Page 106 of The Book That Held Her Heart

The stone hail had partially re-established itself as they approached the walls, the raven unable to maintain his position and having to circle over them periodically. As much as having her head crushed by a small piece of the ceiling worried Livira, she also knew that the total collapse that would bring everything down in an unstoppable rush couldn’t be far away.

The metal man stood sentinel at the entrance as he always had, the spars of his ruined wings arching above his head. Now however, the strange light that lit when Volente had woken him with a howl was back without the hound’s intervention. As the group came forward, the man turned towards them, his whole body moving.

“Livira. Arpix. It is good to see you.” He addressed them in deep-voiced sabbertine, the only one of his multitude of languages they shared. “My name, by the way, is Dalion. It has been an honour to share the library with you.”

“Hello, Dalion.” Livira found no comfort in the metal man’s disturbingly final phraseology. Moreover, she wasn’t sure how to greet him. He had stood there for a hundred generations and more. He deserved more respect. A thunderous boom close at hand and the encroaching dust billow of the impact overrode her social misgivings and delivered her directly to her point. “We need to find the centre.”

The others gathered around, Kerrol and Mayland almost as tall as the metal man.

“That’s rather like being impatient to find patience,” Dalion replied after a long pause in which more pieces crashed down close by. Wentworth continued to circle, occasionally weaving through the forest of legs to nip at the brownish-gold ankles of the former statue.

“You’re not going to give us some mystic mumbo jumbo about the centre being inside us all along, are you?” Carlotte strode up to the avatar with a quick glance at the ceiling. “Because we really don’t have time for that sort of—”

“I think whatQueenCarlotte means”—Livira elbowed her friend aside—“is that unless we get there quickly, we won’t be getting there at all.”

The avatar rumbled in his chest. “It is a time when many things will end. Me, the bird”—the light in his eyes flickered—“maybe even the oldone.” He stroked Wentworth’s head as the cat grew large and pressed it into his metal hand. “Your lives are not in my gift. I would save you if I were able. But the sacrifice is not mine to make.”

“Sacrifice?” Clovis asked.

Livira glanced around, uneasy with such talk. She wasn’t sure what else she had to surrender, or how it might help. “Do we have to give something up? To reach the centre? It’s a state of mind? Only people who don’t want to reach it can get there? What?”

Dalion met her eyes, the glow in his dazzling her. “The world is seldom kind, Livira.”

“I’m not…” Panic seized her. “I can’t give Evar up again. That can’t be what you mean!”

“There has to be a sacrifice,” the avatar repeated.

Behind Livira Yute exhaled a long, soft sigh.

“I don’t understand…” Livira looked from Kerrol to Arpix in confusion.

Wentworth suddenly looked up at Dalion, a fresh wildness in his eyes. He surged upwards, growing all the time, lunging at the metal man.

Dalion threw his arms around the cat’s neck, grappling with him. “Hurry!” he shouted above Wentworth’s yowl. “I can’t hold him for long.”

“I don’t…” Livira backed away from the squalling bundle of fury that had been Wentworth, fur flying, scythe-like claws raking across Dalion’s metal limbs and torso. “I don’t understand!”

As Dalion wrestled with the cat, whose claws were now scoring bright furrows through his bronze-gold flesh, a high-pitched scream dragged Livira’s attention from the contest. Starval had hold of Yolanda and was securing her with both arms straining as she started to exhibit a struggle every bit as furious and desperate as Wentworth’s.

Livira only caught a glimpse of him. White hair, a dark grey robe. Then he was gone from sight. “Yute!” His name broke from her in a scream and without fully understanding why, she began to sprint after him.

Kerrol caught her and refused to let go. As she beat her fists against him, he howled, not in anger, nor because her blows were hurting him, but in anguish. The same howls that Evar had made long ago over the broken remains of the Assistant.

A swooping darkness descended upon them, and the raven’s great talons hit the ground, each toe longer than a full-grown canith, his wings folding about them in a protective shield, his head bowed in so that the point of his vast beak touched the ground close to Dalion, and a single black, unreadable eye watched them all.

A rolling thunder eclipsed all protests or demands. Rock hit rock, the floor trembled and shook beneath their feet. Edgarallen shuddered beneath impact after impact but refused to reduce himself into a smaller target.

Livira kept throwing her strength against the canith’s, but it was only when Wentworth tore past them that Edgarallen raised his wing and Kerrol released her.

Dalion lay in scattered pieces, ripped apart by Wentworth’s fury. The shelves ahead of them were in ruin, smashed timber, broken books, and shattered stone everywhere. The ceiling continued its collapse, but the hail of pieces had slowed, perhaps as a rainstorm will come in waves, or perhaps the momentary calm before a devastating general collapse.

Wentworth sprang over the first obstacles and charged on.

“We need to follow,” Arpix said in a broken voice.

Livira looked back again at Dalion’s remains. Edgarallen lay among them, unmoving, back to the size of a normal raven, and more battered than when she had seen him at his worst, his left wing broken, black blood leaking through the sparsity of his feathers. She twisted away from Kerrol, passed an uncomprehending Carlotte, and scooped the bird into her arms. “You don’t get to leave.”

Yolanda ran on ahead, tearing her tunic on splintered spars, labouring up slopes of books. Starval kept pace, though the main threat came from above and he could do little to protect her from it.

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