Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Chapter 12

Right now you should be asking yourself some questions. Questions like: “How is it possible that this book can be so awesome?” and “Why did the Librarian slip and fall down?” and “What exactly was it that exploded and made Hawkwind crash in Chapter Two?”

Did you think I’d forgotten that last one? No, not at all. (The crash nearly killed me, after all.) I figured that the Librarians might be behind it, as everyone else assumed. But why had they done it? And, more important, how?

There just hadn’t been time to ask those questions, vital though they were. Too much was going on. We’ll get to it though.

(Also, the answer to the second question in the first paragraph is obvious. She fell because she was looking through the library’s nonfriction section.)

We approached Keep Smedry’s audience lounge, where Sing—with his hefty Mokian girth—stood guard. It was time to confront She Who Cannot Be Named—the most dangerous Librarian in all of the Order of the Wardens of the Standard. I’d fought Blackburn, Dark Oculator, and felt the pain of his Torturer’s Lens. I’d fought Kilimanjaro of the Scrivener’s Bones, with his bloodforged Lenses and terrible half-metal smile. Librarian hierarchs were not to be trifled with.

I tensed, entering the medium-sized castle chamber with Grandpa Smedry and Folsom, ready for anything. The Librarian, however, wasn’t there. The only person in the room was a little old grandmother wearing a shawl and carrying an orange handbag.

“It’s a trap!” I said. “They sent a grandmother as a decoy! Quickly, old lady. You’re in great danger! Run for safety while we secure the area!”

The old lady met Grandpa Smedry’s eyes. “Ah, Leavenworth. Your family is always such a delight!”

“Kangchenjunga Sarektjåkkå,” Grandpa Smedry said, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. Almost cold.

“You always were the only one out here who could pronounce that correctly!” said Kagechech … Kachenjuaha … She Who Cannot Be Named. Her voice had a decidedly kindly tone to it. This? This was She Who Cannot Be Named? The most dangerous Librarian of all? I felt a little bit let down.

“Such a dear you are, Leavenworth,” she continued.

Grandpa Smedry raised an eyebrow. “I can’t say it’s good to see you, Kangchenjunga, so instead perhaps I will say that it’s interesting to see you.”

“Does it have to be that way?” she asked. “Why, we’re old friends!”

“Hardly. Why have you come here?”

The old grandmother sighed, then hobbled forward on shaky legs, back bowed with age, using a cane to walk. The room was carpeted with a large maroon rug, the walls bearing similar tapestries, along with several formal-looking couches for meeting with dignitaries. She didn’t sit in one of these however; she just walked up to my grandfather.

“You never have forgiven me for that little incident, have you?” the Librarian asked, fiddling in her handbag.

“Incident?” Grandpa Smedry said. “Kangchenjunga, I believe you left me dangling from a frozen mountain cliff, my foot tied to a slowly melting block of ice, my body strapped with bacon and stuck with a sign that read ‘Free wolf chow.’”

She smiled wistfully. “Ah, now that was a trap. Kids these days don’t know how to do it correctly.” She reached into her handbag. I tensed, and then she pulled out what appeared to be a plate of chocolate chip cookies, swathed in plastic wrap. She handed these to me, then patted me on the head. “What a pleasant lad,” she said, then turned to my grandfather.

“You asked why I had come, Leavenworth,” she said. “Well, we want the kings to know that we are serious about this treaty, and so I have come to speak before the final vote this evening.”

I stared down at the cookies, expecting them to explode or something. Grandpa Smedry didn’t seem worried—he kept his eyes focused directly on the Librarian.

“We won’t let this treaty happen,” Grandpa said.

The Librarian tsked quietly, shaking her head as she shuffled out of the room. “So unforgiving, you Smedrys. What can we do to show that we’re sincere? What possible solution is there to all of this?”

She hesitated by the door, then turned and winked at us. “Oh, and don’t get in my way. If you do, I’ll have to rip out your entrails, dice them into little bits, then feed them to my goldfish. Toodles!”

