The Forbidden Library

by Django Wexler

  Alice pulled harder on the thread, and more swarmers materialized. She opened her eyes to find Isaac staring back at her, his lip set in a snarl.

  “Don’t you think—” Alice began.

  She was interrupted by a tremendous roar.

  Alice had heard a lion roar once, in a circus, and at age ten it had made her squeal and clap her hands over her ears. This was another class of sound entirely, as if it had issued from some vast mechanism, like the engines of a steamship groaning into life. It rattled her skull from the inside, and the rocks themselves shook and shifted alarmingly. Alice lost her grip on the thread, and the little swarmers vanished. Isaac was on his knees, hands pressed to his head.

  The sound died away slowly, amid rumbling echoes. Alice’s ears still rang with the force of it. She looked around wildly, but there was no obvious source for the tremendous noise.

  “We’re dead,” Isaac mumbled. “Oh God. We’re dead, we’re dead, we’re dead . . .” He lapsed into the other language again.

  “Isaac.” This produced no response, so she strode over and grabbed him by the collar, jerking him to his feet. “Isaac! What the . . . What was that?”

  “The prisoner. This is a prison-book, after all.” He glanced up at her, then closed his eyes again. “The Dragon.”

  Alice let him go, and he slumped forward.

  “A dragon?” she said. “Really a dragon?”

  “The Dragon,” Isaac said.

  “There’s only one?”

  “Nobody knows where it came from. Some Reader caught it in a book a long time ago, and nobody has ever been able to find another one. And even the book has been lost for centuries.”

  Alice felt a hint of fear, clutching like a cold hand at her chest, but she pushed it ruthlessly away.

  “If it was lost, how come you came looking for it?”

  “My master found a hint that it had been hidden somewhere in Geryon’s library, and he talked Ending into sneaking me in to try and find it.” He looked accusingly at Alice. “And you got us stuck inside it!”

  Alice scanned the horizon. There was no sign of a dragon.

  “If this is a prison-book,” she said, “that means we’ve got to find the prisoner, and force it to submit. How much do you know about the Dragon?”

  “Nothing!” Isaac said. “I wasn’t supposed to go inside. My master didn’t tell me anything about it!”

  “We’ve got to do something.”

  “We’re going to get eaten, that’s what we’re going to do,” Isaac said. “We—”

  “You sound like Ashes,” Alice said. “He was certain we were going to die too. But we didn’t. So would you quit—”

  The rocks shifted underneath her, this time more violently. The one they were standing on, a huge, flat-topped boulder, jumped as though something had struck it hard from beneath, then sagged on one side until it was canted like the deck of a sinking ship. The movement shocked Isaac out of his hypnotized immobility, and he scrambled for the high end of the rock, looked down, and leaped over the side.

  “Isaac! Wait!” Alice hurried to the edge and found him scrambling up the face of the next boulder. “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t have the chance to reply. Ahead of him, rocks crunched and exploded in a great shower of dust and debris, sending shards zipping and pinging in all directions. Isaac nearly lost his grip, and the stone he was clinging to tilted violently backward, leaving him hanging by his fingertips against the nearly vertical surface.

  Something was moving inside the cloud of dust, something enormous, shouldering aside tons of stone like a human might kick off a constricting blanket. Where to run suddenly didn’t seem nearly as important as just being somewhere else. Alice had a clear shot down the slope of her boulder, and a solid leap would take her to another flat surface. But just ahead of her, Isaac struggled to pull himself up with his bandaged hands, long cloak flapping absurdly behind him, his thin arms shaking with the effort.

  Alice said a word her father would have been shocked to hear and knelt on the lip of the rock, just above Isaac. She yanked the Swarm thread into her body and held out her hand.

  “Isaac!”

  He risked a look over his shoulder, saw her hand, and clung even tighter to his perch.

  “It’s coming!” Alice shouted. The rock-crushing sounds were getting louder. “Just—push off a little. You’ll make it!”

