The Dead Hamlets: Book Two of the Book of Cross (20 page)

The Black Guard cut down, impaled or otherwise killed a dozen fey before I could even react. The woman with six arms was a whirlwind of blades. The stone man smashed his fist into a fey and a couple of men standing nearby fell as well from the shockwave. I couldn’t see what the yeti thing did because a flurry of snow masked its movement, but it left bleeding bodies behind.

“Stop!” I cried. My hands instinctively reached for a weapon, but I had nothing. I was growing careless in my old age. Anubis assumed a fighting stance and readied his staff anyway as he remained close to me. The black scythe blade flared a bit, like a fire that had found fresh kindling.

I took a few steps toward Amelia, to shield her with my body, but the Black Guard had already stopped their killing before the word even escaped my mouth. They stepped back and assumed their guard positions again as the faerie and fey drew knives and sharpened sticks and even a few guns from beneath their own clothing. For all the good it would do them.

“What is the meaning of this?” Morgana cried, turning on Marlowe, and he took a step back. The power of the faerie queen is not to be tested lightly, even if you’ve got the Black Guard in your corner. I took the moment to glance at Amelia. She looked unmoved by everything that had just happened. She didn’t even look at me. She just gazed off into the distance, as if thinking about something else.

“Unless I’m mistaken, you need blood to summon the Witches,” Marlowe said. “Now you have blood.”

“A thimble full would have sufficed,” I said, looking back at him.

“Now you have extra in case something goes wrong,” Marlowe said. I knew the deaths were also a message. If I tried any tricks, there’d be more deaths to follow.

But I didn’t want to try any tricks. I didn’t want any more dead faerie or fey on the ground. I didn’t want Amelia or Alice or anyone else to join their ranks. And the truth was, I didn’t mind the idea of Marlowe and the Black Guard tagging along with us now that they were here. We might need all the help we could get in dealing with the ghost problem. It was what happened after we dealt with the problem that I was concerned about.

I shrugged and put it out of my head for the moment. There’d be plenty of time for dealing with that later. I hoped.

I took another look at the bodies soaking the ground with their blood. Then I pushed past Anubis and walked up the hill to stand beside Alice and the giant spider thing. Alice smiled at me and the spider snapped its multiple sets of mandibles together and drooled some thick substance that melted the ground beneath it.

“Sorry I got you into this,” I said to Alice.

“That’s all right,” she said, patting the spider thing on its back like it was some sort of pet. “I’m kind of curious about how this story ends anyway.”

“You and me both,” I said.

Then her eyes went wide and she looked all around. “What if it doesn’t end?” she whispered.

I didn’t want to think about that, so I took a few steps away from her and looked out into the mist. I said the words that summoned the Witches, low enough that hopefully no one else would hear. Despite the differences the Witches and I sometimes had, I didn’t want other people bothering them. They were just being true to their nature when they did things like toss me into boiling cauldrons. I knew they couldn’t help themselves.

I didn’t bother trying to write the name of the play on a piece of paper or anything ritualistic like that this time. I figured there was no need in this place. I also didn’t bother going down to the bodies for blood. There was enough blood in the air.

There must have been more than enough blood, because it didn’t take long at all for the Witches to arrive. One minute it was just empty mist all around, the next the mist thickened into a dense fog and the Witches came out of it and circled me.

“Something wicked this way comes,” one of the Witches breathed into my ear.

“A deed without a name,” another of the Witches said.

“Double, double toil and trouble,” the third Witch said.

“Let’s skip the drama and get right down to it,” I said. I took out the book and showed it to them. “I need to get back to the library where this came from,” I said. “The only problem is it doesn’t exist, at least not in our world. Kind of like the play you live in. But I think you know how to get there. You helped Shakespeare find it, didn’t you?”

“Alas, poor Will,” one of the Witches said.

“We knew him well,” another said.

“We showed him the path to Hell,” the third one said.

“We all make our own paths,” I said. “Can you help us find the Forgotten Library or not?”

“Only one other has come to us to seek the way,” one of the Witches said.

“One other who no longer looks upon the day,” another one of the Witches said.

“One other who is dead to stay,” the third Witch said.

So I’d been right about how Will had found the Forgotten Library. He always had been a crafty one.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I said. “Name your price.” I took a deep breath and waited. This part could get ugly.

Instead, the Witches drifted back away from me, disappearing into the mist again.

“Here is the way to an unknown land,” one of the Witches said.

“Here is the way to a forgotten land,” another of the Witches said.

“Here is the way to an unread land,” the third Witch said.

Then they were gone, the only sign they’d ever been there a whisper drifting out of the mist.

“Come like shadows, so depart,” they said.

Marlowe climbed the hill to stand at my side and look after the Witches.

“Did your little magic trick work?” he asked.

I stared into the mist. I couldn’t see a thing. “I have no idea,” I said. That had been my least painful experience with the Witches so far. It was almost like they were eager to fulfill my wish. So eager they hadn’t even demanded anything in return. That didn’t bode well.

I put the book back in my pocket and walked forward a bit. That was when I saw it. Another book lying in the grass. The copy of
Alice’s Adventures Under Ground
that Alice had destroyed in the British Library.

“What is it?” the Scholar cried behind me. “You should probably let an expert examine it.”

Marlowe stepped up to my side. “Indeed, what have you found?” he asked.

I looked deeper into the mist. I saw a couple more books lying there at the edge of my vision. One was charred almost to nothing. The other was so warped from the elements I couldn’t make out anything on the cover.

