Orlind (46 page)

‘
Listen,’ Eva said in desperation. ‘Perhaps we could introduce
ourselves. What is your name, besides the Master?’

He looked
sideways at her, eyes narrowed, his whole expression one of
calculating speculation. Then he was suddenly all affability. He
charged forward and grabbed her hand, shaking it with painful
enthusiasm. ‘Galywis,’ he barked. ‘And you are?’

Eva introduced
everyone, using only their first names to avoid confusion. As
before, he focused almost entirely on her, ignoring everyone else.
‘Eva!’ he beamed. ‘Good of you to come. Not many people visit an
old man like me, out here by myself. Not many at all, no. Haven’t
much to offer you, sorry. The old girl’s ailing.’

‘
You
mean the Library?’

‘
Why,
I
do
mean the Library!’ he cried in exaggerated delight.
‘How did you know?’

‘
I...
just a guess,’ she said, taken aback. ‘Why is she
ailing?’

‘
Oh,
broken, broken. Long time ago now.’

‘
How
did that happen?’

‘
It
was the fighting that did it,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘Wanted
everything, didn’t they? And they got nothing at all! Ha!’ He
laughed, an unpleasant sound. ‘But the old girl suffered the most,
didn’t she? Always the way.’

He talked as
though the Library was a living entity, capable of independent
thought. As wondrous as the Libraries were, Eva was fairly certain
that this was beyond them. How long had Galywis been out
here?

‘
Do
you have company?’ Eva asked him. ‘Anyone else here?’

‘
No,
no,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just me.’

Good gracious,
she thought faintly. Orlind had been lost for a long, long time. If
he had been here all along, alone and ceaselessly assailed by the
mind-bending peculiarities of the place, no wonder he was
completely mad. He may have been like Limbane, once, but his sanity
must have gone long ago. How long could the five of them remain
here before their wits began to unravel?

‘
Galywis,’ she said with a smile. ‘Do you know the names of
these people? The fighters who wanted the Library?’

He nodded
vigorously. A premonition of the answer made her wait, holding her
breath, for his next comment.

‘
Those
boys ought to have known better,’ he said, suddenly angry. ‘Hey,
you aren’t with them are you? You aren’t, are you?’

The suspicion was
back. Eva backed away a step under the glare he threw at her, her
nervousness growing. ‘I’m not here for anyone, but you’ll have to
tell me who you mean if you want me to be sure.’

‘
Both
wanted to be Lokantor,’ he growled. ‘But that was me, see? And I
knew better than they did, much better. Took better care of the old
girl.’

Eva opened her
mouth to ask him again, but she was distracted by a sudden ripple
in the air. The hallway in which they were standing warped and
changed in a flash, becoming an enormous greenhouse teeming with
plants. She smelled the mingled aromas of many fruits and blossoms,
heard the dull buzzing of insects in the air.

The change seemed
to please Galywis, for he settled down again at once. This was
promising, only he then wandered off into the thick of the plants,
apparently forgetting about his visitors.

‘
Galywis?’ she called, adding a curse under her breath when he
disappeared altogether. ‘The man is completely
maddening!’

‘
Come
and see my trees!’ he shouted.

Rolling her eyes,
Eva plunged into the undergrowth after him, following the sounds of
rustling leaves. The greenhouse was crowded with plants, so thickly
that she had real trouble finding her way through the clustered
pots and crates. At length she burst free of the greenery into a
little clearing ringed with fruit trees. Galywis had gathered an
overflowing armful of fruits, which he now offered to her with
touching eagerness.

‘
The
old girl’s come up with something after all! Must like you, eh?
Try!’

Eva eyed these
offerings doubtfully, but they looked sound. She took a fat purple
fruit with powdery skin, sniffing it dubiously as Galywis turned to
each of her friends in turn and thrust various others at them. A
tentative nibble revealed soft, sweet-tasting flesh, and she ate
the rest gladly.

‘
That
was good of you, Galywis,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you.’

He beamed, but
the smile vanished almost immediately. ‘Talking, weren’t we? What
was it you said?’

