Necropolis

and, on the other side of it, an open door. The air was very still. I could actually hear my heart beating as I approached. I didn't think I was in danger, but there was something so weird about this place, so far removed from my experience, that I admit I was afraid. I didn't hesitate, though. I passed through the arch and suddenly I was inside, in a long corridor with a tiled, very polished floor and a high, vaulted ceiling held up by stone pillars: not quite a church, not quite a museum, but something similar to both.
    "Can I help you?"
    Another shock. I wasn't on my own. And the question was so normal, so polite that it just didn't seem to belong to this extraordinary place.
    There was a man standing behind a lectern, the sort of things lecturers have in front of them when they talk. He was quite small, a couple of inches shorter than me, and he had one of those faces… I won't say it was carved out of stone (it was too warm and human for that) but it somehow seemed ages old, gnarled by time and experience.
    From the look of him, I would have said he was an Arab, a desert tribesman, but without any of the trappings such as a headdress, white robes, or a dagger. Instead, he was dressed in a long, silk jacket —
    faded mauve and silver — with a large pocket on each side and baggy, white trousers. A beard would have suited him, but he didn't have one. His hair was steel gray. His eyes were the same color. They were regarding me with polite amusement.
    "What is this place?" I asked.
    "This place?" The man seemed surprised that I had asked. "This is the great library. And it's very good to see you again."
    A library. I remembered something Jamie had told me. When he met Scarlett at Scathack Hill, she had mentioned visiting a library to him.
    "We've never met."
    "I think we have." The man smiled at me. I wasn't sure what language he was speaking. In the dreamworld, all languages are one and the same, and people can understand each other no matter where they've come from. 'You're Matthew Freeman. At least, that's the name you call yourself. You're one of the Gatekeepers. The first of them, in fact."
    "Do you have a name?"
    "No. I'm just the Librarian."
    "I'm looking for Scarlett," I said. "Scarlett Adams. Has she been here?"
    "Scarlett Adams? Scarlett Adams? You mean…Scar! Yes, she most certainly has been here. But not for a long time. And she's not here now."
    "Do you know where I can find her?"
    "I'm afraid not."
    We were walking down the corridor together, which was strange because I couldn't remember starting.
    And we had passed into a second room, part of the library…it was obvious now. I had never seen so many books. There were books on both sides of me, standing like soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, packed into wooden shelves that stretched on and on into the distance, finally — a trick of perspective —
    seeming to come together at a point. The shelves began at floor level and rose all the way to the ceiling, maybe a hundred rows in each block. The air was dry and smelled of paper. There must have been a million books in this room alone, and each one of them was as thick as an encyclopedia.
    'You must like reading," I said.
    "I never have time to read the books. I'm too busy looking after them."
    "How many of you are there?"
    "Just me."
    "Who built the library?"
    "I couldn't tell you, Matt. It was already here before I arrived."

    "So what are these books? Do you have a crime section? And romance?"
    "No, Matt." The Librarian smiled at the thought. "Although you will find plenty of crime, and plenty of romance for that matter, among their pages. But all the books in the library are biographies."
    "Who of?"
    "Of all the people who have ever lived and quite a few who are still to be born. We keep their entire lives here. Their beginnings, their marriages, their good days and their bad days, their deaths — of course. Everything they ever did."
    We stopped in front of a door. There was a sign on it, delicately carved into the wood. A five-pointed star.
    "I know this," I said.
    "Of course you do."
    "Where does this door go?"
    "It goes anywhere you want it to."
    "It's like the door at St. Meredith's!" I said.
    "It works the same way…but there you have only twenty-four possible destinations. In your world, there are twenty-five doors, all connecting with each other — although none of them will bring you back here.
    This library, on the other hand, has a door in every room, and I have absolutely no idea