by Sheila Grau
“Go ahead. Keep laughing,” he said. He pulled a blue handkerchief out of his pocket and draped it over the desk lamp. I knew what he was doing. The blue light would cut through the beasts’ glamours and reveal their true selves. He wanted me to see their monster forms. He wanted to see me in complete terror. What he didn’t know was that I could already see through them, just by touching my medallion.
“You told me that knowledge is power,” I said. “But that wisdom is knowing what you don’t know.”
He walked toward me, eyes blazing with hatred.
I stood my ground. “I think you don’t know something really important here.” I wasn’t going to back down now. It felt good, not backing away. Stupid good. Or maybe just stupid.
“Good-bye, you insignificant nothing. I will leave here listening to your screams echoing in this magnificent library, which now belongs to me.”
He smirked as he pointed behind me, expecting me to melt into a quivering, terror-filled lump. I was surrounded by the whole frightening pack of them, with their strange, hairy bodies; powerful hind legs; and long arms dragging to the ground. Claws and teeth that looked sharper than any knife I’d ever seen. Even their horns were sharpened to a point.
“Not so smug now, are you?”
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I’d made sure to pick out Sara from the pack before their glamours were deactivated by Pravus’s blue light. I might not have Frankie’s photographic memory, but I would never forget her face from when she pinned me, or sat in that dungeon cell, or skinned the flesh from that fish with her teeth.
“Hi, Sara,” I said, looking right at her. “I’ve come to free you.”
The circle surrounding me got closer and closer, until the snouts were practically touching my legs. I tried to stand bravely as they sniffed at me, but my heart was pounding so fast that I was sure I was shaking.
“Fameely,” I said, raising my medallion.
They backed away.
“Attack!” Pravus screamed. “Eat him!”
“No,” I said. I stepped toward Pravus. “They won’t hurt me.” I turned to the beasts. “Grab Pravus.”
The beasts lunged for Pravus, except for one who stayed by my side. “Thank you, Sara.”
“Thank you, little one,” she said. “For finding us.”
Pravus’s mouth hung open in shock at the monsters surrounding him. But he quickly recovered and yelled, “What are you doing? I am your master. You are bound to me by the spell. I defeated the last of your family!”
“Not the last,” Sara said.
He looked at her, at me, his eyes squinting with fury. “Who are you?”
“I wish I knew,” I muttered. I turned to Sara. “I have to find Professor Zaida.”
“The small one ees in the office down the hall, with the other preesoners. I take you.” She motioned for me to get on her back, so I did, grabbing onto her shoulders.
“Keep him there,” I told the others.
Pravus was purple with rage. “I don’t know who you are or how you turned my minions, but you have just sealed your doom. I will kill you myself, and your friend too.”
I felt something more than fear when I looked at him. I felt anger. How could he be so arrogant? It triggered something inside me. I didn’t want him to think he’d scared me. I didn’t want him to think he could threaten Syke and me, and I’d just curl into a ball and take it, even if that was what I felt like doing.
I jumped off Sara’s back and looked at him. “With one word from me, these beasts will strip you to your bones,” I said. “It’s . . . unpleasant, as you said. I think instead of threatening me, you should be begging for your life.”
The beasts closed around him, their jaws snapping with anticipation. They really wanted to eat him. Pravus could feel it too, and his anger faded a little. His expression now looked a little fearful.
“I’m waiting,” I said.
I could practically see his inner struggle as fear and pride battled for control. Pride seemed to be winning. He did not want to plead for his life.
“Are you guys hungry?” I asked the monsters. In answer, one bit Pravus in the leg.
“No!” Pravus screamed. “Please! Please don’t kill me!”
“Keep him here, but don’t eat him,” I said. I jumped on Sara’s back with one last look at Pravus. He looked like he was plotting my murder in his head, and making it as painful as possible.
Sara took me to a pair of double doors at the end of the long central hallway, and we entered a large room dominated by a long table, like a conference room. Around it sat a dozen worried grown-ups and one troll. The troll made a move toward me with his giant fist clenched, but Sara stepped in front of me and growled, and the troll backed away.
“It’s okay. She’s not going to harm any of you,” I said. “Where’s Professor Zaida?”
“Blaggify wecknerk boooooofree,” the troll snarled at Sara. “BOOOFREE!”
The nervous people looked to the floor, and I ducked down and saw her. Next to the far wall, Professor Zaida’s head lay unmoving in Syke’s lap, an empty vile of antidote on the floor next to them. As I watched, Professor Zaida’s eyelids fluttered and then opened. I crawled under the table to join them on the other side.
“Syke? Runt? How did you find us?” Professor Zaida asked.
“Um, long story,” I said. “But you’re all safe.” I pointed to Sara. “They’re with me now.”
Professor Zaida gasped.
“It’s okay,” I said. “She won’t hurt you. She saved me from Pravus.”
“Pravus!” she said. “Where is he? He can’t get away.”
“The Girl Explorers are watching him,” I said.
Professor Zaida wiggled her fingers. I watched her as she felt the antidote work through her body. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
A dark-skinned woman in a gray suit helped Professor Zaida sit up. She knelt down so their heads were together.
