Chapter Twenty – The Reading Room

“What do we do?” Edie panted, short of breath and long on fear. “We can’t just sit in here and wait for him to be killed.”

“He’s already dead,” Adam replied, pacing around behind her.

“Oh, this is no time for your stupid comments,” she snapped. “Why d’you find it so hard to grasp reality? Sometimes I wonder if you ever lived at all.”

“Cheers for that!” Adam grumbled. “How would you feel if you’d been used to cause this mess? I was just a distraction to hide the fact that Sister Goodman was sneaking around looking for the Voynich. That means all this is wrong, the Vision, the Sentinel, all rubbish. I knew it, I knew it all along.”

“No.” Edie gripped his arm. “No, you’re wrong, Red. I’ve seen it, remember? We’re here for a reason. Sister Goodman may not have realised it, but she was another part of the path to the Vision. Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t understand it or believe it, the Vision will still happen.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then it isn’t the right time,” Edie reassured him.

“Damn it, you’re putting so much faith in this fate and destiny thing. I can’t do that. I wish I believed it as much as you do, but I don’t.” Adam slumped down to sit on the floor.

The Reading Room was a perfect island in the chaos that was going on outside. Inside the books remained silent and calm on their shelves and the only sign that something was not right were occasional thumps and flashes from outside, and the fact that heat was gradually building up in the room. Edie stood close to the door and put her ear to it to listen to the sound from the Great Court, but recoiled as the door was too hot to touch.

“There must be something more we can do,” she said. “Think! You were the one who saw the full Vision – is there anything in it to help us?”

“I dunno,” Adam said, pacing up and down in frustration. “I can’t remember. There’s something about a trinity and the saviour being a child and . . .” He frowned hard, screwing up his eyes in frustration. “I dunno, I really don’t remember.”

“You know something that can help us. Somewhere in your head, something in your memories can get us out of this,” Edie told him. “Otherwise why are we even here?”

“Please, not the fate thing again,” Adam said in an exasperated voice. “You heard Sister Goodman – I’m not even meant to be here. She told D’Scover about me just to distract him from the real issue, the search for that book. This is all a mistake so how can fate or destiny or whatever be involved at all?”

“I don’t want to argue with you, not now anyway,” Edie sighed, “but I do believe that we’re meant to be here. As I said, I saw this place.”

“I suppose so,” he mumbled, “but I can’t think of anything . . . I can’t remember anything that might be useful. I’ve gone totally blank. Maybe it’s all locked away in my head, but I just can’t seem to . . .”

“Wait!” She ran to him. “That’s it – locked away in your head! I can try and see inside your thoughts and find out if you know something that can help.”

“How can you do that?” he asked. “You said you can’t read the thoughts of ghosts.”

“I can’t generally, but it’s not as if I’ve had many to practise on. Maybe if I really concentrate on you, I might get something.” She looked around for a table with a good view of the door in case anything came through. “Come and sit here.”

“What good will this do? I don’t have a brain, do I? I’m dead, remember. How can you read a mind that’s not there? We should just go out and take our chances.”

“Easy for you to say, you’ve already died once, but I know I’ve got plenty to do in the land of the living before I join you,” she told him. “If you have thoughts, then I can read them, and you do clearly still have them. Stop wasting time. Sit down, I need to concentrate.”

Adam moved grudgingly away from the door and joined her at the table.

“You need to concentrate too,” Edie said. “You must focus all of your strength on your mind. Make your thoughts clear.”

“You say that like you’ve done it a thousand times.” He slammed his hands down on the table. “But how the hell can that work?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was soft and calm. “But unless you’ve got a better idea, what choice do we have?”

Adam shook his head and leaned forward with his eyes closed in deep concentration. Edie leaned her head forward too and pressed her forehead against his, pushing all of her will into seeing what lay in the deepest recesses of his memory.

“Sister, is this the boy you dealt with before?” Earth’s fearsome voice rattled deeply round the court. “I imagined him smaller and . . . fleshier somehow.”

