Ex Libris

by Paula Guran

  “Help me!” The voice was soft and hoarse. There was no telling whether or not it came from the throat of a thinking creature.

  “Someone from another book-return team?” asked Yvette.

  “I’d know,” said Molnar. “More likely it’s a trick. We’ll investigate, but very, very cautiously.”

  As though it were a response to the Master Librarian’s words, a book came sailing out of the darkened stacks. The two Librarians ducked, and after bouncing off the floor once the book wound up at Yvette’s feet. She nudged it with the tip of a boot and then, satisfied that it was genuine, picked it up and examined the cover.

  “What is it?” said Molnar.

  “Annotated Commentaries on the Mysteries of the Worm,” said Yvette. “I don’t know if that means anything special—“

  “An-no-tated,” hissed a voice from the darkness. There was a strange snort of satisfaction. “New!”

  “Commentaries,” hissed another. “New, new!”

  “Hells!” Molnar turned to the aspirants and lowered his voice to a whisper. “A trick after all! Vocabuvores again. Keep your voices down, use simple words. We’ve just given them food. Could be a group as large as the last one.”

  “Mysteries,” groaned one of the creatures. “New!” A series of wet snapping and bubbling noises followed. Laszlo shuddered, remembering the rapid growth of the thing that had tried to jump him earlier, and his sword was in his hand in an instant.

  “New words,” chanted a chorus of voices that deepened even as they spoke. “New words, new words!” It sounded like at least a dozen of the things were out there, and beneath their voices was the crackling and bubbling, as though cauldrons of fat were on the boil . . . many cauldrons.

  “All you, give new words.” A deeper, harsher voice than the others, more commanding. “All you, except BOY. Boy that KILL with spell! Him we kill! Others give new words!”

  “Him we kill,” chanted the chorus. “Others give new words!”

  “No way,” whispered Astriza. “No gods-damned way!”

  “It’s the same band of vocabuvores,” whispered Molnar. “They’ve actually followed us. Merciful gods, they’re learning to overcome their instincts. We’ve got to destroy them!”

  “We sure as hell can’t let them pass this behavior on to others,” whispered Astriza, nodding grimly. “Just as Master Molnar said, clamp your mouths shut. Let your swords and spells do the talking. If—”

  Whatever she was about to say, Laszlo never found out. Growling, panting, gibbering, screeching, the vocabuvores surged out of the darkness, over bookcases and out of aisles, into the wan circle of red light cast by Molnar’s staff. Nor were they the small-framed creatures of the previous attack—most had grown to the size of wolves. Their bodies had elongated, their limbs had knotted with thick strands of ropy muscle, and their claws had become slaughterhouse implements. Some had acquired plates of chitinous armor, while others had sacks of flab hanging off them like pendulous tumors. They came by the dozens, in an arc that closed on Laszlo and his companions like a set of jaws.

  The first to strike on either side was Casimir, who uttered a syllable so harsh that Laszlo reeled just to hear it. His ears rang, and a bitter metallic taste filled his mouth. It was a death-weaving, true dread sorcery, the sort of thing that Laszlo had never imagined himself even daring to study, and the closest of the vocabuvores paid for its enthusiasm by receiving the full brunt of the spell. Its skin literally peeled itself from the bones and muscles beneath, a ragged wet leathery flower tearing open and blowing away. And instant later the muscles followed, then the bones and the glistening internal organs; the creature exploded layer by layer. But there were many more behind it, and as the fight began in earnest Laszlo found himself praying silently that words of command, which were so much babble to non-magicians, couldn’t nourish the creatures.

  Snarling they came, eyes like black hollows, mouths like gaping pits, and in an instant Laszlo’s awareness of the battle narrowed to those claws that were meant to shred his armor, those fangs that were meant to sink into his flesh. Darting and dodging, he fought the wildest duel of his career, his centuries-old steel punching through quivering vocabuvore flesh. They died, sure enough, but there were many to replace the dead, rank on writhing rank, pushing forward to grasp and tear at him.

  “New words,” the creatures croaked, as he slashed at bulging throats and slammed his heavy hilt down on monstrous skulls. The things vomited fountains of reeking gore when they died, soaking his cloak and breeches, but he barely noticed as he gave ground step by step, backing away from the press of falling bodies as new combatants continually scrambled to take their places.

