The Scroll of Years: A Gaunt and Bone Novel (41 page)

The presence of any other browser could make a goblin librarian chartreuse with rage.

Bone heard more scampering from nearby, and excited
glurpings
. He squeezed between shelves, then leapt to the alcove for Simple Things Made Obtuse.

Skidding, he bumped a stack. Three flights below, a goblin troop shrieked and clambered upward. Bone caught a glimpse of their variable shapes: jutting noses, gray pockmarked skin, glowing yellow eyes (one to three apiece). Each bore a long catalog-card file strapped to its back.

Bone smirked and snapped one of his balsa daggers; within was a glass bead. He tossed the bead and it shattered among the goblins, bathing the area with noxious fog. Bone turned and ran—but two flights up he encountered another troop, squeaking in fury.

They unsheathed the copper rods of their card files, each one slender and honed to a point, scored with old ink and blood.

Bone jumped sideways, wriggled himself into a crack, and toppled a collection of scholarly offerings, smiling thinly at the cries of outrage and pain. He threw another rope to an upper alcove, and climbed.

As he ascended he glanced up to spot a huge goblin grinning furiously (beneath the shelf for Tales That Could Not Have Been Written By Their Dead Narrators). The goblin clutched an enormous tome, the very
Anthro-Goblin Cataloging Rules, Thirteenth Edition
.

“Curse you for requiring this,” said the goblin. It dropped the book.

Bone had an instant to admire its binding, its stately solidity, its weight.

After Joyblood vanished, Persimmon Gaunt hurried to a haycart stashed in an alley up Index Road. She suspected Joyblood, despite all denials, hoped to employ her in slaying Bone. Of course, she thought, her heart did not truly belong to Bone—but if the death believed it, the thief was still endangered. If she fled across the city, Joyblood could not use her.

Yet if she were not at Hangnail Tower, according to plan, Bone might die anyway. A nasty, brutish death, satisfying Severstrand.

She gripped the reins, but could not decide where to go.

“Horns of a dilemma, my dear?”

She shivered: the shadowy death himself appeared, sketched in old soot and moonlight. Ghostly spiders crawled upon his non-substance. Yet this apparition suited her better than Joyblood’s flames. Gaunt found her voice. “You can read my thoughts?”

“No. Better to say I sense their tenor, when I am their subject.”

“I’ve just spoken with Joyblood.”

“That is why I appeared.”

“He believes Bone’s race is run.”

“It may be so. It would be fitting if he died at Hangnail Tower, home of his tormentors.”

She frowned. “You’re not speaking of you and Joyblood, are you? You refer to the kleptomancers, Remora and Vine.”

“Indeed. Please do not think ill of us, Persimmon Gaunt. Though we two deaths are antagonists, we share a respect for Imago Bone. We often speak of him while he sleeps. (Death in sleep would satisfy neither, you understand.) We wish him a poetic ending, after our own fashion, no worse.”

“I fear I must think ill of you, Severstrand.”

“I am sad.”

“But I may think worse of others. You are an instrument, I would guess. Vine and Remora’s?”

“Remora’s. Joyblood is Vine’s doing.”

Gaunt frowned. “But you work at cross purposes.”

“Quite. And rather than ending Bone’s life we have stretched it unnaturally—all because of two enraged and careless kleptomancers.”

“Enraged because he interrupted their ceremony?”

“Worse.” Severstrand paced about the cart. The horses shivered as if scoured by hail. “We deaths sense the circumstances of our summonings, as you recall a fading dream. So I still taste the bile in Imago Bone’s throat as he beheld the butchery. It was not that Bone was a good man. Rather, he saw what he might have become, had his own greed been augmented by magic. And a small, pathetic portion of him still ached at Vine’s dismissal, and wished to stand by her side.”

“What did he do?”

“He acted quickly. In that a common thief may best a kleptomancer. He kicked open the shutters, so those within other towers might witness the crime, and those upon Index Road might hear. Then—in the most unseemly romantic fashion—he swung by the rope of a tapestry into the fray. He had no plan, only anger, and he tossed upon the fire the blossom he’d carried for Vine.

