Page 142 of Brimstone

“Thank you.” Slightly bemused, I kept walking, turning down another stack—where another five stargazers were waiting. Over my shoulder, the three I had just passed were following close behind. “Okay, this is getting a little creepy, folks.” More of them darted around the corner. More, suddenly swooping over the top of the stacks and diving down. Tens of them. Hundreds. They gathered overhead, flocking in a circle, the rustle of paper wings growing louder until it was all that I could hear.

“Fuck,”I whispered.

And then I ran.

Bone-white missiles zipped past my ears as I careened through the library. Left. Right. Right again. Left. The stargazers buzzed my head, swooping, snagging in my hair, teasing it loose from my braid. They crashed into me, pinwheeling to the floor and sliding, only to take off again, whirling around my head.

I swatted them away, batting them out of the air, but they only rose again. I spun left and collided with a pile of books that had been stacked haphazardly on the floor. They crashed to theground, skidding in every direction, nearly bringing me down with them, but I kept my feet. I charged forward, emerging into a small clearing amid the stacks, and my frustration finally won out over my alarm.

They were birds.

Paperbirds.

I stopped running and shielded my eyes with my hands, peering through my fingers to assess the situation. There were so many stargazers now, hundreds of them; they flew around me, faster, faster, faster—a vortex of them, whipping around and up toward the library’s rafters like one of the dust devils that tore across the dunes back in Zilvaren, only much, much bigger.

It . . . it wasbeautiful.

Cautiously, I lowered my hands and took it all in. The stargazers formed a tunnel, and I was at its center. The birds stirred the air, creating a breeze that blew my loose strands of hair around my head.

I’d never seen anything quite so lovely—ormagical—in all my life.

If crows had their murders and vultures had their wakes, then the spectacle of these stargazers, moving harmony, could only be one thing: a constellation.

“Impressive . . .” The thought was whispered out loud, and the birds reacted. A single stargazer broke away from the wheeling mass and dropped from the air like a stone. A split second before it hit the floor, it pulled up and hair-pinned in the air, coming right at me.

It happened too quickly; I didn’t get my hand up in time. The edge of the stargazer’s wing sliced my cheekbone, leaving a bright sting of pain in its wake.

“Ahhh!What—” This was thesecondtime one of them had cut me. “Thatreallyisn’tnice,” I hissed. I prepared for what would come next—the raining hail of angry stargazers all set ondrawing blood. Death by a thousand cuts—but none of the other birds fell from the cyclone of flapping wings. The air seemed to thicken with tension. The birds flew faster. Faster still. They flew so fast that it became impossible to discern one bird from another, and the entire mass became a fluttering, rushing mass of white.

Craning my neck, I looked up and shook my head. “What . . . the hell . . . ishappening?”

At once, the cyclone stopped dead. The birds began to fall out of the air, spinning or else nosediving, just like the first bird who had cut me and fallen, lifeless, to the steps outside the library. I watched, speechless, as the first birds to hit the floor began to unfold, their wings snapping open, their bodies, their beaks, until they were crumpled sheets of paper. Others unfolded midair and floated down much slower, like fat flakes of snow. The world became fluttering, creased sheets of paper.

I plucked one out of the air as it drifted past my face, and there, on the paper, were lines and lines of elegant, slanted handwriting.

In most cases, the power is too great. The Alchemist will need to surrender . . .

My heart pounded.

I plucked another sheet of paper from the air.

. . .often painful. Historically, it was recommended that a counterbalance be used as a kind of Alchemical overflow mechanism . . .

The writing spoke of Alchemical magic. All of the pages—so many pages!—werefullof text about Alchemy. My mind would not comprehend it. I’d picked the library at Cahlish clean. Both Algat and Foleyhadconfirmed that there were books on Alchemy in this library here, but neither of them had considered the stargazers.

The birds had been here for centuries. Longer than anyone could remember . . .

And all along, they had been the pages of a book.

Fast as I could, I started to collect them from the floor. Sheaves and sheaves of paper. They were wrinkled and yellowed by time around the edges, but the writing had been on theinsideof the pages; the words there, written in black ink, had been protected by the stargazer’s folds. I’d collected half of the pages from the floor when they started to rattle in my hands. I clamped the pile between my fingers, determined to keep hold of them, but then they were ripped free by some invisible force.

“No!” My shout echoed around the library.“Please!”

The pages didn’t listen. They flew through the air and tumbled one over the other, gathering into a ball. Before my eyes, they organized themselves into a single, ordered pile . . . and then theywerea book.

Navy blue cloth cover.

Thick.