Page 20 of The Book that Broke the World

Their trek through the wonders of the library had the most impact on Clovis and Kerrol since Evar had ghosted his way through many chambers on journeys through the Exchange. Still, it was hard to impress anyone who had lived their entire life amid a near infinity of books by using a larger near infinity held in chambers identical to the one they’d lived in. Both were, however, fans of shelving, being impressed by its height and the ease of obtaining a book without toppling an entire tower to get to it. They were less impressed by the constraints it imposed on getting places. Particularly when trying to follow a bearing. Fortunately, the only decision that ever needed to be made—bearing or not—was which of the other three doors to attempt to leave a chamber by.

Evar wasn’t sure how long it took to reach the outermost chambers, but he was sure it was more than a day, and they slept twice. Despite the threat of the skeer, they saw no other living creature on their expedition. Clovis surmised that the skeer set guards only on the doors they couldn’t open, in the hope that they would then capture the door when it did finally open. Once through a canith door there was no worry about skeer since the areas the siblings trekked through were presumably inaccessible to the insectoids.

—

“Well, we’ve reached the edge.” Kerrol stood looking back and forth across the expanse of wall.

“We have.” Evar frowned. The lack of a door meant that beyond the wall lay the outside world. Unless of course the architect—Irad as some legends called him—enjoyed cruel tricks. The lack of a door also meant that they had followed the assistant’s bearing with insufficient accuracy.

“Left or right?” Clovis asked. It was the correct question. The more difficult one was how far left or right to go before turning back and going right or left.

Kerrol chose left and was outvoted, so they ended up going right, which was undoubtedly what Kerrol had intended. Evar considered reversing the decision and going left. But that would then turn out to be what Kerrol had intended. In the end he decided that it didn’t matter.

They found the exit door two chambers later.

Evar stood back and looked at it. Just for once he was the expert. He had experienced things that his siblings would soon face for the first time. “There’s a whole world out there.” He basked in the novelty of being the leader. “Brace yourselves. It’s not like anyth—”

Clovis cut his speech short by drawing her sword, walking up to the door, and slapping at it. She was through before it had fully dissipated. Kerrol walked after her, giving Evar a pat on the shoulder as he passed. “Sorry, brother, she’s seen all kinds of worlds in the Mechanism. It’s going to take quite a bit to impress her. Nice speech, though.”

Evar clenched his teeth against the grumbling he wanted to succumb to. The assistant had said there weren’t any ghosts around, but there was a remote chance Livira had found them in the interim and was watching over him. If so, he was sure she’d be laughing at his pomposity, and he determined to create a better impression going forward.

“Evar!” Kerrol ducked back through the door. “Come on!”

—

Beyond the door lay a sequence of natural caves adjoining artificial chambers. From the rubble heaped on all sides, and from the broken walls and cavitated ceilings, it was apparent that the place had been heavily damaged, collapsed even, then partially repaired at least once. Some passages were blocked, and the chambers had a deserted look, carrying the same cold, dampish aroma as caverns sculpted by nature.

“I’m going to say that the exit is very well hidden from the outside, and probably blocked too,” Kerrol said.

“Because there wasn’t a skeer waiting behind the door,” Clovis said.

Evar understood why his sister had gone through the door ahead of them, blade in hand. She’d been expecting a skeer. More than one maybe.

They found no sign of the insectoids. In fact, they found very little. No bones, almost nothing organic, just rusted hinges and pieces of shattered planking in the occasional doorway. A chair leg here, a blackened pot there.

“I want something to eat.” Clovis sniffed at a cauldron whose base had corroded through long ago. “We can starve out here.”

“We can starve in the library,” Evar said. “Just not die from it.”

“Unless you can’t reach a centre circle for some reason.” Kerrol rubbed his chin.

“I can’t see that happening...”

—

As they approached what had to be the main entrance, the library light began to fade and the collapses became more of a problem, forcing them to squeeze through narrow gaps on several occasions.

“This is deliberate.” Clovis eyed up the wall of rubble in their way.

“The question is whether it’s to stop canith coming in, or to stop something else,” Kerrol said.

“Either way”—Evar clambered up to the top and took hold of a large rock—“we have some digging to do. Watch out!” With a heave he sent the chunk tumbling down the slope. He looked at his hands, wondering. He’d never touched broken rock before. He’d never touched anything that wasn’t flesh, or books, or library, save for his food and the trees in the Exchange.

Clovis came up to join him, jumping between the larger rocks. Kerrol scrambled up after her. He stood, brushing rock dust from the book-leather skirt that covered his knees, then frowned at his dusty hands. “This could take a while. Reckon we can do it before we die of thirst?”

—

In the end it took three retreats to the nearest centre circle and another period of sleep before they smelled any hint of an outside world. The rubble wall was backed against truly titanic slabs of rock that sealed the entrance tunnel. Rubble filled the narrow gaps between the slabs too. The siblings mined a path between giant rocks, wondering all the time if their efforts were simply going to reveal a path that narrowed to a crack and forced them to try another way until at last all their labour proved futile. As they dug further the library’s light weakened rapidly, leaving them fumbling in the dark.

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