Vergence (29 page)

“So you don’t know what Leth can eat here in Vergence?”

“Sorry, young miss,” Pietr said, shaking his head. “I can’t say that I do.”

“Is there some other person here we may ask?” Addae said.

“There’s just me and Sual now,” Pietr said, nodding at the other man.

Sash turned away, looking like she wanted to cry. “Come on let’s go.”

The sight of Sash upset seemed to go right through Ebryn, and he cast around for something helpful to say as he followed her to the door. “We can see if Plyntoure has found anyone.”

Elouphe padded up beside her and plucked at her sleeve. “Try fish, Sash?”

“I’ve already told you, I don’t know if he can eat fish. It might poison him.”

“Have you tried the library?” Pietr called out after them. “Try the library. You might find something there.”

Sash brusquely wiped away wetness on her cheek with the back of her hand as she pushed past the door. Sual was close on her heels, almost running to keep up.

“Thanks for the advice,” Ebryn said to Pietr as he turned to follow her.

“When you find what it's you needin', I'll get it for you. Big n' small, we got space for'em,” Sual said.

“This place is horrible, and you're vile,” Sash said. “I don't want anything from you. You make me so angry. Look at these poor creatures. You don't even look after them properly. Look, these cages are filthy. How can you keep them locked up in a place like this—”

Sash turned a corner, and collided with someone heading in the opposite direction. The other person, shorter than Sash, crashed to the ground with a painful gasp. A staff flew into the air, striking the bars on a cage noisily, and clattering across the stone floor.

Ebryn could see the bottom of a dark maroon robe, which had flapped up to reveal the lower part of its owner's legs, and two misshapen sandalled feet.

Fla hit the ground hard enough to drive all the air from his chest. He turned as he fell, landing on the hard floor with his bad knee and elbow. If he’d shattered a dozen bones the pain could not have been worse. It obliterated every other sense.

Thought and feeling fled. For a span of heartbeats he had no idea of what, or who, he was. Everything stopped, suspended in a void of pure agony. If there'd been anything left inside him he would have screamed.

As the pain flowed away a boiling rage filled the space it left behind, a raw desire to punish whoever had pushed him to the ground. He could feel somebody bending over him, touching him, saying something he could not hear. It occurred to him it might be a thief trying to steal from him as he lay there.

He reached out a hand for his staff, and like an obedient dog it rolled to him, and jumped into his palm. In years past he would have needed words and gestures to bring it to him, but more recently he could formulate the pattern reflexively. With a tremendous effort Fla pushed against the floor and turned himself over, reaching out with words and mind to summon a scalding lash.

Leaning forward over him was a young woman, her face close enough to his to touch. The sight of her stopped the words in his mouth and the lash dissipated before it began to form. One of her hands rested lightly on his good arm.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

The hand she has placed on his arm was gentle and the scent of her breath, so near to his, sweet. Instinctively, he turned the left side of his face away from her, and dropped his head to bring his hood forward.

Fla focused on her with his good eye. He had a fleeting impression of flawless beauty — golden skin and perfect lips, but he was drawn helplessly to her gaze. Where he expected to find revulsion, hatred or fear, he saw nothing but sympathy.

He felt trapped in the reflection of her eyes, like an insect sinking into the purest liquid amber, forever frozen in that moment. The kindness in her expression overwhelmed him more surely than the most powerful glamour, and the rage inside him fluttered, and died in the face of it. So unexpected, he had no defence, and it broke something inside him.

“I'm not hurt,” Fla said, looking down to avoid her eyes.

His voice sounded harsh to his own ear. He felt like something soiled and crushed in front of her, like a man imprisoned in darkness for too long suddenly brought into bright midday light, and exposed to the ridicule of the world.

“I'm really sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going.”

“No harm was done,” Fla said, as he struggled to his feet, leaning against the bars of the cage for support.

She took his ruined hand through his robes, to help him up. He could see now there was wetness on her cheeks — something had upset her.

She smiled at him uncertainly. “If you're sure?”

Fla nodded mutely, and she turned away. He stood there, transfixed, watching her as she walked to the end of the room. Dimly he perceived the people with her as they passed him. Two were tall and wearing caster's cloaks, another was a web-footed anvolene of a kind he didn't recognise, flapping along behind them, and Sual, the keeper, who edged away from him in the other direction with an expression of abject terror on his face.

He cast around in his mind for what might have made her so miserable. Fla whirled round and stared at Sual. He was sure she had been shouting at him. The man uttered a panicky bleat and fled.

As he hobbled after Sual, he ransacked his memory for her words, before they'd collided. He recalled her voice had been raised, upset, angry, but about what?

Fla slowed, and looked around. In a nearby cage were the ortega he'd come here to collect, large soft eyes staring at him from between unkempt tufts of orange fur. Her last words before she'd knocked him down had been about the caged animals. He stopped next to their cage to watch the creatures’ slow movements and imagined them as she would see them. A distant long-buried half-memory from his childhood kindled in his mind, a feeling of freedom before his body had become its own prison — the gentle and kindly touch of another long gone hand brushing against his hair.

