Chapter 10
Are you annoyed with me yet?
Good. I’ve worked very hard – perhaps I will explain why later – to frustrate you. One of the ways I do this is by leaving cliff-hangers at the ends of chapters. These sorts of things force you, the reader, to keep on plunging through my story.
This time, at least, I plan to make good on the cliff-hanger. The one at the end of the previous chapter is entirely different from the hook I used at the beginning of the book. You remember that one, don’t you? Just in case you’ve forgotten, I believe it said:
“So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.”
This sort of behavior – using hooks to start books – is inexcusable. In fact, when you read a sentence like that one at the beginning of a book, you should know not to continue reading. I have it on good authority that when an author gives a hook like this, he isn’t ever likely to explain why the poor hero is tied to an altar – and, if the explanation does come, it won’t arrive until the end of the story. You’ll have to sit through long, laborious essays, wandering narratives, and endless ponderings before you reach the small bit of the story that you wanted to read in the first place.
Hooks and cliff-hangers belong only at the ends of chapters. That way, the reader moves on directly to the next page – where, thankfully, they can read more of the story without having to suffer some sort of mindless interruption.
Honestly, authors can be so self-indulgent.
“Alcatraz?” Bastille asked as I took off down the hallway following the footprints.
I waved for her to follow. The black footprints were fading quickly. True, if the black ones disappeared, we could just follow the yellow ones, since they appeared more stable. But if I didn’t keep up with the black ones, I wouldn’t know if the two sets diverged.
Bastille and Sing hurried along behind me. As we moved, however, the thought of what I was doing finally hit me: I was chasing down the Dark Oculator. I didn’t even really know what a Dark Oculator was, but I was pretty certain that I didn’t want to meet one. This was, after all, probably the person who had sent a gunman to kill me.
Yet I was also pretty certain that this Dark Oculator was the leader of the library. The most important person around. That made him the person most likely to know where the Sands of Rashid were. And I intended to get those sands back. They were my link to my parents, perhaps the only clue I would ever get to help me know what had happened to them. So, I kept moving.
Now some of you reading this may assume that I as being brave. In truth, my insides were growing sick at the thought of what I was doing. My only excuse can be that I didn’t really understand how much danger I was in. Knowledge of the Free Kingdoms and Oculators was still new to me, and the threat didn’t quite seem real.
If I’d understood the risk – the death and pain that pursuing this course would lead to – I would have turned back right then. And it would have been the right decision, despite what my biographers say. You’ll see.
“What are we doing?” Bastille hissed, walking quickly beside me.
“Footprints,” I whispered. “Someone passed this way a short time ago.”
“So?” she asked.
“They’re black.”
Bastille stopped short, falling behind. She hurriedly caught up, though. “How black?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Blackish black.”
“But I mean…”
“It’s him,” I said. “The footprints seem like they’re burning. Like they were seared into the stones and are slowly melting away the floor. That’s how black they are.”
“That’s the Dark Oculator, then,” Bastille said. “We don’t want to follow them.”
“Of course we do. We have to find the sands!”
Bastille grabbed my arm, yanking me to a halt. Sing puffed up behind us. “Goodness!” he said. “Ancient weapons certainly are heavy!”
“Bastille,” I said, “we’re going to lose the trail!”
“Smedry, listen to me,” she said, still gripping my arm. “Your grandfather might be able to face a high-level Dark Oculator. Might. And he’s one of the Free Kingdoms’ most powerful living Oculators, with an entire repertoire of Lenses. What do you have? Two pairs?”
Three, I thought, reaching into my jacket pocket. Those Firebringer’s Lenses. If I could turn them on the Dark Oculator…
“I know that look,” Bastille said. “Your grandfather gets it too. Shattering Glass, Smedry! Is everyone in your family an idiot? Do your Talent genes replace the ones that give most people common sense? How am I supposed to protect you if you insist on being so foolish?”
