Alcatraz versus the Knights of Crystallia

So there I w
as
, hanging upside down underneath
a gigantic glass bird, speeding along at a hundred miles an
hour above the ocean, in no danger whatsoever.

That's right.
I wasn't in any danger.
I was more safe at
that moment than I'd ever been in my entire life, despite a
plummet of several hundred feet looming below me.
(Or,
well,
above
me, since I was upside down.)

I took a few cautious steps.
The oversized boots on my
feet had a special type of glass on the bottom, called
Grappler's Glass, which let them stick to other things made
of glass.
That kept me from falling off.
(At which point
up
would quickly
bec
ome
down
as I fell to my death.
Gravity is
such a punk.)

If you'd seen me, with the wind howling around me and
the sea churning belo
w
you may not have agreed that I was
safe.
But these things
–
like
which direction is up
– are
relative. You see, I'd grown up as a foster child in the
Hushlands: lands controlled b
y the evil Librarians. T
hey'd
carefully watched over me
during my childhood, anticipat
ing the day when I'd receive a very special bag of sand
from my father.

I'd received the bag.
They'd stolen the bag.
I'd gotten
the bag back.
Now I was stuck to the bottom of a giant glass
bird.
Simple, really.
If it doesn't make sense to you, then
might I recommend picking up the first two books of a
series before you try to read the third one?

Unfortunately, I know that some of you Hushlanders
have trouble counting to
three.
(The Librarian-controlled
schools don't want you to be able to manage complex
mathematics.)
So I've prepared this helpful guide.

Definition of "book one":
The best place to start a series.
You can identif
y
"book one"
b
y the fact that it has a little
"1" on the spine.
Smedrys do a happy dance when you read
book one first.
Entropy shakes its angry fist at you for being
clever enough to organize the world.

Definition of "book two":
The book you read after book
one.
If you start with book two, I will make fun of you.
(Okay, so I'll make fun of you either way.
But honestly, do
you want to give me more ammunition?)

Definition of "book three":
The worst place, curr
e
ntly, to start a series.
If you start here, I will throw things
at you.

Definition of "book four":
And . . . how'd you manage
to start with that one?
I haven't even written it yet.
(You
sneaky time travelers.)

Anyway, if you haven't read book two, you missed out
on some very important events.
Those include: a trip into
the fabled Library of Alexandria, sludge that tastes faintly
of bananas,
ghostly Librarians that want to suck your
soul, giant glass dragons, the tomb of Alcatraz the First,
and
–
most
important
–
a
lengthy discussion about belly
b
utton lint. By not reading book two, you
also
just forced a
large number of people to waste an entire minute reading
that recap.
I hope you're satisfied.

I clomped along, maki
ng my way toward a solitary fig
ure standing near the chest of the bird.
Enormous glass
wings beat on either side of
me
, and I passed thick
glass bird legs that were curled up and tucked back.
Wind
howled and slammed against me.
The bird
–
called
the
Hawkwind
–
wasn’t
quite a
s majestic as our previous vehicle, a glass dragon called the
D
ragonaut
.
Still, it had a nice
group of compartments inside where one could travel in
luxury.

My grandfather, of course, couldn't be bothered with
something as normal as waiting
inside
a vehicle.
No, he had
to cling to the bottom and stare out over the ocean.
I fought
against the wind as I approached him
–
and
then, sud
denly, the wind vanished.
I froze in shock, one of my boots
locking into place on the bird's glass underside.

Grandpa Smedry jumped, turning.
"Rotating
Rothfusses!" he exclaimed.
"You surprised me, lad!"

"Sorry," I said, walking forward,
my
boots making a
clinking sound each time I unlocked one, took a step, then
locked back onto the glass.
As always, my grandfather wore
a sharp black tuxedo
–
he
thought it made him blend in
better in the Hushlands.
He was bald except for a tuft of
white hair that ran around the back of his head, and he
sported an impressively bushy white mustache.

"What happened to the wind?" I asked.

"Hum? Oh, that."
My grandfather reached up, tapping
the green-specked spectacles he wore.
They were Oculatory
Lenses, a type of magical glasses that
–
when
activated by
an
Oculator like Grandpa Smedry or myself
–
could
do
some very interesting things.
(Those things don't, unfortun
ately, include forcing lazy readers to go and reread the
fi
rst couple of books, thereby removing the need for me to
e
xplain all of this stuff over and over again.)

"Windstormer's Lenses?" I asked.
"I didn't know you
could use them like this."
I'd had a pa
ir
of Windstormer's
Le
nses, and I'd used them to shoot out jets of wind.

