Magic City

by Paula Guran

  “Just so,” said Molnar. “Either you’ve made pleasing use of the introductory materials, or that was a good guess.”

  “It’s, ah, a sort of personal interest.” Casimir reached inside a belt pouch and took out a thick hunk of triangular crystal, like a prism with a milky white center. “May I leave this next to the focus while we’re in the stacks? It’s just an impression device. It’ll give me a basic idea of how the index enchantments function. My family has a huge library, not magical, of course, but if I could create spells to organize it—”

  “Ambition wedded to sloth,” said Molnar. “Let no one say you don’t think like a true magician, Aspirant Vrana.”

  “I won’t even have to think about it while we’re inside, sir. It would just mind itself, and I could pick it up on the way out.” Casimir was laying it on with, Laszlo saw, every ounce of obsequiousness he could conjure.

  But what was he talking about? Personal project? Family library? Caz had never breathed a word of any such thing to him. While they came from very different worlds, they’d always gotten along excellently as chambers-mates, and Laszlo had thought there were no real secrets between them. Where had this sprung from?

  “Of course, Vrana,” said Master Molnar. “We go to some trouble to maintain those enchantments, after all, and today is all about appreciating our work.”

  While Casimir hurried to emplace his little device near the glass column, Molnar beckoned the rest of them on toward another gate at the inner end of the Manticore Index. It was as tall and wide as the door they’d entered, but even more grimly functional—cold dark metal inscribed with geometric patterns and runes of warding.

  “A gateway to the stacks,” said Molnar, “can only be opened by the personal keys of two Librarians. I’ll be one of your guides today, and the other . . . the other should have been here by—”

  “I’m here, Master Librarian.”

  In the popular imagination (which had, to this point, included Laszlo’s), female Librarians were lithe, comely warrior maidens out of some barbarian legend. The woman now hurrying toward them through the Manticore Index was short, barely taller than Yvette, and she was as sturdy as a concrete teapot, with broad hips and arms like a blacksmith’s. Her honey-colored hair was tied back in a short tail, and over her black Librarian’s armor she wore an unusual harness that carried a pair of swords crossed over her back. Her plump face was as heavily scarred as Molnar’s, and Laszlo had learned just enough in his hobby duels to see that she was no one he would ever want to annoy.

  “Aspirants,” said Molnar, “allow me to present Sword-Librarian Astriza Mezaros.”

  As she moved past him, Laszlo noticed two things. First, the curious harness held not just her swords, but a large book buckled securely over her lower back beneath her scabbards. Second, she had a large quantity of fresh blood soaking the gauntlet on her left hand.

  “Sorry to be late,” said Mezaros, “Came from the infirmary.”

  “Indeed,” said Molnar, “and are you—”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I’m not the one that got hit. It was that boy Selucas, from the morning group.”

  “Ahhhh. And will he recover?”

  “Given a few weeks.” Mezaros grinned as she ran her eyes across the four aspirants. “Earned his passing grade the hard way, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I’ve given them the lecture,” said Molnar. “Let’s proceed.”

  “On it.” Mezaros reached down the front of her cuirass and drew out a key hanging on a chain. Molnar did the same, and each Librarian took up a position beside the inner door. The walls before them rippled, and small keyholes appeared where blank stone had been a moment before.

  “Opening,” yelled Master Molnar.

  “Opening,” chorused the Indexers. Each of them dropped whatever they were working on and turned to face the inner door. One blue-robed woman hurried to the hallway door, checked it, and shouted, “Manticore Gate secure!”

  “Opening,” repeated Molnar. “On three. One, two—”

  The two Librarians inserted their keys and turned them in unison. The inner door slid open, just as the outer one had, revealing an empty, metal-walled room lit by amber lanterns set in heavy iron cages.

  Mezaros was the first one into the metal-walled chamber, holding up a hand to keep the aspirants back. She glanced around quickly, surveying every inch of the walls, floors, and ceiling, and then she nodded.

  “In,” said Molnar, herding the aspirants forward. He snapped his fingers, and with a flash of light he conjured a walking staff, a tall object of polished dark wood. It had few ornaments, but it was shod at both ends with iron, and that iron looked well-dented to Laszlo’s eyes.