“You are unversed in kleptomancy, Persimmon Gaunt. Understand that this violet was in no sense stolen, and represented as honest a love as Imago Bone could muster. It was the antithesis of the spell. The flames died and the ceremony was lost.”

Gaunt’s mind thrilled with the image. “He fought them then?”

Severstrand chuckled, and across the alley a cloud of moonlit gnats tumbled to earth. “He might say so. But in truth he fled the tower. After the initial fury he knew fear and shame: though he now despised his paramour, her contempt still stung.”

“How like a man, swayed by beauty though a monster wears it.”

“The pair swore to punish Bone for his infatuation with Vine; but the senior kleptomancers locked them away for a month. Such was their sentence for murdering gutter trash. But in their separate cells, Remora and Vine pronounced frightful curses, tapping the power of their one stolen heart. Though they could not become immortal, they each had enough strength to raise a death for Imago Bone. Yet their arrogance betrayed them. For each believed the opposite sex to be simple, easy to predict. Thus they assumed they could anticipate each other’s curse, doubling its strength. In fact, all they understood of each other was a shared lust for power.

“Remora cursed Bone to die in despair, never again knowing love. While Vine swore the next woman to love him would doom him.”

Gaunt said, “And so Bone survived.”

The specter nodded. “And in his own way, prospered. When Joyblood and I emerged from the vaults of the night we embraced as kin. Then we fought. Evenly matched, we settled into a long game of waiting and watching. I will never forget Bone’s laughter when he understood.”

“What a strange life.” Gaunt patted the horses, more to reassure herself than the team. “Bone, protected for eighty years by a stalemate of deaths. Neither can allow the other to claim him. Neither can allow age to touch him. Meanwhile, Joyblood must keep thrusting women into his path, while you must . . . kill them?”

“Frighten. Even were I inclined otherwise, Bone has charged us to protect all sentients near him, or he shall end his life. Such self-sacrifice would thwart us both.” The death shook his cowled head. “His barfights are particularly vexing.”

“He must be lonely.”

Severstrand’s eyes took on an eerie, moonlit glow. “One would suppose he would despair. But he has not.”

“He has you for company, I suppose.”

The death shook his head, his thin voice wavering oddly. “I must away. Joyblood will undo my latest attempt.”

“Why did you come at all, Severstrand?” Gaunt demanded. “If you think me Joyblood’s tool you have not frightened me, much.”

The death shrugged, turned his back, and vanished.

“Did you need to explain yourself?” Gaunt asked the air. “Be forgiven?”

She thought a long moment, watching a few hardy gnats buzz about the alley.

“Be careful, Bone,” she said, “for I do feel something for you, after all.”

She stirred the horses toward the tower. They were eager to depart, unaware they followed the source of their fear.

Bone’s bones complained in seven places, but at least the chair was comfortable.

Chair?

Opening his eyes, Bone decided he sat in the Reading Room: tomes sprawled upon chairs, desks, and pedestals, awash in multihued light from stained-glass windows depicting goblin storytellers regaling goblin crowds. And besides, there was a goblin crowd surrounding him now.

They prodded him with cardfile-rods. “See, O Rex Libris,” said one. “See! It is the Imago Bone, he who recently trespassed.”

“Eighty years ago,” Bone clarified.

The massive goblin bearing the
Cataloging Rules
laughed and sneezed through his single nostril. He was the very model of the brass face of the lower doorway. “I
do
remember you, Imago Bone. I know the stories; some of them found final rest here. As have you. I am honored.”

All assembled looked at the Rex Libris in surprise.

“Do not stare! Are we not goblins? Do we not love stories? Look around you, Bone, behold our vice. Bookbats return each morning, clutching tomes to inter.” The Rex Libris nodded at an oaken door between stained-glass panels, a door that led to empty air.

“Can you not forgive our temptation to learn the books’ secrets, to speak, as it were, with the dead? So we read each acquisition, savor it—then shelve it forever and speak of it no more. Can we condemn those who would share such pleasure? No, we can merely kill them. So I must admire your attempt. Please satisfy my curiosity. Which book?”

