Reports say it lasted only for the length of two heartbeats. It felt like hours to me as I struggled, both terrified and in awe of the thing I’d let loose. With a heave of strength, I pulled it back into me. In a second, it was contained.
I blinked, standing in the night. There were a dozen enormous cracks in the ground around me. The Librarians who had been running for me had been knocked to the ground.
Unfortunately, the fighting in Tuki Tuki was still going on, however. I wasn’t done. I took the thing inside of me and suddenly knew what to do with it. I reached down, pulling the single remaining Bestower’s Lens from the pouch at my pocket. I knelt beside Bastille, who lay on the ground beside me. I brushed back her hair and exposed her Fleshstone. It was crystalline and pure, translucent, like an enormous diamond set into the skin of her neck.
That stone connected all of the Knights of Crystallia together. I raised the Bestower’s Lens and looked into the Fleshstone, willing my Talent to pass into the stone.
It refused to move. It seethed within me, angry that I had stopped it from destroying. I gritted my teeth, angry, but I was feeling exhausted from all that had happened. I couldn’t force it.
So I tried a different tactic. I need to trick it, I thought. Grandpa had to be tricked into thinking he was late so that he could arrive early. Aydee had to be confused by numbers so that she could add wrong.
What did I need to make my Talent work? I need to think it’s breaking something important, I realized. Always, during my childhood, the Talent had acted to shatter, destroy, or break things that were very important to me or to those who cared for me. As I realized this, I found myself hating it again. But there was no time for that.
I focused on the Fleshstone, and I thought about how much I cared for Bastille. How important she’d become to me recently, and how if that stone broke, she’d die. The Talent – gleeful for something to destroy – snapped from me, but I raised the Bestower’s Lens and channeled it, sending the Talent into Bastille’s Fleshstone.
I felt an immediate draining within me as something very powerful was pulled through that Lens and sent into the stone on Bastille’s neck.
It sapped me, sucked away what strength I had left. Everything went dark, and I collapsed.
∞ + 1
Three hours later, the sun rose over a broken city.
I sat up in my bed, looking out the window. Tuki Tuki was in shambles; many of the huts had collapsed. Broken spears, bits of metal, and shards of glass lay peppering the lawns of fallen homes. Bits of trash blew in the wind.
There were no bodies, but I could see blood. The bodies had been removed.
‘Ah, lad, you’re awake.’
I turned to find my grandfather sitting in the chair beside my bed. I was in the palace, one of the few buildings that hadn’t fallen during the earthquake.
‘What happened?’ I asked softly, raising a hand to my head. It throbbed.
‘You saved us,’ he said. He seemed . . . oddly subdued. For my grandfather, at least. ‘My, my, lad,’ he said. ‘That was something incredible you did! I’m . . . not even sure what it was, but it was something incredible indeed!’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The Librarian weapons fell apart,’ Grandpa said. ‘In the middle of the battle. Every gun, grenade, cannon, robot, everything they had. It all just . . . well, lad, it broke.’
I could hear drums. The Mokians were having a celebration. How could they celebrate when their city was in shambles?
Because they still have a city, I thought. Broken though it is.
‘How are you feeling, lad?’ Grandpa asked, scooting his chair closer to me. ‘Fine, actually,’ I replied. ‘Tired. No, exhausted. But remarkably good.’
‘Well, that’s great. Fantastic, in fact! Excellent to hear.’ He seemed hesitant about something. ‘I don’t want to push, lad, but . . . do you mind me asking what you did?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I knew that the Fleshstones on the necks of the Crystin are all connected. And once, when using the Bestower’s Lenses you gave me, I loaned someone else my Talent. So I figured . . . well, if I gave my Talent to all of the Knights at once, while they were fighting, it would work for them like it did for me. It would destroy the weapons of the Librarians when they tried to fire.’
My grandfather seemed disturbed. ‘Ah . . .’ he said. ‘Yes, very clever, very clever.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be clever,’ I said, grimacing. ‘It just kind of . . . happened. But it looks like it worked.’
‘Oh, it worked,’ Grandpa said. ‘Maybe better than you thought . . .’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Well, lad, here’s the thing. You didn’t just break the weapons of the Librarians who were fighting here. You broke them all, every weapon being wielded by a Librarian anywhere in Mokia. In one moment, they all shattered, broke, fell apart.’ Grandpa raised a hand to his head, scratching at the fluffy white hair there. ‘They’ve retreated, called off the war, and gone back to the Hushlands. The Mokians have named you a national hero.’
I sat back, stunned.
‘Already the news is spreading through the Free Kingdoms,’ Grandpa said. ‘This is the first time the Librarians have been turned back from taking a kingdom they were besieging. It’s being called a miracle. You’re a hero, lad. Everyone is talking about it.’
