Bookburners: Season One Volume Two

by Max Gladstone

  “We’re honored to be here,” said Asanti.

  “Γνῶθι σεαυτόν,” said the woman, chiding, and resumed walking. The rest of the team hurried to catch up.

  • • •

  Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. Although Asanti could read ancient and modern Greek fluently, she had to admit that her grasp of the spoken language was a bit rusty. Still, a little historical context made the meaning of the woman’s phrase clear enough: “Know thyself.” It was the phrase (or perhaps one of three, depending on your source) engraved on the Pythia’s temple in ancient times. But what had the woman meant by it?

  Asanti had merely spoken the truth. She was honored to be here. Of course, that wasn’t what she had said, was it? But surely her colleagues must appreciate the sheer awe, the simple wonder of being here, in spite of their personal prejudices and misgivings?

  She glanced back at her companions. Perhaps not. She wondered if she should have come alone. But no, they needed each other, and Menchú would never have allowed it. In any event, it was far too late to worry about that now.

  As she followed the woman in white, Asanti let herself picture all the travelers who had come before them. A trader from Athens, a mother from Crete, a senator from Rome. All had been part of the same pilgrimage over the millennia, changed in details, but not in spirit.

  The first step in obtaining a divination from the Pythia was determining that an omen was needed, and making the journey to Delphi. Done. The second step was ritual purification in the Castalian spring. As if reading her mind, the woman in white led the group to a place outside the temple where the spring flowed into a deep pool, and directed them to wash. Asanti knelt at the edge without hesitation.

  “Is this really necessary?” asked Liam.

  The woman in white replied evenly, “Only if your question is important to you.”

  Menchú tried to reassure Liam. “Ritual cleaning is an important part of most religious practices, even our own.”

  “I’ve been baptized once already, thanks.”

  Asanti ignored them, plunging her hands into the spring and bringing up an armful of cold water to splash over her face and hair. Menchú and Grace followed suit. Sal didn’t seem much more thrilled with the procedure than Liam was, but pressed ahead—Asanti suspected—so that it wouldn’t look like they were in agreement. What happened between those two? she wondered.

  The water slid down Asanti’s back with a slight tingle, like carbonation fizzing against her flesh. When it passed, she felt strangely refreshed, as though the last few weeks of constant stress and travel had washed away.

  Rising to her feet, Asanti reached up to squeeze her hair and was shocked to realize that it, along with her hands and her clothes, was completely dry.

  “Oh, weird . . .” From Sal’s reaction, Asanti was not the only one to notice this phenomenon. Once everyone had washed and observed that they were both cleaner and just as dry as they had been before, the woman in white gestured them forward into the temple.

  • • •

  In his life both before and after entering the priesthood, Menchú had had cause to visit sites considered holy by many different peoples: churches of all denominations, mosques, synagogues, Buddhist and Hindu temples, ancient groves, and standing stones. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that they all felt the same; that was both a gross oversimplification and the kind of platitude that had always annoyed him. But he was willing to allow that when a place was imbued with divine significance by the people within, there was a . . . quality . . . that was common to all. Different in flavor and degree, perhaps, but which spoke to a union of all divinity which had been part of his faith from childhood and had never left him. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi had that quality, but with an added . . . something.

  Shadows of Doric columns fell slanting across Menchú’s steps as he followed behind his team, led in turn by the woman in white. Wouldn’t we all feel stupid if it turns out we haven’t reached the Pythia, after all? For all that this mission had been Menchú’s own suggestion, it would have been a lie to say that he was completely at peace with asking the Oracle for help. Liam’s words pricked at him. Is this the only way? Or is it merely the only way we can see? If we had persevered in our pursuit of Mr. Norse, would God have opened up another path? Or is this the doorway He has provided? Menchú was forcibly and uncomfortably reminded of a joke an American colleague had told him where the punch line was God telling a drowned man who had turned down repeated rescues during a flood because he was so sure he would be saved by divine intervention: “Didn’t we send two boats and a helicopter?”

