Chapter forty-eight

The Exotic Stack Room, Kinspit University

 

Hardacre stepped out of the shadows. The guard had been lying on a mattress and it took him a while to scramble up.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, in Archaic Elven

‘He is my companion’ answered seven-of-nine, stepping forward too.

‘And who are you?’

The naga’s eyes narrowed in irritation.

‘I am the exotic stack librarian – I am guardian of this place and the artefacts in it’

The guard, half dressed in his Helian uniform and looking distinctly shabby, still managed to seem superior.

‘No, you are not’ he sneered, ‘this is the Basilieus’s territory…’

‘How can that be?’ asked the snake-elf

‘Because he has willed it, I assume’ said the soldier, ‘that is not my concern’

‘No, it is not. It is mine’

The mage appeared almost as unexpectedly as Hardacre had. He had either been standing behind a pillar or had blinked in. His long red cloak billowed out as he stepped forward.

‘You are trespassers’ he said. He was clearly used to having the final word.

The snake-elf snorted.

‘No, stranger, that is you. Be gone… I have been here since the beginning of this time. I am a member of the nine; the oldest of the creatures of Skiophos’

She stepped forward and her skin began to change: there was a hint of scaly green. Hardacre glanced at her and shook his head a fraction. She took a step back and refrained from shifting for the time being. Hardacre spoke with exaggerated care.

‘May I ask to whom we are speaking? I do not recognise the uniforms’

The mage smiled coldly.

‘Of course you do not. There are some things that are beyond human ken’

Seven-of-nine glared at Hardacre. He shook his head again, twice, very slowly. He tried again.

‘With the greatest respect, eminent mage, you have not answered my question; unless my lineage precludes me from knowing even who you are…’

The mage flashed the sort of smile usually reserved for particularly precocious children.

 ‘Well said, wise human. As you asked me so politely, I will tell you. I am mage Polysophos, of the Basilieus’s Epipelagia stratum. My troops and I guard this room’

 ‘Briefly, perhaps’ Hardacre whispered in his own language. He immediately switched back to Archaic Elven.

‘Why are you here?’

Polysophos considered this for a moment.

‘His majesty want to find out what’s going on. He is concerned that the library is being used to forward political agendas.’

The naga twitched again.

‘What?’ she spluttered, ‘this is a place of learning’

The mage smiled at her.

‘None of this is your problem, guardian creature – you go back to protecting your secret, whatever it is.  It is of no interest to us’

He shooed the naga with his hands. Then he looked away from her as if she was no longer worth any consideration. The naga lurched forward, her skin turning scaly again, but once more stopped when she saw Hardacre’s look. Polysophos turned his attention to the human.

‘…And as for you, witch, I think my superiors would be as interested to talk to you as to that irritating Dwarven Magic woman’

The mage’s three soldiers moved forward to grab Hardacre.  He made no attempt to resist.

‘You shall not dare to!’ shouted seven-of-nine, ‘whatever you may assert; this is my space… I will not have violence in it’

The soldiers stopped just in front of the human. The naga looked at Hardacre again, but he was still shaking his head.

‘It is you who dare… librarian – I am from the real world.’

He gestured round at Hardacre and the rest of the room.

‘You and he and everything in this world are fabrications; counterfeit nonsense, like the sour milk at the top of a coffee cup that looks a little like islands and continents…until it is scraped away’

‘Why are you even here, then?’ asked Hardacre, calmly, ‘if we are all but worthless’

The mage shrugged.

‘The Basilieus wants to take back the things that belong to our world’ he said, ‘I have been preparing an inventory’

‘Why?’ asked Hardacre, dreading the inevitable answer

The mage laughed

‘Just in case they turn out to be rather hard to recover later…’

‘And why would that be?’

The mage titled his head to one side in mock sympathy

‘Well, if you do not know then perhaps it is best that you remain ignorant’

Hardacre’s mouth felt dry, but his head was swimming.

