Evastany Page 26

Let me begin by saying that this is ridiculous.

  I do not keep diaries. I keep journals — the scientific kind, full of data and observation. This habit of recording one’s escapades is ridiculous, for who could possibly care? And the language! The style! To call it merely popular would be an act of generosity.

  But I owe a small debt to Lady Glostrum and Mr. Warvel, much as I hate to admit it. Dwinal had become a plague on our society, and the tentative efforts of the likes of Limbane and his ilk did little to combat her worst excesses. Nor could I do much better. Hamstrung by the Council as I was, I had to obey its strictures to a certain degree, or how could I claim to be any better than Dwinal? How could I propose myself as a worthier leader? Oh, the frustration of mounting such a feeble opposition! Mere political manoeuvring! How ineffectual against such a woman!

  No such constraints bound the actions of Lady Glostrum, Mr. Warvel and their various friends. I could not simply have the woman taken out and shot, and neither could Limbane. But the people of the Seven Realms, as they call it, are not part of our world. They are not bound by our rules. And since they are able to take rather more direct action against such poisonous types as Dwinal — and indeed, did — I feel it incumbent upon me to play their games if I must, and contribute my mite to the melodramatic excesses of this idiotic account.

  I do so secure in the knowledge that my own kind will never, ever read it.

  I sent away my brother, and dismissed her ladyship and her fiancé along with him. What did I need the two of them for? They could not help me; they would only get in my way. Let them complicate Hyarn’s day instead. Who knew? Once conveyed to Orlind, they might find a way to be useful after all.

  My errand was different, and particular. See, Dwinal might have been making herself scarce but I knew she would have to show herself sooner or later. Only the Lokantor of Sulayn Phay could issue the order to translocate. Nobody else could ever have the authority. You may be wondering how this can be the case; I understand from Lady Glostrum that much has been said about Lokant affairs in this and other accounts, and you are likely to be aware just how much delight we take in interfering in each other’s business. (Whether or not she had any right to detail such matters and make them publically accessible is a matter I shall investigate another time.)

  If we can break into each other’s quarters, no matter what measures are taken to keep us out; infiltrate each other’s Libraries, whatever the fiendish complexity of the relevant security systems may be; how is it that I could not find a way to take over the leadership of Sulayn Phay, at least for a while?

  Well, I am not going to describe the obstacles in detail, for it is none of your business. But I will tell you this much: the Lokantorship of a Great Library is bound into the blood. It is biologically determined. In order to take over Dwinal’s duties, I would have to have become Dwinal — usurped her blood and flesh, made myself identical to her.

  I may as well hint that even that is not, perhaps, entirely beyond me. But it would take an inordinate amount of time to pull it off, and time I did not have.

  Instead, I lay in wait. There was no real need to overthrow her entirely, not right away. I merely needed to prevent her from issuing the order to translocate. As clever as she is, she is still a creature of flesh and blood herself. She is still fragile. She can be hurt.

  And she can be tricked. Her ego is both her blessing and her downfall, for while it drives her on to greater and greater heights of achievement, it also blinds her.

  I have spent a great deal of time studying the oddity that is Dwinal. I flatter myself that I understand her better than anyone.

  At the heart of each Library, there is a hidden room wherein the controls reside. Once Dwinal’s third Library was in place and ready to go, she would come back to Sulayn Phay. She would come back to that very room, and issue the command to depart.

  So I broke in. That may sound impressive, but the security was not especially fiendish. Why should it be? Only one person can make any use of the room anyway.

  I hastened to station myself there, for she would turn up at any moment. She must. By my brother’s account, she had two Libraries out there besides my own, beloved Phay. Three was almost certainly enough. Her gamble had almost succeeded, but could still fail; she would not wish to delay.

  Nor did she. I had barely settled myself in her beautiful, plush chair before a faint whisp of air near my ear announced the presence of a recently translocated person.