  As Laszlo fought on, he managed to catch glimpses of what was happening around him. Molnar and Astriza fought back to back, the Master Librarian’s staff sweeping before him in powerful arcs. As for Astriza, her curved blades were broader and heavier than Laszlo’s—no stabbing and dancing for her. When she swung, limbs flew, and vocabuvores were laid open guts to groins. He admired her power, and that admiration nearly became a fatal distraction.

  “NEW WORD!” screeched one of the vocabuvores, seizing him by his mantle and forcing him down to his knees. It pried and scraped at his leather neck-guard, salivating. The thing’s breath was unbelievable, like a dead animal soaked in sewage and garlic wine. Was that what the digestion of words smelled like? “NEW WORD!”

  “Die,” Laszlo muttered, swatting the thing’s hands away just long enough to drive his sword up and into the orbless pit of its left eye. It demonstrated immediate comprehension of the new word by sliding down the front of his armor, claws scrabbling at him in a useless final reflex. Laszlo stumbled up, kicked the corpse away, and freed his blade to face the next one . . . and the next one . . .

  Working in a similar vein was Lev Bronzeclaw, forgoing his mediocre magic in order to leap about and bring his natural weaponry into play just a few feet to Laszlo’s left. Some foes he lashed with his heavy tail, sending them sprawling. Others he seized with his upper limbs and held firmly while his blindingly fast kicks sunk claws into guts. Furious, inexorable, he scythed vocabuvores in half and spilled their steaming bowels as though the creatures were fruits in the grasp of some devilish mechanical pulping machine.

  Casimir and Yvette, meanwhile, had put their backs to a bookshelf and were plying their sorceries in tandem against a chaotic, flailing press of attackers. Yvette had conjured another one of her invisible barriers and was moving it back and forth like a tower shield, absorbing vocabuvore attacks with it and then slamming them backward. Casimir, grinning wildly, was methodically unleashing his killing spells at the creatures Yvette knocked off-balance, consuming them in flashing pillars of blue flame. The oily black smoke from these fires swirled across the battle and made Laszlo gag.

  Still, they seemed to be making progress—there could only be so many vocabuvores, and Laszlo began to feel a curious exaltation as the ranks of their brutish foes thinned. Just a few more for him, a few more for the Librarians, a few more for Lev, and the fight was all but—

  “KILL BOY,” roared the commanding vocabuvore, the deep-voiced one that had launched the attack moments earlier. At last it joined the fight proper, bounding out of the bookcases, twice the size of any of its brethren, more like a pallid gray bear than anything else. “Kill boy with spells! Kill girl!”

  Heeding the call, the surviving vocabuvores abandoned all other opponents and dove toward Casimir and Yvette, forcing the two aspirants back against the shelf under the desperate press of their new surge. Laszlo and Lev, caught off guard by the instant withdrawal of their remaining foes, stumbled clumsily into one another.

  The huge vocabuvore charged across the aisle, and Astriza and Molnar moved to intercept it. Laszlo watched in disbelief as they were simply shoved over by stiff smacks from the creature’s massive forelimbs. It even carried one of Astrizas’s blades away with it, embedded in a sack of oozing gristle along its right side, without visible effect
. It dove into the bookcases behind the one Casimir and Yvette were standing against, and disappeared momentarily from sight.

  The smaller survivors had pinned Yvette between the shelf and her shield; like an insect under glass, she was being crushed behind her own magic. Having neutralized her protection, they finally seized Laszlo’s arms, interfering with his ability to cast spells. Pushing frantically past the smoldering shells of their dead comrades, they seemed to have abandoned any hope of new words in exchange for a last act of vengeance against Casimir.

  But there were only a bare dozen left, and Laszlo and Lev had regained their balance. Moving in unison, they charged through the smoke and blood to fall on the rear of the pack of surviving vocabuvores. There they slew unopposed, and if only they could slay fast enough . . . claws and sword sang out together, ten. And again, eight, and again, six . . .

