They were all trapped now, unable to move, their eyes glued to where they had last been looking before the artifact was activated.
In front of Mira, the air shimmered suddenly and parted like a curtain. A silhouette stepped through and revealed itself, and in a world where youth reigned supreme by virtue of complicated circumstances, the sight of the figure before them was shocking, even for Mira, who had seen him countless times growing up.
She’d never had the gall to ask the Librarian how old he really was, but she was positive it was more than seventy years. His appearance was beyond disheveled. His clothes were a patchwork of pieces from all manner of garments, some of them having been sewn into places that were the opposite of what they came from. Pieces of jeans for shirtsleeves, and coat arms pieced together to make leggings. A pair of eyeglasses hung from his neck by red twine, half from one pair, the other half from another, and taped together to form a complete set. Despite his chaotic appearance, the man had neatly and meticulously trimmed his beard, and it hung down half the length of his wrinkled neck. And, of course, there were his eyes: clear of the Tone. The hazel of his irises sparkled in the candlelight that filled this part of the cavern.
Leather straps like belts crisscrossed his body, and attached to them were a dozen amazingly intricate and beautiful artifact combinations of his own creation. The lights of one of them, near his left shoulder, glowed and flashed in different colors, and Mira guessed it was probably the Restrictor that was holding all of them.
The old man examined each of the four trespassers one at a time without emotion, and then his eyes finally settled on Mira. When they did, his brow furrowed deeply and he fixed her with an irritable gaze.
“If anyone should not be here in this place, Mira Toombs, it is you,” he said in an annoyed voice that sounded like he had swallowed a mouthful of gravel and cut glass. “Explain why I shouldn’t hand you over to your old faction right now. It would be a fitting punishment, the way I see it.”
The Librarian tapped the glowing artifact on his shoulder, and some of the lights on the combination—a mixture of magnets, vials of black metallic shavings, a circuit board, and a strand of interlocking paper clips, all held together by spun silver and gold chain—wavered and died away.
With a groan, Mira collapsed to the ground in a heap, and her entire body ached. It was a normal side effect from being restrained in a Restrictor’s field, and she painfully looked up … and was shocked to see the others—Holt, Zoey, and Max—still frozen in place.
A typical Restrictor simply emitted a single field that slowed down everything it touched. The Librarian, however, had managed to construct a combination that could selectively apply a Restrictor’s effect to multiple and separate targets. It was an amazing achievement, a testament to the Librarian’s reputation as the greatest crafter of artifacts in the world, and her head spun as she tried to figure out the complicated combination of Essences and Focuses necessary to—
“You were asked a question, Mira Toombs,” the Librarian stated with unveiled displeasure. He was not used to being ignored, and it made her face redden the way he spoke to her as if she were still a little girl. “By coming here, you have violated the sanctity of something I long ago taught you to revere.”
“I do revere this place, old man,” Mira said. “Just not the city that holds it.”
The Librarian gazed down at her curiously. “Not a completely uninspired response, to be sure, and one that echoes sentiments I also hold, but it fails to answer the question, doesn’t it? Why are you
here
?”
Mira swallowed, thinking through her words carefully. “I need something from the Vault,” she said. “Something that doesn’t belong to me.”
The Librarian frowned. “You aren’t making a very good argument, little one. Why would I allow you to steal from my Vault? Why would I break the oaths I have taken?”
Mira made herself look up at the Librarian forcefully. “You’ve broken them before—don’t pretend you haven’t. It’s me you’re talking to, old man, not some silly acolyte.” She spoke with as much strength as she could muster, and hoped it was enough.
The Librarian stared back evenly … and then smiled. Or at least as much as he could. The only indication Mira had ever attributed to a smile from him was a slight wrinkling of the beard around his cheeks, and that was what he gave her now. “I didn’t say I had never broken them, only that I wanted to know the reasons why I might do so again. Is this about that wretched little creation of yours? The one I warned you against?”
“Yes,” Mira said with shame. “I’m trying to undo that mistake.”
