The Infinite Library

a Sword & Sorcery short story

This story is related to my story Scourge of Gods:

Trinity College library

Vinshya walked towards the Eternal Pillar through the desiccated burnt down town. The road became a black glistening spine polished smooth by centuries of feet. It took her two steps to get from one vertebrate to the next. On either side, the ribs stretched from the spine into the sky and curled above her. They caught the sunlight and shined black. She stared between them to the miles of bones. Broken and polished black from centuries. The burnt homes once occupied by the living were built out of the giant bones. The buildings spiraling round the spines, the femurs, the skulls.

Vinshya stared up into the blue sky bisected by the Eternal Pillar and inhaled the gentle wind, drenched in death’s stench. Her chest spasmed and she vomited a black viscous substance. It fell slow and thick from her mouth and she retched and spit to get it out. Tacky and vile on her teeth and tongue. Panic was fire through her nerves. Her skin coated in sweat and her heart hammered in her ears. She covered her mouth and the black substance oozed out of her nose. She blinked through tears and ran towards the Eternal Pillar stretching miles into the air, its surface glass reflecting and revealing nothing. A glass so opaque it disappeared into the burnt landscape.

She ran, her steps clumsy, over the spine leading to a door of glass. Her vision blurred as she hammered on its surface, the blackness leaking from her mouth and nose. Choking on the viscosity, the world beyond her body deafened. Vision funneling, she took out the screaming black sword and shoved it through the glass door. Stuck, she shoutvomited out a torrent of blackness that clung to her chin and arms. Sawing at the door, yanking the sword back and forth, she pulled it free and the glass door shattered. Tears of blackness ran down her face and the substance leaking from her ears matted her hair and stuck her cloak to her skin.

Falling through the threshold of the glass door, she vomited a puddle of the black viscous substance and took her first clean and clear breath since inhaling the deadly wind. Gasping, she rolled onto her back and wiped the blackness from her face. Vinshya’s cloak now weighed down by the black vomit, she sheathed her black sword and used the wooden scabbard to push to her feet. Breathing slow and steady, she closed her eyes and counted her breaths. Coughs broke her count repeatedly and she spit out the last of the black substance still clinging to her teeth and tongue.

Standing at the foot of a yrwood stairway, she stared through the glass door she just shattered, now solid again. Her vision unimpeded by the glass of the Eternal Pillar. She saw the surrounding landscape, the burnt down town, the bones of the giants, the bonetrees blowing in winds deathly.

The glass was cold on her palm and fingers, still covered in black viscous vomit. Seeing them so, she wiped them on her filthy cloak only to give up on its uselessness.

Walking up the stairs that twisted round the outside of the Eternal Pillar, she rose higher and saw farther into the distance. All the surfaces of the Eternal Pillar were round, even the yrwood steps which waved along their grain. The yrwood drank in the sound of her steps, leaving only an oppressive silence. The stillness of the air was like walking through a membrane enveloping her, grazing every hair on her body. Tense, her brow knit and she kept one hand on the hilt of her sword and the other on her scabbard. The sound of her breathing, her steps, and her heart were swallowed by the silence, the stillness.

For hours she climbed and the sun fell and the walls began to glow faintly. The constant angle of the steps spiraling the Eternal Pillar dizzied her and the silence and stillness and glow numbed her.

Her legs burned from the incline and her breathing became heavy, but in the distance came the faint sound of singing. A rolling song like a boat on a river in a storm. The singing became clearer and several voices bounced back and forth rhythmically, as if performing a play.

As she approached the voices, the wall opened up to her right for the first time. The voices spoke an unintelligible language with an iambic rhyming rhythm, full of multitonal vowels and soft syllables. The interior space was a cylindrical room lined with maps of no land Vinshya recognized. The room was bisected by tapestry depicting a battle between two giants and an ancient god. She crept over the undulating yrwood floor towards the voices behind the tapestry. The voices filled the room, growing louder with every step she took.

Vinshya unsheathed her sword and approached the tapestry. Her knees bent, her fingers loose, her breathing controlled. Tension gnawed at her shoulders and her thigh muscles burned from the long climb. She raised her sword high and yanked down the tapestry.

She jumped back and gripped her sword with both hands. “Who—what are you?”

Completely white as if carved from bone but with huge protruding jaundiced eyes, a creature towered over her. Its long angular legs stretched from a small torso with wide shoulders where three arms hung loose and long, its knuckles dragging across the floor. Spindly and spiderlike, it stepped towards her. Its movements jerky and sharp, it stretched forth an open hand.

Vinshya jumped back once more and the creature’s head cocked to the side at a ninety-degree angle where it rattled like a broken machine. Its mouth opened and its voice came as a choir, as if several spoke the same words at the same time but with slight variations on tone and timbre. “This is no place for fighting, monster.”

Vinshya scowled but did not sheath her black sword, “What are you?”

Its joints clicked as it rolled its shoulders and sat crosslegged before her, “Please, put the weapon away or remove yourself.”

