Chapter 29
There are few journeys more painful than going back to a place you haven’t seen in many years. If you are lucky, it will have changed beyond recognition and, by having done so, will allow you to ignore the still larger changes in yourself.
No Returns: A Librarian’s Tale , by Ook Longarm
CHAPTER 29
Arpix
They started their trek as a group and soon became a straggle, limping their way across the margins of what had once been the Dust but currently was something considerably more habitable and perhaps even more difficult to walk across. Arpix, like most of the others, had worn his shoes out years before. The scraps of leather around his feet were held together with dry sinews and optimism.
Arpix took what Clovis called “point,” leading the way, or at least following Wentworth. He had their hoe with him and poked at any suspicious patch of ground, wary of the creatures Livira had called dust-bears. He’d never seen one, but they were things that you tended only to see while they were eating your legs. The few travellers to reach the plateau had all spoken of the ambush predators in fearful tones. Wentworth seemed oblivious to the danger, and Arpix wasn’t sure whether that meant the cat was skilfully navigating around their pits or was simply unaware of the threat.
Every now and then Arpix asked Wentworth to pause while the stragglers caught up. There were no skeer in evidence but that didn’t mean anyone should leave the orb’s protection zone. At any time, a skeer flier might drop from the sky without warning.
For the first few miles the skeer who had followed them from the plateau had attempted attacks from almost every angle. Arpix was pleased to discover that when they blocked the way it took no effort to drive them aside with the orb’s aura. If the skeer had been able to hem them in, it would have been an unequal pushing match. At Meelan’s insistence, Arpix had tried the obvious experiment, advancing at speed without warning to see if the skeer would be engulfed and killed, but each time they moved aside without any apparent injury.
Jost, who had been loath to move in the first place, had finally been motivated by the idea of a return to the library, the source of her authority. Also by the fact that she stood no chance if they left her alone. Even if the plateau’s protection had remained, the woman was clearly unequal to the labour required to feed herself.
It was Jost who demanded that Arpix give her the orb so she could trap the skeer somewhere they couldn’t escape from and thus reduce them to piles of offal like the one Wentworth had pulled too close. Arpix politely declined and pointed out that no such topology lay within many miles of their position.
Eventually, the skeer divided into two groups and went on ahead, both seemingly aimed at the closest mountain where their hive hugged the library entrance. They had no problem outpacing the humans and injured canith. Arpix listened to the muttered speculation about what kind of reception would be waiting for them in the valleys and gorges ahead.
Kerrol and Evar essentially carried Clovis between them, though pride kept her legs moving for most of the way. An uncomfortable memory plagued Arpix every time he looked back at the canith trio. Livira had escaped the Dust with three soldiers, including one who had died of his wounds on the journey. The other one had had a broken arm or something similar, which echoed Kerrol’s injured shoulder. Only Malar had escaped without serious injury, though he still bore the scars of the battle on his face.
It took all day to reach the valley that once led to Crath City. The scar of the old road still marked the ground, even after two centuries. Arpix guessed that his hometown had suffered a gentler doom than most of its predecessors. His people hadn’t reached the fire limit that Yute had spoken of, a common or garden war had burned their city down to the foundations before they’d had the opportunity to re-create the fire of the ancients and burn themselves down to the bedrock. And the canith who had done it clearly hadn’t lasted too long before the skeer they’d been retreating from had found and obliterated them in turn.
Arpix walked on, his feet sore from the unaccustomed miles. Unexpectedly, Jella had kept him company at the front. He should have expected it. The library had shaped the girl, playing on her timid nature and desire to please everyone. But the harshness of the plateau had carved most of that away and revealed a young woman with greater reserves of stamina and courage than the rest of them. She might still flinch from a scorpion or the rawness of an open wound but faced with the far greater challenge of survival against the odds, Jella had demonstrated a fearlessness that put his own worries to shame. She had taken on the environment with both hands and made a better job of the fight than Arpix and Meelan.
“Penny for your thoughts.” An old saying Jella had found in a book and was fond of using.
“You’re overvaluing what goes on in my head.”
“I’m sorry about the canith. Clovis, I mean. I know you like her.”
“I don’t—” Arpix swallowed the denial. He did.
“I always said it would take a warrior to batter down your walls.”
“She’s a fighter, that’s for sure. Don’t count her out yet.” Arpix pressed his lips together and held his face stiff against the unfamiliar emotion threatening to twist it.
“Salamonda says we’re going from the frying pan into the fire.”
“She likes her kitchen analogies.”
Jella snorted. “The plateau was a lot like a frying pan. Flat. Hot.”
“And the fire?”
“You know.” Jella gave him a sideways look. “Yute’s bringing us back into his war.”
