Page 130 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Well, you will soon. Come on. We’re looking for Meelan and Arpix.”

—

With Jella and six of her colleagues in tow, Livira led the way to the librarians’ quarters. She hoped to find Yute still there with the main strength of the Library Guard. Instead, she found the hallway a slaughterhouse. Library guards lay scattered, literally. Arms and heads torn from torsos as often as not, perhaps as few as six dead or maybe as many as a dozen, it was hard to tell. A single sabber corpse sprawled amid the carnage.

Livira turned to prevent Jella from seeing but found herself too late. She pushed her friend back. “Don’t let the others past.”

Malar went ahead, stepping around the corpses and bits of corpses. All the doors had been staved in—Livira’s too. Deputy Ellis lay half out of his doorway, looking smaller and older in death than he had in life, staring in sightless astonishment at the ceiling. Livira’s mind refused to make sense of the scene. Her eyes settled on Arpix’s broken door and the owl-eyed helm lying on its side amid the splintered planks. It couldn’t mean what it meant.

“Arpix!” Livira screamed his name, careless of how many sabbers it might call back to complete their work. “Arpix...” The name came out broken the second time.

No reply. No response. Nothing. Livira found she lacked the courage to go in. At her side Jella began to weep.

“What’s that noise?” Malar spun around, swords raised. He didn’t mean Jella or the shocked whispers behind her. The deep rumbling had been there the whole time, but they’d only noticed it as it grew louder. Loud or not, it admitted no direction, seeming to come from everywhere. Malar cocked his head. “I don’t like it...”

Livira didn’t care about any noise. Jella pushed past her, her face drained of the colour it had held back in the binding hall. She stumbled, grief-stricken, towards Arpix’s door. Unable to let her face it alone, Livira followed her through into Arpix’s quarters, glancing at the overturned furniture, the bedroom door hanging on a hinge. She frowned, narrowing her eyes at the door. The noise Malar had identified was louder here. A sabber’s growl but far too deep.

“Something odd...”

“It’s dark!” Jella exclaimed. “Dark on the other side!”

Livira rushed over and hauled the bedroom door open. A wall of blackness met her eyes. She stepped forward and the darkness rippled, alive with motion. “Arpix?” The growling sound drowned her out. Another step and it seemed that a fearsome shape momentarily detached itself from the impenetrable night before sinking back into it. Behind her Jella gave a despairing shriek and ran. Malar quickly took her place, swords to the fore.

“Volente!” Livira shouted.

The sound stopped.

“Come here!”

Sheepishly, the great black dog began to emerge from the darkness. Before he got halfway a voice from behind him said, “Livira?”

“Meelan?”

The darkness collapsed and there, holding her black book in one hand and a table knife in the other, was Meelan, kneeling on the bed. Arpix huddled beside him, clutching an oversized book with iron hinges as if it were a shield. Their true shield had been the darkness though, and Volente’s growling—something it seemed that even sabbers feared to test.

Livira threw herself at both of them.

Moments later, Malar hauled her from their arms. “We need to go.”

Livira let herself be drawn away. “He’s right. Come on. Right now!”

Out in the corridor Livira glanced towards the far end where the remains of the head librarian’s door littered the floor. She considered investigating then turned away. Either Yute’s corpse lay in those chambers, or his living body was waiting for her at the library. If he wasn’t there, then she’d know he was dead without the need to see what the sabbers had done to him. His death would undo her, and she needed her focus.

—

There was only one more corpse waiting for them on their way to the great cave. Heeth Logaris lay on the stairs that spiralled up from the complex, his neck broken by a blow that had shattered his jaw and cheekbone. Three young trainees, still children, crouched by the body, still in shock.

“He protected us...” the eldest of them said as Livira approached, her footsteps slowing.

“How many?” Malar demanded.

“How many sabbers?” Livira repeated, seeing their hesitation.

“Four, librarian. They went that way.” The boy pointed up the stairs.

“They... they had a man with them,” the smallest girl added.

“A prisoner?” Livira frowned.

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