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“What would you suggest instead?” Clovis asked.

Arpix had already remarked that while she was ready for any fight, she wasn’t ready to make a fight out of anything. A good general listens first, when there is time to listen, and Clovis would make a good general.

“We could come from the side and just move them out of the way. It wouldn’t put us in any danger.”

“They would bring more of their kind here,” Clovis countered. “And after the lesson with the rock, perhaps the next one they’ll learn will involve spears...”

Arpix frowned. “The door we came through is closed. They can’t get out to call for reinforcements.”

“Perhaps the other two doors are open or open for them,” Clovis said.

“We could check.” Arpix met her gaze.

“That seems a lot of effort to save the lives of three enemies who don’t seem to care whether they live or die anyway.”

“We could send a human and a canith to both doors,” Evar said. “If they open for either one then we know the skeer can’t get in or out that way.”

“We’d all need to go to both doors.” Arpix shaped the imagined iron ball between his hands. “It’s the only way to keep safe from any skeer that might be wandering out here.”

“A journey of over four miles.” Clovis grimaced. “To maybe keep three skeer alive. Skeer that might cause us problems later.”

“We should vote on—” Arpix broke off as Kerrol, who he hadn’t seen leave, reappeared around the end of the aisle.

“Squashed the bugs.” Kerrol tossed the orb to his sister.

Arpix found his mouth hanging open and closed it. Evar seemed similarly amazed. Clovis took it more in her stride though still looked a little puzzled as she turned the orb over in her hands.

Kerrol explained himself. “You were going to argue over it. It’s a fault line in the group dynamics. Couldn’t be allowed to widen. Better that I take the hit. You don’t trust me anyway.”

The group advanced to find the pulverised remains of three skeer decorating the foot of the door. Their gore rippled across the white surface, seeking to get away from the orb even in death.

Clovis advanced unperturbed. “Let’s see what they were guarding.” Her hand came to rest against the door. She frowned and turned back to the others. “Arpix?”

Arpix wondered if it was the first time she’d spoken his name. It seemed impossible but he couldn’t remember another. He liked how it sounded in her mouth, growled out but still not a threat—more of a promise. He went forward to stand beside her. “Let’s hope it’s not a ganar door, or a larnix door, or something even—”

“Just try it.” She laughed.

So, he did. And it melted before him, the ichor spraying out down the corridor under the orb’s pressure.

Clovis stood for a while, sniffing. “I can smell something.”

“Me too, and I wish I couldn’t.” The reek of skeer guts was overpowering to the point where Arpix’s eyes were starting to water.

“Humans.” Clovis nodded. “Not close, but lots of them.”

“Define ‘lots.’ ”

Clovis licked her teeth. “My nose is clever. But it can’t count.”

—

Cautiously, the group moved into the chamber, with Evar and Arpix at the front. Evar in case of problems; Arpix in case those problems were caused by Evar being a canith.

The room, or at least the tiny fraction of it that Arpix could see, appeared similar to the typical library room. It always amazed him that people had had the energy and industry to erect such a vast amount of shelving so far from the known entrances, and fill them with the books that the assistants would otherwise leave piled on the floor. It certainly lent credence to the slow migration of the chambers—or perhaps it should more accurately be described as the quick but highly infrequent exchange of chambers.

Livira had spoken of written accounts from travellers who had ventured deep into the interior. They spoke of seemingly endless rooms lying beyond the range of any but the most intrepid explorer, where books lay in drifts, taller than a man, untended, unknown, unloved. It had always amazed and saddened him that such a wealth of knowledge and culture, speculation and imagination sat out there, beyond the capacity of mankind to make use of, just waiting for the next fire to sweep through.

The shelves in Arpix’s small patch of the current chamber were in good condition, fashioned from dark oak and topped by carved animal heads that looked down upon the travellers in the style of cathedral grotesques, as large as a human head and set every few yards. Each had been picked out in great detail by a master of the craft, some indistinguishable from the true animal, others given human expressions ranging from contemplation to amusement, some wise, some leering, some comically bored.