It hit her like a whiplash across her back, throwing her to her knees on the dirty pavement. She could feel every inch of her Library tattoo burning, feel it mapped out across her back as clearly as if she could see it. The world shivered around her. She tasted bile in her mouth, and struggled not to throw up.
The words were everywhere. She could see them on the newspaper stands, swimming up through the whiteness to crawl across the paper. She could see them on the back of the paperback novel which the man in front of her had tucked into his pocket, on the crudely printed advertisements fluttering from every stall and on the receipts which the woman to her left was checking. They printed themselves on everything legible in a spreading circle around her.
BEWARE ALBERICH.