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word--out loud. I recall reading about a spell that worked that way, once."
"So what do we do?"
"You notice that all three books are open? We'll have to come at them from
underneath and tip the covers shut. So that they end up face-down. Even then
we might want to handle them with our eyes shut when we go burn them. I've
read about grimoires that had rakshasas bound into their covers." Although
nothing as exciting as that ever turned up in the library where I had worked.
"A talking book that can read itself to me. That's what I need."
"I thought Soulcatcher made you learn how to read when you were the king of
the Greys."
"She did. That don't mean I want to read. Reading is bloody hard work."
"I thought managing a brewery was hard work. You never shied away from that."
Being shorter, I took the job of sneaking up on the three lecterns. I used
extreme caution. They might have been great actors but I was soon convinced
that they could not see me coming.
"I like making beer. I don't like reading."
He should have been the one getting ready to burn books, then. I was suffering
a crisis of conscience as troublesome as any of my crises of faith. I loved
books. I believed in books. As a rule I did not believe in destroying books
because their contents were disagreeable. But these books contained the dark,
secret patterns for bringing on the end of the world. The end of many worlds,
actually, for if the Year of the Skulls successfully sacrificed my world,
others connected to the glittering plain must follow.
This was not a crisis that needed immediate resolution. I had my answers
worked out already, which was why I was on hands and knees under the lecterns
while suffering verbal abuse from an infidel who had no use for my god or for
the Deceivers' merciless Destroyer. I tipped the covers of the books shut
while wondering if there was still some way the Children of Night could get to
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me.
"The covers appear to be blank," Swan said.
"You're looking at the backs of the books. I'm closing them so they're
face-down. Remember?"
"Hold it." He held up a finger, cocked an ear.
"Echoes."
"Uhm. Somebody's out there."
I listened harder. "Singing again. I wish they wouldn't sing. Nobody in the
band but Sahra can carry a tune in a bucket with a lid on it. You can come on
up here now. I think it's safe."
"You think ?"
"I'm still alive."
"I don't know if that's necessarily a recommendation. You're too sour and
bitter for the monsters to eat. I, on the other hand--"
"You, on the other hand, are plain lucky that my god forbids me to reveal that
the only thing interested in eating you would be the kind of beetle that
flourishes on a diet of livestock by-product. Right there looks like a good
place to start a fire."
Swan was up beside me now. "There" was some kind of large brazier-looking
thing that still had a few charcoal remnants in it. It was made of hammered
brass in a style common to most of the cultures of this end of the world.
"You want me to tear a few pages out for tinder?"
"No, I don't want you to tear pages out. Weren't you listening when I told you
the books might make you want to read them?"
"I was listening. Sometimes I don't hear very well, though."
"Like most of the human race." I was prepared. In minutes I had a small fire
burning. I lifted one of the books carefully, making sure it faced away from
Swan and me. I fanned its pages out slightly and set it down in the flames,
spine upward. I burned the last volume first. Just in case.
Something might interfere. I wanted the first volume destroyed to be one the
Daughter of Night had not yet seen. The first book, which she had copied parts
of several times and might have partially memorized, I would burn last.
The book caught fire eventually but did not burn well. It produced a
nasty-smelling dark smoke that filled the cavern and forced Swan and me to get
down on our stomachs on the icy floor.
The underground wind did carry some of the smoke away. The rest was no longer
overwhelming when I consigned the second book to the flames.
While waiting to add the final book to the fire, I brooded about why Kina was
doing nothing to resist this blow to her hopes for resurrection. I could only
pray that Goblin's sacrifice had hurt her so badly she could not look outside
herself yet. I could only pray that I was not a victim of some grand deceit.
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Maybe these books were decoys. Maybe I was doing exactly what Kina had planned
for me to do.
There were doubts. Always.
"You're muttering to yourself again."
"Uhn." I possessed not so much as the faintest hope that Goblin's death had
put Kina out of the misery of the world permanently.
"This feels so nice," I said. "I could go to sleep right here." And I did so,
promptly.
Good old Willow's sense of duty, or self-preservation, or something, kept him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]