Page 49

First steps are important and are frequently the occasion for celebration. Last steps often go unnoticed. Few of us believe that when we take to our beds we will not rise again.

Cobblers: The Importance of Good Shoes , by Arnold Shoemaker

Livira

Livira’s journey owned a great many candidates for “starting point.” The door of her aunt’s hut on a fateful morning, the steps of the Allocation Hall, the entry to the librarian’s complex, or to the library proper. But the black stain at the centre of the labyrinth could also stake a decent claim.

Here she was again, setting out on another journey, expected somehow to find the library’s centre when in truth she had spent her whole life exploring just a minuscule fraction of the athenaeum’s vast estate and never found even a clue to the centre’s location. And now she had to find it before the place collapsed around her. An end that seemed imminent.

Maybe someone else could do it? A guide? She had found the raven here, very long ago, and although it had scolded her loudly and relentlessly, she had come to care for the construct. Part of Livira wanted to speak Edgarallen’s name and see if she could summon him. Perhaps he would know where the centre lay. But the bird had always seemed so delicate, at the end of a long, long life, and vulnerable to hazard. Livira wasn’t going to call him to face the end of the world with her.

Inspiration struck. “You could call Wentworth?” She turned to Yute.

Yute frowned. “There are certain dangers—”

“Just do it!” Clovis exploded. “Look where we are!” As if to underscore her opinion the distant boom of falling masonry rolled across the chamber, echoing from the walls.

“Still…” Yute prevaricated. “We should—”

“Wentworth!” Kerrol called out a loud imperative. “Wentworth! We need help!”

Something huge loomed behind Livira, accompanied by the sound of shelves splintering and falling back. The light dimmed and quailed as if it were being blocked, which was impossible—in the library the illumination bled from the air itself.

Livira hadn’t completed her turn before a desperate scream swelled and then cut off with an awful crunching sound.

Wentworth had become huge, larger than a skeer warrior, big as an elephant, Livira guessed, though she had never seen such a creature. More importantly, the cat was less Wentworthy than Livira had ever seen him: his fur had become almost black, mottled with shadow, his claws scythe-like, his eyes lambent amber slits, and his teeth…his teeth had just passed entirely through King Oanold’s neck.

Wentworth spat out the man’s mangled head a heartbeat after his bleeding body hit the floor. Clovis moved with breathtaking speed to put herself in front of Livira who of the remaining party had been standing closest to the beast. She held her white sword between her and the cat, and unless Livira imagined it afterwards, her arm trembled.

“Wentworth!” Yute ran past them both, towards the cat, his voice neither fearful nor angry, but full of sorrow.

Wentworth glowered down at the librarian, jaws dripping crimson, as the man came to him unhesitatingly. Yute’s head came only to the cat’s great fur-laden chest. He reached out, patting Wentworth while turning back to face Livira.

“I worried this would happen…”

“You worried he’d bite someone’s head off?”

Yute winced. “It seems he developed a taste for fascists when we were last together…But no. This.” He looked up at the fang-filled maw and wild eyes pointing his way. “Wentworth has always been attuned to the library. By many accounts he is part of it. As the library fails, so will he.”

“He doesn’t look happy about it,” Clovis murmured, not lowering her blade.

Livira swallowed, trying to see past the teeth and blood to Salamonda’s sleepy stair-cat that had so often ignored her, and every once in a while been of immense use. “Wentworth…” She swallowed again, and tried with more force in her voice, hoping it wouldn’t dry up this time. “Wentworth. We need to reach the centre. I might be able to help you if we can, but I don’t know how to get there.”

The cat locked eyes with her and suddenly she knew exactly how prey felt. Beneath a weight of fur, muscles tensed, ready to propel Wentworth into motion. For a long moment it seemed that the only question was when he would spring at her, rather than if. The moment passed, and the cat turned away, shrinking as he started to climb the slanting shelves that his bulk had toppled into the next aisle.

“Follow him,” Mayland said. Rather unnecessarily, in Livira’s opinion.

Wentworth took to the shelf tops, heading west while all around them pieces of the ceiling started to fall. The cat appeared unbothered, though he kept up the dedicated pace of a cat summoned to the kitchen. Livira could tell that he was leading them to the door to Chamber 7. If his intention was to take them to the centre by foot, the journey might be measured in months or years, although the length of the journey felt academic. If it was more than ten minutes, Livira was fairly sure the problem would be solved by them all being crushed by falling rocks.

Before they’d covered half the distance to the door, pieces of the ceiling were falling all around them, a steady hail ranging from fist-sized bits to chunks substantially larger than Wentworth at his biggest. The cat led at a pace dictated by Yute’s best efforts at running. He sprinted along shelf tops, effortlessly leaping aisles, then pausing for the humans to catch up. In the old days he would have collapsed in a furry puddle or sat nonchalantly licking a paw. Now he stalked impatiently, agitation twitching in his tail.

