Alcatraz versus the Scrivener's Bones (9 page)

I was too late to stop your father from going down into the Library. I fear for the worst! He’s always been the curious type and might be foolish enough to exchange his soul for information. I’m only a few days behind him, but the Library of Alexandria is a terrible maze of passages and corridors. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find him and stop him before he does anything foolish.

I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you in the airport. This seemed more important. Besides, I have the feeling you can handle things on your own.

If you’re reading this, then you didn’t go to Nalhalla like you should have. Ha! I knew you wouldn’t.
You’re a Smedry! I’ve left you a pair of Discerner’s Lenses, which should be of use to you. They’ll let you tell how old something is, just by looking at it.

Try not to break anything too valuable if you come down below. The Curators can be a rather unpleasant bunch. Comes from being dead, I suppose. Don’t let them trick you into taking one of their books.

Love,

Grandpa Smedry

P.S. If that crazy son of mine Kazan is there, smack him on the head for me.

I lowered the note, then pulled out the Lenses. I quickly swapped them on, then glanced about the hut.
They put a glow about anything I focused on – a kind of whitish shine, like you might get from sunlight reflecting off of something very pale. Except the shine was different for different objects. Most of the boards in the hut were actually downright dull, while the velvet pouch in my hand was rather bright.

Age
, I thought.
They tell me how old something is – the boards were created and put there long ago. The pouch was made recently.

I frowned myself. Why couldn’t he have left to me another pair of Firebringer’s Lenses? True, I’d broken the first pair – but that sort of thing tended to happen a lot around me.

The thing is, Grandpa Smedry tended to place little value on offensive Lenses. He thought information was a far better weapon.

Personally, I felt that being able to shoot superheated beams of light from your eyes was far more useful than being able to tell how old something was. But, I figured I would take what I was given.

I left the hut, walking over to the others, who were talking about Australia’s discovery.
They looked up as I approached, waiting for me again, like they had before.

Waiting for leadership.

Why look to me
? I thought with annoyance.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’
t even want to be in charge.

“Lord Smedry,” Draulin said, “Should we wait for your grandfather, or should we go in after him?”

I glanced down at the pouch and was annoyed to find that the strings had unraveled as I was walking. My Talent, acting up again. “I don’t know,” I said.

The others looked at one another. That hadn’t been the response they’d been expecting.

Grandpa Smedry obviously wanted me to lead the group into the Library. But what if I gave the order to go down below, and something went wrong? What if someone got hurt or got captured? Wouldn’t that be my fault?

But, what if my father and Grandpa Smedry really needed help?

That’s the problem with being a leader. It’s all about choices – and choices are
never
very much fun. If someone gives you a candy bar, you’re excited. But, if someone offers you two
different
candy bars and tells you that you can have only one, what then? Whichever one you take, you’ll feel that you missed out on the other one.

And I
like
candy bars.
What about when you have to choose between two terrible things? Did I wait, or lead my group down into danger? That was like having to choose to either eat a tarantula or a bunch of tacks. Neither option is very appealing – both make you sick to your stomach, and both are tough to choke down without catsup.

Personally, I like it much better when someone else does the decision making. That way you have legitimate grounds to whine and complain. I tend to find both whining and complaining quite interesting and amusing, though sometimes – unfortunately – it’s hard to choose which one of the two I want to do.

Sigh. Life can be so tough sometimes.

“I don’t want to make that decision,” I complained. “Why are you all looking at me?”

“You’re the lead Oculator, Lord Smedry,” Draulin said.

“Yeah, but I’ve only known about Oculators for three months!”

“Ah, but you’re a Smedry,” Kaz said.

“Yes, but…” I trailed off. Something was wrong. The others looked at me, but I ignored them, focusing on what I was feeling.

“What’s he doing?” Australia whispered. By now, she’d gone back to looking just like her old self, though her hair was a bit messy from sleep.

“I don’t know,” Kaz whispered back.

“Do you think that last comment was him swearing, do you?” She whispered “Hushlanders like to talk about our posteriors…”

He
was coming.

I could feel it. Oculators can sense when other Oculators are using Lenses nearby. It
’s
something built in to us, just like our ability to activate Lenses.

The sense of wrongness I felt, it was like that of someone activating a Lens. But, it was twisted and dark. Frightening.

It meant someone was activating a Lens nearby that had been created in a terrible way. The hunter had found us. I spun, searching out the source of the feeling, causing the others to jump.

There he was. Standing atop a hill a short distance away, one arm too long for his body, staring down at us with his twisted face. All was silent for a moment.

Then he began to run.

Draulin cursed, whipping out her sword.

“No!” I said, running toward the hut. “We’re going in!”

Draulin didn’t question. She’d just nodded, waiting for the others to go first. We dashed across the ground, Kaz pulling out a pair of Warrior’s Lenses and slipping them on. His speed immediately increased, and he was able to keep up with us despite his short legs.

I reached the hut, waving Kaz and Australia inside. Bastille had taken a detour and was in the process of grabbing one of the packs.

“Bastille!” I yelled. “There isn’t time!”