“If you had listened to me in the first place, you wouldn’t have anything to undo, would you?” he said with contempt. “You’re all the same, once you leave here. Arrogant and sure of yourselves. It’s a wonder any of you survive that place.”
“I’m trying to fix things, old man,” Mira said through clenched teeth, feeling her face burn at his scolding, just as it always had. Why did she still feel so tiny around him? Hadn’t any of her achievements impressed him? Hadn’t she earned the right to make a few mistakes?
“You want to take it back to the Strange Lands and destroy it,” he surmised. “A wise course, but it still doesn’t explain why you’re here. You must need something else,” the old man said contemplatively, and Mira could see him putting the pieces together in his head, tugging on his beard absently as he did so. “The Gray Devils have sealed the city; I heard the horns. Looking for you, no doubt. There must be something here someone else wants in order to grant you passage out of the city. The only other way out is through the Lost Knights’ infamous secret exit … and they have always lusted after the Chance Generator.” His mood, if it were possible, darkened even more as he figured it out. “Is that why you’re here?”
Mira just nodded. She could sense Holt and Zoey frozen in place above her, but was powerless to do anything for them. The old man had all the cards now, and he stood over her stoically a long time, still tugging on his beard, thinking things through. “The price for my aid is this, Mira Toombs,” he finally said. “You may take the artifact … but in return, you must carry it back into the Strange Lands and destroy it along with your own. It’s another hideous aberration that doesn’t deserve to exist, as far as I’m concerned, but my tenure as the Vault’s Librarian prevents me from taking matters into my own hands. You are already Unmentionable here. One further insult will have little effect.”
“Gee, thanks,” Mira said tartly, glaring up at him. She could feel her patience starting to run out. “How exactly am I supposed to arrange all
that
? We need the artifact to bargain our way
out
of here.”
“You’ve always been industrious,” he said, his beard wrinkling in a quasi-smile once more. “I trust you to find a way. But if I should hear that the Lost Knights have the Chance Generator and are actively using it to increase their Points, I will be … most disappointed.” The stare he fixed Mira with almost instantly made her cringe, and it was infuriating.
The old man tapped the same artifact again, and this time all the lights on it went out. When they did, both Zoey and Holt exhaled deeply as they fell to the floor. Max whined as the same thing happened to him. He just squirmed on the ground with the others, feeling the painful sensations of motor control returning.
“What … the …
hell,
” Holt managed to say in between gasps of air, and the anger in his voice was apparent. He looked up at the Librarian with red eyes. “I am going … to
stomp
this guy.”
Before Mira could warn him, Holt pushed himself shakily to his feet. The old man, however, simply rotated a ring of dimes around a different artifact, one near his waist, until a specific coin clicked in place. When it did, the combination hummed loudly and glowed in muted red light. “That decision would be … ill advised,” he said calmly.
Holt eyed the glowing artifact, and didn’t make another move. He wasn’t a fool, Mira knew; he’d survived this long on his own by being able to read a situation in spite of his emotions, and his instincts were probably telling him the old man was a lot more capable than his feeble, disheveled exterior implied. If he wasn’t, the Librarian wouldn’t be so unintimidated. And for good reason, she knew. The Librarian was the one person in all Midnight City that even Lenore feared.
“Now that that’s resolved…,” the old man said as he moved toward the nearby work area. It was filled with rows of tables and seats in front of shelves that contained all manner of minor artifacts for combinations. It had been a school for Mira, a hallmark of what little “youth” she’d had, and the place always stirred emotions in her when she saw it. Here, sitting at these desks, she and dozens of others had been taught the cursory skills they needed to become Freebooters.
The basics of artifact creation: coins, Focusers, Essences. How to combine them into more powerful entities. The properties of hundreds of minor artifacts for creating their own. And the Strange Lands and its obstacles and its different rings. They learned about antimatter storms and dark energy tornadoes, discovered the mysteries of the core and the Severed Tower, and dreamed of seeing Polestar, the famous Freebooter outpost that stood in the middle of the third ring in defiance of the chaos that surrounded it.
