They wandered for a while until they had put some distance between them and Ari. Then they located the nearest Index.

  “Alright,” Gianna said, picking up the red feathered quill. She licked the nib and then dipped it into the inkwell, swirling it around heartily. “What was that serial number? 8.14 — something?”

  “8.15.73,” Nico said, reciting from memory.

  Gianna transcribed the number onto the parchment, and the Index yielded a swift reply:

  You cannot go from here to there.

  “Well, why not?” Leo said. When the Index offered forth no reply, Leo stepped forward and said louder, “Why can’t we!?”

  “Are you bickering with a roll of parchment, Lee?” Gianna said, giggling. “First statues, now paper. I swear, each day you sink to new lows.”

  “I strive for ever greater progress. But no, you are mistaken, this is no ordinary parchment. It’s magical.” He snatched the quill from her and, with his usual grotesque calligraphy, wrote Why can’t we go there?

  To their collective amazement, the Index dutifully replied.

  All possible passages traverse a condemned region of the Library. By decree of Archscriv Elodin, this location is thereby condemned as well. You may not access it.

  Leo replied, Show me a map of the entire library.

  His words faded, sinking into the parchment, and they were replaced by a comprehensive map of the Library. Each region or Collection was color coded and marked with a bold border. It was immediately apparent why Collection 8 was inaccessible: the only way to reach it was by crossing Collection 5, Fiction. The whole region was shaded scarlet, designating it condemned. Many of the Metzengheist were labeled with ominous names.

  Gianna whistled. “The Ghouls of Parnassus, the Darkling Forest, Xyl’s Labyrinth. Oh, we are exquisitely fucked.”

  “Why?” Leo asked. “What the hell are those?”

  “Fictional locales,” said Nico. “The Metzengheist are taking the form of fictional characters and fantasy realms.”

  “And not fun, cute fairy tales,” said Gianna. “Ominous, gory, grisly Vedic folk tales. The sort parents tell to make their children wet their beds at night. The Darkling Forest is home to the matriarch Blightwidow, the queen of queens.”

  Blightwidows were a race of vampiric spiders said to feast solely on human flesh, killing their prey slowly — sometimes over the course of months.

  “What sort of parents try to make their own children wet their beds?” Leo asked.

  “Dunno,” Gianna said. “What sort of parents abandon their own children?”

  “Touché,” Leo said. All three of them were orphans and had not the slightest clue who their parents were or where they had gone, though Leo had a distant memory of a beautiful woman with scarlet hair cradling him in her pale arms…

  “Our best bet will be the Bejeweled Bridge from the Tale of Niesus,” Nico said. He traced a route on the map with his finger from their present location to Collection 8. The Bejeweled Bridge was marked with a gemstone icon. “A bit longer than some other routes, but I daresay a safer passage.”

  “Agreed,” Gianna said. “Anything but Xyl’s Labyrinth. I’m not facing that damned minotaur.”

  “A minotaur, you say?” Leo said, lips curling to a smile.

  “Come on,” Nico said. He collected the map, rolling it up into a tight scroll. “This way.”

  ***

  They traversed the Collection 2, the Library's assorted works on fauna and animal biology. Then they came to the edge of Collection 5, Fiction. A condemned region of the Library.

  At first it seemed entirely ordinary, rows and rows of dusty shelves. Then they turned a corner, and the Library gradually blended with a thickly-wooded boreal forest. Bookshelves were neighbored by tall pines and spruces. Some of those trees had faces, black sap trickling from their mouths like spittle. Golden-winged sprites nested in the boughs.

  A blue sun materialized overhead, dim at first and then growing in brightness, and eventually all remaining vestiges of the Library had disappeared. They were firmly in the Merigold Forest from the Tale of Niesus.

  “Tell me more about this fairy tale, the Tale of Niesus,” said Leo, as they stepped carefully through the undergrowth, bushes rustling against their bare legs. “What’s it about? What happens in it?”

  “It’s a Vedic romance,” Nico said. “A boy named Niesus falls in love with a princess in his village. She promises to give him her hand in marriage if he travels to the end of the earth to steal a rainbow. Everyone, including the girl, believes it's a fool's errand at best, a suicide mission at worst.”

  “And does he prevail in his quest?”

  “He does. At great cost and supreme personal sacrifice he acquires the rainbow, but upon his return to his hometown a pack of wild crows pluck his eyes out, disfiguring him. The girl shuns him.”

  “Ah, murdered. A terrible way to go.”