I hesitated. Down the hallway, the last of the dark footprints burned away, leaving only the yellowish set. I looked down at them, frowning to myself.
I’m missing something, I thought.
Grandpa Smedry had explained about the Tracker’s Lenses. He’d said… that the footprints would remain longer for people that I knew well. I glanced back down the way we had come. My own footprints, glowing a weak white, showed no signs of fading. Bastille and Sing’s sets, however, were already beginning to disappear.
That yellow set of footprints, I realized, turning back toward the ways the Dark Oculator had gone. They must belong to someone I know…
That was too big a mystery for me to ignore.
I reached into my pocket, pulling out the small hourglass Grandpa Smedry had given me. “Look, Bastille,” I said, holding it up before her. “We only have a half hour until this place gets filled with Librarians back from patrolling. If that happens, we’ll get caught, and those sands will fall permanently into Librarian hands. We don’t have time to go poking around, looking in random doors. This place is way too big. There’s only one way to find what we need.”
“The Dark Oculator might not even have the sands with him,” Bastille said.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But he might know where to find them – or he might lead us to them. We at least have to try to follow him. It’s our best lead.”
Bastille nodded reluctantly. “Don’t try to fight him, though.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Don’t worry – it’ll be all right.”
And if you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you… on the moon.
To my credit, I didn’t really want to face down a Dark Oculator. I was half hoping that Bastille would talk me out of the decision. Usually when I tried to do reckless things, there had been adults around to stop me. But things were different now. By some act of fortune – perhaps even more strange than the appearance of talking dinosaurs and evil Librarians – I was in charge. And people listened to me. I was realizing that if I chose poorly, I would not only get myself into trouble but I might end up getting Bastille and Sing hurt as well.
It was a sobering thought. My life was changing, and so my view of myself had to change as well. You might think I was turning into a hero – however, the truth is that I was just setting myself up for an even greater fall.
“We’ll stay out of sight,” I said. “Eavesdrop and hope the Dark Oculator mentions where the sands are. Our goal is not to fight him. At the first sign of trouble – or, in Sing’s case, tripping – we’ll back out. All right?”
Bastille and Sing nodded. Then I turned. The yellowish footprints were still there. A little more cautious, I followed them down the hallway. We passed a couple more archways, set with solid wooden doors, but the footprints didn’t lead into any of them. The hallway led deeper and deeper into the library.
Why build a library that looks like a castle inside? I thought, passing an ornate lantern bracket shaped like a cantaloupe. The lantern atop it burned a large flame, and – despite the tense situation – something occurred to me.
“Fire,” I said as we walked.
“What?” Bastille asked.
“You can’t tell me that those lanterns are more ‘advanced’ than electric lights.”
“You’re still worried about that?”
I shrugged as we paused at an intersection, and Bastille peeked around it, then waved the all clear.
“They just don’t seem very practical to me,” I whispered as we started again. “You can turn electric lights on and off with a switch.”
You can do that with these too,” Bastille said. “Except without the switch.”
I frowned. “Uh… okay.”
“Besides,” Bastille whispered. “You can light things on fire with these lamps. Can you do that with electric ones?”
“Well, not most of them,” I said, pointing as the footprints turned down a side corridor. “But that’s sort of the idea. Open flames like that can burn things down.”
I couldn’t see because of the sunglasses, but I had the distinct impression that Bastille was rolling her eyes at me. “They only burn things if you want them to, Smedry.”
“How does that work?” I whispered, frowning.
“Look, do we have time for this?” Bastille asked.
“Actually, no,” I said. “Look up there.”
I pointed ahead, toward a place where the hallway opened into a large room. This diversion was actually quite fortunate for Bastille, for it meant that she didn’t have to explain how silimatic lanterns work – something I now know that she couldn’t have done anyway. Not that I’d point out her ignorance to her directly. She tends to start swinging handbags whenever I do things like that.
