The Library at Mount Char

by Scott Hawkins

  Business first. Steve picked up the doormat, looking for a key. Nothing. He slid his finger across the top of the frame. Carolyn looked at him quizzically. “A lot of times people keep spare keys sitting out.” The tips of his gloves came away dusty. There was no key. “Oh well,” he said. “Have to do this the hard way.”

  They walked around to the back. Steve took out the crowbar and muscled it in between the door and jamb at the level of the bolt.

  He slipped a Phillips and a flathead into his pocket, along with a pair of wire cutters. “If the alarm is set you usually get a full minute to disarm it,” he said. “That should be plenty of time. You wait out here, though. I don’t want to be tripping over you.”

  She nodded.

  Steve pulled at the crowbar, grunted. The doorjamb bent open an inch or so, enough that the bolt slipped free of its housing. The door popped open into darkness. Warm air rolled out from inside. He waited, but nothing beeped.

  “I think we caught a break. The alarm isn’t set.”

  Inside, it was very dark. All the windows were curtained—thick heavy things that the moonlight and that lonely streetlamp couldn’t penetrate. The only light in the living room came from an enormous stereo rack, fully as tall as Steve himself. The pale blue LEDs of the receiver shone down over a La-Z-Boy recliner rising up out of a sea of crumpled Busch cans.

  “What are you waiting for?” Carolyn asked. The sound of her voice came from in front of him. Steve didn’t quite jump, but he was startled. He hadn’t heard her move.

  “Just giving my eyes a chance to adjust,” Steve said. He glanced around. The microwave in the kitchen blinked endless green midnight over a greasy pizza box and a small mountain of crumpled paper towels. “Hmm.” He padded into the kitchen and pulled open the fridge, squeezing one eye shut so as not to re-blind himself. The white light of the fridge was startling in the dark. It was mostly empty of food—just a half-empty jar of relish and a plastic squeeze bottle of French’s mustard in the door—but there was a box of beer in the back. Steve, thirsty, considered the question this posed for a moment, then shut the door and drank a plastic cup of water from the sink.

  “Carolyn? You thirsty?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He poked his head out of the kitchen. “Carolyn?”

  “Yes?” She had moved again. Now her voice came from behind him. This time he did jump. He turned to look at her. She was very close.

  “Do you want…” His voice trailed off.

  She moved in closer, ran her fingers down his chest. “Want what?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You asked me what I wanted.” Faint emphasis on the last word.

  “Oh. Right. Sorry. Lost my train of thought.” He paused. “You want me to help you look for…whatever it is?”

  She said something he didn’t understand.

  “What was that?”

  “Chinese. Sorry. So many languages. Sometimes when I get excited the words blend.”

  Her touch was electric on his chest. He backed away from it. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Where before there had only been vague shapes, he now saw couch and television, chair and table. He walked over to a cabinet next to the television and opened it. “Not bad,” he said. The receiver was a German brand, much nicer than the house warranted. “You want a stereo?”

  “No.”

  Steve’s own stereo, never particularly high-end, had developed some sort of short. He reached out for this one—Hey, it’s a burglary, right? His hand hovered over the power cord for a moment…and then he pulled back, mentally kicking himself in the ass. If you kill, lie, or steal…you dig up your own roots. When he looked up, Carolyn was gone. “Hey,” he said. “Where’d you go?”

  “It’s in here,” she said. “I found it.”

  Her voice came from a different, adjoining room. Steve flinched again. Found what? He followed the sound. She was in the dining room. She sat on a long, formal table, feet dangling, silhouetted against the pale light of the streetlamp. The china cabinet loomed behind her like a black throne.

  “Carolyn?”

  “Come here,” she said. Her legs were slightly parted. He went and stood before her.

  “Where is it?”

  “Here,” she said. She reached out to him, slid her hand around the back of his neck, pulled him in close.

  “Wait,” Steve said, not resisting much. “What?”

