Page 165 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Evar

Evar shot from the pool, an arrow loosed from a bow. He was home. No longer a ghost, the laws of the world snared him in a web of limits bound in such things as traction and acceleration, but he pushed against them until they tore, or he did. He carved a straight path through the crop, leaving greenery twisting in the air behind him. He leapt the boundary wall as if it weren’t there.

It won’t be too late.

Livira had been trapped within the Assistant for his whole life and many lives before. She’d been watching him from the other side of time, powerless to reach him, faint echoes of her love lapping against his shore, realised as the efficient care of a tireless guardian.

I can make it.

Evar ran as he had run in this place many times before, when what was inside him felt impossible to contain. He had sprinted through this ancient prison a thousand times, pursued not by Escapes but by his own demons, finding release in the sudden, extravagant expenditure of energy. He had run always knowing what he would find—another wall.

Now he ran with hope and horror pounding through his veins in equal measure.

Away to his right book towers were tumbling. Through the forest of remaining stacks Evar glimpsed skeer, a trio of them, moving through the chamber. They turned his way, the black globes of their eyes tracking his progress.

“Livira!” Evar shouted her name as he skidded around the corner, into the mouth of the corridor.

The door remained open. The hundred yards of corridor lay scattered with skeer dead, dozens of them. It didn’t seem possible that so many had been close enough to be summoned by the cries of the trio waiting in some kind of stasis at the door.

“LIVIRA!” Evar leapt three corpses, piled almost taller than he was. He swerved around the Soldier’s body, the top half at least, the lower portion gone. He’d died with his fingers in a skeer’s eye sockets and his arm down its throat.

“Livira...” Her name fell from his mouth as broken as she was. Her white body lay shattered as if she had fallen from the tower in her story. Dead skeer were heaped around her, though whether slain by her own hands, or in the Soldier’s last extravagant defence of her, Evar couldn’t say.

“Livira.” Evar fell to his knees beside her. He reached for her, but the courage left him and his arms dropped to his sides. Touching her would make it true.

Her face lay turned to one side, lips parted as if in some final word, her eyes blank and white. He could see her there, somehow; beneath the Assistant’s smooth, detail-free features he could see the lines of Livira’s face.

“Oh...” A sob broke from him. He was too lost for anger. “...my sweet girl.”

And at last, his fingers found the curve of her cheek and tears began to fall. And in the nature of his kind, he raised his head to howl his sorrow to the unseen moons.

—

“What’s he doing?” Malar asked.

“Grieving.”

“It’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

“He loves me, you idiot.” Livira wiped her eyes.

“I love you too, but you wouldn’t catch me howling like a... like that. I’d be sorting out that fucker holding the door. Or better still, getting ready for those three coming up behind.” Malar shook his head. “Damn... didn’t think I’d left so many standing.” He drew his sword. “And why the fuck are we still ghosts?”

“I don’t know.” Livira knelt beside Evar, next to the ruins of her old prison. The tower she’d locked herself into so long ago, although it only seemed like yesterday. She guessed that in the tale she was both the witch and the princess.

She steeled herself, focused her thoughts, and reached out to touch Evar lightly on the shoulder. “Get up, you. I still need saving.”

—

Something deeper than the self-preservation that his grief had swept away forced Evar to his feet and turned him to face the trio of skeer that had appeared at the far end of the corridor. Whatever it had been, the sudden impulse saved him. He might not be able to fight these monsters, but he could certainly run from them.

“What’s he doing?”

Evar reached for his knife. He’d seen three of these creatures land blows on the Soldier that would have destroyed any canith. The Soldier wasn’t just tougher than a suit of armour, he was swift as well, and far more skilled at reading a fight than Evar was. He’d had a sword too. Evar wondered if he had time to grab the blade.

“Why isn’t he running?”

Evar bared his teeth and held his ground. He didn’t know where the sword had ended up and he’d trained far more with his knife—his knife would do. He raised a hand, growled deep in his throat, and beckoned them on. He had no illusions about his chance of survival but dying in the defence of Livira’s last remains felt right.

---