Chapter 3
I’d like to take this opportunity to point out something important. Should a strange old man of questionable sanity show up at your door – suggesting that he is your grandfather and that you should accompany him upon some quest of mystical import – you should flatly refuse him.
Don’t take his candy either.
Unfortunately, as you will soon see, I was quickly forced to break this rule. Please don’t hold it against me. It was done under duress. I’m really not used to being shot at.
I walked tiredly into the kitchen – which still smelled of smoke – hoping that the strange old man wouldn’t take to pounding on the door. I didn’t really want to call the police on him – not only would I likely break the telephone in the process (I’m particularly bad with phones) but I really didn’t want the old loon carted away in a police car. That would have been –
“Alcatraz Smedry?” a voice suddenly asked.
I jumped, turning from the half-burned cupboard, a box of cornflakes in my hand. A man stood in the doorway behind me, wearing slacks and a button-down shirt. I frowned, realizing that I recognized the symbol on the man’s shirt pocket and standard-issue attaché case. He was a foster care caseworker – this was the man that Ms. Fletcher had sent to pick me up from the house. I realized that when I’d originally gone chasing the old man up to my room, I’d left the front door open. The caseworker must have come in looking for me while I was upstairs chatting with the lunatic.
“Hi,” I said, putting down the box. “I’ll be ready in a bit – let me have breakfast first.”
“You’re him, then?” the caseworker asked, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses. “The Smedry kid?”
I nodded.
“Good,” the man said, then pulled a gun out of his attaché case and raised it toward me. It had a silencer on the barrel.
I froze, shocked. (And don’t try to claim that you did anything different the first time a government bureaucrat pulled a gun on you.)
Fortunately, I eventually found my tongue. “Wait!” I said, raising my hands. “What are you doing?”
“Thanks for the sands, kid,” the man said, and moved as if to pull the trigger.
At that moment something massive crashed through the wall of my house – something that looked a lot like the front end of an old Model-T Ford. I cried out, dodging to the side, and the caseworker stumbled to the ground in the chaos.
The man who called himself Grandpa Smedry sat happily in the driver’s seat. A chunk of smoke-damaged ceiling fell down onto the hood of the car, throwing up a puff of white dust. The old man poked his head out the window.
“Lad,” he said, “might I point out that you have two choices right now? You can get in the car with me, or you can stay here with the man holding a gun.”
I stood, dazed.
“You really don’t have much time to decide,” Grandpa Smedry said, leaning toward me, speaking in a kind of half whisper, as if he were sharing some kind of great secret.
Now, I’d like to pause here and note that Grandpa Smedry was lying to me. I didn’t have only two choices at that point – I had quite a few more than that. True, I could have chosen to stay in the room and get shot. I also could have chosen to get in the car. However, there were lots of other things I could have done. For instance, I could have run around the house flapping my arms and pretending that I was a penguin. The logical choice to make in this situation would have been to call the police on both of those maniacs.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think of penguins or police and instead did as Grandpa Smedry said, scrambling over and getting into the car.
As I stated at the beginning of the chapter, I really shouldn’t have done this. I was soon to learn the dangers involved in following strange old men on quests. I don’t want to give away any more of the story, but let me say that my fate at this point took a sharp turn toward altars, sacrifices, and evil Librarians.
And possible some sharks.
The car backed out of the house, the tires leaving tracks in the lawn. I sat in the front passenger seat, still stunned, looking at the wreckage of the Sheldons’ house. Bits of siding were falling off the outside wall, crushing Roy’s prize tulips. This was more damage than I’d ever done to any foster home. This time it wasn’t directly my fault, but… well, that didn’t change the fact that the kitchen was no longer just burned but also had quite a large hole in it.
We turned onto the street in front of the house – the car puttering along at a modest speed. The caseworker didn’t chase after us, but that didn’t stop me from watching anxiously until the house disappeared in the distance.
Someone just tried to kill me, I thought, feeling numb. You may find it hard to believe – considering the number of things I’d broken in my life – but this was the first time someone had actually tried to shoot me. It was an unsettling feeling. A little like the way you feel when you have the flu, actually. Maybe there’s a connection.
“Well, that was exciting!” Grandpa Smedry said.
I was still staring out the window. The street passed outside, a suburban neighborhood distinctive only in that it looked pretty much like every other one in the nation. Calm two-story houses. Green lawns. Oak trees, shrubs, flower beds, all carefully maintained.
“He tried to kill me,” I whispered.