‘The university authorities will never approve this…’

The mage sniggered

‘What do you think they can do about it? In any case, it’s a military matter. As far as the Basilieus is concerned Kinspit is in Panoikonde, and so part of his demesne’

Hardacre had had enough of this. He spoke loudly and clearly.

‘You have my colleague, Dr Katherine Fielding. She is your captive. Before we discuss anything else I request that you release her. She is a scholar and represents no threat to you at all’

Polysophos narrowed his eyes in disbelief.

‘You seem to have misunderstood me. My intention is to capture you both for interrogation by the hegemonic service. Was that not clear? ’

The mage lifted up his hand and began to chant. Hardacre felt something close round his neck. He put his hands up to pull it away but it was too late. An unseen cord jerked him up until he was hanging ten feet in the air, suspended by the neck. The naga was horrified – she moved forward.  Polysophos barked an order at her.

‘You, strange elf, back away; return to your sleeping area. I have heard you have special powers, but if you try any of them I will snuff out this man’s life’

Hardacre dangled by the neck on the invisible rope. His breath began to labour.

Polysophos looked up at him dispassionately, as a butcher stares at a piglet. He turned back to the naga.

‘Unless you remove yourself from here immediately, librarian, I will kill him – he means nothing to me; he’s just a human; one is as doomed as any other…’

The naga was appalled.

‘Why?’ she whispered, ‘why would you kill without reason?’

The mage laughed

‘You have a lot to learn, weird spawn of the green goddess. You clearly have never heard why men were given such a short time to live…’

‘What?’ asked the naga, more out of irritation than as a question. The mage carried on anyway.

‘…It was out of kindness, Seventy years of cleaning Elf latrines, mopping kitchen floors and cleaning up rubbish is enough for anyone…

Hardacre struggled in the air. Polysophos looked up at him and laughed.

‘This one is far above his station…’

The snake-elf ignored this. She scowled.

 ‘I will not let you kill him… You have no right to threaten murder in this place of peaceful learning…’

While the naga and the mage argued, Hardacre whispered a single word in the witches’ tongue repeatedly.

‘Lacia… Lacia… Lacia’

The noose loosened slowly, but as no-one could see it no-one could see what had happened. He put a hand behind his back so that he could still, at least for a moment, hold himself up on the rope. He whispered one more word in Rhylic.

‘Brrw!’

Two things happened together – Hardacre dropped awkwardly to the floor and the spectral rope lashed out across the room. It struck the mage full in the face. He fell backwards with a cry.

After a moments scrabbling on the floor the mage scrambled up and lunged towards Hardacre. He was chanting magecraft in his ancient language. His eyes blazed with anger. Hardacre knew that the mage was stronger than he, but he had a secret weapon. He nodded at the naga.

Without a word she shifted. With a well-practised lunge she curled her snake form effortlessly round Polysophos. He let out a brief cry as all the breath was forced out of him; like an accordion that someone had stepped on.

 ‘I can kill him in a moment’ hissed the serpent, staring at Hardacre, ‘you give the word and I will. One squeeze and he will be gone, painlessly. I sense that our world would in no way miss him’

Hardacre was appalled, both by the nature of the request, and by the assumption that he was somehow in command. The snake-elf continued, her serpent’s tongue filled with anger.  

‘He would have murdered you, I am certain, and he is clearly a foe of the commonweal. Perhaps, he deserves to die’

‘Just hold him’ said Hardacre, gently, ‘there are none who deserves to die, and just a few who we may yet have to kill, despite that. But he is not one of them’

He turned to the other guards who were now cowering in front of him. They had dropped their weapons as soon as they’d seen the naga change shape.

‘Free my friend’ Hardacre ordered

One of the guards, too terrified to disobey, stood up fumbling with his keys. He walked over to the cupboard and opened the door. After a few seconds Kath came staggering out, her hands shielding her eyes against the light. She coughed for a moment, looked round the room, bewildered, but then her gaze fixed on Hardacre. She managed a thin smile.

