“That I know, and knew from the hour when he came back. I summoned?I learned?enough. It is the falling stone that may loose an avalanche.’
I had the eldritch feeling his words weren’t for me but for someone else. And what was this about the affair worrying him also? I dared not stop to ponder. “Your Enlightenment will understand, then, why I’m in a hurry and why I can’t break my oath of secrecy, even to him. If he’d let me know where Marmiadon’s cell is?”
“The failed one sleeps not with his brothers. The anger of the Light‑Bearer is upon him for his mismanagement, and he does penance alone. You may not seek him before he has been purified.” An abrupt snap: “Answer me! Whence came you, what will you, how can it be that your presence shrills to me of danger?”
“I . . . I don’t know either,” I stammered.
“You are no consecrate‑”
“Look, your Enlightenment, if you, if he would?Well, maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. My, uh, superior ordered me to get in touch with Marmiadon. They said at the entrance I might find him here, and lent me a gate key.” That unobtrusive sentence was the most glorious whopper I ever hope to tell. Consider its implications. Let them ramify. Extrapolate, extrapolate. Sit back in wonder. “I guess they were mistaken.”
“Yes. The lower clerics have naturally not been told. However‑”
The Magus brooded.
“If your Enlightenment ‘ud tell me where to go, who to see, I could stop bothering him.”
Decision. “The night abbot’s secretariat, Room 107. Ask for Initiate‑Six Hesathouba. Of those on duty at the present hour, he alone has been given sufficient facts about the Matuchek case to advise you.”
Matuchek case?
I mumbled my thanks and got away at just short of a run, feeling the sightless gaze between my shoulder blades the vole distance to the stairs. Before climbing back over the gate, I stopped to indulge in the shakes.
I knew I’d scant time for that. The adept might suffer from a touch of senility, but only a touch. He could well fret about me until he decided to set inquiries afoot, which might not end with a phone call to Brother Hesathouba. If I was to have any chance of learning something real, I must keep moving.
Where to, though in this Gormenghast house? How? What hope? I ought to admit my venture was sheer quixotry and slink home.
No! While the possibility remained, I’d go after the biggest windmills in sight. My mind got into gear. No doubt the heights as well as the depths of the cathedral were reserved for the ranking priests. But the ancient mystery religions had held their major rites underground. Weren’t the crypts my best bet for locating Marmiadon?
I felt a grin jerk of itself across my face. They wouldn’t lighten his ordeal by spelling the smell off him. Which was another reason to suppose he was tucked away below, out of nose range.
Human noses, that is.
I retraced my steps to the first level. From there I hastened downward. No one happened by. The night was far along; sorcerers might be at work, but few people else.
I descended past a couple of sublevels apparently devoted to storage, janitorial equipment, and the like. In one I glimpsed a sister hand‑scrubbing the hall floor. Duty? Expiation? Self‑abasement? It was a lonely sight. She didn’t see me.
A ways beyond, I encountered another locked gate. On its far side the stairway steepened, concrete no longer but rough‑hewn stone. I was down into bedrock. The well was chilly and wet to touch, the air to breathe. Modern illumination fell behind. My sole lights were candles, set in iron sconces far apart. They guttered in the draft from below. My shadow flapped misshapen around them. Finally I could not hear the mass. And still the path led downward.
And downward, until after some part of eternity it ended.
I stepped onto the floor of a natural cave. Widely spaced blue flames picked stalactites and stalagmites”, out of dense, unrestful murk. These burned from otherwise inactivated Hands of Glory fastened over the entrances to several tunnels. I knew that the Johannine hierarchy had used its influence to get special police licenses for such devices. Was that really for research? From one tunnel I heard the rushing of an underground river; from another glowed wan lights, drifted incense and a single quavering voice. Prayer vigil, theurgy, or what? I didn’t stop to investigate. Quickly I peeled off suit, socks, shoes, and hid behind a rock. The knife I clipped back onto my elastic shorts.