Worldsoul

Prologue

Fire tore through the library, scattering burning scrolls across the floor, inscribing smooth marble with letters of ash. With a breath of the sea wind through the glassless window, the words were gone. The pale-haired woman turned, a silhouette against the fire, took a dying word in her hand and stared at it. Flames licked the hem of her robe, leaving the linen untouched.

“This is an intriguing tongue,” she said. “Runic. From before the ice, perhaps? What do you think?”

“Beheverah.” The name was accented with exasperation. “We need to act. Before They realise what’s happening. Before They come.”

The woman arched an eyebrow. “You overestimate them. They’re savages, nothing more. Mindless… Although I grant you that their masters are not. There’s no rush.”

“Maybe not in the Liminality.” His voice was still sharp. “But here-this doesn’t work the same way. And we need to take action before it’s too late. Think of all the stories here they will devour. You can look at them at leisure, later, if you wish. All those stories,” he coaxed.

“Very well.” Beheverah sighed. It was so interesting in here, with everything changing so quickly, the flames climbing up to swallow marble and paper alike. She brushed a smouldering fragment from her skirts. “If you really think so… ”

Shouts were coming from outside, cries of panic and dismay trickling up from the harbour.

“The scrolls!” someone cried, an old voice, a heart breaking. “The scrolls!”

Raising her gaze beyond the blazing papyri, the woman could see out past the torchlight on the quay: a green sky, a greener sea, merging into one as the twilight deepened. A good time to steal something away; an edge in time. She reached out and touched her companion’s fingertips, stood on tiptoe, called on the horizon and the dying day. His murmuring voice summoned up power, drawing it from the fire and the cracking stone that surrounded them, making the spell concrete, then deconstructing it again. Beneath her bare toes, the library started to shift. She smiled. This was almost easy. She spoke three careful words, spells of moving, and the floor rippled as though she was standing on ocean.

More shouts. She knew what they’d see, those horrified observers. They’d see something that couldn’t possibly be happening: their beloved library-the greatest repository of knowledge in the world-first in flames and blazing, then starting to shimmer and glow, the gleam of magic blinding out the glow, then the whole magnificent columned structure meteor-shooting out of sight and taking its consuming fire with it.

Gone from Alexandria. Gone from Earth. But not gone forever.