Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(101)

The automaton stretched out a hand.

He gritted his teeth and reached up for the help. Getting to his knees was agony. Getting to his feet made him spit blood. How did Jess live through this? he wondered, and he remembered the skull-like pallor of his friend’s face. Maybe he hasn’t.

Thomas made it to his feet, somehow, and caught himself against the worktable loaded with Heron’s own tools. Pushed himself from there to the recording device. Then to the sphinx in the corner. Then, with a sob of pain, from there to the drawer.

Inside lay seven vials. He almost picked up the first one, and his blurry vision caught the colors of the glass.

The last trial.

He turned back to the automaton. “Is there more?”

“No. This is all.”

“Can it cure two people?”

No answer. Perhaps Heron had never written that answer into the machine.

Thomas lunged away to the worktable, found a glass beaker, and poured the contents of the vials into it, in the correct order. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

The mixture turned cloudy white.

I may kill us both, he thought, but better that than watching his friend die. He split the solution, pouring half into another vial and sealing it before he lifted the beaker to his lips.

He drank, and the taste of it was foul, but not as bad as the awful clinging horror of the Dragonfire gas. He felt it begin to work almost immediately, clearing the foam from his mouth and nose, opening up his throat. His lungs would take time, he thought; they seemed to be swollen and tender, stuffed with fluid.

But for the first time, he thought he would survive.

He took the vial and wrapped it carefully in fabric he tore from his ruined jacket. The pockets were still intact, so he stored the antidote there for Jess. I have to hurry.

Then he looked at the wonders around him and despaired, because they were exposed now, vulnerable, and he could not stay here. He’d opened the way for predators. For the evil old man to take everything.

He couldn’t just leave it like this.

He found a scroll case among Heron’s things and began to wrap as many scrolls as he could together to fit into the small, round openings inside. He managed to gather about half before the case was full. Then he found another empty chest hidden behind the sphinx and put the rest inside that.

He passed Heron’s statue.

It said, “You are worthy of my legacy. Use my treasure well,” and the gleam in its eyes went out. It was dead.

Its purpose had been served.

He went past the unmoving sphinx. Past the crystals, which stayed dormant. Past the next sphinx, too.

The anteroom beyond had bodies lying on the flagstone floor. Men and women in red uniforms. He sent his people in after me. That was foolish. He checked each of them but found them all dead—some, of wounds that could only have been made by the spears in the ceiling. Others, of wounds that looked like they’d been earned in battle.

He picked his way carefully on the safe path through the room, made the stairs, and realized that something was very, very wrong.

At the top of the staircase Thomas saw a flash of lightning split the sky.

The sky. He shouldn’t have been able to see the sky.

But the temple that had covered this place was gone. Just . . . gone.

He emerged into a smoky pile of rubble, a broken god in pieces on the ground, and steadily falling rain. Fires were burning. Walls had been shattered.

The Archivist was gone. He wasn’t among the dead; Thomas checked every body, no matter how torn and bloody. These were his soldiers, and two dead automata sphinxes who’d evidently attacked them.

No one to help here, and no one to stop, either. He was free. Free to go, with Heron’s treasures.

“Stop,” a voice said. He couldn’t see anyone. Then lightning flared, and he saw Zara Cole crouched just ahead of him, aiming a rifle at his chest. Rain flattened her hair against her head, darkened her uniform almost to black. She must have been cold and miserable, but her aim was steady, her eyes calm.

Then she put her rifle down, raised her hands above her head, and said, “I surrender to you, Scholar Schreiber.”

“Why?” Thomas asked. He didn’t trust her, of course. He was looking for a trap, but the night didn’t seem to hold any other soldiers, any other secrets. “Why would you give up now?”

She took in a deep breath and said, “I was wrong, Thomas. He never intended to save the Great Library. He intends to destroy it.” She staggered and fell to her knees, and even though he didn’t trust her, he carefully set down the boxes he carried and went to her.

Up close, he saw the holes in her uniform, and the blood that was pouring out of her wounds. She’d been shot. Several times.

“Lie down,” he told her. “I’ll find a Medica.”

“No. No time,” she said. “The Archivist shot me. He shot me, after everything—” She sounded more amazed than angry, and shook her head to dismiss it. “He thought you’d failed. He knew he was finished. He intends to take it all with him.”

Thomas felt a surge of real fear at that. “What do you mean, all?”

“The Great Archives,” she said. “He’s set them to burn. Stop him. You have to . . .” She fell slowly, tipping on her side and then rolling on her back, staring up at him as he crouched beside her. She didn’t seem to see him for a moment, but then she smiled. Smiled. “I knew you weren’t dead,” she said. “You’re too hard to get rid of. So I waited for you.”