“Do you trust them?” she asked Professor Zaida.
“Yes, look at his medallion,” Professor Zaida said, reaching for my chest. “And like he said, the vaskor obey him.”
“And the boy will obey you?” she asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Very well. We need to deal with the intruders first. Asim, you know what to do,” she said to a short, bearded man. “Take this vaskor with you, to control the rest.”
“My friend Frankie is near the waterfall, holding off a bunch of ahools,” I said. “I was hoping Sara would go help him.”
“I weel help your friend,” Sara said. “The rest of us weel help your new friends here. We know they are friends of the fameely. We always knew, but the code binds us. The spell ees powerful.”
“Thank you,” the lady in charge said. “Go now, and keep Pravus from leaving. We need to continue what we were doing before the intruders arrived. The entrance must be closed and all signs to it obliterated. We will use the emergency exit that leads to the other side of the mountain. We must see how far the breach of information has reached.” She handed out assignments to the people in the room. The troll stayed behind, not taking his eyes off this important lady.
“Valerie, does the boy know?” she said, nodding at me. Professor Zaida shook her head.
“You know what to do,” the lady said. She put a hand on Professor Zaida’s shoulder and left with the others.
Professor Zaida stood up, and when she did, Syke collapsed to the floor.
“Syke!” I looked for an injury somewhere but didn’t see anything. Professor Zaida checked her head, her pulse.
“My head hurts,” she whispered. “Those trees really shook me up. And my arms hurt, and my ribs from when that henchman threw me against the railing.”
“There’s a doctor at the school,” Professor Zaida said. “I’ll have our troll take you there immediately.”
“I’ll go too,” I said.
<
br /> “No,” Professor Zaida said. “You need to come with me.”
“I’m not leaving Syke,” I said.
“She’ll be fine.”
“Go on, Runt,” she said. “I don’t need you.”
Professor Zaida took me back to the library’s central hallway, where we headed away from Pravus, to another hallway that was lined with arched alcoves, each one holding a statue.
“Runt, I have so much to tell you,” she said. “When I got here, I knew I was going to die soon, so I wrote you a letter. But we’re here now, so I’ll tell you. Look around.”
I did. This end of the library looked like a shrine. Between the alcoves were stone inscriptions, filled with dates and histories. On the wall facing us hung an enormous portrait of a family in royal clothing.
“This is the shrine to the Natherly family, the onetime rulers of a country called Andirat, and the descendants of the royal family of Erudyten. In fables, the Erudyten king is called by a different name—King Wellread, because he loved reading. He collected books from all over the globe, and at the height of his rule, Erudyten was very advanced.”
“Darthin told me that story,” I said. “Other countries grew jealous and attacked it.”
“That’s right. Centuries ago. What are now the realms of Carkley, Delpha, Riggen, and Brix used to be Erudyten. Before it fell, an order of librarians worked tirelessly to save the books. They were smuggled out of the country and brought upriver to this place, which was an abandoned mountain fortress called NORAD, the National Overlord Restricted Area Defense.
“The librarians set up the Kobold Retraining Center as a ruse to be near their secret library. They continued to collect books as realms throughout the continent changed hands, and their histories were rewritten by new rulers. This is the only repository of true history, Runt. Protecting this sacred place has been the life’s work of countless loyal people. We’ve hidden it well, and it has never been discovered by outsiders. Until today.”
She sat down on a padded bench and sighed. “You know, this mountain used to be a volcano. The early librarians made it appear like it was still active. We’ve never had to use all our defenses before, but we did today. The volcanic eruptions, the falling debris, the flames. Nothing stopped Pravus’s army of gorillas. They blasted through the mountain until they found us.”
“That eruption was fake?” I asked.
“Yes, this mountain is dormant. We have staged eruptions from time to time as part of our cover. Many field CLOUDs are volcanologists, which provides them with an excuse to come here with books—they say that they are coming to study the volcano. Plus nobody would think a library would be hidden beneath a volcano. That would be ridiculous.”
That was very interesting, but I wasn’t sure why she was telling me all this. “Professor Zaida? Maybe we should get you back to school, to make sure you’re okay.”
“I have to finish telling you this story.” She patted the bench seat, and I sat down next to her. “When Erudyten fell, the rulers fled across the sea and landed in the peaceful kingdom of Andirat, on the Currial continent. They were welcomed guests because they shared their knowledge with Andirat’s rulers—knowledge of economics and trade, education, and public works, how to run a country so that it doesn’t get split into two groups who disagree about everything—those kinds of things. There were marriages between the two royal families, and over many generations they became entwined together. Andirat’s royal family took over the job of protecting the Great Library. They were our patrons, funding our operation here.”
“Were?”
Professor Zaida nodded.
“Fearing a repeat of the attacks that led to pacifist Erudyten’s downfall, the rulers of Andirat built a very strong army for defense. Unfortunately, the military grew too strong, and soon there was strife within the country.
“Eight years ago there was a military coup. The country’s generals murdered the royal family and took over, splitting up Andirat among themselves and carving out their own realms. Soon, the generals were fighting one another. It was chaos, and the country is still in disorder.”