  “I . . .” Isaac took one hand off the rock hesitantly, then grabbed it again when his foot slipped a couple of inches. “I can’t.”

  Alice wanted to scream with frustration. She dropped flat on her stomach and reached out with both hands, and her fingers nearly brushed the back of his head. “Come on. Now!”

  He reached for her again, and this time she grabbed his hand with both of hers and pulled. His footing slipped, pebbles sliding and clattering below him. For a moment he swung free, all his weight on Alice’s wrist. The edge of the rock dug deep into her forearm, and she was certain her bones would have snapped without the power of the Swarm hardening her flesh.

  It didn’t lend her additional strength, though, and light as Isaac was, he was still too much for Alice to lift. Fortunately, the fear that had paralyzed Isaac had washed out of him again, and he got his other hand on her elbow and braced his legs against the overhang. Between the two of them, Alice on her knees pulling backward and Isaac climbing up hand over hand, they were able to get back over the edge and onto the rock. Isaac flopped down face-first, panting, and Alice ended up spread-eagled on her back beside him.

  “You . . .” Isaac wheezed. “You saved . . .”

  “Again,” Alice managed, fighting for breath. “Don’t mention it.”

  The noises had stopped. Alice sat up cautiously, hoping whatever it was had gone back to sleep.

  It hadn’t. The dust was settling, and there, in the center of a crater of shattered boulders, was the Dragon.

  If she’d seen a picture of it in a book, Alice thought she would have sniffed and said it didn’t look like her idea of a dragon. She liked dragons that were lithe and graceful, more like scaly cats with fairy wings, who could dart about and be clever and help little girls defeat vicious ogres and so on.

  This was not that sort of dragon. It didn’t have wings, and it didn’t seem disposed to offer any kindly wisdom. It was a lizard the size of a small house, with eight legs each so thick that Isaac and Alice could not have linked hands and put their arms around it. It had a long, canine snout with a serious overbite and two enormous fangs like a serpent’s sticking out like tusks on either side of its lower jaw. On each side of its arrowhead-shaped skull were three eyes, huge hemispheres that gleamed like black diamonds in the weak sunlight. They were lidless and unblinking, and reminded Alice more of some kind of insect than a reptile.

  Its scales were gray-white, and two long black stripes ran down its back. Its tail, as long as the rest of it put together, coiled behind it in an elaborate S-shape and was never still, even while the rest of the beast was perfectly at rest.

  Alice was struck momentarily dumb. She could see herself reflected in all six of those eyes, the distorted image compressed to a tiny dot amidst the endless rock-field. All six tiny Alices shifted in unison as the Dragon took one step forward, then another. The way its legs moved was wrong, too fluid, as though they had extra joints. Its sinuous tail lashed and coiled from side to side.

  It spoke without moving its jaw, like Ashes, but in a voice so deep and resonant, it rattled Alice’s skull. It was the voice of a mountain crag, or an ancient, secret cavern.

  “Pathetic,” the Dragon rumbled. “This is what my sister sends against me, after so many years? Children? And the little bones always stick in my teeth . . .”

  It opened its mouth in a long, slow yawn. A black, snaky tongue licked out and tasted the air.

  Alice opened her mouth to speak—
or perhaps it had been hanging open anyway—and realized she had no idea what to say, or how to address a dragon. She stuttered lamely for a moment, and settled on, “Hello.”

  “What are you doing?” Isaac said. He was crouched beside her.

  “Trying to talk to it,” Alice whispered. “Shh.”

  “You can’t talk to it,” Isaac said. “It’s a dragon.”

  “If it can speak, it ought to be able to understand.”

  “Who says it can—”

  “Hello, yourself,” the Dragon said. “A brave little girl, I’ll give her that.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said. “But nobody sent us here, and I don’t think I know your sister. I expect I would remember if I’d met her.”

  There was a long silence. Alice was no great judge of dragon expressions, but she thought it looked surprised.

  “Alice—” Isaac began, tugging at her sleeve. She stopped him with a gesture.