She walked over to where D’Scover stood and leaned down from her great height to look him right in the face. She cocked her head and examined him closely. D’Scover looked defiantly up into her muddy face and could see every grain of dirt that had combined to form her and he could smell the cold aroma of decay and corruption on her breath.

“I think he is enchanting.” She smiled a smile that looked like a knife slash in muddy ground. “I think he looks like a dear little corpse. More animated than the ones I am used to. I think that my faithful friends would like to get hold of you,” she said, stroking her wormy hair. “Or maybe they would prefer the girl child, the little witch?”

She licked her lips and D’Scover watched a glossy red beetle scuttle out of her mouth and run across her cheek before disappearing inside her ear.

“NO!” D’Scover yelled. “YOU WILL NOT TAKE ANYONE.” He drew his sword and, clutching it in both hands, stood his ground in front of the library doors.

“What does he think he can do?” Earth asked her sister. “Can he possibly think that he can fight us alone?”

“Because he believes he has fate on his side,” Fire laughed, and wafted over towards her sister, charring a burnt trail on the floor behind her. “He actually believes it is his destiny to win.”

“Let me take him. I will show him how false his thoughts have been,” Earth pleaded with her sister.

“No,” Fire answered in softer tones, “I have waited a long time to taste this revenge. The last time we met I was cheated of the chance to finish him off. This boy is mine.”

She threw out her arms and an impenetrable circle of flames arose all around, cutting Earth off from the two of them. Turning back to D’Scover, she smiled and he felt the heat cover him like a thick blanket. Suddenly he wanted to lie down, to give up on all of this and just Disperse once and for all. His eyes closed slowly and his head began to loll around sleepily.

“Ah,” Fire whispered, so close to him now that he could see the small fires that danced together to make her body shape, “see how you want to sleep? You do not want to fight me any more, do you? You are so tired. Why do you not come to me and let me keep you safe and warm in my embrace?”

She stretched out her arms to him and beckoned for him to come closer. His arms drooped and suddenly the sword seemed unbearably heavy. His shoulders strained to keep the weapon in the air and pointing in her direction.

“Come to me, I can make everything better.” She breathed the words and the warm air rolled around him. “I can make you feel like you belong to someone, like you are safe and loved. Is that not what you want?”

He looked at her as she drew closer; his sword now crashed down with the point on the ground. She was so beautiful and, for a moment, he could not believe her capable of anything other than good – of anything other than creating this wonderful warm sensation that rushed through his body as though he was alive again.

“Come to me, come to me,” she repeated in soft tones, luring him in.

As she reached out her hand for him, he looked up into the flames that licked around her, making the shape of her body, and saw something else. Within the flames were the hideous, distorted faces of those spirits she had taken before. Poor lost souls Dispersed by her and drained of what little energy they had left so all that remained were twisted images in their last agonising moments. D’Scover looked up into the faces in the inferno and the horror of it tore through him and snapped him from his dreamlike state.

He staggered backwards, dragging his sword across the floor. Fire snatched an arm out through the air and one of her long fingers scoured across D’Scover’s cheek, burning a deep mark where it ran. He recoiled and stumbled further away from her until the fire licked up his back, but the pain of the wound she had inflicted had returned him fully to his senses. Clutching his sword, he raised it with renewed ferocity and ran towards her, screaming and hacking the air from left to right. She now stood her ground and smiled a patronising grimace at him.

“I CANNOT, AND WILL NOT, LET YOU WIN!” he screamed.

As he bellowed, he put all of his concentration into bolstering his substance and a cluster of blue sparks began to build round his hands, enveloping them as they held the sword. Slashing the air in front of him, he ran forwards the vast circle of fire. As he reached her, a wave of blue sparks flew down the blade and sheathed it in a halo of sapphire light. D’Scover hefted the sword over his shoulder and, with a mighty swing, he lashed out at Fire.