Grandpa Smedry snorted. “Not very well. You’ll understand eventually, lad, but pulling a gun on a Smedry isn’t exactly the smartest thing a man can do. But that’s behind us. Now we have to decide what to do next.”
“Next?”
“Of course. We can’t just let them have those sands!” Grandpa Smedry raised a hand and pointed at me. “Don’t you understand, lad? It’s not just your life that’s in danger here. This is the fate of an entire world we’re juggling! The Free Kingdoms are already losing their war against the Librarians. With a tool like the Sands of Rashid, the Librarians will have just the edge they need to win. If we don’t get the sands back before they’re smelted – which will only take a few hours – it could lead to the overthrow of the Free Kingdoms themselves! We are civilization’s only hope.”
“I… see,” I said.
“I don’t think you do, lad. The Lenses smelted from that sand will contain the most powerful Oculatory Distortions either land has ever seen. Gathering those sands was your father’s life’s work. I can’t believe you let the Librarians steal them. I’ll be honest, lad – I had higher hopes for you. I really expected better. If only I hadn’t come so late…”
I sat quietly, looking out the windshield. Now, it’s time you understood something about me. Despite what the stories like to say about my honor and my foresight, the truth is that I possess neither trait in large amounts. One trait I’ve always possessed, however, is rashness. Some call it irresponsibility; others call it spontaneity. Either way, I could rightly be called a somewhat reckless boy, not always prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions. In this case, of course, there was something more behind the decision I made. I had seen some very odd things that day. It occurred to me that if something as crazy as a gunman showing up in my house could happen, perhaps it could be true that this old man was my grandfather.
Someone had tried to kill me. My house was in a shambles. I was sitting in a hundred-year-old car with a madman. What the heck, I thought. This might be fun.
I turned, focusing on the man who claimed to be my grandfather. “I… didn’t let them steal the sand,” I found myself saying.
Grandpa Smedry turned to me.
“Or, well, I did,” I said, “but I let them take the sand on purpose, of course. I wanted to follow them and see what they tried to do with it. After all, how else are we going to uncover their dastardly schemes?”
Grandpa Smedry paused, then he smiled. His eyes twinkled knowingly, and I saw for the first time a hint of wisdom in the old man. Grandpa Smedry didn’t seem to believe what I had said, but he reached over anyway, clapping me on the arm. “Now that’s talking like a Smedry!”
“Now,” I said, holding up a finger. “I want to make something very clear. I do not believe a word of what you have told me up to this point.”
“Understood,” Grandpa Smedry said.
“I’m only going with you because someone just tried to kill me. You see, I am a somewhat reckless boy and am not always prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions.”
“A Smedry trait for certain,” Grandpa Smedry noted.
“In fact,” I said, “I think that you are a loon and likely not even my grandfather at all.”
“Very well, then,” Grandpa Smedry said, smiling.
I paused as the old car turned a corner, moving with a very smooth speed. We were leaving the neighborhood behind, turning onto a commercial street. We began to pass convenience stores, service stations, and the occasional fastfood restaurant.
It was at that point that I realized Grandpa Smedry had taken his hands off the wheel sometime during the conversation, and now sat with his hands in his lap, smiling happily. I jumped in surprise.
“Grandpa!” I yelped. “The steering wheel!”
“Drastic Drakes!” Grandpa Smedry exclaimed. “I nearly forgot!” He grabbed the steering wheel as the car turned another corner. Grandpa Smedry proceeded to turn the wheel back and forth, seeming in random directions, as a child might play with a toy steering wheel. The car didn’t respond to his motions but moved smoothly along the street, picking up speed.
“Good eye, lad!” Grandpa Smedry said. “We always have to keep up appearances, eh?”
“Um… yes,” I said. “Is the car driving itself, then?”
“Of course. What good would it be if it didn’t? Why, you’d have to concentrate so much that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. Might as well walk, I say!”
Right, I thought.
Those of you from the Free Kingdoms might be familiar with silimatic engines and can – perhaps - determine how they could be used to mimic a car. Of course, if you’re from the Free Kingdoms, you probably have only a vague idea what a car is in the first place, since you’re used to much larger vehicles. (It’s kind of a like a silimatic crawler with wheels instead of legs, though people treat them more like horses. Only, unlike horses, they aren’t alive – and when they poop, environmentalists get mad.)
“So,” I asked, “where are we going?”
“There’s only one place the Librarians would have taken an artifact as powerful as the Sands of Rashid,” Grand Smedry said. “Their local base of operations.”
