Scrubbing the heel of his hand between his eyebrows in an effort to recenter his spinning brain, he went back to the beginning and started over.
Within my bloodline—the keepers of the library’s secrets—they say that a powerful Prophet will arise as we get close to the end-time. This Prophet will be an outsider, one who has lost his way, but once he finds himself, finds his magic, he’ll have the power to avert a terrible tragedy. How could I not think the prophecy was talking about me? Ostracized from my bloodline, stripped of my powers, yet born for so much more than I had become, there couldn’t be anybody better for the job.
Did this happen because of my pride? Because I wasn’t humble enough before the gods or the magic? Rather than dying and giving my people a Prophet, I’m stuck in here. I’ve got the answers, but no way to give them to those who once loved me.
That all made sense to a point, Lucius supposed, but he could’ve used more context. Unfortunately, the next page and a half contained confusing rambles about flames and staring eyes. Then, finally, on the last written page, there was something useful.
Therefore, as the last of my bloodline, the last keeper of the library’s secrets, I write this both fearing and hoping that nobody will ever read it. I hope that a true Prophet will arise at the end of the age, one who dies as is meant, leaving his body behind to transmit all that is hidden here. But I fear that this may not happen . . . and if you’re reading this, you’re like me. The gods didn’t take your soul during the spell, and they gave you only this small window into the library. To you, I write the following, some of which was known to my bloodline, some of which I’ve figured out here: The way-ya spell will get you back to your body from here, but only twice. If you enter the library a third time, you’re staying. Trust me—third time isn’t a charm in the library magic.
You’re here, so you probably figured out how to get in. Just in case, let me spell it out for you: It’s talent-specific, so you’re going to have to use your own magic to get back here. When you do, make sure you’re bringing the right questions, because you’ve only got one shot. Don’t screw it up, because I can only imagine that you’re it. You’re the last Prophet. The one who’s supposed to help save the world.
Finally—and this isn’t about the library so much as what I’ve figured out sitting here dying, wishing I’d done things differently—magic isn’t what’s going to save the world. Love is. So find someone to love, and tell them so. Better yet, show them you love them by making them happy rather than miserable. Don’t be an idiot like I was.
“Which in my experience is a total contradiction in terms,” Lucius muttered. In his experience, using the “L” word to a lover was the very definition of being idiotic. At least it was the way he did it.
Granted, all the talk about bloodlines meant the journalist had been a Nightkeeper, and from what he’d seen the magi tended to do a good job in the couples department. Still, it seemed like an odd thing to say, even odder to write as the very last entry in the strange journal. “And who the hell wrote it, anyway?”
His body jolted, lurched upright, and staggered back toward the stacks. “Whoa! Wait,” he said, “I didn’t mean—” But he broke off at the realization that he was far, far weaker than he’d comprehended. His legs shook and the stone walls blurred around him as he headed across the room, impelled by the magic. It was all he could do to stay on his feet, but he’d be damned if he crawled.
By the time he reached the other end of the narrow stone room, he was breathing hard, nearly doubled over as he fought not to retch. Then he got a good look at what the magic had brought him to, and he froze inside and out.
A woman’s corpse sat in the corner, wrapped in a yellow-edged green robe identical to the one he was wearing.
He had his answer. He’d asked who wrote the journal . . . and the magic showed him. For half a second, the torch flames flickering on the body made it seem to move, even though he knew it wasn’t alive. It couldn’t be. Not looking like that. She wasn’t a mummy in the formal sense of embalming and wraps, but she was mummified all the same, with her skin tight and shiny, stretched over where flesh had wasted from bones. Honey-colored hair hung to her shoulders, and the bone structure of her face seemed oddly elegant despite the hooked-nose, bared-teeth grotesquery of desiccation. The robe had ridden up over her forearm, baring three marks: those of the star bloodline, the warrior, and the jun tan.
“Bingo,” Lucius slurred. “Now we know that the stars were the keepers of the library.” Which was only partially useful, given that none of the living Nightkeepers were members of the star bloodline.
But it was information, and he’d always been a fan of info. And, dude, he was punchy. The torchlight seared his eyes, and the stones beneath his feet heaved like the deck of a fishing boat, with the same nausea-inducing consequences he’d suffered on his single lamented attempt at deep-sea fishing. “I’ve gotta get out of here.” He didn’t have the answers the Nightkeepers needed about the skyroad or the sun god, but his body was flat-out done. If he collapsed and passed out here, he would probably exhaust the last of his energy reserves while unconscious. And death in the barrier was death nonetheless, which meant it was time to go home.
The journal had talked about the “way-ya” spell, not the way spell, which was what he’d been assuming he should use. “Way-ya” meant “home,” but could also mean “spirit” or “portal.” Similar but different. Chanting the word over and over in his thick-feeling head, he dragged himself back to the study area, with its carved medallions. His feet seemed very far away when he plonked them on the way symbol of the snaggle-toothed dragon. Wetting his gone-dry mouth, he croaked, “Way-ya.”
Power instantly slammed into him, swept him up. Everything went dark, and the world around him spun hard and fast. He might’ve puked but wasn’t sure; he lost touch with his body, with his neurons —hell, with every part of himself. Terror slashed as he glimpsed a dusty, barren roadway that came from nowhere, led nowhere. The in- between. His own private hell. Adrenaline slashed, sweeping away the cobwebs. Screaming inwardly, he fought not to go there, fought to go anywhere but there, but how could he fight without power, without magic, without training?
As he slid toward that dry, dusty purgatory, he lashed out, reaching invisible thought hands to grab something, anything that might halt the slide. He caught a flash at the edge of his consciousness, a hint of power that wasn’t quite familiar, wasn’t entirely strange, but was wholly, utterly compelling. He grabbed for it, touched it for a second, then lost it. But at that brief touch, the in-between winked out and the world went gray-green.
Then that too winked out, and there was nothing but darkness and sick, aching pain.
Panic hammered through him as he sensed boundaries all around him, hemming him into a space that was so much smaller than the vastness he’d just traveled through. He was jailed by the pain, trapped within— Oh, he thought as the inner lightbulb went off and he recognized the sensation of being back in his physical self . . . which felt like unholy shit. His head hammered with the rhythm of his stumbling heart, and agony flared in each of his joints, making him feel like he’d been stretched out on a huge cosmic torture rack that had stopped short of actually killing him, but only barely. And who knew the body had so many damned joints? Even his pinkie toes were killing him.