“I think this is the strangest Talent I’ve ever seen,” I said. “And that’s saying a lot.”
She shrugged. “Didn’t yours break a chicken once?”
“Good point.”
Kaz led us back to the trees, cutting us a half pathway. “So your Talent can take you anywhere!” I said to the short man.
He shrugged. “Why do you think I was on the Dragonaut? In case things went wrong, I was to get you and your grandfather out of the Hushlands.”
“Why even send the ship, then? You could have come got me on your own!”
He snorted. “I have to know what to look for, Al. I have to have a destination. Australia had to come so that we could use Lenses to contact you, and we figured it was a good idea to bring a Knight of Crystallia for protection. Besides, my Talent can be a little… unpredictable.”
“I think they all can,” I said.
He chuckled. “Well, that’s the truth. Just hope you never have to see Australia after she’s just gotten up in the morning. Anyway, we figured that rather than taking a chance on my Talent – which has occasionally gotten me lost for weeks – we should bring the ship.”
“So… wait,” I said. “We could be walking like this for weeks?”
“Maybe,” Kaz said, parting some fronds, looking out. I peeked through beside him. What looked like a desert was sprawling out beyond us. He rubbed his chin in thought. “Walnuts,” he swore. “We’re a bit off track.” He let the fronds fall back into place and we continue walking.
Several weeks. My grandfather could be in danger. In fact, knowing Grandpa Smedry, he most definitely was in danger. Yet, I couldn’t get to him because I was traipsing through the jungle, occasionally peering out through another clearing at…
“Dodger Stadium?” I asked. “I know there aren’t any jungles there!”
“Must be up past the nosebleed seats,” Kaz said, taking another turn, leading us in a different direction. It was already growing light, and dawn would soon arrive. As we started again, Draulin marched up beside me. “Lord Alcatraz? Might I have a moment of your time?”
I nodded slowly. Being called “lord” was still a little unsettling to me. What was required of me? Was I expected to sip tea and behead people? (If so, I certainly hoped I wouldn’t need to do both at the same time.)
What did it mean to be called “lord”? I’ll assume you’ve never had the honor, since I doubt any of you happen to be British royalty. (And, if by chance you are, then let me say, “Hello, Your Majesty! Welcome to my stupid book. Can I borrow some cash?”)
It seemed that the Free Kingdomers had unrealistic expectations of me. I wasn’t normally the type to doubt myself, but I’d rarely had a chance to be a leader. The more others started to look to me, the more I began to worry. What if I failed them?
“My lord,” Draulin said. “I feel the need to apologize. I spoke quite out of turn to you while we were fighting atop the Dragonaut.”
“It’s all right,” I said, shaking myself out of my moment of self-doubt. “We were in a tense situation.”
“No, there is no excuse.”
“Really,” I said. “Anyone could have gotten snappish in a predicament like that.”
“My lord,” she said sternly, “a Knight of Crystallia isn’t just anyone.’ More is expected of us – not just in action, but in attitude as well. We don’t just respect men of your station, we respect and serve all people. We must always strive to be the best, for the reputation of the entire order depends on it.”
Bastille was walking just behind us. For some reason, I got the feeling that Draulin was preaching less to me, and more to her daughter. It seemed backhanded.
“Please,” Draulin continued. “I would be more at peace if you would chastise me.”
“Uh… okay,” I said. (How does one scold a Knight of Crystallia some twenty years your senior? “Bad knight”? “Go straight to bed without polishing your sword”?)
“Consider yourself chastised,” I said instead.
“Thank you.”
“Aha!” Kaz called.
The line paused. Sunlight was beginning to peek through the canopy of leaves. Ahead, Kaz we looking out through some bushed. He flashed us a smile, then cut the bushes away with a swipe of the machete.
“I knew I’d find my way!” he said, gesturing out. I looked for the first time at the great Library of Alexandria – a place so entrenched in lore and mythology that I’d been taught about it even in Hushlander schools. One of the most dangerous buildings on the planet.
It was a one-room hut.
CHAPTER 7
I am a fish.
No, really. I am. I have fins, a tail, scales. I swim about, doing fishy things. This isn’t a metaphor or a joke, but a real and honest fact. I am a fish.
More on this later.
“We came all this way for that?” I asked, looking at the hut. It stood on an open plain of sandy, scrubby ground. The roof looked like it was about to fall in.
“Yup, that’s it,” Kaz said, walking out of the jungle and down the slope toward the hut.
I glanced back at Bastille, who just shrugged. “I’ve never been here before.”
“I have,” Bastille’s mother said. “Yes, that is the Library of Alexandria.” She clomped out of the jungle. I shrugged, then followed her, Australia and Bastille joining me. As we walked, I glanced back at the jungle.
It, of course, had vanished. I stopped, but then thought better of asking. After everything that I’d been through in the last few months, a disappearing jungle wasn’t really even all that odd.
I hurried to catch up to Kaz. “You’re sure this is the place? I kind of expected it to look… well, a little less like a hut.”
“You would have preferred a yurt?” Kaz asked, walking up to the doorway and peeking in. I followed.
