The Invisible Library (40 page)

‘Their chaos is too great,’ Bradamant answered, her tone as sharp as if she was being questioned in class. ‘They would unmake a world.’

‘
Exactly
,’ Alberich purred. ‘And you wouldn’t want that.’ The very air began to shudder around his hand. It smoked as if his flesh was liquid nitrogen, cold
enough to burn a hole in reality. ‘And to prevent that manifestation, I only need one of you with your skin intact . . .’

Irene breathed. He hadn’t forbidden her to do that. And she was not going to accept the binding he had set on her. She was a Librarian, and while that made her the Library’s servant,
it was also a protection. The Language was her freedom. Bradamant had told her to move freely. She could not allow . . .

and her brand was a weight across her back, a heavy burden, trying to force her to her knees

. . . she would not . . .

white hot iron, searing into her

. . . permit him to do this. She refused to submit. Even if he was a monster, something that had killed greater Librarians than herself,
she was not going to accept his binding
.

Irene opened her mouth. The tiny movement of parting her lips seemed to take years as she watched dark fire blossom around Alberich’s hand. She sought for something to distract him, to
give her time to invoke the Library. And it came to her in a burst of inspiration. ‘
Jennifer Mooney’s skin! Get off that body now!
’

And it did. In rags and tatters, like a piece of clothing being ripped apart along the seams. The flame around Alberich’s hand died, and he opened his mouth wide in a howl of pain. The
dress disintegrated, falling apart like the pale fragments of skin. What lay behind it was so painful to Irene’s eyes that she had to turn and shield them with her hand. Behind the stolen
skin, Alberich was a living hole into some place or universe that should not exist on any human plane. In that brief moment she had seen living muscle, tendon and blood – but also colours and
masses that left burning spaces on her retinas. She’d seen things moving which bent the light around them and shifting structures which made no sense. All her reality suddenly seemed as
fragile as a curtain which someone was about to rip through at any moment. Irene was aware that she was screaming, and she could hear Bradamant crying out as well. Yet behind it all was Alberich,
his voice higher than any human’s normal pitch, screaming in pure rage and pain.

So that’s why he has to wear a skin
, her thoughts rattled, as though the words could form a chain to sanity, link by link.
So that’s why he has to wear a skin
. . .

Alberich turned and pointed at her, and reality warped in the wake of his gesture. The wooden floor rotted under her feet, and mouths opened in it to gulp at dead silverfish and bite at her
ankles. Thick knots of webbing dropped from the ceiling, full of spiders and drifting ash.

‘They’ll come for you,’ Alberich whispered. His voice had changed again; no longer female, or the voice of Aubrey, but something else. Something that hummed like the keys of an
out-of-tune piano, just missing normal human harmonies to strike out a more painful music. ‘You’ve hurt me and I’ll hurt you in turn, I’ll give you to the White Singers and
the Fallen Towers . . .’

A fold of spiderweb fell across Irene’s face, and the sheer horror of having to drag it away, feeling the spiders begin to crawl into her hair, somehow yanked her back into sanity. Her
horror turned from something alien and bone deep, into more mundane human disgust. She needed a moment to speak the Library’s name and so invoke it. That had been the plan. Minimal and
pitiful as it was, that had been the plan. But Alberich would know it the moment she began, and she had his full attention. She’d never get the word out.

Bradamant was screaming. No help from that quarter. And Vale was unconscious. She hoped. Better unconscious than dead.

Glass cracked and splinters from another display case ripped into her dress, distorting into glass singing birds with bright claws and edged beaks. She flung her arm up to shield her face, and a
glass bird lashed at her hand, thrashing wings leaving deep scratches. Blood ran like ink down her arm.

Of course. A Language was far more than the spoken word, after all.

She clamped her hands shut around the squirming bird, and fell to her knees. She could hear herself screaming in agony as the thing sliced into her palm and fingers, but it seemed somehow
distant. The impossibilities around her were far more real and visceral than the pain. She dimly wondered if she was destroying her hand. Again. But set against her life, or her sanity, then the
choice was clear.