  Yvette’s shield buckled at last, and she and Casimir slid sideways with vocabuvore claws at their throats. But now there were only half a dozen, and then there were four, then two. A triumphant moment later Laszlo, gasping for breath, grabbed the last of the creatures by the back of its leathery neck and hauled it off his chambers-mate. Laszlo drove his sword into the vocabuvore’s back, transfixing it through whatever approximation of a heart it possessed, and flung it down to join the rest of its dead brood.

  “Thanks,” coughed Casimir, reaching over to help Yvette sit up. Other than a near-total drenching with the nauseating contents of dead vocabuvores, the two of them seemed to have escaped the worst possibilities.

  “Big one,” gasped Yvette. “Find the big one, kill it quickly—”

  At that precise instant the big one struck the bookcase from behind, heaving it over directly on top of them, a sudden rain of books followed by a heavy dark blur that slammed Casimir and Yvette out of sight beneath it. Laszlo stumbled back in shock as the huge vocabuvore stepped onto the tumbled bookcase, stomping its feet like a jungle predator gloating over a fresh kill.

  “Casimir,” Laszlo screamed. “Yvette!”

  “No,” cried Master Molnar, lurching back to his feet. “No! Proper nouns are the most powerful words of all!”

  Alas, what was said could not be unsaid. The flesh of the last vocabuvore rippled as though a hundred burrowing things were about to erupt from within, but the expression on its baleful face was sheer ecstasy. New masses of flesh billowed forth, new cords of muscle and sinew wormed their way out of thin air, new rows of shark-like teeth rose gleaming in the black pit of the thing’s mouth. In a moment it had gained several feet of height and girth, and the top of its head was now not far below the stones that floored the gallery above.

  With a foot far weightier than before, the thing stomped the bookcase again, splintering the ancient wood. Lev flung his mighty scarlet-scaled bulk against the creature without hesitation, but it had already eclipsed his strength. It caught him in mid-air, turned, and flung him spinning head-over-tail into Molnar and Astriza. Still dull from their earlier clubbing, the two librarians failed spectacularly to duck, and four hundred pounds of whirling reptilian aspirant took them down hard.

  That left Laszlo, facing the creature all alone, gore-slick sword shaking in his hand, with sorcerous powers about adequate, on his best day, to heat a cup of tea.

  “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

  “Known,” chuckled the creature. Its voice was now a bass rumble, deep as oncoming thunder. “Now will kill boy. Now EASY.”

  “Uh,” said Laszlo, scanning the smoke-swirled area for any surprise, any advantage, any unused weapon. While it was flattering to imagine himself charging in and dispatching the thing with his sword, the treatment it had given Lev was not at all encouraging in that respect. He flicked his gaze from the bookshelves to the ceiling—and then it hit him, a sensation that would have been familiar to any aspirant ever graduated from the High University. The inherent magic of all undergraduates—the magic of the last minute. The power to embrace any solution, no matter how insane or desperate.

  “No,” he yelled. “No! Spare boy!”

  “Kill boy,” roared the creature, no more scintillating a conversationalist for all its physical changes.

  “No.” Laszlo tossed his sword aside and beckoned to the vocabuvore. “Spare boy. I will give new words!”

  “I kill boy, then you give new words!”

  “No. Spare boy. I will give many new words. I will give all my words.”

  “No,” howled Lev, “No, you can’t—”

  “Trust me,” said Laszlo. He picked a book out of the mess at his feet and waved it at the vocabuvore. “Come here. I’ll read to you!”

  “Book of words . . . ” the creature hissed. It took a step forward.

  “Yes. Many books, new words. Come to me, and they’re yours.”

  “New words!” Another step. The creature was off the bookcase now, towering over him. Ropy strands of hot saliva tumbled from the corners of its mouth . . . good gods, Laszlo thought, he’d really made it hungry.

  “Occultation!” he said, by way of a test.

  The creature growled with pleasure, shuddering, and more mass boiled out of its grotesque frame. The change was not as severe as that caused by proper nouns, but it was still obvious. The vocabuvore’s head moved an inch closer to the ceiling. Laszlo took a deep breath, and then began shouting as rapidly as he could:

  “Fuliginous! Occluded! Uh, canticle! Portmanteau! Tea cozy!” He racked his mind. He needed obscure words, complex words, words unlikely to have been uttered by cautious librarians prowling the stacks. “Indeterminate! Mendacious! Vestibule! Tits, testicles, aluminum, heliotrope, narcolepsy!”

