The Forbidden Library

by David Alastair Hayden

  “I think he might be too exhausted to — No, you’re right. He’s going to throw a fit.”

  Turesobei went to Kurine and Shoma’s room and tapped on the door. Iniru opened it. She wore a burgundy tunic that was no longer than Turesobei’s. It wasn’t revealing, and he’d seen her in less — her shorts and shirt that she wore under her uniform. But he wasn’t supposed to have seen her in so little.

  She was stunning. He’d seen so little of her on the ice except when he’d healed her that night that he’d forgotten how beautiful her red-brown fur was, how supple her muscled limbs.

  A hint of playfulness danced in her eyes and she started to smile but stopped. “Gonna stare at me all day long?” she whispered. It took him a moment to shake his head. “Good, because it wouldn’t be right to do that in here with your betrothed.”

  “How is she?” Turesobei asked.

  “Getting worse.”

  Enashoma joined them. Her tunic was solid black.

  “You look beautiful, Little Blossom.”

  “I feel —”

  “Naked? I know.”

  “You baojendari!” Iniru said.

  “You’ve got to admit,” Turesobei said, “that after all that cold weather gear …”

  “That even I feel naked?” Iniru asked. “No, I feel free at last. That was torture.”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Lu Bei said. He landed beside Kurine and looked her over. “This doesn’t look good, master.”

  “I’m going to do one more poison delay spell on her,” Turesobei said, kneeling beside Lu Bei. “Diminished returns, I know. I can’t heal her anymore. I’ve done all I can.”

  “Master, her fevers have been high. The longer this takes … a cure may not be enough. She may die anyway … or be damaged.”

  “I know.” Turesobei cast the spell on her. He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m doing all I can for you. Hang in there.”

  Motekeru entered. “Master, you are needed.”

  The Keeper of Scrolls waited for him outside. “The Great Librarian will see you now. You and your fetch. The others should wait here. Their presence is unnecessary.”

  “She doesn’t want to interview us all?” Turesobei asked.

  “You are the only one who matters to her,” the Keeper of Scrolls replied.

  Motekeru stepped forward, but Turesobei raised a hand. “I’ll be fine. We are at their mercy anyway. Stay here with the others. Tell them where I’ve gone.”

  Turesobei followed the Keeper of Scrolls back into the library and up the spiraling staircase. He suspected the Keeper was merely climbing the stairs now for Turesobei’s benefit. It was strange because even though no one used these stairs, they were polished and entirely free from dust. The guest rooms, which could not have been used in centuries, were in perfect condition. Nothing here had deteriorated and everything was kept spotless. But maybe that was what the Keepers did to occupy their time.

  At the final level, the Keeper walked through the stacks to a place where a ladder led up to a trapdoor. “Go up. The door will open for you. She will be occupied. You must wait for her to acknowledge you.”

  Turesobei climbed the ladder. He reached the top and was about to push on the trapdoor, but it flipped open on its own. He climbed into a room capped by a glass dome. In the center of the room stood a tall woman with a baojendari frame but incredibly angular features: a sharp jaw, high cheekbones, deep eyes. Living tattoos in silvery blue ink danced across her pale, parchment-colored skin. She was naked, so he could see that the tattoos covered nearly every inch of her body. Blue-black hair cascaded down her back, all the way onto the floor, like a cape. Her eyes were a solid scarlet that matched the crimson kavaru embedded into her navel.

  The moment he saw the channeling stone and felt its power, Turesobei and Lu Bei whispered her name at the same time.

  “Ooloolarra.”

  Chapter 47

  Turesobei and Lu Bei glanced sharply at one another. Yet again he had recognized a Kaiaru instinctively. But unlike with the eidakami-ga, this was a real Kaiaru, the first he had ever met, or at least the first who hadn’t become a dragon.

  Ooloolarra, the Great Librarian, didn’t give any sign that she’d noticed their entrance. She was observing a section of the glass interior of the dome. The entire surface was alive with text in all sorts of languages and sizes constantly scrolling and shifting.