Through her tangled, cobwebbed hair she saw Alberich raise his hand, perhaps to call up more horrors or deliver the death-blow.

Alberich could have stopped her if she’d tried to speak. He ignored it when she drove the squirming bird into the soupy wood of the floor, as she scraped it along to create a long,
blood-filled cut. He merely laughed as more debris came raining down on her shoulders from the now-unstable ceiling. But she needed an excuse to explain her actions. Something he would expect her
to try.

Irene raised both hands, pointing the bloody glass bird at him. ‘
Floor!
’ she screamed in the Language. ‘
Swallow Alberich!
’

The heaving mass of rotten wood surged round his feet, but he remained above it as if walking on water. ‘Let’s try that the other way around, shall we?’ he laughed at her.
‘Go down and
drown
in it!’

She was already on her knees. She felt the wood slurp upwards around her legs like thick mud, sliding up to her thighs. It didn’t soak through the skirts of her gown like water, but
pressed against her like hungry lips. She had a moment of panic – what would happen if her idea didn’t work? She let herself scream and, driven by the energy of that terror, sliced the
glass bird into the remaining floor. And again and again, as she sank further into the wood, as if she were trying to save herself. Her blood spattered onto the scored lines, as the wood closed
around her waist. The bird’s marks stood clear in the slowly oozing floor. Maybe because it was written in the Language, or just because it
had
to work or she was worse than dead.

‘Beg me and I’ll save you,’ Alberich said gleefully. ‘Beg me and I’ll make you my favoured student, my own sweet child – ’

The cobwebbing covered her eyes now. She was working blind.

But some things she knew even in the dark.

‘No,’ she said, and cut the final line into place. The symbol representing the Library itself showed clearly in the rippling wood between them.

The Library didn’t arrive like a roaring dragon or waves of chaos. But there was a light in the room that hadn’t been there before, more penetrating and clearer than the fluttering
gaslamps. The spiderwebs that had clung to her face and shoulders flaked away as fine dust. The Library’s authority pulsed through the room in a steady whisper, like pages turned in slow
motion, and stability followed. The floor was now firm where Irene knelt on it, and the glass in her hand was sharp, but it wasn’t a living bird. The light even muted the horror of
Alberich’s form, turning it to something seen as if through dull glass, retreating further and further away . . .

He
was
actually slowly withdrawing. The Library’s presence was driving him back, and though its touch felt welcoming to her, like a feeling of
home
, it was forcing Alberich
away. And if the sounds he was making were any judge, his expulsion was pure agony.

He hadn’t quite finished with her yet, though. Blackness flared in his eyes and his open mouth. ‘You call this a victory, Ray?’

And then his back touched the wall, and he started moving through it. The wall thinned to translucency around him as he struggled, partly immersed, like amber around a prehistoric insect.

Then, as they watched, Alberich’s back arched, and he screamed – but this was on a different scale than anything they’d heard so far. Irene felt her heart lurch in unwanted
sympathy as she saw the punishment that he was suffering – Alberich was crucified between the reality of the Library and the barrier that Kai had created outside, a squirming
thing
of
chaos trapped between two surfaces of reality.

Irene realized that she hadn’t the remotest idea what would happen next. She didn’t know. She didn’t
care
as long as it got him away from here. There was no place for
that sort of unreality in this world. It was abhorrent. What had he done to himself to become this? What sort of bargains had he struck?

‘Release me . . .’ Alberich choked out. Blood drooled from his mouth. ‘You can’t trust the dragons – they’ll turn on you as well – release me and
I’ll tell you.’

‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Bradamant spat. She was pulling herself up off the floor, her gown in shreds, leaning on the wreckage of a chair to support herself. ‘Do you really
think we’d let you go now?’

Thank you for so helpfully stating the obvious,
Irene thought, but managed to keep it to herself. She simply shook her head. A slow-burning flame of something that might be hope was
kindling inside her. What they’d done had hurt Alberich. It had
frightened
him.

They might actually win.

She hadn’t realized how much she’d assumed they’d already lost.

‘
You’ll regret this
,’ Alberich whispered in the Language.

