Broken Quill [2] (25 page)

“Kind of hard to explain,” I said.
“Tia?”

She rolled her eyes. “The Forgetful
Library, Annie, houses and shelves the Thrice-Kindly works.”

“Thrice-Kindly?”

“Three unique types of books,” I
said, holding up the equivalent number of fingers. “Kind the First—The
Forgetful Library contains every book
never
written. Kind the Second—The
Forgetful Library contains every book that ever existed and was
lost
.
And Kind the Third—The Forgetful Library contains every book found
within
books.”

Annie held up her hands. “That’s...
absurd.”

“That’s abstract,” I said. “This
place is thousands of years old. Legend has it books just appeared here. Books
no one had read. Books that shouldn’t and didn’t exist.”

“Books within books,” Tia mused.
“That was always my favorite.”

I nodded and smiled. “Mine too.
Let’s get a move on, though. If I remember rightly, we’re on the forty-second
floor of the Fae Palace. My brother holds court a hundred floors overhead.”

Annie had wandered over to one of
the large, arched windows nearby. I heard her gasp and saw a hand fly to her breast.
She stared, wide-eyed and shocked, at the expanse of what I knew was Ascension
City. More than a little keen to see the place again for myself, I joined her
at the window.

“This is simply incredible,” Annie
whispered, and she found my hand and clasped it in her own. Her grip was
strong, even frightened—awed. “Of all the things you’ve shown me so far, this
is by far the most amazing.”

I was inclined to agree. Perth was
my home now, but before the exile, I was a son of Ascension City. In time, I
was also an Arbiter of the Knights Infernal and a lord ruling over all that we
could see from this window. Which wasn’t a lot, all things considered. Just a
slice of Ascension.

Tens of millions of people called
this city their home. Of those millions, several hundreds of thousands were
gifted with some measure of ability to use Will. If I hadn’t been locked from
my power, I’d have been able to sense them. From low-level practitioners to the
Knights Infernal themselves.

As it had done three months ago,
during my last visit, the city looked magnificent.

A frightful but efficient mix of
modern architecture and old, almost rural country towns. Massive skyscrapers
tore at low-hanging clouds, and great bridges of steel and light connected the
upper city to the ground far below, spiraling down through the middle high
rises. We were about half a mile above the city streets and only about a
quarter of the way up the length of the Fae Palace. Seen from one of the
distant mountains on the horizon, the palace was a spire of white obsidian,
eclipsing the height of the skyscrapers. Neon-blue light ran up the length of
the palace, and a pyre of pure white fire burned on the summit.

“It’s all so... thrown together,”
Annie decided and chuckled. “And clean. Everything looks so clean and shiny.”

“Like something out of a fairy
tale,” I said and thought about letting go of her hand.

I had been told never to come back
here. Cast into exile as the gods of old were... Now here I was breaking that
exile for the second time in three months. But there was nothing for it, and if
I’d read even a scrap of the situation right from Emily Grace and even
Emissary, then perhaps I wouldn’t be executed on sight.

Perhaps.
I’d survived a lot worse on a lot less than
perhaps.

“We should keep moving,” Tia said,
and I pulled Annie away from the window with some reluctance.

“Hold on,” Annie said and gazed out
of the window again then back along the endless shelves that disappeared over a
horizon within the library itself. She frowned, looked again, and then shook
her head. “I don’t... It’s... The dimensions of this place—”

Ah, I knew what had her puzzled.
“You ever watch that show with the alien flying around in the police box?
Doctor Who?”

“God, yes, Brian loves it.”

“Well, the Fae Palace kind of has
that bigger on the inside trick going on. A lot of inverted space and gateways
to worlds within the palace itself.” I ran my hand along a smooth, crystal
pillar. “The library is squeezed into a space far too small for it, but it
exists here nevertheless. That’s why we can see the sky over our heads even
though there’s another hundred or so floors to the palace above us. And take
the Academy, for another example. It’s here, on one of the higher levels, but
it covers a region of some ten square miles.”

“How’s that possible?” Annie asked
as we began the trek toward the exit and the core of the palace.

“Will power, or Origin, as the old
ones called it, and a whole load of carefully constructed gates and portals.
You’ll see some of it if we get the chance. You step from a marble floor like
this onto a cobblestone street under a bright sky. The Academy, technically,
exists in a bubble on a hidden world, accessible
only
through this
palace. The actual location, worlds and worlds away from here, is one of the
Knights’ most closely guarded secrets.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“Few educated guesses, but we’re
back to searching for needles in haystacks, really.” We were about to emerge in
what had always been a heavily traversed area of the Forgetful Library. “Here.”
I handed Myth to Annie. “Slip it under your jacket or into a pocket or
something. Unless things have really changed here, you won’t be subjected to a
search.”

“What? And you will?”

I nodded and caressed the hilt of my
sword. “More than likely, given my status, but you should be treated as a
guest. I don’t care if they take my star iron blade, but I’d rather hang on to
Myth for as long as we can. It’ll make a good bargaining chip further down the
line, if nothing else—or make for a quick getaway.”

Tia chuckled. “Rule One—always have
a back-up plan.”

“They taught some of us too well,” I
agreed.

*~*~*~*

We mingled in with the crowds,
somewhat, given that I was an infamous exile, Tia was supposed to be dead, and
Annie had never even set foot in the palace before five minutes ago.

The vast, cathedral-like central
dome of the Forgetful Library was aflutter with activity. Scribes dressed in
dusty robes carried stacks of books ten feet high, teetering back and forth but
never falling—the ease of long practice. Narrow desks stretched around the dome
in a half circle, and golden stanchions roped off with red velvet formed
orderly lines for all the people requesting access to the library’s catalogues.

