“And yet this happened before,” the Librarian reminded him. “The world came very close to the edge when the Old Ones visited it the first time. There were very few survivors left. But thanks to you – the five of you – mankind had a second chance.”
“Yes. And they blew it again. Like they always do.”
“There’s still hope.”
“I’m not so sure.” Matt set his glass down. He had finished his tea and felt better for it. The Librarian leant forward and poured some more. “The five of us are scattered,” he went on. “That was my fault. We were together in Hong Kong and that should have been the end of it, but then everything went wrong and now we’re right back where we started. I don’t know who made me the leader of the Five but they can’t have known what they were doing. When I wake up, I’m going to find myself back in the middle of Brazil! What use is that? There are no phones any more. No TV. All the doors are locked. How am I ever going to reach the others?”
“I never remember you being so defeatist,” the Librarian remarked.
“I’ve had enough of it,” Matt said. He was thinking of the Brazilian boy. He suddenly saw the open wound in his stomach, the plastic bags sticky with blood. He hadn’t been able to save him. He hadn’t even learnt his name. “I never asked for any of this. Why does it have to be me?”
“You can give it up if you want to. That choice is still open to you.”
The Librarian sounded calm and friendly. Yet Matt still felt the accusation in his voice. He knew that he was being judged, and right now, when it mattered most, he was failing. He forced himself to remember why he had come here. “Why are the doors locked?” he asked.
“I can tell you that,” the Librarian replied. “It’s actually very simple. The twenty-five doors that carry you and your friends across the world are all interconnected. This means you can go from anywhere to anywhere at any time. However, if you lock one of them, you lock all of them. And that’s exactly what the King of the Old Ones has done. He’s locked the twenty-fifth door.”
“Where is it?”
“That’s the problem. It’s in Antarctica … in a place called Oblivion. That is where Chaos has built his fortress and the door is somewhere inside. It’s also where he is gathering his armies. There’s absolutely no doubt that he wants another battle, a final confrontation with you to make up for the last time when you beat him. He also wants revenge for what you did to him in the Nazca Desert. You caused him pain and that is unthinkable … unforgivable. And so he has put down this challenge. Finding you is not so easy. So he’s waiting for you to come to him instead.”
“In Antarctica!” The very thought of it made Matt’s head spin. It was so far away, a totally hostile environment. How was he even supposed to get there? “If I found this door, could I unlock it?” he asked.
The Librarian shook his head. “Not really,” he replied. “Well, you could. But it would kill you. There’s an electric charge running through the lock … except it isn’t really electricity. You could say it’s a sort of cosmic force, but the end result would be the same. Even if you managed to break it open, you would die. And to be honest with you, I’m not sure how you’d get into the ice fortress to begin with. The King of the Old Ones has all his forces around him. Shape-changers, fly-soldiers, fire-riders…”
“But there has to be a way! You just sit there as if all this doesn’t mean anything to you. Why won’t you tell me what I want to know? Why can’t you help?” The Librarian said nothing. Matt took a grip of himself. Getting angry wasn’t going to do any good. “Even if I get to this fortress, what am I supposed to do?” he went on. “You say he’s got a whole army there. There are just five of us! And he’s waiting for us. Everything is on his side…”
“I am not the one who creates the stories,” the Librarian said. “I just look after them. And in this particular story, Matt, I’m not the hero. You are.”
Matt nodded. He had known all along that it would come to this. As far as he could see, there was no other way. “All right,” he said. “The last time I was here, you showed me the book of my life. You said it contained everything I had ever done and everything I would do. You even said it would tell me how I die.”
The Librarian nodded slowly.
“So all the answers I’m looking for must be in there – right? If I do beat the Old Ones, it will tell me how I beat them. And if I make any more mistakes, like I did in Hong Kong, they’ll be in there too.”
“Yes.”
“When I was here before, you said I could read it. But I didn’t want to. There were things in it I didn’t want to know. There still are – but now I see I have no choice. So is the offer still on?”
“Of course you can read it, Matt. It’s your life.”
“Then I want to read it now. Let’s go…”
The Librarian looked neither happy nor sad. It was as if he had been expecting the request and was here simply to oblige. He stood up and Matt followed him back into the entrance hall and over to a simple wooden door near the desk where the Librarian had been working. Matt knew that it could lead to any room in the library city. It worked the same way as the twenty-five doors in his own world and would take them wherever they needed to go. The Librarian went through first, with Matt close behind, and they came out in a wide, modern space that might have been built just a few years ago. Matt understood why. He had been born at the very end of the twentieth century and so the architecture – plate-glass windows, metal walkways and platforms – corresponded to that time. If he had wanted to read the life of Julius Caesar, he would probably have been taken to a Roman temple.
