‘I’ll be fine,’ interrupted Lace. ‘I’ll see you later, Holiness. Don’t worry about me.’
As Fallow’s steps retreated in the corridor outside, the Envoy turned his attention back to the shelf. He was surrounded by abject fools, he thought. But that was to be expected among humans. Besides, he preferred to work alone. He did not want his activities too closely monitored by the Dean, who would in any case come crawling back to him soon enough.
He began to go methodically through each crate, rummaging among the crumbling parchments and ancient relics, reflecting as he did so on the ironies of mortal existence. Possessed of a priceless secret, these creatures left it to rot in storage, or dismissed it as the ravings of a madman. Those few who appreciated its significance were too frightened to make use of it, preferring ignorance and safety to the challenges of knowledge. They truly were worms, thought Lace, locked in their pupae-like experience and blind to all else. They were not worthy of the sublime. So much the better: it would belong to him alone. The Nonnians would lead him to the Oracle, and the Oracle would lead him to the Key.
His Masters, he knew, were well aware of this second treasure hidden in the Oracle’s resting place, this ultimate secret within the secret. They had not seen fit to mention it when they raked him over in the Veil, of course. They did not want him to be the one to discover it. The mysterious artefact had remained hidden for millennia, already relegated to the status of fable when the first human civilisations flourished in the Tree. It was more ancient than the Ancients, older than the Old Ones. It was a type of machine, according to legend, an intricate device like the orah-clocks but far more subtle in its workings. It tuned itself to the mind of its possessor, becoming one with him. He who discovered the Key would wield great power. But there were other privileges it conferred, besides access to the Veil.
Lace had not told Fallow why the World Key was so important to him, never mentioning that it might be used to call those in the Veil back to this physical universe, as well as to send prisoners there. The Key would give his Masters limited access to the world of the living. Although the sentence that bound them to the Veil could not be wholly contravened, such dregs of liberty might prove attractive, after a long period of imprisonment. And if he, Eblas, were the one to claim the Key, it would be a liberty accorded and controlled by him alone.
After an hour or so of rifling through the crates, the candle in the lantern burned low. Father Lace replaced it with another from the store in his jacket pocket, and continued his inspection of the crates piled on the archives shelves. At long last, his search revealed a box shoved behind two others, marked with a circular green symbol. The paint was so faded by time as to be almost invisible, but Lace immediately pounced on it with a hiss of triumph. It contained at first glance only various articles of yellowed clothing, ancient leather-soled slippers and a squashed skullcap, the effects of some forgotten saint. The Envoy tore out the clothes and flung the slippers away from him, lifting up a crackling pile of vellum from the base of the box.
‘They wrote it on the skin of living beings,’ he murmured aloud, caressing the translucent sheets. ‘It was too precious a secret to confide to bark and pulp.’
A moment after, however, he frowned. There were only a few pages left in the box, too few. He flipped through the sheets of parchment to the end, then back again. Sections of the text were missing. Not all the liturgies were present. He groaned aloud in frustration.
Perhaps it was only the draught from the door of the archives, but at that instant, the Envoy felt a soft stirring of air on the back of his neck, like a human breath. He spun about on his heel, gripped by the uneasy sense that someone was watching him. But no one stood in the doorway of the chamber. The use of the orah-clock might provoke just such an effect, he remembered. Was the Dean trying clumsily to spy on him, after having feigned disinterest in his efforts? Or, worse still, was this the prick of his Masters’ eyes, peering at him from within the Veil? As he looked back towards the shelf, the sensation returned, stronger this time, a warning prickle on the back of his neck. The spy was close, physical. He could have sworn there was a face peeping out from behind the crates. And it was not the Dean’s. His fingers darted out to grab at the impudent watcher; he retrieved a mask, empty-eyed and painted with white enamel. The movement of the boxes had caused it to slip out of a loosely fastened bag of black velvet at the very back of the shelf.
