I nodded. Then, I jumped as something floated out of the wall next to me. ‘Gak!’ I said before I realized it was just a Curator.
‘Here,’ it said, dropping a leaf of paper to the ground.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, picking it up.
‘Your book.’
It was the paper I’d written in the tomb, the inscription about the Dark Talent. That meant we’d been trapped for nearly an hour. Bastille was right. Kaz had probably already reached the center of the Library.
The Curator floated away.
‘Your mother,’ I said, folding up the paper. ‘If she gets that crystal thing back, she’ll be all right?’
Bastille nodded.
‘So, since we’re trapped here with no hope of rescue, do you mind telling me what that crystal was? You know, to help pass the time?’
Bastille snorted, then stood up and pulled the silvery hair up off the back of her neck. She turned around, and I could see a sparkling blue crystal set into the skin on the back of her neck. I could see it easily, as she still only wore the tight black T-shirt tucked into the trousers of her militaristic uniform.
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘Three kinds of crystals grow in Crystallia,’ she said, letting her hair back down. ‘The first we turn into swords and daggers. The second become Fleshstones, which are what really make us into Crystin.’
‘What does it do?’ I asked.
Bastille paused. ‘Things,’ she finally replied.
‘How wonderfully specific.’
She flushed. ‘It’s kind of personal, Alcatraz. It’s because of the Fleshstone that I can run so quickly. Stuff like that.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘And the third type of crystal?’
‘Also personal.’
Great, I thought.
‘It’s not really important,’ she said. As she moved to sit down, I noticed something. Her hand – the one that had been holding the dagger that had blocked the Frostbringer’s Lens – had red and cracking skin.
‘You okay?’ I asked, nodding to her hand.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Our daggers are made from immature swordstones – they aren’t meant to hold out against powerful Lenses for long. A little of the ice got around and hit my fingers, but it’s nothing that won’t heal.’
I wasn’t as convinced. ‘Maybe you should—’
‘Hush!’ Bastille said suddenly, climbing to her feet.
I did so, frowning. I followed Bastille’s gaze up toward the top of our hole.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I thought I heard something,’ she replied.
We waited tensely. Finally, we saw shadows moving above. Bastille slowly pulled her dagger from its sheath, and even in the darkness, I could see that it was laced with cracks. What she expected to do at such a distance was beyond me.
Finally, a head leaned out over the hole.
‘Hello?’ Australia asked. ‘Anybody down there?’
17
I hope you didn’t find the last line of that previous chapter to be exciting. It was simply a convenient place to end.
You see, chapter breaks are, in a way, like Smedry Talents. They defy time and space. (This, alone, should be enough to prove to you that traditional Hushlander physics is just a load of unwashed underpants.)
Think about it. By putting in a chapter break, I make the book longer. It takes extra spaces, extra pages. Yet, because of those chapter breaks, the book becomes shorter as well. You read it more quickly. Even an unexciting hook, like Australia’s showing up, encourages you to quickly turn the page and keep going.
Space becomes distorted when you read a book. Time has less relevance. In fact, if you look closely, you might be able to see golden dust floating down around you right now. (And if you can’t see it, you’re just not trying hard enough. Maybe you need to hit yourself on the head with another big thick fantasy novel.)
‘We’re down here!’ I yelled up to Australia. Beside me, Bastille looked relieved and slipped her dagger back into its sheath.
‘Alcatraz?’ Australia asked. ‘Uh . . . what are you doing down there?’
‘Having a tea party,’ I yelled back. ‘What do you think? We’re trapped!’
‘Silly,’ she said. ‘Why’d you go and get trapped?’
I glanced at Bastille. She just rolled her eyes. That’s Australia for you.
‘We didn’t exactly have a choice,’ I called back.
‘I climbed a tree once and couldn’t get back down,’ Australia said. ‘I guess it’s kind of the same, right?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Look, I need you to find some rope.’
‘Uh,’ she said. ‘Where exactly am I going to find something like that?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘All right then.’ She sighed loudly and disappeared.
‘She’s hopeless,’ Bastille said.
‘I’m realizing that. At least she’s still got her soul. I was half afraid that she’d end up in serious trouble.’
‘Like getting captured by a member of the Scrivener’s Bones, or perhaps falling down a pit?’
‘Something like that,’ I said, kneeling down. I wasn’t about to count on Australia to get us out. I’d already been around her long enough to realize that she probably wasn’t going to be of much help.
(Which, incidentally, was why you shouldn’t have been all that excited to see her show up. You still turned the page, didn’t you?)
