The point is, I knew Bastille was right. I needed to turn that Lens off quickly. If Blackburn hadn’t heard the gunfire, then he’d certainly notice the Lens “noise.”
“Sing, loan me that shotgun,” I said urgently, waving with my hand.
Sing reluctantly relinquished the weapon. As soon as I touched it, the barrel fell off—but I was ready for that. I grabbed the tube of steel and used it to flip the Firebringer’s Lens over. The Lens was convex, meaning it bulged out on one side, and now that it was flipped over it looked like a translucent eyeball staring up out of the ground. It continued to fire its superhot ray of light, which was now directed at the ceiling.
I used the barrel of the gun to scoot the Lens away from the heated section of the floor, then carefully reached out. I gritted my teeth—expecting to get burned—and touched the side of the Lens.
Remarkably (as I’ve mentioned before) the glass wasn’t even hot. As soon as I touched it, the Lens shut off, the ray of light dwindling. I stepped back, surprised at how cold and dark the corridor now seemed by comparison.
“My shotgun,” Sing said despondently as I handed back the barrel. “This was an antique!”
That’s what happens when you stay around me, Sing, I thought with a sigh. Things that you love get broken. Even when I don’t do it on purpose.
“Oh, get off it, Sing,” Bastille said. “I lost my sword—you can’t even understand how much trouble I’ll be in for that. I was already bonded to the shattered thing; now I’ll have to start the process all over, if they even let me. Next to that, your gun is nothing.”
Sing sighed but nodded as Bastille reached into her handbag and pulled out a large crystalline knife. You may, by the way, have noticed the connection between the word Crystin and the weapons made of crystal that Bastille uses. This is actually a coincidence. Crystin is the Vendardi word for “grumpy,” which all Crystins tend to be. And I think …
Nah, I’m just kidding. They got the name because they use crystal swords. Plus, they live in a big castle (dubbed Crystallia) made of—you guessed it—crystals. That clear enough? Crystal clear?
Ahem.
“I’m out of bullets for the Uzis too,” Sing said, looking in his bag. “Small weapons for us both, I guess.”
I knelt down and tentatively poked the Firebringer’s Lens, still trying to pick it up off the floor. It began to glow. Blast! I thought and touched it again. The glow dissipated.
“Try being dumb,” Bastille suggested.
“Excuse me?” I asked, frowning.
“Think dumb thoughts,” Bastille said. “Or try not to think very much at all. The Lenses react to information and intelligence. So, it’s easiest to handle them when there isn’t much of either one around.”
I paused. Then I frowned and looked at the Lens, trying my best to be … well, stupid. I would like to note that this is quite a bit more difficult than it might sound. Particularly for a person like me, who can be (has this been mentioned?) rather clever.
Not only is it against a rashional purson’s nature to try and convince himself that he is more stoopid than he thinks he is, it is quite dificult to not think about anything when one has been told not to. Only the trooly most briliant of peeple can purrtend stoopidity so sucessfuly.
Butt eet kan bee dun.
I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. Then I reached for the Lens. It started to glow. I frowned, then tapped it before it could go off.
“Maybe we should simply leave it,” Sing said nervously. “Before someone sees us.”
“Too late,” Bastille said, nodding down the hallway, to where a group of robed Librarians had just appeared around a corner. They looked quite anxious, and I suspected that Bastille had been right in her earlier comment. The gunfire had been heard.
Bastille glanced at them through her sunglasses, then flipped her knife in her hand, raising it to throw.
“No!” I said. “Wait!”
Dutifully, she paused. The Librarians scattered, several racing back the way they had come.
“Why did you stop me?” Bastille asked testily.
“Those aren’t paper monsters, Bastille,” I said. “Those are unarmed people. We can’t kill them.”
“We’re at war, Alcatraz. Those people are the enemy. Plus, they’re going to alert Blackburn!”
