“So what do we do?” Devona asked in the hushed, respectful voice people only use in churches and libraries.
“We start wandering around. Eventually Waldemar will show up.”
She looked skeptical, but she didn’t say anything. After all, the front door had opened as I said it would. We started walking.
As big as the Great Library looks when you first enter, you don’t really get a sense of how truly enormous it is until you start exploring. Room after room: some large, high-ceilinged, footsteps echoing against tile floors; some small, cramped, barely bigger than a closet, with hardly enough room to squeeze through the moldering books and papers jammed against the walls. There was no obvious source of light: no torches-naturally enough in a place filled with paper-no electric or fluorescent lights, and no magical equivalents to any of the above. Nevertheless, every corner of the Great Library was clearly illuminated, and we had no trouble making our way.
After a time, Devona asked, “Do you know where we are?”
“Of course,” I answered, even though I had no idea. It didn’t really matter, not here.
I don’t know how long we wended through the maze of books and papers, but eventually we came to a circular room with a high domed ceiling fifty feet about the floor. The walls were lined with bookcases which rose nearly all the way to the ceiling, leaning against them at irregular intervals stood a half dozen long, rick-ety-looking ladders to provide access to the upper reaches of the shelves. In a regular library, the ladders might have had wheels. Here, they had tiny clawed lizard feet. They might have been for purely decorative purposes, but I doubted it.
“We’re wasting time, Matthew,” Devona said, exasperated. “Waldemar obviously doesn’t wish to talk to us. Instead of wandering aimlessly through here, we should be trying to locate Varma.”
“I understand how you feel, but the more we can learn about the Dawnstone, the more-” I broke off, frowning. “Do you hear something?”
Devona’s brow furrowed as she listened. It was faint, but there was a definite skritch-skritch-skritch coming from an overburdened shelf of books against the far wall.
“What is it?” she asked.
Despite the fact that my nervous system was as dead as the rest of me, a chill rippled down the length of my spine. “So you do hear it. Damn! I was hoping it was just my imagination.”
The skritching became louder.
“Matthew, just tell me what the hell it is!”
Before I could answer, the bookshelf exploded, sending fragments of torn paper, parchment, and vellum flying toward us. Devona hissed in pain as the sharp edges of the paper-storm sliced through the flesh on her face and hands. I suffered similar injuries, of course, but I didn’t feel them. Even if I had, I wouldn’t have cared right then. I was too busy watching the thing that was responsible for the explosion step forward from the hole in the wall where the bookshelf had been. A seven foot tall insect with a silvery carapace stood upright on its four rear legs, sheafs of paper clutched in its upper two limbs. Antennae quivering nervously, the giant bug stepped forward into the room, jammed the paper it held into its mouthparts, and chewed noisily.
“Just what I was afraid of,” I said. “It’s a goddamned silverfish.”
Devona goggled at the monstrous insect. “ That’s a silverfish? It should be the size of the end of my little finger, if that!”
I shrugged. “This is the greatest library that’s ever existed, so it only makes sense that it would attract the largest pests in existence.”
The silverfish finished its snack and regarded us dispassionately with cold black eyes. The creature’s antennae continued to quiver, as if drinking in every bit of sensory data it could find, but otherwise, its body remained unnaturally still. But a certain tension radiated from the giant insect nevertheless, as if the thing might dash toward us in an instant if we made the wrong move.
Devona, as if sensing the silverfish’s mood, spoke in a hushed tone. “What does it want?”
“Mostly, just to be left alone to gorge itself on paper,” I said. “It’s trying to decide whether or not we’re a threat to it.”
“You mean it’s afraid we might be the exterminators?” she asked in disbelief.
“Something like that.”
“And if it should decide we mean it harm?”
“While the giant silverfish that dine at the Great Library might prefer a diet of paper products, they’ve been known to eat other things from time to time,” I said. “This is Nekropolis, after all.”
“When you say ‘other things’, I don’t suppose you mean popcorn and potato chips.”
“Afraid not.”
The silverfish shifted its weight from side to side then, as if working up the courage to attack.
“So what do we do?” Devona asked. “Slowly back away, keeping our gazes trained on it the whole time?”
“You’ve watched one too many nature documentaries,” I said. “That’s a sure way to get us both eaten. There’s only one way to deal with a monster silverfish.” I’d known we’d probably end up at the Great Library sooner or later, and so I’d come prepared. Slowly-very, very slowly-I reached into my jacket pocket and removed a small white plastic container.
The silverfish’s entire body began to quiver then. I unscrewed the container’s lid, careful not to make any sudden moves. Devona watched me, a puzzled frown on her face.
“Is that…glue?”
“Not just any glue,” I answered. “It’s really thick…and it has sparkles in it.”
The silverfish’s antennae blurred with anticipation, and it legs began tap-tap-tapping on the floor, like an excited little dog getting so worked up it was going to start peeing any minute.
I slowly held the container of sparkle-glue out before me. “Back on Earth, silverfish eat more than just paper. They also eat the glue in book bindings. And this is really good glue. Expensive, top-of-the-line stuff, imported from an art supply store near the Louvre.”
The silverfish’s body began to undulate rapidly, almost as if it were swimming underwater, the strange motion a major reason for its species’ name. The giant insect took a single hesitant step forward, then a second…
“Whatever you do,” I said to Devona, “don’t move.”
Before she could ask why, the silverfish darted forward. I spun around and hurled the open container of glue through the nearest doorway. The silverfish became an argent blur as it scuttled past-missing us by only a few inches-and raced out of the room in mad pursuit of the treat I had brought it. A moment later loud, enthusiastic slurping noises came from the outer chamber, quickly followed by a heavy thud.
“Poison?” Devona asked.
I started to answer, but before I could say anything, a new sound disturbed the Library’s quiet. A soft papery rustling. A sheaf of torn book pages blew into the room on what I imagine was a musty, antiquity-laden breeze, tumbling and scratching against each other like dry autumn leaves caught in a windstorm. The pages stopped in front of us, whirled about in a column, faster and faster, closer and closer, until they merged together and resolved into the form of a friendly-faced, middle-aged man wearing granny glasses. He looked like Ben Franklin by way of Shakespeare’s tailor.
“There’s no need for poison,” Waldemar said. “A rich meal of French glue just makes the poor things logy.” He sighed. “I try my best to keep them out, but somehow they always manage to find their way in again.”
“Maybe if you wouldn’t keep leaving scraps of paper in the back alley for them to eat,” I said.
Waldemar grinned, displaying a small set of fangs. “And where would be the fun in that, I ask you?” He took my hand in both of his pale, pudgy ones and pumped vigorously. “Delighted to see you again, Matthew, my boy!”
“Good to see you too, Waldemar.” I was about to introduce Devona when he released my hands and took hers, shaking them just as energetically.
“Devona Kanti-it’s a privilege and a joy to finally meet you! And how is your esteemed father?”
Devona looked at Waldemar for a moment, his effusive greeting catching her off guard. I guess she hadn’t expected Nekropolis’s most respected historian to act like someone’s effusive uncle.
“He’s, uh, rather busy right now, actually,” she said.
