Chapter One: The Quake
Sardis and the Battle for the Library
Welcome to the serial, Sardis and the Battle for the Library, a speculative fiction tale. Click here for the Table of Contents. New chapters will post on Saturdays at 10 am Eastern.
Sardis stood on the front porch of a little house, and he didn’t know whose it was.
Before him, a grassy lawn sloped down to a river and another stone house. To his left, behind a fence, six-legged, shaggy brown herbivores grazed on blue-tinged grass, bells at their necks gently chiming as they moved. They lowed quietly. Some had large horns that arched gracefully from their heads, the points forward.
Sardis watched a smaller version, a baby, nose under the hair of its mother until it found an udder. He tried to think of the name of the species, but nothing came to his mind.
He looked away, scrutinizing the other house. It was built of gray stone, with a tiled roof half-covered in grey-green moss. A thin stream of smoke rose from the chimney. The sun, as it edged to the horizon, scattered reddish beams over the whole world, setting the clouds on fire.
The back door of the far house opened. A lithe woman stepped out, the soft breeze catching at her dark hair. Sardis strained but could not make out the features of her face.
She waved at him and shouted a word. A name? Sardis could almost make it out. It was a sound that belonged to him--but didn’t. She repeated it. He stepped forward, off the porch onto the soft grass, and raised one hand to his ear. When the woman cried out a third time, the breeze turned to wind and plucked the sound from the air.
The ground shuddered, little shivers that grew to quaking jolts. A high-pitched trill pierced his ears and cut through the wind.
Sardis jerked awake. He shoved back the curtain around his little wardrobe bed and spilled out of it, hitting the floor with his shoulder. Pain snapped through him, from his shoulder and down to his fingertips. Groaning, he stood, clutching his arm. A blue-and-red feathered lizard circled above Sardis, screaming.
“Niall,” he cried. “Come!”
Niall closed his wings and dropped, landing on Sardis’s uninjured shoulder. The shivering aerial wrapped his tail around Sardis’s neck and clung close.
The shaking continued, the boards under his feet shivering. Pictures on the walls fell with a crash. A stack of books tumbled to the floor. Sardis stumbled to the bedroom door and opened it.
Chaos greeted him. The parlor where he read and studied was being shaken into a mess of fallen books, toppled knick-knacks, and scattered papers. A ceramic vase shattered against the floor. Sardis braced himself in the doorway. From various places in the parlor came the shrill cries and wails of the library critters that had called the place home since before he arrived centuries ago.
The floor in the parlor rose in a mound, creaking and groaning as the boards fought not to split. Sardis could feel, low in his gut, that an entity pushed against the boundaries of the Library. It was trying to come through.
The Library was not exactly a place but a nexus of worlds, where all the dimensions and alternate realities crossed. Everything around them was, in so many ways, an illusion. A way for his mind and the minds of the resident creatures to grasp the space, to be able to function in this Nexus of all nexuses. This Nexus was a Library, because all the stories in the various universes came to live here, like a cosmic filing system.
A boundary of energy protected the Library and that was what this entity was trying to breach.
Sardis stumbled into the cluttered parlor. A sudden shake sent him into a table, the arm on his injured side slamming against wood and sending a bolt a pain through him. Niall squeaked, digging in his claws to tighten his hold. Sardis groaned but continued onward.
He fell against his desk and yanked open a bottom drawer. Light spilled, blinding him for a moment. He delved his hand into the brightness, fumbling with cords of energy. Where Sardis now reached was the closest to the beating heart of the place.
The cords came alive, wrapping around his fingers, palm, wrist, and forearm. Power surged through him. His muscles tightened, almost locking. In his mind’s eye, illusion dropped away and reality unfolded: an awesome array of light and knowledge locked in a timeless bubble.
A dark shape pressed into the light from outside, seeking a way to breach the defenses. Sardis studied it. The shape was amorphous, swirling like a storm cloud. He could make no details other than its sharp edges and utter blackness. It pressed hard against the light. The Library around him shook harder.
Sardis, with his mind, rearranged the cords that created the boundary, like a weaver at a loom. He filled in the torn places and bolstered the weakened spots. The wall between them and the intruder strengthened to steel.
The quake eased, slowed, stopped. The darkness vanished. The cords released Sardis.
Sweating, he withdrew his hand and closed the drawer. He leaned against the desk, trying to catch his breath.
“Niall,” he whispered, “go fetch Drusilla.”
Niall squawked and launched off his shoulder into the air. The cottage opened its door to let the little aerial out into the dew-wet morn. Sardis collapsed into the chair with a groan.
Another door in the library popped open. His new assistant, Malo, stumbled out. He was pulling his tunic over his head.
“Wh’ ‘appen?” he said through the fabric.
“What?” asked Sardis.
He finished pulling on the short tunic. His black hair was in more disarray than usual. “What happened? What was that?”
“A library quake.” Sardis’s gaze dropped to the circle of cracks decorating the floor. “A very large one.” The last library quake was some months ago, but it had been so much smaller than this.
Quakes sometimes happened if the Library had grown, or for just no other reason than a random rush of energy. This, though, was different. Sardis couldn’t recall the last time a quake occurred because of an attack.
“Are you all right?” Malo asked. “You look pale.”
“I injured my shoulder. Niall has gone to fetch Drusilla. She has training as a healer.”
“Oh.” Malo stuck his hands in his pockets, surveying the damage. “This is certainly one way to start the morning.” Despite his nonchalance, his voice wavered.
Sardis’s shoulder was dislocated. Drusilla moved him to a chair by the fireplace. She carefully manipulated it back into the socket, biting her lower lip at Sardis’s yelp.
