Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

“We don’t have time to wipe that colony out today,” said Molnar. “Fortunately, vocabuvores are extremely territorial. And totally illiterate. Their nests are surrounded by enough books to feed their little minds forever, but they can’t read a word.”

“How can such things have stolen in, past your gates and sorcery?” asked Lev.

“It’s the books again,” said Molnar. “Their power sometimes snatches the damnedest things away from distant worlds. The stacks are filled with living and quasi-living dwellers, of two general types.”

“The first sort we call externals, ” said Astriza. “Anything recently dumped or summoned here. Animals, spirits, even the occasional sentient being. Most of them don’t last long. Either we deal with them, or they become prey for the other sort of dweller.”

“Bibliofauna,” said Molnar. “Creatures created by the actions of the books themselves, or somehow dependent upon them. A stranger sort of being, twisted by the environment and more suited to survive in it. Vocabuvores certainly didn’t spawn anywhere else.”

“Well,” said Astriza, “we’re a bit smellier, but we all seem to be in one piece. We’re not far now from twenty-eight Manticore East. Keep moving, and the next time I tell you to shut up, Laszlo, please shut up.”

“Apologies, Librarian Mezar—”

“Titles are for outside the library,” she growled. “In here, you can best apologize by not getting killed.”

“Ahhh,” said Molnar, gazing down at his guiding ideogram. The lights within the red lines had turned green. “Bang-on. Anywhere on the third shelf will do. Aspirant D’Courin, let Astriza handle the actual placement.”

Yvette seemed only too happy to pass her satchel off to the sturdy Librarian. “Cover me,” said Astriza as she moved carefully toward the bookcase indicated by Molnar’s spells. It was about twelve feet high, and while the dark wood of its exterior was warped and weathered, the volumes tucked onto its shelves looked pristine. Astriza settled Yvette’s book into an empty spot, then leapt backward, both of her swords flashing out. She had the fastest over-shoulder draw Laszlo had ever seen.

“What is it?” said Molnar, rushing forward to place himself between the shelf and the four aspirants.

“Fifth shelf,” said Astriza. She gestured, and one of the hovering lanterns moved in, throwing its scarlet light into the dark recesses of the shelves. Something long and dark and cylindrical was lying across the books on that shelf, and as the lantern moved, Laszlo caught a glimpse of scales.

“I think—” said Astriza, lowering one of her swords, “I think it’s dead.” She stabbed carefully with her other blade, several times, then nodded. She and Molnar reached in gingerly and heaved the thing out onto the floor, where it landed with a heavy smack.

It was a serpent of some sort, with a green body as thick as Laszlo’s arm. It was about ten feet long, and it had three flat, triangular heads with beady eyes, now glassy in death. Crescent-shaped bite marks marred most of its length, as though something had worked its way up and down the body, chewing at leisure.

“External,” said Astriza.

“A swamp hydra,” said Lev, prodding the body with one of his clawed feet. “From my home world…very dangerous. I had night terrors of them when I was newly hatched. What killed it?”

“Too many possible culprits to name,” said Molnar. He touched the serpent’s body with the butt of his staff and uttered a spell. The dead flesh lurched, smoked, and split apart, turning gray before their eyes. In seconds, it had begun to shrink, until at last it was nothing more than a smear of charcoal-colored ash on the floor. “The Tree of Knives used to scare predators away from this section, but it’s uprooted itself. Anything could have moved in. Aspirant Bronzeclaw, give me the notes for your book.”

“ Private Reflections of Grand Necrosophist Jaklur the Unendurable, ” said Astriza as Molnar shared the notes with her. “Charming.” The two Librarians performed their divinations once again, with more urgency than before. After a few moments, Astriza looked up, pointed somewhere off to Laszlo’s left, and said: “Fifty-five Manticore Northwest. Another hell of a walk. Let’s get moving.”

The second stage of their journey was longer than the first. The other aspirants looked anxious, all except Casimir, who continued to stroll while others crept cautiously. Caz seemed to have a limitless reserve of enchantment with the place. As for Laszlo, well, before another hour had passed, the last reeking traces of the vocabuvore’s gore had been washed from his face and neck by streams of nervous sweat. He was acutely aware, as they moved on through the dark canyons and grottos of the stacks, that unseen things in every direction were scuttling, growling, and hissing.

At one point, he heard a high-pitched giggling from the darkness, and stopped to listen more closely. Master Molnar, not missing a step, grabbed him firmly by his shoulders, spun him around, and pushed him onward.

They came at last to one of the outer walls of the library, where the air was clammy with a mist that swirled more thickly than ever before. Railed galleries loomed above them, utterly lightless, and Astriza waved the party far clear of the spiral staircases and ladders that led up into those silent spaces.

“Not much farther,” she said. “And Casimir’s book goes somewhere pretty close after this. If we get lucky, we might just—”

“Get down,” hissed Molnar.

Astriza was down on one knee in a flash, swords out, and the aspirants followed her example. Laszlo knelt and drew his sword. Only Molnar remained on his feet.

The quality of the mist had changed. A breeze was stirring, growing more and more powerful as Laszlo watched. Down the long, dark aisle before them the skin-chilling current came, and with it a fluttering, rustling sound, like clothes rippling on a drying line. A swirling, nebulous shape appeared, and the mist surged and parted before it. As it came nearer, Laszlo saw that it was a mass of papers, a column of book pages, hundreds of them, whirling on a tight axis like a tornado.

“No,” shouted Molnar as Casimir raised his hands to begin a spell. “Don’t harm it! Protect yourselves, but don’t fight back or the library will—”

His words were drowned out as the tumbling mass of pages washed over them and its sound increased tenfold. Laszlo was buffeted with winds like a dozen invisible fists—his cloak streamed out behind him as though he were in free-fall, and a cloud of dust and grime torn from the surfaces nearby filled the air as a stinging miasma. He barely managed to fumble his sword safely back into his scabbard as he sought the floor. Just above him, the red lanterns were slammed against a stone balcony and shattered to fragments.

From out of the wailing wind there came a screech like knives drawn over slate. Through slitted eyes, Laszlo saw that Lev was losing his balance and sliding backward. Laszlo realized that Lev’s torso, wider than any human’s, was catching the wind like a sail despite the lizard’s efforts to sink his claws into the tile floor.

Laszlo threw himself at Lev’s back and strained against the lizard’s overpowering bulk and momentum for a few desperate seconds. Just as he realized that he was about to get bowled over, Casimir appeared out of the whirling confusion and added his weight to Laszlo’s. Heaving with all their might, the two human aspirants managed to help Lev finally force himself flat to the ground, where they sprawled on top of him.

Actinic light flared. Molnar and Astriza, leaning into the terrible wind together, had placed their hands on Molnar’s staff and wrought some sort of spell. The brutal gray cyclone parted before them like the bow-shock of a swift-sailing ship, and the dazed aspirants behind them were released from the choking grip of the page-storm. Not a moment too soon, in fact, for the storm had caught up the jagged copper and glass fragments of the broken lanterns, sharper claws than any it had possessed before. Once, twice, three times it lashed out with these new weapons, rattling against the invisible barrier, but the sorcery of the Librarians held firm. It seemed to Laszlo that a note of frustration entered the wail of the thing around them.