"It takes quite a bit of practice, my boy," Grandpa
S
m
edry said in his boisterous way.
"I'm creating a bubble of
wind that is shooting out from me in exactly the opposite
d
irection of the wind that's pushing against me, thereby
negating it all."

"But . . . shouldn't that blow me
backward as well?"

"What?
No, of course not!
What makes you think that it
would?"

“
Uh . . .
physics?" I said.
(Which you might agree is a
rather strange thing to be
m
entioning while hanging upside
d
own through the use of magical glass boots.)

Grandpa Smedry laughed.
"Excellent joke, lad.
Excellent."
He clasped me on the shoulder.
Free Kingdomers like my
grandfather tend to be ve
ry amused by Librarian concepts
like physics, which they find to be utter nonsense.
I think
that the Free Kingdomers don't give the Librarians enough
credit. Physics isn't nonsense
–
it's just incomplete.

Free Kingdomer magic and technology have their own
kind of logic.
Take the glass bird.
It was driven by some
thing called a silimatic engine, which used different types
of sands and glass to propel it.
Smedry T
a
lents and Oculator
powers were called "magic" in the Free
K
ingdoms, since
only special people could use them.
Something that could
be used by anyone
–
such
as the silimatic engine or the
boots on my feet
–
was
called technology.

The longer I spent with people from the Free Kingdoms,
the less I bought that
d
istinction.
"Grandfather," I said, "did
I ever tell you that I managed to power a pair of
G
rappler's
Glass boots just by touching them?"

"Hum?" Grandpa Smedry said.
"What's that?"

"I gave a pair of these boots an extra boost of power," I
said. "
J
ust by touching them . . . as if I could act like some
kind of battery or energy source."

My grandfather was silent.

"What if that's what we do w
ith the Lenses?" I said, tap
ping the spectacles on my face.
"What if being an Oculator
isn't as limited as we think it is?
What if we can affect all
kinds of glass?"

"You sound like your father, lad," Grandpa Smedry said.
“He
has a theory relating to exactly what you're talking
ab
out."

My father.
I glanced upward.
Then, eventually, I turned
b
a
ck to Grandpa Smedry.
He wore his pair of
Windstormer's
Le
nses, keeping the wind at b
a
y.

"Windstormer's Lenses," I said.
"I . . . broke the other
pair you gave me."

"Ha!" Grandpa Smedry said.
"That's not surprising at
a
ll, lad.
Your Talent is quite powerful."

My T
a
lent
–
my
Smedry T
a
lent
–
was
the magical
a
bility to break things.
Every Smedry has a Talent, even
those who are only Smedrys by marriage.
My grandfather's
T
alent was the ability to arrive late to appointments.

The T
a
lents were both blessings and curses.
My grandfa
ther's Talent, for instance, was quite useful when he
a
rrived late to things like bu
llets or tax da
y.
But he'd
a
lso arrived too late to stop the Librarians from stealing my
inheritance.

Grandpa Smedry fell uncharacteristically silent as he
stared out over the ocean, which seemed to hang above us.
West.
Toward Nalhalla,
m
y homeland, though I'd never
once set foot upon its soil.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Hum?
Wrong?
Nothing's wrong!
Why, we rescued your
father from the Curators of Alexandria themselves!
You
showed a very Smedry-like keenness of mind, I must say.
Very well done! We've been victorious!"

"Except for the fact that my mother now has a pair of
T
r
anslator's Lenses," I said.

“
Ah, yes. There
is
that."

The Sands of Rashid, which had started this entire mess,
had been forged into Lens
es that could translate any lan
guage.
My father had somehow collected the Sands of
Rashid, then he'd split them and sent half to me, enough to
forge a single pair of spectacles.
He'd kept the other pair for
himself.
After the fiasco at the Library of Alexandria, my
mother had managed to steal his pair.
(I still had mine,
fortunately.)

Her theft meant that,
if she had access to an Oculator
she could read the Forgotten Language and understand the
secrets of the ancient Incarna people.
She could read about
their technological and magical marvels, discovering
advanced weapons.
This was a problem.
You see, my mother
was a Librarian.

"What are we going to do?" I asked.

“I
'm not sure," Grandpa Smedry said. "But I intend to
spe
ak with the Council of Kings.
They should have s
ometh
ing to say on this, yes indeed."
He perked up.
“
Anyway,
th
e
re's no use worrying about it at the moment!
Surely you
did
n't come all the way down here just because you wanted
to
hear doom and gloom from your favorite grandfather!"

I almost replied that he was my
only
grandfather.
Then
I thought for a moment a
bout what having only one grandfa
ther would imply.
Ew.