Worldsoul

Eighteen

Nerren was due in later that morning after a doctor’s appointment. The Library inspection had apparently gone as well as possible and Benjaya informed her that it had been thankfully brief.

“They said they’d do a more extensive one later.”

“Oh, good,” Mercy said. “Something to look forward to.”

Predictably, she found herself with a mountain of paperwork, and some explaining to do. She spent most of the morning of her return with the Elders of the Library, trying to work out where the disir had come from. Nerren had told them about the events in Section C, eventually. Mercy called on Librarian McLaren for moral support: he could be relied upon to talk sense, and he looked more like a warrior than a Librarian. She felt she needed that.

“It must be a priority,” Elder Tope said, her elderly face creased in concern. “We simply cannot have leakage.”

“This never happened when the Skein were here,” Elder Jonah lamented.

“But now the Skein are gone,” McLaren remarked. “We have to shift for ourselves.”

She looked at the Elders and suddenly felt very sad. Despite their age, they were like children whose parents had suddenly disappeared, leaving them alone and defenceless. She had thought this before and, of course, it was no more than the truth: the Skein had always taken care of everything. They might not have been gods, but they were god-like-powerful, benevolent, remote. Not for the first time, however, Mercy started to wonder whether this was really an accurate perception. How much had they really known about their masters and mistresses, after all?-although the Skein had changed gender seemingly at will, adopting new bodies as one might put on another set of clothes. They had always seemed kind, but when Mercy thought about it, she had the impression that the Skein treated humans as a sort of amusing pet, that their agenda lay entirely elsewhere. These thoughts did not make her comfortable, but this was not a comfortable world. And looking at the faces of the Elders, creased with worry and bewilderment, Mercy was conscious of a growing anger. Did you go away on purpose, she mentally asked the Skein, so that we would grow up? But in that case, why didn’t you prepare us better?

“Don’t worry,” she heard herself say. “I’ll take care of it. I promise you that I will.”

Outside the doors, McLaren gave her a quizzical look. “We’ve known each other a long time, Mercy. Are you sure you can handle this?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not. I’m not sure at all.”

The ka, Perra, slipped on velvet feet through the labyrinthine passages of the Library. These were the secret ways, that even most of the Librarians did not know. Only the Librarians were allowed entry here, but Perra and ka-kind, along with others, used the secret routes: the little-known pathways of forgotten stories, the backdoors of tales, the null-spaces between lines of text and subtext. The route that Perra now took had brought the ka through an ancient tale of a winged bull and the sun, a fragment of poetry from an Elizabethan noblewoman’s writing desk, and a folktale about fox witches from nineteenth-century China. Nimbly, Perra skirted hooves crashing into sunwarmed dust, tasted old rose petals and disappointment, glimpsed a galleon on a far and silver sea, and pattered through snow under pine trees, before coming out into the liminal space between Sections C and D of the secured section of the Library.

Perra was curious, like all spirits. Perra wanted to know.

This section of the Library was very quiet, even compared to the usual silence of all libraries anywhere. Perra, being a spirit, was noiseless, and yet felt a distinct tinge of the ominous in the air, glimpsing shadows from the corners of the eye that had no relationship to the storyways.

This ka, thought Perra, is being watched.

The spirit spoke a name into the air, experimentally. Nothing answered, but Perra was not really expecting it to. The name hung for a moment, glimmering, then shattered like glass, the shards falling to the floor and disappearing.

This ka sees.

The name had been a revelatory one, calling the invisible into being, and it was a powerful and ancient word. It took a considerable resistance to protect oneself against it and the non-appearance of anything significant gave Perra two theories: either there was nothing there, or there was something big. Perra, from both experience and a natural caution, was inclined to favour the latter.

Mercy had mentioned the problematic section and so Perra approached it with a considerable degree of caution. As soon as the relevant stack was reached, the ka became aware of a tingling in the air, a jangling resonance which a human would have been unlikely to pick up. To the ka, however, it was as though someone had stretched a wire far too tightly and made it sing, sending ripples out into the surrounding air. It ruffled the goldensand fur of Perra’s spine and set the ka’s small sharp teeth on edge. Reflexive claws slid out from Perra’s toes to make small indentations on the parquet floor, which lingered briefly and then vanished: spirits leave little trace.

Cold/drivensnow/blackice/wrongness.

All of these things were familiar to the ka by now, in direct opposition to its own ancestral magic, which was of the desert, the warm breath of the sand-laden winds, the heat of stone and the cooler shadows of moonlight. Golden magic, and old. But the ka had seen what had come through this ripped gate in the world and what now haunted the Eastern Quarter: the disir. The ka had some other ideas about that.

Pausing before the stacks, Perra could see where the disir had come through. The rent would be invisible to Mercy and her colleagues, but to Perra, it looked like a black shining rip in the air, the edges hanging loosely and occasionally billowing outward as the between-worlds wind caught them and sent them flying like a ragged banner. Perra made a small, clucking sound of disapproval. Not Mercy’s fault, of course. How can you mend something if you don’t know that it’s there? But the ka could see it and with sight, came knowledge, and with knowledge, came responsibility.