“Well, to be fair, it’s not really his war. He spent hundreds of years just watching over the city and shelving books. And the canith rolling over Crath’s walls... that had nothing to do with Irad and Jaspeth or whatever you want to call them. I mean, if it hadn’t been for Livira we wouldn’t even know there was a war...”
“You know I’m right.”
Arpix wondered if Jella was channelling Carlotte; there was definitely something of her old friend in the forthrightness on display. And she was right, probably. Yute wasn’t calling them back to be librarians again. Arpix wondered what the mysterious deputy and his equally strange wife were planning, now that the uneasy compromises they had supported had ended in disaster and fire. He trudged on for a long dusty while before surprising Jella with an answer to her first question.
“I’m thinking that this would be so much easier if there were a dark lord who hated the world and wanted to tear it down. We’d all line up against that one.” He reached for a favourite saying of his own that he’d dug up from a tome probably every bit as old as the one Jella found hers in. “ Honourable men may differ . That’s our curse here.”
—
As the arms of the mountain started to reach around them, they saw their first skeer since the warriors had abandoned them out on the plains. Small bands of skeer runners flanked them, high on the slopes. Overhead, fliers flitted across the paling sky like errant dragonflies. Ahead the hive loomed ever larger. It was easy, from a distance, to consider it an oversized wasps’ nest. Closer in, though still miles off, and the mind began to strain to encompass quite how oversized it was. The architects and builders of Crath City had for decades stretched their imagination and their skills ever higher, piling their rocks more artfully until golden spires seemed to threaten the very sky itself. But the organic mass the skeer had adhered to the mountainside overtopped any of the fallen towers from Arpix’s time. Quite how such a thing could have been built, apparently without tools, Arpix had no idea.
Wentworth idled his way relentlessly up the valley, often saving his legs by passing through a brief-lived portal to gain a few hundred yards. He waited for them, half-asleep atop a stray boulder that winter had prised from the heights and left for spring to find in the valley.
“He’s taking us right to the nest, isn’t he?” Meelan asked.
“Looks that way,” Arpix said unenthusiastically. His arms hurt from carrying the iron ball. The thing weighed about the same as a plump baby, no challenge at first, but after fifteen miles his arms felt as if they were twice their normal length. He eyed the blue-veined walls of the nest, not at all keen to put the orb to the test against the near infinity of skeer the thing must house.
“You think they have Yute in there?” Evar called the question from back down the road.
“He’s in the library, more likely. This is the way Wentworth wants to take us in.” Arpix waited for the canith to catch up.
“We could try the way we came out,” Evar said. “No need to make a fight of it if we don’t have to.”
“I think we should.” Jella added her opinion into the mix. “My mother didn’t teach me much that stuck, but she did tell me not to kick a nest of... well, anything. And the first time I did, I really wished I’d listened to her.”
“Another vote for Jella’s mother.” Salamonda came huffing and puffing up behind the canith.
Arpix nodded, still staring at the vast nest. “There’s got to be a brain in there somewhere, and we really don’t want to attract its attention. If it starts thinking about how to deal with us... well, I could think of several ways to make this orb useless.” He called to the cat. “Wentworth, we’re going this way!”
—
Despite all he knew about the canith, Arpix found himself face to face with his prejudices when, with Clovis between them, Evar and his brother led the way through the ruins of the city before the canith entrance to the library. Time had taken the elements in both hands and used them to scrub the crumbled remains to almost nothing. Even so, Arpix could see the remnants of an architecture to match any of the works of man he was aware of.
In what Arpix still thought of as “now” but was really “his time” lost centuries in the past, there had been an army outpost in this valley. If any trace of canith ruins had been visible at that time, nobody remarked upon them. The intent of the outpost had clearly been to deny the canith access to the library, even if the system of doors within meant that there would always be chambers that only men could enter, containing more books than all the king’s subjects could ever read even if they did nothing else.
Not only had the wild “dog-soldiers” that King Oanold had so derided stormed over his royal walls, but they’d built palaces to beggar his own. And yet that narrative, which the king’s lies had written on Arpix’s soul, still stained his thinking despite the facts washing over it countless times. He shook his head and promised himself he would do better.
“Let me.” Arpix went to support Clovis as Evar started up the slope, hunting for the crack through which he’d escaped the library less than a week before.
The first rock landed two yards in front of Arpix, and he stared at it stupidly, unable to explain it to himself. Three more smashed down. Then thirty. Then it was raining.
The skeer fliers could have come in closer to drop their missiles but they sacrificed accuracy for deadliness, releasing the rocks they carried from a much greater height. Little aiming was possible, but the extra distance ensured that, when they did hit, the rocks would do more than sting.
Amid a deafening thunder of rock hammering into rock, Arpix struggled up the slope, supporting Clovis on one side as her brother did most of the work. Evar’s shouts were lost in the din, but his waving needed no explanation. He’d found the fissure and was beckoning them forward.