At first he thought he must have missed her as nothing seemed to have changed, but she looked down and the expression on her face turned to one of shock. Across her stomach there now ran a deep black gouge, charred and smoking as if she had been partially extinguished by his sword. D’Scover looked to the blade and saw that it was glowing white-hot at the tip and was sheathed in blue light.

“What have you done?” she gasped and it was her turn to stagger away. “How can this be?”

Her circle of flames retreated with her and D’Scover had to run after her to stay out of the fire wall as it closed in behind him Lifting his sword, he hacked out at Fire before she had time to recover and another appeared – this time across her chest, cutting deep from shoulder to hip. She clutched at her wounds and an unholy scream echoed round the court. She clapped her hands together and a ball of fire rolled from her fingertips; this she hurled towards D’Scover, but he dodged it easily and swung out his sword for her again. This time he made contact across her legs and she collapsed in front of him. He lifted his sword for the final cut, but in her desperation she had one last trick and threw out her hands, causing the veil of flames to drop.

“SISTER!” she screamed. “HELP ME – IT IS THE SWORD.”

D’Scover turned to see Earth bearing down on him, her face now the colour of dried blood, baked by the heat of her sister’s flames.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?” Earth bellowed.

She swung out her arm and caught D’Scover off guard and the impact sent him and his sword skidding hard across the floor. His limp body slid across the floor through the dirt and water, with his blade following. Free of D’Scover, Earth bent over her fallen sister and was joined by Air and Water.

“LEAVE HER ALONE, YOU WEAK IDIOTS. HOLD YOURSELVES IN READINESS UNTIL I SAY OTHERWISE,” Earth shouted to her sisters. “I CAN HEAL HER.”

She laid her infernal sister out on the floor and, stepping through the flames trickling from her limp body, began to press Fire’s wounds closed. The two remaining sisters slunk back after their chastisement and returned obediently to their places on the stairs.

All had turned their attention away from D’Scover as he had been cast across the floor. His bolstered substance had taken the full force of Earth’s strike and the blow had thrown him far from where Fire lay to where a large limestone plinth had finally stopped his progress. He collided heavily with its base and became partially embedded before he lost consciousness.

The images were far away at first, like long-forgotten dreams that return when triggered by a taste or smell. Drifting images of places he had seen or people who had helped or hindered him during his life. Edie tried to force these images away so she could move into newer territory. She had no desire to see again how he had died and these old images were wasting time, but she knew she could not rush it for fear of losing the link altogether.

More images came through, of cold and a hospital, of nurses talking and a long corridor – and blackness. In her mind she walked in this vast empty space that seemed to have a spotlight just on her. This was the most realistic image she had ever seen in someone else’s thoughts. She could feel the softness of the floor beneath her and the gentle breeze against her skin, but there seemed to be no end to this blackness. She could no more see what was under her feet than she could see what was at the edge of the void.

“Adam?” she said experimentally.

Her voice echoed around the space and bounced back to her, obviously unhindered by any obstacle. She waited a few moments and stopped walking.

“Adam, can you hear me?” She tried again, and once more, her voice rebounded on her.

Suddenly she could see something, a sharp spot of light that cut through the blackness in front of her and lay out like a path. She followed it and, as she did so, she could hear snatches of speech and the soft tinkling sound of a woman’s laughter. The pinpoint of light grew bigger as she got closer until eventually it looked like a small, round yellow hole that seemed to hang in the void. She walked to it and peered in. Inside there was a garden and a child playing in a sandpit while a woman laughed at the games it played.

Edie was overwhelmed with the complex jumble of feelings in this memory. Deep emptiness and angry resentment accompanied this image. Locked here, deep in Adam’s mind, a child played in complete innocence and it was tearing Adam apart. Edie knew this was not the memory they needed and too much time dwelling on it might make Adam lose heart altogether.