I stared in shock. Everything about her screamed “kindly grandmother.” She even smiled in a cute-old-lady sort of way when she mentioned our entrails, as if discussing a favorite knitting project. She exited, and a couple of keep guards followed her.

Grandpa Smedry sat down on one of the couches, exhaling deeply, Folsom sitting next to him. Sing still stood by the door, looking disturbed.

“Well then,” Grandpa said. “My, my.”

“Grandfather,” I said, looking down at the cookies. “What should we do with these?”

“We probably shouldn’t eat them,” he said.

“Poison?” I asked.

“No. They’ll spoil our dinner.” He stopped, then shrugged. “But that’s the Smedry way!” He slipped a cookie out and took a bite. “Ah yes. As good as I remember. One of the nice things about facing off against Kangchenjunga is the treats. She’s an excellent baker.”

I noticed a motion to the side, and turned as Himalaya entered the room. “Is she gone?” the dark-haired former Librarian asked.

“Yes,” Folsom said, standing up immediately.

“That woman is dreadful,” Himalaya said, sitting down.

“Ten out of ten points for evilness,” Folsom agreed.

I remained suspicious of Himalaya. She had stayed outside because she didn’t want to face a former colleague. But that had left her unsupervised. What had she been doing? Planting a bomb, like the one that blew up Hawkwind? (See, I told you I hadn’t forgotten about that.)

“We need a plan,” Grandpa Smedry said. “We only have a few hours until the treaty vote. There has to be a way to stop this!”

“Lord Smedry, I’ve been talking to the other nobility,” Sing said. “It … doesn’t look good. They’re all so tired of war. They want it to end.”

“I’ll agree the war is terrible,” Grandpa Smedry said. “But, Clustering Campbells, surrendering Mokia isn’t the answer! We need to show them that.”

Nobody responded. The five of us sat in the room for a time, thinking. Grandpa Smedry, Sing, and Folsom enjoyed the cookies, but I held off. Himalaya wasn’t eating them either. If they were poisoned, then she would know.

A short time later, a servant entered. “Lord Smedry,” the young boy said, “Crystallia is requesting a swap time.”

“Approved,” Grandpa Smedry said.

Himalaya finally took a cookie and ate one. So much for that theory, I thought with a sigh. A short time later, Bastille walked in.

I stood up, shocked. “Bastille! You’re here!”

She appeared dazed, like she’d just suffered a repeated beating to the face. She looked at me and seemed to have trouble focusing. “I…” she said. “Yes, I am.”

That gave me chills. Whatever they’d done to her in Crystallia must have been horrible if it left her unable to make sarcastic responses to my dumb comments. Sing rushed to pull over a chair for her. Bastille sat, hands in her lap. She was no longer wearing the uniform of a Squire of Crystallia—she had on a generic brown tunic and trousers, like a lot of the people I’d seen in the city.

“Child,” Grandpa Smedry said, “how do you feel?”

“Cold,” she whispered.

“We’re trying to think of a way to stop the Librarians from conquering Mokia, Bastille,” I said. “Maybe … maybe you can help.”

She nodded absently. How were we going to involve her in helping expose the Librarian plot—and thereby get her knighthood back—if she could barely talk?

Grandpa Smedry glanced at me. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m going to go break some crystal swords,” I snapped.

“Not about Bastille, lad,” Grandpa said. “I can assure you we’re all in agreement about how she’s been treated. We have larger problems right now.”

I shrugged. “Grandpa, I don’t know anything about politics back in the Hushlands, let alone the politics here in Nalhalla! I have no idea what to do.”

“We can’t just sit here!” Sing said. “My people are dying as we speak. If the other Free Kingdoms remove their support, Mokia won’t have the supplies to keep fighting.”

“Maybe … maybe I could look at the treaty?” Himalaya said. “If I read it over, perhaps I would see something that you Nalhallans haven’t. Some trick the Librarians are pulling that we could show to the monarchs?”

