“Oh,” Sing said. “I meant to leave that there, Alcatraz.”
“Yes, well,” I said, dropping scrap of metal. “I thought I should… uh, take care of the gun, just in case. We wouldn’t want anyone to find such a primitive weapon and hurt themselves by accident.”
“Ah, good idea,” Sing said. Bastille held open the door, then we all moved into the hallway.
“Next door,” Bastille said.
I nodded, switching glasses. As soon as the Tracker’s Lenses were on, I noticed something: bright black footprints, burning on the ground.
They were still fresh – I could see the trail disappearing as I watched. And there was a certain… power to the footprints. I instantly knew to whom they belonged.
The footprints passed through the hallway, beside a yellowish-black set, disappearing into the distance. They burned, foreboding and dark, like gasoline dropped to the floor and lit with black fire.
As Bastille crept toward the next door in the hallway, I made a decision. “Forget the room,” I said, growing tense. “Follow me!”
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“So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians.”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.