Draulin was backing toward us; she glanced at Bastille, then at the Scrivener’s Bone. He had crossed half the distance to us, and I saw something flash in his hand. A line of whitish blue frost shot from it toward me.

I yelped, ducking into the hut. The structure shook as the burst of cold hit it, and one wall started to freeze.

Bastille skidded in a second later. “Alcatraz,” she said, puffing. “I don’t like this.”

“What?” I asked. “Leaving your mom out there?”

“No, she can care for herself. I mean going down into the Library in a rush, without planning.”

Something hit the frozen wall, and it shattered. Bastille cursed and I cried out, falling backward.

Through the opening I could see the hunter dashing toward me. After freezing the wall, He’d thrown a rock to break it.

Draulin burst in through the half-broken door. “Down!” she said, waving her sword toward the stairs, then bringing it back up to block a ray from the Frostbringer’s Lens.

I glanced at Bastille.

“I’ve heard terrible things about this place, Alcatraz,” she said.

“No time for that now,” I decided, scrambling to my feet, heart thumping. I gritted my teeth, then charged down the steps toward the darkness, Bastille and Draulin following close behind.

All went black. It was like I had passed through a gateway beyond which light could not penetrate. I felt a sudden dizziness, and I fell to my knees.

“
Bastille?” I called into the darkness.

No response.

“Kaz! Australia! Draulin!”

My voice didn’t even echo back to me.

I’ll take one chocolate bar and a handful of tacks, please. Anyone got any catsup?

I would like to try an experiment. Get out some paper and write a 0 on it. Then I want you to go down a line and put a 0 there. You see, the 0 is a magic number, as it – well – 0. You can’t get better than that! Now, on the next one, 0 isn’t enough. 7 is the number to put here. Why isn’t the 0 good enough here? 0 is not magical now. Once great, the 0 had been reduced to being nonsense. Now, take your paper and throw it away, then turn this book sideways.

Look closely at the paragraph above this one. (Or, uh, I guess since you turned the book sideways it’s the paragraph
beside
this one
.) Regardless, you might be able to see a face in the numbers in the paragraph – 0s form the eyes, the 7 is a nose, and a line of 0s form the mouth. It’s smiling at you because you’re holding your book sideways, and – as everyone knows – that’s not the way to read books. In fact, how are you reading this paragraph, anyway? Turn the book around. You look silly.

There. That's better. Anyway, I believe I talked in my
last book about how first impressions are often wrong.
You may have had the impression that I was done talking
about first impressions.
You were wrong. Imagine that.

There's so much more to be learned here. It's not just
people's
first
impressions that are often wrong. Many of
the ideas we have thought and believed for a long time are,
in fact, dead wrong. For instance, I believed for years that
Librarians were my friends. Some people believe that
asparagus tastes good. Others don't b
u
y this book because
they think it won't be
i
nteresting.

Wrong, wrong, and so wrong. In my experience, I've
found it best not to judge what I
think
I'm seeing until
I've had enough time to study and learn. Something that
appears to make no sense may, actually, be brilliant. (Like
my art in paragraph one.)

Remember that. It m
ight be important somewhere else
in this book.

I forced myself to my feet in the complete darkness. I
looked about, but of course that did no good. I called out
again. No response.

I shivered in the darkness. Now, it wasn't just dark down
there. It was
dark
. Dark like I'd been swallowed by a whale,
then that whale had been eaten by
a
bigger whale, then that

bigger whale had gotten lost in a deep cave, which had then
been thrown into a black hole.

It was so dark I began to fear that I'd been struck blind.
I was therefore overjoyed when I caught a glimmer of
light. I turned toward it, relieved.

"Th
ank the first sands," I exclaimed. “It’s – “

I choked off. The light was coming from the flames
burning in the sockets of a
bloodred skull.

I cried out, stumbling away, and my back hit a rough,
dusty wall. I moved along it, scrambling in the darkness,
but ran forehead first into another wall at the corner.
Trapped, I spun around, watching the skull grow closer.
The fires in its eyes soon illuminated the creature's robe-like cloak and thin skeleton arms. The whole body
– skull,
cloak, even the flames
–
seemed
faintly translucent.

I had met my first
C
urator of Alexandria. I fumbled,
reaching into my jacket, remembering for the first time
that I was carrying Lenses. Unfortunately, in the darkness,

I couldn't tell which pock
et was which, and I was too ner
vous to count properly.

I pulled out a random pair of spectacles, hoping I'd
grabbed the Windstormer's Lenses. I shoved them on.

The Curator glowed with a whitish light.
Great
,
I thought.
I know how old it is. Maybe I can bake it a birthd
ay
cake.

The Curator said something to me, but it was in a
strange, raspy language that I didn't understand.

"
U
h
. . . I missed that . . .,
" I said, fumbling for a differ
ent pair of Lenses. "Could you repeat yourself . . . ?"

It spoke again, getting closer. I whipped out another
pair of Lenses and put them on, focusing on the creature
and hoping to blow it backward with a gust of wind. I was
pretty sure I'd gotten the right pocket this time.

I was wrong, of course.

". . . visitor to the great Library of Alexandria," the thing
hissed, "yo
u
must pay the price of entry."