“That would be… the library”
“Where else? The downtown library, to be exact. We’ll have to be very careful infiltrating that place.”
I cocked my head. “I’ve been there before. Last I checked, it wasn’t too hard to get in.”
“We don’t have to just get in,” Grand Smedry said. “We have to infiltrate.”
“And the difference is…?”
“One requires far more sneaking.” Grandpa Smedry seemed quite delighted by the prospect.
“Ah,” I said. “Right, then. Are we going to need any… I don’t know, special equipment for this? Or, perhaps, some more help?”
“Ah. A very wise idea, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said.
And the car suddenly jerked, turning onto a larger street. Cars passed on either side, whizzing off to their separate destinations, Grandpa Smedry’s little black automobile puttering along happily in the center lane. Grandpa gave the wheel a few good twists, and we rode in silence.
I kept glancing at the steering wheel, trying to sort out exactly what mechanism was controlling the vehicle. In my world, vehicles don’t drive themselves, and men like Grandpa Smedry are generally kept in small padded rooms with lots of crayons.
Eventually (partially to keep myself from going mad from frustration) I decided to try conversation again. “So,” I said, “why do you think that man tried to kill me?”
“Because the Librarians got what they wanted from you, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “They have the sands, which we all knew would make their way to you eventually. Now that they have your inheritance, you’re no longer an asset to them. In fact, you’re a threat! They were right to be afraid of your Talent.”
“My Talent?”
“Breaking things. All Smedrys have a Talent, my boy. It’s part of our lineage.”
“So… you have one of these Talent things?” I asked.
“Of course I do, lad!” Grandpa Smedry said. “I’m a Smedry, after all.”
“What is it?”
Grandpa smiled modestly. “Well, I don’t like to brag, but it’s quite a powerful Talent indeed.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“You see,” Grandpa Smedry said, “I have the ability to arrive late to things.”
“Ah,” I said. “Of course.”
“I know, I know. I don’t deserve such power, but I try to make good use of it.”
“You are completely nuts, you know.” It’s always best to be blunt with people.
“Thank you!” Grandpa Smedry said as the car began to slow. The vehicle pulled up to the pumps at a small gas station. I didn’t recognize the brand – the sign hanging above the ridiculously high prices simply depicted the image of an upside-down teddy bear.
Our doors swung open on their own. Grandpa hopped out of his seat and rushed over to meet the station attendant, who was approaching to fill up the tank.
I frowned, still sitting in the car. The attendant was dressed in a pair of dirty overalls and no shirt. He was chewing on the end of a piece of straw, as one might see a farmer doing in old Hushlander movies, and he had on a large straw hat.
Grandpa Smedry approached the man with an exaggerated look of nonchalance. “Hello, good sir,” Grandpa Smedry said, glancing around. “I’d like a Philip, please.”
“Of course, good sir,” the attendant said, tipping his hat and accepting a couple of bills from Grandpa Smedry. The attendant approached the car, nodding to me, then took out one of the gasoline hoses and held it up against the side of the car, whistling pleasantly to himself.
“Come, Alcatraz!” Grandpa Smedry said, walking up to the gas station’s store. “There isn’t time!”
Finally, I just shook my head and climbed out of the car. Grandpa Smedry went inside, the screen door slamming behind him. I walked up, pulled open the screen door – threw the door handle over my shoulder as it broke off – then stepped inside after Grandpa Smedry.
Another attendant – also with straw in his mouth and a large hat on his head – stood leaning against the counter. The small “store” consisted of a single stand of snacks and a wall-sized cooler. The cooler was stocked completely with cans of motor oil, though a sign said ENJOY A COOL REFRESHING DRINK!
“Okay,” I said, “where exactly are you people finding straw to chew on in the middle of the city? It can’t be all that easy to get.”
“Quickly, now. Quickly!” Grandpa Smedry gestured frantically from the back of the store. Glancing to either side, he said in a louder voice, “I think I’ll have a cool refreshing drink!” Then he pulled open the cooler door.
I froze in place.
Now, it’s very important to me that you understand that I am not stupid. It’s perfectly all right if you end this book convinced that I’m not the hero that some reports claim me to be. However, I’d rather not everyone I meet presume me to be slow-witted. If that were the case, half of them would likely try and sell me insurance.
The truth is, however, that even clever people can be taken by surprise so soundly that they are at a loss for words. Or, at least, at a loss for words that make sense.
“Gak!” I said.
You see. Now, before you judge me, place yourself in my position. Let’s say that you had watched a crazy old man open up a cooler full of oilcans. You would have undoubtedly expected to see… well, a cooler full of oilcans on the other side.