Inside, a large set of stairs was cut into the ground. They led down into the depths of the earth. The dark opening seemed unnaturally black to me – like someone had cut a square in the floor and pulled away the fabric of existence with it.
“The Library,” I said. “It’s underground?”
“Of course,” Kaz said. “What did you expect? This is the Hushlands – things like the Library of Alexandria need to keep a low profile.”
Draulin walked up beside us, then pointed for Bastille to check the perimeter. She moved off. Draulin went the other way, scouting the area for danger.
“The Curators of Alexandria aren’t like Librarians you’ve seen before, Al,” Kaz said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re undead wraiths, for one thing,” he said, “though it’s not really nice to be prejudiced against people because of their race.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Just saying…,” He said with a shrug. “Anyway, the Curators are older than the Librarians of Biblioden. Actually, the Curators are older than most things in this world. The Library of Alexandria was started back during the days of classical Greece. Alexandria was, after all, founded by Alexander the Great.”
“Wait,” I said. “He was a real person?”
“Of course he was,” Australia said, joining us. “Why wouldn’t he be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I figured that all the things I’d learned in school were Librarian lies.”
“Not all of them,” Kaz said. “The Librarian teachings only really started to deviate from the truth about five hundred years back – about the time that Biblioden lived.” He paused, scratching his face. “Of course, I guess they do lie about this place. I think they teach that it was destroyed.’
I nodded. “By the Romans or something.”
“Complete fabrication,” Kaz said. “The Library outgrew its old location, so the Curators moved it here. Guess they wanted a place where they could hollow out as much ground as they wanted. It’s kind of tough to find room inside a big city to store every book ever written.
“Every book?”
“Of course,” Kaz said. “That’s the point of this place. It’s a storage of all knowledge ever recorded.”
Suddenly, things started to make sense. “That’s why my father came here and why Grandpa Smedry followed! Don’t you see! My father can read texts in the Forgotten Language now; he has a set of Translator’s Lenses like mine, forged from the Sands of Rashid.”
“Yes,” Kaz said. “And?”
“And so he came here,” I said, looking at the stairway leading into the darkness. “He came for knowledge. Books in the Forgotten Language. He could study them here, learn what the ancient people – the Incarna – knew.”
Australia and Kaz shared a glance.
“That’s… not really all that likely, Alcatraz,” Australia said.
“Why not?”
“The Curators gather the knowledge,” Kaz said, “but they’re not that great at sharing. They’ll let you read a book, but they charge a terrible cost.”
I felt a chill. “What cost?”
“Your soul,” Australia said. “You can read one book, then you become one of them, to serve in the Library for eternity.”
Great, I thought, glancing at Kaz. The shorter man looked troubled. “What?” I asked.
“I know your father, Al. We grew up together – he’s my brother.”
“And?”
“He’s a true Smedry. Just like your grandfather. We don’t tend to think things through. Things like charging into danger, like infiltrating Libraries, or…”
“Like reading a book that will cost you your soul?”
Kaz looked away. “I don’t think he’d be that stupid. He’d get the knowledge he wanted, but he’d never be able to share it or use it. Even Attica wouldn’t get that hungry for answers.”
The comment begged another question. If he didn’t come for a book, then why visit? I thought.
Draulin and Bastille arrived a few moments later. Now, you might have noticed something important. Look up the name Draulin on your favorite search engine. You won’t get many results, and the ones you do get will probably be typos, not prisons. (Though, the two are related in that they are both things I tend to be affiliated with far too often.) Either way, there’s no prison named Draulin, though there is one named Bastille.
(That last bit about the names – that is foreshadowing. So don’t say I never give you anything.)
“Perimeter is secure,” Draulin said. “No guards.”
“There never are,” Kaz said, glancing back at the stairs. “I’ve been here half a dozen times – mostly due to getting lost – though I’ve never gone it. The Curators don’t guard the place. They don’t need to – anyone who tries to steal even a single book will automatically lose their soul, whether they know about the rules or not.”
I shivered.
“We should camp here,” Draulin said, glancing over at the rising sun. “Most of us didn’t get any sleep last night, and we shouldn’t go down into the Library without our wits about is.”
“Probably a good idea,” Kaz said, yawning. “Plus, we don’t really know if we need to go in. Al, you said my father visited this place. Did he go in?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t tell for certain.”
“Try the Lenses again,” Australia said, nodding encouragingly – sometimes that appeared to be one of her favorite gestures.
I was still wearing the Courier’s Lenses; as before, I tried to contact my grandfather. All I received was a low buzz and a kind of wavering fuzz in my vision. “I’m trying,” I said. “All I get is a blurry fuzz. Anyone know what that means?”
I glanced at Australia. She shrugged – for an Oculator, she sure didn’t seem to know much. Then, I was one too, and I knew even less, so it was a little hard to judge.
“Don’t ask me,” Kaz said. “That ability skipped me, fortunately.
I looked over at Bastille.
“Don’t look at her,” Draulin said. “Bastille is a squire of Crystallia, not an Oculator.”
