The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

The sabber turned its head and found her with yellow eyes. “Are you good to eat?” it rumbled, showing canines as long as her thumb. “I taste like dung. Stringy dung.” Livira tried to hold on to her courage under the creature’s stare. She bolstered it with rage. “Where’s my aunt?” The sabber barked. Maybe it was a laugh. He turned his head back to face the direction of travel.

Malar answered but it seemed to Livira that he wasn’t really talking to either of them. “There’s nothing brave in committing to a fight—you just need to understand that there’s a scarier outcome waiting for you if you don’t. Hesitation’s the killer. They try to train hesitation out of you, but most people have it in their bones. Only thing that makes me different is: I see—I do. It’s not a matter of heart and soul.”

Livira frowned. “But why bring the city people food? How do they pay?” “You’re too clever for your own fucking good, girl. Get you into trouble, that will.” Malar shook his head. The flesh around the furrows the sabber had carved across his face was still an angry red. Sweat ran from beneath hair streaked with the first touch of grey. He looked as tired as Livira felt. “Knowledge. That’s what they pay with. Whole city’s here for one reason. This is where King Oanold’s great-grandfather built the library.”

Without guilt we would all be monsters. And memory is the ink with which we list our crimes. Notes from the trial of Edris Dean

“I’m so sorry,” she snarled, “that I failed your tests.” Yute smiled for the first time, his pink eyes suddenly no longer sinister. “My dear child, I wasn’t testing you—I was testing them. You had me at t’loth.”

“I . . . also want . . . to find her.” The ivory hand changed course, grasping the front of Evar’s jerkin and dragging him down until his face was level with the Soldier’s. “I’ve lost her. I’ve lost myself . . .” He looked into Evar’s eyes, his own shading darker still. His voice, which had been sterile and without inflection Evar’s whole life, now took on tone and character. “Know this . . . if you hurt her, no army will save you from me.” Evar tugged free, amazed. “I just want to help her. That’s why I need to leave. There might be a way out at the bottom of this door. Or . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve got to get lower. To the bottom. I think she’s in a basement somewhere . . .” “You won’t find her out there, boy.” The Soldier took a step back. “Any idiot can see that. It’s fuc—” Without warning the colour fled from his eyes and his voice became its calm, implacable self once more. “Come away, Evar Eventari.” And he turned and walked back among the book towers.

Is he malar

When Livira had opened her first book in the Allocation Hall its odour was simply the way it smelled. And afterwards it might have remained the scent of failure and rejection. But Yute had overwritten those memories and now whenever she breathed in a book it took her back to his narrow house and the crowded little library on the fifth floor, stuffed with curios. It came freighted with salvation—with someone seeing past dirt and ignorance and finding value. Livira took a deep breath. “I never imagined it would be so . . . big.”

The woman whose name his tongue wouldn’t form but whose scent seemed to find him now in quiet moments. He found that although he knew nothing about her, remembered nothing . . . he needed her. Perhaps more than he needed to draw breath. The pool would decide that one.

Its def livira right

Livira marched up to knock on the door. She didn’t have any magic glove, but she would hammer on that perfect white surface and stain it with her sweat and demand entrance. “Let me . . .” Before her knuckles could register contact the whole door melted away just as it had for the guard. “. . . in . . .”

“One thing’s for sure, I’m not in kansas anymore.” It was a phrase in half the languages he knew and one that had led to a saying almost as ancient: “We don’t even know what kansas is anymore.” Mayland said that in the histories some held it to be a real place, some a mythical city, and others still an enlightened state of being. Evar leaned towards agreeing with those who thought it was a state.

Oh shit so this takes place in our world kind of

She appeared to be perfect in all regards save for a curious cratered wound to the side of her forehead not pressed to the ground. The indentation was no bigger than a thumbprint and maybe a third of an inch deep.

OH

“There’s a hole through the heart of me,” Evar said. “And it won’t be gone until I find her.” The hurt, which had lived in his bones, so deep that he’d grown around it without recognition, trembled now in his voice, threatening to crack it.

The assistant turned, gazing at her with white eyes. “You asked if the library were here so that you could read. It was, as I said, a big question. Some would answer that the library is here in order that an old war can be fought again and again until the end of time. I thank you for your concern. I have much to do.” And he walked away.

The sabbers?

Sudden understanding stopped his advance. He stood straight, ignoring the bangs and the zip of projectiles, and stared in the direction the sabbers had attacked from. “The pool? They came from the pool . . .”

