Sword and Pen (The Great Library #5)(50)

Wolfe was moving forward, and for an older man he still had an athlete’s light, sure grace; he used the outer structures of the Necropolis for cover. Jess and Glain flanked him, ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. I don’t know why I always think of him as a Scholar, Jess thought. He moves like a soldier. Always has. He’d spent a long time away from Alexandria out in the world, doing dangerous work for the Great Library.

Jess’s lungs were on fire now, and he tried to breathe in the shallowest mouthfuls of tainted air possible. It didn’t help. He shook with the effort to hold in the coughs, and tasted blood again. No. I can’t afford this. Not now!

He should have been watching his footing. His boot landed on a stone, and the scrape echoed through the chamber like a shot.

Everyone froze. The others, he thought, didn’t know he’d been the one to make the sound; it ricocheted off of tombs and walls and ceiling.

He heard whispers follow it. They weren’t coming from Anit’s people—that was clear; they knew better. No, this came from another group.

The Archivist’s High Garda Elite were here.

Jess didn’t catch the first flutter of movement, but Glain did; she raised her rifle and fired, and the flash illuminated the raw gray edges of tombs. In the next instant Wolfe flung himself behind cover, and a barrage of answering shots came at them. It was impossible to know how many of them there were, with the echoes in this chamber, but it sounded like a lot. Maybe as many as Anit had brought with them. Jess didn’t think he was a match for even one High Garda Elite on a good day, and this wasn’t one. He doubted Anit’s band of mercenaries was, either. Glain might be. But even Glain couldn’t best a crowd of them.

His mind was racing, and he was trying to think of some way around a fair fight. I’m a liability. I shouldn’t have come. He knew that, and was enraged about it, but it was too late. He needed to use whatever advantages he could offer to save his friends.

It was far too dark in here to see properly; there was a very real risk of shooting allies. No way to tell if the Elites were wearing anything to identify them, but he’d memorized the faces of Anit’s warriors. He just needed to be able to see them.

The lights.

Jess slipped off to the right, away from the fight. Tombs clustered thickly on this side, opposite the model of the Serapeum. He took shelter behind a tomb built to look like a gracious Egyptian home, complete with a stone garden in front, and used the mask in deep, convulsive gasps until the burning in his lungs calmed. Then he crouched and began a zigzag run between the tombs and toward the light at the center of the Necropolis.

The Elites hadn’t destroyed the mirror, thankfully; they’d only tilted it down toward the ground. Jess stayed concealed behind a large granite statue of Bast and looked for any traps, any guards. Saw nothing. That didn’t mean they hadn’t thought of this, of course, but he hoped not.

The rolling roar of shots fired made him decide not to wait. Caution would get his friends killed.

He rushed forward with absolute focus on the mirror. Imagined exactly when to drop to his knees and spin the giant metal disc up on its metal frame so it caught the sunlight, then focus that light on the next mirror. With any luck, the Elites hadn’t bothered to move the rest of the array.

He had to veer aside before reaching the mirror when what he’d taken for another inert funeral statue whirred to life.

Jess threw himself aside and rolled, but there was nowhere to go; his back collided with the side of another tomb and drove a wrenching cough from him that tore something inside. He spat blood and got a clear look at the thing coming for him.

It was a nightmare.

He’d heard rumors that the High Garda Elite had ordered special automata, but everyone he’d ever talked to had dismissed them as legends. He wished that had been true, because he was facing a Minotaur.

Even if he’d been standing it would have topped him by several inches, and it was three times as broad in the chest, with shoulders that bulged with cabled muscles. A bull’s head with sharp, curving horns and glaring red eyes. It carried an axe, and it moved forward on metallic human feet with hardly a sound.

Jess scrambled upright and threw himself aside just before the axe buried itself in the ground and cracked the granite of the tomb he’d been lying against. The blow would have chopped him in half if it had landed. He darted for an open path but the thing was fast, and it was relentless; he veered away from a swing of its double-headed axe.

He backed away, and it followed. It was locked on him, and if he wanted to escape, he was going to have to stop it. No chance of getting close enough to it to look for an off switch, and somehow he doubted this automaton even had one. He’d never seen one quite like it. Not even the dragon had this much raw presence. Not even the gods. This was built to resemble a monster, and it moved like one; the fact that its bull’s face had no real expression only made it worse. Even without the axe, the sheer power of those arms could easily pull him to pieces.

He just wanted to run, but he knew that was useless; his lungs wouldn’t take it, and this thing moved so fast he was certain it would hunt him down, no matter what he tried. He tried his rifle, but the bullets glanced off the creature’s armored skin. He needed Thomas’s light ray.

He didn’t have it.

How is it seeing me in this darkness? Because here, near the turned-down mirror, it was very black indeed, hard to see anything in any great detail. He ought to be nearly invisible in these clothes.