Death and the Emperor

Book 1 Chapter XVII: The Library of Memories

Observe, learn, and react. -- American McGee's Alice

The inside of Death's castle was as odd as the rest of the Land of the Dead. It included features like a dining table on the ceiling; a room dedicated entirely to what looked like coffins, pieces of headstones, and similar macabre items; and a hallway that led nowhere.

Well, it led nowhere as far as he could tell. Apparently it only led somewhere when Death was leading condemned souls along it. What it led to then, and what the souls were condemned to, she refused to say. After thinking about it for a while, he had decided he was probably happier not knowing.

His favourite part of Death's castle was the Library of Memories. Like the statue garden back in Rethli, that wasn't its proper name. Rather, it was a nickname he had given it, and Death had laughed and said that was as good a name for it as any.

The Library of Memories was, as its name suggested, a collection of memories. Kilan wasn't entirely sure of whose memories; they seemed to be the memories of souls now residing in the Land of the Dead, but occasionally they included information that the soul could not possibly have known at the time. Regardless of whose memories they were, they were endlessly fascinating. There were stories of horror: plagues and shipwrecks, spaceship disasters and wars. But there were also stories of ordinary people: farmers, tradesmen, fishermen, doctors; people who experienced only the sorrows and trials that came to an average life. Kilan liked those stories most of all. Today, however, he wanted to hear a different story.

"Are there any memories of people who lived in Malish?" he asked, idly spinning around one of the revolving "bookcases" that held the jars full of memories.

Death's eyes briefly glazed over as she mentally searched through the Library. "Yes. Here's one."

A jar detached itself from a bookshelf (or should that be memoryshelf? Kilan wondered) and floated over to her outstretched hand. Kilan took it from her and opened it.

A memory, when in a jar, looked like a roll of paper. When the jar was opened and someone looked at the memory, it unrolled itself and a depiction of the memory exactly as it had happened played across its surface, complete with occasional written notes on who each person it showed was, where it showed, what consequences the events in the memory had had.

This particular memory, it turned out, was the memory of a girl named Nekaureł KorgoAxashtę, from the village of Chlibrivauth in the south of Malish, and it began when she was ten.

Kilan watched in horrified astonishment as Nekaureł's father insisted she marry a man in his sixties, who already had four wives. The girl attempted to run away, but was caught, dragged back, and stoned to death for disobeying her father and dishonouring her family.

Stoning a person to death was something unheard of the Carann Empire. Kilan had never known it was possible to kill someone in such a way. He tore his eyes away from the memory with a muffled cry. The jar slipped from his hands and would have shattered if Death hadn't caught it. She sent it back to its shelf with a wave of her hand, never taking her eyes off Kilan.

"Why?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"You'll have to be more specific, I'm afraid," Death said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "Why what? Why would they be so cruel?"

"That too, but why did you show me that memory when there must be thousands of others?"

Death was silent. Her gaze never wavered from Kilan's face. He was abruptly reminded that Death was not human, was not even close to human, and her way of thinking and seeing the world was utterly alien to him.