Mira’s head, like those of all the other students, had been filled with the Librarian’s teachings, but he’d warned it was only theoretical knowledge. The only true way to learn to survive in that place was through experience. The Strange Lands were a harsh teacher … but so was the old man. Mira could still feel the shocks on her wrists and back when she got the polarity of a coin set wrong or chose the wrong Essence for a combination. The Librarian’s methods had seemed unnecessarily severe at the time, but the truth was, he was preparing them for the reality to come, Mira knew. The Strange Lands were unforgiving, and the punishment for failure there was far worse than the sting of an electrical charge.
Though his demeanor was cold, there was more to the Librarian than his harsh teaching style. He had spent his life since the invasion preparing countless children to become Freebooters, and had watched his teachings consistently not be enough to keep them alive. Mira knew he drove his students hard out of an interest to protect them—because, deep down, he really did care.
The Librarian stepped to a large, ornate pedestal holding a huge, hardcover bound book. He grabbed the mismatched pair of eyeglasses that hung from his neck and slipped them onto his nose. The book was as wide as he was, and he flipped the tome open and scanned its pages one at a time with a discerning eye, running his finger down the length of each, looking for something specific. Eventually, he found it.
“The Chance Generator,” he said in disdain, peering up at them over the rim of his glasses. “Are you ready for the key?”
Mira nodded. “Yes, old man.”
“Six of clubs,” he began, spouting out the list of settings that would program the lift. “Purple eight, and three-twenty-five. You and the Outsider can go—the little one and the dog can remain with me. I always have plenty of chores to be done, as you well know.”
Zoey looked up at Mira and Holt curiously, neither frightened nor eager.
“I’m not a fan of leaving her with Merlin here,” Holt said, fixing his gaze on the Librarian. The old man just stared back silently.
“He can be … difficult, I know, but he won’t hurt her,” Mira said, pulling Holt’s attention away from the Librarian. “I promise, it’s the last thing he would do.”
Mira could tell Holt didn’t like it, but her word seemed to be enough for him. He nodded, and Mira kneeled down to Zoey, ran her fingers gently through the little girl’s hair. “We’ll be right back, okay. Zoey?” Mira said. “Do what the old man says. There’s no reason to be scared.”
“I’m not scared, Mira,” Zoey said, matter-of-fact.
“Of course you’re not,” Mira replied. Then she stood up and moved for the large, heavy wooden platform that extended out over the breach of the pit, and the two wooden lifts that sat there. “Come on,” she said to Holt, and he followed after.
“Mira,” the old man called out gently behind her, and she stopped and looked at him. There was a different feel to his eyes now. “It is not … unpleasant to see you alive.”
Mira smiled. It was as close as you got to tenderness from the Librarian. “You too, old man.” She turned and kept walking with Holt toward the lifts.
Along each side of the platform were small, open shacks full of chains, ropes, pulleys, cranks, and wheels, and Mira stopped in front of one.
She reached for a long, antique brass crank attached to huge spoked metal gears. Interestingly, each gear was marked at certain points with old, faded playing cards—clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds—and the gear threaded through a series of giant rusted chains. Mira turned the crank handle, and the gear spun with it, pulling up lengths of chain and winding them through pulleys and slots up above the shed. Outside on the platform, one of the lifts shook slightly as the tension of the chains rippled down to it.
As Mira turned the crank, the cards began to rotate on the surface of the gears. She kept cranking, loading more and more chain, until she finally saw the card she wanted: the six of clubs. She kept cranking until it was pointed straight up, above all the others, and then locked the wheel in place.
The first axis was set, but there were two more to go. And using the formula the Librarian had given her, she set the remaining ones. She pulled a long stretch of thick rope downward, lined with numbers in different colored paint, until a purple
8
appeared. More tension shook the lift outside. For the last axis, she moved over to where additional chain hung, and an assortment of metallic weights hung with it.
“Help me,” she said to Holt. “We need three hundred and twenty-five pounds.” Holt was clearly confused at what they were doing, but he helped anyway. They added weights in different increments—ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty—linking them into hooks on the chains’ surface, until it was the right amount. The chains didn’t move; they were locked over the breach with all the added weight, waiting to descend.