Standing alone in the archives chamber, the Envoy gave a dry bark of laughter. Where the enamel had chipped slightly at the edges of the object, he glimpsed the telltale gleam of orah. Here was a pretty surprise, and a welcome one, too. He had not expected to find more Explorer artefacts in the archives. This one had evidently been overlooked by the catalogue clerks. He put the mask gently back in its bag and set it on the table in the middle of the room. Then he turned back to the crates piled on the shelves and continued his search. By the time the Dean came back into the archives to visit him, three hours later, he had gone through every single box, and was sitting on a stool by the table, his head in his hands.
‘No luck?’ asked Fallow, approaching him with careful solicitude.
‘I found some of them,’ answered Lace. ‘The liturgies are incomplete.’
‘Too bad.’ The Dean peered curiously at the sheets on the table beside the Envoy. ‘If you say we’ve forgotten why they’re important, we may be in trouble. This place hasn’t been properly inventoried for years, and vellum is expensive: I’ve known scribes to rub the ink off old sheets and use them again … Would there be copies in the main library? We might check the stacks upstairs and cross reference “key” with the words “Nonnian” and “world” —’
‘I already checked,’ interrupted the Envoy, moodily hunched under his black coat. ‘The Council’s misinformation has worked beautifully: nobody mentions the Nonnians except in passing. Besides, partial copies are useless. The liturgies contain the coordinates to the World Key, but you need all the pages, all the writing, to figure it out. It’s a code. You’d have to apply the abjat system on the verses: the numerological alphabet of the Ancients, if you recall —’
‘Number-magic?’ Fallow raised an eyebrow. ‘Why didn’t you say so to begin with? I know where your Nonnians are. We put all that abjat stuff in the novices’ prayer room, to encourage the students’ use of mathematics. I had no idea those code games were what you were after. Come along, I’ll show you where they are. Hidden in plain sight, of course. I’m glad I can make up for leaving you alone in this place all afternoon.’
He placed a companionable hand on Lace’s shoulder, and the latter suffered himself to be led out of the archives chamber, the roll of vellum and the white mask in its velvet bag bundled under his arm.
He might have known, the Envoy reflected numbly, as he traipsed up the stairs after Fallow. The humans had relegated their most weighty secrets to mere child’s play, using one of the mystic keys to the universe to help the pimpled sons of Argosian burghers improve their grasp of basic arithmetic. Not even his Masters had guessed how far humanity had sunk into ignorance, oblivious of the ancient ways; they had expected the priests to keep the Seed Prophecies safe. The Fathers accused demons from the Storm of tempting their flock into heedlessness, but Lace was beginning to think they achieved that objective very well on their own.
Fallow helped him retrieve the Nonnian liturgies in their moth-eaten bindings from deep inside one of the stacks at the back of the study room, and left him to read the vellum sheets, making some further excuse for leaving to which Lace paid no attention. He barely looked up as Fallow melted out of the room, poring over the light script that had faded with time to a watery grey. The author of the liturgies was anonymous; the question of his identity never troubled Lace. As far as he was concerned, the nameless mystic had fulfilled the whole point of his brief life in writing these verses. The prophecies themselves were nonsense, existing only to house the code within. He could already sense the pattern beneath the phrases, the repet
ition of certain words like musical notes. It would not take him long to decipher the coordinates of the World Key.
When afternoon drew to a close and student voices began to echo in the quadrangle outside, Lace collected up all the vellum sheets into a binder, tucked it under his arm and left the prayer room. He had assured himself that the liturgies were complete and that his computations would be correct. It only remained for him to do the actual calculations, and since Gowron was not due back in Argos city for another three weeks, there was plenty of time for that. There remained one more task for him to accomplish, before he began organising the expedition his Masters expected him to undertake.
The Envoy stepped out of the library building and strode onto the College quadrangle. His tread echoed in the chill air of the winter’s evening. The sky visible in slices through the trellis of branches above was a startling blue, the colour of wild flowers or parrots’ plumage. The towering, snowbound leaf-forests gleamed with hoar frost. But Lace did not pause to admire the beauty surrounding him. He made directly for the College infirmary and mounted the steps to the private wing reserved for the professors, entering a room closed off by a green curtain. A youth sat on the bed at the back of the room, gazing out of the window at the students laughing in the quadrangle below. He did not look around as Lace came in.