‘
I...’
Eva stopped, astonished, as Galywis took a seat on his back, with
his shoeless feet stretched up against the trunk of a small tree.
He continued to look at her expectantly, his being now upside down
no apparent impediment to their carrying on a
conversation.

Well, it
shouldn’t be. Only, looking at him in his inverted posture was
playing havoc with her carefully-balanced notions of direction.
That traitorous part of her mind still insisted that she was the
wrong way up, and now her physical vision seemed to be agreeing
with it. She grabbed hold of Tren to steady herself, fighting the
temptation to close her eyes.

‘
Um, I
had asked about the people who broke the old girl,’ she said.
‘Maybe I know them.’

‘
Sit,
sit,’ he said to them all, stretching out his arms to gesture, most
hospitably, at the damp floor. ‘Those boys, yes. But can I
remember?’ He thought for a while, screwing up his eyes. ‘Yes! I
do
remember! Erritas and Meevel, those were the
names.’

Eva felt both
disappointed and bewildered. Who were these people?

‘
One
question,’ Tren interjected. ‘Is Galywis your first name or your
family name?’

He thought about
that for a while. ‘Father was called Galywis. Brother. Cousins.
Must be a family name! Come to think of it, I can’t remember if I
had a first name. Suppose I must have.’

‘
So
Erritas and Meevel are family names too?’

‘
Yes,
excellent! So they are.’

‘
Their
first names weren’t Limbane and Krays, by any chance?’

‘
Those
are familiar,’ Galywis agreed comfortably. ‘Might have been, at
that.’

Tren shot her a
triumphant smile. ‘We’ve met them a time or two.’

Galywis shot
upright at that. ‘Are they here? You brought them, didn’t
you!’

‘
No,
no,’ Eva said, trying to sound soothing. ‘We came by ourselves.’
She paused for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts. Logical
reflection was virtually impossible under these circumstances. Too
much of her intellect was tied up in the effort to make sense of
this contradictory, muddlesome world; the rest had a hard task
unravelling the nuggets of rational information from Galywis’s
deranged manner of holding a conversation. She cast a desperate
look at Tren.

‘
Right,’ he said, taking the conversational lead. ‘So Krays and
Limbane wanted the Library? Why?’

‘
Because it was the best!’ Galywis said grandly. At Eva’s
assurances he had sunk back down onto the ground, though he was
restless.

Tren struggled
with that. ‘So... Orlind was some kind of Master
Library?’

‘
Mistress, if you please!’ Galywis corrected. ‘No way to speak
about a lady, that.’

‘
Sorry,’ Tren mumbled.

‘
Orlind,’ Galywis said dreamily. ‘She was the centre, the
queen...’

Eva tried to
piece all that together. Orlind, Queen of the Libraries. A building
with an identity crisis that behaved like a Lowers construct but
had once been a major Library. A Master Lokantor who was mad,
utterly and beyond hope. The only part of it that made sense to her
was that Krays and Limbane had fought over it long ago, and had in
some way been responsible for its demise. That aligned perfectly
with what she knew of their rivalry and the ambition they both
shared. It also explained why Limbane had never told her about
this; he wanted to appear as the great Lokantor but there had been
a greater, once. Nor would it suit him to admit that he had ever
erred so badly as she began to believe he had.

But what did
Galywis mean about a Master Library? And why had Orlind been so
significant that two Lokants had destroyed it in their desire to
possess it? Asking him outright would be of no help at all;
Galywis’s ability to follow a rational train of thought was too far
gone. She had better try another approach.

‘
Tell
us about the old girl,’ Eva said. ‘What was she like, before she
was broken?’

‘
Oh,
she was magnificent!’ Galywis beamed, spreading out his arms. ‘She
flew.’

‘
...
Flew?’

He nodded
vigorously, but advanced no elaboration.

‘
You
mean she could move around?’

‘
Yes.
Never could tell where she’d turn up next.’ He spoke with pride, as
though the subject of the conversation was his daughter or
protege.

‘
Just
in this Cluster, or across worlds?’

