I took the steps quietly, by twos. At the third‑floor landing, a locked wrought‑iron gate barred further passage. Not surprising, I thought; I’m getting into officer country. It wasn’t too big for an agile man to climb over. What I glimpsed of that hall looked no different from below, but my skin prickled at a strengthened sense of abnormal energies.
The fourth floor didn’t try for any resemblances to Madison Avenue. Its corridor was brick, barrel‑vaulted, lit by Grail‑shaped oil lamps hung in chains from above, so that shadows flickered huge. The chant echoed from wall to wall. The atmosphere smelled of curious, acrid musks and smokes. Rooms must be large, for the pointed‑arch doors stood well apart. They weren’t numbered, but they bore nameplates and I guessed the sequence was the same as elsewhere.
One door stood open between me and my goal. Incongruously bright light spilled forth. I halted and stared in slantwise at selves upon shelves of books. Some few appeared ancient, but mostly they were modern?yes, that squat one must be the Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics, and yonder set the Encyclopaedia Arcanorum, and there was a bound file of Mind?well, scientists need reference libraries, and surely very strange research was conducted here. It was my hard luck that someone kept busy this late at night.
I glided to the jamb and risked a closer peek. One man sat alone. He was huge, bigger than Barney Sturlason, but old, old; hair and beard were gone, the face might have belonged to Rameses’ mummy. An adept’s robe swathed him. He had a book open on his table, but wasn’t looking at it. Deep‑sunken, his eyes stared before him while a hand walked across the pages. I realized he was blind. That book, though, was not in Braille.
The lights could be automatic, or for another worker in the stacks. I slipped on by.
Marmiadon’s place lay several yards further. Beneath his name and rank, the brass plate read “Fourth Assistant Toller.” Not a bell ringer, for God’s sake, that runt . . . was he? The door was locked. I should be able to unscrew the latch or push out the hinge pins with my knife. Better wait till I was quite alone, however. Meanwhile I could snoop?
“What walks?”
I whipped about. The adept stood in the hall at the library entrance. He leaned on a pastoral staff; but his voice reverberated so terribly that I didn’t believe he needed support. Dismay poured through me. I’d forgotten how strong a Magus he must be.
“Stranger, what are you?” the bass cry bayed.
I tried to wet my sandpapery lips. “Sir‑your Enlightenment?”
The staff lifted to point at me. It bore a Johannine capital, the crook crossed by a tau. I knew it was more than a badge, it was a wand. “Menace encircles you,” the adept called. “I felt you in my darkness. Declare yourself.”
I reached for the knife in my pocket, the wereflash under my shirt. Forlorn things; but when my fingers closed on them, they became talismans. Will and reason woke again in me. I thought beneath the hammering:
It’d have been more luck than I could count on, not to get accosted. I meant to try and use the circumstance if it happened. Okay, it has. That’s a scary old son of a bitch, but he’s mortal. Whatever his powers are, they don’t reach to seeing me as I see him, or he’d do so.
Nonetheless I must clear my throat a time or two before speaking, and the words rang odd in my ears. “I‑I beg your Enlightenment’s pardon. He took me by surprise. Would he please tell me . . . where Initiate Marmiadon is?”
The adept lowered his staff. Otherwise he didn’t move. The dead eyes almost rested on me, unwavering: which was worse than if they actually had. “What have you with him to do?”
“I’m sorry, your Enlightenment. Secret and urgent. As your Enlightenment recognizes, I’m a, uh, rather unusual messenger. I can tell him I’m supposed to get together with Initiate Marmiadon in connection with the, uh, trouble at the Nornwell company. It turns out to be a lot more important than it looks.