That strong, heady scent of old
leather and vanilla permeated the air. I almost felt, for a moment, that I was
back in my shop. But there was no scotch to be had here, and already I was
attracting one or two stares and looks of uncertain disbelief. Surely that
couldn’t be Declan Hale—I could almost hear the thoughts swirling around me.

“People are staring,” Annie said
tightly, wise enough not to actually use my name out in the open.

“They’re just wondering how a guy
like me can be lucky enough to have a beautiful woman on each arm.”

Tia snorted. “Actually, I think
they’re trying to decide whether or not someone needs to come and cut your head
off.”

In the end, it only took mere
minutes for word to spread far and wide enough through the halls and twisting
corridors of the palace to reach the ears of a Knight. Just as Annie, Tia, and
myself were about to exit the Forgetful Library, we were met by a tall, older
woman with short grey hair, wearing the dress robes of a Sentinel and resting
her hand on the hilt of a curved Infernal blade.

She looked me up and down once, took
note of my ruined eye, and nodded to herself. “Well aren’t you a sorry sight,”
she said. “How did you get into the palace, Declan?”

“Hell, what makes you think I ever
left?”

At that, she cracked half a smile.
“With me,” she said. “Infirmary first, then you’re here to see your brother, I
suppose?”

“Kinda felt like he was extending me
an invitation, what with withdrawing all the Knights from True Earth and
leaving Perth at the mercy of a creature that makes Voidlings look like fluffy
kittens. How’ve you been, by the way, Instructor Marty?”

Glancing from Annie to Tia, the old
Knight shrugged. “Didn’t think you remembered me, lad. You blazed through my
warding course so fast you were almost a blur.”

Instructor Marty led us under her
Knightly guard to the banks of ornate golden elevators used by the Knights to
zoom up and down and around the palace. The Healers held offices on every few
floors, and the nearest from memory was just two stops away. Using her special
code on the gilded panel, which held a few hundred varied buttons, we made good
time.

I got the sense that I wasn’t
altogether unexpected, which put me a touch more at ease.

The young healer on duty almost
fainted when she realized who I was, and it was only after a gruff word from
Instructor Marty that she set to work on healing my eye. I was lying on a
clinical hospital bed, and if not for the healer’s glowing hands, it could’ve
passed for a room back on True Earth. After a few minutes of her shaking hand
pressing against my face, I felt the ache diminish to almost nothing. However,
I still couldn’t see. I told my healer as much.

“Might have left it too long,” she
said. “When were you injured?”

“Four or five hours ago.”

She shook her head. “Has to be
delicate work on something as fragile as an eye. Is the pain diminished? Good.
You’ll have to come back tomorrow when Wiser Delaney is on duty. Eyes are her
specialty.”

Turning on her heel, my young healer
dashed from the room, only to return half a minute later with a simple black
leather eye patch and strict instructions to keep the wound clean. With a
grumble of disagreement, I slipped the patch over my blinded left eye and
promised to do just that. The band snapped over my ear and pulled at my hair.

“Declan,” Tia remarked. “You’re a
pirate.”

“Then get me some rum,” I muttered.

Instructor Marty grunted. “They’ll
know you’re here by now, Hale. Best we get you upstairs to see your brother.”

“Argh,” I agreed.

A quick trip up in the lifts took us
to the Throne Room, shooting past the floors containing the Forgetful Library,
the courts, the Infernal Academy, and almost rising to the summit of the Fae
Palace. It had only been three months since my last appearance before the
Dragon Throne. Set in a chamber of ornate marble on the topmost floor of the
palace, as vast as an ancient Roman pantheon, the Throne Room was all shafts of
vaulted sunlight and fancy marble pillars. Everything in this palace seemed to
be some variation on marble and crystal. All that splendor could get a little
tiring after a while.

At least, that’s what I thought as
the elevator doors slid open on silent hinges and Annie, Tia, Instructor Marty,
and I stepped out into cool air at the back of the large chamber.

“Oh my,” Annie said, and her voice
echoed throughout the space.

Last time I’d been here, the pews
had been full of important people, and a guard of at least a hundred Knights
had patrolled the perimeter. I’d also been handcuffed in bands of star iron to
prevent me from accessing my Will. That, at least, was the same. Now the
chamber was all but empty, save for a few souls standing on the dais before the
Dragon Throne—a chair purportedly forged from the bones of an ancient menace, a
dragon of inconceivable might bested by the Knights.

My shoulders back and my head held
tall, I marched between the rows of pews toward the dais and the Knights
gathered there. My companions followed in my wake. It was only when I got a
good look at the man on the throne that my pace faltered and I became
uncertain.

Seated on the Dragon Throne was not
my hale and hearty brother but an old man. With a start I recognized him. The
so-called King of Ascension City.

“Declan,” Jon Faraday rasped, looking
for all the worlds like a man two hundred years old and left out in the sun for
too long. “You are late...”

I gaped as if I were a goldfish for
a few seconds until I remembered where I was and what was on the line. Then I
cleared my throat and strolled across to the dais before the Dragon Throne as
though I had every right to be there. Moving past rows of empty pews peppered
with false-light fading through the vast, marble pillars lining the perimeter
of the room, I doffed an invisible hat and gestured widely with my arms.

“Forgive my tardiness, brother,” I
said, feigning pretense with the best of them, “I was unavoidably delayed. You
remember Tia Moreau? Back from the dead, Jon. All the cool kids are doing it.
What in sweet unholy hell happened to you?”

Faraday licked his lips and managed
a small, uneven rasp that tried to be a chuckle. He waved at one of his
advisors, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair above a sharp face and a firm
chin, standing resplendent in the midnight-blue dress uniform of the Knights
Infernal. He wore a curved scimitar on his hip—an Infernal Blade unless I
missed my guess. The man stepped forward and pointed a long bony finger at me.