“ADAM!” Edie screamed at the top of her voice. “THIS IS THE PAST, WE’RE WASTING TIME, AND WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU SAW IN THE LIBRARY – HURRY.”

The darkness suddenly flooded with light and the images rushed past her at breakneck speed. Images of D’Scover and his instruction of Adam, the office, Freedom Farm and the euphoric power Adam felt in his Dispersals and then the library. The images slowed and stopped and the walls of D’Scover’s library locked in place around them until Edie found herself standing in the unfamiliar room. She turned round and saw Adam talking to himself.

“Red? Can you hear me?” she asked, but he did not reply.

She stood back and watched as he gestured to the shelves and the books responded to him and descended into his hands. He moved slowly around the room and then reached out for one that had appeared from a dark cloud of sparks and smoke. He looked down as it hovered in front of him and he frowned at the pages. His speech was indistinct, as though he could not remember the specifics of what he had said, and Edie could not grasp what he was saying.

“Adam, we must know the Vision,” she said out loud, “the exact wording, try.”

Adam did not respond, but he began to smile at the book lying in the air in front of him, and then to speak, and these words were clear and bright.

“In times of chaos, a great division will split the Brotherhood. Faith shall weaken and many shall be lost for ever to the void. In this confusion of spirits, darkness shall rise silently and take upon a form known to many. This force shall command the elemental spirits and countless spirits of ill-passage. This evil will take hold whilst others look away, but a trinity shall see all and one shall be triumphant. The one who overthrows shall have known nothing of the wickedness of the living world and shall have died unsullied by the mire of the living. This innocent shall raise a blade, forged in purity and crystal fed, and shall strike down the demons that rise to overthrow the living world. This shall be the Sentinel and their form shall be true and shall be that of a child.”

Edie gasped with pain as sheer white light cut across her vision and she was back in the Reading Room with Adam in front of her.

“I can’t feel D’Scover!” she said.

“What d’you mean?” Adam asked. “I thought it took all that effort just to read my thoughts?”

“Yes, but I could feel him even if I couldn’t actually catch specific thoughts.”

“And you can’t feel him now?”

“No,” she said. “I saw a blinding flash, a shower of sparks and felt a pain across my chest and then nothing.”

“We know the Vision, but does it make sense to you? Can it help him?”

“I know the words, but I can’t quite make sense of it. All that stuff about crystals and swords?”

“Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? The sword, the innocent child? It’s him. It means D’Scover is the Sentinel.” He grabbed Edie by the shoulders. “The last time the Senior Council put him up for trial wasn’t the right time, or the right conditions. We have to help him.” Adam let go of her, his eyes filling with tears. “We’re running out of time. We have to help him. He’s all I’ve got.”

“It’s not just you any longer, Red,” she said. “We’ll always have each other now. We’ll never be alone again.”

A silence fell between them. Edie forced a smile.

“There must be something from your mind.” She broke the moment. “I saw you when you were alive, and where you died, and your training with D’Scover and then . . .” She hesitated, the image of the child in the garden seemed too private for her to have seen without permission, and so she chose not to mention it. “Then I saw you in the library . . . Hey! That’s it!”

“What?”

“The library, you could talk to the books and they responded to you, I saw you. You could do that here.” She looked around at the shelves towering above them, full to bursting with ancient tomes. “There must be one here that has the answer, but it’ll take too long to find it the normal way – but you could ask them for help.”

“I dunno.” Adam followed her gaze to the high stacks above them. “These books aren’t the charmed ones in D’Scover’s library. It’s a whole different thing.”

“They’ve never been asked; maybe they’re all charmed by their content, or their makers, I don’t know.” Edie shrugged. “This all seems crazy anyway and I don’t know where the real ends and the unreal begins. In any case, do you have a better idea?”

Adam shook his head and ran to the middle of the room, pushing aside chairs to clear a space right in the centre under the dome.

“Library!” he called out. “We need your help. We need to know what we can do to defeat the Elementals.”

The room remained still; nothing shifted on the shelves and the silence enveloped them.

