escape steadily gained on him – despite the great hurt that the Mechanism had done him – had the grey structure stood before him, door open wide, he would have dived right back in to win free.
In the third age of the Arcadian Federation, man’s mastery of nature reached such heights that disease was undone, age defeated, and even the stars were claimed as jewels in humanity’s crown. In short, any dream might be made real. But some dreams are dark.
The Dust of Arcadia. A fragment. Author unknown.
CHAPTER 5
Evar
Evar sucked in a breath, pushed through a narrow gap, raced on. He turned in time to see the Escape flicker from the concealment of one stack to the next, a black insinuation, half-seen tendrils ghosting across the spines of a dozen books. Given time, it would drain them, leaving blank pages, constructing itself from fragments of stolen thought, old ideas repurposed to the business of death. In its pursuit of Evar, though, the Escape hadn’t time to empty whole chapters, and the stories beneath those covers left only unquiet ripples across its many surfaces.
Breath ragged, heart hammering, Evar tore through the stacks, ricocheting from one to the next, leaving them rocking behind him. The Escape wove a cleaner path, following his fear, reaching for him with thin, dark hands. The faster he ran, the more quickly it gained on him.
Think.
He was too far from home. Too far from the safety of the others. It would catch him long before he could make it back to the pool. It would catch him, kill him, and hide his corpse. They hadn’t found Mayland’s body yet and it had been a whole year.
Evar glanced left and right, sucking his breath past bared teeth. The Escape had hidden itself again, but he could feel it out there, feel its hunger pulsating in the unseen spaces beyond his vision. This one was worse than the others had been. Evar had fought Escapes before, but he could tell this one was something new. Something awful.
The air lay thick with must, the lazy drift of dust motes bright with light, oblivious to the tension. The dust underfoot here was gritty and red, untouched by soot. Evar shot through, pursued by the pounding tattoo of his own feet.
A misstep and Evar’s shoulder hit a tower. The impact spun him half around – long enough to see the tower sway and begin to topple in his wake. Behind it the Escape boiled towards him, a black flood … with legs. Evar’s next crash was into something more solid, without even a hint of give in it. The collision threw him to the ground and broke his vision into bright fragments.
Evar lay curled around his pain, lungs emptied and unable to haul in much-needed air. The Escape, contrary to expectation, shuddered to a halt against the nearest stack. The breath that might keep Evar from blacking out hissed into his throat with agonizing slowness. Evar imagined that he heard the creak of his ribs as his chest rose by fractions.
The Escape sunk its tendrils into the book stack like roots hunting moisture. It found a form and began to grow, elongating, painting in the details as wisps and hints hardened into sharp-edged fact. Long, painfully thin limbs encased in a gleaming black carapace ended in scythe-like appendages. The Escape watched him through multi-faceted eyes set into a small triangular head atop a tall body. Evar levered himself upright using the colossal book tower he’d crashed into. He’d been right – this Escape was different, larger, carrying its own weapons.
The Escape choked a noise past the complication of its mouth plates, a weird combination of dry rattle and, further back, a thick spluttering. It made the noise again, then once more, coming unnervingly closer to a word each time. ‘Evar.’
Evar had been foolish, coming out to search the stacks. He’d known it from the start, though back then the knowledge had made him angry. Now it terrified him.
‘What are you?’ Even now, with a bloody death moments away, more than anything Evar wanted answers. He’d lived his whole life surrounded by knowledge, piled high, heaped on every side, and still questions defined him.
‘Evar.’ His name sounded dirty in that mouth.
‘Stay back!’ Evar drew his knife, which was really a sharpened piece of an iron book hinge, and held it up. It was an unequal contest; his opponent had a much longer reach – one swing of the creature’s scythes would leave him with a bloody stump. The Escape already had his name. Soon it would have the portal to his mind fully open and be rooting around his childhood memories for the form best suited to horrifying him. Evar was tempted to let it in. The Escape would find slim pickings among the wreckage.
Evar gathered himself. He was done with running. He raised his blade. ‘Come on then.’
The Escape tensed to launch itself. Evar moved to attack first, but the creature jolted forward, unexpectedly throwing its scythe-arms wide with a crackling hiss. It spun around, turning away from him. A shard of iron had bedded itself deeply in the creature’s narrow back, cracking the armour plating. Ichor leaked out around the cutting edges.
The Escape swayed, hissing, hunting for its attacker. Clovis came from the side, stepping out from behind a book pillar. The Escape managed to swing for her, but she leaned back, letting the blade pass an inch before her chest, then spun in to drive her knife into the creature’s neck, twice, then twice into its head. Evar stabbed its back, hammering his blade in deep. Ichor spattered across his face – unpleasantly cold – and he lost his weapon as the Escape collapsed.
The Escape hit the ground with the clack of dry bones. Its dissipation began almost immediately, the dark stuff of its interior smoking off Clovis’s blade, leaving the steel bright.