The light increased, and he decreased in proportion, fading back and away from them like a disappearing stain. His last scream rang through the room, shattering the remaining glass and throwing
books from the shelves.

Irene caught a last glimpse of his face, a human face livid with rage, as he vanished.

‘Irene!’ Bradamant was suddenly there and she’d lost a few moments of time. She’d been watching Alberich vanish and now Bradamant had an arm round her shoulder and was
making her sit down. Vale – hadn’t Vale been unconscious? – was fussing over her hands. ‘Irene, listen, I promise I won’t take it,’ Bradamant was saying.
‘I will give you my word in the Language right now, if you like, and Vale is here too as witness. If you let go of that book it will make it a lot easier for us to take care of your hands.
Irene, please,
listen
to me, say something to me here . . .’

The door burst open. Again. ‘Irene!’ That was Kai shouting. Irene could only hope that no civilians were close enough to hear it. ‘Bradamant! What have you done to
her?’

Plus ten for genuine concern for my welfare,
Irene decided,
minus several thousand for perception
.

‘Please,’ Vale said wearily. ‘It was that Alberich person. Your plan worked perfectly, but I’m afraid that Miss Winters is in shock. If you would just help us persuade
her to relax, so that we can bandage her hands – I have some brandy here.’

‘Don’t waste that on my hands,’ Irene mumbled. She hadn’t even realized that she’d picked the book up. She let Bradamant ease the book out from under her arm.
‘I need a drink.’

‘Miss Winters!’ Vale exclaimed.

‘Make that two healthy drinks. I’m in shock. Give me brandy.’

‘But your hands,’ Vale protested. ‘They need immediate care.’

Irene didn’t want to look, but she forced herself. There were deep cuts across both palms and the insides of her fingers. Flaps of skin hung loose, and she thought she could see bone. She
looked away before she embarrassed herself by throwing up. The skirt of her dress was wet with her blood. She must be in shock, or it would be hurting even more than it already did. She’d
never hurt herself this badly. She wasn’t even sure if it could be fixed. ‘There are people in the Library who can deal with this,’ she said firmly, desperately praying that she
wasn’t lying to herself. Her words came spilling out, quick and professional, a distraction from the reality of her hands. She could hear the forced lightness of her tone. Her speech sounded
as if it was coming to her from a great distance, like the chirping of little birds very far away. ‘Mr Vale, thank you for your assistance, and I’m sorry that you were dragged into
this. Bradamant, please can you check the door – the inner door, the Library ingress – for any traps?’

‘I don’t think there could be any alien influences, after you invoked the Library inside this place,’ Bradamant said gently.

‘Oh.’ She must be more in shock than she’d thought. ‘All right, then. Kai, please help me stand.’

Kai slipped an arm around her, helping her to her feet. Under other circumstances she might have been more careful about leaning on him, but at the moment it really didn’t seem that
important. So she was leaning on him. She was injured. He was her colleague. It was only sensible.

His clothing was disarranged, but still there. So turning into a dragon didn’t mean that you lost all your clothing. This seemed unduly significant, and she filed it away so she could ask
questions later. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked in an undertone.

‘I think it’s best that we’re out of here before any questions need answering.’
That
piece of wisdom was drilled into all Librarians very early on.

‘Ahem.’ Vale brushed at the trickle of blood on his collar, rather pointlessly, considering his generally dishevelled state. ‘While I am willing to abet Singh in, well,
covering this up, I would also be interested in finding out more about this. Before you go, Miss Winters, all of you . . . can you tell me about the last story in that book?’

Bradamant opened her mouth, and the first word was obviously going to be
No
, and so were all the rest of them.

Irene held up one hand to stop her. ‘Mr Vale, are you sure that you want us reporting to our superiors that you read it? Whatever it is?’

‘I find it hard to believe that they will assume I didn’t read it,’ Vale said drily.

That was true enough. ‘I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t look over our shoulders as we check that it’s the right book,’ Irene said slowly. She cast a
quick glance at Kai, but he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut and not mention they’d already done so. ‘Bradamant, you said to check the eighty-seventh story, correct?’ She
indicated the book, now in Bradamant’s possession. ‘I would open it myself, but my hands – ’