  Menchú hoped that whatever they learned was worth it. And then they were descending a short flight of stairs into the presence of the Oracle.

  • • •

  Sal wasn’t sure what she had been expecting the Pythia to look like. Ethereal? Ancient? Infused with the divine? She definitely hadn’t been expecting to see a woman her own age, sitting in a small room on a stone bench beside a pool of water, flipping through a glossy magazine.

  Given Asanti’s expression, her extensive research hadn’t covered that little detail either. The woman in white bowed, murmuring, “The pilgrims you were expecting,” and then stepped forward to take the magazine. The Pythia handed it over with only a trace of reluctance. Those formalities complete, the woman in white turned to the team. “This is the Pythia.”

  The Pythia apparently didn’t get a name, which hadn’t seemed strange to Sal until she had seen her flipping through a copy of Vogue. People who read Vogue should have names, she thought. As the woman in white withdrew, Sal glanced at the magazine, and blinked. The text had been completely whited out, leaving only the pictures. The Pythia answered her unspoken question.

  “The role of the Pythia is to foretell the future and divine the past. Being too bogged down in the present is deemed . . . distracting.”

  Deemed by whom?

  “By Apollo, of course.”

  “Stop doing that,” said Sal, aloud this time.

  The other members of the team turned to stare. Grace had already moved her weight forward to the balls of her feet, ready to act if this woman turned out to be not a seer, but a threat.

  “She’s answering questions that I’m thinking, not asking,” said Sal, feeling a little silly.

  “Sal,” said Asanti, “she hasn’t said a word.”

  “You didn’t hear that? About how Apollo doesn’t want her to read the articles in Vogue?”

  Grace blinked. “People read the articles in Vogue?”

  “Not the point,” said Sal.

  The Pythia looked apologetic. “You can see why avoiding distractions is important. My apologies.”

  Sal thought that maybe inadvertent mind-reading and forgetting to talk so that everyone in the room could hear you was an argument for having a few more distractions in your life, but what did she know about being a prophetic priestess of Apollo? What she said was: “It’s okay.” Then added, “But please stop reading my mind.”

  The Pythia shrugged, “I wouldn’t if your thoughts weren’t so loud. Is that why you’re here?” she asked.

  “No,” said Asanti. “We come seeking information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “We need to know about the Codex Umbra.”

  The Pythia considered this. “And what will you sacrifice for that knowledge?” she asked.

  Sal’s stomach went cold. A sacrifice. She’d been so distracted after she’d nearly slept through their flight she had completely forgotten she needed one. What had the others brought? The Pythia must accept small offerings. No one else seems to have anything huge with them . . . unless Menchú has been hiding a baby goat under his jacket this whole time.

  Sal tried to be subtle as she slipped her hands into her pockets. It was probably futile to try to fool a demonstrated mind-reader, but maybe she could manage to avoid letting the rest of her team know what a flake she was. And then . . . beside her keys and a handf
ul of loose Euros, her fingers closed around a folded square of paper. A receipt? Old grocery list? Sal squeezed the packet. It gave slightly, as if it was folded around something. What the hell?

  One by one, the others brought out their offerings: Grace’s copy of Moment in Peking, the first novel she had read in English; Menchú’s Bible, given to him by a parishioner before he left Guatemala. Asanti had brought letters from her dead mentor. Liam, breaking the written material trend, produced a fighter’s knife, which he placed on the table before the Pythia without offering any explanation. At least, not aloud. Then it was Sal’s turn. She took a deep breath, drew out the folded paper, and hoped like hell she wasn’t about to offer the Oracle a piece of old gum.

  Slowly, she opened the packet, revealing a tidy bundle of mousy brown hair. Sal’s mind raced. Hair? Where did I get— And then she knew. With absolute certainty. She knew. Sal swallowed. It was her brother’s hair. That’s what I was doing in the Archives. But how—

  The Pythia’s voice in her head cut off Sal’s mental spiral. An interesting choice. We accept your sacrifice.

