Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians
The Knights of Crystallia
Brandon Sanderson
For Jane, who does her best to keep me looking fashionable, and does it in such an endearing way that I can’t even convince myself to wear mismatched socks anymore (except on Thursdays)
Author’s Foreword
I am awesome.
No, really. I’m the most amazing person you’ve ever read about. Or that you ever will read about. There’s nobody like me out there. I’m Alcatraz Smedry, the unbelievably incredible.
If you’ve read the previous two volumes of my autobiography (and I hope that you have, for if you haven’t I will make fun of you later on), you might be surprised to hear me being so positive. I worked hard in the other books to make you hate me. I told you quite bluntly in the first book that I was not a nice person, then I proceeded to show that I was a liar in the second.
I was wrong. I’m an amazing, stupendous person. I might be a little selfish at times, but I’m still rather incredible. I just wanted you to know that.
You might remember from the other two books (assuming you weren’t too distracted by how awesome I am) that this series is being published simultaneously in the Free Kingdoms and in the Hushlands. Those in the Free Kingdoms—Mokia, Nalhalla, and the like—can read it for what it really is, an autobiographical work that explains the truth behind my rise to fame. In the Hushlands—places like the United States, Mexico, and Australia—this will be published as a fantasy novel to disguise it from Librarian agents.
Both lands need this book. Both lands need to understand that I am no hero. The best way to explain this, I have now decided, is to talk repeatedly about how awesome, incredible, and amazing I am.
You’ll understand eventually.
Chapter
1
So there I was, hanging upside down underneath a gigantic glass bird, speeding along at a hundred miles an hour above the ocean, in no danger whatsoever.
That’s right. I wasn’t in any danger. I was more safe at that moment than I’d ever been in my entire life, despite a plummet of several hundred feet looming below me. (Or, well, above me, since I was upside down.)
I took a few cautious steps. The oversized boots on my feet had a special type of glass on the bottom, called Grappler’s Glass, which let them stick to other things made of glass. That kept me from falling off. (At which point up would quickly become down as I fell to my death. Gravity is such a punk.)
If you’d seen me, with the wind howling around me and the sea churning below, you might not have agreed that I was safe. But these things—like which direction is up—are relative. You see, I’d grown up as a foster child in the Hushlands: lands controlled by the evil Librarians. They’d carefully watched over me during my childhood, anticipating the day when I’d receive a very special bag of sand from my father.
I’d received the bag. They’d stolen the bag. I’d gotten the bag back. Now I was stuck to the bottom of a giant glass bird. Simple really. If it doesn’t make sense to you, then might I recommend picking up the first two books of a series before you try to read the third one?
Unfortunately, I know that some of you Hushlanders have trouble counting to three. (The Librarian-controlled schools don’t want you to be able to manage complex mathematics.) So I’ve prepared this helpful guide.
Definition of “book one”: The best place to start a series. You can identify “book one” by the fact that it says BOOK ONE on the back cover. Smedrys do a happy dance when you read book one first. Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being clever enough to organize the world.
Definition of “book two”: The book you read after book one. If you start with book two, I will make fun of you. (Okay, so I’ll make fun of you either way. But honestly, do you want to give me more ammunition?)
Definition of “book three”: The worst place, currently, to start a series. If you start here, I will throw things at you.
Definition of “book four”: And … how’d you manage to start with that one? I haven’t even written it yet. (You sneaky time travelers.)
Anyway, if you haven’t read book two, you missed out on some very important events. Those include: a trip into the fabled Library of Alexandria, sludge that tastes faintly of bananas, ghostly Librarians that want to suck your soul, giant glass dragons, the tomb of Alcatraz the First, and—most important—a lengthy discussion about belly button lint. By not reading book two, you also just forced a large number of people to waste an entire minute reading that recap. I hope you’re satisfied.
I clomped along, making my way toward a solitary figure standing near the chest of the bird. Enormous glass wings beat on either side of me, and I passed thick glass bird legs that were curled up and tucked back. Wind howled and slammed against me. The bird—called Hawkwind—wasn’t quite as majestic as our previous vehicle, a glass dragon called Dragonaut. Still, it had a nice group of compartments inside where one could travel in luxury.
My grandfather, of course, couldn’t be bothered with something as normal as waiting inside a vehicle. No, he had to cling to the bottom and stare out over the ocean. I fought against the wind as I approached him—and then suddenly the wind vanished. I froze in shock, one of my boots locking into place on the bird’s glass underside.
Grandpa Smedry jumped, turning. “Rotating Rothfusses!” he exclaimed. “You surprised me, lad!”
“Sorry,” I said, walking forward, my boots making a clinking sound each time I unlocked one, took a step, then locked back onto the glass. As always, my grandfather wore a sharp black tuxedo—he thought it made him blend in better in the Hushlands. He was bald except for a tuft of white hair that ran around the back of his head, and he sported an impressively bushy white mustache.
“What happened to the wind?” I asked.
“Hum? Oh, that.” My grandfather reached up, tapping the green-specked spectacles he wore. They were Oculatory Lenses, a type of magical glasses that—when activated by an Oculator like Grandpa Smedry or me—could do some very interesting things. (Those things don’t, unfortunately, include forcing lazy readers to go and reread the first couple of books, thereby removing the need for me to explain all of this stuff over and over again.)
“Windstormer’s Lenses?” I asked. “I didn’t know you could use them like this.” I’d had a pair of Windstormer’s Lenses, and I’d used them to shoot out jets of wind.
“It takes quite a bit of practice, my boy,” Grandpa Smedry said in his boisterous way. “I’m creating a bubble of wind that is shooting out from me in exactly the opposite direction of the wind that’s pushing against me, thereby negating it all.”
“But … shouldn’t that blow me backward as well?”
“What? No, of course not! What makes you think that it would?”
“Uh … physics?” I said. (Which you might agree is a rather strange thing to be mentioning while hanging upside down through the use of magical glass boots.)
Grandpa Smedry laughed. “Excellent joke, lad. Excellent.” He clasped me on the shoulder. Free Kingdomers such as my grandfather tend to be very amused by Librarian concepts like physics, which they find to be utter nonsense. I think that the Free Kingdomers don’t give the Librarians enough credit. Physics isn’t nonsense—it’s just incomplete.