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no strategy ever survived contact with the enemy. Or, in the vernacular, Things Will Go Wrong. Be Prepared.
They were even listed in the boarding school prospectus as a guarantee of student safety – ANY KIDNAPPERS WILL BE TORN TO BLOODY RAGS BY OUR PROFESSIONALLY MAINTAINED HISTORICAL ARTEFACTS!
She was in the Library. Not just any library, but THE Library.
It is my theory that the greater truths underlying life and death can best be understood as a parable – that is, as a fiction.
She just wanted – had always wanted – a good book to read. The being chased by hellhounds and blowing things up was a comparatively unimportant part of the job. Getting the books, now that was what really mattered to her.
That was the whole point of the Library: as far as she’d been taught, anyway. It wasn’t about a higher mission to save worlds. It was about finding unique works of fiction, and saving them in a place out of time and space.
Anyone who really loved a good story would understand.
He had the sort of beauty that instantly shifted him from a possible romance object to an absolute impossibility.
There were three basic reasons why Librarians were sent out to alternates to find specific books: because the book was important to a senior Librarian, because the book would have an effect on the Language, or because the book was specific and unique to that alternate world.
The Library runs on conspiracy theory. Admit nothing, deny everything, then find out what’s going on and publish a paper on the subject. It’s not as if they can stop you doing that.’
She had no idea where to start coping with chaos. No one knew exactly how or why chaos broke through into an alternate – or maybe that knowledge was above her paygrade. But it was never natural to that world and seemed drawn to order so it could break it down, warping what it touched. It created things that worked by irrational laws. It infected worlds and it broke down natural principles. It wasn’t good for any world it entered, and it wasn’t good for the humanity in that world. Even if it did make for good literature.
So the theory suggests it’s being warped, and it would then reach the stage where things tend to fall into narrative patterns. So instead of natural order prevailing, events start taking on the kind of rhythm or logic you might find in fiction or fairy tales.
Despite searching with a certain horrified curiosity, she couldn’t find any secret torture chambers or rooms containing strange vampiric devices.
Belgium always seems to get invaded, fall prey to meteorites or get infested by alien fungus or something . . .
Alberich was a figure out of nightmare. He was the one Librarian who’d betrayed the Library, got away with it and was still somewhere out there. His true name was long since lost, and only his chosen name as a Librarian was remembered. He’d sold out to chaos. He’d betrayed the other Librarians who’d been working with him. And he was still alive. Somehow, in spite of age and time and the course of years that would afflict any Librarian who lived outside the Library, he was still alive.
‘How?’ Irene enquired. She’d decided a while back that Socratic questioning was a good idea, because (a) it got students thinking for themselves, (b) sometimes they came up with ideas she hadn’t thought of, and (c) it gave her more time to think while they were trying to find answers.
‘To serve the Library, I would work with murderers, or thieves, or revolutionaries, or traitors, or anyone who will give me what I need. Do you understand me, Kai? This is important.’
‘Kai,’ Irene said, ‘the Library is my honour. And if you seal yourself to it, then it’ll be yours too.’
It wasn’t a leader’s place to cast oneself trembling on a junior’s shoulder and confess uncertainty. It wasn’t even a leader’s place to suggest that they might be in an indefensible position and should be grateful for any allies that they could get. It was a leader’s job to project a calm mastery of the situation, while also encouraging subordinates to develop decision-making skills. Assuming that they made the right decisions. A leader’s job was a crock of shit.
And at that moment the alligators burst into the room.
Amazing grammar in a crisis, Irene couldn’t help noticing.
One of the most important aspects of command is not giving orders that won’t be obeyed,
‘I and Mr Strongrock are agents of a library which exists between the alternate worlds. Our task is to collect books for the Library from all those worlds, to preserve them.’
‘all of us who are sealed to the Library are people who have chosen this way of life because we loved books. None of us wanted to save worlds. I mean, not that we object to saving worlds . . .’ She shrugged, picking up her teacup again. ‘We want books. We love books. We live with books. Someone who joined the Library just so that they could try to use the Library to benefit their own world . . . well, I suppose it would be ethical, but it isn’t the purpose of the Library.’
‘Then what is the purpose of the Library?’ Vale asked. ‘To save books,’
‘In this place and time, I am not a courtier to present an opinion to a king, but a general in the field, expected to handle things as they arise for the good of the Library.
This would have been the perfect time to develop telepathy, except that as far as she knew, it was purely fictional.
She was a Librarian, and the deepest, most fundamental part of her life involved a love of books. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to shut the rest of the world out, and have nothing to worry about, except the next page of whatever she was reading.
Maybe there was a whole genre of literature written by dragons for dragons about how they sensibly stayed out of fights that they couldn’t hope to win, and flew away to do something very important somewhere else.
Maybe someone who went round skinning and killing people (order as yet unspecified) was not concerned with making the universe a better place. Just a thought.
What she needed was a miracle. What she got was a dragon.
