(This was included for anyone who skipped forward to read the last page of the book. For the rest of you—the ones who reached the last page in the proper, honorable, and Smedry-approved manner—those untold millions are cheering in praise of your honesty.
They’ll probably throw you a party.)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my agents, Joshua Bilmes (who single-handedly transformed this manuscript from being a whimsical idea into a full-blown super-project), Steve Mancino, and Eddie Schneider, who exceeded my expectations wildly in finding the book a home.
And, speaking of that home, Anica Rissi—this book’s first editor—took fantastic care of this book, helping make it the best book possible. Her tireless work is well appreciated.
For this new edition, huge thanks go out to Susan Chang, my editor at Starscape, who made the rerelease a reality. Hayley Lazo has provided fantastic illustrations under the guidance of Dragonsteel’s art director, Is??c Stewart, who also made the map. The cover by Scott Brundage is the best I’ve seen so far on an Evil Librarians book. The interior design by Heather Saunders looks great, and the compositing was by Westchester Publishing Services. Tireless production work came from Megan Kiddoo, Nathan Weaver, and Karl Gold, and proofreading was by Joseph Brosnan and Lauren Hougen.
As for alpha readers, I’d like to thank Stacy Whitman, Heather Kirby, Kristina Kugler, Peter and Karen Ahlstrom, Kaylynn ZoBell, Isaac Thegn Skarstedt, Ethan Skarstedt, Leif Ethan Skarstedt, Benjamin R. Olsen, Matisse Hales, Lauren Sanderson, Alan Layton, Janette Layton, Nathan Hatfield, Krista Olsen, C. Lee Player, Eric J. Ehlers, and Emily Sanderson. Special thanks to my grandmother, Beth Sanderson, for suggesting this project.
Also, I’d like to give a special acknowledgment to Janci Patterson, who worked tirelessly to slay the typo demons in this manuscript. (Not that I didn’t manage to sneak a few more in afterward, but the Intrepid Peter Ahlstrom made sure the current text was up to snuff.)
Finally, a thanks to all of the evil librarians out there. It’s partially their fault that I ended up being a writer instead of something useful, like a plumber or a foghorn repair technician. It’s poetic justice that I would now use my nefarious talent to expose you all for what you really are.
Brandon Sanderson
Read on for an excerpt from Alcatraz’s next adventure
THE
SCRIVENER’S
BONES
Available now from Starscape
Copyright © 2008 by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC
Chapter
1
So, there I was, slumped in my chair, waiting in a drab airport terminal, munching absently on a bag of stale potato chips.
Not the beginning you expected, is it? You likely thought that I would start this book with something exciting. A scene involving evil Librarians, perhaps—something with altars, Alivened, or at least some machine guns.
I’m sorry to disappoint you. It won’t be the first time I do that. However, it’s for your own good. You see, I have decided to reform. My last book was terribly unfair—I started it with an intense, threatening scene of action. Then I cut away from it and left the reader hanging, wondering, and frustrated.
I promise to no longer be deceptive like that in my writing. I won’t use cliffhangers or other tricks to keep you reading. I will be calm, respectful, and completely straightforward.
Oh, by the way. Did I mention that while waiting in that airport I was probably in the most danger I’d ever faced in my entire life?
I ate another stale potato chip.
If you’d passed by me sitting there, you would have thought that I looked like an average American boy. I was thirteen years old, and I had dark brown hair. I wore loose jeans, a green jacket, and white sneakers. I’d started to grow a bit taller during the last few months, but I was well within the average for my age.
In fact, the only abnormal thing about me was the blue glasses I was wearing. Not truly sunglasses, they looked like an old man’s reading glasses, only with a baby-blue tint.
(I still consider this aspect of my life to be terribly unfair. For some reason, the more powerful a pair of Oculatory Lenses is, the less cool they tend to look. I’m developing a theory about it—the Law of Disproportional Lameness.)
I munched on another chip. Come on … I thought. Where are you?
