Alcatraz (40 page)

‘Look closely,’ Kaz said, pointing.

I did, squinting in the light of the single lamp.
With effort, I saw what he was talking about.
Dust.
Hanging in the air, motionless.

‘What’s that?’
I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Kaz said.
‘But, if you look, there’s a bubble of clean ground around the sarcophagus.
No dust.’

There was a large circle on the ground, running around the casket, where either the dust had been cleaned away, or it had never fallen.
Now that I thought to notice, I realized that the rest of this room was far more dusty than the Library.
It hadn’t been disturbed in some time.

‘There’s something odd about this place,’ Bastille said, hands on hips.
‘Yeah,’ I said, frowning.
‘Those hieroglyphics don’t quite look like any I’ve seen before.’

‘Seen a lot?’
she asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

I flushed.
‘I mean, they don’t look the way Egyptian ones should.’

It was hard to explain.
As one might expect, the walls were covered with small pictures, drawn as if to be words.
Yet, instead of people with cattle or eagle heads, there were pictures of dragons and serpents.
Instead of scarabs, there were odd geometric shapes, like runes.
Above the doorway where we had come in, there was .
.
.

‘Kaz!’
I said, pointing.

He turned, then his eyes opened wide.
There, inscribed over the door, was a circle split into four sections, with symbols written in each of the four pieces.
Just like the diagram Kaz had drawn for me on the ground, the one about the different kinds of Talents.
The Incarnate wheel.

This one also had a small circle in the center with its own symbol, along with a ring around the outside, split into two sections, each with another character in them.

‘It could just be a coincidence,’ Kaz said slowly.
‘I mean, it’s just a circle split into four pieces.
It isn’t
necessarily
the same diagram.’

‘It is,’ I said.
‘It feels right.’

‘Well, maybe the Curators put it there,’ Kaz said.
‘They saw me draw it on the ground, and copied it down.
Maybe they have placed it here for us to find, so it would confuse us.’

I shook my head.
‘I’ve still got my Discerner’s Lenses on.
That inscription is as old as the rest of the tomb.’

‘What does it say?’
Bastille asked.
‘Won’t that tell us what it is?’

Why didn’t I think of that
?
I thought, embarrassed again.
Bastille certainly was quick on her feet.
Or maybe I was slow.
Let’s not discuss that possibility any further.
Forget I mentioned it.

‘Can I read that text without losing my soul?’
I asked.

We looked at the Curators.
One reluctantly spoke.
‘You can,’ it said.
‘You lose your soul when you check out or move a book.
A symbol on the wall can be read without being checked out.’

It made sense.
If it were that easy to get souls, the Curators could just have posted signs, then taken the souls of any who read them.

With that, I pulled off my Discerner’s Lenses and put on my Translator’s Lenses.
They immediately interpreted the strange symbols.

‘The inner squares say the things you taught, Kaz,’ I said.
‘Time, Space, Matter, Knowledge.’

Kaz whistled.
‘Walnuts!
That means whoever built this place knew an awful lot about Smedry Talents and arcane theory.
What about that symbol in the middle of the circle?
What does it say?’

‘It says Breaking,’ I said quietly.

My Talent
.

‘Interesting,’ Kaz said.
‘They give it its own circle on the diagram.
What is that outer circle?’

The ring was split into two pieces.
‘One says Identity,’ I said.
‘The other says Possibility.’

Kaz looked thoughtful.
‘Classical philosophy,’ he said.
‘Metaphysics.
It appears that our dead friend there was a philosopher of some kind.
Makes sense, considering that we’re near Alexandria.’

I wasn’t paying much attention to that.
Instead, I turned, hesitant, to read the words on the walls.
My Translator’s Lenses instantly changed them to English for me.

I immediately wished that I hadn’t read them.

14

T
ime for a history lesson.

Stop complaining.
This isn’t an adventure story; it’s a factual autobiography.
The purpose isn’t to entertain you, but to teach you.
If you want to be entertained, go to school and listen to the imaginary facts your teachers make up.

The Incarna.
I talked about them in my last book, I believe.
They’re the ones who developed the Forgotten Language.
In the Free Kingdoms, everyone is a little annoyed at them.
After all, the Incarna supposedly had this fantastic understanding of both technology and magic.
But, instead of sharing their wisdom with the rest of the world, they developed the Forgotten Language and then – somehow – managed to change all of their texts and writings so that they were written in this language.

No, the Forgotten Language
wasn’t
their original method of writing.
Everybody knows that.
They
transformed
all of their books into it.
Kind of like .
.
.
applying an encrypting program to a computer document.
Except, it affected all forms of writing, whether on paper, in metal, or in stone.

