Page 11 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Clovis’s final day had been written too deeply to be erased. The slaughter that she’d run from was the anvil on which she had been formed and she carried the weight of it about her neck everywhere she went. It would never bow her—not Clovis—but it left her too hard for kinship, unable to bend in the ways that mattered when living among others.

—

Evar walked on, trying to stay focused on Clovis’s trail and on the danger posed by the Escape that could be lurking behind any of the thousands of book stacks. Despite his efforts, his thoughts kept straying to his unfinished ramp, his probably doomed attempt to reach the distant ceiling. Of late, his struggles to find a way out of the chamber had grown steadily more intense. The Escape, clothed in whatever nightmare form it could find to steal, would be scary enough, but what Evar truly feared was that he would die here in this chamber, not beneath the talons of a monster but of old age. That he would wither and die within a stone’s throw of the place he had been born, and in the company of the same three faces he saw every day. That he would see nothing, do nothing, spend his days in the same cage, and even his remains would wait out eternity in the same chamber. Lately though, something had changed, something ineffable, a wind that moved not even the smallest mote of dust had blown through the room, and Evar knew it was time to go. If not now, then never.

As a child, Evar had found a book that claimed a circle of blood could open a door. He had nearly bled himself dry drawing crimson loops on the white expanse of each of the doors that held them in. But what ran in his veins proved unequal to the task. Undaunted, he continued to hunt the walls and floor in search of secret exits. It stood to reason that amid the thousands of acres, almost all of it covered with books in columns and towers stacked to precarious heights, there might be a dozen hidden ways that had not only eluded his small family, but the many generations that had dwelt in the same prison before them.

Since Mayland’s death, Evar’s efforts had taken on a new tone that even he acknowledged carried a note of desperation. All of them believed that Mayland was dead, though his body still lay hidden out among the stacks. Kerrol and Clovis seemed to think that Starval had murdered him. Starval thought there was a good chance that Clovis had cut Mayland down in one of her black moods. Evar felt it more likely that an Escape had killed Mayland, or perhaps he had simply been the unfortunate victim of a tower collapse and they would one day find his bones beneath a drift of books.

Evar had been on Clovis’s trail for an hour or so, winding back and forth through the stacks, before he realised he was being stalked. Book towers rose around him on all sides. The stacks extended from wall to distant wall. In some areas the towers stood no higher than Evar’s knees, like a shallow sea, its waves frozen in place. Here, though, they were five books thick and twice or even three times his height, sometimes with barely enough room between their bases for him to squeeze through. Few places in the chamber offered much of a view. Despite the many acres, the sight line in most of it extended only a few yards, wrapping any venture into the interior in a sense of growing claustrophobia.

Evar had fought Escapes before with his siblings. The things leaked from the Mechanism, black ghosts seeking form among the richness of the book stacks, feeding on old ideas. Kerrol said age had finally reached into the device and cracked it.

The first Escape had emerged several years ago and whilst the frequency with which they had appeared seemed to grow, still they had been a rarity. This year, however, there had been six.

Twice, Evar had faced one alone and emerged victorious. Something was different here though. Here the library’s habitual stillness had grown brittle. The light that bled from everywhere and cast no shadows seemed... changed. Challenged. The hairs across the back of Evar’s arms prickled and a primal terror constricted his throat. Suddenly being out alone, against Kerrol’s advice, seemed less a righteous act of defiance, and more of a mistake. A potentially fatal one.

Evar moved on, glancing behind him at regular intervals. In a place where shadows held no sway the eye couldn’t take comfort in self-delusion. The blackness that flitted from behind one stack to hide behind another could have no source other than the Escape. Evar had come out among the stacks as the hunter and in some manner he didn’t fully understand had become the prey. Fear filled him from toe to head, as if he were an empty glass into which the Escape had poured all its terror in one swift action.

He started to run.