  She tilted her head a little, leaned forward, kissed him. Her lips were full, soft. She tasted of salt and copper. For a moment, he let himself go, sank down into the kiss. But it was in his nature that he did not close his eyes.

  Behind her, reflected in the glass plate of the china cabinet, something moved.

  Steve jerked away, spun around. In the shadows at the corner of the room stood a man. He was holding a long gun.

  “Whoa,” Steve said, raising his hands. “Wait a minute…”

  “I’m sorry, Steve,” Carolyn said. Somehow she had managed to slip off the table and move to the other side of the room.

  “You’re under arrest,” the man said. He leveled the gun at Steve.

  “Yeah,” Steve said. He raised his hands slowly. “OK. No problem.”

  The man stepped forward into the pale light of the streetlamp. His hair stood on end. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. What the hell is wrong with him? Thorazine? Brain damage?

  “You’re under arrest,” the man said again, raising the gun to his shoulder.

  “Right,” Steve said. “OK. Should I turn around now, or…?”

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” the man said. A trickle of drool ran down the side of his mouth.

  “Wait! Wait, I’ll—”

  “Do it,” Carolyn said.

  The man fired. The muzzle flash was huge and bright in the small room, but Steve seemed not to hear the shot at all. When his vision cleared he was on his back, looking up. Behind him he heard a small, tinkling sound. He rolled his eyes toward it, saw a chunk of glass fall out of the china cabinet. It made a pretty sound. What’s that on the plates? he wondered. It’s all dark and drippy.

  Carolyn leaned into his field of vision. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “I…help…I gotta get home…gotta feed Petey…got…go…”

  She reached down, touched his cheek.

  Darkness.

  IV

  When Steve was dead, Carolyn took a moment to get hold of herself. She squeezed her eyes shut and blew out a long breath.

  “You’re under arrest,” Detective Miner said again. He had resumed tottering around. Now he was in the corner, his back to her. He took a step forward and bumped into the wall. She walked over to him, turned him around gently, took the shotgun from him. He surrendered it without protest.

  She gave it an expert pump, jacking another round into the chamber, then set it on the dining-room table. She was careful not to look at Steve’s body. Then she took Detective Miner by the shoulders and steered him into the archway between the dining room and the kitchen.

  “Stand here,” she said.

  He focused on her for a moment, then rolled his eyes again. “You’re under arrest,” he said. He didn’t move, though.

  Carolyn walked around to Steve’s right side. She picked up the shotgun and wrapped the dead fingers of his left hand around the pump, holding it in place with her own. She put his right index finger on the trigger. She aimed the gun at Detective Miner.

  Miner watched this without much interest. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  She pulled the trigger. The blast caught Miner in the chest, obliterating his heart and lungs and sending a good bit of tissue out a fist-sized hole in his back. He dropped to the floor.

  She set the gun down and walked over to the light switch. There she took off her right glove and rolled her thumb across the brass plate around the switch, careful not to smear. When she was done she put the glove back on.

  Finished now, she took her hands away, leaving the gun in Steve’s grip. She turn
ed around and faced him. Even now she did not allow herself to weep. Instead, with infinite gentleness, she reached down and shut his eyes. “Dui bu chi,” she said, touching the skin of his cheek. “U kamakutu nu,” she said. “Je suis désolée” and “Ek het jou lief” and “Lo siento,” “Mainū māfa kara dēvō” and “Het spijt me” and “Je mi líto,” “Ik hald fan di” and “Ben bunu çözecektir” and “A tahn nagara” and on and on.

  She sat beside Steve’s body, rocking back and forth a little, hugging herself. She took his head in her lap. Silver moonlight lit the room full of broken things. Alone, she dispensed with lies. All that night she held him, brushing his hair with her fingertips, speaking softly, saying, “I’m sorry,” saying, “forgive me,” saying, “I’ll make it better” and “I promise it will be OK,” over and over and over again in every language that there ever was.

