My Black Beast (10 page)

The pair rounded the corner and a pair of
large, wooden doors stood in front of them. Lowell was almost taken
aback. Wood had been an entirely foreign substance since he’d
entered. He hadn’t expected to see it used for doors, especially
not a run of six doors, each of them ten feet tall and much more
subtly designed than anything there had been around.

Marka was quick to move up the granite steps,
passed the pillars, and to the doors. She grabbed a ring on the
door nearest the edge of the building they’d rounded. She opened it
just enough to squeeze through and Lowell moved to keep pace. The
door was heavy, as massive pieces of wood tended to be, and smooth
with use. It was old, the corners worn smooth just from years and
years of being touched.

He pushed into the place and looked up. A
dimly lit cavern stared back at him, walls lined with shelf after
shelf of books. The floor scattered with statues of robed figures,
the few faces he could see were old, many bearded. People like that
Degoed bastard most likely.

A voice rang out, female and chastising.
Lowell began to run toward it without thinking. A yelp rang out,
the same voice. Past the statues, in front of a pair of much
smaller wooden doors, there was a stone desk in a stark dark marble
that laid in contrast to the smoothed granite of the library. On
the ground beside the desk was a woman in a pale blue draped robe.
More of a toga, really. She was bleeding slightly from her head
with Marka behind her, already making for the wooden doors. They
were plain, made of a dark heavy wood, and again carved in a very
simple style compared to the bulk of the city.

Lowell hurried to catch up to Marka, the woman
left motionless on the ground. He imagined he could see her
breathing but he wasn’t so confident about that. The lack of any
sort of first aid training and the hope that Marka had a good
reason for braining the lady helped him put any real concerns at
the back of his mind.

Marka pushed the doors open quickly and
stopped just inside the room they had opened to. It was a much
smaller area, maybe only a dozen shelves, none much taller than six
and a half feet or so. He wouldn’t need a ladder even in the worst
case. The books here were musty and the spines of many had faded
with the occasional use of many passing ages. Maybe that was the
case in the rest of the library, but Lowell hadn’t been close
enough to the books to truly know. Was there some special reason
for this room? The lack of any understanding of the language was
beginning to be a bit of a bother.

There was rustling below him and Lowell looked
down to see Marka pull the paper out and unfold it. She pointed to
a set of characters that had been underlined at the top of the page
and walked off to begin looking for books.

“
Okay,” he said blithely to
himself. “Everything’s perfectly clear now. Don’t know why I didn’t
put it together before.”

He sighed and moved toward the nearest shelf,
studying the shapes and doing his best to memorize them in some
meaningful way. It was wasted effort. The book titles were all an
endless tangle of shapes that didn’t seem similar to anything so
with every passing volume he was forced to re-check the
paper.

There were thousands and thousands of books in
the room, though it was certainly a more manageable task than
searching the entire library. He’d nearly gone over an entire shelf
when he heard the pat of bare feet moving to his side. Marka was
coming. He placed a hand on the book so he’d remember where he left
off and turned to the side.

She was holding a book. Holding it very
preciously, as though dropping it would have been the worst thing
that could happen. The tiny girl walked slow and careful up to
Lowell and held the book out. She looked down as though she were
trying to remember something.

“
Take… ke… keep?”

He grabbed the book from her and compared the
title to the signs on the paper. They matched.

“
Of course. I’ll protect it with my
life.”

He smiled kindly and she stared at him. She
reached up and touched around his mouth and then her own. He
thought for a moment she might try the expression for herself.
Instead, she nodded her head and moved past him, back toward the
small wooden doors that lead out into the library
proper.

Lowell followed, flipping the book open,
thinking he might find where the page went. He turned the pages
absentmindedly at first, but toward the center of the book there
was a sketching of the ring that Marka had showed him before. He
stared at the page, hoping the letters would magically form
themselves into English. Sadly, Lowell was not magic and the words
would remain a mystery. He sighed, closed the book, and followed
Marka.

They passed through the smaller library doors
and out into the main hall. The woman from before was gone, a small
pool of blood still left on the ground where she’d landed. It
hadn’t grown at all, so she was probably fine. Well, not fine.
Alive. Probably. Lowell stared at the spot as they passed by,
thinking it was probably better to just not give it much
thought.

They made it back to the massive wood doors
and Marka pushed one open ahead of him. The sound of the siren that
he’d heard before was blaring again, much closer now. Not only was
it closer, there seemed to be more of them. The noise was
inescapable but Marka didn’t seem to notice it. She looked around
the area just outside the door and motioned for Lowell to
follow.

The ghost town aesthetic was in play again
outside, no one around and no real need for them to stick to the
side streets. Marka moved into the main thoroughfare and began to
walk cautiously toward the spire. The area of town was much more
clearly lived in. The road was well worn but clean of dust and
dirt, the houses much more well-kept. It wasn’t such a busy looking
place as the market square had been. They moved through at a
snail’s pace, Marka taking only a few steps before she would stop
and scan the entire street as though something had changed. If
anything had, Lowell was entirely oblivious. It made him feel
uneasy, whatever the case.

“
I’m going to be really honest. I
haven’t really thought about what we’re doing at all, and I’m
trying really hard not to. I mean, by rights I should be just
running for whatever looks the most like an exit, right?” He took a
deep breath. “I can’t leave you here. So, you know, whatever we’re
doing, fine. We’ll do it and hopefully then we’ll go. People here
don’t seem to really like either of us and I haven’t seen any place
that even looks a little like it sells burritos or, really, any
sort of Mexican cuisine of any kind.”

Marka was ignoring him or didn’t care.
Probably the second one. Still, the talking helped so he kept
on.