A terrible scream pierced the cacophony. It came from behind Arpix and if he’d turned to identify the source, the slope would have tripped him. He lurched on, ignoring Clovis’s curses as he dragged her onwards. Visions of injured friends threatened to swamp his sight, but he needed to get Clovis into cover.
Sharp fragments peppered Arpix’s face as a chunk of stone exploded against a boulder to his left. Rock dust filled the air, adding to the confusion. Clovis’s burden left him suddenly and a moment later, as he turned to go back for Jella and the others, he was grabbed from behind and dragged down.
The rain of falling stones stopped just moments after Evar pulled Arpix into the cover of the fissure. It cut off almost completely from one beat of his heart to the next, just a scatter of late impacts and then nothing. Meelan and Salamonda stumbled up to him, grey with dust. Blood coated Meelan’s forehead, running into his eyes. Arpix shook off the hand on his robe and scrambled back out to his friend’s side.
“Where are you hit?” He grabbed Meelan’s shoulders. “Meelan?”
“I’m hit?” Meelan wiped his face and stared at his crimson fingers in astonishment.
Arpix held Meelan’s head still. “It’s a cut.” Sharp fragments must have sliced his scalp. He handed Meelan into Salamonda’s care. The eldest and youngest of the bookbinders staggered into view, Nortbu and Sheetra, the girl clutching her shoulder, one arm hanging limp.
“Jella?” Arpix scanned the slope as the dust settled. “JELLA!”
A grey figure approached.
“Jella?” His eyes said no but he refused their evidence.
Jost walked past, expressionless, her mouth half-open.
“Arpix!” Evar calling from back inside the fissure. “They’ll come back!”
It was true. The skeer wouldn’t have to hunt for ammunition: suitable rocks were within arm’s reach practically anywhere they might choose to land. The hive’s brain had at last given Arpix and his friends serious consideration—they had elevated themselves from “distant annoyance” to “approaching threat,” and this was the result.
“Jella!” Arpix refused to leave her. He could see four bodies on the slope, all clothed in dust and broken stone. Logic dictated that they were Jella and her bookbinder colleagues, Atle, Henral, and Brigha, but he recognised none of them.
“Jella!” Two of the bodies stirred and a low groaning reached him.
“Arpix!” A heavy hand closed on his shoulder. Evar had emerged from the crack. Kerrol had shuffled the others below ground. “Arpix!” Evar’s hand pointed to a cloud of fliers rising from the rocky slope to the west. A literal cloud, perhaps a thousand of the insectoids. “We have to go.”
“You do.” Arpix nodded. “Look after them for me.” He shook free and ran back down to the nearest body, skipping across the rocks in his disintegrating shoes.
The closest of the fallen was Atle Norstad, a quiet, studious man who had nearly earned his librarian’s robes but never complained about falling at the last hurdle. The groans had come from him. Blood bubbled from his mouth, and as Arpix rolled him to his side the scale of his injury became apparent, his chest cratered by an impact not even a skeer warrior could survive. Atle watched the sky, wide grey eyes filled with innocence and vague surprise.
“I’m so sorry...” Arpix felt ridiculous, apologising as if he’d spilled the man’s chai at dinner. “I’m so sorry.” He moved on, passing the second figure for the most distant who had managed to lift themselves a little from the ground.
“Arpix!” Evar’s despairing shout. The whirr of skeer wings filled the air like the promise of a coming storm.
Arpix reached the moving figure. It was Jella. “Up!” He wrenched her to her feet, not even questioning where the strength came from. “Are you hurt?”
“I...” Jella set a hand to her bleeding nose. “I just fell.”
“Come on!” Arpix dragged her forward, only to have the woman collapse with a cry of pain.
“My ankle!” Jella sobbed with the agony.
A shadow swallowed the slope.
“Leave me!” Jella tried to pull free of his hands. “Run!”
“Never going to happen.”
“Arpix.” Jella looked at him, horrified, her eyes flitting to the mosaicked sky above them, skeer-dark and sun-bright. “Damn you, Arpix! Run!”
Arpix bent and tried to pick Jella up. Privation had stripped her to a shadow of her former self, but it was still all he could do to lift her now that the terror had left him. He was still scared of course, but he wasn’t terrified. He’d been terrified of leaving her alone to die. He wasn’t terrified of dying with her. Just scared. “We’re going to make it.” He managed a couple of staggering steps up the slope. “Nothing to it.”
The first stones of the new rain hit close by.
Suddenly Evar was there. The canith slung Jella over his shoulder with a grunt and began to run back up the slope so fast that Arpix could barely keep pace. Rocks hammered all around them, exploding with breathtaking fury.
Arpix didn’t expect to reach the fissure. But he did, and waiting hands hauled him down in Evar’s wake.