Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

I frowned.

“Oh, he won’t be able to say anything normal for the rest of the day,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Sing, my boy, would you help me with…” He nodded downward, toward his leg – which, I now noticed, was still impaled by the torturing knife.

“Grandpa!” I said with concern as Sing reached down gingerly and pulled the knife free.

There was no blood.

“Don’t worry, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I’ll arrive late to that wound.”

I frowned. “How long can you keep that up?”

“It depends,” Grandpa Smedry said, accepting his tuxedo shirt from Sing. He put it on, then began doing up the front. “Arriving late to wounds requires a bit of effort – holding this one back, along with all the pains Blackburn gave me with his Torture’s Lenses, is already fatiguing. I can hold on for a little while longer, but I’ll have to start letting the pain through eventually.”

Indeed, Grandpa Smedry looked far less spry now that he had earlier in the day. The torture might not have broken him, but it had certainly produced an effect.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I can arrive at the pain in small, manageable amounts, once we’re free. Bastille, dear, any luck?”

I turned. Bastille had apparently done a quick search of the room’s tables and cabinets. She looked up from the last one and shook her head. “If he took you Lenses, he didn’t stash them in here, old man.”

“Ah, well,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Good work anyway, dear.”

“I only searched the room,” she said, slamming the door, “because I was so furious at you for getting yourself captured. I figured that if I walked over to help you, I’d end up punching you instead. That didn’t seem fair in your weakened state.”

Grandpa Smedry raised a hand, whispering to me, “This would probably be a bad time to remind her that she got captured too, eh?”

“My capture was a different Smedry’s fault,” Bastille snapped, flushing. “And that doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here before that Dark Oculator comes back.”

“Agreed,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Follow me – I know the way to a stairwell up.”

“Up?” Bastille asked incredulously.

“Of course,” Grandpa Smedry said. “We came for the Sands of Rashid – and we’re not leaving until we have them!”

“But they know we’re here,” Bastille said. “The entire library is on alert!”

“Yes,” Grandpa Smedry said. “But we know where the sands are.”

“We do?” I asked.

Grandpa Smedry nodded. “You don’t think Quentin and I got ourselves captured for nothing, do you? We got close to the sands, lad. Very close.”

“But?” Bastille asked, folding her arms.

Grandpa Smedry blushed slightly. “Snarer’s Glass. Blackburn has that room so well trapped that it’s a wonder he doesn’t catch himself every time he walks into it.”

“And how are we going to get past the traps now, then?” Bastille asked.

“Oh, we won’t have to,” Grandpa Smedry said. “Quentin and I couldn’t think of a way to get by the traps, so we just fell into them! The room should be completely free now. Each square of Snarer’s Glass can only go off once, you know!”

Bastille huffed at him. “You could have gotten yourself killed, old man!”

“Yes, well,” he said. “I didn’t! Now, let’s get moving! We’re going to be late.”

With that, he rushed out of the room. Bastille gave me a flat look. “Next time, let’s just leave him.”

I smiled wryly, moving to follow her out of the room. However, something caught my attention. I stopped beside it.

“Sing?” I asked as the large man walked past.

“Yes?”

I pointed at a lantern holder on the wall. “What does this lantern holder look like to you?”

Sing paused, scratching his chin. “A coconut?”

Coconut, I thought. “Do you remember what Quentin said downstairs, just after we entered the library?”

Sing shook his head. “What was it?”

“I can’t quite remember,” I said. “But it sounded like gibberish.”

“Ah,” Sing said. “Quentin speaks in gibberish sometimes. It’s a side effect of his Talent – like me tripping when I get startled.”

Or me breaking things I don’t want to, I thought. But this seemed different. Coconuts… pain don’t hurt. That’s what it was.

I glanced back at the broken table. The pain of torture hadn’t hurt Grandpa Smedry.

“Come on Alcatraz,” Sing said urgently, pulling on my arm. “We have to keep moving.”

I allowed myself to be led from the room, but not before I took one last look at the wall bracket.

I had the feeling I was missing something important.

Chapter 18

The book is almost done.

The ending of a book is, in my experience, both the best and the worst part to read. For the ending will often decide whether you love or hate the book.

Both emotions lead to disappointment. If the ending was good, and the book was worth your time, then you are left annoyed and depressed because there is no more book to read. However, if the ending was bad, then it’s too late to stop reading. You’re left annoyed and depressed because you wasted so much time on a book with a bad ending.

Therefore, reading is obviously worthless, and you should go spend your time on other, more valuable pursuits. I hear algebra is good for you. Kind of like humility, plus factoring. Regardless, you will soon know whether to hate me for not writing more, or whether to hate me for writing too much. Please confine all assassination attempts to the school week, as I would rather not die on a Saturday.