“With an endless library,” Livira muttered, “if you search long enough, you can find a book that agrees with just about any opinion you have . . . And we’re the engine of that search. We give the king what he wants to hear, what he wants the people to hear. He doesn’t ask the librarians to bring him books about the sabbers—he asks them to bring him books that say ‘this’ about sabbers.”

She wiped her inky hand on her newly black robe and made her way wearily down the ladder, ready to eat some real food and to sleep in her own bed.

I still think its livira and just her as she is older since time is weird with the exchange and mybe the book evar had was her story

“Truth?” Master Logaris scoffed at the idea. “We deal in affirmation. People don’t want truth. They say that they do but what they mean is that they want the truth to agree with them. Take ninety-nine books that say one thing and one that says the opposite. If that opposite was what the customer was hoping to hear, they’ll put their stock in the single volume. In this manner we learn more regarding human nature from closed books than from anything that might be written within them.”

Malar pretended she hadn’t spoken. “Your friend Yute had thoughts to share on wealth. In his opinion, it’s not the gift of money that’s the greatest—it’s the gift of purpose. He said, and the fancy words are all his: All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.”

“The king says they’re just evil, vicious animals that—” “Animals aren’t evil,” Meelan said. “If you’re going to start calling the king out on his nonsense, we’ll be here all fucking night.” Malar spat to the side. “Me, I think they want what we’ve got.”

Salamonda had the door open almost as Meelan’s knuckles made contact with the wood. “Livira!” She looked past Meelan. “And who’s this? You’ve traded in your last boyfriend for one that’s a prince?”

I thought he might be a prince wonder if its true

“Hurts don’t stop, but they fade into shadows of what they were. That’s sad. That something so vital, something that bit you so deep, can be eroded by time into a story that almost seems like it happened to someone else. Any hurt. The years have taken away her meaning. It lessens us.” He paused, as if realising that his words had carried him away, then shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“I believe we may have displeased the king,” Yute replied dryly. “Be on your guard.” Malar looked as if he had something hot to say, but instead offered a curt nod and led the way. “You displeased the king,” Livira said. “I didn’t even know why I was there.” “You displeased him by existing,” Yute said.

In reality it took three years even to catch sight of her, and it would have taken longer but for the fact that Livira decided to break into her private quarters to steal a book.

She opened the bedroom door, screamed, dropped the satchel, and staggered back. The black dog was there already. Waiting for her.

Suddenly there it was in front of her with fewer than a dozen pages left to go. A circle drawn with the blood of a white one will open the way to the wood.

“Well.” Arpix started to count on his fingers. “Firstly, I said we should go deeper in before we did this. Secondly, I very much doubt that creature has any real dog in it. And thirdly, my family had five dogs that I grew up with, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Jim.”

“Edgarallen.”

Absolutely not

Images of Evar began to intrude. They’d shared their hatred of sabbers. But they’d been speaking different languages and the Exchange had translated for them. In the end “sabber” was just another word for “enemy” and the hatred they’d shared had been for each other.

“His sister, Clovis, is clearly more suspicious, looking for trouble. She expected or hoped to find someone to fight. So, the Exchange showed her the real me.”

Or what she wanted to see! I still think they are the same

“Why,” she ploughed on, “why does the head librarian look like you?” “Like me?” Yute frowned. “You know what I mean.” Yute gave a slight shrug, a slight smile. “We share a common origin. We were born in the same place.”

Are yute and yamala the two children???

“Where are you going?” “To Yamala,” Yute said. “She has the Library Guard!” Livira wasn’t worried about the head librarian, she was worried what might happen to Meelan, Arpix, and Jella. She paused, frowning. “Who is she to you, this Yamala?” Yute blinked as if it was obvious. “She’s my wife.”

Def the children

“He says he doesn’t like you,” Livira supplied. “And that if you so much as look at me sideways he’ll end you.” She paused while Malar said something else. “And he says thank you for saving his life.”

Livira held the book to her chest. She’d written her heart into it. She’d let her pen wander the pages through adventure after adventure, imagination unchained. And through it all Evar had walked beside her, run beside her, flown to the moons, dived to the darkest depths the seas contained. She had written it. He had lived it. With her. Malar coughed and sat up. “Fucked if a man can sleep with all that growling and grunting. Let’s go.” And Livira and Evar—without requiring translation but needing the space to absorb this revelation—agreed.

“She cuts it off then, idiot, and she’s free. That’s the purpose of the story. To say that you can escape from somewhere but you’re always going to leave part of yourself there.”