‘They told me you had your bandages taken off today,’ said the Envoy, rattling the curtain shut behind him. ‘So. How’s my favourite acolyte?’
Wick still did not turn around. He was fully dressed and evidently able to move about, but the skin on his hands and neck was a dangerous purplish red. The colour of pain, thought Lace. The young acolyte’s voice when he answered was tight and husky.
‘I want to die,’ he whispered.
‘That won’t do!’ remarked the Envoy, sitting down on the bed. He tried to look at Wick’s face, but the youth would have none of it and twisted away. ‘You’re a winner,’ announced Lace with false cheerfulness, in an attempt to raise his spirits. ‘Winners don’t give in. They’re sometimes down, but never out.’
‘Do winners look like this?’ blurted out his companion, low and fierce.
He did turn towards Lace then, showing the whole ruin of his face. The injuries he had sustained on the day of Samiha’s execution, when he was caught in the inexorably closing door of the Veil, had been translated with painful accuracy to his physical body. There was nothing left of the smooth-cheeked boy who had taken orders at the seminary. Wick’s flesh was raw, his lips and eyelids consumed as if by a disease, his bland, childish roundness gone forever. He trembled as he spoke and his red-rimmed eyes were awash with tears.
‘No one will ever love something that looks like this,’ he said in a choked whisper, jabbing a finger at his scarred features. He bowed his head, his shoulders heaving.
‘Now, now,’ murmured the Envoy. He attempted to pat Wick on the back, but snatched his hand back hastily as the other cringed in pain. ‘It’s hard at the moment, but I promise you’re going to come through this, and come through it strong. Think of the one who did this to you. Would you like Tymon to see you so defeated?’
‘I’ll kill him,’ snarled Wick, looking up again immediately. ‘I’ll make him suffer for what he’s done.’
‘There you go,’ replied Lace heartily. ‘Focus on your anger. Use it to recover. You’ll have your revenge.’
‘The girl, too,’ grated Wick. ‘Jedda: you said she was gone when you visited the other day. Well, she should have been there with me on the dock, and helped. I want to make her feel like I do now. Raw. Eaten. Pecked to death.’
The Envoy’s smile broadened. ‘We might just be able to do that,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, I have a present for you. This will make you feel better, I think.’
He put the prophecies in their binder down on the bed, and retrieved the velvet bag, which he had slipped into the pocket of his coat. ‘It’s no ordinary disguise, of course,’ he said, drawing out the mask. ‘It’s made of orah under the paint.’
He did not give it to Wick at once, but instead placed it over his own face. Wick gasped in amazement as the mask slowly faded away and became transparent, showing only his master’s familiar features.
‘Another treasure plundered by our friends the Explorers,’ Lace said, removing the mask again and handing it to Wick. ‘I thought this one had been lost, actually. It was called “Hadron’s mirror”, back in the day. With a little concentration you can use it to look like anyone, but I imagine you’ll be wanting to appear unscarred from time to time. Just a word of warning,’ he added, as Wick turned the artefact over in his hands, inspecting it wonderingly. ‘Don’t use it for extended periods. If you must wear it for a whole day, or two, take it off for an equivalent amount of time afterwards. Otherwise the Seeming will lose potency — and you’ll have other problems, besides.’
He rose from the bed, retrieving the binder. ‘When you’re ready, Wick, you may join me on the bell tower. Tonight, if you’re feeling up to it. I have some chastisement in store for our troublesome Grafter friends. I need your help to achieve it.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ murmured Wick hoarsely, holding the mask against his chest. ‘Thank you for everything.’
‘All part of the service,’ laughed Lace. ‘What sort of mentor would I be if I didn’t help my students? You and I are excellent allies, Wick. This unfortunate business will only bring us closer together, you’ll see.’
