The Forbidden Library

by David Alastair Hayden

  “You’ve killed her!” Kemsu snapped.

  “I’ve preserved her. She will remain like this and neither age nor die nor truly live. I will wake her when I have the cure.”

  “And now must pay with pain,” the Keeper of Scrolls announced impatiently. “You must enter the stacks wounded, humble, and alone.”

  His stomach wrenching, Turesobei stared at him. “You’re joking … right?”

  The Keeper shook his head. “I am sorry, but that is the way the magic of the stacks works. It can be no other way.”

  Turning to his friends, Turesobei said, “Whatever happens, stay calm. Don’t interfere. I’ll be okay.”

  Turesobei followed the Keeper of Scrolls as he went to the codex and dripped Turesobei’s blood onto the Fangthorn entry. The Keeper placed his palm onto the page, chanted, then turned back to Turesobei, watching him, expectantly.

  “Okay,” Turesobei said, “what do I do n—”

  A burst of flame erupted on Turesobei’s chest, just above his sternum. He screamed and fell to his knees as the flame seared his skin and burned into the bone. The flame went out but the pain continued, beyond his chest and into every fibre of his body. He lay on the floor, gasping for breath.

  “You may open the door and go inside now,” the Keeper of Scrolls said.

  Turesobei realized he was crying. Shoma was crying, too. “I’m okay,” he said, but the words tumbled out on instinct so as not to worry them. He was anything but okay.

  Heavy footsteps thudded toward him. Motekeru knelt beside him. “Let me help you up, master.”

  Turesobei grabbed onto Motekeru’s arm and stood. He regulated his breathing, trying to reduce the pain.

  Lu Bei threw jabs and hooks as if shadow-boxing. “Go get her, master! Show that dragon who’s boss!”

  The others voiced encouragement, too. But he couldn’t respond. He didn’t have the energy. But he felt their love. That was all that mattered, all that he needed to keep going. To face his death.

  Turesobei limped on his own to the door to the Lower Stacks, his chest afire, his mind and body throbbing with pain. He pushed the door open.

  Chapter 52

  Turesobei stepped down onto a staircase barely illuminated by a single, no doubt magical, lantern hanging near the door. The door boomed shut behind him with the finality of the closing of a burial tomb. Head spinning, he slumped down onto a step. On his chest was a perfect circle of charred flesh with a glowing rune in the center. This was the worst library ever.

  Turesobei shivered uncontrollably, from shock and from the icy cold within the staircase. He gathered his composure. Sitting on the steps hurting and freezing … he was only going to get weaker. No choice but to move on. He lifted the lantern off its hook and held it up to light his way.

  Turesobei trudged, and stumbled, down perhaps a hundred steps, until the staircase ended with a simple door engraved with a black circle punctuated by a crimson eye … shadow and flame … the Mark of the Earth Dragon.

  How did one reach the other artifacts? Some sort of magic, obviously. Perhaps a tunneling spell to pocket dimensions. Ooloolarra had said she built her library on top of the original shrine. This was the only artifact that had to be physically present. While such magic was incredibly powerful, it probably wasn’t beyond what the Keepers were capable of.

  He touched the handle and drew in a breath. Weaponless, no spell strips, his chest scorched, down even into his soul — he had to face one of the most powerful dragons in Okoro’s legends — a dragon that believed him to be her nemesis reborn. Sure, Hannya was bound to a sword. But Ooloolarra had said that he’d need to convince Hannya to help him. She had to be willing. Based on his nightmare encounters, Hannya clearly thought she could defeat him when they met. And unfortunately, he was no Kaiaru, even when he was at full strength and prepared for battle.

  He pushed the door open and lifted the lantern.

  The chamber, only slightly larger than Turesobei’s workshop at home, was walled in black granite and littered with the debris of collapsed ornamental cedar beams and rotting mats and tapestries. A polished block of white marble, etched with hundreds of runes, sat on the far side of the chamber. Embedded halfway into the block was an old-fashioned, two-handed longsword with a blade as dark as wrought iron. Runes carved into the blade writhed as if aflame. The pommel held a ruby so dark a crimson that it was nearly black. The dank room smelled faintly of salt, and beyond the weeping, rough-hewn walls the sea below the ice whispered.

