The Forbidden Library

by Django Wexler

Alice spent a few moments considering this. The trail of dirt and blood led quite clearly to the door back into the main hall, and after a while she padded over to this, skirting the mess, and pulled it open. Aside from the music, everything was still silent.

  In the hall lay Emma, slumped against the base of one of the marble statues. A tray was overturned on the floor beside her, with a smashed bowl of sticky oatmeal. Alice hopped over the muddy carpet and hurried to the girl’s side, and found that she was just as deeply asleep as Ashes.

  It clicked, finally, and Alice remembered where she’d heard the music before. Her breath caught in her throat. Breaking into a run, she followed the trail back into the kitchens and confirmed that it led to the back door. From there, she was certain, it would go out, around the garden, and into the library.

  If everyone in the house was asleep, there was no one to go after Isaac but Alice. She hesitated, her hand on the doorknob, then turned around and dashed up toward her room. She’d gone charging off into the library by herself twice now, and if those experiences had taught her anything, it was that it was better to dress warmly and bring along a decent pair of boots.

  A few minutes later, Alice trotted down the gravel path toward the library. The music was still just on the edge of hearing, growing no louder or fainter wherever she went.

  He lied to me. The thought burned large in her mind. Isaac had told her that his Siren wasn’t strong enough to put the three needle-toothed creatures to sleep at once, but now he’d used it to entrance the entire house. She hadn’t been able to find Geryon, but he must have been caught as well, or he would have responded to the pilfering of his vault. He was just playing with me, the whole time. He could have gotten away from those things easily, if he could do this. He never needed my help. Alice rubbed the back of her hand against her lips unconsciously, as though trying to wipe away a stain.

  The full moon provided a good illumination. The trail of blood was down to a few drops, and not always visible in the silver light, but it didn’t matter. Alice knew where she was going, and finding the bronze front door of the library slightly ajar confirmed her suspicions.

  She slipped through, stopping only to retrieve and light a lamp, and headed inside. There was something different, something wrong, down at the very edge of perception. Like a noise she hadn’t realized was there until it stopped, the library felt different. It was, she thought, as though even the shelves and the building were asleep, somehow. There had always been a sense of presence, as though something was watching her from the shadows with cool, unblinking eyes, but now those eyes were closed. She passed a half-dozen sleeping cats, curled up in corners or lounging astride the shelves.

  It wasn’t long before she could see the glimmer of another lantern, up ahead. It didn’t seem to be moving, and Alice slowed her steps as she approached, suddenly uncertain how to proceed. She thought about trying to sneak around, behind a shelf, and then pop out unexpectedly, but that would only make Isaac run, and she wasn’t certain she could outrace him. He might even attack her. Her stomach roiled, reminding her that all she’d had to eat in who-knows-how-long was honeyed oatmeal, and her legs gave a warning quiver.

  Alice pulled herself together and marched forward. If she could see his lantern, he could probably see hers, so there was no point in trying to be sneaky. She raised the hurricane lamp over her head and called out.

  “Isaac! It’s you, isn’t it? I know you’re there!”

  She rounded a bank of shelves and found herself at the low table Mr. Wurms usually used. The scholar was nowhere to be seen, but another lantern was sitting on the table. Behind it, rising slowly from a crouch, was Isaac. He was still in his dirty, tattered coat, and his hair was limp and heavy with sweat. He had crude bandages around both his hands and halfway up one arm, and Alice could see spots of blood already soaking through the linen.

  “Alice?” he said, and all the tension went out of him in one breath. “Oh, God. Of course.” Isaac flopped down onto one of the benches beside the table. “I thought I’d had it when I saw someone coming after me.”

  “You,” Alice said. She didn’t know what to think. A half-dozen things to say crowded toward her tongue, but the one that finally escaped was, “How did you get out?”

  “Geryon puts too much faith in his guard dogs.” He sounded a little smug.

  “You lied to me about the Siren.”

  “Oh.” Isaac had the decency to look a little bit embarrassed. “I didn’t lie, exactly. I just didn’t mention this.”

  He dug in his pocket and produced a small piece of jewelry, a red stone in a silver setting, like a broach or a necklace. The stone was dull and plain, and a wide crack ran most of its length.

  “It’s a sort of . . . battery,” he explained. “My master gave it to me. It let me feed enough power to the Siren that it caught even Geryon off-guard. But it only works once, and I knew I’d need it—”

  He stopped, looking puzzled at Alice’s expression.

  “You’d need it to escape,” Alice said. “Because you’re a thief.”

  “You don’t need to say it like that. It’s nothing personal. The book is just something my master wanted, so he sent me to get it.” He shook his head. “Anyway, Geryon didn’t even know where the Dragon was. I can hardly be stealing it from him if he didn’t know he had it, can I?”

  “We were supposed to get it back for Ending,” Alice said. She didn’t mention her own goal of using the book to trap Vespidian.

  “Ending told me we could make a deal for the book,” Isaac said. “My master wants the book, and he’d be willing to bargain generously for her help in getting it. But she betrayed us, Alice. No one could have led Geryon to us except for her!”

  “She didn’t have a choice,” Alice said.