  Then she stepped forward, took the paper and lock of hair from Sal’s hand and placed them next to the other sacrifices before seating herself behind them on a small three-legged stool. “Your sacrifices are all fitting.” She dipped a hand into the pool at her feet, brought a mouthful of water to her lips, and drank.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  And then the Pythia spoke again, but her voice had changed—though maybe it was only that Sal was hearing it differently. The Oracle’s words filled every corner of the room, and yet she spoke so softly, Sal found herself straining to hear.

  “The Codex Umbra: a prison of demons, the worst placed together, to be more easily guarded by the followers of the cross. Until the Codex became too dangerous to be safely held. Even the jailers could not be trusted to the temptations of the prisoners.”

  “This book was created by the Church?” asked Menchú.

  “Assembled, not created. A compilation, pieced from fabrics ready-made, not woven as virgin cloth.”

  “Dear God,” whispered Asanti.

  Sal caught her breath as she began to understand. The Black Archive’s books were dangerous. The Pythia’s words implied that someone had decided to take the most dangerous sections of the most dangerous books and put them all together in one place, a supermax for demons. Sal shuddered. “Dear God” was right.

  “Where is it?” asked Liam.

  “The wounded knights knew it must be hidden, so they found a place where no—”

  The Pythia’s voice ceased abruptly. Her face grew red, then dusky purple. Was that normal? The woman in white screamed and rushed forward. No, definitely not.

  “She can’t breathe,” said Liam. For once, Sal was relieved that someone was cynical enough about this whole excursion to keep their wits about them. Liam rushed to the Pythia’s side, working with the woman in white to ease the Oracle to the ground. He tipped her head back, checking her airway. Something about the familiar emergency procedures caused Sal’s training to kick in, and she unfroze, moving to join them.

  The Pythia was still conscious, and Sal grabbed her hand. “Can you hear me? Blink if you can.”

  The Pythia blinked.

  “We’re going to help you out, okay?”

  From up close, it wasn’t hard to tell what the problem was. The golden necklace that the Pythia wore around her neck had sprouted thorns that had dug their way into her flesh.

  “Are those going through to her airway?” Sal asked Liam.

  He shook his head. “More likely it’s the delivery system for some kind of toxin, and her throat is closing down as a reaction. Either way, her throat’s almost completely blocked.”

  “Don’t suppose anyone here carries an EpiPen?” Sal asked.

  The woman in white clutched the Pythia’s other hand. Menchú and Asanti shook their heads.

  Sal turned back to Liam. “Should we try to get it off?”

  “I don’t see how it could make things worse.”

  “Famous last words,” Sal muttered.

  But Liam was already lifting the Pythia’s head, gently so as not to bend her already compromised trachea. “I can see the clasp.”

  Sal reached forward, but just as her fingers touched the metal of the fastener, Grace’s hand slid in under her hers, grasped the clasp, and wrenched it open. As it sprang free, the necklace flew through the air, landing with a soft clink against the hard floor.

  The instant the necklace was gone, the Pythia convulsed in Liam’s arms, her eyes rolling back and bloody foam bubbling up through her lips. She kept writhing as Liam set her down. Menchú slid his folded jacket under her head to protect her skull from banging against the stones, and Sal turned the Pythia’s head so that she wouldn’t choke as she began to vomit. First bile, then blood.

  Sal watched the struggling woman’s pulse pound in her neck. Saw her diaphragm strain to pull air past her blocked throat. She had already coughed up so much blood that the additional stream when Liam cut a hole for a field tracheotomy barely made a difference. But mostly Sal watched her heartbeat, proof that she was still fighting to live with everything she had. She kept fighting through it all.

  In the end, it wasn’t enough.

  4.

  Chamber of the Oracle, a short time later

  The woman in white was so obviously upset, Asanti drew her into her arms like she was a child, absorbing her grief at the loss of the Pythia against her shoulder. Eventually the woman in white pulled herself together, extracted herself from Asanti’s arms, and turned to face the truth of her oracle lying dead upon the stones. Asanti rose to join her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  The woman nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Do you know where she got the necklace? Who might have wanted to harm her?”