I opened Bastille’s pack and pulled out the boots with the Grappler’s Glass on the bottom. I activated the glass, then stuck a boot to the side of the wall. As expected, it didn’t stick. They only worked on glass.
‘So . . . maybe we should have you try to break the walls down,’ Bastille said speculatively. ‘You’ll probably bury us in stone, but that would be better than sitting around talking about our feelings and that nonsense.’
I glanced over, smiling.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just good to have you back.’
She snorted. ‘Well? Breaking? Can you do it?’
‘I can try,’ I said speculatively. ‘But, well, it seems like a long shot.’
‘We’ve never had to depend on one of those before,’ she said.
‘Good point.’ I rested my hands against the wall.
The Dark Talent . . . beware it. . . .
The words from the tomb wall returned to my mind. The paper with the inscription sat in my pocket, but I tried not to think about it. Now that I’d begun to understand what my Talent was, it didn’t seem a good time to start second-guessing its nature.
There would be time enough for that later.
I tentatively sent a wave of breaking power into the wall. Cracks twisted away from my palms, moving through the stone. Bits of dust and chips began to fall in on us, but I kept going. The wall groaned.
‘Alcatraz!’ Bastille said, grabbing my arm and pulling me back.
I stumbled back, dazed, away from the wall as a large chunk of stone toppled inward and hit the floor where I had been standing. The soft, springy ground gave way beneath the stone. Kind of like my head would have, had it been in the way. Only that would have involved a lot more blood and a lot more screaming.
I stared at the chunk of stone. Then, I glanced, up at the wall. It was cracked and broken, and other bits of it seemed ready to fall off too.
‘Okay, that was expected,’ Bastille said, ‘but still kind of dumb of us, eh?’
I nodded, stooping over to pick up a Grappler’s boot. If only I could get it to work. I put it up against the wall again, but it refused to stick.
‘That’s not going to do anything, Smedry,’ Bastille said.
‘There’s silicon in the rock. That’s the same thing as glass.’
‘True,’ Bastille said. ‘But there isn’t enough to make the Grappler’s Glass stick.’
I tried anyway. I focused on the glass, closing my eyes, treating it like it was a pair of Lenses.
During the months Grandpa Smedry had been training me, I’d learned how to activate stubborn Lenses. There was a trick to it. You had to give them energy. Pour part of yourself into them to make them function.
Come on! I thought to the boot, pressing it to the wall. There’s glass in the wall. Little bits of it. You can stick. You have to stick.
I’d contacted Grandpa Smedry at a much greater distance than I was supposed to be able to. I’d done that by focusing hard on my Courier’s Lenses, somehow giving them an extra boost of power. Could I somehow do the same to this boot?
I thought I felt something. The boot, pulling slightly toward the wall. I focused harder, straining, feeling myself grow tired. Yet, I didn’t give up. I continued to push, opening my eyes and staring intently.
The glass on the bottom of the boot began to glow softly. Bastille looked over, shocked.
Come on, I thought again. I felt the boot drawing something from me, taking it out, feeding on it.
When I carefully pulled my hand away, the boot stayed where it was.
‘Impossible,’ Bastille whispered, walking over.
I wiped my brow, smiling triumphantly.
Bastille reached out with a careful touch, poking the boot. Then, she easily pulled it off the wall.
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Did you see what I had to go through to get that to stick?’
She snorted. ‘It came off easily, Smedry. Do you honestly expect that you’d be able to walk up the wall with it?’
I felt my sense of triumph deflate. She was right. If I had to work that hard to get one boot to stay in one place, there was no way I’d be able to summon enough effort to get all the way to the top.
‘Still,’ Bastille said. ‘That’s pretty amazing. How did you do it?’
I shrugged. ‘I just shoved a little extra power into the glass.’
Bastille didn’t reply. She stared at the boot, then looked at me. ‘This is silimatic,’ she said. ‘Technology, not magic. You shouldn’t be able to push it like that. Technology has limits.’
‘I think your technology and your magic are more related than people believe, Bastille,’ I said.
She nodded slowly. Then, she moved quickly, putting the boot back into the pack and zipping it up. ‘You still have those Windstormer’s Lenses?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Why?’
She looked up, meeting my eyes. ‘I have an idea.’
‘Should I be frightened?’ I asked.
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘The idea’s a little bit strange. Like one you might have come up with, actually.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘Get out those Lenses,’ she said, throwing her pack over her shoulder.
I did so.
‘Now, break the frames.’
I paused, eyeing her.
‘Just do it,’ she said.
I shrugged, then activated my Talent. The frames fell apart easily.
‘Double up the Lenses,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ I said, sliding one over the other.
‘Can you do to those Lenses what you did to the boots? Put extra power through them?’