A Princess of Landover (34 page)

A
t exactly midnight, the bedroom door opened anew and there was Edgewood Dirk. She was sitting on the bed waiting for him, dressed in dark clothing and wearing soft boots to muffle her passage. The cat gave her a quick glance, then turned away without a word. Eyes forward, he started down the hallway toward the Stacks, not waiting to see if she would follow.

She caught up to him quickly but didn’t say anything, preferring the quiet. She kept glancing around for Pinch but didn’t see any sign of him. Even when they reached the Stacks, entering the cavernous room and crossing to the beginnings of the shelving, the odious little man had not appeared.

“Nor will he,” said Dirk, apparently reading her mind. “He fell asleep in his room a while back. I believe he wore himself out earlier in the day, keeping watch over things. Now he needs to sleep. Come with me.”

They worked their way down the aisles and deeper into the Stacks. While there were no lights lit on the shelving units and they carried no glow sticks, they had no trouble finding their way because Dirk’s fur radiated a pale silvery light that let them see where
they were going. Mistaya kept glancing around, unable to shake the feeling that someone must be watching. The shadows surrounding them were impenetrable beyond their small light, and her imagination was working overtime as she tried to detect a presence that wasn’t there. Not only was Pinch absent, there was no sign of the Throg Monkeys, either. Apparently Dirk was as good as his word.

“What are we doing?” she whispered finally.

“Exploring,” he whispered back.

“Exploring for what?”

“Whatever we find that looks interesting. Keep your eyes open. That is what cats do; humans should learn to do it, too.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, but she decided to let it go for the moment. She concentrated instead on wending her way through the shadows, keeping close to the Stacks on her left as she progressed, wary of the sucking wind that sooner or later would try to draw her into the deepest part of the blackness waiting ahead. Although the Throg Monkeys were not in evidence, she kept looking for them, thinking they must be there, hiding and watching. She glanced repeatedly at Dirk for some sign that she should start worrying. But the cat seemed unconcerned, ambling down the center of the aisle, tail twitching and eyes shining like bright, tiny lamps.

After they had gone a long way back, although not as far as she had gone with Thom, and there was still no sign of the black tunnel or the sucking wind, her patience gave out.

“Why aren’t we encountering the tunnel or the wind that was here before?” she asked the cat. “What’s happened to them?”

“Nothing,” he said. “They are still here. But we don’t see or feel either because they are dormant.”

“How can that be?”

“The magic that sustains them is unaware of us.”

“Unaware of us?”

“I am shielding us. I told you I could hide us from other magic when I chose to do so.”

“Well, why didn’t you shield Thom and me when we came down here before? Wouldn’t that have saved us both a lot of trouble?”

The cat arched his back, and all his fur stood up on end. Mistaya backed away, afraid suddenly that she had stepped over an invisible line.

“That,” Dirk declared in a voice that brooked no argument, “would have put you in a good deal more trouble than you’ve gotten into so far. If you don’t know what you are doing—and you don’t—then it is best that you leave it to those of us who do. Shielding with magic is tricky business, and doing it for one is difficult enough without trying to crowd in two. Besides, if left on your own, you and that boy wouldn’t have found your way to what’s waiting.”

She compressed her lips into a tight line. “What
is
waiting, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind your asking, but I think I’ll leave it to you to find that out for yourself.”

Stupid cat
, she thought, furious all over again. “Some kind of monster, I suppose?”

“That would be monsters, plural,” said Edgewood Dirk.

She sighed. “Can I ask you something else? Are these monsters the ones causing the blackness and the wind?”

She didn’t really expect an answer, but he surprised her by providing one. “No, the monsters have nothing to do with either one.”

“Well, who does, then? Someone must!”

The cat stopped where he was, turned toward her, and sat. “It appears your impatience cannot be contained a moment longer, so perhaps it is best if we satisfy it here and now. This is just one more example of why cats are vastly superior to humans. Cats understand patience. You never see a cat unable to wait. Humans, on the other hand, cannot stand to be put off even for a moment. If the delay goes beyond their limited ability to cope, they implode. I will never understand.”

Nor would she ever understand cats, she supposed, especially this one. “We are fragile vessels in many ways,” she conceded wearily. “But you were about to say?”

The cat gave her a long, steady look. “You are quite bold,
Princess. Even for a child of Ben Holiday.” Its strange eyes glittered. “Very well. Listen carefully.”

It lifted one paw and licked it, then set it down carefully again. “Libiris is a living creature, though of limited ability and intelligence. You already know this. But all creatures share a commonality, no matter their origins or talents. If they are injured, they will be in pain. And if they lose purpose, they lose heart. The former is self-explanatory, the latter less so. Purpose is individual to each creature. Purpose gives meaning to life. Take away that purpose, and the creature starts to wither inside.”

He gave her a moment to digest this, now licking the other forepaw. “Let me give you an example. Sterling Silver was created to serve the royal family. When there was no King, as when Ben Holiday came into Landover, the castle ceased to function as she should. She was both injured and bereft of purpose. Holiday found her tarnished and emotionally damaged. Yet when he entered her and became her new King, she came alive again and began to heal. So it is with Libiris. Do you understand?”

