Spirits in the Wires (46 page)

It's getting worse, I realise,
as I go tearing back to where I left the others watching over Librarius and the leviathan by the lakeshore. All around me I can hear the thundering crashes of bookcases toppling as fissures open underneath them. A huge one comes from just behind me. I hope Christy and his friends are okay, but I don't have time to go back and look. Then one of the crevices opens right in front of me.

I jump over it, clearing it easily, but the ground's still moving when I land and it's enough to throw me off balance. I crash into a bookshelf, hitting it with my shoulder. Books come flying off, tumbling around me as I fall to the floor. I don't know how, but I manage to hold on to that hell-hound knife I got from the tinker.

I start to get to my feet, then see the fissure widen and the bookcases on either side of me begin to slide into it. I put an arm over my head to shield myself from the falling books and scrabble out of the way. The books that hit me are falling from the nearest shelves, but I know that any minute the ones higher up are going to be coming down. If one of them hits me, I'm going to have worse than bruises to worry about.

It's hard to make progress. The floor's at an odd angle, sloping back. Like it's trying to funnel me back into the fissure. I only just make it back to a level section when the bookcase on my right goes sliding into the crevice. I allow myself one look back, hear an ominous, stony crack from almost directly underground, and take off again.

I don't realize how far I'd come in my search for a weapon until now, when I'm making my way back. I don't know how big this place is, but I've been running for miles. I've always had a lot of stamina, but I have a stitch in my side by the time I finally reach the lakeshore where I've left the others. Saskia turns around, eyes widening at the big knife I'm carrying. Jackson's still standing watch over Librarius.

“Don't let him so much as twitch,” I tell Jackson as I angle my course to where the huge body of the leviathan lies sprawled, half in, half out of the lake.

“You've got it,” he tells me.

I guess I misjudged him because he's proving to be a lot more capable than I would have guessed from when I first met him.

“Christiana!” Saskia calls.

“Don't worry,” I tell her. It's easier to pretend everything's under control. “I saw Christy and some other folks back there. It's going to take them awhile to work their way here, what with all those bookcases coming down, but they shouldn't be too long.”

She's trailing after me. Now she turns to look back the way I've come.

“Christy's here? Is he okay?”

“He looked fine.”

“Who's with him?”

“I didn't recognize anybody, but I guess they're all here on a rescue mission.”

“But—”

“There's really no time,” I tell her.

I speed up a little to put some distance between us, but I needn't have bothered. She's still looking back to where I came out of the bookcases and not following me anymore. She's obviously thinking about Christy.

And then I'm by the leviathan, his immense bulk rearing up above me.

I can believe how big he is. I mean, I
know
how big he is—you can't miss it, up this close—but he's so enormous that unless he's right in front of me like this, I lose the size reference. It's as though my memory can't hold his immensity, so it brings him down to something manageable—you know like twenty feet tall instead of the two hundred or so he really is.

But he's not twenty feet tall. He's a mountain, lying there. A behemoth.

I look at the knife in my hand.

Yeah, like it's going to do the trick.

But there's nothing else. Until I ran into Christy and his friends, the only thing I could find were books. Lots of books. So what was I supposed to do? Tear out some pages and paper cut him to death?

Though I'm not planning to actually kill him. I just want to set him free of the weight and burden of the flesh that
is
killing him. Semantics, I suppose, but it makes sense in my head.

I take another look at the knife, then put it between my teeth—which feels really weird—and start up the side of one enormous arm.

I've experienced worse things in my time, but not many. Quickly heading the list is this: grabbing fleshy handfuls of the putrid skin of this monstrous man to haul myself up onto his chest, handhold by handhold. It's making my stomach do little flips.

I keep expecting him to rouse. Not get up and lumber around—I think he's too far gone for that. But to lift a giant hand to brush away some bothersome insect crawling up his arm? I can see that happening. I can really see that happening. My imagination's way too good.

But I get up onto the slope of his chest and he doesn't even twitch. There's just the slow rise and fall of the spongy flesh underfoot to tell me that he's still alive. Barely.

I take the knife from between my teeth and slowly make my way up to his throat, arms held out to keep my balance against the movement of his breathing. I get right up to the collarbone, then slide carefully down into the hollow of his throat. I don't have any trouble identifying the twinned carotid arteries I need to sever. I touch the edge of the hellhound knife with my thumb—just enough to feel the edge of the blade. It's sharper than a razor.

I bring it down toward where the arteries pulse just under his skin.

And then I can't do it.

It doesn't matter that I have only his best intentions in mind. I feel too much like I haven't weighed enough other options. Sure, he's dying. And the Wordwood is falling apart around us as he goes. But who's to say that my killing him will free his spirit to go back into the Wordwood the way it was before Librarius bound him? For all I know, I'll just bring about the Wordwood's destruction all that much more quickly.

The Wordwood, and us in it.

I wish I knew what to do.

I wish someone else would step up and take charge.

