The Cornerstone (24 page)

‘Bad people are coming Grandad! We have to leave!’

Charlie started to edge into the kitchen, Nugget straining at his collar.

Merelie was transfixed by The Cornerstone, which was now screaming and growling at the same time. It sounded like a malfunctioning Formula One car just about to explode.

‘There’s more than one this time!’ she shouted.

‘Then we need to get out of the hou - ‘ Max was cut off as a bomb exploded in his face.

- 5 -

Garrowain watched one of the enemy Wordsmiths - a small, skinny man with a long nose - pounce on The Cornerstone as his colleagues ceased another fruitless barrage of Wordcraft.

His word shaping was more subtle, and he’d obviously been building it for some time. Garrowain had to admire his skill, even though the result could be disastrous.

The little Wordsmith let out the power at once - a scalpel cutting smoothly, rather than the sledge hammer approach the others had been using.

The custodian could almost feel the surprise and hatred coming from The Cornerstone as Fergil breached its defences, strode forward and ripped the cover open.

The other Wordsmiths crowded round, a couple of them letting out relieved whoops of joy.

Garrowain watched in dismay as Fergil disappeared, followed by three of his colleagues in quick succession.

The fourth, a tall rangy looking fellow with bushy eyebrows and long straggly black hair, tried to access the doorway to Earth as well, but The Cornerstone looked like it had recovered from the sneak attack and was determined to make sure no-one else got through.

The tall Wordsmith was thrown away as if he’d been electrocuted, flying a good ten feet before hitting the wall and slumping unconscious to the floor.

Some of the Dwellers, who’d been investigating the open doorways leading to the Library’s stacks, sensed a fresh meal. They leapt on the hapless Wordsmith, fighting each other for the chance to feed.

Garrowain grimaced as they swarmed over him.

This was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, though. He couldn’t prevent the Wordsmiths travelling to Earth, but with the Dwellers distracted, now was the time to secure the Library.

He mouthed a silent prayer to the Writer, drew the power of words around him like a mantle and dropped from his hiding place, eyes blazing and ready for a fight.

Max could have sympathised with the black haired Wordsmith.

He was also thrown several feet from The Cornerstone.

Luckily though, his fall was broken by a hard and unyielding bookcase...

He looked up in a fog of pain to see Merelie lying unconscious and Charlie rushing forward to help her. His grandfather seemed to have avoided most of the explosion of energy that had erupted from the book.

Four men now stood around The Cornerstone, which still lay on the coffee table. Their arms were raised in preparation for attack.

From the way they were dressed, Max thought they must be Wordsmiths. They all wore long coats: two coloured blue, the others in gold. Each had a House coat of arms on the left breast.

Draveli and Morodai.The bad guys.

One of the ones in blue, a small man with a face like a rat, looked around the room, orienting himself.

‘Where’s Binks?’

‘Looks like the book stopped him,’ one of the others said.

‘Damn. We’ll have to do this without him, then.’ He saw Merelie. ‘That’s her! That’s the Carvallen girl. Grab her!’ he ordered and the other Wordsmith in blue walked forward, word shaping.

An invisible hand picked up Charlie and Nugget, pushing them violently back. The old man slammed into the fridge freezer and Nugget skittered across the kitchen tiles, his hind quarters cracking the cooker’s glass door as they made contact.

The rat-like Wordsmith ordered his companions in gold to grab Max and Charlie, earning him a look of utter contempt.

He offered an ingratiating smile and asked them
nicely
if they wouldn’t mind taking them prisoner. This got a better response, and one approached Max, the other going to secure his grandfather.

Nugget was now barking his head off, snarling and snapping at the intruders, trying to protect his master.

‘Shut that thing up,’ hissed the second Draveli Wordsmith as he picked up Merelie’s unconscious body.

The Morodai looked down at the maddened dog, gave a small gesture with one hand and Nugget flew back across the kitchen, smashing through a set of doors and into the pantry, only stopping when he hit a large sack of potatoes with a dull, hard thud. He let out one loud yelp of pain and lay still.

‘No!’ Charlie and Max cried in unison.