Matt had never seen so many books. They were stacked in mile-long rows that dwindled in the distance until they finally became a blur. The shelves started at floor level and rose all the way to the ceiling, with spiral staircases connecting them and narrow metal walkways and handrails stretching from one end to the other. Some strange artificial light filtered through the room. It couldn’t have been coming in from outside – with the roofs and the spires of the other sections closing in, everything was dark – but there was no sign of any electric lamp. It was as if the room was somehow trapped in perpetual daylight. Matt climbed up after the Librarian, vaguely remembering his last visit. But with so many books, and all of them more or less identical, he wouldn’t have known where to start.
The Librarian went six levels up, then turned left, trailing his finger along the spines. Finally, he stopped. “This is what you want,” he said, picking out a thin grey volume. He handed it to Matt.
Matt weighed it in his hands. His first thought was how light it was, how little his life added up to. He thumbed to the back page and for a crazy moment he felt like he was back at school, being given a novel to read in English class. He had never found books easy and it had always been the first thing he had done … look to see how much he would have to struggle through.
His life lasted one hundred and fifty pages.
He knew that the book would tell him everything he wanted to know, everything he had ever done, everything he would be. He was the book – and he could feel his heart thumping. His mouth had gone dry. The very thought of opening it, of starting at the beginning, filled him with a sense of unease. But try as he might, he could think of no other option.
“Is there somewhere I can go?” he asked.
“There’s a table downstairs,” the Librarian said.
The table suited the room. It was large and industrial, with a single plastic chair waiting for him.
“I won’t be far away,” the Librarian said. “Just call as soon as you’ve finished and I’ll be right back.”
He walked away.
Matt placed the book on the table in front of him. The cover was completely plain, covered in grey fabric. There was no author listed, no title, no illustration. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said it was a textbook; maybe a study of something that nobody was very interested in, the sort of book that’s left at the back of the
shelf and is never read. He tried to get his head around what was about to happen. The book would describe his life. Presumably, he would come to a chapter where he would find himself here, in the library, reading. And then the book would tell him what he did next.
He would know. So did that mean that he could do something different? Could he change his own future? Suppose the book told him he was shot by an arrow and killed leaving the library, then why couldn’t he just stay where he was, or go out by another door? But then again, if he changed his future, the book would be wrong … and that wasn’t possible, was it? If it was in the book, it must have happened. Who had written the bloody thing anyway? Matt had asked the Librarian the last time he was here but the Librarian had refused to say.
It didn’t matter. Matt wasn’t here to change anything. He was here to find out what he was supposed to do. The answer was in front of him. He opened the book and began to read.
Six hours later, a lifetime later, he called the Librarian.
The man appeared almost at once. Matt was still sitting at the table. His whole body was rigid and there was no colour in his face. He looked ill. His hands, curled into fists, were stretched out in front of him. The book, closed and with the cover facing down, was on the table between them.
“You read it,” the Librarian said.
“Yes. I read it.” Matt looked up accusingly. “You knew what was in it.”
“No.”
“You never read it?”
“No.”
“Why did you let me read it?” Matt asked. His voice was little more than a whisper.
“I’m afraid it’s not my job to prevent you,” the Librarian said. “I’m sorry. Is it very bad?”
“I know how I’m going to die!” Matt heard himself speak the words. It was as if they came from someone else. He thought about the last ten pages of what he had just read. The last ten pages. One hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty. There was going to be no page one hundred and fifty-one. Not for him. “I’ve read what I’m meant to do. I’ve read what happens. And it’s horrible.” He pointed at the book. His hand was trembling. “Nobody could be expected to go through that. I mean, nobody would do it if they knew how it was going to be.”
The Librarian shrugged. “You want to save the world,” he said. “I suppose that always comes at a price.”
“It’s too much. The price is too high. I won’t do it. I can’t.”
There was a long silence. Matt sat there, in shock, his chest rising and falling. Eventually he wiped his face with the back of his hand and turned again to the Librarian. His eyes were pierced with anger. “Just because it’s written this way, I don’t have to do it,” he said. “I still have a choice. I can walk away. I don’t have to be part of this. Maybe there’s another way.”
The Librarian said nothing.
“I thought you were on my side. I should never have come here.”
“Leave the book on the table,” the Librarian said. “I’ll return it later. Let’s go back to the entrance hall. Maybe I can get you something else to drink.”
“I don’t want anything more from you.”
“Whatever you say, Matt. I understand why you’re angry but I would remind you that this was your idea. I had nothing to do with it.”
They left together, taking the door back the way they had come. Matt didn’t know how long he had been in the library. Normally it would have taken him several days to read a book.
Not this book.
He wondered how long he had been sleeping in the Brazilian jungle while he was here. And yet he wouldn’t have been surprised to wake up and find that only minutes had passed. Different world, different times. None of it made any sense.
“I want to see the others,” Matt said. “Do you know where they are?”
“The library has a bell,” the Librarian said. “If you ring it, they’ll hear it and they’ll come.”