He turned and stalked out of the infirmary, leaving the youth cradling the mask. He had not told Wick the other name that had been given to that infamous relic in days gone by, when it had been developed by a rogue practitioner of the subtle arts now known as sorcery. Even the humans had their master criminals, and this one had used the mask to escape the law of the Ancients, at least for a while. He had also given a pet name to his creation, calling his subatomic particle-warping device — his ‘SAP’-warp — ‘Sweet Oblivion’, and wearing it until it drove him to his grave.
It was nearing midnight when the Envoy and his acolyte stood together in the arched alcove at the summit of the bell tower, gazing out over the moonlit city far below, a descending jumble of darkened rooftops and crooked chimney pots. There were only a few twinkling lamps visible at this late hour, as the inhabitants had already locked their doors and drawn their curtains against the encroaching night. Above the two standing in the tower alcove, the great, curved mass of the bells hung silent.
Wick’s breath rose in chill clouds in the darkness. He shivered, the wind biting the newly healed scars on his cheeks as he surveyed the familiar spectacle of the town lying beneath him. Argos city had been his home since birth, the theatre of a thousand boyhood triumphs and frustrations. But now he was a stranger in his own country, cut off from the joys and cares of ordinary citizens, no longer even associating with his fellow lordlings in the upper echelons of society. He had given all that up to be the Envoy’s acolyte, choosing the lonely road to power. The price was worth it, he told himself, shoring up his determination against the bitter night. For was he not possessed of the fundamental secrets of existence? He waited deferentially for his master to begin their next ritual, hunching his shoulders beneath his heavy winter cloak.
The Envoy waited for the time to be exactly right. Each hour of the day had its own occult significance, dependent upon the position of the sun and stars. The workings of space and time were not without meaning, for there were periods when the force humans called ‘Sap’ flowed more freely and the generating power of the universe was easier to predict or control. No stargazer’s diagram or leaf-watcher’s chart, no merely human system of divination had ever come close to correctly mapping those mighty ebbs and flows. Only the all-encompassing science practised by the Born, the science that was both logic and belief, experiment and intuition, had ever been capable of navigating its complexity. It was a profound and robust knowledge now abandoned in this world, replaced by the maudlin dabblings of sorcerers and the Grafters’ blind, unquestioning faith.
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nbsp; Lace despised both, of course, though he kept his disgust well hidden from his mortal allies. He despised all things human, their clumsy, unripe attempts at understanding. But he was obliged to make use of the tools at his disposal; the sentence placed upon him left him no other choice. He had been forcibly severed from the Sap, the creative power of the universe, and reduced to beggary, his consciousness starved of all but the absolute minimum of energy. The bounty lavished so freely upon this physical world was denied him. The unpleasant truth was that a single spark of the smokeless flame burning in the heart of even the most stupid human being was brighter, warmer, stronger than anything still smouldering in the ashy soul of the Special Envoy of the First Born.
Although he would never tell Wick so, Lace needed a human accomplice to perform the slightest ritual involving the Sap. It was a grinding insult, a slap in the face, but he would not let that stop him. After a grim moment passed watching the frost-bound city, he came to stand behind his acolyte, placing his hands on Wick’s shoulders and turning him inexorably towards the east. Those with the Sight were conduits, attracted like the points of the Ancients’ compasses towards an inner north. Like the orah, they were irresistibly drawn to the world of their origins, the esoteric world of the Tree of Being.
‘Weakness be strength,’ the Envoy muttered. He could not keep an edge of bitterness from his voice.
There was an energy in anger, a power in bitterness. It was a debased and unstable force, but it had its uses. His acolyte was seething with both emotions, overflowing with bitter pride and furious injury. They had already marked him and would eventually consume him. But for now, Wick’s hurt and rage were excellent tools for the Envoy. The garbled ‘words of welcome’ were hardly spoken before the youth flung back his head and jerked loose from his master’s grip, falling to his knees on the floor of the alcove. Wick was gasping, his body racked with spasms. After retching violently for a few moments, his mouth opened and he vomited up a gluey mass of black feathers. A jagged wing forced its way between his teeth, followed by a jabbing beak. Even as he groaned and retched again, a bird-like creature clawed its way out of his mouth and hopped onto the floor with a single, raucous cry.
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