Nobody knows how they managed this.
They were a race of mega-evolved, highly intelligent superbeings.
I doubt it was all that tough for them.
They could probably turn lead into gold, grant immortality, and make a mean dish of cold fusion too.
Doesn’t really matter.
Nobody can read what they left behind.

Except me.
With my Translator’s Lenses.

Perhaps now you can see why the Librarians would hire a twisted, half-human assassin to hunt me down and retrieve them, eh?

‘Alcatraz?’
Bastille said, apparently noticing how white my face had become.
‘What’s wrong?’

I stared at the wall with its strange words, trying to sort through what I was reading.
She shook my arm.

‘Alcatraz?’
she asked again, then glanced at the wall.
‘What does it say?’

I read the words again.

Beware all ye who visit this place of rest.
Know that The Dark Talent has been released upon the world.
We have failed to keep it contained
.

Our desires have brought us low.
We sought to touch the powers of eternity, then draw them down upon ourselves.
But we brought with them something we did not intend
.

Be careful of it.
Guard it well, and beware its use.
Do not rely upon it.
We have seen the possibilities of the future and the ultimate end.
It could destroy so much, if given the chance
.

The Bane of Incarna.
That which twists, that which corrupts, and that which destroys.
The Dark Talent
.

The Talent of Breaking
.

‘This place is important,’ I whispered.
‘This place is really,
really
important.’

‘Why?’
Bastille said.
‘Shattering Glass, Smedry.
When are you going to tell me what that says?’

‘Get out your pen and paper,’ I said, kneeling.
‘I need to write this down.’

Bastille sighed, but did as I asked, fetching a pen and paper from her pack.
Kaz wandered over, watching with interest as I transcribed the writing on the wall.

‘What language is that, anyway?’
I asked.
‘It mentions the Incarna, but it’s not the Forgotten Language.’

‘That’s old Nalhallan,’ Kaz said.
‘I can’t read it, but we have a few scholars back in the capital who can.
When the Incarna fell, its few survivors ended up in Nalhalla to live.’

I finished the translation.
Then, immediately, the three Curators surrounded me.

‘You must give up all writings to the Library when you enter,’ one hissed.
‘A copy will be returned to you once we have completed it.
If a copy cannot be made in one hour’s time, we will return the original instead.’

I rolled my eyes.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’
However, I let them pull the sheet away and vanish with it.

Bastille was frowning – she’d read the translation as I wrote it.
‘That inscription makes it seem like your Talent is dangerous.’

‘It is,’ I said.
‘Do you know how many times I’ve nearly been beaten up for breaking something at the wrong time?’

‘But—’ She cut off, however, obviously sensing that I didn’t want to talk about it further.

To be honest, I didn’t know what to think.
It was strange enough to find ancient writings that dealt with Smedry Talents.
To have them give a caution about mine specifically .
.
.
well, it was a little disturbing.

That was the first time I really got any hint of the troubles that were coming.
You Free Kingdomers call me a savior.
Can I really be considered a savior if I
caused
the very problem I helped fix?

‘Wait a moment,’ Bastille said.
‘Didn’t we get drawn here by an Oculatory Lens?
Whatever happened to that?’

‘That’s right,’ I said, standing.
I could still sense it working, though I’d been distracted by everything else in the tomb.

I swapped my Translator’s Lenses for my Oculator’s Lenses, then had to turn down their power because of how blinding the room was.
Once I’d done so, I could see the Lens that had drawn me here.
It was set into the lid of the sarcophagus.

‘It’s there,’ I said, pointing.
‘On the top of the sarcophagus.’

‘I don’t trust that thing,’ Kaz said.
‘That circle around it is strange.
We should leave, gather a research team, then come back and study this place in detail.’

I nodded absently.
Then, I walked toward the sarcophagus.

‘Alcatraz!’
Bastille said.
‘Are you going to do something stupid and brash again?’

I turned.
‘Yeah.’

She blinked.
‘Oh.
Well, then, you probably shouldn’t.
Consider me opposed to it.
Whatever it is.’

‘Objection noted,’ I said.

‘I—’ Bastille said.
She stopped as I stepped into the circle of clean ground around the sarcophagus.

Everything immediately changed.
Dust began to fall around me, sparkling like very fine powdered metal.
Lamps burned with bright flames set to the top of the pillars around the sarcophagus.
It was like I’d entered a small column of golden light.
Somehow I’d moved from a long-dead tomb to someplace alive with motion.