“The Broken Place,” I whispered. “Sara said she came from a broken place. And maybe me too.”
Professor Zaida nodded. “There were rumors that the young prince had been saved by a loyal advisor, who brought him across the ocean to a place where he’d be safe from the generals. Look at the last portrait of the royal family—it’s there above the shrine.”
I got up and walked over to the end of the hall. The portrait was huge, the people in it life-size. A king and queen sat on thrones, and four children surrounded them: a tall teenage boy, a girl who looked like his twin, a younger girl, and, finally, a young boy. Flanking the royal family were two wolves. No, not wolves; they were too large, each one as big as a horse. I looked at my medal. The faces of the “wolves” matched the face on my medallion.
I looked at Professor Zaida. “Those aren’t wolves, are they?”
“No, they are vaskor. Your friend Sara is a vaskor. They adopt the glamour chosen by their patron. The Natherly family chose a monstrously large wolf. The vaskor were tasked with protecting the family. Nothing was more important than the family. But that’s not important. Look at the youngest boy.”
The boy, like his brother, wore a light blue coat with gold trim over a ruffled shirt. He looked sullen, like he didn’t want to pose for a painting. He also wore a medallion, just like mine.
It suddenly dawned on me what she was thinking. “That’s not me,” I said.
“Yes, it is, Runt. I believe that you are Prince Auberon Gabriel Titus Kenton Valdemar Natherly.” She took an envelope out of her pocket and handed it to me. Inside was a picture of me with Cook and Pierre. It was an old picture; I looked about four years old. “Cook gave this to me before I left,” she said. “Now look at the portrait.”
I did, and while we looked very similar—same hair and eye color, same high forehead, same everything—I knew that the prince wasn’t me. I don’t know how to explain the feeling, but that guy wasn’t me.
“Runt, it all fits,” she said. “The timing of when you showed up at the school—right after the coup—your medallion, the resemblance to the royal family, the clothes you were wearing when Cook found you. Runt . . .”
She came over and stood next to me, putting a hand on my arm. I looked down at her.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“You wanted to know who you were, where you came from,” Professor Zaida said. “And now you know.”
“If that’s true, my family is gone.”
“I’m sorry, Runt—er—Prince Auberon.”
“No. Don’t call me that.”
“You’re right. We should keep this between us until we figure out what to do. Runt, this library is your family’s heritage. You belong here, and you can stay here. The librarians live in the village. The vaskor can stay and do what they were meant to do—protect the library. Protect the legacy of the Natherly family. They are forest creatures, and there are forests on every side of the mountain.”
I suddenly felt so tired. It was too much to take in. I sat down on the floor and then toppled over, closing my eyes.
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Back at school, I stumbled through class, not really aware of what was going on around me. The events in the Great Library had left me shaken. I felt like I’d lost something huge, like my purpose in life. I’d always been driven by a need to find my family, but there was no family waiting for me to find them. They were gone. They hadn’t abandoned me, though, like I’d always believed. They’d loved me and tried to keep me safe.
I’d lost my best friend too. Syke wouldn’t talk to me. If my Shun Box was faulty, hers was a steel-plated, inescapable dungeon cell.
And then I found out that I had to report for a disciplinary hearing i
n Dr. Critchlore’s office that would determine whether I’d be expelled for Repeated Acts of Disobedience.
I sat in Dr. Critchlore’s office with Cook, there to testify on my behalf. As we waited for everyone else, I showed her my wrists. While I was in the Great Library, two thick, pale reddish bands had appeared on them, and they wouldn’t wash off.
“Maybe it’s some kind of rash,” Cook said. “We’ll go to the infirmary after dinner.”
Dr. Critchlore entered, dropping a book on his desk after he passed us. I glanced at the cover, Retraining Kobolds for Fun and Profit.
“Cook, Higgins,” he said, smiling. He laughed suddenly, and then noticed Cook glaring at him. “Forgive me, I know this is a serious situation, but I am in an exceptionally good mood right now.”
“We’re thrilled to hear it,” Cook said, with a touch of sarcasm. “Maybe you’ve come to your senses about this ridiculous hear—”
“I just have to share this news with somebody!” Dr. Critchlore interrupted, leaning over his desk in our direction. “Dr. Pravus has to appear before the council. He’s being brought up for Acts Inconsistent with Proper Minion School Stewardship!”
“Because he attacked the Kobold center?” I asked.
“No, they don’t know about that. Fardaglio, Fandango, what’s his name? The headmaster there didn’t file a complaint.” Dr. Critchlore sat down. “He’s doesn’t want the publicity.
“No, the council has gotten several complaints from other minion schools about sabotage, and they all blame Pravus.”
“How did Pravus think he could get away with attacking another school?” I asked, because it still stunned me that we’d found Dr. Pravus at the Kobold center with an army.
“Simple. He assumed the evil overlords would grant his petition to take over the Kobold center. They’ve all been sucking up to him, hoping to get his giant gorillas, so of course they’d give him anything he wanted, right? And once he got his greedy paws on the school, he could move his army there and break into the Great Library. Nobody would care, because it would look like minion training.