“I know,” Matt said. “I read it in the book.”
They were back in the entrance hall. The Librarian was standing in front of him, his hands folded. As ever, he was unperturbed. “Is that what you’d like me to do?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter whether I’d like it or not. It’s what happens. You leave me here. You climb up the tower and you ring the bell. The others arrive. We meet outside. And as for you and me, we never see each other again.”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Yes. Go.”
“Matt … I’m sorry.”
“Just do it. Please.”
The Librarian turned and walked back through the door they had taken, but of course it could now open somewhere completely different. Matt sat where he was, staring ahead of him, trying to block out the thoughts that were running through his head.
Pain. Humiliation. Death.
Eventually he heard the tolling of a bell. The same sound would be heard all over the dreamworld and the others would come. Jamie would be the first, then Scarlett and Pedro. And finally Scott. Matt knew all about Scott.
The bell rang out.
Matt waited.
When the bell fell silent and the Librarian came back through the door, Matt had already gone.
The five of them met at the top of the hill, where Matt had first seen the library.
Jamie was the first to arrive and, despite everything, Matt was glad to see him. Jamie was always positive, always upbeat, and the two of them had struck up a friendship when they had travelled to London. Matt sometimes thought that if the five Gatekeepers had a leader, it should have been Jamie, not him. After all, Jamie had been at Scathack Hill. He had taken part in the first battle long ago, when the Old Ones had been defeated. He had even helped to construct the first gate.
They embraced warmly.
“I thought I was never going to see you again,” Jamie said. He looked past Matt at the vast construction. “What is this place?”
“It’s a library.”
“Scar told me about the library when I travelled back in time. And there’s supposed to be some sort of woman who lives here too.”
“I haven’t seen her.” Matt smiled, grateful for this moment. “Where are you, Jamie?” he asked. “In the real world?”
He knew the answer. He knew all the answers. But if he stopped talking, he thought he might break down. He had to hold it together for all their sakes.
“I’m back in England. I was in a village but it was attacked and now I’m on a canal boat heading for London. There’s that church you told me about. St Meredith’s. I reckoned if I could find the door, I could somehow get to join you.”
“You know that London has been destroyed.”
“London and pretty much the whole world, from what I can gather. Nothing is the same any more. Somehow I managed to lose ten years.”
“We all lost ten years. If we’d just spent a few more seconds in Hong Kong…”
“It wasn’t your fault, Matt. You had to get us out of there and you did. It’s just bad luck we ended up all split apart…”
“Matt! Jamie!”
Scarlett had appeared, quickly climbing the hill towards them, with Pedro just behind her. She was dressed in exactly the same clothes she had been wearing when she had entered the Tai Shan Temple, but Matt could see that she had been hurt. She was thinner and she had a slightly pinched look in her eyes; the memory of recent pain. Pedro too was different. Although he did his best to smile, and he was evidently glad to see Matt again, he was hiding something and he couldn’t disguise it. One of his hands was wrapped in a bandage.
His finger was broken. Matt knew about that too.
Matt went over to them.
Scarlett kissed him on the side of his cheek. At that moment she was close to him and looked deep into his eyes. She pulled away. “What is it, Matt?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Matt lied. He had already decided not to tell any of them about the book. “I’m really glad to see you.”
“I’ve really missed you.”
r /> It helped to keep talking. Say anything. Ask questions.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Egypt, on the way to Dubai. I’m with your friend, Richard. He’s going to be so relieved that I’ve seen you. He asks me about the dreamworld every morning. What do you want me to say to him?”
“Just tell him I’m glad he’s OK. And say I’m glad he’s got you to look after him.”
“Actually, I think it’s the other way round.”
“Scott!” Jamie had seen his brother walking towards them and ran forward to greet him.
But even as Scott appeared at the bottom of the hill, Matt could see that he was lingering. He had probably thought twice before responding to the sound of the bell and had only come because he had to, because if he wasn’t there, Pedro would tell them what had happened. He was still reluctant to join the group. Matt glanced at Pedro and saw him turn away, deliberately avoiding having to look Scott in the eye. Matt tried to force what he had read out of his thoughts. He wasn’t the only one with problems. This adventure was going to hurt them all.
Pedro was his friend. Without him, Matt would never have survived Peru. He rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Hello, Pedro.”
“I am happy to see you, Matteo.”
“I’m glad to see you too.” He went on quickly, keeping his voice low. “Don’t worry about Scott. I know what’s happened and it’s going to be all right. Don’t say anything to the others.”
“But Scott—”
“I know. But everything’s happening the way it’s meant to. What matters is that we’re together again. The Five. It’s all going to work out.”
They talked for a few more minutes. Scarlett was amazed to learn that Lohan was now with Matt. She quickly described the civil war in Egypt and the death of Tarik, killed by his own bomb. She still couldn’t believe what Richard had done.