I shrugged. “It just didn’t feel right. Besides, there were too many for you to kill them all. We can’t keep our escape secret any longer.”
Bastille snorted but otherwise fell silent. Either way, I didn’t have any more time for acting stupid. I grabbed the Lens—it began to glow—and quickly shoved it back inside its velvet pouch. Then I reached in and tapped it off with a finger. I pulled the bag shut, then stuffed it in my pocket.
“Let’s go then,” I said.
Bastille nodded. Sing, however, had moved over to the pile of ripped, shredded papers that were the remnants of the Alivened. “Alcatraz,” he said. “There’s something here you should see.”
“What?” I asked, hurrying over. As I approached, I could see that in the center of the pile, Sing had found what appeared to be a portion of the Alivened that was still … well, alivened.
It sat up as I arrived, prompting Sing to point a pistol at it. The creature was smaller now, and it was much more human-shaped. However, it was still made of crumpled-up paper, and now that I was close, I could see that it had two beady, glassy eyes.
I frowned, looking at Sing. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Sing said. “Of course, I don’t know a lot about Alivening. It’s Dark Oculary.”
“Why?” I asked, watching the three-foot-tall paper man with suspicious eyes.
“Bringing an inanimate thing to life this way is evil,” Bastille said. “To do it, the Oculator has to give up a bit of his own humanity and store it in Glass of Alivening. That’s what those eyes are made of. Shoot it, Sing. If you hit it in the eye, you might be able to kill it.”
The little paper creature cocked its head, quizzically staring down the barrel of the gun.
I looked back at Bastille. “They give up a bit of their own humanity? What does that mean?”
“They let the glass drain them of things,” Bastille explained.
“Things? That’s specific.”
From the side, I could see Bastille narrow her eyes behind her sunglasses, staring at the little creature with suspicion. “Human things, Alcatraz. Things like the capacity to love, protect others, and have mercy. Each time an Oculator creates an Alivened, he makes himself a little less human. Or at least he makes himself a little less like the kind of human the rest of us would want to associate with.”
Sing nodded. “Most Dark Oculators think the transformation is an advantage.” He reached down with his free hand, still keeping his gun leveled at the small Alivened. He held up a ripped bit of paper.
“You’d think that by giving up part of his humanity,” the anthropologist said, “the Dark Oculator would create a creature that possessed good emotions. But that’s not the way it works. The process twists the emotions, creating a creature that has just enough humanity to live, but not enough of it to really function.”
I accepted the scrap of paper. I could read the text—it appeared to be prose. The title line at the top right corner read The Passionate Fire of Fiery Passion.
“You can make an Alivened out of virtually anything,” Sing said. “But substances that soak up emotion tend to work the best. That’s why a lot of Dark Oculators prefer bad romance novels, since the object used determines the Alivened’s temperament.”
“Romance novels make an Alivened very violent,” Bastille said. “But rather dense in the intelligence department.”
“Go figure,” I said, dropping the scrap of paper. They give up their own humanity.… And this was the monster that was holding my grandfather captive. “Come on,” I said, standing. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”
“And this thing?” Sing asked.
I paused. The Alivened gazed up at me, its paper face somehow managing to convey a look of confusion.
I … broke it somehow, I thought. I thought I’d killed it—but that’s not the way my Talent works. I don’t destroy, not when the Talent is in full form. I just break and transform. “Leave it,” I said.
Sing looked up in surprise.
“We don’t want any more gunshots,” I said. “Come on.”
Sing shrugged, rising. Bastille moved down the hallway, checking the intersection. I quickly swapped my Oculator’s Lenses for my Tracker’s Lenses—fortunately, my grandfather’s footprints were still glowing.
I didn’t think I knew him that well, I thought.
I met Bastille at the intersection, pointing to the right branch. “Grandpa Smedry went that way.”
“The same way the Librarians went,” she said. “After they discovered us.”