“You’ll have to rest it,” she said as she tied the arm against Sardis with a long strip of bandage in a makeshift sling. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” he said. Sweat beaded his pale forehead.
“Shall I help Malo check on the library critters?” While Drusilla was the leader of the nymphs in the woods surrounding them, she could spare the time to help set things to rights.
He shook his head, looking out over the mess of the parlor. Drusilla frowned. Sardis had been her friend ever since she first arrived, however long ago. She’d long lost track.
At any rate, she wasn’t used to seeing him so distracted and troubled. Her sweet Librarian had always been a little odd, as if he constantly saw and heard more than all of them. However, there was more to the way his gaze roved over the destruction.
He wasn’t the only difference. The library critters, which were part of the strange ecosystem of the Library, were silent. Her sensitive ears allowed her to hear the chuckling, purring, and chirping that formed the auditory backdrop of the Library. It was so strange for there to be silence.
At that moment, Malo knelt with his head under the desk, crooning soft words to one of the critters, Sasella. As far as Drusilla could tell, he wasn’t getting much of a response.
“How about I make some hot cocoa?” she offered, raising her eyebrows.
Sardis nodded, not looking at her. His gaze was focused now on an area of the floor. Cracks formed a wide circle.
“Sardis.” Drusilla pulled a chair over. “What happened?”
At her question, Malo pulled his head out from under the desk and sat back on his heels, looking at them with full attention.
Sardis did not respond. She lightly grasped his chin, turning his face to look at her. “Sardis. What happened?”
With his good hand, he took the hand on his jaw and held it. “I was dreaming of a place familiar to me. I saw someone who called a name that was mine but also wasn’t. The quaking and Niall screaming woke me. I-I managed to stop whatever was trying to push through.”
“Do you know what it was?”
He lifted his uninjured shoulder in a shrug. “There are many things that would like to consume the energy of this place.”
“You said you had a dream. So you think was tied to what happened?”
“I...” He frowned. “Perhaps?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“My predecessor often said that the Librarian and the Library were intimately tied.” He glanced over at Malo. “Something you may experience for yourself one day, assistant.”
Malo asked, “But what does that even mean? Tied how?”
“He never explained, but I’ve always taken it to mean that I would have access to the Library’s knowledge and have a certain level of control over it. At the same time, the Library can communicate with me, alerting me to danger or granting me information. It’s the Library’s magic that allows me to write those stories that don’t simply appear.”
He looked down at his hand holding Drusilla’s. “I rather wonder if he also meant more than that. It feels like the dream and this morning’s intrusion were tied, but I don’t know how.”
Uneasiness and fear curled in Drusilla’s stomach. “Do you think we could ask the former Librarian for help?”
Sardis snorted. “Drusilla, outside of this place, almost ten thousand years have passed since I took over his position. He has surely died.”
Drusilla started to ask how so much time could pass and Sardis still be unsure about any aspect of the Library. She bit her tongue.
But, as if he knew what she was thinking, he continued: “I have come to an instinctual understanding of my connection with the Library. That when I have a great need for an item--or person--” He nodded to Malo. “--it will appear. But there is much I do not understand. For example, why some stories need writing and why some simply appear.” He frowned. “It was simply easy to meld into the running of things without pondering too much on the how, as there has never been a large issue.”
The phrase “until now” hung in the air.
Drusilla asked, “You’re wondering if your connection goes deeper than simple knowledge or need?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps your predecessor left a journal or manual behind.”
“I’m sure I will learn what is happening.” He released her hand and stood. “We must tend to the Library.”
Over the next two hours, Drusilla helped Malo with each of the Library critters. Ladrew the bark-man had a split across his hand, which Drusilla covered in a salve and bandaged. Poor Sasella under the desk was curled in a tight ball and refused to be soothed. They left her a pile of pencil shavings in case she got hungry.
The little dust fairies in the rafters were distraught at how the shaking had destroyed their little village. Malo found a bag of dust to help them rebuild.
Sardis, with Niall’s help, straightened the mess of books and papers. Eventually, Malo and Drusilla joined him, all three of them working until the parlor returned to its usual intentional chaos. Sardis, his long nightshirt now dirty from dust, collapsed into the chair by the fire. Niall curled up in his lap. Malo flopped into a chair as well. Drusilla went into the kitchen for cocoa and breakfast.
The scent of bacon, eggs, and hot cocoa drew Sardis out of his doze. Opening his eyes, he sat up in his chair, much to the displeasure of Niall in his lap. The aerial, chirping complaints, dropped down and curled around his feet. Smiling slightly, Sardis took the tray of food from Drusilla.
She handed a tray to an equally bleary-eyed Malo before taking her own seat with her tray.
“You both looked too comfortable to move,” she said, smiling at him. “Blessing?”
Together, they prayed the blessing before meals and then dug in. As they ate, Sardis filled Drusilla in on a couple of stories that had come through recently. One, involving an ape-like creature and the fools who tried to commune with it, left Drusilla laughing hard enough for tears to come to her eyes.
Sardis watched Drusilla, his heart making strange tumbles in his chest.
With her thumb, Drusilla wiped the tears away. “Oh, my. How funny.”
“Do you have any stories about your home world?” Malo asked around a bite of food. He chewed and swallowed.
“Oh. I--” Sardis froze. The place where there should have dwelt stories and memories was empty and blank, like a desolate, dry well. He dropped his cutlery onto his plate.
The humor drained from Drusilla’s face. “Sardis?”
Malo, cheeks bulging, looking up from his food.
“I...” He raised his eyes to look at her. “I can’t remember.”
With a heave, another quake struck the Library.
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How convenient that another quake happened when he fails to remember something...I can't wait to read the next chapter!
He can’t remember? That’s not good…