The Great Library didn’t look like much from outside, especially not compared to the two grander structures flanking it. It was just a simple wooden building, more appropriate for a cobbler’s or a baker’s. Devona’s doubts had nothing to do with the Library’s appearance, though. Everyone in Nekropolis knew what it looked like; no, what she didn’t believe was what I’d just told her.
“You really expect to just walk up to the door,” she said, “knock, and be let into the repository of not just the sum total of Bloodborn history but the accumulated knowledge of the entire Darkfolk?”
“No,” I deadpanned (I’m good at that). “I’ve never had to knock before.”
“Matthew,” she said in the tone of an adult speaking to a mistaken child, “no one just goes into the Great Library whenever he wants. That’s not how it works.”
So it was Matthew now. I wondered when in the last couple hours we’d gotten on a first-name basis.
“Call me Matt. And yes, that’s precisely how it works for me.”
“Waldemar is very selective about who he allows inside the Library and when. And no one knows how he chooses who may enter. I’ve never been inside. Even Lord Galm cannot just drop by whenever he feels…”
She broke off when she saw me reach out and open the door. Her jaw dropped. “That’s…impossible!”
“Are you sure Waldemar’s reputation isn’t just exaggerated? Like I said, the door’s always been open every time I’ve come here.” Even Nekropolis, a place where so many myths and legends are real, still has its share of tall tales.
“I don’t…” Whatever she was going to say, she decided against it and finally just shook her head.
“C’mon, let’s go.” I held the door open for her and gestured for her to enter. She walked past me and stopped on the other side of the threshold and swayed dizzily.
I shut the door quickly and put a hand on her arm to steady her. “I’m sorry, I really should have warned you. The shift in perspective hits you pretty hard the first time.”
We stood inside a vast room, far larger than such a small building as the Library appeared to be from outside could possibly contain. And the room was filled with case after case, shelf upon shelf, of books, papers, parchments, and scrolls. And what the shelves couldn’t hold were stacked on the floor, piled on top of cases, shoved into corners, jam-packed into every nook, cranny, and crevice available.
I didn’t have a sense of smell anymore, but I could imagine the wonderful musty odor of ancient knowledge and thought that permeated the place. Breathing this air would be like breathing Time itself.
“So what do we do?” Devona asked in the hushed, respectful voice people only use in churches and libraries.
“We start wandering around. Eventually Waldemar will show up.”
She looked skeptical, but she didn’t say anything. After all, the front door had opened as I said it would. We started walking.
As big as the Great Library looks when you first enter, you don’t really get a sense of how truly enormous it is until you start exploring. Room after room: some large, high-ceilinged, footsteps echoing against tile floors; some small, cramped, barely bigger than a closet, with hardly enough room to squeeze through the moldering books and papers jammed against the walls. There was no obvious source of light: no torches-naturally enough in a place filled with paper-no electric or fluorescent lights, and no magical equivalents to any of the above. Nevertheless, every corner of the Great Library was clearly illuminated, and we had no trouble making our way.
After a time, Devona asked, “Do you know where we are?”
“Of course,” I answered, even though I had no idea. It didn’t really matter, not here.
I don’t know how long we wended through the maze of books and papers, but eventually we came to a circular room with a high domed ceiling fifty feet about the floor. The walls were lined with bookcases which rose nearly all the way to the ceiling, leaning against them at irregular intervals stood a half dozen long, rick-ety-looking ladders to provide access to the upper reaches of the shelves. In a regular library, the ladders might have had wheels. Here, they had tiny clawed lizard feet. They might have been for purely decorative purposes, but I doubted it.
“We’re wasting time, Matthew,” Devona said, exasperated. “Waldemar obviously doesn’t wish to talk to us. Instead of wandering aimlessly through here, we should be trying to locate Varma.”
“I understand how you feel, but the more we can learn about the Dawnstone, the more-” I broke off, frowning. “Do you hear something?”
Devona’s brow furrowed as she listened. It was faint, but there was a definite skritch-skritch-skritch coming from an overburdened shelf of books against the far wall.
“What is it?” she asked.
Despite the fact that my nervous system was as dead as the rest of me, a chill rippled down the length of my spine. “So you do hear it. Damn! I was hoping it was just my imagination.”
The skritching became louder.
“Matthew, just tell me what the hell it is!”
Before I could answer, the bookshelf exploded, sending fragments of torn paper, parchment, and vellum flying toward us. Devona hissed in pain as the sharp edges of the paper-storm sliced through the flesh on her face and hands. I suffered similar injuries, of course, but I didn’t feel them. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have cared right then. I was too busy watching the thing that was responsible for the explosion step forward from the hole in the wall where the bookshelf had been. A seven foot tall insect with a silvery carapace stood upright on its four rear legs, sheafs of paper clutched in its upper two limbs. Antennae quivering nervously, the giant bug stepped forward into the room, jammed the paper it held into its mouthparts, and chewed noisily.
“Just what I was afraid of,” I said. “It’s a goddamned silverfish.”
Devona goggled at the monstrous insect. “ That’s a silverfish? It should be the size of the end of my little finger, if that!”
I shrugged. “This is the greatest library that’s ever existed, so it only makes sense that it would attract the largest pests in existence.”
The silverfish finished its snack and regarded us dispassionately with cold black eyes. The creature’s antennae continued to quiver, as if drinking in every bit of sensory data it could find, but otherwise, its body remained unnaturally still. But a certain tension radiated from the giant insect nevertheless, as if the thing might dash toward us in an instant if we made the wrong move.
Devona, as if sensing the silverfish’s mood, spoke in a hushed tone. “What does it want?”
“Mostly, just to be left alone to gorge itself on paper,” I said. “It’s trying to decide whether or not we’re a threat to it.”
“You mean it’s afraid we might be the exterminators?” she asked in disbelief.
“Something like that.”
“And if it should decide we mean it harm?”
“While the giant silverfish that dine at the Great Library might prefer a diet of paper products, they’ve been known to eat other things from time to time,” I said. “This is Nekropolis, after all.”
“When you say ‘other things’, I don’t suppose you mean popcorn and potato chips.”
“Afraid not.”
The silverfish shifted its weight from side to side then, as if working up the courage to attack.
“So what do we do?” Devona asked. “Slowly back away, keeping our gazes trained on it the whole time?”
“You’ve watched one too many nature documentaries,” I said. “That’s a sure way to get us both eaten. There’s only one way to deal with a monster silverfish.” I’d known we’d probably end up at the Great Library sooner or later, and so I’d come prepared. Slowly-very, very slowly-I reached into my jacket pocket and removed a small white plastic container.
The silverfish’s entire body began to quiver then. I unscrewed the container’s lid, careful not to make any sudden moves. Devona watched me, a puzzled frown on her face.