  ‘Hello, Dwinal.’ I said it with my most charming smile.

  She looked dishevelled, which is not unusual for her. Some rely on a carefully cultivated appearance to impress; clothes chosen to impart the desired impressions, fastidious grooming to create a sense of efficiency. Dwinal relied on personality alone, and why not? She could get away with it. She wears black for the most part, but not because she wants to appear intimidating. It is because black is the most practical of colours, and if she always wears the same shade, she never has to waste any time thinking about her clothes. Her hair is her one vanity, for she wears it very long, albeit tied back in a hasty tail.

  She is nothing if not focused.

  So she appeared on that day, unchanged and unalterable, save that the shadows had deepened under her eyes. Always a mess of wrinkles, her face that day looked like a crumpled paper bag. Would it be ungenerous of me, rather younger as I am, to say that she looked every one of her advanced years?

  It would be highly ungenerous, but I am unrepentant.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Dwinal, as though we had encountered one another in the corridor, or at a restaurant. That is another of her affectations: the appearance of always knowing, of being surprised by nothing. Unflappable calm. Unshakeable imperturbability. And it works, curse it, for study her though I might I have never learned to tell when she is genuinely forewarned and forearmed, or when she is only faking it.

  Oh well, two can play at that game. I tried to look as though her total lack of surprise was of no surprise whatsoever to me, for her cool unconcern rattled me, and I would not have had her know it. ‘I have come to get in your way,’ I offered.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dwinal.

  That was it, just “yes”. I suppressed the frown of annoyance that threatened to burden my brow, and tried again. ‘It is a poor scheme, you know. The costs are far too high. It will never answer.’

  ‘Answer what?’

  ‘The Council will never permit it. A new Master Library? The project must be theirs or no one’s, preferably the latter. You have already made enemies among them.’

  This was a salient argument. Believe me, the Council are full of ways to make one’s life difficult, if they so choose. They can and will be ruthless about it, at need. But in answer Dwinal merely smiled, with a faint, mocking tilt to her lips that I found troubling.

  I made a note to talk to Limbane, for unless I miss my guess, Dwinal was secure in the knowledge that somebody on the Council was safely in her pocket. Perhaps more than one somebody.

  This boded worse and worse. ‘It is too bad, using the draykoni as fodder,’ I tried. ‘They are creatures of infinite value, unique, powerful beyond reason. Does it not strike you as sadly limited, to use them as a mere source of power?’

  ‘They are flawed. They will be improved.’

  ‘How?’

  Dwinal looked at me, impassive. I could not tell what she was thinking. ‘Why do you ask, when you can only oppose me?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘What else can I do, when at every turn you have opposed me? If I knew what you were about, perhaps I would feel differently.’

  She was silent for a time, considering. Then she said: ‘The Draykoni Project had great potential, but was poorly executed. Its earliest products are fatally flawed, and cannot be mended. They are best eliminated. But remarkably, those flaws breed out over time. Think of it! A product which self-corrects! A creation which can breed with other races, and not only will it maintain reasonably full use of its own powers, it will absorb others
into its own system, adapt itself into something new. Something more, with all the strengths of both races and none of their weaknesses. Have you met my students?’

  This question caught me off guard, appearing as a swift apropos-of-nothing change of subject at the end there. I nodded cautiously. ‘Some of them.’

  ‘Some of them are as nothing,’ she said, contemptuous. ‘But some of them… they could change everything. They will change everything. They will be greater by far than the sum of their parts. Greater than the draykoni, flawed and weakened and limited as they are. Greater than our kind. And the Library that can house and support and produce such a creation must be great, too — truly great. Truly a Master. The Council, blind and hidebound, will never see its potential.’

  My mind raced with speculation. Eliminated? She did, then, mean to use up and discard those eldest of the draykoni race, the ones she considered irretrievably flawed. But the others were destined for a different purpose. What use would she make of them? She would use them as teachers, perhaps — she was already doing so. Tutors to coax the best from her precious students.