Clovis always fought with dispassion. The hatred only showed once the killing was over. For a long moment, with her lips twisted back to expose both canines, she stared at the fading stain where the Escape had fallen, her naked want on show, her bare hunger for something more to fight. Over the course of five deep breaths, she drew herself back, hiding from Evar’s sight, a book closing its covers, story hidden once more.
Evar picked up his knife, hands still trembling. He’d never seen Clovis scared. Nothing frightened her. Nothing, except that the war for which she’d been training all her life might not happen – the one with the sabbers who had killed her first family. Her unspoken fear had always been that the enemy would not return and that she would grow old here, trapped in a forgotten corner of the library. That she would die ancient and feeble having tested herself against nothing but the occasional Escape.
‘What have you found, little brother?’ Clovis turned curious eyes on the book tower that had stopped him dead. It was, by some considerable margin, the thickest and tallest he had ever seen.
Clovis picked up her other knife and slid both into their sheaths. The Escape had seemingly gone from her mind as swiftly as its body had evanesced. The weapons and their housing had been fashioned from books, the blades, like Evar’s, from the hinge of some great tome. She had armour made from the same raw material though she’d not worn it on this occasion: a weight of leather covers stitched together and overlaid with metal plates.
Clovis ran a hand across the wall of the colossal book tower. ‘How has this been here all our lives and not been discovered?’
Evar, still trembling, wiped at his face. The ichor had undoubtedly evaporated by now, but he could still feel it there, cold and penetrating. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Saving your life.’ Grey eyes continued their study of the structure, not so much as flickering his way.
‘Right here? Right now?’ Evar understood and slumped. ‘You used me! Both of you used me!’ Kerrol had suggested that he stay close to the pool until the Escape had been dealt with, but what Kerrol wanted and what Kerrol said were rarely directly related.
‘You’d have made lousy bait if you’d come out here knowing I had your back. Kerrol sent you after me.’ Clovis shrugged. ‘It was a sneaky one. I needed someone to lure it out.’
She meant she’d needed someone scared to lure it out with the scent of their fear. To embolden and distract it. Evar showed his teeth. ‘You used me!’
‘Why didn’t you call for help?’ Clovis cocked her head, regarding him with narrow eyes. ‘I was almost too late.’
Evar’s anger blew itself out. ‘I was stupid.’ The answer was more complex than that, but Evar had little time for his own excuses at the best of times, and stupidity did seem to be the core of it. ‘Dumb.’
Clovis ignored his statement of the obvious. She shook the red mane of her hair and craned her neck to look up the tower. The tumbling book would have hit her full in the face but for the speed of her reflexes. Several others crashed down in its wake, but she sidestepped them.
‘Damn! How hard did you hit this thing?’
‘Very.’ Evar rubbed his shoulder and stepped back. Some of the towers would topple at a touch. With no weather to bother them they could stand on the edge of collapse for centuries. This one had felt as solid as the chamber wall when he hit it, but sometimes the effects of a blow are not immediate. Clovis had taught him that.
More books fell from on high, and though it might have been a trick of the eye, the whole thirty-yard height of the tower seemed to sway. Evar felt guilty. He’d knocked down dozens of smaller towers in his youth, but suddenly this one felt worth saving.
‘Help me!’ He threw his weight against the far side, seeking to counteract the lean.
Clovis lent her shoulder to the effort. She lacked a couple of inches on him in height and her limbs, though corded with muscle, were hardly thicker than his, but she always knew how to apply her strength in exactly the right way.
It made no difference. Some things when set in motion by the lightest touch cannot be stopped by a whole army. Somewhere within the tower’s inner architecture something vital had slipped. More books fell. One bounced off Evar’s shoulder. He managed to shout ‘Run!’ before the whole thing came crashing down.
Thunder swallowed them. Confusion followed. Silence – the library’s undertaker – re-established itself in the wake of the collapse.
Evar found himself entombed. He struggled to find which way was up, and then to follow it. He emerged panting and sweaty, and slumped forward, still half buried in the heap of books. For a moment he wondered if Mayland’s bones lay beneath a heap like this somewhere out among the stacks. Then he remembered his sister.
‘Clo!’ He crawled free. ‘Clo! Where are you?’
A groan behind him drew his eye to a heaving patch. A moment later, her hand emerged, and by the time he reached her she had her head and shoulders free. He grabbed her arm and hauled her clear.
They stood together on the uneven surface, heads bowed, breathing hard, his hand still on her shoulder. For a moment it felt almost as if they were back five years ago when for a brief but glorious time Evar had thought they were in love. The fiction that they were truly siblings had been cast aside and for weeks or perhaps months Clovis had been his world. She’d broken his heart, of course. Evar didn’t need Kerrol’s skills to tell him that Clovis couldn’t allow her armour to be breached. Even so, it had hurt. But not so badly that he regretted it. Not even when she took the anger at what she thought was her weakness and turned it on him. Evar couldn’t be sorry for the only moments of tenderness he’d ever known. Not even when she mocked him and took Mayland to her bed.
