Divine Apostasy Book 12 - Chapter 83

Chapter 83

“The second line,” Numarrow continued, “And starlight bends to mortal schemes. This is more interesting. Starlight bending suggests gravitational lensing or dimensional warping. Mortal schemes implies human—or at least living—intervention.” He stopped pacing abruptly. “Of course. The Observatory.”

“There's an observatory in a library?” Tremine asked.

“Not just any observatory,” Numarrow corrected with condescension. “The Celestial Reading Room. It's where astronomical texts are stored, but more importantly, where the library's founders installed a reality lens. I believe it allows one to view books that exist in parallel dimensions. Shame on you Tremine for such ignorance. You are a poor excuse for an Ink Lord.”

Ruwen would bet the contents of his Void Band that the lens Numarrow referenced was an access point for the Outerverse marketplace, perhaps with a filter to only display books.

Numarrow’s comments didn’t seem to affect Tremine, who nodded thoughtfully and responded as if he’d not even heard the insult. “I've heard about such devices, but I thought they were myth.”

“Everything's myth until it’s proven true,” Numarrow replied. “The reality lens, considering its location, definitely counts as ‘bending starlight to mortal schemes.’”

Numarrow resumed his pacing and continued his analysis. “Seek the place where silence screams. Now this is clever wordplay. Most would assume it's referring to the Quiet Sections where sound suppression is so absolute it causes psychological distress. But that's too obvious for a Conclave riddle.”

The undead Ink Lord paced in silence.

“Then where?” Rami asked, unable to hide her curiosity.

“The Lost Wing,” Numarrow replied with certainty. “The silence there isn't just absence of sound—it's the absence of words themselves. Works whose authors died before completing them, stories conceived but never told, and knowledge discovered but never recorded. While the Lost Wing appears silent it stems from our own inability to hear. The items shelved there, doomed to remain incomplete for eternity, are surely screaming in despair.”

Rami shifted slightly next to Ruwen. Through their bond, Ruwen felt her discomfort at Numarrow’s description.

“And the final line?” Lyra asked. “And find what nothing truly means.”

Numarrow's expression shifted to something almost like excitement, but his cloudy eyes made it difficult to tell. “This is the key that confirms my analysis. 'Nothing' in library science has a very specific meaning. It refers to the Null Catalog—the index of things that don't exist but are referenced by things that do.”

“That makes no sense,” Sift muttered.

Numarrow heard it and snapped a reply. “Of course you don’t understand, you're not a librarian. Consider this: a book references another text that was never written. That reference creates a bibliographic phantom. An entry in the catalog for something that doesn't exist. The Null Catalog indexes these phantoms.”

Ruwen didn’t understand the purpose of the riddle, and his frustration increased. He’d missed some piece of important context. “The riddle doesn’t make sense. Your knowledge has isolated four locations, but for what purpose? Do they each contain a piece of the Archivist?” He paused as another possibility occurred to him. “Unless the context is the four locations.”

Numarrow turned to Ruwen, and for a moment, something like respect flickered across the undead Ink Lord’s face. “In a properly organized library, the Memory Palace, the Celestial Reading Room, the Lost Wing, and the Null Catalog all border another area.”

Numarrow paused for dramatic effect before explaining.

"The Central Index," Numarrow announced with theatrical flair.

Tremine cleared his throat, looking up from the map he’d sketched on the floor. "There's a simpler interpretation." He stood and pointed at his crude drawing as he spoke. "Knowledge sleeping in crystal dreams—that's just the Crystal Reference Hall where the library stores its master indexes. Starlight bending to mortal schemes could be the Astrolabe which contains the library’s star charts. Silence screaming could be the Muted Gallery where the banned proclamations and censored texts are kept and 'nothing truly means' might be the Semantic Void, where meaningless texts are archived for their structural value rather than content."

Numarrow's mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. "That's... that's..."

"Simple," Tremine said in a neutral tone. "And those four locations form a compass around the Central Index. You don't need to know about Memory Palaces or Null Catalogs. Any Ink Lord familiar with basic library navigation would recognize these landmarks. They're on every map."