  Hannya herself was nowhere to be seen.

  He stepped inside and set the lantern down. The runes on the blade continued to flicker on their own. He bowed, wincing in pain as the skin and muscles of his chest stretched.

  “My Lady, I, Chonda Turesobei, come before you with a humble heart and ask —”

  A great shadow billowed out from the sword and expanded to fill the entire room save for a small space around Turesobei. Flaming eyes illuminated a slender snout capped with twin horns. Her breath struck him as fire and ice.

  “Naruwakiru,” said the deep, feminine voice he’d heard in his nightmares. Here her voice had regal textures and undertones he’d not heard through the Shadowland.

  This was not what he had expected. This was far, far worse. Why didn’t Ooloolarra tell him the Earth Dragon could leave the sword?!

  “I’m not Naruwakiru,” he said quickly. “I’m Chonda Turesobei, a baojendari who absorbed her power.”

  “You are the Storm Dragon. You are Kaiaru. You are Naruwakiru.”

  “I have her power, yes. And a kavaru, but —”

  “I know why you have come here, but I would never help you return to him. Do you think I’m a fool? No, no, not a fool am I. Do you know what I will do for you? I will teach you a lesson.”

  He wasn’t getting anywhere. Perhaps he should play along. “What am I supposed to learn?”

  “Suffering,” she replied. “You shall know my suffering. You shall know it and it will ruin you.”

  “I’m sorry for anything Naruwakiru did to you, but I’m not her. I am Chonda Turesobei.”

  Hannya opened wide her gaping jaws and fell upon him. Not knowing the binding runes on the blade, there was nothing he could do to stop her. She swallowed him whole and he fell into a pure cold of desolation … of nothingness. His sense of self eroded until he was all but unmade. Only a sliver of his consciousness remained.

  *****

  He was not Chonda Turesobei anymore. He was a slender Kaiaru woman with fangs and claws, steel-black hair, shadow-blue skin, and a ruby kavaru at the navel.

  He was Hannya.

  Before him … before her … stood a naked man with skin the color of fog and sea-dark hair. His eyes sparkled with madness, shifting from color to color, one moment gold and another crimson and another black. Nine kavaru, each a different color, were embedded on his forehead, chest, navel, both hands, both feet, and both thighs. The man lifted a wooden bowl. Blood sloshed within it. He offered it to her.

  “My Queen of the Earth, drink with me,” he said in a voice that rattled within Hannya’s brain.

  “No,” she replied, with a tremor of fear. “I will not.”

  The Blood King’s eyes narrowed. His voice lowered to a whisper. “Do you not love me?”

  She loved him so intensely she thought her heart would burst. “I do love you, and I would die for you. But this … this I cannot do. I think you should give up now.”

  “I cannot stop, Hannya. I cannot stop until I get what I desire.”

  The Blood King had courted madness and lost his way, and she had followed, not because she still believed in his quest, but because she loved him. But she would not drink this blood for anything.

  “If you will not drink,” he said, “then you are no longer of any use to me.”

  “My love, surely —”

  “I will choose a new queen. Your old rival Naruwakiru will share her power with me and drink the blood. She has told me so. Unlike you, she has fully embr
aced the storm kenja within her. She has become a dragon. And we are lovers already.”

  “Lovers?” Hannya whispered. Her knees thudded into the earth as betrayal stabbed deep into her soul.

  “Lovers as you and I once were,” he said. “Leave me now. You are nothing to me. She is more beautiful and more willing than ever you have been.”

  Hannya stumbled away. She trudged a hundred leagues, every step a step of torment and sorrow, and crawled into a cave. Down and down she crawled, into the deepest cave in the Central Mountains of Okoro. And there, in the womb of the deep earth, at last she fully embraced the powers she had mastered, blackest shadow and volcanic flame. She gave herself over completely. Her human form dissipated and her body shifted into a dense cloud veined with thin trails of lava. And suspended in her midst was her ruby kavaru.