“I think it’s the way to the Forgotten Library,” I said and started forward. “Don’t let the Scholar touch anything,” I added. “We might need those books to find our way back.”

More books were scattered on the ground past the others. Some folios and what looked like ancient bibles and even a few confessionals. I thought I recognized a number of them from Baal’s library, which had burned when I’d torched his home. They lay there as if someone had emptied out a box and simply walked away. Then there were even more as we went. A pile of them that rose to knee height on one side of us. Then another pile that rose to waist height on the other. Then stacks of them that formed walls on either side of us, rising slowly as we went, to chest height and then shoulder height and then towering over our heads. There were burning books in their midst, and others soaking wet or covered with mud or mould. More than a few were bloodstained.

“Where are we?” Morgana asked somewhere behind me.

“We are entering the Forgotten Library,” I said. It was just like the other times I’d found myself in this place. Only this time I was alive. I hoped it would make a difference.

The ground gave way to a floor of books, and we walked upon their torn and faded covers. Then we passed through an arch made of books, and the sky on the other side was gone, replaced by more books.

“Why, truly this is Heaven,” the Scholar sighed.

“Heaven is a library of the books that are,” Alice said from somewhere distant. “Not the books that aren’t.”

“We are all far from Heaven,” Marlowe muttered, and I was inclined to agree with him.

The hallway grew wider as we went, until it was like a great hall of the sort you would see in a palace. More hallways began to branch off from it, winding away in what looked like random paths. There were more books than I could count here. There were more books than I could imagine in the library.

“Perhaps we should split up and go our separate ways,” the Scholar suggested. “To better explore this place.”

“We’ll stay together,” Marlowe said, “until we find what we need.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw the Black Guard forming a perimeter around the others, forcing them into the middle of the hall. The spider Alice rode was scuttling along the ceiling. She still sat on its back, but she was sitting upside down now. She waved at me and didn’t seem to notice the Scholar glowering at her. I looked in front of us again and carried on.

“Which path do you think will lead us to our prize?” Marlowe asked.

“I suspect the only one who knows the answer to that is Will,” I said. “We’ll just have to find our way as best we can.”

We came to what appeared to be a statue of a man reading a book in the middle of the hall. The statue was giant, twice the size of the largest Black Guard, and also made of books.

“There are more mysteries between heaven and hell than the mind can fathom,” Marlowe said, gazing at the figure.

“If you don’t mind, I’m not really in the mood to talk philosophy,” I said as I went past the statue.

Marlowe chuckled. “What form of conversation shall we pass the time with then?” he asked.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” I said.

“I suspected you would be,” Marlowe said. “Although I’ll tell you now it will change nothing.”

“I don’t think you came up with the idea that I would travel to Macbeth’s Hillock to seek out the Witches all on your own,” I said. “I think you were waiting for us because someone must have tipped you off.”

Marlowe grinned that skullish grin of his at me and nodded. “It’s true,” he said. “We never would have found you on our own. Whatever remains of our friendship compels me to tell you that you have a spy in your midst.”

I looked over my shoulder at the Scholar, and the Scholar scowled back at me. “I’m sure the Royal Family has many fine texts to tempt me,” he said, “but even they do not have a collection like this library. I would not have risked my chance to explore it by turning you over to the fate you no doubt deserve.”

“Not him,” Marlowe said to me, wisely ignoring the Scholar. “Him.”

I followed the direction he pointed with his bony finger, looking past the Scholar and into the crowd of faerie and fey.

Puck.

Puck grinned and shrugged as everyone stopped to stare at him.

“Sorry, but I couldn’t help myself,” he said.

“In his defence, I believe the sprite tells the truth,” Marlowe said. “He’s a creature of pure mischief and could no more pass up the opportunity to sow chaos than you could to steal grace from an angel.”

“I’m no sprite!” Puck said indignantly.

“Not yet,” Morgana said in a hard tone of voice she usually reserved for me. I felt suddenly and strangely jealous of Puck. “Put him in irons.”

Cobweb and Mustardseed and a few other faerie fell upon him, and within seconds Puck was shackled and on his knees.

“It’s in my nature!” he protested. “You know that.”

“I know, my pet, I know,” Morgana said, her voice back to normal, as if her mood had already passed. “Now hush.” She nodded at the woman with the donkey’s head, who stepped close and pulled a needle and thread from her purse. The donkey woman sewed Puck’s mouth shut so quickly her hands were a blur. And then Puck had nothing to say at all.

Morgana looked at me, but I turned away and kept on walking. What else was there to do, after all?

We went past a tree made of books and then what looked like a fountain of books frozen in mid-splash. The architect, if there was one, had classic tastes.

The Scholar sidled up to Marlowe as we went down the hall. He whistled a tuneless tune, then cleared his throat several times.

“What is it?” Marlowe sighed.

“I must admit I am curious about the rumours of your collaboration with Shakespeare,” the Scholar said to him.

“There was no collaboration,” Marlowe said, looking back at the passage of books in front of us.

“Of course, of course,” the Scholar said, nodding. “I would have known if such a text had been written. But discussions of the possible text, on the other hand—”

“There were no discussions of a collaboration either,” Marlowe said.

“I understand,” the Scholar said, rubbing his hands together and engulfing us in a cloud of dust. “Such important playwrights as yourselves couldn’t be seen in formal discussions regarding a matter like that. Everyone knows the treaties it would violate.”

I didn’t know anything about those treaties but I refrained from commenting. Let Marlowe suffer.

“There were no discussions, formal or informal,” Marlowe said, grinding his teeth together. “Will and I never had any interest in working together.”