“You could throw me the dagger.”
I looked at her skeptically. The ropes seemed wound pretty tightly around her. They, however, were connected to the pillars.
“Hang on,” I said, walking up to one of the pillars.
“Alcatraz…” she said, sounding uncertain. “What are you doing?”
I laid my hand against the pillar, then closed my eyes. I’d destroyed the jet by touching the smoke … could I do something like that here too? Guide my Talent up the pillar to the ropes?
“Alcatraz!” Bastille said. “I don’t want to get squished by a bunch of falling pillars. Don’t…”
I released a burst of breaking power.
“Gak!”
She said this last part as her ropes—which were connected to the pillars—frayed and fell to pieces. I opened my eyes in time to see her grab the one remaining whole piece of rope and swing down to the ground, landing beside me, puffing slightly.
She looked up. The pillar didn’t fall on us. I removed my hand.
She cocked her head, then regarded me. “Huh.”
“Not bad, eh?”
She shrugged. “A real man would have climbed up and cut me down with the dagger. Come on. We’ve got to find the others.”
I rolled my eyes, but took her thank-you for what it was worth. She stuffed the boots and dagger back in her pack, then threw it over her shoulder. We walked down the hallway for a moment, then spun as we heard a crashing sound.
The pillar had finally decided to topple, throwing up broken chips of stone as it hit the ground. The entire hallway shook from the impact.
A wave of dust from the rubble puffed around us. Bastille gave me a suffering look, then sighed and continued walking.
Chapter
10
You may wonder why I hate fantasy novels so much. Or maybe you don’t. That doesn’t really matter, because I’m going to tell you anyway.
(Of course, if you want to know how the book ends, you could skip to the last page—but I wouldn’t recommend that. It will prove very disturbing to your psyche.)
Anyway, let’s talk about fantasy novels. First, you have to understand that when I say “fantasy novels,” I mean books about dieting or literature or people living during the Great Depression. Fantasy novels, then, are books that don’t include things like glass dragons, ghostly Curators, or magical Lenses.
I hate fantasy novels. Well, that’s not true. I don’t really hate them. I just get annoyed by what they’ve done to the Hushlands.
People don’t read anymore. And when they do, they don’t read books like this one, but instead read books that depress them, because those books are seen as important. Somehow, the Librarians have successfully managed to convince most people in the Hushlands that they shouldn’t read anything that isn’t boring.
It comes down to Biblioden the Scrivener’s great vision for the world—a vision in which people never do anything abnormal, never dream, and never experience anything strange. His minions teach people to stop reading fun books and instead focus on fantasy novels. That’s what I call them, because those books keep people trapped. Keep them inside the nice little fantasy that they consider to be the “real” world. A fantasy that tells them they don’t need to try something new.
After all, trying new things can be difficult.
“We need a plan,” Bastille said as we walked the corridors of the library. “We can’t just keep wandering around in here.”
“We need to find Grandpa Smedry,” I said, “or my father.”
“We also need to find Kaz and Australia, not to mention my mother.” She grimaced a bit at that last part.
And … that’s not everything either, I thought. My father came here for a reason. He came searching for something.
Something very important.
I’d found a communication from him several months back—it had come with the package that had contained the Sands of Rashid. My father had sounded tense in his letter. He’d been excited, but worried too.
He’d discovered something dangerous. The Sands of Rashid—the Translator’s Lenses—had been only the beginning. They were a step toward uncovering something much greater. Something that had frightened my father.
He’d spent thirteen years searching for whatever the something was. That trail had ended here, at the Library of Alexandria. Could he really have come because he’d grown frustrated? Had he traded his soul for the answers he sought, just so that he could finally stop searching?
I shivered, glancing at the Curators who floated behind us. “Bastille,” I said. “You said that one of them spoke to you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Kept trying to get me to borrow a book.”
“It spoke to you in English?”
“Well, Nalhallan,” she said. “But it’s pretty much the same thing. Why?”
“Mine spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand.”
“Mine did that at first too,” she said. “Several of them surrounded me and searched through my possessions. They grabbed the supply list and several of the labels off the foodstuffs. Then they left—all except for that one behind us. It continued to jabber at me in that infuriating language. It was only after I’d been caught that it started speaking Nalhallan.”
I glanced again at the Curators. They use traps, I thought. But not ones that kill—ones that keep people tangled up. They separate everyone who comes in, then they make each one wander the hallways, lost. They talk to us in a language they know we don’t understand when they could easily speak in English instead.
This whole place is all about annoying people. The Curators are trying to make us frustrated. All so that we’ll give up and take one of the books they’re offering.
“So,” Bastille said. “What’s our plan?”
I shrugged. “Why ask me?”
“Because you’re in charge, Alcatraz,” she said, sighing. “What’s your problem, anyway? Half the time you seem ready to give orders and rush about. The other half of the time, you complain that you don’t want to be the one who has to make the decisions.”
I didn’t answer. To be honest, I hadn’t really figured out my feelings either.
“Well?” she asked.
“First we find Kaz, Australia, and your mother.”
“Why would you need to find me?” Kaz asked. “I mean, I’m right here.”
We both jumped. And of course there he was. Wearing his bowler and rugged jacket, hands in his pockets, smiling at us impishly.
“Kaz!” I said. “You found us!”
“You were lost,” he said, shrugging. “If I’m lost, it’s easier for me to find someone else who is lost—since abstractly, we’re both in the same place.”
I frowned, trying to make sense of that. Kaz looked around, eyeing the pillars and their archways. “Not at all like I imagined it.”
“Really?” Bastille asked. “It looks pretty much like I figured it would.”
“I expected them to take better care of their scrolls and books,” Kaz said.
“Kaz,” I said. “You found us, right?”
“Uh, what did I just say, kid?”
“Can you find Australia too?”
He shrugged. “I can try. But, we’ll have to be careful. Quite nearly got myself caught in a trap a little ways back. I tripped a wire, and a large hoop swung out of the wall and tried to grab me.”
“What happened?” Bastille said.
He laughed. “It went right over my hat. Reason number fifteen, Bastille: Short people make smaller targets!”
I just shook my head.
“I’ll scout ahead,” Bastille said. “Looking for tripwires. Then the two of you can follow. Kaz will engage his Talent at each intersection and pick the next way to go. Hopefully his Talent will lead us to Australia.”