  “You . . .” the Dragon said, drawing out the word. “You understand me?”

  “I think so.”

  “But . . .” It turned its head, examining her with one set of eyes and then the other. “She did it, then. After all these years.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about. I came in here by accident—”

  “Of course you didn’t,” it said. “You happened to fall into this book, of all books? Don’t be foolish.” Its tone was getting angrier. “You came here because she wished you to come. But why? She can’t honestly expect you to triumph. Does she think I will show mercy?”

  The last word came out as another roar, drowning all other sound. Isaac tugged hard at her arm, but Alice needed no urging. She took off running as the Dragon uncoiled and started toward them. Alice held on to the Swarm thread and leaped to the next boulder, letting her rubbery legs absorb the impact. Isaac landed just behind her.

  The Dragon surged forward. All eight legs moved at once, rising and falling in opposing pairs like pistons of a steam engine. Boulders crunched and groaned under its weight. One huge foot hit the rock they’d been standing on and flipped it into the air, tumbling end over end like a child’s toy. Alice jumped to the next boulder, slipped on a patch of mossy earth, and caught herself before she fell between the rocks and stuck there. Isaac, moving more carefully, got to the top of the boulder but made the mistake of turning to look behind him. The sight of the oncoming Dragon froze him in his tracks, and Alice had to grab his arm and pull him away by force. They jumped again, this time hand in hand, moments before the creature lunged over the stone they’d been standing on, one huge foot coming down hard enough to raise a cloud of rock dust.

  A tiny part of Alice’s mind—the part not concentrating on her footing, or trying to figure out what the Dragon had meant, or screaming in silent terror—was busy assessing their prospects. They couldn’t outrun the Dragon. Quite apart from its size, its eight triple-jointed legs gave it an easy grace on the uneven footing that the two humans couldn’t hope to match. She didn’t think attacking it with the Swarm would do any good, either, except possibly as a distraction, and maybe not even that. The swarmers were barely the size of lice in comparison.

  That left one route to safety. She tugged the Swarm thread inside her, as far as it would go, then glanced back at Isaac. Really, she thought, I should just leave him. This is all his fault, anyway.

  “Come here.” It was hard to hear over the sound of the Dragon, so she tugged on his hand as well. Before he could start squirming, Alice wrapped herself around him in a bear hug, gripping her own wrist behind the small of his back, her head alongside his. He smelled musty and old, like the library—probably the coat—and she could feel the trip-hammer beat of his heart pressed against hers.

  “Alice?” he squeaked, right in her ear. “What are you—”

  “Just hold still!”

  The Dragon had turned, slewing to a halt in a spray of bouncing boulders and rock fragments, gathering all eight legs underneath itself for a lunge. Alice tightened her grip on Isaac, lifted him an inch off the ground, and took a tottering step backward over the edge of the boulder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HUNTED

  IT WASN’T SO MUCH a fall as a descent, caroming off one rock after another. Alice did her best to control it, and to keep her body between Isaac’s unprotected form and unforgiving stone. She caught her head a couple of nasty cracks, which in her Swarm-charged state made it rebound like a tennis ball but produced surprisingly little pain. Sharp edges and spires of rock snatched and cut at her as they fell, and more than once she heard the sound of tearing fabric, but her rubbery skin remained unbroken.

  She just had time to wonder if there was solid ground underneath all these rocks before she landed on something broad and flat, rump-first. Isaac sprawled bonelessly in her grip. A small cascade of pebbles and dirt she’d dislodged on her way down showered all around them, raining into Alice’s hair and forcing her to keep her eyes shut.

  Far overhead, she could hear the Dragon moving. Rocks shifted and ground against one another, but nothing nearby moved. After a moment, the noises diminished, moving away, and Alice let out a long breath. She released Isaac, letting him slip to the ground beside her, and brushed the dirt from her eyes.