  Turesobei bowed and knelt on a cushion that sat nearby, he assumed for this purpose. Lu Bei flew around examining the text. Turesobei gestured for Lu Bei to kneel beside him, but Lu Bei gave him his whatever look and carried on. Turesobei tried to read the text while he waited. Every now and then he spotted characters from a language he knew, but it would scroll away too fast for him to read any of it.

  He tried hard not to stare at Ooloolarra. He failed. Not because she was naked … not just because she was naked … but because the shifting tattoos mesmerized him. Like most Kaiaru, her form was unique. Chonda Lu had been one of the few who’d taken on an almost entirely normal human appearance.

  Over an hour had passed when suddenly she turned and said, “Chonda Lu, my old friend. I never expected you to come here seeking my help.”

  “I am not Chonda Lu,” he said, bowing. “I am Chonda Turesobei.”

  Her eyes darted to Lu Bei. “I suppose you are … Chonda Turesobei.” She made a gesture and then peered at a specific spot on the glass dome. Her eyes widened then narrowed as she bit her lip. Turesobei followed her gaze to the section of now-frozen text, but he couldn’t read it. “You are Lu Bei, yes?”

  “I am, Madam Ooloolarra. Don’t you remember? We have met before, on numerous occasions.”

  “Oh, I remember,” she said. “But I just wanted to be sure. You were much smaller then and didn’t have the Mark of the Storm Dragon on your chest.”

  “Some of the energies Master took in when he absorbed the Storm Dragon’s Heart bled into me. I grew and gained a little power.”

  “You can turn into a book,” she said with a spark in her eyes. Her lips curled into a smile. “I never knew that before.”

  Lu Bei frowned with worry. “Master wished me to hide that from you.”

  “Oh, I am certain he did. But now I know.” She nodded toward the dome. “Now I know … well, almost everything. Everything written throughout history is here on my screen. There is a lot to read through. Stand please, my brother. We are all siblings, the Kaiaru.” After Turesobei stood, Ooloolarra stepped in close and stroked a hand across his cheek. Her breasts lightly brushed against him. He averted his eyes and tried to keep his focus. “You even look a lot like him. You know, we were always friends, Lu and I.”

  “Friends?” Lu Bei said. “That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”

  “Well, we were not enemies. We helped each other on many occasions. For a Kaiaru, that amounts to friendship, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lu Bei shrugged. “It’s true that you weren’t enemies.”

  “I hear some of the other members of Chonda Lu’s … menagerie … are with you. Though Rig and Ohma were before your time as I recall.”

  “Indeed, madam.”

  “And Motekeru.” She shuddered.

  “I summoned them by accident before we came through the gate,” Turesobei said.

  “Child, nothing in your brief life has been by accident. Everything has been to Chonda Lu’s design. I am sure of that.”

  “The big destiny I can’t understand,” Turesobei said. “I know. But Lu Bei returned too soon.”

  “That’s true,” Lu Bei said.

  “Is it?” Ooloolarra asked. “I wonder. Just because you returned before Lu said you would doesn’t mean it’s earlier than he desired.” She gestured and another cushion appeared from nowhere. “I have stood a long time. Too long. Perhaps a week, I think. Come, let us sit and talk for a while. You are no doubt full of questions. I am guessing you do not understand the nature of the Ancient Cold and Deep, is that correct?”

  He nod
ded as she sat lotus-style across from him. She was terribly close. He shifted uncomfortably and mostly kept his eyes averted.

  “My nakedness bothers you?”

  “All of this bothers me,” he replied. “But yes, especially that.”

  She delicately touched her cheek and batted her eyes. “You don’t think I’m beautiful?”

  “You are — very much so.” He kept trying to look away. “It’s just that … um …”

  “Master is confused by everything here,” Lu Bei said, coming to the rescue.

  “Is that so?” Ooloolarra said.