An enraged Charlie Pearce punched the Morodai Wordsmith in the face as hard as he could. The man screamed in agony, blood streaming from his nose.

The skinny Wordsmith who fancied himself in charge, spun Wordcraft of his own and sent a barrage of paperbacks and hardbacks flying at Charlie. The old man threw his arms up in defence, but was hit several times, forcing him into submission.

Max watched this as his own captor, the largest and meanest looking of the four, grabbed him by the hoodie and dragged him to his feet. This guy might not have been quite as big as Borne, but there was no way one hundred and fifty five pounds of Max Bloom was getting away.

The Wordsmith pushed Max against the bookcase.

‘No trouble from you, stupid monkey,’ he growled.

Max might have been groggy from the fall and only half in control of his faculties, but he was also spitting mad. He lashed out with fists and feet, but the big Morodai man batted the blows away and yanked Max away from the bookshelf, throwing him onto the coffee table.

Max, The Cornerstone, the tea tray and all the other books piled on the table went crashing to the floor. He screamed as broken china cut him in several places and his face mashed into the carpet.

‘Don’t kill him, Gormley!’ the rat man shouted. ‘He could be valuable if the girl doesn’t co-operate.’

Gormley sneered and stalked over to Max, flipping him over with one massive foot. ‘He’ll live,’ he grunted, grabbing Max’s face and looking into his eyes.

The last thing Max saw before blacking out was the Wordsmith staring down at him, the sneer still plastered across his face.

- 6 -

Max has had occasion recently to wake up in considerable pain, with no idea where he was.

This time was much worse as he came round in extreme pain, knowing exactly where he was:

In deep trouble.

He was sat up against a bookshelf in the corner of the lounge, near where he’d been flung by Gormley. The big man stood over him, arms folded and watching his every move.

The floor around Max was littered with debris, including several smashed biscuits, broken bits of coffee cup and Charlie’s copy of Call of the Wild - the cover half torn away.

Max reached over and picked it up, not wanting it to incur any more damage. He looked at the torn cover, tears coming as he remembered what had happened to poor Nugget.

Charlie was sat in his leather chair, with the second Morodai beside him. A couple of large red welts had appeared on his forehead where he’d been struck by the books. He looked terribly sad and small.

The guilt that raced through Max was almost too much to bear.

He’d brought this to his grandfather’s doorstep. Had got him involved in this, and now Nugget was dead.

He looked up to see the ratty Wordsmith pacing, The Cornerstone clutched in his hands. Merelie was still unconscious, laid out on the sofa with her Draveli guard stood behind, gazing down with an expression Max didn’t like one bit.

He turned back to Charlie. ‘Are you ok, Grandad?’

The old man looked up. ‘Um… bruised a bit is all. But Nugget… ‘

‘I know, Grandad.’

Max swallowed his grief. It was far better to be angry.

He looked back at the little Wordsmith.

‘Blast it!’ the rat man spat. ‘This damn thing won’t let us back through!’

‘Are you working it right?’ rumbled Gormley.

‘Of course I am!’ he bit back. ‘It’s just blocking us again.’

‘It does that,’ said Max. ‘If it doesn’t like someone it won’t work. And it sure as hell doesn’t like you, you rat faced bastard.’

The rat faced bastard leapt over. ‘Call me that again and I’ll crush you to death with a single word,’ he hissed.

‘Leave him alone and get on with it, Fergil,’ the Wordsmith with Merelie said. ‘We haven’t got time to be threatening the local wildlife.’

Fergil shot him a black look, then spoke to Max again. ‘You’re the one the stupid Carvallen witch brought over, aren’t you?’

‘Kiss the boniest part of my arse,’ Max threw back.

‘Yes… yes it was you.’ Fergil was starting to make some assumptions. ‘You used it. The book let you through. It let a brain-dead, word-empty fool like you through.’ He opened the pages at Max and thrust it toward him. ‘Read it!’

‘There’s nothing there.’

Fergil looked at the blank pages and scowled. ‘Maybe if you hold it,’ he said and held the book out.

‘Go suck pig balls,’ Max told him.