Numarrow’s face turned grey, which Ruwen guessed passed for an undead blush of embarrassment. “My solution is a sophisticated analysis—"

Ky cut the undead Ink Lord off. “You overcomplicated it.”

Ruwen studied both interpretations, his Cleverness ability suddenly active and making his brain itch.

“What’s wrong?” Rami asked.

Ruwen responded out loud, hoping it would help his Cleverness along. “Why would the library provide a riddle with two valid solutions—one simple, one complex—that lead to the same place?"

"Perhaps it's supporting the different types of intelligence," Hamma suggested. "Quick practical thinking versus deep scholarly knowledge."

"Maybe," Ruwen said slowly, not convinced it was that clear cut. "Think about it. If everyone can reach the same conclusion with either path, why create the complex solution at all?”

Tremine frowned. "You think there's a third layer?"

Ruwen shrugged. "If the common and scholarly solutions cover all the Ink Lords, who would a third solution be for?”

"The library wouldn't create something so complex," Numarrow protested, though he sounded uncertain.

"Wouldn't it?" Ruwen asked. "The library has balanced the risk to reward for everyone here except for me. I’m being punished. It said so during its explanation. But that doesn’t mean balance doesn’t exist for me.”

Ruwen turned and paced around the outside of the circle as he thought. Everyone remained quiet while he worked through his thoughts. “What if whoever triggers the Conclave is provided a hidden path that offered a way to survive?” He spoke faster as he became more confident. “And if the third solution is so specific to me that the others would never find it, how would the library balance that? It could simply show everyone where I’m at so they could follow me.”

Stopping suddenly, Ruwen turned toward Numarrow. “Can you expand Tremine’s map? Just the high-level areas.”

“I don’t know,” Sift said to Ruwen. “If you’re right it means you needed the dead guy to make this work.”

“Undead,” Numarrow corrected as he strode over to Tremine.

“Plus,” Sift continued, “How would the library know about Echo’s…uh…special skills?”

“How would it know?” Ruwen repeated thoughtfully. He glanced at Echo and thought about the thousands of zombies he’d stored in his Soul Vault. She’d raised them on Earth, which meant the System knew.

“Earlier,” Hamma said, “You threatened the library and said you thought it was the System. What did you mean by that?”

Ruwen had to remember his friends had the senses of gods now and would hear everything he said.

“My time in the Destruction Realm exposed me to some alternate Systems, and I have reason to believe another master System merged them all and is the ultimate source of control.”

“Which means it would know the contents of your Void Band,” Lylan said.

Ruwen nodded. “It knows everything and constructed this third puzzle just for me. What would it center around?”

Sift started to answer but Ruwen cut him off. “That was rhetorical.”

Sift turned to Lylan.

“It means don’t answer,” Lylan whispered.

Ruwen studied the riddle and both solutions again. There had to be a pattern here. Some type of method or process. Those thoughts sent sparks through his mind and the pieces dropped into place.

“Alchemy,” Ruwen whispered.

"Yes, yes, the Alchemical correspondence," Numarrow said dismissively. "As above blah blah blah. It's just another façade on the same conclusion. The Central Index."

But Ruwen's Cleverness hadn’t finished. The pattern shifted in his mind, revealing another result. "No, it’s not pointing to the Archivist at all."

Everyone waited for Ruwen to explain.

"The riddle gave us four lines," Ruwen said. "What if each corresponded to an Alchemical component.”

Ruwen collected his scattered thoughts and continued. “Crystal dreams might refer to the most common alchemical crystal, salt, which acts as a foundation in many recipes. Starlight bending could be mercury which resembles liquid starlight and is a critical component in most transformations. Silence screaming doesn’t immediately point to anything, though.”

Ruwen considered the phrase, and his thoughts kept coming back to sulfur. It made an odd sound when burning in a crucible, and the flame remained nearly invisible which made the burning sounds seem to come from the air. It also served as a principal ingredient in many formulations.