Bastille went up the hallway first. Despite myself, I was impressed by her stealth as she crept forward, close to the wall. The room ahead was far better lit than the hallway, and her movements threw shadows back along the walls. After reaching the place where the hallway opened into the room, she waved Sing and me forward. I realized that I could hear voices up ahead.
I approached as quietly as possible, creeping up next to Bastille. There was a quiet clink as Sing huddled beside us, setting down his gym bag. Bastille shot him a harsh look, and he shrugged apologetically.
The room at the end of the corridor was actually a large, three-story entryway. It was circular, and our corridor opened up onto a second-story balcony overlooking the main floor down below. The footprints turned and wound around a set of stairs, leading down. We inched forward to the edge of the balcony and looked down upon the people I had tracked.
One of them was indeed a person I knew. It was I person I had known for my entire life: Ms. Fletcher.
It made sense. After all, Grandpa Smedry had said that she’d been the one to steal the sands from my room. The idea had seemed silly to me at the time, but then a lot of things had been confusing to me back then. I could now see that he must have been right.
And yet, it seemed so odd to see a person from my regular life in the middle of the library. Ms. Fletcher wasn’t a friend, but she was one of the few constants in my life. She had directed my moves from foster family to foster family, always checking in on my, looking after me….
Spying on me?
Ms. Fletcher still wore her unflattering black skirt, tight bun, and horn-rimmed glasses. She stood next to a hefty man in a dark business suit with a black shirt and a red power tie. As he turned, conversing with Ms. Fletcher, I could see that he wore a patch over one eye. The other eye held a red-tinted monocle.
Bastille breathed in sharply.
“What?” I asked quietly.
“He only has one eye,” she said. “I think that’s Radrian Blackburn. He’s a very power Oculator Alcatraz – they say he put out his own eye to increase the power focused through his single remaining one.”
I frowned. “Blackburn?” I whispered. “That’s an interesting name.”
“It’s a mountain,” Bastille said. “I think in the state you call Alaska. Librarians named mountains after themselves – just like they named prisons after us.”
I cocked my head. “I’m pretty sure that Alcatraz Island is older than I am, Bastille.”
“You were named after someone, Alcatraz,” Sing said, crawling up next to us. “A famous Oculator from long ago. Among people from our world – and among our opponents – names tend to get reused. We’re traditional that way.”
I leaned forward. Blackburn didn’t look all that threatening. True, he had an arrogant voice and seemed a bit imposing in his black-on-black suit. Still, I had expected something more dramatic. A cape, maybe?
I was, of course, missing something very important. You’ll see in a moment.
Beside me, Bastille looked very nervous. I could see her pulling her purse up, reaching one hand inside of it. An odd gesture, I thought, since I doubted there was anything inside that purse that could face down a Dark Oculator. Anyway, the voices from below quickly stole my attention. I could just barely hear what Blackburn was saying.
“…you hadn’t scared him off last night,” the Oculator said, “we wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
Ms. Fletcher folded her arms. “I brought you the sands, Radrian. That’s what you wanted.”
Blackburn shook his head. Hands clasped behind his back, he began to stroll in a slow circle, his well-polished shoes clicking on the stones below.
“You were supposed to watch over the boy,” he said, “not just collect the sands. This was sloppy, Shasta. Very sloppy. What possessed you to send a regular thug to go collect the child?”
Ms. Fletcher sent the gunman, I thought with a stab of anger. She really was working for them, all this time.
“That’s what I’ve always done,” Ms. Fletcher snapped. “I send one of my men to move the boy to another foster home.”
Blackburn turned. “Your man drew a gun on a Smedry.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Ms. Fletcher said. “Someone must have bribed him – someone from one of the other factions, I’d guess. The Order of the Shattered Lens, perhaps? We won’t know for certain until the interrogation is complete, but I suspect that they were afraid that you’d manage to recruit the boy.”
Recruit me? That comment made me cock my head. However, there was something more pressing in that statement. It implied that Ms. Fletcher hadn’t wanted me killed. For some reason, that made me relieved, though I knew it was foolish.