Nothing more of the memory returned, but he looked at the animals and understood. The grace that allowed her to see him as a person, and which would free him if it could, also looked beyond the bars to the creatures trapped in misery like him, and would free them too.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Fla smiled. She'd liberated something in him. He'd free all the animals for her.

The Great Library

T
HEY FOUND THE LIBRARY
at the heart of Vergence. Master Spetimane had once described Vergence Library as the greatest that had ever existed and, standing on the outside, Ebryn could see why.

The centre of the city was dominated by a steep hill, which appeared from a distance to be topped with a tall colonnaded structure. Encircling the entire base of the hill was a single vast building built from the same white stone used to construct the more enduring parts of the menagerie. It mounted in concentric rings around the hill to completely cover the lower half. A strip of parkland, over a hundred yards deep, surrounded the entire complex

When Master Spetimane described the library, Ebryn had expected a building perhaps as large as Conant Manor. Nothing he could have imagined had prepared him for the reality.

They stood in silence for a moment as they all absorbed the view. The driver of their symor had left them next to a broad sandy path leading to the entrance. Elouphe had returned to his rooms after the visit, but Ebryn was still accompanied by Sash and Addae.

“Is that it? That must be it,” Sash said.

Even Addae seemed to be impressed. “It is said it was the greatest library of Volane. Let us see.”

Without waiting for a reply, Addae set off down the path towards the entrance, walking so fast they needed to jog to keep up with him.

Under the entrance arch there were three double doors, each more than twice the height of a man and at least three times as wide. Flanking the doors were large sculptures of catlike creatures sitting on their haunches. They were carved in a similar style to the wall gargoyles at the menagerie, and from the same kind of stone, but with a more conservative hand. By a dim light, Ebryn thought, they might almost look real.

Inside, they found it pleasantly cool. Two men in white robes sat on chairs behind a counter towards the back of the entrance hall, both engaged in writing down extensive notes on large rolls of paper. The nearest glanced up as they approached, then returned to his scribbling.

Sash put a hand on the counter. “Can you help? I’m looking for information about my miniature dragon. Do you know where I should look?”

“You want the inner library. Turn right, then left, then left again, and right,” the man said, glancing up. “No unrestrained animals inside.”

“He’s on a leash,” Sash said.

The white robe returned his attention to his writing. “He’s your responsibility then. Mind you don’t touch the exhibits, unless you want to leave with fewer fingers, or wings, than when you arrived.”

“We’ll be careful,” Sash said, rolling her eyes at Ebryn and Addae.

Ebryn felt relieved to see she'd cheered up since arriving. They took the first doorway on the right and found themselves in a huge hall. Two rows of thick white pillars supported a high ceiling of the same smooth pearlescent stone.

The pillars extended as far as the eye could see, curving gradually to the left as the building conformed to the contour of the hill. A subtle sourceless light illuminated the interior, lending the surfaces a pale blue sheen.

Ebryn had expected a room full of books, but they were confronted with dozens of rows of display cases, cabinets and stands which stretched out along the length of the hall in neat lines. Some of the displays held old-looking pieces of parchment pinned to boards. Others contained tools, clothing, vases, pictures and statuettes. Most of the sets had small plaques set beneath them, inscribed in old Volanian.

They walked between the rows, their footsteps echoing crisply from the walls, examining each collection as they passed. There didn’t seem to be any obvious order to them, and the descriptions on the plaques were sparse. Ebryn stopped in front one which said Eating Utensils From Southern Metorea’. He found it oddly disturbing that so much obvious care had been taken to collect and display such mundane items.

“Why are all these here?”

“They are all that remain from Volane after it was lost,” Addae said.

Ebryn felt as if something cold had run down his spine and settled in his gut. He felt abruptly like he was walking through a crypt, surrounded on all sides by the shades of the dead. “How do you know?”

Addae had stooped to look at a collection of colourful butterflies, pinned to a large board in a low glass covered display cabinet. “It is known, I was told.”

Sash glanced at Ebryn. Perhaps she heard something odd in Addae's voice, or saw his feelings reflected in his face, because she grabbed his arm and tugged at it.

“Come on, we need to find out about food for Leth. This place is huge — who knows how long it’s going to take to find out.”

A broad stairway took them up to the next section where Ebryn found the books he’d been expecting. Row upon row of bookcases, each taller than Addae, and crammed with heavy bound volumes. Lining the walls were holders for loosely bound sheaves of paper and bundles of scrolls.

The chamber was lit with the same kind of lighting used in the great hall below, but here, with all the books around them, it felt somehow friendlier. Dozens of small labels along the front of each shelf listed the books above them. One he passed read Telean Poems and another Hobulin’s Letters To Tannermare. Ebryn thought whoever Hobulin was, he must have been a prolific letter writer, as he’d accounted for eight fat tomes.

A nearby cough brought him out of his reverie. Without thinking, Ebryn spoke the words for far-sensing, feeling the familiar momentary sensation of dislocation as his senses extended outwards like an immensely fine second skin, unrolling as a ripple through the fabric of the building. It swept over first one, then a pair of living beings hidden behind nearby shelves. He could feel the first was four-limbed but squat, the others Volene.