Page 141 of The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“Is that what you thought, Livira?” Yute’s pink eyes flicked her way.

“I... yes... well, it never really made much sense.” Livira shrugged off the protective cradle of Evar’s arms. “Why were they there, room by room, floor by floor?” She looked up over her shoulder, meeting Evar’s amber eyes. He had amber eyes... and the pupils were wrong. She’d never seen him close up before without the Exchange disguising him to suit her expectation. But it was still Evar. Not some animal. Still his kindness looking out at her.

Yute shook his head. “The two races lived in peace for generations. After so many cycles of war, they made their first true peace. Not just a pact to avoid killing each other. They shared the city. They lived in the same buildings. They explored the library together.”

“Nonsense!” Lord Algar raised his voice in anger, but he still kept towards the back of the group, flanked by two soldiers with their ’sticks at the ready, and shielding himself with Serra Leetar, his hands on her shoulders as if to keep her in place.

When the smoke had rolled over everything, forestalling the final confrontation between the fleeing troops and pursuing sabbers, chaos reigned for what seemed an age. Yamala had left the door open behind them and Yute’s voice had led forward some of those lost in the choking blindness of the smoke. Fire and chaos had chased them across Chamber 7, past the point of exhaustion, a scattered band threading many different routes towards the far exit. Yamala had opened that door too and the dreadful heat had pushed them through into Chamber 16 before any roll call could be taken. Livira led the way to the portal that she and Arpix had drawn on the wall. In the chaos of that final smoke-laden aisle it became clear that Yute’s party had changed very significantly in character. He had gained scores, possibly hundreds of the king’s troopers and a dozen of Crath’s richest citizens, including a bedraggled Lord Algar, and Serra Leetar looking as if she’d just stepped out of a ball for a breath of fresh air.

The encroaching smoke rang with the snarls and cries of sabbers, some sounding as terrified as many in Yute’s party, and with the flames chasing at their heels Livira couldn’t blame them. Along the length of the aisle, she’d been unable to see Arpix, Salamonda, or many of the others in the original group, and the cries of soldiers believing they’d been led down a dead end swallowed her shouts. In the end, she’d been forced through the portal by the weight of others pressing in behind her, and had spilled out into the Exchange in an ungainly sprawl.

“Nonsense,” Lord Algar repeated and rubbed at his crimson eyepatch as if there were an eye itching beneath it. “The people of Crath would never open their doors to these animals. The idea that they would know what to do with books... BOOKS, for the gods’ sake!”

Yute ignored him. “Both your races lived in harmony. The chemical attack came from members of a third race seeking their own justice. After so many cycles of destruction there was a peace. A way forward that had long been sought. And then suddenly... death everywhere. As assistants, we serve Irad, the founder, and our relationship with time is a curious one. Like the Escapes in service to Jaspeth we stand with one foot outside time. We see its entirety and are forbidden from action beyond our tasks—but we feel the now. And on seeing the destruction of so rare a peace Yamala and I felt we could no longer stand outside. We did the only thing we could. We shed our immortality and took the frail forms that would allow us to act, to help, to try to nurture a peace and break the cycle. I took a name. I became Yute and embraced time so that I could make a change.”

Livira’s gaze returned to Malar, who she’d been crawling towards when Evar reached her. The soldier still hadn’t moved. She edged closer, trying not to catch Clovis’s eye.

“It was hubris. Immersed in the flow of time we found ourselves tangled in the problem we had imagined we might solve. We couldn’t even agree on the solution. Yamala still cleaved to Irad’s way. Let the library be a perfect memory for endless imperfect intelligences. Let it remember where they forgot. Let it raise them as swiftly from the dust as it is possible to rise. Let nothing be hidden. Everything put into the hands of any who ask for it.

“I found myself in sympathy with Irad’s brother. Unlike Jaspeth I didn’t want to destroy the library and let the races crawl from increasingly infertile mud at every cycle. But I felt they should be taught to walk before they were given racehorses, chariots, ornithopters to take them to the sky. I felt that knowledge should be earned through wisdom.

“Sadly, my own wisdom has not been equal to the task. I have grown old, and war has overtaken my efforts.

“But the truth is that I traded immortality for the chance to help you. And I gave eternity away because the death of so many Liviras and Evars living together in peace was a moment of shame deep enough to teach sorrow to a being as old as the library itself and with no time for moments.” He turned to look at Livira. “And yes, Livira, I was the boy you saw at the window in that poisoned city, and I saw you, and I held the memory of you across the centuries until I saw you once more on the steps of the Allocation Hall.”

“You should have worked with me, husband.” Yamala’s voice amplified through the trees as Yute’s had. “If the people of Crath had more advanced weaponry they could have forced a peace and the library would not be burning, yet again.”

“If the soldiers on the wall had held in their hands a faster means of killing, the dead would have piled yards-deep at the foot of the wall, and when Evar’s people had run, the soldiers would have chased them and killed them in their homes and villages. And he”—Yute extended a white finger towards Lord Algar without looking at him—“would neither deny this fact nor declare it to be anything other than just and reasonable.”

“Is it not justice to retaliate when attacked?” Algar spat into the grass. “These dogs have driven us from our homes, slaughtered tens of thousands in the streets, and burned the library. All because you, Davris Yute, have some delusion of grandeur to excuse your deformity and have in consequence sabotaged the work of the library. You have brought down a king, a capital, and the kingdoms will now topple by the score. No wonder you’re all for mercy now. Hear me well, librarian. You will pay for your crimes, and I will find what I need to pay these dogs back for murders too numerous to count. I’ll hunt them to the end of the world, slit the throat of every last pup taken from its mother’s arms. I’ll—”

Clovis raised her hand faster than thought. The knife would have flown from her fingers but for Evar catching her wrist.

“You’re going to kill him?” Evar barked. “He’s you, Clovis. Those are your words coming out of his mouth. We could kill them all. Hells, you could do it by yourself. And—”

“Don’t tell me we’d be making ourselves just as bad as they are.” Clovis had Evar by the throat. “Don’t try that with me, little brother. Just don’t.”

Evar tore her hand away from his neck. He bared his teeth and set himself squarely between Clovis and Livira. Livira meantime had gone to her knees and was struggling to roll the unconscious Malar onto his back. Evar took a swift step towards his sister, putting the siblings almost nose to nose. “Do what you will with him then. But hear me on this one thing. You understand me—so you must understand that I will burn everything down before I let you hurt her.”

A shudder ran through the ground beneath Livira’s feet, and she caught the sharp scent of smoke. A mutter of new fear ran through the crowd. A crimson flame flickered up around the trunk of the nearest tree like the tongue of some infernal lizard: Evar’s anger given release.

“Help me!” Livira’s scream cut the tension. She looked up from Malar’s side, both hands dripping with blood from the wound Clovis had put in his belly. “I think he’s dying!”

The last words a person speaks are given additional weight. Some legal systems codify that gravitas into the statutes, allowing evidence from the deathbed greater import. But, often as not, the last words to pass our lips do so without the burden of knowing no more will follow. They are a random line from a random page in a novel that believes it will be completed. Just imagine what...

In Memoriam: The Things I Remembered to Forget, by Nicholas Hayes

CHAPTER 59

Evar

Help me!”

Livira’s cry tore Evar’s attention from Clovis and the creature, Yute, who claimed he was once an assistant, part of the fabric of the library.

“I think he’s dying!” Livira’s hands were red with her companion’s blood.

Evar examined the wound. It looked fatal. What else could be expected when a sabber put itself in Clovis’s way? The male had been lucky to put Kerrol down, but Clovis was a different matter entirely.

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