“So the wind and the blackness are symptoms of injury and loss of purpose? Symptoms generated by Libiris?”

“Just so. They are a reaction to both conditions. But can you guess what injury she has suffered and what purpose has been stolen from her?”

Mistaya had no clue. She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The cat stood up and started walking. “Then we’d better hurry on so you can find out.”

They moved ahead once more, penetrating deeper into the Stacks, and for a long time Mistaya was convinced that they were simply going to slog ahead forever without finding anything. Nothing around them changed; nothing suggested it ever would. There was no wind and no tunnel of blackness into which it could suck you, but there was nothing else, either. There was a gloomy sameness to things that filled her with an unexpected sense of despair.

“Why is this taking so long!” she hissed at Dirk in exasperation.

“It isn’t all that long; it just seems that way.” The cat barely
glanced at her. “The distance is an illusion; Libiris seeks to protect herself.”

“Protect herself from what?”

But the cat had apparently lost interest in the conversation and did not answer. Letting the matter drop, she trudged on.

Finally, she caught a glimmer of light from somewhere ahead. She felt an urge to run toward it, to escape the darkness. But Edgewood Dirk kept moving at the same maddeningly unchanging pace, as if it made no difference whether they reached the light in the next few seconds or the next few days.

Then, as the light grew nearer and brightened sufficiently, it took on a crimson hue. She could see that it marked an opening in the library’s rear wall that was ragged and cracked all around its edges. The light seemed to emanate from the breach itself rather than from whatever lay beyond; the air was thick and misty and concealing. More disturbing to her, the light’s crimson hue suggested a wound.

Edgewood Dirk stopped abruptly and sat down. “This is as far as I go. You have to go on alone from here.”

She looked at him doubtfully. “Why is that?”

“I cannot pass through that opening. It would be much too dangerous for me. I will wait here for you to return.”

“I can go somewhere you can’t?”

“Because I am a fairy creature, I am at much greater risk than you. Once you pass through, you will understand.” He gave her another expressionless cat look. “You need not worry. I shall still be shielding you. Just be careful. Don’t go too far in. Touch nothing. Just take note of everything you see. It will be interesting to discover how much you understand.”

Thanks ever so much
, she wanted to tell him. But she didn’t. She just nodded. “Go straight ahead, through that opening?”

“I believe I have already made that clear. Is there a problem? Are you too afraid to go through? Was I wrong when I said you were a bold girl?”

She felt like spitting at him, but instead she simply looked ahead
again, studying the ragged, red-tinged rent in the wall and the deep gloom beyond. Well, she was either going to do this thing or turn back. Turning back was not an option.

She took a deep breath to steady herself and started forward.

S
he entered the hole in the wall without incident, paused only momentarily for a quick look about to reassure herself that she wasn’t missing anything, and then continued through to the other side. She moved more cautiously after she did, taking slower, more careful steps, listening for sounds, searching for movement.

She found both much more quickly than she anticipated. The hazy gloom cleared and she found herself in what appeared to be a tunnel that quickly turned into a winding stairway descending into the earth. She kept going only because she hadn’t found anything yet and had made up her mind she wasn’t going back until she did. She went down the stairs, hugging the wall to one side, her steps more cautious still. Strange glowing rocks embedded in the walls at regular intervals illuminated the darkness enough that she could see to make her way. The mist followed her down, a clinging presence that felt damp and cold against her skin. She ignored it as best she could, concentrating on the task at hand, putting one foot in front of the other, reminding herself that she wasn’t completely helpless here, that she had magic of her own to protect herself even if Dirk should abandon her. Not that she had any reason to think he would, of course. Although he had abandoned her before for all intents and purposes after she was inside Libiris, so maybe she shouldn’t be so sure about what might happen here.

Stop being so paranoid
, she scolded herself.
There’s nothing to be frightened of!

But several hundred feet farther down the stairway, she changed her mind.

The stairs leveled out onto a sort of shelf before continuing on down, and the wall opened up at this point in a kind of window to reveal a cavernous chamber below. She crouched down, peered
over the wall’s edge, and was instantly reminded of the Stacks in Libiris. Perhaps this was because she was suddenly looking at row upon row of shelving, most of it filled with books. For a moment, she had the sensation that somehow she had returned to Libiris, although a different Libiris than she had left, a rather surreal one. Throg Monkeys were everywhere, carrying books to and fro, arranging and stacking and organizing.

Amid the little monsters were black-cloaked figures carrying tablets on which they were writing, presumably making lists of those books. In one shadowy corner, tightly clustered and hunched over a massive red, leather-bound book, a trio of the black-cloaked figures chanted the same words over and over again. Even from as far away as she was, she could tell that neither the list makers nor the chanters were human. Their hands and wrists were blackened and withered and clawed and gnarled, and once or twice she caught a quick glimpse of their faces, which were of the same terrible aspect, with eyes that glittered like embers.

At the periphery of all this activity were creatures that resembled monstrous wolves, huge muscular beasts that prowled back and forth along the edges of the workers like guard dogs. Their muzzles were drawn back to reveal rows of sharpened teeth.