  Once the six of them were inside the metal-walled chamber, Molnar waved a hand over some innocuous portion of the wall, and the door behind them rumbled shut. Locking mechanisms engaged with an ominous series of echoing clicks.

  “Begging your pardon, Master Molnar,” said Lev, “not to seem irresolute, for I am firmly committed to any course of action which will prevent me from having to return to my clan’s ancestral trade of scale-grooming, but merely as a point of personal curiosity, exactly how much danger are we reckoned to be in?”

  “A good question,” said Molnar slyly. “We Librarians have been asking it daily for more than a thousand years. Astriza, what can you tell the good aspirant?”

  “I guard aspirants about a dozen times each year,” said Mezaros. “The fastest trip I can remember was about two hours. The longest took a day and a half. You have the distinct disadvantage of not being trained Librarians, and the dubious advantage of sheer numbers. Most books are returned by experienced professionals operating in pairs.”

  “Librarian Mezaros,” said Lev, “I am fully prepared to spend a week here if required, but I was more concerned with the, ah, chance of ending the exam with a visit to the infirmary.”

  “Aspirant Inappropriate Levity Bronzeclaw,” said Mezaros, “in here, I prefer to be called Astriza. Do me that favor, and I won’t use your full name every time I need to tell you to duck.”

  “Ah, of course. Astriza.”

  “As for what’s going to happen, well, it might be nothing. It might be pretty brutal. I’ve never had anyone get killed under my watch, but it’s been a near thing. Look, I’ve spent months in the infirmary myself. Had my right leg broken twice, right arm twice, left arm once, nose more times than I can count.”

  “This is our routine,” said Molnar with grim pride. “I’ve been in a coma twice. Both of my legs have been broken. I was blind for four months—”

  “I was there for that,” said Astriza.

  “She carried me out over her shoulders.” Molnar was beaming. “Only her second year as a Librarian. Yes, this place has done its very best to kill the pair of us. But the books were returned to the shelves.”

  “Damn straight,” said Astriza. “Librarians always get the books back to the shelves. Always. And that’s what you browsers are here to learn by firsthand experience. If you listen to the Master Librarian and myself at all times, your chances of a happy return will be greatly improved. No other promises.”

  “Past the inner door,” said Molnar, “your ordinary perceptions of time and distance will be taxed. Don’t trust them. Follow our lead, and for the love of all gods everywhere, stay close.”

  Laszlo, who’d spent his years at the university comfortably surrounded by books of all sorts, now found himself staring down at his satchel-clad grimoire with a sense of real unease. He was knocked out of his reverie when Astriza set a hand on the satchel and gently pushed it down.

  “That’s just one grimoire, Laszlo. Nothing to fear in a single drop of water, right?” She was grinning again. “It takes an ocean to drown yourself.”

  Another series of clicks echoed throughout the chamber, and with a rumbling hiss the final door to the library stacks slid open before them.

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” said Yvette, taking the words right out of Laszl
o’s mouth.

  Row upon row of tall bookcases stretched away into the distance, but the farther Laszlo strained to see down the aisles between those shelves, the more they seemed to curve, to turn upon themselves, to become a knotted labyrinth leading away into darkness. And gods, the place was vast, the ceiling was hundreds of feet above them, the outer walls were so distant they faded into mist . . .

  “This place has weather!” said Laszlo.

  “All kinds,” said Astriza, peering around. Once all six of them were through the door, she used her key to lock it shut behind them.

  “And it doesn’t fit,” said Yvette. “Inside the cube, I mean. This place is much too big. Or is that just—”

  “No, it’s not just an illusion. At least not as we understand the term,” said Molnar. “This place was orderly once. Pure, sane geometries. But after the collection was installed the change began . . . by the time the old Librarians tried to do something, it was too late. Individual books are happy to come and go, but when they tried to remove large numbers at once, the library got angry.”

  “What happened?” said Casimir.

  “Suffice to say that in the thousand years since, it has been our strictest policy to never, ever make the library angry again.”