He sped between the towering book stacks of the east corner, chased by a dark malignance that meant to eat him whole. And as the Escape steadily gained on him—despite the great hurt that the Mechanism had done him—had the grey structure stood before him, door open wide, he would have dived right back in to win free.

In the third age of the Arcadian Federation, man’s mastery of nature reached such heights that disease was undone, age defeated, and even the stars were claimed as jewels in humanity’s crown. In short, any dream might be made real. But some dreams are dark.

The Dust of Arcadia. A fragment. Author unknown.

CHAPTER 5

Evar

Evar sucked in a breath, pushed through a narrow gap, raced on. He turned in time to see the Escape flicker from the concealment of one stack to the next, a black insinuation, half-seen tendrils ghosting across the spines of a dozen books. Given time, it would drain them, leaving blank pages, constructing itself from fragments of stolen thought, old ideas repurposed to the business of death. In its pursuit of Evar, though, the Escape hadn’t time to empty whole chapters, and the stories beneath those covers left only unquiet ripples across its many surfaces.

Breath ragged, heart hammering, Evar tore through the stacks, ricocheting from one to the next, leaving them rocking behind him. The Escape wove a cleaner path, following his fear, reaching for him with thin, dark hands. The faster he ran, the more quickly it gained on him.

Think.

He was too far from home. Too far from the safety of the others. It would catch him long before he could make it back to the pool. It would catch him, kill him, and hide his corpse. They hadn’t found Mayland’s body yet and it had been a whole year.

Evar glanced left and right, sucking his breath past bared teeth. The Escape had hidden itself again, but he could feel it out there, feel its hunger pulsating in the unseen spaces beyond his vision. This one was worse than the others had been. Evar had fought Escapes before, but he could tell this one was something new. Something awful.

The air lay thick with must, the lazy drift of dust motes bright with light, oblivious to the tension. The dust underfoot here was gritty and red, untouched by soot. Evar shot through, pursued by the pounding tattoo of his own feet.

A misstep and Evar’s shoulder hit a tower. The impact spun him half around—long enough to see the tower sway and begin to topple in his wake. Behind it the Escape boiled towards him, a black flood... with legs. Evar’s next crash was into something more solid, without even a hint of give in it. The collision threw him to the ground and broke his vision into bright fragments.

Evar lay curled around his pain, lungs emptied and unable to haul in much-needed air. The Escape, contrary to expectation, shuddered to a halt against the nearest stack. The breath that might keep Evar from blacking out hissed into his throat with agonizing slowness. Evar imagined that he heard the creak of his ribs as his chest rose by fractions.

The Escape sunk its tendrils into the book stack like roots hunting moisture. It found a form and began to grow, elongating, painting in the details as wisps and hints hardened into sharp-edged fact. Long, painfully thin limbs encased in a gleaming black carapace ended in scythe-like appendages. The Escape watched him through multi-faceted eyes set into a small triangular head atop a tall body. Evar levered himself upright using the colossal book tower he’d crashed into. He’d been right—this Escape was different, larger, carrying its own weapons.

The Escape choked a noise past the complication of its mouth plates, a weird combination of dry rattle and, further back, a thick spluttering. It made the noise again, then once more, coming unnervingly closer to a word each time. “Evar.”

Evar had been foolish, coming out to search the stacks. He’d known it from the start, though back then the knowledge had made him angry. Now it terrified him.

“What are you?” Even now, with a bloody death moments away, more than anything Evar wanted answers. He’d lived his whole life surrounded by knowledge, piled high, heaped on every side, and still questions defined him.

“Evar.” His name sounded dirty in that mouth.

“Stay back!” Evar drew his knife, which was really a sharpened piece of an iron book hinge, and held it up. It was an unequal contest; his opponent had a much longer reach—one swing of the creature’s scythes would leave him with a bloody stump. The Escape already had his name. Soon it would have the portal to his mind fully open and be rooting around his childhood memories for the form best suited to horrifying him. Evar was tempted to let it in. The Escape would find slim pickings among the wreckage.

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