“Will the answer prolong my life?”

“For a time.”

“Then for a time I will answer. I seek not one, but two volumes.”

“The nerve!” shrieked some goblins, and “The courage!” squeaked others.

“The first,” Bone said, “is a thin volume of poetry even now, I suspect, on loan to your landlords. For the sake of this
Alley Flowers
I am merely traversing your domain to their sanctum. It is for the sake of friendship, and a nominal fee.”

The Rex Libris chuckled. “For this, I might release you with a maiming. The kleptomancers have grown thoughtless in their borrowing. Only half of us had the opportunity to read this brooding verse. Such funereal splendor! But what of the other book?”

“Ah. That. It is a cursed tome, O bibliophiles, and most rare. Even connoisseurs of such material whisper its name, if they know it at all.”

“Ah,” said the Rex Libris with cheerful interest, “a student of blasphemous power. You seek the
Nominus Umbra
.”

“Nothing so grand.”

“The dread
Geisthammer
then.”

“No.”

The goblin frowned and scratched its chin. “
Dead Richard’s Almanac
?”

“No. This book’s fame is rather circumscribed. Even among scholars willing to risk being whisked off to the stars by amorphous things with shadowy wings—even among such sturdy folk, few will speak of it.”

“You mock me. I would know of such a book.”

“I think not.
Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow
is not a book that inspires bibliography.”

The gauntlet was thrown. The room filled with the susurrant flipping of thousands of pages.

“No such title!” meeped a goblin.

“He lies!” gurgled another.

“Take him to the bindery!” chirped a third.

“No,” rumbled the Rex Libris. “For his insolence we shall brand him with hot accession stamps.”

Then the Rex Libris shuddered in a cocoon of crimson light.

“Hello, Joyblood.”

“This one admires you, Bone, despite his outrage. It is almost love.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Fear not. I have other plans.” Joyblood raised the Rex Libris’s voice. “Friends! Lovers of books! Read elsewhere, please.”

The goblins waved their cardfile rods.

“Do not—” Bone said.

“Do not kill them, I know,” sighed Joyblood.

Joyblood spat red fire, singeing the carpet. Sparks fell near a pile of books. The goblins dropped their rods and backed away, hands raised.

Joyblood said, “You would save even these creatures! Ah, you’ve grown soft, foolish, sentimental. I am pleased. Soon you’ll earn your death by romance.” He scratched the nose of the Rex Libris. “May I ask why this
Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow
is so important?”

Bone rose and stretched. “Sometimes the best weapon is one the enemy already owns.”

Joyblood said, “It is a weapon, not a book?”

“In a sense all books are weapons, but this more than most.”

Joyblood laughed, the Rex Libris’s chest heaving. “Ah, keep your secrets, Bone. You always plan fascinating thefts. I shall miss you.”

Bone lowered his head. “I’ll miss you too, O romantic.”

“Ah, so you sense I’ll succeed!”

Bone sighed. “I simply buckle under life’s despair.”

“Despair . . . You do not intend to give yourself to that boor Severstrand?”

Bone smiled, shrugged, and left the room.

“Severstrand?” Joyblood cried. “Show yourself!”

Bone waited around the corner until Severstrand’s whispers answered Joyblood’s wail. Good: they would argue for a time.

Unhindered, Bone stalked the alcoves. At last he came to Stories About Rich And Beautiful People Stupider Than Ourselves. There on a low shelf stood
Mashed Rags Bound in Dead Cow
, caked in a thin layer of dust.

There is no better way to hide a book than to misfile it in a library.

It had taken twenty years to trace the hints to the whispers to the legends; to bribe witnesses under moonglow and scour testaments by candlelight. The thing’s compiler was long dead, the various authors in worse states. All the owners had met bizarre accidents. But rash scholars had skimmed its pages and scribbled warnings in the margins of their journals. One, Dolman the Charmed, sorcerer and thief, unearthed the thing itself. He read a page and burned a year of his notorious luck in one day. It was the horrified Dolman who slipped into the Goblin Library forty years past—not to steal books, but to bury one. Yet Dolman had his pride, and coded the location into his memoirs.