“Excellent!” Grandpa Smedry said. “Folsom?”

“I’ll take her to the palace,” he said. “There’s a public copy there we can read.”

“Lord Smedry,” Sing said, “I think that you should speak to the kings again.”

“I’ve tried that, Sing!”

“Yes,” the Mokian said, “but maybe you could address them formally in session. Maybe … I don’t know, maybe that will embarrass them in front of the crowds.”

Grandpa Smedry frowned. “Well, yes. I’d rather do a daring infiltration though!”

“There … aren’t many places to infiltrate,” Sing said. “The entire city is friendly toward us.”

“Except that Librarian embassy,” Grandpa Smedry said, eyes twinkling.

We sat for a moment, then glanced at Bastille. She was supposed to be the voice of reason, telling us to avoid doing things that were … well, stupid.

She just stared forward though, stunned from what had been done to her.

“Blast,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Somebody tell me that infiltrating the embassy is a terrible idea!”

“It’s a terrible idea,” I said. “I don’t know why though.”

“Because there’s not likely to be anything of use there!” Grandpa Smedry said. “They’re too clever for that. If anything, they have a secret base somewhere in the city. That’s where we’d need to infiltrate, but we don’t have time to find it! Somebody tell me that I should just go speak to the kings again.”

“Uh,” Sing said, “didn’t I just do that?”

“I need to hear it again, Sing,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I’m old and stubborn!”

“Then really, you should speak to the kings.”

“Spoilsport,” Grandpa Smedry muttered under his breath.

I sat back, thinking. Grandpa Smedry was right—there probably was a secret Librarian lair in the city. My bet was that we’d find it somewhere near where my mother vanished when I was trailing her.

“What are the Royal Archives?” I asked.

“They’re not a library,” Folsom said quickly.

“Yes, the sign said that,” I replied. “But if they aren’t a library, what are they?” (I mean, telling me what something isn’t really wasn’t all that useful. I could put out a blorgadet and hang a sign on it that said “Most certainly not a hippopotamus” and it wouldn’t help. I’d also be lying, since “blorgadet” is actually Mokian for hippopotamus.)

Grandpa Smedry turned toward me. “The Royal Archives—”

“Not a library,” Sing added.

“—are a repository for the kingdom’s most important texts and scrolls.”

“That, uh, sounds an awful lot like a library,” I said.

“But it’s not,” Folsom said. “Didn’t you hear?”

“Right…” I said. “Well, a repository for books—”

“Which is in no way a library,” Grandpa Smedry said.

“—sounds like exactly the sort of place the Librarians would be interested in.” I frowned in thought. “Are there books in the Forgotten Language in there?”

“I’d guess some,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Never been in there myself.”

“You haven’t?” I asked, shocked.

“Too much like a library,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Even if it isn’t one.”

You Hushlanders may be confused by statements like this. After all, Grandpa Smedry, Sing, and Folsom have all been presented as very literate fellows. They’re academics—quite knowledgeable about what they do. How then have they avoided libraries and reading?

The answer is that they haven’t avoided reading. They love books. However, to them books are a little like teenage boys: Whenever they start congregating, they make trouble.

“The Royal Archives,” I said, then quickly added, “and I know it’s not a library. Whatever it is, that’s where my mother was going. I’m sure of it. She has the Translator’s Lenses; she’s trying to find something in there. Something important.”

“Alcatraz, the place is very well guarded,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I doubt even Shasta would be able to sneak in unseen.”

“I still think we should visit,” I said. “We can look and see if there’s anything suspicious going on.”

“All right,” Grandpa Smedry said. “You take Bastille and Sing and go. I’ll compose a stirring speech to give at the final proceedings this evening! Maybe if I’m lucky someone will try to assassinate me during the speech. That would make it at least ten times more dramatic!”

“Grandpa,” I said.

“Yes?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Thank you! All right, let’s get moving! We have an entire continent to save!”