There was still a sense of reverence to the area.
I turned, noticing Bastille and Kaz standing outside the ring of light.
They seemed frozen in place, mouths open as if to speak.

I turned back to the sarcophagus, the dust falling very faintly in the air, sprinkling over everything.
I held up a hand.
It was indeed metallic, and it glittered with a yellow sheen.
Gold dust.

Why had I stepped blindly into the circle like that?

It’s hard to explain.
Imagine you have the hiccups.
In fact, you not only have the hiccups, you have
The
Hiccups.
These are the hiccups to end all hiccups.
You’ve hiccupped all of your life, without a moment of freedom.
You’ve hiccupped so much that you’ve lost friends, made everyone annoyed at you, and grown pretty down on yourself.

And then, amazingly, you discover a group of people who have similar problems.
Some of them burp all the time, others sniffle all the time, and still others have really bad gas.
They all make annoying noises, but they come from a land where that’s really cool.
They’re all impressed with your hiccupping.

You hang out with these people for a time, and start to grow proud of your hiccups.
Then, you pass a billboard that mentions – for the first time – that your hiccups will probably end up destroying the world.

You might, then, feel a little like I did.
Confused, betrayed, unsettled.
Willing to step into a strange ring of power to confront, hopefully, the person who made the billboard.

Even if he did happen to be dead.

I pushed aside the top of the sarcophagus.
It was heavier than I’d expected, and I had to heave.
It clattered to the floor, scattering gold dust.

There was a man’s body inside, and he wasn’t even a bit decomposed.
In fact, he looked so lifelike that I jumped backward.

The man in the sarcophagus didn’t move.
I edged closer, eyeing him.
He looked to be in his fifties, and was wearing an ancient set of clothing – a kind of skirtlike wrap around the lower legs, then a flowing cloaklike shirt on his back that left his bare chest exposed.
He had a golden headband around his forehead.

I hesitantly poked his face.
(Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have done the same.) The man didn’t move.
So, carefully, cringing, I checked for a pulse.
Nothing.

I stepped back.
Now, perhaps you’ve seen a dead body before.
I sincerely hope that you haven’t, but let’s be realistic.
People die sometimes.
They have to – if they didn’t, funeral homes and graveyards would go out of business.

Dead bodies don’t look like they were ever alive.
Corpses tend to look like they’re made from wax – they don’t seem like people at all, but mannequins.

This body didn’t look that way.
The cheeks were still flush, the face surreal in the way it seemed ready to take a breath at any moment.

I glanced back at Bastille and Kaz.
They were still frozen, as if time weren’t moving for them.
I looked back at the body, and suddenly began to catch a hint of what might be going on.

I put on my Translator’s Lenses, then walked over to the discarded lid of the sarcophagus.
There, printed in ornate letters, was a name:

Allekatrase the Lens-wielder, first Bearer of the Dark Talent.

Intrinsically, my Translator’s Lenses let me know that the word
Lens-wielder
when spoken in ancient Nalhallan would sound different to my ears.
The ancient Nalhallan word for ‘Lens’ was
smaed
and their word for ‘person who uses’ was
dary
.

Allekatrase the Lens-wielder.
Allekatrase Smaed-dary.

Alcatraz Smedry the First.

Golden dust fell around me, sprinkling my hair.
‘You broke time, didn’t you?’
I asked.
‘Kaz mentioned that there were legends of you having done so.
You created for yourself a tomb where time would not pass, where you could rest without decomposing.’

It was the ultimate method of embalming.
I personally suspect that the Egyptian custom of making mummies of their kings came from the story of Alcatraz Smedry the First.

‘I have your Talent,’ I said, stepping up beside the sarcophagus, looking at the man inside.
‘What am I supposed to do with it?
Can I control it?
Or will it always control me?’

The body was silent.
They’re like that.
Completely lacking in social graces, those corpses.

‘Did it destroy you?’
I asked.
‘Is that what the warning is for?’

The body was so serene.
Gold dust was beginning to gather on its face.
Finally, I just sighed, kneeling down to look at the Lens in the lid of the sarcophagus.
It was completely clear, with no color to indicate what it did.
Yet, I knew it was powerful because it had drawn me here.

I reached out and tried to pry it free.
It was stuck on the lid very soundly, but I wasn’t about to leave a Lens that powerful sitting in a forgotten tomb.

I touched the lid and released my Talent into it.
Immediately, the Lens popped free, flipping up into the air.
I was caught so off guard that I barely managed to grab it before it fell and shattered.