  “It was a tribute from a supplicant, in thanks for a prophecy fulfilled.”

  “Do you know this supplicant’s name?” Asanti asked.

  The woman in white turned and looked Asanti in the eye for the first time since the Pythia had fallen. “It does not matter. The assassin’s aims have been achieved.” Then, “You and your friends should go.”

  “Ms. Brooks is a trained investigator. We can help you—”

  “Now.”

  As she spoke, a peal of thunder echoed across the clear sky. Clouds soon followed, accompanied by a distant pounding noise. Rain or footsteps. Many, many footsteps.

  “Surely, you don’t think we are responsible,” said Asanti.

  “It does not matter,” the woman in white repeated. “The Pythia is gone. We must mourn, and bury her. And then find and anoint her successor. You are no longer welcome here.”

  “But we need to know—”

  “What you need is no longer relevant. Return to the fountain house, it will bring you back to your own place and time. Go!”

  The thunder cracked again, and the stone floor shook beneath their feet. Asanti turned to the others. “I think we should listen to her.”

  Asanti thought she heard Liam mutter, “Finally.”

  Together, they ran.

  The fountain house, in Delphi of the world

  “What happened back there?” Grace asked as soon as they were once again in the dappled world of modern Delphi and had enough breath for asking questions.

  “Besides someone killing the Pythia?” asked Liam.

  Grace leveled her best do-not-mess-with-me stare. “Allow me to rephrase: How did that happen back there?”

  Menchú shook his head. “Aside from ourselves, the only person present at her death was the woman in white. And I know none of us killed the Pythia.”

  “Verbal trigger,” said Asanti.

  Liam blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “It strangled her, cutting off her voice, as she was about to tell us where we could find the Codex. That can’t be a coincidence. Whoever gave her that necklace—”

  “And b
y whoever, you mean Norse,” said Sal.

  “Whoever gave her that necklace clearly meant it as a trap. She starts divulging information they don’t want to get out? No more Pythia.”

  “The Pythia will be replaced,” said Grace. “And she won’t be stupid enough to wear the necklace that killed her predecessor.”

  “Maybe that doesn’t matter,” said Sal, “I’m guessing that anointing a new Pythia isn’t a quick process. Most likely, it’ll be weeks before they reopen the shrine. Norse left us alone for nearly a month after the Market Arcanum. Now, suddenly, we can’t go twenty minutes without the Orb triggering. Norse is on a timetable, and my bet is that by the time we can ask the new Oracle where to find the Codex, he’ll already have his hands on his very own Norton Anthology of Evil,” said Sal.

  Three pairs of eyes blinked at her in silence.

  “If any of you had gone to an American high school, that would have been a very clever reference,” said Sal.

  Liam crossed his arms. “We know what a Norton Anthology is,” he said. “Norton is a British publisher, but unless your American high school taught you where to find evil books sought by madmen, we’re back where we started. Only lighter by five sacrifices and heavier by one dead Pythia.” He glared at Menchú. “So glad using magic was worth it.”

  Sal couldn’t quite believe that Liam had basically told his boss (a priest, no less), “I told you so.” On the other hand, Liam wasn’t wrong.

  “Actually,” said Asanti, “we aren’t exactly back to square one.”

  “How so?” asked Menchú.

  “At the Library of Alexandria, Youssef told us about the nature of magic, the special rules of cause and effect that apply. And before she died, the Pythia showed us how to access the power of the Castalian Spring.”

  Liam stared at Asanti, mouth agape. “No.” He turned to Menchú. “She can’t. You can’t let her.”

  “Technically, she outranks me,” Menchú pointed out.

  “I don’t care,” said Liam.

  “You don’t even know what I’m suggesting,” said Asanti.

  “You’re suggesting that we try to channel the magic of the spring ourselves. And I’m saying that it’s a terrible idea.”