  *****

  Hannya stood now in front of a gate with a shimmering portal. Alongside her stood nine other Kaiaru with wild forms and appearances, looking as if they’d spent far too long alone in the wilderness. Their newfound power emanated from them in waves. They were the only Kaiaru left from the dozens who had fought the Blood King.

  Hannya burned with a rage so hot she thought she’d burst into flames, and yet deep within she was cold, and empty. She loved him still, not the Blood King he had become in the end, but the passionate, inquisitive Kaiaru he had been when first they met. She would never forgive him for what he had done to her and Okoro.

  In chorus with the other Kaiaru, Hannya chanted a spell and locked the gate to the Nexus, imprisoning the Blood King in case he ever awoke from his slumber. Killing him would have been easier, but he had become a god and slumber and a prison were the best that even they could manage.

  Hannya turned back into her Earth Dragon form. “Speak to me no more,” she told the others. “Look not for me again. This is your land to rule now. Do so wisely.”

  *****

  Only yearly feedings, primarily on demon-beasts, punctuated the centuries that Hannya haunted the deepest bowels of the earth, free from human contact, free to dream of better days long gone.

  Until a Kaiaru she had never before met ventured into her lair. “I am Tepebono, Consort of Lady Amasan of the Winds,” he declared. “And I am deeply sorry for this.”

  Before she could even respond, he drew forth a two-handed longsword of dark-steel engraved with lifeless runes and with an empty hole in the pommel. The blade was ancient … legendary … unseen for millennia.

  “Fangthorn,” she hissed. “No!”

  She struck at him, but he plunged the blade into her and spoke the first rune of binding. Howling, she fell back, unable to attack, unable to flee. Again he thrust the blade into her, speaking the second rune of binding. Over and over he plunged the blade into her body and uttered runes of binding. Until at last her billowy form snapped into the blade and her entire being was crammed within. Her ruby kavaru fell to the floor with a clink and rolled to his feet. Tepebono picked up the stone and fitted into the hole in Fangthorn’s pommel.

  “Why?!” she shouted, her voice vibrating from the blade. “Why have you done this to me?!”

  “Because I have to stop the Storm Dragon,” he said.

  “She has returned? How?”

  “I don’t know,” Tepebono said, “but she’s back, far stronger than ever, and her power is growing. Soon she will rule the land. The Shogakami won’t stand up to her, even now that she’s kidnapped one of their own.”

  “If you had asked, I would gladly have helped you fight her,” Hannya said bitterly.

  “I know, but you are not strong enough.”

  “Then how does having me bound within this sword make anything better? If I’m not strong enough in my dragon form then I’m certainly not strong enough bound.” He didn’t answer, but she could feel his fear, his desperate hope that he was doing the right thing. “Oh, I see. You’re not using me to attack Naruwakiru. You are giving me to Naruwakiru. She wants to open the Nexus and restore the Blood King and she cannot force the Shogakami to obey her. So that just leaves me, because a dragon can be compelled.”

  “Given the right magic.” Tepebono hefted the dark-steel sword and gazed upon it sadly. “I went to great lengths to find Fangthorn. The only blade in existence that could contain your power. I swear, I’m only doing this because I must.”

  “You’re a fool! Do you know who the Blood King is? What he will do if you free him?”

  “I know what he is. I’m aware of the risks.”

  “Then why take them? The Shogakami aren’t powerful enough to stop him once he’s free, especially if Naruwakiru is stronger than before.”

  “I have to take the chance. I have to save Amasan. No matter the cost.”

  “Amasan doesn’t even know you’re doing this, does she?”

  He shook his head. “I love her. I don’t expect you to understand. Besides, I have a plan. I can make everything right.”

  Hannya tried, over and over to escape, but each time pain lashed her like a bladed whip. Being in the sword was a torment of suffocation, and worse, he was taking her to the one being she hated above all others.

  *****

  High in the Orichomo Mountains they met. Tepebono stood before the Winter Gate and lifted Fangthorn. An hour earlier he had stopped and placed an arrow made entirely of white steel on the floor of a cave deep within the mountain. White steel was incredibly rare in Okoro.

  “I am here!” Tepebono shouted.

  From the violent storm raging above, a lightning bolt struck, and on the blast mark appeared Naruwakiru in her human form. Beside her, in binding chains, slumped the Lady Amasan.