It's funny. I'm the most independently-minded person I know, but right now I really would give almost anything to have somebody else here to make the decision for me. Or at least for them to give me some informed advice. How come Mumbo didn't prepare me for a situation like this? Some days it felt like she was readying me for everything and anything, up to and including fixing a kitchen sink. But while I know all about passing as human and getting around in the borderlands and the otherworld, when it comes to leviathans, I've got nothing to fall back on.

I look away, over at the rest of the library. It's really getting bad now. The cracks of fissures splitting the stone floor, the crashing of the bookcases coming down, are a steady cacophony that doesn't let up. From my vantage point on the leviathan, I can see great gaping holes where bookcases used to stand.

I think of what Librarius told me. Of how he wasn't afraid to die, because dying he'd just be born again as himself. What he was afraid of was if whatever's destroying the Wordwood also tore
bis
spirit apart, because then there was no telling when, or even if, he'd be himself again.

I guess that's what answers my dilemma. If the leviathan dies—if I can summon the courage to use this knife—he'll get to go on as himself. But if I don't kill him, then he'll be torn apart like Librarius when the Wordwood completely falls to pieces around us.

I know that I can't let that happen. The leviathan doesn't deserve it. For all I know, he's the very one who gave Raven the tools to make the world of which this little corner of the otherworld is only a tiny part. Wouldn't that be horribly ironic?

Before I can chicken out, I take a deep breath, then plunge the knife down into the artery and tear it across. The knife goes into his skin like I'm cutting a pudding. There's no resistance at all. And then the hole I made explodes. Blood fountains out, a grotesque, red geyser. The immense body underneath me shifts and I fall down, sliding across the blood-slick skin.

It's weird. My perceptions go slow-mo, like in a car accident. I feel a huge change … in the air, inside my chest. Something shifts inside me. Deep. Bone marrow deep.

The blood rains down on me. I'm covered in it. Sliding in it.

I'm going over the edge of the leviathan's shoulder. I try to grab a hold of something, anything, but his skin's covered with blood and too slick.

Then I'm airborne.

Falling.

And everything goes white.

We almost lose Bojo
in the next fissure. It starts to open under our feet, separating Suzi and Aaran from the rest of us. Aaran makes the leap across, then turns back to help Suzi, Bojo at his side. The gap keeps widening, stones grinding deep underfoot. The bookcases are tottering, sliding into the fissure. Suzi makes the jump and Bojo and Aaran each catch her by a hand, pulling her to safety. But before they can get to level ground, the floor does a dip under their feet.

Bojo gives Aaran and Suzi a shove to where Raul and I can grab them, but he goes sliding down into the fissure. All that saves him is that he manages to grab on to a bookcase that's wedged into the crevice at an angle. Books are falling, hitting the floor and sliding past him into the growing gap. Bojo starts to climb back along the bookcase, but it suddenly drops another foot and he almost loses his grip.

“Hang on to me,” Raul says.

He stretches out on the floor and flings his knapsack toward Bojo. Aaran, Suzi, and I hold on to his legs. One of the straps on the knapsack reaches Bojo. Raul's holding on to the other with both hands. Another shower of books comes down—luckily slim folios. It's pretty much a miracle that no one's gotten a concussion yet from one of the larger books.

Bojo grabs the strap and then we all start hauling Raul back, which also pulls Bojo toward higher ground. We manage a couple of yards before Bo jo finds some purchase for his feet. He pushes himself forward and crawls to safety. And we all scramble to our feet on the level ground. I don't know about the others, but my heartbeat's doing double-time in my chest.

But there's no chance for us to take a breather.

There's another crack of splitting stone.

“Look out!” Suzi cries.

Another fissure is opening right in front of us. We dart down a side corridor to avoid it. The gap widens faster than before and the bookcases are crashing down, swallowed into it in moments.

“This way,” Bo jo says.

He leads us down the side corridor. We cross, one, then another passage. At the third, he has us heading back in the same direction that we'd been going earlier, the direction that my shadow took. All around us we can hear the grind of stone, the thundering crashes of the bookcases coming down.

“This is the way I've always figured things would end,” Raul says as we trot behind Bojo. “If a person was to get caught up in something as big as this, I mean. You can be brave, and you can do your best, but in the end all your efforts prove to be ineffectual.”

“I don't believe that for a moment,” Suzi says from behind us. “When we expend the effort, we make a difference. We might not solve the big problem, but at least we'll have done something to improve the small aspects of it that lie closer to home.”

“Which is really comforting when you're dead,” Aaran puts in. Then he adds, “Ow,” and I assume Suzi's given him a whack.

I want to add something to the argument, but then Bojo calls out from ahead of us.

“I think it's opening up!” he says.

We all look forward. In between the bookcases, far ahead, I get a glimpse of what seems to be an impossible sight. A lake, in the middle of the library. A giant man with blood fountaining from his throat.

Then there's a flare of white light. Blinded, we stumble into each other and fall in a tangle of limbs.

As I try to stand up, I realize that my eyes are still open, but I can't see anything.

And then the world goes completely away.