You would not expect to see a room with a large hearth at the center, blazing with a cheery reddish-orange fire. You would not expect to see two men in full armor standing guard on either side of the door. Indeed, you would not expect to see a room – instead of a cooler full of oilcans – at all.
Perhaps you would have said “Gak” too.
“Gak!” I repeated.
“Would you stop that, boy?” Grandpa Smedry said. “There are absolutely no Gaks here. Why do you think we keep so much straw around? Now, come on!” He stepped through the doorway into the room beyond.
I approached slowly, then glanced at the other side of the open glass door – and saw oilcans cooling in their wall racks. I turned, looking through the doorway. It seemed as if I could see much more than I should have been able to. The two knights standing on either side of such a small doorway should have left no room to walk through, yet Grandpa Smedry had passed easily.
I reached out, rapping lightly on one of the knight’s breastplates.
“Please don’t do that,” a voice said from behind the faceplate.
“Oh,” I said. “Um, sorry.” Still frowning to myself, I stepped into the room.
It was a large chamber. Far larger, I decided than could have possibly fit in the store. I could now see a rug set with thronelike chairs arranged to face the hearth in a homey manner (if your home is a medieval castle…). To my left, there was a long, broad table, also set with chairs.
“Sing!” Grandpa Smedry yelled, his voice echoing down a hallway to the right. “Sing!”
If he breaks into song, I think I might have to strangle myself… I thought, cringing.
“Lord Smedry?” a voice called from down the hallway, and a huge figure rushed into sight.
If you’ve never seen a large Mokian man in sunglasses, a tunic, and tights before –
Okay. I’m going to assume that you’ve never seen a large Mokian man in sunglasses, a tunic, and tights. I certainly hadn’t.
The man – apparently named Sing – was a good six and a half feet tall, and had dark hair and dark skin. He looked like he could be from Hawaii, or maybe Samoa or Tonga. He had the mass and girth of a linebacker and would have fit right in on the football field. Or, at least, he would have fit right in if he’d been wearing a football uniform, rather than a tunic – a type of garment that I still think looks silly. Bastille has pictures of me wearing one. If you ask her, she’ll probably show them to you gleefully.
Of course, if you do that, I’ll probably have to hunt you down and kill you. Or dress you in a tunic and take pictures of you. I’m still not sure which is worse.
“Sing,” Grandpa Smedry said. “We need to do a full library infiltration. Now.”
“A library infiltration?” Sing said excitedly.
“Yes, yes,” Grandpa Smedry said hurriedly. “Go get your cousin, and both of you get into your disguises. I need to gather my Lenses.”
Sing rushed back the way he had come. Grandpa Smedry walked over to the wall on the other side of the hearth. Not sure what else to do, I followed, watching as Grandpa Smedry knelt beside what appeared to be a large box made entirely of black glass. Grandpa Smedry put his hand on it, closed his eyes, and the front of the box suddenly shattered.
I jumped back, but Grandpa Smedry ignored the broken shards of black glass. He reached into the chest and pulled out a tray wrapped in red velvet. He set this on top of the box, unwrapping the cloth and revealing a small book and about a dozen pairs of spectacles, each with a slightly different tint of glass.
Grandpa Smedry pulled open the front of his tuxedo jacket, then began to slip the spectacles into little pouches sewn into the lining of the garment. They hung like the watches on the inside of an illegal street peddler’s coat.
“Something very strange is going on, isn’t it?” I finally asked.
“Yes, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, still arranging the spectacles.
“We’re really going to go sneak into a library?”
Grandpa Smedry nodded.
“Only, it’s not really a library. But someplace more dangerous.”
“Oh, it’s really a library,” Grandpa Smedry said. “What you haven’t realized before is that all libraries are far more dangerous that you’ve always assumed.”
“And we’re going to break into this one,” I repeated. “A place filled with people who want to kill me.”
“Most likely,” Grandpa Smedry said. “But what else can we do? We either infiltrate, or we let them make those sands into Lenses.”
This isn’t a joke, I began to realize. This man isn’t actually crazy. Or, at least, the craziness includes much more than just him. I stood there for a moment, feeling overwhelmed, thinking about what I had seen.
“Well, all right, then,” I finally said.
Now, you Hushlanders may think that I took all of these strange experiences quite well. After all, it isn’t every day that you get threatened with a gun, then discover a medieval dining room hiding inside the beverage cooler at a local gas station. However, maybe if you’d grown up with the magical ability to break almost anything you touched, then you would have been just as quick to accept unusual circumstances.