  Tepebono handed over the sword and Naruwakiru shoved Amasan into his arms.

  “The binding on those chains will release once I’m gone,” Naruwakiru said, smiling. She trailed a sparking finger along Fangthorn’s blade. Hannya cried out in pain. “My revenge and the key to our lord’s rebirth, all at once. Did you miss me little Earth Dragon?”

  “Hannya, attack!” Tepebono ordered unexpectedly.

  Forced by his command, she instantly billowed forth from the sword and in her dragon form struck Naruwakiru, knocking her back against the gate’s arch. Flame and shadow met wind and lightning, and for a few moments their battle raged. But Tepebono had been right. Even in her human form, Naruwakiru was now more powerful than Hannya had ever been. Naruwakiru drew down power from the storm above and smote Hannya.

  Tepebono chanted a spell and broke the binding on Lady Amasan’s chains. But they were too late to help. While Hannya was reeling, Naruwakiru locked her palm against the blade and shouted a command that burned a new binding rune onto the hilt of the sword: the Mark of the Storm Dragon.

  “You are mine forever, Earth Dragon,” Naruwakiru said as Hannya seeped harmlessly back into the blade. “Now, shall we —” Naruwakiru spotted Amasan, and Hannya saw it through her eyes. The Shogakami of the Winds was pointing at the storm cloud above which had ceased to rage when Naruwakiru struck Hannya. “What are you —”

  The white-steel arrow shot out from the cave and flew into the storm cloud. There was a sharp bang followed by a single, deafening peel of thunder. Naruwakiru vanished. The storm dissipated. And down fell the Storm Dragon’s jade heart. It fell into Amasan’s hand. The white steel had only cracked the surface.

  “It will heal over in time,” she said, “but it would take powerful magics to resurrect her.'

  “We must lock her heart away,” said Tepebono. “I know the perfect place.”

  *****

  Tepebono spoke spell after spell for days on end, but nothing worked. At last he gave up.

  “I can break the binding I put on you, Lady Hannya, but I can’t break the Mark of the Storm Dragon. Only Naruwakiru could do that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “So I’m trapped in this blade … forever …”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?!” Hannya shouted. Her voice coming from the sword shook
the earth and cracked the walls in Tepebono’s workshop. “You took away my freedom!”

  “It was the only way we could defeat her. And I knew you’d want to see Naruwakiru stopped.”

  “The plan was idiotic, and you know it! You traded my freedom for Amasan’s!”

  “If ever I find a way to release you, I swear that I will do so.”

  “I hope you rot in Torment, Tepebono. I wish now that you’d freed the Blood King so I could see him slowly tear you and your precious Amasan to shreds.”

  Tepebono started to saying something else, but Hannya howled incoherently at him until the blade started to smoke. Tepebono set it down and Amasan pulled him off to the side.

  “We must hide her away,” she said. “Bound like this Hannya is too dangerous. Someone else might one day find a way to use her and free the Blood King.”

  “I know a place where we can hide her,” Tepebono muttered. “An island no one knows about. Bound by sea, the Earth Dragon will be hidden away, her power reduced.”

  *****

  Sea air whipped against her. Lady Amasan and Tepebono took Fangthorn to a shrine on an uninhabited island thirty leagues off the coast of Zangaiden. Few ships would ever be able to sail here through the reefs. They plunged the blade into a white marble slab and departed.

  The sea sloshed outside. Gulls cried, zipped through spindrift, and plunged after prey. Seals barked on the shore. Storms rolled over. No one ever came. Days passed, years passed, centuries passed. A few people came at last and built a tiny shrine and worshiped her. The Mark of the Storm Dragon had weakened and Hannya won enough freedom that she could billow forth from the blade, but only so far. She was anchored to the blade and the ruby kavaru in the pommel.

  Still, she emerged rarely. Only enough that the worshipers would remain and she wouldn’t be alone. But that was a lie she told herself. She was utterly alone, always.

  She missed freedom. She even longed for war and heartbreak, and for the days before she became the dragon. She wished now that she had sipped from the bowl offered to her by the Blood King, for her soul had fallen into Torment all the same.