“
Anyway, there’s a bunch of food
you can have that’s way better than that weird crap in the brown
sauce. I don’t really know how I’d explain it. You don’t really
look like you’re from around… earth. Yeah. It’s fixable, though. I
guess after we do the ring thing it’s probably over, right? We can
go? There’s a lot of good stuff up there for kids. Cartoons, pizza,
sugary cereals. A lot less broken ribs in general.”

His rambling trailed off and he stared
absently in the direction of the spire. It was close now. Somehow
the wail of the sirens had pushed itself into the background and
Lowell could manage to think through the noise. He couldn’t help
wondering what the place was for. I mean, it stood out so much
against the relentless square, columned buildings that made up the
entirety of the world below it. It had to have a purpose. His
curiosity took his mind away from the road and he bumped into a
stationary Marka. Hopping on one foot to angle around her without
falling, he ended up a few steps out in front of her.

“
Whoa, sorry. I guess I wasn’t
watching.”

He chuckled a little as he regained his
footing. She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring intently a
building nearby. More specifically, at a low wall blocking the
alleyway beside the house. Lowell fixed his gaze on the area. All
at once the sirens died.

“
What—”

His mind hadn’t processed the slight sound of
rock shifting before he saw the mass of grey flying toward his
head. Before it landed there was an impact in the middle of his
stomach. He landed hard and skidded across the ground. He wasn’t
hurt, somehow. The impact had been wide across his midsection. He
scrambled himself over onto his stomach and pushed up from the
ground.

Marka was the best part of five feet away, her
leg glowing deep. A drop of blood falling caught Lowell’s eye as it
fell from her elbow. There was a divot on her arm where the rock
had hit. Her eyes were still burned to the spot on the
wall.

Out from the shadows and into the street was
the boy from before, his arm as bright as Marka’s leg.

Chapter 11

The humming of the two magics
seemed to
bounce off one another and scatter down the street as though it was
trying to escape. Now over the wall, Brista stood still, his arm in
front of his body in a protective stance. Marka stood with her
tattooed leg forward. The ball of her foot was just barely touching
the ground. Lowell watched them intently, not sure what to do.
There was a wave of constant power pouring toward him like a hot
wind.

The boy moved, only the slightest bit, to
adjust his stance and Marka lit out. She was on him in a fraction
of a second, nearly too fast for Lowell’s eyes to follow. Brista
moved to block, but he was too slow and her foot slid in under his
guard. The front of his cloak seemed to absorb a good deal of the
damage but physics wouldn’t allow for him to stay on his feet and
he flew back hard into the wall. In the second that she had, Marka
ran for Lowell, grabbing him and pulling. She was so much faster
than she’d ever moved when she was dragging him through the city.
He could barely keep pace, but he knew he had to.

Marka noticed them first, the forms skipping
along the roofs, staying in step with no real effort. Lowell
followed her line of sight up to them. The glow was there on all
three. They were tiny figures, mostly covered by the large cloaks
but he could just make them out. The magic’s purple light was in a
different spot on each of them. A taller girl with her leg dimly
lit and a pair of boys. The boys were different. One had a run of
tattoos up from his throat to his jaw an in toward his mouth. The
other had a shaved head and tattoos running up and over to the area
around his eye. They were only paying the slightest attention to
either of them, which seemed strange given that they were clearly
following along.

The horror of there being three more like
Brista hadn’t fully settled when a small rock moving at tremendous
speed caught his ankle. His foot pulled to the side from the force
of the impact and he lost his grip on Marka. The ground was as
unpleasant as ever and this time he was skidding along it. He
rolled a few times and came to a stop with the breath half knocked
out of him. He was tiring as it was, but the impact had done him
in. Marka stopped dead in the street, but he waved her on without
even taking the time to think.

“
Go! I’ll catch up!”

She looked up to the roof, the three had
stopped and were watching. The sound of bare feet pounded down the
street, the boy who was fond of throwing rocks was closing quickly.
Marka nodded and turned. She was gone far too quickly as were her
pursuers. Lowell pushed himself up, searching the ground for the
book. He found it a foot or so away, still closed and no pages
obviously missing. The glowing arm passed in a blur, not so much as
giving over a passing glance as he tore down the street. Lowell
scrambled for the book and pulled it in close to his
body.

They were well away now, down the street and
around who knows how many corners. He’d have held her back and
probably meant the end of both of them. The book in hand, he ran
toward the alleyways hoping to stay away from the main streets.
Marka’s kick had saved him but it wasn’t entirely without its cost
and his ankle was hurting more and more with every step. There was
plenty of room to move in the alleys in this section of the city,
no juts out from the wall and no nasty surprises around any of the
corners. It was well kept but empty none the less. Surely the
people were just inside from the sounds of the sirens. They’d
stopped a few minutes prior, but people didn’t seem in a rush to
come outside and see what the alarm was all about.

Every pair of houses that passed by meant
another street to cross and every street meant time spent in the
open. The spire was growing closer which meant there were likely
going to be people who would be actively unhappy about his
presence. Beyond that, he needed to find Marka. It’d been more than
a minute since they’d separated and that worried him endlessly. The
concern kept nibbling away at his confidence as houses passed one
after the other. Another street passed into the background and he
stopped dead in the alley. He glanced backward, hoping for some
kind of reassurance that he should keep going.

There were four of them. Just the one had hurt
her. Hurt her twice.

He put his head down and charged toward the
next street. As he came to the corner of the house, he made a sharp
turn and kept moving. There was a curt scream and he saw the face
of a terrified girl just before he collided with her and sent them
both tumbling awkwardly to the ground.