Perra knew that the sensible thing to do would be to close the rift at once. But kas are old, and although they are wise, they know that wisdom sometimes has to be earned and won. Thus Perra did not close the gap immediately. It thought it would take a little look.

Together, Mercy and Nerren studied the map. Its edges bristled with thistledown sigils: the spells that were keeping the map’s representation three-dimensional, and mid-air. Occasionally, Nerren cranked the bronze and silver sigilometer up a notch, bringing the map into sharper focus.

“It’s too far,” Mercy said. “It’s off the map.” But they had known that. They were looking for loose threads and there were plenty of those.

This part of the map showed the northern storyways. At the top were the more modern folktales, threads of narrative which led down into more ancient groups of legend. Most of them were quests, showing the distinctive golden-brown colour of quest stories and featuring brave children, elf-folk and svart-folk, mythical swords, magical objects. Earlier on, the children had been heroes, usually male, and then gods.

“Here’s something,” Nerren said, peering. The readout showed a partial tale, of a wonderful necklace desired by a goddess: this one was multilayered and emergent into Earth’s present day, but at the bottom a thread disappeared into nowhere. Nerren sighed. “It’s slid past the Holdstockian layer into the nevergone. Looks more like a love story, though.”

“I’m not really interested in those,” Mercy said.

“What happened to what’s-his-name, by the way?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.” Mercy winced. That story, which had reached a conclusion shortly before the Skein had disappeared, had taken the pattern of all her other romances: Library coming first, everything else coming second.

Nerren seemed to understand this. She said, “Well, never mind that now, then. How about this?”

It was the story of a woman who tried to fly to the moon, in a chariot drawn by deer, or sometimes swans. It was very old, and petered out some three thousand years down.

“I like it but I can’t see how it’s relevant. What we’re looking for are legends of warrior women, ancient nightmares… ”

“Those all seem to be from around the Black Sea,” Nerren said. “We’d have to bring up another map.”

The oldest maps of the storyways were from the Middle East, with some from China. The Australasia department on the ninth floor was doing sterling work transcribing songlines, which were much older, but those responded to pictures, not text, and Mercy did not think they would be relevant to mainland Continental Ice Age myths. Eventually, she and Nerren gave up.

“We’re just going to have to go in there and have a look,” Mercy said. She watched as the sigilometer powered down and the map faded back into its parchment. “And keep our fingers crossed.”

Mercy took the Irish sword with her when she went back into Section C. She also took Benjaya, one of the more active of her colleagues. Benjaya was young, male, and keen, which were not necessarily good qualities, but Mercy felt that enthusiasm would make up the lack. She gave him a lecture anyway, as they climbed the stairs, about appropriate behaviour and lack of experience. Benjaya listened earnestly, but she had a nasty feeling that he might not have taken it all in. With Nerren recently injured, however, she needed someone who could provide backup and Benjaya, despite inexperience, had muscles. He was also on the Library’s fencing team and Mercy thought this was likely to be useful. He brought a sword of his own with him, a long whipping rapier which sang softly to itself, in a language that Mercy did not know.

The ka stood on a ledge of ice, small wings folded against the wind. Golden eyes were slitted, trying to see. To the left lay a long line of forest, shadow-dark. To the right stretched a broken landscape of ice, a wide tumbling torrent, and the glimmer of oxbow lakes. The sky was heavy with storms. As Perra watched, a vivid bolt of rose-coloured lightning broke the cloud and struck down into the forest. Perra heard something cry out, a long forlorn wail which did not sound human. The trees went up like torches, burning a strange, unnatural blue.

Perra had the feeling that this had happened before, many times. The ka, eyes closed, sent senses out into the overlight, the place which lies between the layers of the nevergone, and saw, very far away, a huge construction like a sundial. This confirmed the ka’s suspicions that this scene, unfolding now, was no more than a bubble in time, a trapped loop on endless replay.

Nonetheless, it was interesting. And something was running from the forest, a tall thing that loped swiftly over the tundra. Perra braced clawed feet against the ice, but this thing did not look like the disir. A narrow muzzle swung from side to side, scenting the air. It was dressed in strips of leather that hung down like moss; a clawed hand gripped a staff. It sang as it came, a plaintive wail that was nonetheless rhythmic and compelling. Perra felt a thread of old magic spiral through the air, conjured from ice and water and wind, and speaking to the far stars. The figure raised its staff and behind the ka, the rent in the air grew wide. Perra was lifted from the ledge and carried through. The rift snapped shut.

Mercy, stepping cautiously through the double doors of Section C, had to duck to avoid the flying ka. Benjaya cried out, lashing up with the rapier.

“No!” Mercy cried. “It’s Perra!”

She felt the ka’s passage merely as soft feathers brushing her face, and when she straightened up, she saw Perra sitting on the ledge above the door. The spirit looked slightly ruffled.

“Perra, what are you doing here?”

“This ka wanted to see what was here,” the ka said. “Now, it has seen.”

Mercy stared at her. “What did you see?”

“An age of ice.”

“Why was the rent still open?” Benjaya asked.

“A very good question.”

“You would not have been able to see it,” the ka said. “It was visible to me, but only in the overlight, not the everyday.”

Mercy sighed. “So all the time we’ve been thinking of the rent as closed, it’s been gaping wide open letting through who knows what?”