  “She told you that, I assume?” Isaac snorted. “You should know how much that’s worth.”

  “And what about me?” Alice said.

  “What about you?” He stared at her, and a strange expression came over his face. “Ending promised you the Dragon, didn’t she? You thought I was there to help you get it.” He shook his head. “She’s played us both for fools. I imagine she was following Geryon’s orders the whole time.”

  “I don’t . . .” Alice hesitated. “I don’t believe that.”

  Isaac sighed, and sat down heavily on the bench beside the table. His hand bumped the tabletop, and she saw him wince.

  “What happened to your hands?” Alice said, in spite of herself.

  “Just a couple of cuts from the glass,” Isaac said, frowning at his bandages. “I’ll be all right.”

  “You should have told me,” she said, trying to hold on to her anger. “We could have worked something out.”

  “Alice . . . if you’re going to be a Reader’s apprentice, you need to understand what that means.”

  “What, that I have to be awful? That I should lie and cheat and steal like you?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.” Isaac looked up at her. “Did you have any brothers and sisters, when you were growing up?”

  “What?” Alice paused, taken aback. “No. It was just me and my father. My mother died when I was very young.”

  “I had a brother. I don’t think he was really my brother, actually, but he was as good as one. We grew up together in my master’s fortress. He was a Reader too, about three years older than I was. His name was Evander.” Isaac paused. “We used to do everything together. It was all they could do to pry us apart for lessons.”

  Alice heard the significant past tense. “What happened to him?”

  “When I was six, and he was nine, my master came to some kind of deal with one of the other old Readers. I have no idea what it was about, but this other Reader must have needed an apprentice, and my master felt like he had one to spare. He told us that Evander was going to live somewhere else from now on, and that was that. I cr
ied and cried, but he just left me in my room until I got over it.”

  “That’s horrible,” Alice said. “They just . . . traded him? Like he was a box of chocolates?”

  “That’s how they think. We’re all just stuff to them. I even understand how they feel, a little. When you’ve lived a thousand years, can you take the feelings of a six-year-old seriously? It would be like you and me trying to understand an ant.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  “Oh, yes,” Isaac said. “That’s the point, really. The next time I saw him, he tried to kill me.”

  “What?”

  Isaac laughed. “That’s unfair, I guess. I don’t know if he would actually have killed me. But my master sent me to get something he wanted, and Evander’s new master sent him for the same thing, and we . . . fought. In the end I ran away. My master was very angry with me.

  “But the next time we met, we were working together. My master and his had made an alliance with a couple of the others, and they sent a bunch of us to some awful jungle world to try and find . . . well, it doesn’t matter. We didn’t find it, in the end. But I got a chance to talk to Evander, and he explained everything.”

  Isaac leaned forward. “The old Readers fight each other in a hundred little ways, and one of them is always sending his apprentice to steal this or defend that. None of us has any choice, you see? For us it’s like a . . . a game, or something. You try your hardest, because you don’t want to be punished, but there’s no use in taking it personally. The person fighting you today might be on your side tomorrow, and stealing from you the day after.”

  Alice shook her head. “But that’s awful.”

  “It’s who we are. It’s who you are. All we can do is try to make the best of it, and live long enough to become old Readers with apprentices of our own.” Isaac shook his head. “Then maybe we can treat them a little differently.”

  He brushed some of the dust off his coat and got to his feet, flexing the fingers of his injured hand.

  “Anyway, my job here is finished,” Isaac said. “You can believe what you like, but you’ll learn soon enough.” He gave her a thin smile. “Who knows? Next time, maybe we’ll be on the same side again.”

  He turned to leave, in a swirl of dust. Alice took a step toward him and said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Isaac looked back at her, over his shoulder. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m Geryon’s apprentice,” she said coldly. “I can’t just let you walk out of here with the book, can I? Give it back, and I’ll let you leave. Just to show that it isn’t personal.”

  There was a long, fragile moment of silence. Slowly, Isaac turned back to face her, long coat dragging in the dust.

  “Or what?” he said.

  Alice wanted to say “Or else” in the manner of a pulp radio action-hero, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. She found herself unaccountably blushing instead, and shook her head violently. Isaac snorted.

  “Go back to bed,” he said. “It’ll be a while before everyone wakes up, you’ll have plenty of time. Then you won’t get in trouble for letting me go, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m not worried about getting in trouble. I mean it, Isaac. Just give it back.”

  “If I come back without it, I will get in trouble.” A shadow passed across Isaac’s face, as though he’d remembered something unpleasant. “I don’t plan to risk that.”

  “I’m not going to let you leave.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Alice.”

  He shifted his stance slightly, and spread his arms like a wrestler. Alice could feel something change in the air, a kind of thrumming tension, like a guitar string vibrating just on the edge of hearing. She realized he’d taken hold of his threads, leading back to some distant prison-book. A sharp, cool breeze cut through the stagnant air of the library, and the crisp smell of fresh snow briefly overwhelmed the ancient scent of dust.