  Turesobei nodded. “I’m in a strange place and I’ve never encountered a Kaiaru before, and yes, you are naked and I’m … unused to that. It’s not proper in my society.” He had actually never seen a woman naked before. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do not be then.” Chuckling, she scooted a little farther away and placed her hands in her lap. He knew then that she had been toying with him.

  “What is this place, really?” he asked. “The Ancient Cold and Deep … it’s not exactly what I expected.”

  “This realm is a duplicate of the part of Okoro you call Zangaiden and some of the ocean beyond it. This perfect copy was placed in a pocket dimension separated out from the normal world. Every snowflake in that portion of Okoro, every book, every living being … duplicated and placed in this little dimension with its finite boundaries leading off into nothingness. And yet despite that, the world functions just as you would expect. The sun and moons rise, the wind blows, and life goes on. The original Zangaiden and all its inhabitants went on living their normal lives in their normal world, completely unaware of what had been done. They experienced nothing more than a mild earthquake and a wave of vertigo.”

  Turesobei shook his head. “But that’s … that’s just …”

  “Ridiculous?” she suggested.

  “I was going to say impossible.”

  “Clearly it’s not, even if you and I cannot fathom it.”

  “But the goronku don’t exist in the Zangaiden I know. How can this be a copy when so much is different?”

  “This copy was made over a dozen millennia past your time, after the sun began to fade.”

  “So we’re in the future now … the far future?” She nodded. Turesobei glanced at the text scrolling on the inside of the dome. “That means you know everything that will happen to me and my companions, right? My future is your past.”

  “Well, I know of one specific past that involved you, yes. My past. But your future will be different from what I know.”

  “How?” Turesobei asked.

  “That’s simple. In my past, Chonda Turesobei never came to the Winter Realm. There are most likely thousands of other, smaller differences as well. The short of it is that your venturing here did not happen in the time-stream from which this land was taken. From the moment you entered the Ancient Cold and Deep, the history of the world which I possess here will be different from what occurs in your world. Suffice it to say that anything I tell you about your future or the future of your world is largely irrelevant.”

  “Why was this place copied into a pocket dimension? And how?”

  “The Ancient Cold and Deep,” Ooloolarra said, “was created by the Blood King. He created all nine realms.”

  “Wait, I thought there were only four realms.”

  “There are only four whose existence was known and remembered in your day. But there are actually eight gates that each take you from Okoro to one of the realms. And in each of those eight realms you will find a gate that takes you to the ninth realm, the Nexus.”

  Turesobei’s head began to swim. “So who’s this Blood King?”

  “Bad news,” Lu Bei said.

  “You know something about him?” Turesobei asked.

  “Only a few legends Master was trying to track down before he died. But that’s not how I know he’s bad news. Blood King, hello? No one going by that name’s gonna be friendly.”

  Ooloolarra grinned. “Lu Bei is right. The Blood King was a mad tyrant who conquered Okoro millennia before your time. Only with the help of the Earth Dragon were the Kaiaru of Okoro able to defeat him and imprison him in the Nexus of the Realms where he sleeps for eternity. Of the twenty-one Kaiaru brave and powerful enough to oppose the Blood King, just nine survived. They absorbed his power and that of the realms. From that moment forward, the zaboko, and even your people, have worshiped them as the Shogakami.”

  “That’s the origin of the Shogakami?!” Turesobei said.

  “Indeed, as much of it as I know.”

  “And you don’t know why the Blood King did it?”

  She swept her hand out toward her screens. “All this knowledge, so many secrets, and yet so very little about the Blood King. The only thing I know for certain is that he was mad.” She sighed. “I think the purpose of the Ancient Cold and Deep was to preserve this library. I was here the day this realm was made. When I was copied into this place.”

  She closed her eyes and shuddered. “A day I can only describe as pure torment, when it felt like my insides were being shredded and my brain melted. You cannot imagine the chaos and confusion, especially along the boundaries. People and homes were severed. Loved ones lost beyond the boundary. The many who walked unknowingly into oblivion for days and years afterward. And I tell you, the sight of a hundred panicked Keepers is not one you will ever forget.