“It’s too quiet outside; we have to do something quick – ask again,” Edie said.

“But it’s pointless.”

“We have no other option,” she pointed out. “I still can’t feel D’Scover. Try again.”

“BOOKS!” Adam called again, shouting this time. ”IF YOU DON’T HELP US, THEN YOUR BROTHER THE VOYNICH WILL BE LOST TO THE HANDS OF DEMONS AND THIS BUILDING WILL BE DESTROYED BY THE ELEMENTALS WHEN THEY COME FOR US. WE CAN’T PROTECT YOU IF WE DON’T KNOW HOW.”

Again silence at first, but this time it was broken by a thin rustling from high up on the top walkway. A black book lifted itself from the shelf and slowly made its way down to Adam like a crow descending on a breeze. It flapped gently, and he stretched out his arms to allow it a comfortable perch.

“Thank you,” he said to the book. “Help us.”

Hugely relieved, Edie ran over to join him and they both watched as the book skimmed through its pages, searching for the relevant chapter.

“It’s a book of myths and legends,” Edie said, her eyes catching bits on the pages as they flittered past. “Look, elves, faeries, gorgons, piskies – these aren’t all real, are they?”

“It’s complicated,” Adam said distractedly.

The book had slowed down and was turning one page at a time, settling on a chapter entitled ‘Myths of Nature’. They both quickly read down the page and turned over, and there on the next page was a perfect likeness of Fire.

“It says here about her last being seen in sixteen sixty-six during the Great Fire of London.” Adam pointed to a paragraph below the illustration.

“Is there anything about how to get rid of her?” Edie leaned over the book.

“Hold on, I’m getting to it.” He flicked a page over. “It says that Fire is the more dominant and aggressive of the Elementals with Earth coming next. Water and Air are usually gentler. Not driven by a destructive urge.”

“So fires and earthquakes are the product of the two evil sisters, but tornadoes and floods aren’t?” Edie said. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“I suppose that good can come from wind and flood, but fires and earthquakes are always terrible,” Adam said. “I mean, you have to think on a world scale and not in terms of people. Plants are helped by wind, seeds carried, rain is moved around the world, and everything would die without water.”

“But things recover after fire – plants and stuff live on,” Edie argued.

“But maybe that’s just adaptation to impossible conditions.”

“OK, I get the point,” Edie said. “You know, Red, you would’ve been a genius if you’d ever gone to school. But does it say anything we can actually use?”

“That’s wrong.” Adam was frowning. “It says here that the Elementals are never seen together.”

“What? But they are here together. Does it say why they’re not seen together?”

“It says they hate each other because of their conflicting personalities,” Adam explained. “Maybe that’s the key; maybe we can set one against the other – Water against Fire, that kind of thing.”

The book ruffled its pages and began to close.

“Well, the book seems to think it’ll work,” Edie said. “I told you before, I have some power over water and air, and maybe that’s why I’m here; maybe it’s my purpose all along. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s our only plan so we’d better go with it.”

The closed book rose up through the air and slid back into the gap it had left on the shelf. Adam and Edie ran towards the doors and stood behind them.

“I’ll have a look first,” Adam said. “I can slip through and see if there’s a way to get to one of the sisters.”

“Who shall we start with?”

“Let’s try Water first as the book says that she’s the gentlest,” he replied quickly.

“What about floods and stuff?”

“It said those are caused by her tears and not by malicious intent,” he said. “But we’re dealing with myths here, so if we believe it hard enough, it might work.”

“OK,” Edie said. “You’d better get on with it.”

She leaned over quickly and, before he had time to react, pressed her lips against his cheek; he was stunned to find he could feel her warm kiss against his skin.

“You take care,” she smiled at him, “I can’t do this alone.”

He beamed at her and shifted his substance to a state where he looked to Edie as if all that remained of him was a poor reflection. He flashed a final grin back at her and began to slide through the door and out into the Great Court.