Fear was a knife at the base of her spine. Her grip loosened on the black blade’s hilt and she moved into a fighting stance. Her voice came steady and sharp, “Answer me.”

The creature clicked as it rolled its shoulders. It sighed heavily and leapt the thirty feet between them in an instant, locking Vinshya’s wrists in one hand before she could parry, her waist in another, and her legs in the third. She struggled against its grip but it lifted her as if she were a feather and slammed her into the yrwood floor. Breath exploded from her lungs and her grip loosened on her sword. The creature lifted her again and slammed her back down once more. Vision darkened and her ears rang with the sound of her sword clattering against the polished yrwood.

It released her waist and legs and dragged her into the air by her wrists until their faces were close enough to kiss. Hanging, Vinshya gasped for breath against her still empty lungs spasming to remember how to breath. She stared into the lifeless eyes of the creatures. Those yellowbrown orbs in a face so white it was bright. Her own head heavy on her neck, she let it fall back and saw how her dark arms, still stained by the black vomit, disappeared into the white of the creature’s enormous hand.

Then the floor was beneath her feet and her lungs expanded. Settling her feet on the waved surface, her body was heavy and bruised. When the creature’s grip released her, she collapsed onto the floor. The three hands took her once more, this time gently, and set her back on her feet.

“I’m sorry, monster.” Its voices were delicate. “This place is not for weapons but for knowledge and life.”

Vinshya swallowed as her vision cleared, “Will you tell me who you are?”

“Yes.”

Vinshya stretched her back and arms. Her muscles screamed in her back and sharpened her breathing. “Who are you?”

“I am Keeper.”

“What are you?”

“The library.”

“What?”

Keeper cocked its head at a ninety-degree angle but its face was blank. A white wall without expression.

“Where is the library?” Vinshya said.

Keeper placed one palm flat on its chest and the other two on either of its cheeks, “Here.”

“Then what is this place?”

Keeper rolled its shoulders, clicking all the way, “This place has had many names over the history of this world and even more before. Those who seek its riches call it the Tower of the Gods.”

“What riches can be found here?” Vinshya’s mouth salivated but she tasted only the caustic bile of the black vomit.

Keeper rolled its shoulders again and let its arms hang loose down to the floor. It moved like a broken marionette as it walked towards the fallen tapestry and strung it up once more. “Most who arrive are disappointed to discover we have only history and knowledge here.” Keeper turned back to her, “Tell me, who are you, monster?”

“I’m not a monster.”

Keeper’s voices cut through the air, “You reek of death.”

Vinshya nodded, “There’s something outside. Some kind of purging disease. It was—”

“No. You reek of the dead. The gods you ate, monster.”

Vinshya eyed her black sword a dozen feet away and swallowed. Tension viced her neck and ran down her bruised spine, “How long have you been here?”

Keeper rolled its shoulders and sat crosslegged in front of the tapestry.

Time sludged and condensed under Keeper’s gaze. It crawled over her skin still covered in the remains of the black viscous fluid that leaked from her outside the Eternal Pillar.

“I’m Vinshya. Now answer me.”

“Who names you the scourge of gods?” Keeper’s voices cascaded heavily onto her.

“I’m weary, Keeper. I haven’t the strength to answer your questions when I have so many myself. Is this a trading game we play?”

“Sit.”

Vinshya closed her eyes for a moment and breathed unevenly. She sat crosslegged across from Keeper. Every movement ached.

“It’s been so long since your kind has entered here. Once you were multitudes filling the myriad levels of this place. So young and hungry for knowledge.” Keeper stared past Vinshya into the darkness of the night past the glowing glass. “I have watched so long. Now your kind eats its own gods.”

“Is that what happened here?”

“The gods died long ago, in the days when this place was already ancient. Your kind found the mountain of bones and made their homes. They prayed to the dead gods and called this a holy place. They worshipped them and me in turn. They sought my help and knowledge and I taught them. Then the disease came and all leaked to nothingness until a group of them burned it clean.”

Vinshya coughed repeatedly, each one agony against her bruised ribs, “I was told this was a cursed place housing the treasure of the ancients.”

“So few come since they burned their home in the bones of the gods. Only three have ventured back here in the years since. Only one made it inside this place.”

Vinshya swallowed, “And the others?”

Keeper’s gaze fell on her like a wave crashing against a sandy shore, “It almost took you too.”

“What is it?”

“In the final days of the people of the bones of gods, there were those who sought a type of knowledge that was not wisdom. They wanted to be other than what they were. They learned the old words and the old songs. They began to see the world as it truly is and not as your kind’s eyes make it seem.” Keeper waved a hand through the air, strumming at things Vinshya could not see. “All these twisting wires that never knot. They began hearing the vibrations of reality and there was one who played these wires in order to transform himself and his followers. It worked but not as they desired.”

“Magic,” the word slipped past Vinshya’s lips and she snorted out remnants of the black liquid. “Are you a god?”

Keeper folded its hands together, which fit in a complex geometry. “What is a god?”

“Anything ancient and still living.”

Keeper’s expression shifted but remained inscrutable. “What if what seems to live does not?”