Once, when Wentworth had ranged far ahead and was a mere dot atop the shelves at the end of a straight aisle more than a hundred yards long, the place he was sitting in exploded without warning, splinters and pages flying in all directions, dust billowing. Livira screamed despite herself, but a moment later she spotted the cat ten yards closer, stalking the shelf tops.

For a moment she found her heart aching for the lost books. She had never even scratched the surface of what was to be read in Chamber 1, let alone the tomes in Chamber 2, but even so, part of her had always thought that she would have the chance to read any given book here. To see them taken away, not just from her but from humanity, hurt her in ways she couldn’t properly put into words.

“How are we not dead yet?” Carlotte panted beside Livira.

“I’m your early-warning system.” Arpix spoke up behind them, voice grim.

Carlotte looked back at him, frowning.

“I’m taller,” Arpix explained. “The rocks will hit me first.”

Behind him, Clovis pointed up in alarm.

Livira had been avoiding looking up, all of them had, not least to keep from getting an eyeful of grit, and also because it was better not to think about deaths that could strike from places beyond their control, but she did so now.

In any normal light the presence of a vast raven high above might have been signalled by its shadow falling across them. Edgarallen—it had to be him—had grown to such titanic dimensions that Livira suddenly knew the truth of the childhood stories Ella had told her out on the Dust. Tales of rocs whose wings darkened the sky and could tear up a hundred trees in their great talons.

Livira hadn’t called him. She had no feather. She hadn’t spoken his name. And yet here he was, flying as a shield above them, shedding pieces of the ceiling from his flight feathers as his wings deflected an untold weight of masonry from their heads.

“Run!” She shouted it even though they were already running. Surely even on this scale the raven couldn’t protect them, or himself, for long.

Even as the thought crossed her mind Edgarallen’s whole body shuddered, and a few moments later a huge chunk of ceiling rolled off his back.

Wentworth waited for them by the corridor to Chamber 7. Kerrol ended up picking Yute up and running with him. Starval did the same for Yolanda and Leetar despite their protests. By the time they emerged from the shelves, all the humans were in the arms of canith, Livira borne beneath one of Mayland’s arms and uncomfortable about it in several ways.

The stone hail had partially re-established itself as they approached the walls, the raven unable to maintain his position and having to circle over them periodically. As much as having her head crushed by a small piece of the ceiling worried Livira, she also knew that the total collapse that would bring everything down in an unstoppable rush couldn’t be far away.

The metal man stood sentinel at the entrance as he always had, the spars of his ruined wings arching above his head. Now however, the strange light that lit when Volente had woken him with a howl was back without the hound’s intervention. As the group came forward, the man turned towards them, his whole body moving.

“Livira. Arpix. It is good to see you.” He addressed them in deep-voiced sabbertine, the only one of his multitude of languages they shared. “My name, by the way, is Dalion. It has been an honour to share the library with you.”

“Hello, Dalion.” Livira found no comfort in the metal man’s disturbingly final phraseology. Moreover, she wasn’t sure how to greet him. He had stood there for a hundred generations and more. He deserved more respect. A thunderous boom close at hand and the encroaching dust billow of the impact overrode her social misgivings and delivered her directly to her point. “We need to find the centre.”

The others gathered around, Kerrol and Mayland almost as tall as the metal man.

“That’s rather like being impatient to find patience,” Dalion replied after a long pause in which more pieces crashed down close by. Wentworth continued to circle, occasionally weaving through the forest of legs to nip at the brownish-gold ankles of the former statue.

“You’re not going to give us some mystic mumbo jumbo about the centre being inside us all along, are you?” Carlotte strode up to the avatar with a quick glance at the ceiling. “Because we really don’t have time for that sort of—”

“I think what Queen Carlotte means”—Livira elbowed her friend aside—“is that unless we get there quickly, we won’t be getting there at all.”

The avatar rumbled in his chest. “It is a time when many things will end. Me, the bird”—the light in his eyes flickered—“maybe even the old one.” He stroked Wentworth’s head as the cat grew large and pressed it into his metal hand. “Your lives are not in my gift. I would save you if I were able. But the sacrifice is not mine to make.”

“Sacrifice?” Clovis asked.

Livira glanced around, uneasy with such talk. She wasn’t sure what else she had to surrender, or how it might help. “Do we have to give something up? To reach the centre? It’s a state of mind? Only people who don’t want to reach it can get there? What?”

Dalion met her eyes, the glow in his dazzling her. “The world is seldom kind, Livira.”

“I’m not…” Panic seized her. “I can’t give Evar up again. That can’t be what you mean!”

“There has to be a sacrifice,” the avatar repeated.

Behind Livira Yute exhaled a long, soft sigh.

“I don’t understand…” Livira looked from Kerrol to Arpix in confusion.

Wentworth suddenly looked up at Dalion, a fresh wildness in his eyes. He surged upwards, growing all the time, lunging at the metal man.

Dalion threw his arms around the cat’s neck, grappling with him. “Hurry!” he shouted above Wentworth’s yowl. “I can’t hold him for long.”