  And what else? Her talk of breeding with other races bothered me, for I envisaged a most unpromising programme of cross-breeding draykoni with Lokants, like packs of animals. Those who already boasted a fine complement of mixed powers would be prized, of course, by such a project. People like Lady Glostrum, a partial Lokant who wielded our arts with confidence and skill, despite her poor training. Her draykoni blood might not be strong enough to permit her to shapeshift, but she possessed virtually every other advantage.

  Dwinal would want plenty more like her.

  She was watching me with that impassive face, waiting. Expecting. She was losing her grip on her composure, for I detected a glimmer of triumph in her air, of sanguine anticipation. Who could fail to be inspired by such a vision, after all? What Lokant could resist the prospect of so intriguing a puzzle, a project so replete with potential advantage?

  And she was right, to a point. It was a seductive prospect. What might we accomplish, with the kind of Library she sought to build? How great could those students of hers become? The products of our best features and our most brilliant creations… believe me, no Lokant could hear all of this and not feel tempted.

  But she could not win me over.

  ‘Your methods leave something to be desired.’

  Dwinal’s face darkened. ‘Methods may be adjusted.’

  ‘Upon my recommendation?’

  ‘Within reason.’

  She was eager to recruit me to her cause, and for the first time I wondered whether she really had expected to find me here. Whether her air of unsurprise was not a pretence after all, but the plain truth. Perhaps she had arranged things this way, manipulated me, given me credit enough to realise that I would figure her out, that I would put myself in her way.

  After all, I was complicating her life rather a lot. I took great pride in doing so. I was the person who proposed to wrest from her a Lokantorship that she no doubt found convenient and useful to hold. I was the person who had stolen some few of her supporters, who had altered the minds of many long devoted to her cause. I had made of myself a sponsor to the likes of Gio, her wayward grandson, and his meddlesome new friends.

  And just now, I was the person standing in between her and the fulfilment of a plan to which she had devoted years of her life.

  I enjoyed the power of that moment. I felt her hope, try though she might to conceal it. I delighted in her confidence, her smug certainty that she had arranged everything just so, that of course I would see the sense of her arguments. I was a Lokant, a leader, one of our brightest lights and most accomplished scholars. How could I fail to be convinced?

  ‘I will turn over the Lokantorship to you,’ she said. ‘Of Sulayn Phay.’

  This was said with an air of growing triumph. It was the clincher, the leveller, the one thing that would tip me over the edge and sway me to her cause.

  Another version of me would have taken her offer without thought. In another time, another place, I might have felt that I could better influence her actions by joining her than by opposing her. I might simply have listened to that part of me to which she primarily appealed: my zealous side, my obsessive scholar side. I might have taken the more interesting road, whatever the cost.

  But I could not. Alas, that I could not! For while much was gained by opposition, at least as much was lost. She was not wrong to suggest that such a Library, and such Librarians, might prove to be the very greatest of our achievements.

  I looked into her tired eyes and minutely shook my head. ‘My father,’ I said softly, ‘would never approve.’

  She became angry. ‘Your father! What can he have to say to any of this? Where has he been all this time? Dead, that’s where! He is dead!’

  And I became angry, too. ‘He died in the conflicts over the last “Master Library.” He and many others, in case you have forgotten! Your people, and mine! What do you think you will set in motion, with these mad ideas of yours? Ambition without reason! Only disaster can follow!’

  ‘There need not be disaster if only we would stop opposing one another! If we could but agree, and work together, we will achieve our highest potential without paying the price of war!’

  ‘A fine proposition! What you mean is that if we could only agree with you, and do whatever you say, then we need never fight again! How simple! A beautiful resolution! If everyone had let Krays have the Master Library eons ago, there need not have been any war! You are quite right, it is all our fault.’

