“No need for language like that!” Biblioden said. “I’m going to help you, Attica. I’m going to put your research into motion! This is going to be very, very interesting.”
Father’s struggles were pointless; the soldiers marched him from the room. Two of them gathered up my mother, and two others took Draulin under the arms and dragged her away. They left Grandpa’s corpse just lying there.
Draulin.
The cure!
I had it still, in my other pocket. But how in the world could I administer it to her without them seeing? My mind raced as they forced me, at gunpoint, to start following the others along the walkway. There was no getting to Draulin. There were too many guards between me and her.
But maybe …
That’s reckless.
It was the only plan I had. It occurred to me, right then and there, that there was a reason behind the Smedry way. Not recklessness for the sake of being reckless, as Biblioden behaved. We acted like we did because we had no other options.
We were the ones willing to take the risk.
Wind whipping at my robe, I pulled out the bottle of antidote and moved to run back toward the room with Grandfather’s body. I was counting on the guards not wanting to kill me, and I was right, as one slammed the butt of his rifle into my side instead of shooting me.
I gasped in pain and fell to my knees, dropping the bottle of antidote. It bounced once, then rolled off the edge of the walkway.
“No!” I cried, reaching toward it as it fell.
Biblioden walked over as one of the soldiers pulled me to my feet. “Thinking of using that on old Grandpa Smedry? It doesn’t cure death, child.” He smiled at me.
I tried to punch him, but one of the guards took me by the arm before I could. Biblioden nodded, and another guard pulled my robe off and tossed it into the fans beneath. That left me in my tuxedo.
“Face this like a Smedry,” Biblioden said, patting me on the shoulder. “It is a fitting way to end.”
“What…” I gasped in a breath, holding my side where I’d been struck. “What are you going to do with us?”
“Surely you’ve figured that out,” Biblioden said, strolling across the walkway. The soldiers marched me beside him, my father finally sagging in his bonds just ahead. “All of that power. I wondered what glories your father would discover, but even without reading the notebooks, I knew that there was something special about your line. Something I wanted.” He looked to me. “Have you ever watched a bloodforged Lens being made?”
I felt cold. Oh no …
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Biblioden said as we walked. “But from what I read in your father’s research, this will be an excellent way to approach the Incarnate Wheel and beseech it for blessings. And beyond that … yes, I do think it will be quite possible to draw the energy source out from inside you and put it to my own use. Your father’s research on the Worldspire tells me that I can transform people from a great distance. What if I made every person in the Free Kingdoms into a power source, like the Smedrys? What would happen to their society?”
He looked at me and smiled a terrible smile. “Why … there would be no more need for a war. Since the Free Kingdoms would go the way of Incarna. They’d simply. Stop. Existing.”
That was the meaning of the darkness. An end to everything Biblioden saw as strange, bizarre, or uncontrollable. I shouted, thrashing, trying to escape as the soldiers hauled me back down the corridor.
We emerged into the central cavern. In the near distance, bathed in light from the open ceiling above, I saw the altar atop its stone peak.
Chapter
20
So there it is; that’s how I finally ended up tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias. Yes, I exaggerated a bit about the magma, fire, and sharks, but this part actually happened. I was about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.
And that’s how my grandfather got shot.
I lay there, strapped in place, as Biblioden and several Librarians from the Order of the Shattered Lens prepared the ceremony. And I couldn’t help thinking about my parents.
What had gone wrong? Had there been one single event? A moment that drove a wedge between my father and mother? Both, deep down, wanted to be with one another. I’d seen it. Yet neither acted that way.
I wondered what the Shaper’s Lens would show if it were turned on me. What did I want? More than anything?
I turned my head, the only part of my body that I could move. The spire with the altar was big enough for a few dozen people at the top, but I was close enough to the edge to look down the fifty feet or so and spot the place where—surrounded by soldiers—Kaz and Himalaya made their last stand. Penguinator lay in wreckage nearby, a gaping hole in its side.
I looked back toward the open ceiling as Biblioden strolled over to me.
I smiled at him.
“I did not expect you to smile,” he noted, hands clasped behind his back. “Usually when people are approaching sacrifice, they are not happy about it.”
“I’m going to beat you,” I whispered.
“Smedry bravado,” Biblioden said.
“I’ve been in worse situations than this,” I said. “I always make it through unscathed. It will work out. You’ll see.”
“In those other situations, you weren’t facing me,” Biblioden said, then leaned down. “Do you realize what your family is, child? You are the symbol of everything loathsome in the world. Pretending to be one of you was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Worse than killing my brother. Worse than sinking a continent full of loyal followers because of the corruption that had spread among them. Worse than anything.”
He grabbed me by the chin, forcing me to look into his eyes as he leaned down. “I am going to relish the chance to remove everything special, interesting, or distinctive about you people. When I’m done you’ll be dead, and the rest of your family will be normal. Fitting, isn’t it?”
He let go of me and stood up, looking toward my father, who was being held by two Librarian soldiers at the edge of the altar’s platform.
“This ceremony,” Biblioden proclaimed, “is more powerful if performed on a willing victim. So I’m going to give you two a chance. Once I’m done, on my word of honor, I will set one of you free. I’d rather you live and know what was done to you anyway.”
What was that scent in the air?
“So which will it be?” Biblioden asked. “Which of you lives, and which dies? I’ll let the two of you choose.”
“Sir,” said one of the soldiers. “Do you smell that? Smells like … cinnamon.”
Biblioden paused.
Down below, the door to Penguinator shook with a resounding bang. Then it exploded open.
A small figure with silver hair stood in the doorway. A thirteen-year-old girl clutching a long crystalline sword.
She looked very, very angry.
“You drop
ped the antidote into the ventilation system on purpose,” Biblioden said with a groan. “I should have seen that. Well, what does it matter? She’s only one person.”
“You,” I said, “have never dealt with Bastille in a bad mood.”
The soldiers started firing. I almost felt sorry for them.
Biblioden watched for a moment, but unfortunately the angle wasn’t right for me to see more of what was happening below. His eyes widened, and then he stepped back.
“All right,” he announced, looking to the others. “Time to speed this up. Roger, knock down the steps leading here. Everyone else, start firing in that direction. Smedrys, make your decision now.”
“Well,” I said, grinning and trying to stall. “I just need a moment to think.…”
Biblioden pulled out my mother’s handgun and pressed it to my temple. “Choose!”
I stammered, trying to delay. But as I did, I started to worry. Bastille had a lot of distance to cover. Even if she did get here, how was she going to fight her way up to us? She was incredible, but she wasn’t omnipotent.
“I’ll count to three,” Biblioden said. “One.”
Stall. I had to stall! “No, listen, I know where you can find much more power—”
“Two.”
There had to be a way out of this. I felt a panic. A sudden, overwhelming panic. “Don’t do this. I know something you don’t. I have secrets!”
“Three.”
“Take me!” my father cried out. Right as I said something.
“Take him.”
Deep down, in that moment of crisis, I didn’t want to die. I can tell myself it was because I thought it would waste more of their time to take me off the altar and put him there instead.
But in the end, I just didn’t want to die.
Chapter
21
They found me huddled up in a ball on the platform, a bloodied altar of books behind me.
I’ll avoid describing what they did to my father. But his corpse was on that altar.
“Alcatraz?” Bastille’s voice.
I stared sightlessly, trying to banish from my mind what I’d just seen.