My grandfather, as usual, was late. Now, he couldn’t completely be blamed for it. Leavenworth Smedry, after all, is a Smedry. (The last name’s a dead giveaway.) Like all Smedrys, he has a magic Talent. His is the ability to magically arrive late to appointments.
While most people would have considered this to be a large inconvenience, it’s the Smedry way to use our Talents for our benefit. Grandpa Smedry, for instance, tends to arrive late to things like bullet wounds and disasters. His Talent has saved his life on numerous occasions.
Unfortunately, he also tends to be late the rest of the time too. I think he uses his Talent as an excuse even when it isn’t to blame; I’ve tried to challenge him on this several times, but always failed. He’d just arrive late to the scolding, and so the sound would never reach him. (Besides, in Grandpa Smedry’s opinion, a scolding is a disaster.)
I hunched down a little bit more in the chair, trying to look inconspicuous. The problem was, anyone who knew what to look for could see I was wearing Oculatory Lenses. In this case, my baby-blue spectacles were Courier’s Lenses, a common type of Lens that lets two Oculators communicate over a short distance. My grandfather and I had put them to good use during the last few months, running and hiding from Librarian agents.
Few people in the Hushlands understand the power of Oculatory Lenses. Most of those who walked through the airport were completely unaware of things like Oculators, silimatic technology, and the sect of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world.
Yes. You read that right. Evil Librarians control the world. They keep everyone in ignorance, teaching them falsehoods in place of history, geography, and politics. It’s kind of a joke to them. Why else do you think the Librarians named themselves what they did?
Librarians. LIE-brarians.
Sounds obvious now, doesn’t it? If you wish to smack yourself in the forehead and curse loudly, you may proceed to do so. I can wait.
I ate another chip. Grandpa Smedry was supposed to have contacted me via the Courier’s Lenses more than two hours before. It was getting late, even for him. I looked about, trying to determine if there were any Librarian agents in the airport crowd.
I couldn’t spot any, but that didn’t mean anything. I knew enough to realize that you can’t always tell a Librarian by looking at one. While some dress the part—horn-rimmed glasses for the women, bow ties and vests for the men—others look completely normal, blending in with the regular Hushlanders. Dangerous, but unseen. (Kind of like those troublemakers who read fantasy novels.)
I had a tough decision to make. I could continue wearing the Courier’s Lenses, which would mark me as an Oculator to Librarian agents. Or I could take them off, and thereby miss Grandpa Smedry’s message when he got close enough to contact me.
If he got close enough to contact me.
A group of people walked over to where I was sitting, draping their luggage across several rows of chairs and chatting about the fog delays. I tensed, wondering if they were Librarian agents. Three months on the run had left me feeling anxious.
But that running was over. I would soon escape the Hushlands and finally get to visit my homeland. Nalhalla, one of the Free Kingdoms. A place that Hushlanders didn’t even know existed, though it was on a large continent that sat in the Pacific Ocean between North America and Asia.
I’d never seen it before, but I’d heard stories, and I’d seen some Free Kingdomer technology. Cars that could drive themselves, hourglasses that could keep time no matter which direction you turned them. I longed to get to Nalhalla—though even more desperately, I wanted to get out of Librarian-controlled lands.
Grandpa Smedry had
n’t explained exactly how he planned to get me out, or even why we were meeting at the airport. It seemed unlikely that there would be any flights to the Free Kingdoms. However, no matter the method, I knew our escape probably wouldn’t be easy.
Fortunately, I had a few things on my side. First, I was an Oculator, and I had access to some fairly powerful Lenses. Second, I had my grandfather, who was an expert at avoiding Librarian agents. Third, I knew that the Librarians liked to keep a low profile, even while they secretly ruled most of the world. I probably didn’t have to worry about police or airport security—the Librarians wouldn’t want to involve them, for that would risk revealing the conspiracy to people who were too low ranked.
I also had my Talent. But … well, I wasn’t really sure whether that was an advantage or not. It—
I froze. A man was standing in the waiting area of the gate next to mine. He was wearing a suit and sunglasses. And he was staring right at me. As soon as I noticed him, he turned away, looking too nonchalant.