  “That morning, before everything started, a tall man with baojendari features came to the library. He was clad in black leather and wore a cloak of scarlet. The Keepers, if you can believe this, let him walk in without consulting me, without challenging him. They abandoned all their protocols. I went down to meet him and … the rest is lost to me.”

  “You think that was the Blood King?” Turesobei asked.

  “I do, and I wish I recalled more. The Keepers don’t remember seeing him at all. Or they don’t claim to anyway.” She turned to Lu Bei. “So Chonda Lu knew nothing more than that about the Blood King?”

  Lu Bei shook his head. “I don’t know that he knew even that much. Master began researching the gates soon after he discovered Okoro and met the Shogakami. He often tried to pry secrets from them, but the Shogakami resisted him. I think he had pieced some secrets about the realms together but was far from understanding all of it. Unfortunately, he forbade me from recording any of what he learned. That wasn’t something he normally did, so he must have thought the knowledge dangerous. Perhaps he knew as much as you, but if so …” Lu Bei shrugged.

  “So why are the gates lost?” Turesobei asked.

  “The Shogakami wanted them forgotten.”

  Turesobei rubbed the palms of his hands across his face and took a deep breath, trying to absorb all the information. “So if all this knowledge is important for me to know, that means —”

  “There is no way to open the Winter Gate from this side,” said Ooloolarra.

  “I’m going to have to enter the Nexus of the Realms, aren’t I, since it connects all the realms together?”

  “Yes. From the Nexus you should be able to venture into other realms and seek a way home. Perhaps some of the other realms will have a means to be opened on their side.”

  “You mean you don’t know? I could travel through the realms in vain searching for a way home?”

  “I don’t know everything for a reason. The Shogakami didn’t want people passing between Okoro and the realms. But just as the Winter Child was a key, there are bound to be others. The Ancient Cold and Deep once had a key on this side that corresponded to the Winter Child, the Winter Crone, but the Shogakami removed her when they imprisoned the yomon here.”

  He began to piece all the information together. His heart stopped. His hopes crashed. “The Shogakami used the Nexus as a prison for the Blood King. I can’t go there. I can’t risk waking him and giving him a way to escape.”

  “You must go there to have a chance at returning home,” she said.

  Lu Bei scratched his chin. �
�If he’s asleep, perhaps we can pass through without waking him. And his power was absorbed by the Shogakami, right? So maybe he’s a pushover now.”

  “That assumes the scraps of information we have are correct,” Turesobei said. “And that might be relative. He might still be too powerful for us to deal with. Even weakened he would probably be amazingly powerful.”

  “I think that even if you entered and left the Nexus,” Ooloolarra said, “the Blood King would be unable to follow.”

  “But the risk,” Turesobei said, shaking his head. “What if I unleashed the Blood King on the world again? The Shogakami disappeared centuries ago and we have only one known Kaiaru in Okoro now. There would be no one who could stop him.”

  “We can’t stay here, master,” Lu Bei said. “You have to go back. And poor Lady Shoma.”

  “Worry about the risks later,” Ooloolarra said. “Now that you are here, you must continue moving forward or the Keepers will execute you. Don’t even pretend you can escape them. Win their approval and get the sword you need to enter the Nexus. You can decide if it’s worth the risk after you leave the library.”

  She frowned as if she pitied him, and perhaps she did. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. Just acquiring the sword will be next to impossible. First, I must convince the Gathering of Keepers to accept your bid. Then you must persuade them your cause is worthy. The Keepers are peculiar and difficult to reason with and you must understand that they don’t like dealing with situations not foretold by the Keeper of Destiny.”

  “The Keeper of Destiny knows what will happen in the future?”

  “Not exactly. It’s not simply that Keepers prevent powerful objects from falling into the wrong hands. Their mission is also to put those objects into the right hands, hands that will lead the world to the destiny they wish to bring about.”

  “So it’s like the k’chasan Sacred Codex.”

  She nodded. “Well, there’s a lot more power involved with further-reaching consequences, but yes, it is like Jujuriki Notasami’s childish book.”