Lord of the Libraries (28 page)

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Authors: Mel Odom

Tags: #Fantasy, #S&S

BOOK: Lord of the Libraries
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“Then how can Time be constrained? Can you just lop off moments like you would pieces of a carrot for a stew?”
“A candle burns,” Juhg said, “and is gone.”
“A burning candle gives off heat and light and smoke,” the mantis said. “If you could gather those things, you could reconstruct the candle, and then burn it yet again. Over and over.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me,” Juhg admitted.
“Time,” the mantis said, “was invented for the beings of your world, so that everything didn’t happen at once. They spilled out of this world into that one a long time ago.”
“You’re saying that everyone in my world came from this place?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The mantis was silent for a moment. Then it folded its upper legs behind its back and started up the mountain. “Walk with me for a while, Librarian Juhg.”
“A while,” Juhg echoed. “You acknowledge a division of time?”
The mantis smiled. “I talk so that you may understand.”
“Well,” Juhg said, “I don’t. I don’t understand at all.” Then he realized he was being left behind and hurried to catch up.
“There is another here like myself,” the mantis said as they walked.
“Another mantis?”
The mantis looked at Juhg. Bright speculation showed in those deep black eyes. “You see me as a mantis?”
“Are you not?”
“Of course I’m not.” The mantis broke into laughter that pealed over the mountainside. “A mantis. Indeed!”
Juhg felt a little embarrassed, but he was angry, too. “You look like a mantis.”
“That’s because your perception sees me as one.” The mantis rubbed its chin with one of its forelegs as if in deep thought. “A number of your cultures believe insects to be immortal on your world. Beetles. Grasshoppers. Other crawling things.”
“And trees,” Juhg added. “As well as rocks.”
“Neither of those things could have walked up this mountain with you. But to return to my story, there is another here like me.”
“Where is he?”
“Who said the other person was male?”
“No one.” Juhg reined in his curiosity. He was leaping to conclusions. The Grandmagister had trained him better than that. “Is the other person female?”
“The other person, like myself, is neither. Perhaps that is another reason why you see me as an insect. Many of them do not immediately reveal their gender. Tell me—” The mantis stopped walking and held its forelegs out. “—am I clothed?”
“No. You’re a mantis. Why would you need clothing?”
“If I were a mantis, I wouldn’t need clothing. In fact I don’t need clothing anyway.” The mantis resumed walking. “You’re not clothed either.”
Juhg felt a sudden intense rush of embarrassment and slowed his gait so that he walked a few steps behind the mantis. He looked down at himself.
I am clothed. I am wearing the robe of a First Level Librarian.
At the same moment, he knew there was no way that robe could be there.
“A joke, Librarian Juhg. Nothing more.” The mantis laughed and the sound was harsh. “One thing your kind has invented that I have rather enjoyed is humor. It took me quite a while to get the knack of it, though. Humor is a very delicate thing.”
“Humor is out of place,” Juhg said sternly. “Laughing at your jokes while my friends face death is … is …
wrong.”
“Pity. I thought it was rather funny. The look on your face, I mean. But that’s quite all right. Most humor is intended for personal consumption anyway, it seems.”
Not caring whether the mantis saw him clothed or unclothed anymore, Juhg ran in front of the creature and blocked its path. “I don’t have time for this.”
The mantis stopped and stared at him with those oily black eyes. “That is one of the things you will have to come to accept, Librarian Juhg. Here in this place, you have all of Time. You never need fear being late. Not even to go back and chance death with your friends in that rapidly filling basement beneath the sea.”
“Send me back.”
“There are things that I must tell you first.”
“An order of events?” Juhg riposted. “Here in a place where Time doesn’t matter?”
“Don’t be facetious. It’s unbecoming.” The mantis stepped around Juhg effortlessly, as if Juhg was standing still, which he was.
Juhg hurried to keep up.
“There have always been two of us here,” the mantis said. “At least, that’s the way we remember it, know that it is, understand that it will be. Sometimes we have been friends and sometimes we have been strangers. There are many things to experience here.” The creature was silent for a moment. “Sometimes we have been, are, and will be enemies. During a period of enmity that was, is, or will be, we fought. Only in this place, neither of us could win. Or we both won. Or it was a draw.”
Struggling to accept that, Juhg kept his peace. He couldn’t help thinking about Craugh and the others at the mercy of the waters rapidly filling the basement. What if the creature was lying and they were already dead? He couldn’t bear that thought.
“In our frustration, I agreed, agree, will agree—”
“Stop doing that,” Juhg said.
“What?”
“Talking in that fashion. Stick with the past tense. That’s how I can best understand it.”
The mantis reflected for a moment. “I will honor your request, since in your world these events have already passed.”
“Thank you.” Juhg’s head hurt with trying to absorb everything. The
nature of space had always plagued him, and even the Grandmagister offered no real understanding of it.
“We …
opened
Time and your world was born, as limitless as this place here, but with different rules. We made Time flow linearly. Like a river. And we put beings there that had been in this place. They became the humans, dwarves, elves, goblins, and other creatures. Birds, fish, insects, and everything else.” The mantis shook its head. “So much more than we expected. But what we had done, are doing, will—” The creature stopped itself. “Well, it quickly got out of hand.”
“Why did you do that?” Juhg asked. “Put all the beings and the creatures into that place?”