  As Laszlo’s senses adjusted to the place, more and more details leapt out at him. It really was a jungle, a tangled forest of shelves and drawers and columns and railed balconies, as though the Living Library had somehow reached out across time and space, and raided other buildings for components that suited its whims. Dark galleries branched off like caves, baroque structures grew out of the mists and shadows, a sort of cancer-architecture that had no business standing upright. Yet it did, under gray clouds that occasionally pulsed with faint eldritch light. The cool air was ripe with the thousand odors of old books and preservatives, and other things—hot metal, musty earth, wet fur, old blood. Ever so faint, ever so unnerving.

  The two Librarians pulled a pair of small lanterns from a locker beside the gate, and tossed them into the air after muttering brief incantations. The lanterns glowed a soft red, and hovered unobtrusively just above the party.

  “Ground rules,” said Astriza. “Nothing in here is friendly. If any sort of something should try any sort of anything, defend yourself and your classmates. However, you must avoid damaging the books.”

  “I can only wonder,” said Lev, “does the library not realize that we are returning books to their proper places? Should that not buy us some measure of safety?”

  “We believe it understands what we’re doing, on some level,” said Molnar. “And we’re quite certain that, regardless of what it understands, it simply can’t help itself. Now, let’s start with your book, Aspirant d’Courin. Hand me the notes.”

  Molnar and Astriza read the notes, muttering together, while the aspirants kept an uneasy lookout. After a few moments, Molnar raised his hand and sketched an ideogram of red light in the air. Strange sparks moved within the glowing lines, and the two Librarians studied these intently.

  “Take heed, aspirants,” muttered Molnar, absorbed in his work. “This journey has been loosely planned, but only inside the library itself can the index enchantments give more precise and reliable . . . ah. Case in point. This book has moved itself.”

  “Twenty-eight Manticore East,” said Astriza. “Border of the Chimaera stacks, near the Tree of Knives.”

  “The tree’s gone,” said Molnar. “Vanished yesterday, could be anywhere.”

  “Oh piss,” said Astriza. “I really hate hunting that thing.”

  “Map,” said Molnar. Astriza dropped to one knee, presenting her back to Molnar. The Master Librarian knelt and unbuckled the heavy volume that she wore as a sort of backpack, and by the red light of the floating lanterns he skimmed the pages, nodding to himself. After a few moments, he re-secured the book and rose to his feet.

  “Yvette’s book,” he said, “isn’t actually a proper grimoire, it’s more of a philosophical treatise. Adrilankha’s Discourse on Necessary Thaumaturgical Irresponsibilities. However, it keeps some peculiar company, so we’ve got a long walk ahead of us. Be on your guard.”

  They moved into the stacks in a column, with Astriza leading and Molnar guarding the rear. The red lanterns drifted along just above them. As they took their first steps into the actual shadows of the shelves, Laszlo bit back the urge to draw his sword and keep it waiting for whatever might be out there.

  “What do you think of the place?” Casimir, walking just in front of Laszlo, was staring around as though in a pleasant dream, and he spoke softly.

  “I’m going to kiss the floor wherever we get out. Yourself?”

  “It’s marvelous. It’s everything I ever hoped it would be.”

  “Interested in becoming a Librarian?” said Yvette.

  “Oh no,” said Casimir. “Not that. But all this power . . . half-awake, just as Master Molnar said, flowing in currents without any conscious force behind it. It’s astonishing. Can’t you feel it?”

  “I can,” said Yvette. “It scares the hell out of me.”

  Laszlo could feel the power they spoke of, but only faintly, as a sort of icy tickle on the back of his neck. He knew he was a great deal less sensitive than Yvette or Casimir, and he wondered if experiencing the place through an intuition as heightened as theirs would help him check his fears, or make him soil his trousers.

  Through the dark aisles they walked, eyes wide and searching, between the high walls of book-spines. Tendrils of mist curled around Laszlo’s feet, and from time to time he heard sounds in the distance—faint echoes of movement, of rustling pages, of soft, sighing winds. Astriza turned right, then right again, choosing new directions at aisle junctions according to the unknowable spells she and Molnar had cast earlier. Half an hour passed uneasily, and it seemed to Laszlo that they should have doubled back on their own trail several times, but they were undeniably pressing steadily onward into deeper, stranger territory.

