Alcatraz versus the Knights of Crystallia (26 page)

"Oh, it's all right," Rikers said, reaching into his pocket.
"They have the sequel here too!"
He pulled out a book and
moved to open the cover.

"Don't you
dare
!" I snapped, grabbing his arm.

“
Oh," he said. "Yeah, probably a bad idea."
He glanced at
my grip on his arm.
"You know, you remind me a lot of my
sister.
I thought you'd be a little less uptight."

"I'm not uptight," I snapped.
"I'm annoyed.
There's a
difference.
Himalaya,
how's the sorting going?"

"
U
h, maybe halfway done," she said.
Indeed, the
mountains of books were quickly becoming large stacks,
like walls.
A much smaller stack was particula
rly inter
esting to me
–
it
contained books in the Forgotten
Language.

There were only four so far, but it was amazing to me
that we'd even managed to find them among all the other
books.
I walked over to the stack, fishing in my jacket pocket
for my pair of Translator's Lenses.

I swapped them for my
O
culator's Lenses.
I almost for
got that I was wearing those.
They were starting to feel
natural to me, I guess.
W
ith the Translator's Lenses on, I
could read the titles of the books.

One appeared to be some kind of philosophical work
on the nature of laws and justice. Interesting, but I couldn't
see it being important enough for my mother to risk so
much in order to get.

The other three books were unimpressive.
A manual on
building chariots, a ledger talking about the number of
chickens a particular merchant traded in Athens, and a
cookbook. (Hey, I guess even ancient, all-powerful lost
societies needed help baking cookies.)

I checked with the soldiers and was relieved to find that
none of them was seriously wounded.
Folsom had knocked
out no fewer than six of them, and some others had broken
several limbs.
The wounded left for the infirmary and the
others returned to helping Himalaya. None of them had
seen Bastille.

I wandered through what was quickly becoming a maze
of enormous book stacks. Ma
yb
e
Bastille was looking for
signs of the diggers breaking into the room.
The scraping
sounds had been coming from the southeast corner, but
when I neared, I couldn't hear them anymore. Had my
mother realized
we were on to her?
With that sound gone, I
could hear something else.

Whispering.

Curious, and a little cre
eped out, I walked in the direc
tion of the sound.
I turned a corner around a wall-like stack
of books, and found a little dead-end hollow in the maze.

Bastille lay there, c
urled up on the cold glass floor whis
pering to herself and shivering.
I cursed, rushing over to
kneel beside her.
"Bastille?"

She curled up a little bit further.
Her Warrior's Lenses
were off, clutched in her hand.
I could see a haunted cast to
her eyes.
A sense of loss
, of sorrow, of having had some
thing deep and tender ripped from her, never to be
returned.

I felt powerless.
Had she been hurt?
She shivered and
moved, then looked up at me, eyes focusing.
She seemed to
realize for the first time that I was there.

She immediately pushed away from me and sat up.
Then she sighed and wrapped her arms around her
knees, bowing her head between them.
"Why is it that you
always see me like this?" she asked quietly.
“
I
’
m strong, I
really am."

"
I
know you are
,”
I said, feeling awkward and
embarrassed.

W
e remained like that for a time, Bastille unresponsive,
me feeling like a com
plete idiot, even though I wasn’
t sure
what I'd done wrong.
(Note to all the young men reading
this: Get used to that.)

"So . . ." I said.
"Er . . . you're still having trouble with
that severing thing?”

S
he looked up, eyes red like they'd been scratched with
sandpaper.
"It's like . . ." she said in a quiet voice.
“
It
’
s like I
used to have memories.
Fond ones, of places I loved, of
people I knew.
O
nly now they're gone.
I can
feel
the
place
where they were, and it's a h
ole, ripped open inside of me.”

"The Mindstone is that important?
”
I asked.
It was a
dumb thing to say, but I felt I shou
l
d say
something
.

"It
connects all of the Knights of
C
rysta
l
lia
,
” she whis
pered.
"It strengthens us, gives us comfort.
By it, we all share
a measure of who we are."

"I should have shattered the swords of those idiots who
did this to you," I growled.

Bastille shivered, holding
her arms close. "I'll get recon
nected eventually, so I should probably tell you not to be so
angry.
They're good people and don't deserve your scorn.
But honestly, I'm having trouble feeling sympathy for them
right now."
She smiled wanly.

I tried to smile back, but it was hard.
"
S
omeone
wanted
this to happen to you, Bastille.
They set you up."

"Maybe," Bastille said, sighing.
It appeared that her epi
sode was over, though it had left her weakened even
further.

"Maybe?" I repeated.

"I don't know, Smedry," she said.
"Maybe nobody set
me up.
M
a
yb
e
I really did just get promoted too quickly,
and really did just fail on my own.
Ma
yb
e
. . . maybe there
is no grand conspiracy against me."