  Alice’s eyes narrowed. No matter how tough he acted, he was still just Isaac. She grabbed the Swarm thread, then hesitated. If she unleashed the little creatures, she really would hurt him, and for all that he was being an idiot, she didn’t really want to. Instead, she drew the thread inward, hardening her skin, and leaped.

  She jumped to the bench, then to the table, then cleared the distance between them with a knee-wobbling leap that brought her down nearly on top of him. Isaac, startled, backpedaled and brought his hands up in front of his face, but Alice went around him instead, grabbing great handfuls of his long coat and yanking him off his feet. He fell heavily on his stomach, and before he could turn over she kept him there by the simple expedient of sitting on the small of his back.

  Alice had never had any siblings, so she had no experience with casual children’s scuffles. But Isaac had the disadvantage of a certain amount of built-in chivalry. The kind of person who had saved her from Mr. Black, Alice suspected, was not the kind of person who would easily punch a girl in the nose, and while she felt a little bad about taking advantage of that, she told herself it was no worse than his taking advantage of her good nature. Besides, with the Swarm thread wrapped around her, she outweighed him considerably, and the occasional awkward blows he did manage to land simply bounced off her rubbery flesh.

  Before too long he’d stopped squirming. “Alice,” he said. “Come on, Alice. Don’t be—ow—stop kicking me!”

  Alice ignored him and began methodically going through the many pockets in the inner lining of his trench coat. “Stop squirming,” she told him severely. “You should have just given me the book.”

  After a few more moments of searching, she found a rectangular bulge in one pocket and triumphantly produced the Dragon.

  “Give it back!” Isaac moaned.

  “Let everyone go,” she said. “Then we can talk to Ending together.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. She’d just give it back to Geryon!”

  He braced one arm against the floor and twisted underneath her, managing to get her off balance and toppling sideways. Squirming out from under her, he made a grab for the Dragon, in the process planting a knee in her stomach that knocked the wind out of her in spite of the Swarm’s protection.

  Somehow, Alice kept one hand on the book, while the other pushed at Isaac’s face in an extremely undignified manner. He had her by the wrist, and they flopped and wrestled on the floor, raising a billowing cloud of dust that made it hard to breathe. Red-faced and sweating, Isaac refused to let go, until Alice finally got her legs between them and planted both her feet in his chest. That gave her the leverage to push him away, but he squeezed her wrist hard enough that the book slipped free, and in the ensuing scuffle one of them gave the Dragon a kick that sent it skittering across the dusty floor.

  Alice and Isaac separated, both sweating and panting, and spent a long moment staring at each other. Then, as though a starting gun had gone off, they both rolled over and scrabbled toward the book on their hands and knees.

  Alice got a hand on it at the same moment Isaac did. They both pulled, in opposite directions, and the little book flopped open between them. In her flustered state, it was a second or two before Alice thought to avert her eyes, and that was a second or two too long. The writing curled and shifted under her gaze, and she read:

  Alice screwed her eyes shut, but she could tell by the breath of wind on her face that she’d been too late . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE DRAGON

  ALICE SCREWED HER EYES shut, but she could tell by the breath of wind on her face that she’d been too late. The air smelled of wet rock and growing things, not the ancient dust of the library. They were inside the Dragon.

  “Oh, no.” This was Isaac, speaking not inside her head as Geryon had, but from somewhere nearby, which meant that he was inside the book too. “No, no, no, no, no. How could you . . . you stupid . .
. !”

  Alice opened her eyes. Isaac stood beside her, ragged coat flapping in the slight breeze, staring around with a rage that was rapidly transmuting into terror. He rounded on her, fists clenched at his sides. Alice could see a set of parallel scratches on his cheeks, where she’d caught him with her fingernails.

  “Of all the stupid things you could have done, it had to be this!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the surrounding rocks. “I should have—oh, God—”

  They stood on a wide, flat stone, looking out over a landscape like a giant’s toy box. Enormous, craggy boulders were everywhere, piled up in heaps. Bushes and even a few small trees sprouted from between bare stones. Roots grew out over the edges, groping blindly in search of somewhere to burrow, like worms. A mountain loomed in the distance.

  Isaac shifted to a language Alice didn’t understand, though she thought he was swearing. She straightened her dress and dusted herself off.

  “This wouldn’t have happened if you had just given me the book, like I asked,” she said. “Or better yet, not stolen it in the first place. Now we’re here, and we’ll have to deal with it.”

  “‘We’?” Isaac shouted. “I think I have had about enough of working with you!”

  He raised his hands, and Alice caught the scent of snow again. Little swirls of white whipped out from Isaac like ocean foam. He extended his arms, palms out, and a blast of wind hit Alice in the face, freezing cold, as though she’d opened a door into a blizzard. Tiny hailstones bounced off her with painful, stinging impacts, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut.

  Blindly, she reached out and pulled a dozen swarmers into being all around her. Borrowing their vision, she saw Isaac in the center of his self-created gale, and sent the little creatures running at him. The first to arrive pecked at his legs, not deep, but enough to cut his trousers and draw blood. Swearing again, Isaac lowered his hands, directing the blast of freezing wind toward his feet. The swarmers scrabbled for purchase, finding claw-holds on the bare rock or else rolling over the side to carom off the rocks below.