‘Laurence’ she said, in Ethian, ‘I’m so sorry’

Hardacre nodded formally, as if essaying a truncated bow.

‘Don’t concern yourself about it, Dr Fielding. It was just a small error of judgement and quite understandable’

Kath was filthy and dusty. She brushed herself down ineffectively. Hardacre looked concerned.

‘Are you unharmed? Can you walk?’

 ‘I’m well enough’ she replied, ‘and, yes, I can walk out of here… and I’d like to do it as quickly as possible’

Satisfied, Hardacre turned to the guards.  

‘Leave’ he commanded.

The guards scuttled off towards the door that led to the long stairs, but Hardacre shook his head.

‘Not that way. You can go back the way you came’

He pointed to the pentangle on the floor with its strange skinny flying reptile drawn inside it.

 The guards stared at their leader. He wasn’t in a position to help them.

‘Only he can open it’ one of the guards mumbled.  Hardacre turned to the naga.

‘Would you release him, guardian spirit?’ he asked

Seven-of-nine unravelled slowly and reluctantly. Polysophos rolled out, dropped on the floor and lay still for a moment. He sounded like a runner who had just struggled up a very steep long hill.

‘Get up’ demanded the naga. She lowered her face and flicked her forked tongue out against his cheek. The mage quivered with fear. He jumped up immediately and struggled over to the pentangle. He began to chant again. The snake-elf looked up at Hardacre sharply, but she knew enough magecraft to know that this was an opening spell and so nothing dangerous.

Polysophos waved his hands over the pentangle as he chanted. The central, illustrated, area began to fade, leaving just the five points. Soon there were narrow wooden steps leading down. As soon as they saw them the guards ran to them and clattered down the steps. Polysophos was the last to leave. He looked up at them before he disappeared from view.

‘You idiots – do not be fooled into thinking you have in some way won. There are many of us here in the city, more than five hundred Helian elves, many of them mages. You do not have the power to prevail against us. And more will come…’

‘We’ll see’ whispered Hardacre, in Ethian. He ran his foot down the side of one of the pentangle’s points, obliterating it. The steps disappeared and so did Polysophos. All that was left was the cobbles of the stack room. Hardacre took a cloth out of his jacket pocket and knelt down. With just a few long strokes of his hand he rubbed out the pattern of chalk on the floor entirely.

The naga shifted back to her elven form. She stared down at the floor.

‘Is that it?’ she asked, ‘is that all you need to do to stop them returning’

‘I doubt it’ replied Hardacre, ‘but I’m not sure’

The naga looked lost for a moment.

‘Are there threats from everywhere?’ she asked

Hardacre stood up straight. His face gave no indication of his emotions.

‘Not from everywhere, perhaps, but from too many places, yes indeed’

Kath had found her tools, apparently left untouched in her bag. She knelt where the pentangle had been. Despite her dishevelled condition her professional instinct had kicked in. She tapped her little silver hammer repeatedly against the floor and listened to the tones that was produced. She looked up at them. 

‘We’re in an interstitial space, just like the one in Klethropolis. But it seems this one has two entrances. One to our world and the other to… Helios, I assume.’

‘So it seems’ said the seven-of-nine, ‘can it still be used?’

‘Yes’ said Kath, ‘I suspect it can be opened from either side… unfortunately’

Hardacre grimaced but he was already making plans.

‘We can’t let the Helians ruin the University. We need to stopper this up. I’ll take you back the Mr Ismay’s house, Dr Fielding, and then go to get Mr Floyd. If anyone can block this up permanently, it’s he’

Kath stood up from the floor. She returned the hammer to her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She urged Hardacre on.

‘We should go before they come back, Laurence…Please…’

Hardacre didn’t even answer. He hastened to the door. The naga opened it for them and they hurried, as fast as Kath’s bedraggled condition would allow them, up the long stairs.