I nodded, glancing in the other direction. I pointed. “I see Ms. Fletcher’s footprints that way.”
“She turned away from the others?”
“No,” I said. “She didn’t go with Grandpa Smedry from the dungeons. Those footprints I can see now are the original ones we followed—the ones that led us to the place we got captured. I told you we were close to where we started.”
Bastille frowned. “How well do you know this Ms. Fletcher?”
I shrugged.
“It’s been hours,” Bastille said. “I’m surprised her footprints are still glowing.”
I nodded. As I did, I noticed something else odd.
(If you haven’t noticed, this is the chapter for noticing weird things. As opposed to the other chapters, in which only normal things were ever noticed. There is a story I could tell you about that, but as it involves eggbeaters, it is not appropriate for young people.)
The normalcy-challenged thing that I had noticed was was really not very odd, all things considered. It was a lantern holder—the ornate bracket that I’d ripped free when I’d thrown the lantern at the Alivened.
There was nothing all that unusual about this lantern bracket, except for the already-noted fact that it was shaped like a cantaloupe. For all I knew, cantaloupe-shaped library lanterns were quite normal. Yet the sight of this one sparked a memory in my head. Cantaloupe, fluttering paper makes a duck.
I glanced back at the hallway behind me, with its broken wall, more broken floor, and piles of paper that shuffled in the draft.
It’s probably nothing, I thought.
You, of course, know better than that.
Chapter
16
If you are anything like me—clever, fond of goat cheese, and devilishly handsome—then you have undoubtedly read many books. And, while reading those books, you likely have thought that you are smarter than the characters in those books.
You’re just imagining things.
Now, I’ve already spoken about foreshadowing (a meddling literary convention of which Heisenberg would uncertainly be proud). However, there are other reasons why you only think that you’re smarter than the characters in this book.
First off, you are likely sitting somewhere safe as you read the story. Whether it be a classroom, your bedroom, your aquarium, or even a library (but we won’t get into that right now…), you have no need to worry about Alivened monsters, armed soldiers, or straw-fearing Gaks. Therefore, you can examine the events with a calm, unbiased eye. In such a state of mind, it is easy to find faults.
Secondly, you have the convenience of holding this story in e-book form. It is a complete narrative, which you can look through at your leisure. You can go back and reread sections (which, because of the marvelous writing the book contains, you have undoubtedly already done). You could even scan to the end and read the last page. Know that by doing so, however, you would violate every holy and honorable storytelling principle known to man, thereby throwing the universe into chaos and causing grief to untold millions.
Your choice.
Either way, since you can reread anytime you want, you could go back and find out exactly where I first heard cantaloupes mentioned. With such an advantage, it is very easy to find and point out things that my friends and I originally missed.
The third reason you think you are smarter than the characters is because you have me to explain things to you. Obviously, you don’t fully appreciate this advantage. Suffice it to say that without me, you would be far more confused about this story than you are. In fact, without me, you’d probably be very confused as you tried to read this book.
After all, it would be filled with blank pages.
Two soldiers stood in the hallway, chatting with each other, obviously guarding the door that sat between them. Sing, Bastille, and I crouched around a corner a short distance away, unnoticed. We’d followed Grandpa Smedry’s footprints all the way here. His prints went through the door—and that, therefore, was the way we needed to go.
I nodded to Bastille, and she slipped quietly around the corner, moving with such grace that she resembled an ice-skater on the smooth stone floor. The guards looked over as she approached, but she was so quick that they didn’t have time to cry out. Bastille elbowed one in the teeth, then caught his companion in a grip around the neck, choking him and keeping him quiet. The first guard stumbled, holding his mouth, and Bastille kicked him in the chest.
The first guard fell to the ground, hitting his head and going unconscious. She dropped the second guard a moment later, after he’d passed out from being choked. She hadn’t even needed the dagger.
“You really are good at this,” I whispered as I approached.
