The Shadow of Malabron (10 page)

“I suppose I’d better wait here then,” she said, and moved away to examine the books on the nearest shelf.

Will pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, pushing aside a stack of books to make some room in front of him. Two other people were sitting at the far end of the long table, but had their heads bent over books and paid him no attention. He didn’t have long to wait. After a few moments he heard a soft flutter in the air, and a slip landed gently on the back of his hand, its paper wings stirring slightly as it settled on its chosen perch. Carefully Will took the slip by one corner and set it onto the table, where its wings spread open and it lay flat and motionless, like an ordinary scrap of paper.

Will lifted the quill pen and set the nib to the paper, expecting the slip to move. It did not stir. Tentatively he scratched a line. Nothing appeared.

“You need ink,” Rowen said.

Will frowned and dipped the pen in the black bottle at his elbow. He held it poised over the slip, and then hesitated.

“Have you ever done this?” he whispered to Rowen.

Without turning to look at him, she whispered back, “No. I use the catalogues. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know what to write.”

“Just ask for what you want, like he said. Simple, remember?”

Will grimaced and set the nib to the paper again. He thought for a moment, wrote the word
home
, then plonked the pen back into its stand.

An instant later the slip’s wings began to rise again, and then to beat rapidly, like the wings of a hummingbird. It fluttered up from the table, sped across the room, and hovered at the arched entrance to one of the dim branching corridors. Will jumped up, grabbed the lantern, and with one quick backwards look at Rowen, he followed.

A
FTER A LONG TIME HE KNEW
that he was lost. And worse, he was pretty sure the slip was, too.

He had followed the fluttering scrap of paper through halls and rooms and corridors of bookshelves, up and down stairs and along winding passageways, until he began to wonder whether there was any end to the Library at all. Every now and then he had passed someone browsing the shelves, or trudging along with an armload of books, or sitting at a desk under one of the dim light globes, poring over some huge, ancient tome. Most of these solitary souls looked as dusty and faded as the books, as though they themselves had not left the Library in years. Will paid them little heed, since most of his attention stayed focused on the slip, which flew along purposefully without slackening its speed, as if it did not care whether Will was keeping up or not. As he followed, from time to time Will heard strange noises, soft shufflings and mutterings from the shadowy recesses around him. Once from a narrow aisle a dim figure in grey rags approached him, silently mouthing words. Its feet were chained to two immense books, and worse, the feet and the books were suspended a foot above the floor. Will fled from the spectre, shouting at the slip to wait for him. He felt foolish talking to a piece of paper, but it was better than having no companion at all in such a place.

When the slip had finally begun to slow down, its wings beating less urgently, Will assumed that this meant they were nearing their goal, and he followed with a burst of new energy. Even when the slip had slowed to a stationary hover, and then turned a slow circle and began to fly back the way they had come, Will was not too concerned. This could simply mean that the slip was honing in on its precise destination. But after many minutes of this turning and darting down other aisles and coming back and trying another direction, Will’s confidence in the slip’s powers began to falter. Especially when he realized that he hadn’t seen another living soul for some time, and the light globes were becoming dimmer and spaced further apart.

With growing unease he followed the slip through a maze of aisles that went on and on, until at last they came to a place where there was no light at all apart from the weak illumination of the lantern. Crooked aisles like tunnels ran off in all directions between shelves that rose to great heights until they were lost in darkness. Scraps of paper littered the floor, which was paved with narrow stones that Will realized with shock were actually the spines of books.

He was not only in the Library, he was walking on it.

Here the slip gave in at last. Its wings ceased beating and it spiralled helplessly down towards Will. He lifted his hand and let the slip drop into his palm. If it hadn’t been a piece of paper, he would have sworn the slip was exhausted beyond endurance and trembling with fatigue, or even fear. One thing was clear: the search was over, and they hadn’t found his book. The Library could not help him.

“Let’s go back now,” he said, and folded the tiny piece of paper the other way, as the librarian had told him to. The slip stirred feebly, then lay still.

“Come on,” Will said more loudly, and heard his voice echo through the endless corridors. “Just do what you’re supposed to.”

He folded the slip the other way, and back again but it did not move.

Will swallowed hard. What chance was there he could retrace his steps back through the Library on his own?

He lowered his gaze and noticed for the first time that the papers scattered over the floor like fallen snow were slips like the one that had led him here. He tucked his own slip into a pocket and stooped to pick up one of the others. On it someone had written:
The Infinite Book, Abridged Edition
. He let it drop and picked up another:
The New Revised Almanack of True Prophecy
. Both pieces of paper were dry and yellowed, looking as though they had lain here for many years. He tried folding this slip the other way, but nothing happened. He picked up several others and tried them too. In most cases the seeker, like him, seemed to have no particular book in mind.

Will dropped the last of these other slips and looked around. He had no idea which way to turn. Every direction looked the same: uninviting. Suddenly he was angry with the librarian, the slip and himself. By going off on this stupid book hunt he had just landed himself in more trouble than he was in before. It didn’t seem to matter what he did, nothing could make things worse now.

At random he chose one of the aisles and headed down it.

The pavement of ancient books here was uneven and in places heaved up like cracked stone. Will was cheered only by a faint cool draught which gave him hope that he would soon reach a way out. He clung to that hope and kept on, until the light of his lantern had dimmed to a feeble red glow that scarcely lit more than the hand that carried it. The scraps of paper that lay underfoot were yellowed and brittle, crackling under his tread like dry leaves.