Down below, Blackburn shook his head. “You should have gone yourself to collect him, Shasta.”
“I intended to go along,” Ms. Fletcher said. “But…”
“But what?”
She was silent for a moment. “I lost my keys,” she said.
I frowned. It seemed like an odd comment to make. Blackburn, however, simply laughed at this. “It still has the better of you, doesn’t it?”
I could see Ms. Fletcher flushing. “I don’t see what problem you have working with me. The man who tried to shoot the boy was working for someone else. We should be focusing on discovering what those sands do.”
“The problem is, Shasta,” Blackburn said, growing solemn again, “this operation was sloppy. When my people are sloppy, it makes me look incompetent. I’m not very fond of that.” He paused, then looked at her. “This is not a time we can spare mistakes. Old Smedry is in this town somewhere.”
Ms. Fletcher paused. “Him? You think it was him?”
“Who else?” Blackburn asked.
“There are a lot of elderly Oculators, Radrian,” she said.
Blackburn shook his head. “I should think that you, of all people, would recognize the Old One’s handiwork. He’s in the city, after the same thing that we were.”
“Well,” Ms. Fletcher said. “If Leavenworth was here, he’s gone now. He’ll have the boy out of Inner Libraria before we can track him down.”
“Perhaps,” Blackburn said quietly.
I squirmed. As I listened, I’d revised my earlier opinion of Blackburn. I didn’t like this man. Blackburn seemed too… thoughtful. Careful.
Dangerous.
“I’ve always been curious,” Blackburn said, as if to himself. “Why did they leave a Smedry of the pure line to be raised in Inner Libraria? Old Leavenworth must have known that we would find the boy. That we would watch him, control him. It seems like an odd move, wouldn’t you say?”
Ms. Fletcher shrugged. “Perhaps they just didn’t want him. Considering his… parentage.”
What? I thought. Say more on that!
But Blackburn didn’t. He just shook his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps. But then this child seems to have an inordinately powerful Talent. And there were always the sands. Old Smedry must have known, as we did, that the sands would arrive on the boy’s thirteenth birthday.”
“So, they used the boy as bait for the sands,” Ms. Fletcher said. “But we got to them first.”
“And old Smedry ended up with the child. Who gained the better half of the deal, I wonder?”
Tell me where the sands are! I thought. Say something useful!
“As for the sands,” Ms. Fletcher said. “There is the matter of payment….”
Blackburn turned, and I caught a flash of emotion on his face. Anger?
Ms. Fletcher raised a finger. “You don’t own me, Blackburn. Don’t presume to think that you do.”
“You’ll get paid, woman,” Blackburn said, smiling.
It was not the type of smile one wanted to see. It was dark. Dark as the footprints I had followed. Dark as the hatred in a man’s eyes the moment he does something terrible to another person. Dark as an unlit street on a silent night, when you know something is out there, watching you.
It was from this smile that I realized where Radrian Blackburn got the title “Dark” Oculator.
“You would sell the child too, wouldn’t you?” Blackburn said, still smiling as he removed his monocle, rubbed it clean, then placed it in his pocket. “You would pass him off for wealth, as you did with the sands. Sometimes you impress even me, Fletcher.”
Ms. Fletcher shrugged.
Blackburn placed a different monocle onto his eye.
Wait, I thought. What am I forgetting?
And then I realized what it was. Ms. Fletcher’s foot prints, along with Blackburn’s, shone below. I was still wearing the Tracker’s Lenses. Cursing quietly, I pulled them off, then switched them for my Oculator’s Lenses.
Blackburn glowed with a vibrant black cloud. He crackled with power, giving off an aura so strong that I had to blink against the terrible shining darkness.
If Blackburn gave off an aura like that… what did I give off?
Blackburn smiled, turning directly toward the place where I was hiding with the others. Then his monocle flashed with a burst of power.
I immediately fell unconscious.