‘I . . .’ I felt odd. I should have felt like celebrating, jumping up and screaming for joy. But I still felt troubled and worried. Something inside of me had changed. Being forced to confront my conceptions of what was right and what was wrong, who was good and who was evil, had changed me.
I didn’t want to celebrate, I wanted to hide. The world was a scary place. My Talent terrified me suddenly, even after I’d used it to save so many.
‘Lad,’ Grandpa said. ‘Do you know when the Talents . . . might come back?’
I felt a chill. ‘What do you mean?’
‘None of them work anymore,’ Grandpa said. ‘Me, Kaz, Aydee . . . no more Talents. They’re gone.’
Hesitantly, I reached out and touched the bed frame, engaging my Talent. But nothing happened. It wasn’t like before, when I felt reluctance within me. Now there was just a void, an emptiness where my Talent had once been.
I let it out, I thought. It can’t be! I contained it, kept it from destroying! I pulled it back in!
But I’d done something else. I’d . . . well, somehow, I’d broken the Smedry Talents.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘Ah. Well, then, lad, you should rest. Rest indeed . . .’
When I next awoke, I had a stream of visitors. Aluki, Aydee, Kaz, then countless Mokians wishing to show their appreciation for me saving their city.
I tried to explain that I’d destroyed their city, but they weren’t listening. The Librarians had retreated; Mokia was safe. What was left of it, at least.
I kept waiting to see if Bastille, the king, or the queen would come to see me. None of them did, though someone did bring me a cheese sandwich and insist that I eat it, thereby fulfilling the holy prophecy of the Author’s Foreword, as was spoken by Alcatraz Smedry.
Finally, I asked the question I’d been dreading and got the answer I’d feared. Those who’d been knocked unconscious during the war were still in comas. The Librarians had fled, taking the antidote with them.
Mokian scientists were confident they could find a cure, given enough time. But in the end, I had failed Bastille after all. And Mokia too – more than half of their population were still unconscious.
I didn’t say this to the Mokians. Instead, I nodded and accepted thanks. I couldn’t really explain how I felt. I wasn’t the same person anymore. Too much had happened. Too much had changed.
I was finally free of the Talent, and that terrified me. Where was it? What had I done?
When I remembered that I’d lost my Translator’s Lenses, that only made me feel sicker.
My final visitor of the day was a very unexpected one. She sauntered in, accompanied by my grandfather and two guards. Shasta Smedry, my mother. She still wore her Librarian business suit and skirt. Her blond hair was down, and they’d taken her glasses as a precaution.
My mother could have been a pretty woman if she’d wanted to be. That had never seemed to matter to her.
‘Lad,’ Grandpa said, ‘she insisted that we bring her to you. I’m not sure if it was a good idea.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, focusing on Shasta. ‘You should be gone. The Librarians who kidnapped me went back and freed all of you.’
‘Yes, they did,’ she said. ‘And I waited behind to get captured again.’
I frowned.
‘I think your father is going to come here,’ Shasta said, eyeing her guards with a raised eyebrow. ‘The catacombs of the Mokian Royal University are said to have walls that are inscribed with the Forgotten Tongue. I thought Attica would try to get to them before the city fell. Alcatraz the First was said to have spent much time in this area, and so there’s a high probability that the writings were his.’
‘Well, that’s not an issue any longer,’ Grandpa Smedry said. ‘The Mokian university is no more. The entire thing was swallowed up in the earthquake, crushed flat, the catacombs pulverized.’
‘Is that so?’ Shasta said flatly.
‘Indeed,’ Grandpa said, meeting her stare. There didn’t seem to be much affection between them. Of course, they were in-laws, so what did you expect?
‘Where will he go next?’ I asked.
Shasta turned to me. She drew her lips into a line.
‘I’ll go with you,’ I found myself saying.
‘What!’ Grandpa said, ‘Trembling Taylers, Lad! What are you talking about?’
‘We need to find my father,’ I said firmly. ‘I think he’s going to try something stoopid. Something very, very stoopid.’
‘But—’
‘You,’ I said to Shasta, ‘me, and my grandfather. Just the three of us, and anyone else you approve. You have my word.’
She seemed amused at that. ‘Very well. There are rumors of an enclave of Forgotten Language texts in the heart of Librarian power. I suspect we’ll find your father there. The place is carefully guarded, however, and even one such as I will have difficulty sneaking in.’
‘Lad, I don’t know about this,’ Grandpa said. ‘The heart of Librarian power?’ I asked, ignoring him. ‘Where is that?’
‘They call it the Library of Congress,’ Shasta said. ‘But it’s really something far grander. The Highbrary, a bunker the size of a city, hidden underneath Washington D.C., in the United States, deep within the Hushlands.’
That got my grandfather’s attention. ‘The Highbrary?’ he asked. He got an almost dreamy look in his eyes. ‘My, my,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to infiltrate that place. . . .’
That’s my grandfather for you. He might have lost his Talent, but he was still a Smedry.