He stopped, sensing more than seeing that there was an
edge
before him. Here the floor of books dropped steeply into a truly inky blackness. Will looked up and saw what appeared to be faint twinkling stars. He wondered if he had found the way out, but could it be night already outside? And if he was still in the Library, what had happened to the roof?

He took another step, craning his neck to peer down, and felt the floor sag and shift beneath him. He scrambled backwards but it was too late. The ancient volumes under his feet had begun to collapse and he was pulled helplessly down with them.

Dropping the lantern he clutched the edge of one huge book and hung on as it slid and tumbled in a roaring avalanche of paper and binding, then finally flipped over and sent him flying through the air.

He landed in a mass of books and paper scraps like a huge pile of dead leaves. A cloud of dust settled all around him, and he went into a spasm of coughing. When it had passed, he looked up and saw nothing but darkness everywhere, lit faintly by some dull grey gleam that seemed to come from nowhere. He saw the lantern near by. Somehow it had landed upright and was still lit. As Will reached for it, he heard a loud cough.

He went very still. There was no sound other than the faint whistle of the wind, the scratch and skitter of paper, and his own breathing.

The fear that he had managed to fend off by keeping moving now threatened to become panic.

“Is anyone there?” he shouted.

The echo of his shout faded away, and then a voice that seemed to come from very close by said, “Yes.”

The flesh on Will’s neck rose in goose bumps. He turned wildly, but could see nothing in any direction.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“I am,” the voice said. It was a voice unlike any he had heard before. It was made, he thought, of many sounds: water trickling over stones, leaves stirring in the wind, the rustle of animals through the grass. It was somehow a comforting voice, like all the sounds of the sunlit world beyond this tomb of books.

“Who are you?”

There was a brief silence, and then the voice spoke again, hesitantly this time, as though surprised at its own words. “Who am I…?”

“Where are you?” Will said. “I can’t see you.”

Immediately he wished he had not said this. He stood up with the lantern raised, trying to still the trembling in his hand, and then heard the pad of soft, slow footfalls. He turned to the sound, and out of the shadows, as if taking shape from them, came a large silver-grey wolf.

Will’s first impulse was to run, but before he could move the wolf spoke.

“I was told to wait,” the wolf said, as if to himself. “I was supposed to wait for … someone.”

Will could not move. The creature stopped a few paces from Will and looked at him searchingly with large yellow-gold eyes. He was larger than Will thought wolves were supposed to be. His head reached the height of Will’s chest.

The wolf lifted his snout and sniffed the air.

“I’ll … um … let you wait then,” Will finally gasped, taking a step back. “I’ll just go, and you can wait.”

“Things are not the same,” the wolf said, and growled. He turned in a circle and then looked at Will again, his eyes reflecting the red light of the lantern. “The world was not this way when I went to sleep. I don’t know this place. I don’t know you.”

“I’m not actually, you know, from here,” Will stammered. “I’m … I’m lost.”

“Lost,” the wolf echoed, and its ears perked up.

“I’m sorry I woke you. It was an accident. Really. I didn’t mean to come here.”

“Lost,” the wolf repeated, and it made a huffing sound that might have been a laugh. “I was supposed to wait, and someone would come. Yes. Someone who was lost.”

“It must be someone else,” Will said, still backing away. “If I see anybody on the way out I’ll tell them where to find you.”

The wolf arched his back and shook himself, just like a dog waking from a long, satisfying nap. Then he sniffed the air again, and gazed into the absolute night that surrounded them. Will saw with a shiver that the wolf’s large, gleaming eyes were definitely those of a hunting animal.

“I have waited, and someone has come,” the wolf finally said, and his gaze fell upon Will again and stayed. “Now I must do as I was bidden.”

Rowen was very worried. Will had been gone for hours.

When he first left she had explored the shelves in the catalogue room, and had taken down a few interestinglooking volumes to skim through. She distracted herself for a good while with the misadventures of Sir Peridor the Extremely Unlucky, and with the imagined history of the unreachable city of Arzareth, which no one has ever actually visited, and then she read about the curious architecture of the palace of Bazeen-Barathrum, where the furniture roamed in herds, and if you wanted a bed or a chair you had to hunt for it with a net and rope. Eventually she grew tired of browsing, but Will was still not back. Then there was a long time during which she paced around the circular room, and went some distance into each of the corridors that led from it, hoping to catch sight of Will.

Finally, when there could be little doubt that something had gone wrong, she sat at one of the tables and debated what to do. The right thing was to go and find her grandfather, but she was not looking forward to what he would say.

Twice already Nymm, the assistant librarian, had come nosing into the catalogue room as if for the express purpose of checking up on her. The second time, when he found her still alone, he had nodded his head and grinned, clearly pleased to find that his expectations had been confirmed.

“
Easy
,” he smirked, and strolled away.

Now he came in a third time, and her grandfather was with him. Rowen stifled a cry of relief and stood up to await the stern lecture that was sure to come.

“No sign of the slip, either,” Nymm was saying to the toymaker, as he hurried to keep up with the old man’s long stride. “That is most unusual. I will to have to notify the head librarian. He is not going to be pleased.”

Pendrake came up to Rowen and looked at her without speaking.