  INTERLUDE I

  FROM THE EAST, THUNDER

  After Isha and Asha were killed, David brought the two deer carcasses back with him to the Library, one over each shoulder. The next morning he skinned them in what had been the driveway of Lisa’s parents. Father insisted that Carolyn help. She did this without complaint, delivering the rubbery, bloody pelts of her friends to Lisa for their leather, their intestines to Richard for bow strings. Father himself took the carcasses. That afternoon he spitted them, rubbed them with sugar and cumin, and roasted them in his bronze bull.

  Carolyn asked Father not to make a big deal about her homecoming, but he insisted. Everyone who was anyone in Father’s court attended. The ambassador of the forgotten lands came bearing the regrets of his mistress. He wore a black robe, smoking hot against the cold of the living world. The last Monstruwaken made an appearance as well, which was a great honor. He lived barricaded in the crown of the black pyramid at the end of time, and rarely manifested in the former world. Some said that he was just an older incarnation of Father himself. Carolyn watched closely for signs of this either way, but saw nothing. There were others as well, two dozen in all—the Duke, Liesel, others she did not yet know. The noble guests laughed and bantered among themselves as they ate. In the firelight the deer grease was shiny on their cheeks.

  Carolyn did not eat. Even before all of the guests had arrived, she asked to be excused to her cell. She wished, she said, to catch up with her studies. Father peered at her for a moment, then nodded. A week or so later he tested her, quizzing her about the events of the summer, first in Mandarin and then in the argot of low dragons. Father said that he was pleased with her progress. Carolyn smiled and thanked him.

  Life went on this way for some time.

  The day Michael knocked on her door was perhaps a year after the banquet. She would have been about ten years old then. Carolyn’s chamber beneath the jade floor of the Library was cool and dark, but out in Garrison Oaks the summer solstice was approaching. They were allowed to go outside in the evenings, but after what had happened the week before, she did not want to. She shuddered. Not after Rachel.

  Rachel’s catalog was concerned with the prediction and manipulation of possible futures. Sometimes this was accomplished via mathematical calculation. Other times she would read portents in the clouds, the waves. But for the most part, Rachel learned of the future by sending out agents. The agents were her children or, rather, their ghosts. In order to make agents of them, Father required that Rachel strangle them in their cribs, usually at about the age of nine months. It was important, Father said, that she do this herself.

  Rachel first came to understand this on her twelfth birthday, three weeks previous. Two weeks later she attempted to escape. One night when Father was away she ran for it, darting through the long shadows of summer twilight, bare feet crunching down on lawns grown yellow and brittle in the drought. Thane saw her, of course. He and the other sentinels took her down just short of the subdivision sign. They ripped her to bits as the children watched.

  Rachel’s right hand, bloody, poked up out of the mass of furry bodies. Two fingers were gone. She grasped for—

  There was a sound at Carolyn’s door, very soft, like the brush of a paw against wood. For a moment she considered ignoring it. Father was away on some errand. David had begun to look at her in ways that made her uncomfortable. The cell doors locked from inside as well as out, and if she—

  “Carolyn?” It was Michael.

  Carolyn smiled. She undid the bolts that barred the door on her side and opened the door a crack. Michael stood in the hallway, naked and sunburned. On his shoulders she saw a fine white crust. Salt? He was clutching a scrap of paper. She waved him in, then shut the door behind him and locked it up again.

  Her cell was about four paces on a side, lined with bookshelves on every wall. The shelves were filled with Father’s texts and Carolyn’s notes on them. There were no windows, of course. She might have decorated—it wasn’t forbidden, and most of the others had a painting or two—but she didn’t. Her desk was the only furniture to speak of. The desk also stood out for being a notch or two above strictly utilitarian—cherry wood, leather top, and some scrollwork. Her sleeping roll was merely comfortable. But the wall shelves were filled to bursting with books, and knee-high stacks teetered here and there across the floor.

  “Michael!” She hugged him, unmindful of his nakedness. “It’s been ages! Where have you been?”

  “In the…” His mouth opened and shut a couple of times. No sound came out. After a few seconds of this he waved his hand vaguely behind him.

  “The forest?” she suggested.