Fergil pointed at Charlie. ‘Do as I say boy, or I will twist the old man’s head from his shoulders.’

Charlie looked at the Wordsmith with loathing.

‘Don’t listen to his mewling, son,’ he said. ‘A scabrous invertebrate like that isn’t worth the sweat from a dromedary’s hump.’

It took the scabrous invertebrate a moment to work out he’d been mortally insulted, then he word shaped. Charlie’s head rocked backward as if he’d been punched.

‘Stop!’ cried Max.

The Cornerstone was thrust at him again. ‘Open the doorway, boy… or more than your flea-bitten hound will die here today.’

Max took the book, dreading what would come next...

What did happen next was something of a surprise.

Max still held Call of the Wild in his left hand, clutched to his chest. When he took The Cornerstone in his right, a connection was made that changed Max Bloom on a fundamental level - forever.

This is how it went:

A bolt of energy shot up his arm and the world around drained away. The Cornerstone’s consciousness filled his head. It wasn’t quite the same as a Dweller overwhelming the mind of its victim, but the process was just as invasive - and in some ways more traumatic. The Cornerstone wasn’t subtle, after all.

The instant Max had taken the book, it had sensed Call of the Wild and the powerful love Max had for it.

It rummaged in his memories and saw the day he’d spent that Christmas, turning the pages in excitement, eager to see what happened next.

It felt the deep love Max had for Buck, the heroic dog in the story - and by extension his grandfather’s Labrador, Nugget. It also grieved with him that the happy dog had been killed moments before.

The Cornerstone revelled in the power the story had over Max and measured the weight of the words in his mind.

It meant for Max to understand this.

Of how - at a deep and intrinsic level - every word Max had ever read went into shaping who he was as a person.

‘You see?’
it said in a dry, dusty voice, echoing in the vaults of his mind.

‘Yeah, I guess I do
,’ Max responded through the fog of blinding light and pain.

‘The words make you who you are.’

‘But I haven’t read enough.’

‘No?’

‘Three books! That’s all… the Montego manual doesn’t count, does it?’

‘It only takes one to open the door, if you understand its power.’

A barrage of images from Call of the Wild flashed through Max’s head. The last was of Buck, standing proud on a rock surrounded by icy tundra, his head turned upwards, howling at the sky.

A shiver ran down Max’s spine. ‘
Alright, I get it!’

‘All books can have power like that, if you open your mind and see.’

The Cornerstone forced his head up so he could look at the bookshelves surrounding him.

Sure enough, Max could now sense the books on another level, beyond what his eyes could show.

It was as if they transmitted an invisible aura of power beyond their pages, out into physical space.

Some of these auras were weak, emanating from books without much strength to their words; either pot boiler novels written by average authors, or factual books where the information inside was dubiously researched at best.

Other books - like the collection of classics Charlie had bought at the car boot sale - virtually
bled
the ephemeral energy into the world, warping it with their power.

Max felt this energy flowing into him, like a sponge soaking up water.

A memory of something Merelie had said bubbled to the surface, nearly making him throw up. He could picture her face, wide eyed and awe-struck:

‘There are millions of books in your world, Max!’

Millions of potential sources of the energy he was being bombarded with.

The people of the Chapter Lands were born into a world where this power was like a thin seam of gold to be mined; where books were rare and literate citizens were rarer. But on Earth, Max had bathed in the stuff from birth, living in a world where thousands of books were printed every year.

This is what Merelie meant. This is why she thought a Wordsmith could come from here.

Is that what I am now? A Wordsmith?

If so, how did you make the energy - which he was now so full of, it was threatening to blow his head clean off his shoulders – work for you, like the Wordsmiths did?

‘Use the words, Max. Turn them into your own.’

The Cornerstone showed him an image of a blacksmith crafting a sword from molten steel. It then created the image of Max standing in front of a bookshelf, the energy spilling from the books made visible - the same bright orange as the metal in the forge.

The book showed him reach out a hand, scoop up the energy and shape it into a ball.

Max let this idea roll around in his head, trying to get a proper grip on it. He was pleased to find it didn’t take him that long to understand.