Page 77 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Years between them?” Evar rubbed at his chin. “But it aimed me at the right day.”

“So maybe the fine adjustments are up to you. Maybe you aimed yourself—or could have. We could go and see you as a little boy.” Livira grinned. “I’d like to be bigger than you. Stop having to crane my neck for once.” She walked slowly to the next portal. If she was correct then it lay in her future, a few decades at most if what Evar said about Clovis was right. “I’d suggest trying to find the woman you’re searching for, but you don’t have a when or a where. Which leaves the field pretty open!”

“Mayland!” Evar looked up sharply. “I want to see what happened to him. It was only a year ago, so—”

Somewhere, not close by, an inconceivable weight struck the ground. The light in every portal shuddered, ripples moving from the outer edge towards the centre. The trees shook. From high above their heads knife-shaped leaves began to tumble through the air. The light itself flickered.

“What was that?” A stupid question but one that Livira was too shocked to keep from spilling out.

“I don’t know.” Evar raised his arms as if he might be attacked at any moment and turned slowly, checking all directions. “It reminds me—” The thump came again, setting the light dancing. “Our Mechanism is breaking. Mayland used to say that things didn’t wear out in the library, not things that were part of it. He said the library was being attacked. This feels a bit like that.”

“Look!” Livira pointed behind him. A black smoke or mist was rising from a distant pool.

“You still have that claw?” Evar asked.

“I do,” said Livira, surprised. She always kept the brass claw on her, a memento of her first expedition within the library. She held it out to him. “What are you going to do?”

Shadows or smoke were rising above another two pools closer at hand.

“Use a little knowledge.” Evar reached up with both hands, the claw in one of them.

Livira’s vision shook and blurred and suddenly the trees were far shorter, their branches reaching out to interlace above her head, dividing the blueness of the sky into innumerable polygons. Evar had cut or torn free a branch that looked too thick to have come free so easily. She would have remarked on his strength but something as black as the Raven had pulled itself from the more distant of the three corrupted pools.

“Pools! I’m seeing pools too!” Somehow the thought seemed more important than the horror drawing itself up to its full height off among the trees. As if changing the course of the conversation might somehow banish the creature to the sidelines.

In two quick motions Evar stripped the branch of the smaller branches it had come with. “Stay behind me.”

“What? I can fight too!” She looked for a branch of her own, but they were all out of reach.

“Watch my back. Tell me where the nearest ones are coming from.” Evar made four slashes at the end of the branch and suddenly it had a point.

The jet-black creature began to charge, trailing darkness in its wake. It seemed humanoid, with shades of a cratalac in the gangly length of its limbs and the worrying speed of its attack. It was so black that all she really saw was an ever-changing silhouette, though she caught an impression of oversized tusks jutting from a roaring mouth. A roaring mouth that made no sound and felt all the more terrifying for the lack.

The thing was on them before she knew it.

Evar moved faster than thought. He was in the monster’s path and then suddenly not. Somehow, he delivered a kick that deflected it headfirst into a tree. The whole thing shuddered, and more leaves started to fall. Before they’d made it even a fraction of the way to the ground Evar had driven his near spear through the creature’s back. He wrenched it free as Livira spotted a second attacker closing at speed—this one like a serpent as thick as a man and borne on many thrashing legs. “Evar! Behind you!”

Instead of running, as common sense dictated, Evar threw himself towards the beast. At the last instant he launched himself feet forwards across the intervening ground and contrived to slide beneath his enemy. Livira saw a flash of the claw as Evar dragged it the length of the serpentine body.

Even as its insides fell out in a flood of darkness the beast turned to lunge for Evar with a mouth full of needled teeth. Evar let it impale itself on his spear. He yanked it free, the point blunt and splintered now, and hurried to her side.

“How can you fight like that?” Livira gasped.

“Clovis taught me.” Evar grinned and there was more wolf in his grin than Livira had expected. His eyes weren’t on her but scanning among the trees instead. “You should see her. She could take ten of me on at once.” The grin faded. There were at least half a dozen more monsters closing on them.

“We need to go. There’s too many Escapes. You need to go. Back where it’s safe.” He jerked his head towards her pool, which lay just a yard behind her.

“I want to go with you and find Mayland!”

Something dark and unexpected launched itself from the tree to her left. Evar spun, swinging his spear like a club and the impact of his blow shattered the weapon. The Escape’s momentum carried it through into a jolting collision that took Livira down. Despite the surprise she braced instinctively, anticipating the ground. Instead, they kept on falling and after an interval that seemed both a heartbeat and an age, they spilled out between two towering sets of book-lined shelves.

... on the third day of the seventh month, Ella reported spotting three ghosts standing at the riverside in full daylight, watching the fishermen land their catch. The astonishment with which the phantoms observed the process matched her own in finding that she alone could see them.

Ghost in the Machine, by James Watt

CHAPTER 35

Evar

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