  Nico was about to correct him — the boy survived his encounter with the crows, albeit maimed and blinded — when he realized it was just Leo’s usual wordplay.

  “Your lousy puns will be the death of me someday,” Gianna said. “Nytios says puns are the laziest form of wit.”

  “Well, I say quoting dead Sages is the laziest form of intellect.”

  “Touché.”

  They came to a clearing in the forest and discovered the Bejeweled Bridge: a stone arch elegantly spanning the rushing Merry River, its handrail ornamented with rubies and sapphires, and topaz and garnet, malachite and onyx.

  Leo was in awe. With his dagger he tried prying one of the gemstones loose.

  “See,” he said, “this is the part of the tale which strains credulity. No way a Bejeweled Bridge would survive contact with a brigand like me.”

  “You know the gemstones aren’t real, right? They’re Metzengheist. They’ll cease to exist the moment we step out of the Library.”

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  Leo pulled back his sword. “Really? Pity. Say… what’s that?” With his sword he pointed downriver to the east, where a castle with nine onion domed spires was but a hazy suggestion.

  “The Obsidian Castle,” Nico said. “Where Niesus rested for a fortnight, pretending to be a scullery maid.” In the tale, the Obsidian Castle was the site of a fateful meeting between the protagonist and a dark sorcerer. The sorcerer sold Niesus a map to a sacred cave in exchange for a sliver of the protagonist’s soul, a diabolical exchange which portended Niesus’ eventual doom.

  “Reckon they have an armory? Could use some castle forged steel.”

  “Doubt it,” Nico said, as they resumed strolling across the bridge and entered the other side of the Merigold Forest. “You might enjoy the tale, Leo. One of the antagonists is an expert swordsman. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to his grand feats, all the monsters he’s slain… I forget his name…”

  “Cobbler,” came a cold voice behind them.

  They turned and there he was, right there in the flesh: the swordsman Nico had been describing. He was six and a half feet tall, broad of shoulder, his arms corded with thick muscle. He held an enormous claymore sword lightly in one hand, inspecting it casually.

  “Name’s Cobbler. My old Pa mended shoes. I made a fair go of it… then found killing’s better money.”

  “Better fun, too!” Leo said. “There is no problem that cannot be solved with an adequate amount of violence. I call it Sforza’s Theory of Problem Resolution.”

  Leo seemed to mistake Cobbler for a friend. He had stepped a few feet closer; Nico was trying to subtly pull him back.

  “Sforza?” Cobbler said.

  “Me,” Leo said, bowing. “Leonardo Sforza, a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cobbler.”

  “Only a cunt names a theory after himself.”

  Leo’s smile slid from his face. He drew his blade, which he was immensely disappointed to remember was not his falchion nor his longsword.

  “What is that you draw upon me?” Cobbler said. “A kitchen knife? Or a rusted spoon?”

  “A dull blade, I’ll grant you. You should see my other one,” Leo said, stepping closer, grip tightening on the hilt of his blade. “A mystical longsword I call Whisper.” As soon as he spoke the words he regretted them.

  “Only a cunt names a blade.”

  Leo took another step forward.

  “Don’t do it, Leo,” Nico said. “You’re the greatest swordsman I have ever known, but Cobbler is a myth. His prowess exceeds your own.”

  “Does it?” The corner of Leo’s mouth curled into a smirk. He was taking this for a challenge.

  Gianna tugged at his arm. “Your blade,” she said, “you can’t defeat him with that piece of shit knife.”

  “Can’t I?” He shrugged them off, just as Cobbler was bringing his own blade in position. The claymore was nearly a foot wide at the base, yet Cobbler brandished it like a fencing saber. Its surface had no sheen, the polish buried under years of blood and entrails that Cobbler had never bothered to clean.

  Leo was undaunted. He moved like lightning, his blade arcing out. Amazingly he’d caught Cobbler off-guard, taking a small slice from his left shoulder.

  “Observe, Gianna,” Leo said. “The element of surprise is paramount. The man who strikes first oft strikes last.”

  “‘tis a scratch,” Cobbler said. In fact, blood drenched the sleeve of his roughspun tunic, though it did not seem to bother him. “I just hope you didn’t give me tetanus. And it wasn’t the last strike. I’m rather—”

  As he spoke Leo struck again, this time a side-swipe that Cobbler was more prepared for. His claymore was so massive, the steel so thick that as parried the blade Leo was fortunate it didn’t shatter his own. Novice swordsmen were always surprised to see blades shatter, but it was fairly common occurrence.