“Here, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, standing and picking up the final pair of spectacles. They were reddish tinted, like the pair Grandpa Smedry was currently wearing. “These are yours. I’ve been saving them for you.”
I paused. “I don’t need glasses.”
“You’re an Oculator, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “You’ll always need glasses.”
“Can’t I wear sunglasses, like Sing?”
Grandpa Smedry chuckled. “You don’t need Warrior’s Lenses, lad. You can access abilities far more potent. Here, take these. They’re Oculator’s Lenses.”
“What are Oculators?” I asked.
“We are, my boy. Put them on.”
I frowned, but took the glasses. I put them on, then glanced around. “Nothing looks different,” I said, feeling disappointed. “The room doesn’t even look… redder.”
Of course not,” Grandpa Smedry said. “The tints come from the sands they’re made of and help us keep the Lenses straight. They’re not intended to make things look different.”
“I just… thought the glasses would do something.”
“They do,” Grandpa Smedry said. “They show you things that you need to see. It’s just subtle, lad. Wear them for a while – let your eyes get used to them.”
“All right….” I glanced over as Grandpa Smedry knelt to put the tray back inside the broken box. “What’s that book?”
Grandpa Smedry looked up “Hmmm? This?” He picked up the small book, handing it to me. I opened to the first page. It was filled with scribbles, as if made by a child.
“The Forgotten Language,” Grandpa Smedry said. “We’ve been trying to decipher it for centuries – your father worked on that book for a while, before you were born. He thought its secrets might lead him to the Sands of Rashid.”
“This isn’t a language,” I said. “It’s just a bunch of scribbles.”
“Well, any language you don’t understand would just look like scribbles, lad!”
I flipped through the pages of the book. It was filled with completely random circles, zigzags, loop-dee-loops, and the like. There were no patterns. Some of the pages only had a couple marks on them; others were so black with ink that they looked like a child’s rendition of a tornado.
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so. A language has to make patterns! There’s nothing like that in here.”
“That’s the big secret, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, taking back the book. “Why do you think nobody, despite centuries of trying, has managed to break the code? The Incarna people – the ones who wrote in this language – held vast secrets. Unfortunately, nobody can read their records, and the Incarna disappeared many centuries ago.”
I wrinkled my brow at the strange comments. Grandpa Smedry stood up, stepping away from the glass box. And, suddenly, the shattered front of the box melted and reformed its glassy surface.
I stepped back in shock. Then I reached up, suspiciously pulling off my glasses. Yet the box still sat pristine, as if it hadn’t been broken in the first place.
“Restore Glass,” Grandpa Smedry said, nodding toward the box. “Only an Oculator can break it. Once he moves too far away, however, it will re-form into its previous shape. Makes for wonderful safes. It’s even stronger than Builder’s Glass, if used right.”
I slipped my Lenses back on.
“Tell me, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, laying a hand on my shoulder, “why did you burn down your foster parents’ kitchen?”
I started. That wasn’t the question I’d been expecting. “How did you know about that?”
“Why, I’m an Oculator, of course.”
I just frowned.
“So why?” he asked. “Why burn it down?”
“It was an accident,” I replied.
“Was it?”
I looked away. Of course it was an accident, I thought, feeling a bit of shame. Why would I do something like that on purpose?
Grandpa Smedry was studying me. “You have a Talent for breaking things,” he said. “Or so you have said. Yet lighting fire to a set of drapes and ruining a kitchen with smoke doesn’t seem like a use of that Talent. Particularly if you let the fire burn for a while before putting it out. That’s not breaking. That seems more like destroying.”
“I don’t destroy,” I said quietly.
“Why, then?” Grandpa Smedry said.
I shrugged. What was he implying? Did he think I liked messing things up all the time? Did he think I liked being forced to move every few months? It seemed that every time I came to love someone, they decided that my Talent was just too much to handle.
I felt a stab of loneliness but shoved it down.
“Ah,” Grandpa Smedry said. “You won’t answer, I see. But I can still wonder, can’t I? Why would a boy do such damage to the homes of such kind people? It seems like a perversion of his Talent. Yes, indeed…”
I said nothing. Grandpa Smedry just smiled at me, then straightened his bow tie and checked his wristwatch. “Garbled Greens! We’re late. Sing! Quentin!”
“We’re ready, Uncle!” a voice called from down the hallway.
“Ah, good,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Come, my boy. Let me introduce you to your cousins!”