  “Laszlo,” muttered Casimir.

  “What?”

  “Just tell me what you want, quit poking me.”

  “I haven’t touched you.”

  Astriza raised a hand, and their little column halted in its tracks. Casimir whirled on Laszlo, rubbing the back of his neck. “That wasn’t you?”

  “Hells, no!”

  The first attack of the journey came then, from the shadowy canyon-walls of the bookcases around them, a pelting rain of dark objects. Laszlo yelped and put up his arms to protect his eyes. Astriza had her swords out in the time it took him to flinch, and Yvette, moving not much slower, thrust out her hands and conjured some sort of rippling barrier in the air above them. Peering up at it, Laszlo realized that the objects bouncing off it were all but harmless—crumpled paper, fragments of wood, chunks of broken plaster, dark dried things that looked like . . . gods, small animal turds! Bless Yvette and her shield.

  In the hazy red light of the hovering lanterns he could see the things responsible for this disrespectful cascade—dozens of spindly-limbed, flabby gray creatures the rough size and shape of stillborn infants. Their eyes were hollow dark pits and their mouths were thin slits, as though cut into their flesh with one quick slash of a blade. They were scampering out from behind books and perching atop the shelves, and launching their rain of junk from there.

  Casimir laughed, gestured, and spoke a low, sharp word of command that stung Laszlo’s ears. One of the little creatures dropped whatever it was about to throw, moaned, and flashed into a cloud of greasy, red-hot ash that dispersed like steam. Its nearby companions scattered, screeching.

  “You can’t tell me we’re in any actual danger from these,” said Casimir.

  “We’re tell me can’t,” whispered a harsh voice from somewhere in the shelves, “known, known!”

  “Any actual you, known, from these in danger,” came a screeching answer. “Known, known, known!”

  “Oh, hell,” shouted Astriza, “Shut up, everyone shut up! Say nothing!” />
  “Known, known, known,” came another whispered chorus, and then a dozen voices repeating her words in a dozen babbled variations. “Known, known, known!”

  “They’re vocabuvores,” whispered Master Molnar. “Just keep moving out of their territory. Stay silent.”

  “Known,” hissed one of the creatures from somewhere above. “All known! New words. GIVE NEW WORDS!”

  Molnar prodded Lev, who occupied the penultimate spot in their column, forward with the butt of his staff. Lev pushed Laszlo, who passed the courtesy on. Stumbling and slipping, the aspirants and their guides moved haltingly, for the annoying rain of junk persisted and Yvette’s barrier was limited in size. Something soft and wet smacked the ground just in front of Laszlo, and in an uncharacteristic moment of pure clumsiness he set foot on it and went sprawling. His jaw rattled on the cold, hard tiles of the floor, and without thinking he yelped, “Shit!”

  “Known!” screeched a chorus of the little creatures.

  “NEW!” cried a triumphant voice, directly above him. “New! NEW!”

  There was a new sound, a sickly crackling noise. Laszlo gaped as one of the little dark shapes on the shelves far above swelled, doubling in size in seconds, its grotesque flesh bubbling and rising like some unholy dough. The little claws and limbs, previously smaller than a cat’s, took on a more menacing heft. “More,” it croaked in a deeper voice. “Give more new words!” And with that, it flung itself down at him, wider mouth open to display a fresh set of sharp teeth.

  Astriza’s sword hit the thing before Laszlo could choke out a scream, rupturing it like a lanced boil and spattering a goodly radius with hot, vomit-scented ichor. Laszlo gagged, stumbled to his feet, and hurriedly wiped the awful stuff away from his eyes. Astriza spared him a furious glare, then pulled him forward by the mantle of his cloak.

  Silently enduring the rain of junk and the screeching calls for new words, the party stumbled on through aisles and junctions until the last of the hooting, scrabbling, missile-flinging multitude was lost in the misty darkness behind them.