  Meanwhile, Gianna was raring to join the fight. She had drawn Poinsettia. Nico grabbed her by the arms, physically restraining her from joining the fray. She strained against his grip.

  “You can’t help him,” Nico said, “not like that. But there is something else we can do.”

  “What?” she said, straining against Nico’s grip.

  “Gimmicks.”

  “Huh?”

  Leo had disengaged himself from the battle. With his free hand he pointed at Nico.

  “Don’t you dare, Nico!”

  “Dare what?”

  “You’re plotting. Plotting to help me.” He ducked a blow that should have taken his head off his shoulders. “Let me handle this on my own.”

  Nico turned back to Gianna, shaking his head.

  “Gimmicks — tricks. Remember that spell scroll you cast?”

  “Hoodwink. What about it? I don’t have the scroll on me.”

  “I’ve been practicing the cantrip.” In fact, Nico had been the one who had purchased the scroll Gianna had used. Casting spell scrolls was a way to practice magic, to help get a feel for a new cantrip. “A few copies of myself should disorient and confuse Cobbler.”

  He winked at Gianna. Some of the fear drained from Gianna’s face.

  Facing Cobbler, Nico closed his eyes. Illusions must always be fertilized in the soil of imagination, and Nico had a vivid imagination. He envisioned several of his colleagues, fellow adventurers of the Pathfinders guild. Lucius, Darius, even Tomasso. Like forging a painting, he forged their body and their face in his mind’s eye, delicately but expeditiously constructing their form. And when he opened his eyes. They had appeared before him. Each was armed with a blade, even Tomasso. Nico had altered Tomasso’s characteristics somewhat, blessing him with a valor the real Tomasso lacked.

  “No!” Leo roared. He was dividing his attention between them and Cobbler’s punishing blows. “Don’t you dare help me!”

  Leo went into berserk frenzy, mustering a flurry of furious blows. Each one was dodged or parried, but Leo had intended that, Nico knew. It was like playing an intricate game of Citadels. He was maneuvering Cobbler, dancing with him, until — at last — a window of opportunity emerged. An infinitesimally small window, but one Leo had fully anticipated, one that he had painstakingly created.

  For a brief moment, Cobbler’s neck was exposed. Leo plunged his sword into him, sinking the blade halfway into his throat. Leo used his leg to kick Cobbler’s chest so that he could free the blade. Cobbler fell backward, gurgling, hand reaching ineffectually for his gushing carotid, trying to keep the blood inside. But the light faded from his eyes and his arms relaxed; he was dead. Nico dismissed the Hoodwink copies of himself with a wave, and they dissipated into mist.

  Leo laughed, smiling down at Cobbler’s corpse.

  “Add that to my list of feats, Gianna. I’ve just slain a mythical swordsman. Mythical! What does that make me? You know, I rather enjoy this Library. We ought to come back sometime.”

  ***

  A half hour later, they had completed their trek across the Merigold Forest and arrived back in the Library proper. A vast marble rotunda soared above them.

  They were in Collection 8, Buildings & Architecture. With the help of a nearby Index, they were able to trace the location of the item they sought — 8.15.73. It was a book with the title Landmarks of Edmeer.

  Leo started to reach for it, but Nico stopped him. A chill ran up Nico's spine. “Look.”

  Leo bent to examine the large blue leatherbound tome. The books around it were each coated in a thick film of grey dust, but on this book the dust was disturbed by fingerprints. “Someone’s been here recently,” Leo said. “The plot thickens. Pun intended.”

  “What pun?”

  “Well, it’s a book. You know, plot… book…”

  Gianna shook her head and pulled on the dusty tome. There was a sound of gears clicking, and then the entire bookshelf swung open slightly ajar, emitting a breath of dry, stale air.

  The three adventurers exchanged intrigued looks. They stepped in cautiously, finding a narrow chamber, dim and dank. The walls were blocks of stone with inscrutable inscriptions on them. Gianna invoked a Shine cantrip, revealing the writing on the wall.

  It was another strange code:

  A1F7N-LQ2MR-XT9KP-VWB34-YZ8CJ

  T8YZR-KP1WB-M3LXC-Q7V4N-A9F2J

  F2KPQ-W9YZC-VB7XL-M4TNR-A1J38

  LQ9V7-M3XZB-YW8F2-T1KPR-A4NJC

  YXF1L-QM9ZR-WB8KP-T2V37-N4CJ2

  KP7M3-WB9F4-X2YZL-TN1QC-V8RJA

  And below that was the symbol of the Choir of Shadows.