‘
Anywhere! Anywhere at all.’

So, Orlind - or
the Library that had once been in Orlind - wasn’t confined to any
world at all. It had come here, or been guided here, and once
broken it had never been able to leave.

‘
Why
did she come here, Galywis?’

‘
Oh,
there was such a great deal to be done! So many possibilities, we
had to have a Library here. And of course, we brought the
best.’

‘
Oh?
Why did you need the best?’

Galywis began
tapping his toes against the tree trunk, as if in time to a tune
only he could hear. ‘Populating an empty world is never easy, as
you must know. She had everything we needed.’

Eva stared,
thunderstruck. ‘You... what did you say? This world was
empty
when you arrived?’

He fluttered a
hand in a prevaricating gesture. ‘Oh, some low-level denizens here,
that kind of thing. Nothing approaching sentient. What a waste that
was, with such beautiful energies! Nothing quite like it anywhere
else.’ He tilted back his head to beam at her. ‘It was
my
idea, you know.’

‘
So...
uh, tell us about your project, Galywis,’ Eva prompted. ‘Did you
bring some other creatures here?’

He seemed
horrified by this idea. ‘No, no! Stupid! Transplants never take,
you should know that, Lokant Eva! Construction had to be the thing!
Never easy, though, building sentients. We went through some
failures.’ His satisfaction vanished and a frown clouded his brow.
‘There were disagreements, of course. Was Maeval who wrought the
first success, damn him. Damned unimaginative too.’

Which one was
Maeval? Limbane or Krays? ‘What did Maeval build?’

Galywis pointed a
finger at Tren, who took an alarmed step backward.

‘
I
don’t understand...’ began Eva, but then she stopped, electrified.
‘You mean... humans?’

‘
Don’t
know why he bothered,’ Galywis said in irritation. ‘Nothing new
there! Built them on the same old pattern, and such plain beasts!
Should’ve made better use of the unique energies around here, but
no! He had to have his damned engineers.’

Eva blinked. ‘So
humans were... were built here, to be engineers?’

‘
Right! Sharp in the brain area, I’ll say that much for them.
Handy with the fingers too.’

Thinking back,
she remembered Limbane had always spoken of Krays as predominantly
interested in engineering. If she had to guess, she would bet that
Maeval was Krays.

In which
case...

‘
What
about the draykoni, Galywis? Did Erritas build those?’

‘
Wrong!’ he cackled. He jumped up without warning, tumbled
forward again in a roll and landed flat-out on the floor between a
startled Llandry and Pensould. ‘Want to guess who made those
marvellous creatures? Guess!’

His
self-satisfied grin rather ruined the suspense. ‘You did,’ Eva
tried.

‘
My
beauties,’ he crooned. ‘
There
was perfection! There was
imagination, vision! Our greatest achievement.’

Eva suppressed a
sigh. She’d yet to meet a Lokant with any notion of modesty. ‘Why
were they so special?’

‘
Besides
beauty, grace, searing intelligence, strength,
nobility?’ He directed a dazzling smile at Llandry, who returned
only a white-faced stare.

‘
Yes,
besides those things,’ Eva said dryly.

Galywis’s mood
turned thoughtful. ‘I could’ve gone Maeval’s way, and built them in
the Labs. Didn’t do that. Not good enough, see? Not for a
genius.
I bound part of the old girl to your glorious world,
merged them up nicely. Once those delicious amaskan energies were
flowing well, off we went! The first draykoni were steeped in that
stuff. Up to the eyeballs. It changed their brains. Definitely the
most interesting thing I’ve done.’ He folded his arms behind his
head, quite comfortable.

Eva raised an
eyebrow. If Galywis was to be believed, all of this went a long way
towards explaining the differences between humans and draykoni. The
latter were so sensitive to the three worlds, especially the
Off-Worlds; they were truly merged with the energies that Galywis
called “amaskan” and Eterna spoke of as “amasku”. Yet humans only
possessed a shadow of that ability, if they had draykon blood
somewhere in their family tree. It wasn’t inherent in them in the
same way.