Vinshya’s eyebrows knit together and she squeezed the bridge of her nose with her fingers, “I don’t understand.”

“The answers are irrelevant. Even the questions may be if you do not know your path.”

Vinshya sighed and her posture deflated. She leaned back on her hands and stared at the undulating yrwood ceiling. “I’m too tired for this, Keeper.”

“Why did you come?”

She shook her head, “I wanted to see the Eternal Pillar. They say it holds up the sky and reaches down to the heart of the world. That the bones of the world itself twine round it and grow into it. I even once heard that yrwood only exists here and can only grow like this in the Eternal Pillar. It’s not true, of course. My own scabbard is made of yrwood. There are so many stories of this place. I wanted to see them.”

“Godeater.”

Vinshya dropped her gaze to Keeper, “What?”

“I see it in you.”

Sweat sprang to the surface of her skin and her flesh goosepimpled, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Money.”

“No.”

“No?” Vinshya laughed, “No what?”

Keeper only stared back.

Vinshya’s skin crawled under its gaze, as if it bored into her. Dredging her bloodstream and the folds of her memories. She closed her eyes seeking darkness but the glow of the tower seeped through. Opening her eyes, she clenched her fists. “Don’t kill me.”

Keeper smiled. First it was only a thin line. A distortion on the blank whiteness of its face. But then it spread. It spread so wide it split its head nearly in half. The enormous mouth opened and it laughed with a dozen voices, some caustic while others chimed like bells in wind.

Vinshya trembled and her sweat caused her clothes and hair to cling to her skin. Her breathing came heavy and her eyes welled with tears. She bit back against the fear.

Keeper stopped laughing abruptly and whispered, “Nothing can die in this place.”

“Is that why you remain?”

Keeper cocked its head, then rolled its shoulders, clicking. “This place is my home and my responsibility. I am the guardian of the past. All time and knowledge are stored here.” It placed a palm on its chest and the other two on its cheeks once more. “Me without this is nothing at all. The world without me is an amnesiac waking endlessly to an unknown sun.”

“I’ve killed greater than you.” The words stumbled over her quivering bottom lip.

“You have eaten gods believing it gave you strength. You sought to be a god yourself but you remain only a monster—”

“Stop it.” Vinshya breathed heavily. “Please, shut up.”

“You may stay here and learn all there is to learn. All that is and has ever been. All that will be.” Keeper stretched its arms wide in jerky motions.

Vinshya pulled her quivering lower lip into her mouth and bit down. The viscous black vomit still present there.

Keeper pulled its arms in and folded them together, “But you will not. Scourge of gods, you will find all your life is death. Mayhem will hound you for all the days that lay before you.”

Vinshya jumped to her feet, “How many? How many more days or years do I have?”

Keeper cocked its head at a ninety-degree angle and it jangled there against its shoulder, “One day the gods will all be dead and there will be none who remembered that they ever existed. They will find their eternal bones and will recognize nothing. Nothing of the infinite will exist in their minds. The world will be a dead, cold place. Some day you monsters will not even be able to see this place. You will weep and never know why. You will grieve for the world you destroyed. For all the gods you killed and ate. You will die and all will know your name and the songs and the plays completing your story.

“A day will come when you monsters are believed gods by those who will one day consume you. They will hunt you as demons and monsters and gods. They will drink your blood and leave nothing of you but the bones which will return to dust and dirt.

“And I will remain. But I will not laugh. I will weep for you, insolent monsters that you are.”

Vinshya’s shoulders slumped, she walked to her sword and lifted it. When she took it in her hands, she turned to Keeper who stared back at her. “Who made you?”

“You did.”

Vinshya frowned at Keeper, then turned to her black blade, “It’s never been so quiet as it is right now.”

“Only here are its screams silenced.”

Vinshya sheathed the black sword, “If I leave, will that purging disease kill me?” She turned to Keeper who remained sitting, like an enormous white spider, its long limbs folded in on itself.

Keeper’s voice unfolded and coalesced as a single resonant voice and spoke in a language she did not know.

It flooded her and she gasped, dropping the black blade. Her spine straightened and she floated weightless. The music raining over her skin, sliding through her body, swallowing the fire of her muscles and the ache of her bones. And then it was over and she drifted back to the floor.

With tears in her eyes, she picked up her sword and sheathed it. “I was wrong to come here.” She turned to Keeper still sitting, its eyes following her every movement. “I’m leaving.”

Keeper made no motion or acknowledgement.

She walked down the yrwood stairs, her body warm and light. Her clothes still weighed down by the black vomit felt filthier after being healed. Dizzied by the power coursing through her veins, by the descent, by the glow, by the lack of edges, she stopped and sat on the stairs. She closed her eyes and curled up onto the step, clutching her silent black sword in her arms and legs.

Sleep fell upon her like a mountain as the sun rose far away.

In the distance, the many voices of Keeper sang in a language long dead.

Vinshya dreamt of her skin sloughing off as she stood on a mountain of dead gods, their bodies rotting beneath her feet.