I caught Bastille’s eyes. She glanced at her mother.
“I command her to speak,” I said.
“It means there’s interference of some sort,” Bastille said quickly. “Courier’s Lenses are temperamental, and certain kinds of glass can block them. I’ll bet the Library down there has precautions to stop people from grabbing a book, then – before their soul is taken – reading its contents off to someone listening via Lenses.”
“Thanks, Bastille,” I said. “You know, you’re kind of useful to have around sometimes.”
She smiled but the caught sight of Draulin looking at her with displeasure, and stiffened.
“So, do we camp?” Kaz asked.
I realized everyone was looking at me. “Uh, sure.”
Draulin nodded, then moved over to some kind of fern-type plant and began to cut off fronds to make some shelter. It was already getting warm, but I guess that was to be expected, what with us being in Egypt and all.
I went to help Australia rifle through the packs, getting out some foodstuffs. My stomach growled as we worked; I hadn’t eaten since the stale chips in the airport. “So,” I said. “You’re an Oculator?”
Australia flushed. “Well, not a very good one, you know. I can never really figure out how the Lenses are supposed to work.”
I chuckled. “I can’t either.”
That only seemed to make her more embarrassed.
“What?” I asked.
She smiled in her perky way. “Nothing. I just, well. You’re a natural, Alcatraz. I’ve tried to use Courier’s Lenses a dozen times before, and you saw how poorly I managed when contacting you at the airport.”
“I think you did all right,” I said. “Saved my skin.”
“I suppose,” she said, looking down.
“Don’t you have any Oculator’s Lenses?” I asked, noticing for the first time that she wasn’t wearing any Lenses. I had put back on my Oculator’s Lenses after trying to contact Grandpa Smedry.
She flushed, then rifled through her pocket, eventually pulling out a pair with far more stylish frames than mine. She slid them on. “I… don’t really like how they look.”
“They’re great,” I said. “Look, Grandpa Smedry told me that I have to wear mine a lot to get used to them. Maybe you just need more practice.’
“I’ve had, like, ten years.”
“And how much of that did you spend wearing the Lenses?”
She thought for a moment. “Not much, I guess. Anyway, since you’re here, I guess my being an Oculator isn’t all that important.” She smiled, but I could sense something else. She seemed good at hiding things beneath her bubbly exterior.
“I don’t know about that,” I said, cutting slices of bread. “I’m certainly glad there’s another Oculator with us – especially if we have to go down in that Library.”
“Why?” she said. “You’re far better with Lenses than I am.”
“And if we get separated?” I asked. “You could use the Courier’s Lenses to contact me. Having two Oculators is never a bad thing, I’ve found.”
“But… the Courier’s Lenses won’t work down there,” she said. “That’s what we just discovered.”
She’s right, I realized, flushing. Then, something occurred to me. I reached into one of my pockets, pulling out a pair of Lenses. “Here, try these,” I said. They were yellow tinted.
She took them hesitantly, then tried them on. She blinked. “Hey!” she said. “I can see footprints.”
“Tracker’s Lenses,” I said. “Grandpa Smedry loaned them to me. With these, you can retrace your steps back to the entrance if you get lost – or even find me by following my footprints.”
Australia smiled broadly. “I’ve never tried a pair of these before. I can’t believe they work so well!”
I didn’t mention that Grandpa Smedry had said they were among the most simple of Lenses to use. “That’s great,” I
said. “Maybe you’ve just always tried the wrong types of Lenses. Best to begin with the ones that work. You can borrow those.”
“Thanks!” She gave me an unexpected hug, then hopped to her feet to go fetch the other pack. Smiling, I watched her go.
“You’re good at that,” a voice said.
I turned to find Bastille standing a short distance away. She’d cut down several long branches and was in the process of dragging them back to her mother.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re good,” she said. “With people, I mean.”
I shrugged. “It’s nothing.”
“No,” Bastille said. “You really made her feel better. Something had been bothering her since you arrived, but now she seems back to her old self. You kind of have a leader’s flair about you, Smedry.”
It makes sense, if you think about it. I had spent my entire childhood learning how to shove people away from me. I’d learned just the right buttons to push, just the right things to break, to make them hate me. Now, those same skills were coming in handy helping people feel good, rather than making them hate me.
I should have realized the trouble I was getting myself into. There’s nothing worse than having people look up to you – because the more they expect, the worse you feel when you fail them. Take my advice. You don’t want to be the one in charge. Becoming a leader is, in a way, like falling off a cliff. It feels like a lot of fun at first.
Then it stops being fun. Really, really fast.
Bastille hauled the branches over to her mother, who was making a lean-to. Then, Bastille sat down beside me and took out one of our water bottles to get a drink. The water level in it didn’t seem to go down at all as she gulped.
Neat, I thought.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said.
She wiped her brow. “What?”
“That jet that was chasing us,” I said. “It fired a Frostbringer’s Lens. I thought only Oculators could activate things like that.”
She shrugged.
“Bastille,” I said, eyeing her.
“You saw my mother,” she grumbled. “I’m not supposed to talk about things like that.”