  ‘He would have made a flawed Master Lokantor, it is true, but the cost of opposition—’

  ‘He was a madman!’ I shouted.

  ‘And you are not?’ Her head tilted; her lips twisted cruelly. ‘What right have you, to take the moral high ground over me and mine? Do not think I am unaware of your history.’

  She had me there, curse her. ‘I do not claim the moral high ground,’ I said, fighting to regain control of my temper. ‘When something needs doing, I will get it done — even if it means breaking some rules. But up to a point, Dwinal. Up to a point! For you, there is no limit.’

  ‘That is why I shall always be greater than you.’

  There was no warning (except for the sheer melodrama of that statement, clearly designed to close the argument forthwith). Tired of waiting for me to come around to her way of thinking, she took the expedient of shoving me out of her way, physically and mentally.

  And I was in trouble, for it was like being hit with a wall. She hauled me out of the chair and hurled me away, proving herself far stronger than I had ever imagined. At the same time, she hit me with a brutal compulsion, as staggering and as unavoidable as a punch to the face.

  It could not hold me long, for I am no weakling. But for a few brief, vital seconds, I had to get out of her way. I could not help myself. Nothing in the world was so important to me in that moment as retreat. I was at the door before I knew where I was, bruised and aching and bewildered.

  There I stopped, but too late, for Dwinal had taken the chair and was intent upon the controls which I had so zealously guarded only moments before.

  What followed was… not pretty.

  We fought. I am no weakling, as I said, and when prepared to encounter an attack I will not so easily succumb. But Dwinal is something else again. Perhaps it comes from her sheer, ruthless brutality, her willingness to do whatever is necessary to achieve her goal. She took everything I had and weathered it, barely slowing down.

  It is an attitude I can match, if I have to. We fought with the savagery of wild beasts, and if it were not for the fact that neither of us was armed with anything sharp, I believe one of us would have died — perhaps both. As it was we tried our best to cripple one another, and almost succeeded.

  In the end, though, for all the bruises I took and all the damage I delivered, I could do no more than distract her. She was weakening, but so was I; one more well-placed punch, one more psychic attac
k, and I would be unconscious.

  I was therefore very glad indeed when my brother appeared.

  Did I say that I had no need of him? I suppose I was being an overconfident fool. It would not be the first time.

  ‘Hyarn!’ I shrieked. In my urgency I forgot that he was not yet exposed, that he still purported to be among Dwinal’s supporters. ‘Help me!’

  He hesitated. Unsure, I think, whether it was the right time to abandon the masquerade, whether more might yet be gained by a continued pretence. But his sister entreated him, a sister dishevelled and bruised and by no means certain of winning her battle.

  So he helped me, and Dwinal screamed in fury, for she had not yet come to view him with suspicion. Clever brother, mine! To live so long by her side, subverting her efforts where he could, and yet go unsuspected!

  Between us, we made short work of her. But even we two, powerful as we are, determined as we were, could not wholly subdue her. Hyarn swung, and his fist failed to land, for where Dwinal had stood the moment before there was only empty air. She had translocated.

  ‘I suppose she would, at that,’ panted Hyarn. Kind soul that he is, he came to tend to my hurts before he bothered about his own.

  ‘At least we deflected her.’ I was exhausted to the point that I could barely speak, for to wage a battle on two fronts like that — the physical and the mental — is utterly draining.

  ‘For now. She will return.’

  ‘With help.’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’ Hyarn sighed, looking terribly old. ‘We had better stay.’

  ‘And summon aid.’

  ‘Lots of it.’

  Nyden: About Rastivan. Again.

  I do not see why I am only asked to talk about Rastivan.

  Rastivan! That wretch! That filthy, sneaking, betraying, snivelling coward! He is unworthy to call himself a draykon!

  But that is all anybody wants to hear about. Tell us what happened with Rastivan, Ny, they say. We need to hear all the details. Write down everything.

  Fine. But only because Avane asked it of me.