“So that we could enjoy our enmity,” the mantis replied. “So that the wars that we fought with these beings could end and there could be a winner declared.”
“A game? You created our world as a game?”
The mantis shrugged. They kept walking along the mountain trail but Juhg hardly paid attention now. “It was unique. Nothing like it had ever existed before.”
“But the beings you put there existed.”
“Yes.”
“Where did they come from?”
“They were always here.”
“Then what made you different from them?” Juhg asked.
“That.”
“That what?”
“The difference, of course. If we had not always been different, there would have been no difference, would there?”
Juhg didn’t know how to argue with that but he felt compelled to. He made himself table the subject for the moment. “What am I doing here?”
“I wished to speak to you, to let you know the things you have to deal with in your world.”
“
The Book of Time,
you mean?”
“Yes. You see, when we opened ourselves to that other world so that we could enjoy our enmity, we left this place open to invasion from the other side. Until it happened, is happening, and will happen, we had never before thought anything could disrupt this place. We were wrong.”
The wind along the mountain suddenly seemed colder and wetter.
Juhg blinked against the precipitation, starting to feel as cold and as chilled as he had back in the building basement in his sodden clothing.
“Men,”
the mantis said as if the term were despicable, “found a means to invade this place. They came into this place and stole
The Book of Time,
returning to their world before we could get them.”
Craugh,
Juhg thought, but he kept the name to himself. “You didn’t know this was going to happen?”
The mantis frowned. “I … do not like admitting something I don’t know. It is … uncomfortable.”
“It’s also,” Juhg said, “often the first step in gaining knowledge.”
“The concept of learning something that I don’t know is … well, beyond description, I’m afraid. I have always known everything.”
“What am I doing here?” Juhg asked.
The mantis stopped and looked at him. “You have been chosen to find
The Book of Time
and bring it back to this place. People search for it there. Your Grandmagister Edgewick Lamplighter was close to acquiring it, but the fourth section of
The Book of Time
is difficult to acquire. And his enemies struck more swiftly and with more knowledge than he had guessed. Still, he sent you to complete the task, and I will depend on you to accomplish that task as well.”
“Why don’t you get it?”
“Because I can’t enter your world,” the mantis said. “I can observe it endlessly, and do. But I can never put a foot in that place. Or a tentacle.”
“Tentacle?”
The mantis smiled a little. “Another joke, I’m afraid. They’ve become somewhat addictive. Of course, I can’t remember a time when humor did not exist here. Once something enters this place, it tends to fill it up and become eternal. In all directions of time.”
“Does that mean that I—”
“You’re not really here, Librarian Juhg. You only perceive yourself to be through the contact I have with you through the piece of
The Book of Time
that you have found.”
“So I am back in the basement?”
“Yes.”
“Am I drowning?”
“Not yet.”
Juhg swallowed hard. “Will I drown?”
“I don’t know. Things in your world are so much different there than here. That is why we were able to have our wars in your world: the outcome was never known for certain. Though some of them turned out to be terribly predictable. Then the various races started taking hold of their own destinies and escaped us.”
“How?”
“By creating written language and writing books, of course.”
“Books?” Juhg was puzzled.
“Yes. With books the various races that learned to read and write, that created means to do so, also created history. They learned how to avoid the situations we sometimes set up to challenge them. We created inhospitable weather, they read their books and found new places to go that they had once been or that explorers had written about. We tried to create war, which was sometimes largely successful, and they consulted books on politics and economics and found that war was not good for either side. They negotiated rather than warred. It all got very boring and we left your world to its own devices. It exists as an aberration, a place apart from this place, but nothing more. Everything that matters is here.”
“Except
The Book of Time
,” Juhg reminded, angry at the way the mantis could be so smug.
Grudgingly, the creature nodded. “Except for that.”
“This is all too much,” Juhg said. “I can’t do what you ask me to.”
The mantis regarded him with its dark eyes. “Do you wish to save Grandmagister Lamplighter?”
A sinking feeling opened in the pit of Juhg’s stomach. “Of course.”
“To accomplish that,
The Book of Time
must be gathered and returned here.”
“I can’t even pick up the first part of it in Skull Canal. My hand keeps passing through the gems.”
“You have hold of the gems, Librarian Juhg. You do have hold of them. That’s how I was able to bring you here. Your decision to feel the pulse of them and be drawn to them instead of attempting to seize them was correct. Gathering the other pieces will be simpler now that you have these.”
“Why was
The Book of Time
broken up?”
The mantis hesitated. “There are some things that I can’t tell you now. We will talk again. Later.” The creature stopped walking. “I weary of trying
to stay attuned to your way of thinking. I find it very difficult. You need to go back.”
“Wait,” Juhg said.
The mantis looked at him.
“Where is the other being? Your peer? Would he or she or it wish to take part in this discussion?”
A troubled look, though terribly abbreviated with the lack of features the mantis had to deal with, fitted itself to the creature’s face. “Don’t concern yourself with that. Take the gems in your hand and go to the Smoking Marshes. The way will not be easy. There are many challenges, and you have many enemies.”
“What enemies?”
“Aldhran Khempus and the other Library. They all seek the portions of
The Book of Time.
They have begun to guess where the pieces are.
The Book of Time
can’t be allowed to fall into the hands of humans again.”

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