Eliza was taunting him, making him feel.
And, even against his will and better judgement, he knew that those feelings were growing stronger.
21: CRAZED
THE GREAT LIBRARY, AMOS
The air was thick and shadowed, soft with age and decay.
In the gloom, Jayr the Infamous shivered uneasily, absently rubbing her scarred arms. Chill breaths of draft exhaled rot and damp stone. Her boots sank in softness, a carpet of age across a broken floor. In places, curious creeper had forced itself through the wall and then died from the lack of light.
At one end of the long hallway, the Great Library had crumbled into collapse and pale sunlight slanted through the dust, touching delicate fingers to the rubble below. She could see the faded corners of books protruding, as if they still sought rescue.
She shuddered.
Over her, rising ringed balconies led up to a once-bright, real-glass dome, now dark with bird droppings and age. One pane was cracked, others missing, and the balcony edges beneath were fallen away with returns of invading weather. Their remnants covered the central mosaic in rubble and fragments of once-carved woodwork.
If she held up her rocklight, she could see only shadows. They hung in the dust between bookshelf and wall, balcony and branch and empty doorway, they lurked as though they were waiting.
Jayr could take a Range Patrol champion to pieces in shorter time than it took to tell it. And this place was giving her the creeps.
Ress sat cross-legged by a small scatter of books. He wore old pince-nez and he squinted at faded scribblings, words and pages that dissolved to nothing at his touch. Occasionally, he reached to scrawl something on a fresh page to his other side. He was frowning intently, rubbing his short beard and blinking in the poor light.
Jayr kicked out a clean place and sat by him, back to the wall, scarred shoulders crawling with tension. She reached to pick up a book – and the thing fell through her hands like sand.
Suppressing another shudder, she rubbed her palms on her breeches and picked up the next one.
“Careful.” Ress’s whisper was instinctive, the gloom swallowed it whole.
“Like one more dead thing’s going to matter.” Her callused fingers were covered in old webs, her lap was full of dust. She, too, was voice lowered, almost fearing what she’d disturb in this forgotten place. “This is loco. Five days on a downriver barge – why did I have to come? You know I should’ve –”
“Jayr.” The apothecary grinned briefly. “Change of focus won’t kill you.”
“What’re you even looking for?”
“Alchemy,” Ress told her. “Half man, half horse. Monsters. Where they came from, who made them. Why.” He crooked an eyebrow. “Seems the Bard isn’t so crazed after all.”
“We’re the crazed ones.” She was young, still prone to sulking. “Still don’t know why you need me.”
He chuckled, the sound oddly subdued.
“Your horse has got to heal. And you can read... feel... basic Kartian, which I can’t. I need your strength.” He glanced at her over the tops of the pince-nez. “This is Amos, and I could do worse for a bodyguard.”
“Against what?” She eyed the shadows. “Is there something else in – ?”
“Not in here, Jayr, out there.” He chuckled. “Any monsters in here are only in the books. Now, make yourself useful. Stuff on ancient, Tusienic discoveries – how they made bretir, and chearl. Whatever those things were, they came from the same –”
“They were no match for us, I’ll tell you that.” The memory of the fight made her grin, brief and tight. “I hope Triq’s okay.”
“You’re both infamous, Infamous.” He shoved his glasses higher up his nose. “Now work!”
Jayr grumbled, “Why’d you teach me to read Grasslander anyway – too many letters.” After a final, uneasy survey of the dimness and the filth, though, she looked at the book in her hands. It was called Reasonless Phemonenæ, the words embossed into a battered leather cover. Something long dead had nibbled the corners. Glancing at Ress, she was tempted to put it back.
Then a word caught her eye.
Listed as part of the contents was “Memory”.
On an obscure impulse, she let the pages fall open, and blew gently at an eternity of insect husk.
The writing had faded to deep blue, ink bled out into the page. She brought the rocklight close and began to read:
Thus it appeared to my eyes upon landing that the Strait has fooled us, and we had failed to disembark upon the much-beloved Substance of the Gods, yet had instead landed upon the cruel shores of a hostile world. The fabled and beauteous inhabitants of the
Ilfead-Syr
were illustrated in old murals taller yet than a man, and more graceful than the most elegant of women, powerful of mind and body and voice. They bore skin between their fingers and between
their toes, and they were able to see in the turbulent waters that surround the island.
We carried gifts to them – the strength of muara, the power of cauxe, the beauty of ghyz, and we carried the greetings of the mainland, not heard in a thousand returns of the spring.
How could we have believed that the Substance of the Gods, the
Ilfead-Syr,
the home of the Well of the World’s Memory, could be so utterly chilling to the souls of such as we?
The chill could be heard in the silence, felt in the air, it leeched the warmth from our very feet. The weakest of the crew broke and ran for the water to lose the sense of nothingness in the turbulence of the waves.
How long we walked with the chill sinking into our bones, I do not now remember, but we found at last the island’s inhabitants, their beauty no fable and seen even in their deaths. Yet their faces were empty – their eyes held nothing but nothing, telling us that nothing had been their deaths.
Jayr paused and read that bit again. It didn’t make any more sense the second time.
How better can my poor language explain what we have seen? How long they have been dead I do not know, but even now, they are still whole, as if only asleep, and there are thousands of them here.
Aleché, God of Inspiration, grant me only that I may portray the depth of horror witnessed by our eyes. The farther we searched, the more dead we found, slumped in their homes, or curled against walls where they had simply fallen. All were made more terrible by their faces, faces that held, not despair, and yet not relief or release, and yet not even a sense of duty, guilt or fear. Their eyes reflected nothing, they held emptiness, lethargy, apathy, as though a
thriving and joyous population, the Guardians of the Ilfe, the Well of Memory, an entire race and culture, had died of simply giving up.
Jayr shivered and rubbed at the back of her neck where her hair was tickling. It was getting colder in here.
And the
Ilfe
was gone! Gone as if it had never been! How is the World to live without her memory? My horror complete, I turned to my crew, seeking their support and friendship, only to find myself alone in the glade of the Well. Alone on this island of the dead, on an island where this empty death would still be stalking.