  The vocabuvore panted in pleasure, gorging itself on the stream of fresh words. Its stomach doubled in size, tripled, becoming a sack of flab that could have supplied fat for ten thousand candles. Inch by inch it surged outward and upward. Its head bumped into the stone ceiling and it glanced up, as though realizing for the first time just how cramped its quarters were.

  “Adamant,” cried Laszlo, backing away from the creature’s limbs, now as thick as tree trunks. “Resolute, unyielding, unwavering, reckless, irresponsible, foolhardy!”

  “Noooo,” yowled the creature, clearly recognizing its predicament and struggling to fight down the throes of ecstasy from its unprecedented feast. Its unfolding masses of new flesh were wedging it more and more firmly in place between the floor and the heavy stones of the overhead gallery, sorcery-laid stones that had stood fast for more than a thousand years. “Stop, stop, stop!”

  “Engorgement,” shouted Laszlo, almost dancing with excitement, “Avarice! Rapaciousness! Corpulence! Superabundance! Comeuppance!”

  “Nggggggh,” the vocabuvore, now elephant-sized, shrieked in a deafening voice. It pushed against the overhead surface with hands six or seven feet across. To no avail—its head bent sideways at an unnatural angle until its spine, still growing, finally snapped against the terrible pressure of floor and ceiling. The huge arms fell to the ground with a thud that jarred Laszlo’s teeth, and a veritable waterfall of dark blood began to pour from the corner of the thing’s slack mouth.

  Not stopping to admire this still-twitching flesh edifice, Laszlo ran around it, reaching the collapsed bookcase just as Lev did. Working together, they managed to heave it up, disgorging a flow of books that slid out around their ankles. Laszlo grinned uncontrollably when Casimir and Yvette pushed themselves shakily up to their hands and knees. Lev pulled Yvette off the ground and she tumbled into his arms, laughing, while Laszlo heaved Casimir up

  “I apologize,” said Caz, “for every word I’ve ever criticized in every dissertation you’ve ever scribbled.”

  “Tonight we will get drunk,” yelled Lev. The big lizard’s friendly slap between Laszlo’s shoulders almost knocked him into the spot previously occupied by Yvette. “In your human fashion, without forethought, in strange neighborhoods that will yield anecdotes for future mortification—”

  “Master Molnar!” said Yvette. In an instant
the four aspirants had turned and come to attention like nervous students of arms.

  Molnar and Astriza were supporting one another gingerly, sharing Molnar’s staff as a sort of fifth leg. Each had received a thoroughly bloody nose, and Molnar’s left eye was swelling shut under livid bruises.

  “My deepest apologies,” hissed Lev. “I fear that I have done you some injury—”

  “Hardly your fault, Aspirant Bronzeclaw,” said Molnar. “You merely served as an involuntary projectile.”

  Laszlo felt the exhilaration of the fight draining from him, and the familiar sensations of tired limbs and fresh bruises took its place. Everyone seemed able to stand on their own two feet, and everyone was a mess. Torn cloaks, slashed armor, bent scabbards, myriad cuts and welts—all of it under a thorough coating of black vocabuvore blood, still warm and sopping. Even Casimir—no, thought Laszlo, the bastard had done it again. He was as disgusting as anyone, but somewhere, between blinks, he’d reassumed his mantle of sly contentment.

  “Nicely done, Laszlo,” said Astriza. “Personally, I’m glad Lev bowled me over. If I’d been on my feet when you offered to feed that thing new words, I’d have tried to punch your lights out. My compliments on fast thinking.”

  “Agreed,” said Molnar. “That was the most singular entanglement I’ve seen in all my years of minding student book-return expeditions. All of you did fine work, fine work putting down a real threat.”

  “And importing a fair amount of new disorder to the stacks,” said Yvette. Laszlo followed her gaze around the site of the battle. Between the sprawled tribe of slain vocabuvores, the rivers of blood, the haze of thaumaturgical smoke, and the smashed shelf, sixty-one Manticore Northwest looked worse than all of them put together.

  “My report will describe the carnage as ‘regretfully unavoidable,’ said Master Molnar with a smile. “Besides, we’ve cleaned up messes before. Everything here will be back in place before the end of the day.”