“I don’t…” Livira backed away from the squalling bundle of fury that had been Wentworth, fur flying, scythe-like claws raking across Dalion’s metal limbs and torso. “I don’t understand!”

As Dalion wrestled with the cat, whose claws were now scoring bright furrows through his bronze-gold flesh, a high-pitched scream dragged Livira’s attention from the contest. Starval had hold of Yolanda and was securing her with both arms straining as she started to exhibit a struggle every bit as furious and desperate as Wentworth’s.

Livira only caught a glimpse of him. White hair, a dark grey robe. Then he was gone from sight. “Yute!” His name broke from her in a scream and without fully understanding why, she began to sprint after him.

Kerrol caught her and refused to let go. As she beat her fists against him, he howled, not in anger, nor because her blows were hurting him, but in anguish. The same howls that Evar had made long ago over the broken remains of the Assistant.

A swooping darkness descended upon them, and the raven’s great talons hit the ground, each toe longer than a full-grown canith, his wings folding about them in a protective shield, his head bowed in so that the point of his vast beak touched the ground close to Dalion, and a single black, unreadable eye watched them all.

A rolling thunder eclipsed all protests or demands. Rock hit rock, the floor trembled and shook beneath their feet. Edgarallen shuddered beneath impact after impact but refused to reduce himself into a smaller target.

Livira kept throwing her strength against the canith’s, but it was only when Wentworth tore past them that Edgarallen raised his wing and Kerrol released her.

Dalion lay in scattered pieces, ripped apart by Wentworth’s fury. The shelves ahead of them were in ruin, smashed timber, broken books, and shattered stone everywhere. The ceiling continued its collapse, but the hail of pieces had slowed, perhaps as a rainstorm will come in waves, or perhaps the momentary calm before a devastating general collapse.

Wentworth sprang over the first obstacles and charged on.

“We need to follow,” Arpix said in a broken voice.

Livira looked back again at Dalion’s remains. Edgarallen lay among them, unmoving, back to the size of a normal raven, and more battered than when she had seen him at his worst, his left wing broken, black blood leaking through the sparsity of his feathers. She twisted away from Kerrol, passed an uncomprehending Carlotte, and scooped the bird into her arms. “You don’t get to leave.”

Yolanda ran on ahead, tearing her tunic on splintered spars, labouring up slopes of books. Starval kept pace, though the main threat came from above and he could do little to protect her from it.

“What has he done?” Carlotte asked, though the tone of her voice indicated that she had already started to understand.

They saw Wentworth first, crouched, his head on his paws. And then a piece of impenetrable blackness, whose silhouette Livira eventually translated into that of a great dog, as large as Wentworth and in a very similar pose, facing him.

“Volente…” The library’s second-most-accomplished guide.

Between them, a shimmering pool whose uneven edge recalled Livira to that day when the Exchange had delivered her to the mountainside just a little too late to witness Yute’s bloody rebirth from the assistant he had once been. He and his wife-to-be had both shed their impervious skins and with them the timeless existence that had held them.

Leetar gave a strangled cry and fell to her knees. Her brother had died in the making of such a pool, that time with the blood of Celcha’s brother, Hellet, who had become an assistant in his turn, aimed and engineered by Mayland to begin this whole collapse, tearing down the library from the inside.

“Why would…” Carlotte stood, bewildered.

“He sacrificed himself to save us.” Arpix choked. “He loved us all. I think. He just never knew how to say it.”

Livira looked at her friend while the tears started to roll, hot down her cheeks. Arpix perhaps had understood the librarian better than any of them, bound as he had always been by the same restraint. What he’d just said wasn’t something that would ever have escaped his lips before Clovis’s arrival. The canith moved up behind him and pressed her forehead to the back of his hair, her mane nearly encompassing them both.

A head-sized chunk of the ceiling smashed down beside them, burying itself in the fallen books.

“Come on,” Mayland said, advancing on the blood pool that had been Yute before the falling roof had crushed him. “He did this so we could reach the centre. Don’t waste it.”

Mayland slowed as he reached the shimmering surface, glancing between Wentworth and Volente who sat like grieving sphinxes, guarding the way. A moment later he gathered his courage, stepped forward and was gone. Kerrol and Starval followed. Yolanda, weeping, stepped after them and let her father’s blood take her. Clovis and Arpix shepherded Leetar and Carlotte through, then took their chance too. Before he went, Arpix turned to lock eyes with Livira, paying no heed to the freshening rain of stone around them. “It’s time.”

Livira, cradling the raven in her arms, came to stand at the edge of what must be her friend and mentor’s last gift. She looked from Wentworth to Volente. “I’m so sorry.”

Volente whined softly. Wentworth only blinked.

“Will you be all right?” she asked. “You should come with us.” But she knew that neither beast would leave their master’s final resting place, even if the mountain were to fall upon them both.

Livira drew a shuddering breath and followed the others into the scintillating depths.