Bastille shrugged modestly as I moved up to the door. Sing followed me, looking over his shoulder down the hallway, anxious.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before the entire library was on alert. We didn’t have much time. I didn’t care about the Sands of Rashid. I just wanted to get my grandfather back.
“His footprints go under the door,” I whispered.
“I know,” Bastille whispered as she peeked through a crack in the door. “He’s still in there.”
“What?” I said, kneeling beside her.
“Alcatraz!” Bastille hissed. “Blackburn’s in there too.”
I paused beside the door, peeking through an open-holed knot in the wood. That was one thing that old-style wooden doors had over the more refined American versions. In fact, Bastille would probably have called this door more “advanced,” since it had the advantage of holes you could look through.
The view in the room was exactly what I had feared. Grandpa Smedry lay strapped to a large table, his shirt removed. Blackburn stood in his suit a short distance away, an angry expression on his face. I twisted a bit, looking to the side. Quentin was there too, tied to a chair. The short, dapper man looked like he’d been beaten—his nose was bleeding, and he seemed dazed. I could hear him muttering.
“Bubble gum for the primate. Long live the Jacuzzi. Moon on the rocks, please.”
The walls of the room were covered with various nasty-looking torture implements—the kinds of things one might find in a dentist’s office. If that dentist were an insane, torture-hungry Dark Oculator.
And there were also … “Books?” I whispered in confusion.
Bastille shuddered. “Papercuts,” she said. “The worst form of torture.”
Of course, I thought.
“Alcatraz,” Bastille said. “You have to leave. Blackburn will see your aura again!”
“No he won’t,” I said, smiling.
“Why not?”
“Because he made the same mistake I did before,” I said. “He’s not wearing his Oculator’s Lens.”
Indeed he wasn’t. In his single, monocled eye, Blackburn was not wearing his Oculator’s Lens. Instead, as I had anticipated, he was wearing a Torturer’s Lens—it was easy to distinguish, with its dark green and black tints.
Perhaps I wasn’t as stupid as you thought.
“Ah,” Bastille said.
Blackburn turned, focus
ing on Grandpa Smedry. Even though I wasn’t wearing my Oculator’s Lenses, I could feel a release of power—the Dark Oculator was activating the Torturer’s Lens. No! I thought, feeling helpless, remembering the awful pain.
Grandpa Smedry lay with a pleasant expression on his face. “I say,” he said. “I don’t suppose I could bother you for a cup of milk? I’m getting a bit thirsty.”
“Turtlenecks look good when the trees have no ears,” Quentin added.
“Bah!” Blackburn said. “Answer my questions, old man! How do I bypass the Sentinel’s Glass of Ryshadium? How can I grow the crystals of Crystallia?” He released another burst of torturing power into Grandpa Smedry.
“I really need to get going,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I’m late—I don’t suppose we could call it a day?”
Blackburn screamed in frustration, taking off his Torturer’s Lens and looking at it with an annoyed eye. “You!” he snapped to a guard that I couldn’t see.
“Uh … yes, my lord?” a voice asked.
“Stand right there,” Blackburn said, putting on the monocle. I sensed another wave of power.
The guard screamed. I couldn’t see him crumple, but I could hear it—and I could hear the pain, the utter agony, in the poor man’s voice. I cringed, closing my eyes and gritting my teeth against the awful sound as I remembered that brief moment when I had felt Blackburn’s fury.
I had to work hard to keep myself from fleeing right then. But I stayed. I’ll point out that now, looking back, I don’t consider this bravery—just stupidity.
The guard stopped screaming, then began to whimper.
“Hmm,” Blackburn said. “The Lens works perfectly. Your Talent is stronger than I had anticipated, old man. But it can’t protect you forever! Soon you’ll know the pain!”
Bastille suddenly grabbed my arm—she was still watching through the crack beside me. “He’s arriving late for the pain!” she said in an excited whisper. “Such power … to put off an abstract sensation. It’s amazing.”