  “No. Not forest.” He pantomimed swimming.

  “The ocean?”

  “Yes. That.” Michael smiled at her, grateful for the help. “I learn with—study with—Diver Eye.” Diver Eye, a sea tortoise, was one of Father’s ministers. Loyal and ancient, he had sole charge of the Pacific Ocean, and sole responsibility for guarding against the things in the Sea of Okhotsk. Michael touched Carolyn’s cheek with one salty hand. “Missed you.”

  “I missed you, too. How was the outside world?” Carolyn spent almost all of her time inside the Library itself, with only occasional field trips to test her fluency in a new language.

  Michael’s face was troubled. “Different. Not like here. The ocean is very deep.”

  Carolyn thought about this for a moment. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “How is here?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “How…how have…it been here?”

  “Oh! Well, about the same. Maybe a little worse, lately. Margaret keeps waking everyone up with her screaming. Honestly, I think she’s going nuts. It must be all those horrible cobwebby books Father has her read. Lately she’s convinced Father’s going to murder her soon.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “She’s so melodramatic.”

  “Oh. That is sad. And David?” Michael and David had been good friends, back when they were Americans. They still played together when they could.

  “Oh, you know David. Just a big goofball, he looooves everybody.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “He’s nice enough, but he’s always so damn cheerful. It gets old.”

  “Yes. The wolves have a saying—” Here Michael made wolf noises.

  “Um. Yes.”

  “It means, uh, ‘heart too big for the hunt.’ David is, maybe, too friendly? Too kind to be a fight?”

  “I think the word is ‘fighter,’ ” she said gently. “But you may be right. Father said something very similar a few weeks back.”

  “And you?”

  “Could be worse.” This was true, but she didn’t know that yet. She thought she was lying. Then, to change the subject, “What do you have there?” She pointed at a scrap of paper he was holding.

  Michael held it up and looked at it. His brow wrinkled. The paper was covered in writing—cuneiform, she saw. Not Pelapi. “Father says…” He waved his hand up and down the paper, then handed it to her.

  “Of course.” It was fairly common for Father to send one child or another in
to her for translations, and Michael could barely remember Pelapi words. Most of his education came from the woods and the creatures therein, not books. She took the paper from him and scanned it for a moment. “Shall I read you the whole thing?”

  Michael looked pained. “Could you…” He made a squishing gesture with his hands and looked at her hopelessly. “I not…words are hard, now. For me.”

  “I know.” Her tone was soft. “I’ll summarize it for you.” He looked blank. “Fewer words. Give me a minute.” She skimmed the document with a practiced eye. “This is old,” she said. “Well, it’s a copy. But it’s talking about a battle that happened in the second century, maybe sixty-five thousand years ago.” He didn’t understand that, either. She tried again. “Long, long ago. Many winters, many lifetimes.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes.”

  “It’s about a…hmmm. Give me a second.” She went to the rear wall and took down an ancient, dusty scroll. She scanned it quickly, looking something up. She nodded. “It’s about Father, sort of.”

  “Father?”

  “Well, kind of. It says here that, mmm, originally the dawning didn’t go as planned.” “The dawning” was what everyone called the battle that marked the end of the third age. Everything after that was considered part of the fourth age, the current one, the age of Father’s reign. “The first sunrise worked OK, and the um, Silent Ones—I think it’s Silent Ones?—were driven into shadow. But when Father prosecuted the final attack against the Emperor—whoa! it says here that Father was ‘cast down and broken.’ ” She looked at Michael, eyebrows raised.

  He gave her a blank look. “I not…I do not—”

  “It means that Father was getting his ass kicked.”

  “Father?” He looked shocked.

  She shrugged. “That’s what it says here. Anyway, so Father was getting his ass kicked by this Emperor guy.” Carolyn had heard of the Emperor before, but beyond the fact that he existed and that he had ruled the third age, not much was known. He must have been quite a character to go around casting Father down, though. “Blah, blah…smite, smite…looking pretty bad for Father…and then…” Carolyn trailed off.