No need to spoil a good weekend.

“This is it,” Grandpa Smedry said, leading us through another hallway. “That door at the end.”

The third floor was a little more lavish than the second floor: Instead of stark, unpleasant stones and blank walls, the third floor was lined with stark, unpleasant rugs and blank tapestries. The door had a large glass disc set into its front, and at first I thought the disc had a lightbulb in the middle. It certainly glowed sharply enough. Then I remembered my Oculator’s Lenses and realized that the disc was glowing only to my eyes.

There had to be Lenses beyond that door – powerful ones.

Bastille caught Grandpa Smedry on the shoulder as he reached the door, then shook her head sharply. She pulled him back, moved up to the door, and tried to get a good look through the glass disc. Then she raised her crystal dagger to the ready and pushed open the door.

Light burst from the room, as if that door were the gate to heaven itself. I cried out, closing my eyes.

“Focus on your Lenses, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said. “You can dim the effect if you concentrate.”

I did so, squinting. I managed, with some effort, to make the light dim down until it was a low glow. No longer blinded, I was awed by what I saw.

What I felt at this point is a little bit hard to describe. To Bastille and my cousins, the room would have been simply a medium-sized, circular chamber with little shelves built into the walls. The shelves held Lenses – hundreds of them – and each one had its own little stand, holding it up to sparkle in the light. It must have been a pretty sight, but nothing spectacular.

To me, the room looked different.

Perhaps you’ve owned something in your life to which you ascribed particular pleasure. A treasured toy, perhaps. Some photographs. The bullet that killed your archnemesis.

Now, imagine that you’d never before realized how important that item was to you. Imagine that your understanding of it – your feelings of love, pride, and satisfaction – suddenly hit you all at once.

That was how I felt. There was something right about all of those Lenses. I’d never been in the room before, but to me, it felt like home. And to a boy who had lived with dozens of different foster families, home was not a word to be used lightly.

Sing, Grandpa Smedry, Bastille, and Quentin moved into the room. I walked up to the doorway, where I stood for a few moments, basking in the beauty of the Lenses. There was a majesty to the room. A warmth.

This is what I was meant to be, I thought. This is what I was always meant to be.

“Hurry, lad!” Grandpa Smedry said. “You have to find the sands. I don’t have my Oculator’s Lenses! I’ll try to find a pair in here, but you need to start looking while I do!”

I shocked myself into motion. We were still being chased. This wasn’t my home – this was the stronghold of my enemies. I shook my head, forcing myself to be more realistic. Yet I would always retain a memory of that moment – the first moment when I knew for certain that I wanted to be an Oculator. And I would treasure it.

“Grandfather, everything in here is glowing,” I protested. “How can I find the sands in all of this?”

“They’re here,” Grandpa Smedry said, furiously looking through the room. “I swear they are!”

“Golf the spasm of penguins!” Quentin said, pointing to a table at the back of the circular room.

“He’s right!” Grandpa Smedry said. “That’s where the sands were before. Aspiring Asimovs! Where did they go?”

“Typically,” a new voice said, “one uses sands to make Lenses.”

I spun. Blackburn stood in the hallway behind us. For some reason, the man’s aura of darkness was far less visible that it had been before.

My Oculator’s Lenses, I realized. I turned them down.

Blackburn smiled. He was accompanied by a large group of Librarians – not the skinny, robe-wearing kind but the bulky, overmuscled kind in the bow ties and sunglasses, as well as a couple of sword-wielding women wearing skirts, their hair in buns.

Blackburn had something in his hand. A pair of spectacles. Even with my Oculator’s Lenses turned down, these spectacles glowed powerfully with a brilliant white light.

“Back away, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said quietly.

I did so, slowly backing into the room. There are no other exits, I thought. We’re trapped!

Bastille growled quietly, raising her crystal dagger, stepping between Grandpa Smedry and the smiling Blackburn. Librarian thugs fanned into the room, moving to surround us. Sing watched warily, cocking a pair of handguns.

“Nice collection you have here, Blackburn,” Grandpa Smedry said, walking around the perimeter of the room.

“Frostbringer’s Lenses, Courier’s Lenses, Harrier’s Lenses… Yes, impressive indeed.” I noticed that my grandfather’s hand was glowing slightly.

“I have a weakness for power, I’m afraid,” Blackburn said.

Grandpa Smedry nodded, as if to himself. “Those Lenses in your hand. They come from the Sands of Rashid?”

Blackburn smiled.

“Why a pair? Why not just a monocle?” Grandpa Smedry asked.

“In case I choose to share these Lenses with others. Not everyone has realized the value of focusing power, as I have.”