"I guess you could be right," I said.

You, of course, don't believe that.
I mean, when is there
not some grand conspiracy?
This entire series is about a
secret cult
o
f evil Librarians who rule the world
, for
Sands'
sake
.

"Alcatra
z?" a voice called.
Sing wandered around the
corner a moment later.
"Himalaya found another book in
the Forgotten Language.
Figured you would want to
look at it."

I glanced at Bastille; she waved me away.
"What, you
think I need to be babied?" she snapped.
"Go.
I'll be there in
a moment."

I hesitated, but followed S
ing around a few walls of
books to the center of the room. The prince sat, looking
bored, on what appeared to be a throne made of books.
(I'm still not sure who he got to make it for him.)
Folsom
was directing the moving of
stacks; Himalaya was still sort
ing, with no sign of slowing down.

Sing handed me the book.
Like all of the others in the
Forgotten Language, the tex
t on it looked like crazy scrib
bles.
Before he had died, Alcatraz the First
–
my
ultimate
ancestor
–
had
used the T
a
lent to break the language of
his people so that nobody could read it.

Nobody, except for someone with a pair of Translator's
Lenses.
I put mine on and flipped to the first page,
hoping
it wasn't another cookbook.

O
bservations on the Talents of the
S
medry people, the title
page read, and an explanat
ion of what led up to their fate
.
As
written by Fenilious K.
W
andersnag, scribe to His Majesty,
Alcatraz Smedry.

I blinked, then read the words again.

"Guys?" I said, turning.
"Gu
y
s!"

The group of soldiers hesitated, and Himalaya glanced
toward me.
I held the book
up
.

"I think we just found what we've been looking for."

T
hings are about to go very wrong
.

O
h, didn't you know that already?
I should think that it
would be obvious.
W
e're almost to the end of the book, and
we just had a very encouraging victory.
Everything looks
good.
So, of course, it's all going to go wrong.
Y
ou should
pay better attention to plot archetypes.

I'd like to promise you that everything will turn out all
right, but I think there's something you should understand.

This is the middle book of the series.
And, as everyone
knows, the heroes
always
lose in the middle book.
It makes
the series more tense.

S
orry.
But hey, at least my books have awesome endings,
right?

I dismissed the soldiers, ordering them to return to their
posts.
Sing and Folsom joined me, looking at the book,
even though they couldn't read it.
I suspected that my
mother must have an Oculator with her to read the
book
–
to
her alone, the Lenses would be useless.

"You're sure this is what we're afte
r?" Sing asked, turn
ing the book over in his fingers.

"It's a history of the fall of Incarna," I said, "told by
Al
catraz the First's personal scribe."

Sing whistled. "Wow. What are the chances?"

"Pretty good, I'd say," Bastille said, rounding the corner
and joining us.
She still looked quite the worse for wear, but
at least she was standing.
I gave her what I hoped was an
encouraging smile.

"Nice leer," she said to me.
“
Anyway, this is the Royal
Archives
–“

"
No
t
a –
" Folsom began to say.

"
– do
n't interrupt
,”
Bastille snapped.
She appeared to
be in rare form
–
but
then, having a piece of your soul cut
out tends to do that to people.

"This is the Royal Archives
,”
Bastille continued.
“
A lot of
these books have passed down through the royal Nalhallan
line for centuries
–
and
the collection has been added to
by the Smedrys, the Knights of Crystallia, and the other
noble lines who have joined with us."

"Yes indeed," Prince Rikers said, taking the book from
S
ing, looking it over.
"People don't just throw away books
in the Forgotten Language.
A lot of these have been archived
here for years and years.
They're copies of copies."

"You can copy these scribbles?" I asked with surprise.

"S
cribes can be quite meticulous," Sing said.
"They're
almost as bad as Librarians."

"Excuse me?" Himalaya huffed, walking up to us.
S
he'd
finished giving orders to the last couple of soldiers, who
were arranging the books she'd just organized.
The room
looked kind of strange, with
the back half of it still domi
nated by gargantuan piles of books, the front half filled
with neatly organized stacks.

"Oh," Sing said. "
U
m, I didn't mean
y
ou
, Himalaya.
I
meant Librarians who aren't recovering."

"I'm not either," she said, folding her arms, adopting a
very deliberate stance as she stood in her Hushlander skirt
and blouse.
"I meant what I said earlier.
I intend to prove
that you can be a Librarian without being evil.
There
has
to
be a way."

"If you say so . . ." Sing said.

I still kind of agreed with Sing.
Librarians were . . . well,
Librarians.
They'd oppressed me since my childhood.
They
were trying to conquer Mokia.