Page 23 of The Book That Held Her Heart

Evar looked at the ring in his palm. “I think you’ve spent too muchtime listening to what Mayland tells you.” Even so, the whisper that ran around the back of his head, just beyond hearing, felt as if it came from the object in his hand, and Evar did wonder whether in this case Mayland’s advice might be worth heeding.

Evar was about to drop the ring when Clovis spun around and, following her line of sight, he made out an approaching figure.

“Escape…” Evar’s first thought left his unguarded mouth. He was both right and wrong. The thing was made of the library’s blood. Coming out of the darkness its blackness had hidden it until it was almost upon them. But it was in the shape of a person, not some ravening monster.

“You found the ring!” The voice emanating from a face too black for features was deep and grave with undercurrents of wonder, perhaps even awe, and a suppressed excitement. “You touched it and yet you are not consumed.”

Evar closed his hand around the ring, even though his first instinct was to drop it. “Who are you?”

As he spoke, the figure paled from midnight to evening, with hints of a face emerging, hints of a cloak, a broad-brimmed hat. A tall canith, though bent with age, eyes like the last stars in a predawn sky.

“The ring has chosen you, my son. You, of all your generation.” The visitor touched his hat. “And I am Gamdot, come to guide you.”

Shades slowly began to appear across the man, like plumes of coloured oil rising from the deep to spread across the surface. His cloak took on a brownish hue, the weave of the cloth visible, his mane a majestic grey beneath the indeterminate weather-beaten green of his shapeless hat. The eyes that had been stars became piercing blue, nested in the wrinkles of advancing age.

“Why me? Why has it chosen me?” Evar had many other questions and concerns, but destiny’s hand pressed upon his shoulder. He had been called to greatness. A purpose awaited.

“Why indeed?” The old man came closer, leaning on his staff to study Evar. A mage perhaps. It seemed impossible that just moments before he’d lacked detail or colour. Compared to Clovis or…the other one…he seemed sunlit where they walked in shadow.

“I wish it had not come to me…” Evar felt the ring’s weight on his heart rather than in his hand. It held a tangible power, at once both fierce and frightening.

“So do all who live in such times, but that—”

The point of a sword jutted bloodily from Gamdot’s forehead. It withdrew with the same sudden violence with which it had appeared, and the mage fell gracelessly, spattering blood across the pages beneath him.

Gamdot’s fall revealed Mayland, shaking the gore from a short sword.

“What? What in all the hells—”

“The Chosen One trope.” Mayland snatched up some loose pages and used them to clean his blade. “Easy to get caught up in. You need to be careful down here. There’s a lot of dead fiction and it’s still looking for an audience. If you’re not paying attention, it’ll suck you down faster than quicksand.”

Already Gamdot’s body was leaking a tar-like substance that on contact with the pages beneath him ate its way through, sinking deeper.

“That particular variant was new and easily dealt with.” Mayland nodded to the dissolving corpse. “Others are well established and very old. Those can be a problem, or a solution if you handle the situation well. But the main danger down here, the reason we can’t stay very long, is—”

“You stopped Livira following me!” Evar advanced on his brother, ignoring the still-drawn blade. Mayland wasn’t going to run him through. And even if he was, Clovis and Starval would never let it happen.

Mayland’s glance took Evar in from head to toe. He didn’t try to lie. “She would have got in my way. Better to leave her to take another path than bring her here and have to kill her. I didn’t think you’d like that.”

“Butyoudon’t mind?” Evar accused. “You murdered one librarian. You’d happily break another one’s neck?”

“Look, we have to get on. This is the best place to find what we need but we don’t have long.” He glanced over his shoulder as if something might have followed him out of the distant dreamscape.

“I’m not going anywhere with a murderer!” Evar started to cross his arms over his chest, felt ridiculous, and let them fall. “I watched you kill that woman…”

“They’re sabbers, Evar. They killed our people.” Mayland looked to Clovis for support. Clovis frowned and studied her feet, the nails of her left hand digging into her right arm.

“And who says I’m not going to get in your way?” Evar’s growing anger coloured his voice. “I don’t want to take your path. Kerrol didn’t either, or he’d be here too. And what about you, Clovis? You want to collapse the library that Arpix has worked in since he was a child? Bringing books to people who wanted them,neededthem? You let one experience make you think the only good human was a dead one. Are you going to let another convince you that the whole library needs destroying? Yes, we were trapped in it—”

“It was our whole lives, Evar. And generations before us!”

“But it was still an accident. Not something the library did to us. Call it Livira’s fault. If the Assistant hadn’t cared—if she hadn’t had Livira’s humanity in her—she would have left our ancestors to burn and none of us would have ever existed, much less been trapped. It was bad, yes! But we have to stop looking for somewhere to put the blame. It’s like hating the rock you stubbed your toe on.”

Mayland stepped between Evar and Clovis. All around them the drifting pages rustled in an invisible wind. “Words are fine things, and pretty arguments can be made from them, but one thing I’ve learned in my travels is that they almost never change anyone’s mind, certainly not in the time they take to speak, or even in a day. Sometimes, over years, they might change a person’s course…” The sporadic fall of loose pages from the black vault overhead seemed to be freshening into a steady drizzle. A low and distant rumble shuddered through the darkening half-light. Evar had never heard thunder before but felt that perhaps this might be it.

“So, the historian advocates what when it comes to changing minds?” Evar demanded. “A punch to the face? Internecine war?”

“Time generally does the trick. It does heal all wounds, after all. I will acknowledge that words work better in the business of changing minds when they’re on the page of a book rather than on the tongue of someone with a contrary opinion. They need to be consumed in private and in the reader’s own time. But face to face? In the moment? No. Changing your mind feels like being defeated. It wounds the ego. And our opinions werenever founded on words—they’re just the garnish added on for show. A display of plumage to attract those of a similar mind.”

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