Nothing must reference the aether, the universal energy that acted as a catalyst in almost every high-level alchemy recipe. Sometimes this energy was Spirit, sometimes Soul power, and Ruwen experimented with mental energy as well.

Ruwen paced around the outside of the circle as his mind raced to find a recipe that made sense. Salt dissolved in mercury produced a potent vapor when heated with sulfuric flames. This vapor, when catalyzed with aether, condenses into a pure crystal.

“It's a transformation,” Ruwen said. “A purification cycle."

"You need to do better than that," Sift said.

Ruwen knelt next to Tremine, who continued to sketch the library’s layout under Numarrow’s direction.

"The riddle is a common purification recipe. The rooms represent the components. Memory Palace dissolves into the Celestial Reading Room which combusts into the Lost Wing before condensing via the Null Catalog. The resulting crystal brings us back to the start at the Memory Palace."

Numarrow shook his head and knelt as well. Jamming a grey finger between the Null Catalog and the Memory Palace. "You must be wrong. There isn’t a path connecting those two locations. Your cycle breaks there.”

“Maybe you misidentified the last room,” Ruwen said.

Numarrow laughed and muttered to himself, not bothering to reply to Ruwen. “Misidentify? Please, that’s just ridiculous.”

Ruwen snapped his fingers. “An incomplete transformation.” He tried to keep the excitement from his voice. “What if 'find what nothing truly means' refers to the missing connection. The gap in the cycle."

"Or it points to a hidden section,” Tremine said.

"It’s the exit," Ruwen said with certainty. "The riddle isn't telling us where the Archivist is—everyone will figure that out. It's telling us where the exit is. The library hid it in the broken point of the Alchemical cycle, the place where nothing connects."

Ky stepped closer to Tremine, placing a hand on his shoulder as she studied his drawing. “If my burgeoning artist here can be trusted it looks like the locations for the simple riddle interpretation are above the Central Index and the Archivist. The overcomplicated explanation areas are all under the Central Index. What’s the scale? How close are they to each other?”

Numarrow stood. “Far enough that the other Ink Lords will need to decide if they want to buy keys from the Archivist and hunt rare books or follow us.”

"Most will assume you're running," Tremine added.

Ruwen considered their options. “What happens when the exit opens?”

Tremine stood, returning his chalk to a pocket and dusting his hands. “The Conclave begins its closing countdown, the Archivist disappears, and any Ink Lord that doesn’t make it to the exit before the timer ends is never seen again.”

"If you're wrong about the exit’s location,” Numarrow said, “we'll be trapped in a dead-end section with no path to retreat. In fact, when your destination becomes evident any Ink Lord that knows the library’s architecture will certainly follow us. The bounty on your Emblem of Dominion is too high to ignore."

“Greed is a powerful motivator,” Bliz said.

The comment triggered another thought and Ruwen faced Numarrow. “Where are the documents you studied to become an expert about the library?”

“Lord Izac’s personal library,” Numarrow replied.

“And his Ink Lord has access to that information?”

“Of course.”

Ruwen recalled Jagen’s hard look and the Ink Lord behind the Champion who intently studied an old map.

Turning to Bliz, Ruwen acknowledged the Crew Chief’s comment. “Greed is powerful, as is revenge.”

Izac wouldn’t pass up an attempt to kill Ruwen and the Conclave was a perfect opportunity. He was certain the new Ink Lord of Malth and Jagen were not here for books. They were coming straight for Ruwen.

Ruwen glanced at Una who had already moved toward Tremine and Ky. He needed to tell her about Jagen. This whole thing could go bad in so many ways. The leprechauns had sapped him of all his luck, and the creatures here hadn’t offered any for him to harvest.

The more Ruwen considered the situation, the worse it seemed. They’d been stationery for too long, but he needed to ask Numarrow if any safe rooms existed on their way. He wanted to go through the loot he gathered, finish some quests, and prepare a little for their literal exit strategy.

Survey absorbed Tremine’s crude floor-drawn map and created a path to the lower areas.

“Let’s get moving,” Ruwen said.