Page 70 of The Book that Broke the World

“We need to find the centre circle,” Arpix said, coming up behind him with Kerrol and Clovis.

“The healing only works for recent injuries,” Evar said.

“And we have recently injured among us.”

Evar felt immediately ashamed. He’d been too focused on Clovis. From the top of the stairs that led down the wall to the chamber floor Evar could see the whole four square miles of it. It took a moment to spot the clear circle in the midst of thousands of acres of shelving. “Come on. I’ll lead you from the shelf tops.”

Evar was far from comfortable walking along the narrow planking atop shelves that reached many times his height, but he’d sprinted across them when the automaton had given chase, and he’d leapt every gap that presented itself, so he had no excuse not to repeat the feat at a more leisurely pace without the pressure of imminent death. The others followed along in the book canyons below while he steered the straightest path he could towards the spot that memory marked as the centre circle.

It took them the best part of an hour but at last the humans stumbled into the circle. Immediately the one called Sheetra gasped in relief as the circle’s healing effect started to repair the shoulder a skeer’s rock had smashed.

Evar felt his thirst ease and the tiredness drain from his limbs. Their leaky bucket of water had not lasted long on the crossing from the plateau, and the water-skins that Jost and Arpix retained didn’t go far when shared between almost a dozen. The only water he knew of in the library was the pool in his home chamber. The circle’s impact on his thirst was welcome but not sufficient to erase it entirely and he sucked his tongue speculatively, imagining a life sustained only by the circles’ illusion of water.

Kerrol and Arpix came in last. Clovis hung between them, seemingly lifeless. Her impression of a corpse was sufficient to set Evar running to check her for a pulse. He reached her as the other two laid her on the floor. Salamonda fashioned a pillow of books. Arpix drew out a small, dried gourd and held it to Clovis’s lips, giving her the last of the water he’d somehow hoarded since departing the plateau.

She coughed and opened her eyes. “I dreamt... that we escaped...” A whisper, her gaze unfocused.

“We did escape.” Kerrol’s voice cracked slightly, the first time that Evar had ever heard any emotion other than gentle amusement from his brother.

“Humans!” Clovis grabbed Arpix’s arm, coughing and spluttering on the water, spilling some. “We found humans.”

“You did.” He stroked her mane absently, eyes bright. “You found humans.”

“I... I wanted to...” Clovis closed her eyes, drifting off.

“She’s too hot,” Kerrol said. “Her breathing’s not right. This place can’t help her. The damage was done days ago.”

Arpix spoke without looking up from Clovis. “It might help. It can undo the damage that’s been done in the last few hours. It can undo the new poisons being made in her blood hour by hour. It can keep her here.”

“She would want more than that.” Evar knew that Clovis would never agree to being held on the threshold of death, helpless but forbidden release.

“It’s a chance to rest,” Arpix said. “Marshal her forces. Regroup and counterattack.” It sounded as if he were trying to get orders to Clovis past her unconsciousness.

“So, we just stay here and wait?” Kerrol asked.

The distant sound of crashing shelves forestalled any answer. Evar exchanged looks with his brother. “It can’t be?”

“It might be,” Kerrol said.

“What?” Arpix growled. The other humans were looking around as if expecting something to burst into the circle any moment.

“I don’t know,” Evar said. “Watch her.” And with that he was scaling the nearest shelves, aiming for the heights.

Gaining the shelf top, Evar couldn’t see the automaton bearing down on them. The shelves in this canith chamber were higher than those in the one they’d first escaped into though. It might be that they were tall enough to hide even something as large as the metal beast that had pursued them for so many miles.

The distant sound of more wood splintering brought Evar’s gaze to the western door. With a sigh he set off towards the destruction’s source. He made steady progress and found himself almost welcoming the distraction. Without it he would still be responsible for around half a dozen fragile humans while watching his sister die a slow death. He made a leap of three yards and pinwheeled his arms with a cry of alarm as sixty feet of age-weakened shelving undulated beneath his feet, spilling books onto the floor far below.

Evar fell to his knees and then to his belly, clutching the shelf top, waiting for it to fall or stop trying to fall. In the end it decided to stay standing, and Evar edged away, promising to be more conservative in his future leaps.

The crashing that drew him on was not the continuous thunder that the automaton had made as it barrelled through shelf after shelf. Rather it was an intermittent thing, with gaps that might stretch minutes between short periods of splintering and crashing.

Evar closed in cautiously. In the boredom of his days on the plateau he’d had plenty of time to consider why some huge mechanical monster had given chase with such dedication. He’d come up with nothing. His best guess for why it had arrowed after him, ignoring his siblings, was either that it had seen him first, or that its random choices had just panned out that way. Nothing else made sense.

When at last Evar got his first sight of the source of the din, he was amazed to find himself looking at a smaller, though still much larger than him, version of the original automaton. It was working its broad-shouldered, almost round body along one of the wider aisles, its elbows stripping books from the shelves about eight feet off the ground, spilling them onto the floor behind it in untidy mounds with loose pages fluttering.

This one was perhaps twice Evar’s height and if it had been made of flesh and bone rather than copper and brass it might have weighed twenty times what he did. A relief of fur picked out in gold covered its body and arms, and on the backs of both hands a single blade jutted forward, looking large and sharp enough to slice a skeer in two.

Evar’s elevated perspective offered a new viewing angle that tickled his memory. “I’ve seen you before...” He tried to remember where. It wasn’t as if he had done much travelling in his life or met many strangers. So how did he know this creature, or at least the creature on which the metal creation below him had been modelled? The most likely answer was that he had seen a picture in a book—but that wasn’t what his memory was telling him. The recollection was fresher and more vivid than that of something flipped past in some ancient bestiary years ago. “Livira...” It hit him as the automaton below twisted its short, thick neck to look up at him. He’d been with Livira in the Exchange. They’d chosen an off-world pool and he’d found himself among these creatures, yellow-furred, barely half his height, within a library not dissimilar to this one. Only Livira hadn’t been there when he turned round, and he’d returned to find her still choking out the noxious air of the creatures’ home.

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