  It wasn’t completely dark in the fissure. Enough light filtered through the cracks and crevices up above to provide a shadowy twilight, with an occasional brilliant spot where a lucky beam of sunlight made it the whole way unmolested. Alice gave her eyes a moment to adjust and looked herself over. Her clothes were a mess of rips and tears, but other than that she seemed to be more or less all right. She breathed a silent thanks to the Swarm and the protection its rubber-ball body provided. Then, dreading what she would find, she looked at Isaac.

  He was breathing, and didn’t seem to have been battered too badly about the head, which dispelled the worst of her fears. His long coat had kept his skin mostly intact, though it had been shredded into strips and rags in the process. The only serious injury she could find was a long gash on his shin from a sharp-edged rock, which was bleeding profusely but didn’t seem too deep. The sum total of Alice’s medical knowledge was that blood was supposed to stay on the inside, but she tore a couple of strips from the tattered greatcoat and tied them into a crude bandage. When she pulled this tight, a hiss of pain escaped from Isaac’s lips, followed by a groan.

  “Isaac?” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Are we . . .” He swallowed, and raised his head a fraction. “Are we dead yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  He treated her to another long string of foreign curses, and took a deep breath. “What were you thinking? It’s a miracle you didn’t crack your head open!”

  “It’s only a miracle you didn’t,” Alice snapped. “I have protection. Besides, I didn’t see any alternatives.”

  “Kind of you to warn me.”

  “There wasn’t time.” She gave the bandage an extra twist, which made him groan again. “Next time I’ll just leave you for the Dragon!”

  She got to her feet and stalked away, looking for a way out. They were in a small clear space where a pair of boulders had formed a crude arch, but the big stones were irregular enough in shape that there were plenty of spaces to wriggle between, albeit at the risk of losing a little skin. Alice selected the largest of these gaps, a couple of feet off the ground, and started to climb.

  “Wait!” Isaac said. “Where are you going?”

  “Somebody has to get us out of here, doesn’t she?” Alice said, with more bravado than she felt. “You can just wait here.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” He sat up, wincing. “You can’t—”

  “I can’t do it? I’m at least going to try. You’re welcome to sit around under these rocks until you starve.”

  “You can’t go after it by yourself,” Isaac finished quietly. “We should . . . figure somethin
g out.”

  “All right,” Isaac said, after Alice reluctantly backtracked and sat down cross-legged beside him. “Talking to it didn’t work, obviously.”

  “It talked to me,” Alice said. “It might calm down if we leave it alone for a while.”

  “It didn’t say anything I could understand,” Isaac said. “Are you sure you’re not just hearing things?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m not in the habit of imagining conversations with giant lizards.”

  “All right, all right.” Isaac paused. “What did it say?”

  “Something about its sister. It thinks she sent us to fight it.”

  “Its sister? Another dragon?” Isaac scratched his head. “I’ve never even heard of another dragon.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell it.”

  “We are going to have to try to . . . convince it, though. If we want to get out.” Isaac shook his head. “What about magic? What did you call those little bird-things?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you,” Alice said, still a little grumpy. “You were trying to kill me a minute ago.”

  “I wasn’t—I wouldn’t have killed you,” Isaac said. “And anyway, I think we can agree to a truce, as long as we’re stuck in here with the Dragon.”

  Alice sighed. “I told you, they’re called the Swarm.” She felt as though she ought to stand up for them. “And they’ve saved my life more than once. Yours too, when we fell—”

  “When you pulled me over the side?”

  “When you froze like a gawking idiot, and I saved you from being eaten by a dragon,” Alice finished. “Yes.”

  “Do they do anything else? Besides protect you and . . . what, bite things?”

  “Not really.” Alice held out her hand and pulled a swarmer into being. It sat placidly on her palm, staring at Isaac, and gave a little quirk.

  “They’re sort of cute,” Isaac said. “When they aren’t trying to eat me.”

  “I don’t think they eat anything, to tell the truth. They drink blood, though.” Alice turned her hand over and let the swarmer vanish before it hit the ground. “Anyway, I’m not sure they’ll be much good against the Dragon. It’s too big. Maybe if they could get to its eyes . . .”