by Stark, Jenn
“You make it sound like this is common knowledge to the average Irish person, and I know that isn’t true.”
He spread his hands. “Well, perhaps not the average Irish person you’d meet in the city, but there’s much about our isle that’s been lost to those who live only in the cities. You’ll need to learn the byways as well if you’re going to stay here any amount of time.”
I glanced around the small, cozy room, already itching to be gone. It was remarkably plain for a room that was supposed to start enchanting me. “Yeah, I don’t plan on that.”
William gave another soft laugh. “This island has a way of seducing even the hardest of hearts, Justice Wilde. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the time comes and you’re sad to let us go.”
Having leaned his pack against the table, Simon was busily opening the books that’d been laid out for us.
“This is amazing,” he murmured as he fished in his pack for a long leather tube that he shook out over the table. A slender coil of parchment slipped and immediately spread open, its edges weighting themselves to the surface of the table without assistance. “And look how it matches up.”
William and I stepped closer. The map Simon had laid out next to the book was an ancient chart of the world segmented only by significant landmasses, not by individual countries. Still it was easy to find Ireland, the distinctive island perched in a cluster with Great Britain. Overlaying the different sections of the world was a tracery of fine lines, some thickly woven, some barely etched. Over Ireland, there was only the barest hint of lines, as if there’d been a layer once, but it had long since been erased.
“So there’s no veil over all of Ireland?” I asked, scowling at the map. “That seems…kind of dumb.”
“There is, but watch this.”
Simon reached out, grabbed one end of the map, and turned it a quarter turn to the right. Now Ireland had as much coverage as anywhere else in the world, with no unbroken lines.
“It’s an illusion. I noticed the discrepancy once I unrolled the map a few times. It starts out with these gaping holes, not just over Ireland, but over about a third of the planet in various places. Then you turned it, and you were okay. That’s what I wanted to look at in these books.”
“And the Hermit didn’t give you any ideas as to why the map changed?”
“All he said is there were veils, and then there were spaces, and the two weren’t alike, but they both protected the world as needs demand. I hadn’t even thought of the idea of the In Between serving as a form of protection until the Council meeting, but—look here.”
The map he pointed to next was in a large two-foot-square book, bound in musty leather. He had it open flat, and the island stretched out before us, its edges elaborately illustrated with crashing waves and dragons, while the land itself was colored a rich emerald hue, peppered with inscriptions for ancient towns and churches, all with distinctively Celtic symbols ringing certain locations throughout both northern and southern Ireland.
“This is Dublin,” he said, indicating the large cluster of symbols along the east coast of the country. “This symbol is repeated here, here, and all the way up here.” He tapped a section of the country far to the north. “There’s healing powers going on in these areas, as well as entries into the In Between. I still don’t know what any of this means, and definitely not how to navigate, but I’m hoping once we get inside, we’ll understand more.”
“Your Magician said you were looking to bring Temperance back to the fold of the Arcana Council, if he’s roaming the shadowed passages,” William said, and I looked up at him with surprise.
“He told you that?”
“He did. He wanted me to understand what I was sending you into and what you hoped to bring back. But I think he is mistaken. Danny Wilson’s soul isn’t what you’ll find between the worlds. He was blessed, he truly was, for all that his body was wasting away with influenza. He knew what awaited him on the far coast, and he yearned for it.”
“Oh.” I rocked back on my heels. “So you’re saying we’re wasting our time here.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Danny Wilson, well and good, he’s not hovering between the worlds, waiting for a peek back in. But the Temperance before him, Bartholomew Simms, well, that’s another story altogether. He’s the type what would’ve held on to this plane with everything he had. He was in love with another Council member after all.”
I stared at him. “You don’t mean….”
“Aye, Justice, I do.” He smiled at my surprise. “Justice Abigail Strand, the very same.”
Chapter Eighteen
“How do you know this?” I demanded. Simon glanced up, so engrossed in his book of architecture on the old library that he was only paying us the barest attention.
William smiled. “Well, at Trinity College, we have access to a lot of books we should have and a few we shouldn’t. And some of those books may once have been in Justice Hall. When Danny was ascending, he gained access to your library, and he right pilfered what he could without being noticed.”
“Really,” I said drily. “Two problems with that. One, there was no Justice at Danny Wilson’s time, so there was no one there to let him in, and two, he was a Council member. Council members are strictly verboten in the library of Justice Hall.”
“Not the Irish ones,” William said. “You see, Abigail Strand was in love with Bartholomew Simms too. When she established her protections for her library, she didn’t want them to extend to her lover. Simms, being a proper Irishman in his own right, saw perhaps a bit farther down the path than his true love did. He knew some things she didn’t.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How long had he been Temperance when Abigail ascended?”
“Going on five hundred years, I should say. There’d been Justices off and on all through that time, an’ he knew the trouble it’d caused him when there weren’t Justices favorable to him in session.”
“So he preyed on Abigail.”
“Oh, it’s not like that. He just wanted to be sure future Temperances, his kinsmen, after all, wouldn’t have to rely on the good graces of Justice to get the information they needed to do their job.”
My head was starting to hurt. “How do you know all this? And why didn’t Armaeus tell me?”
“Because this library has its wards too,” William said smugly, gesturing around the small room. “And you can guess who’s been kept out.”
I stared at him. “Temperance had the ability to keep Armaeus out of Trinity College?”
“Not Armaeus specifically, but the Magician in whatever incarnation he finds himself, yes.”
“I’m going to need a cheat sheet,” I muttered.
“It’s a simple enough construct. The Magician bends the elements to his will. It’s what he does. But Temperance works a different sort of magic. He—or she—blends the elements to his will. The sum is never different from its parts. They remain real, constant, whole. The Magician can create an entirely different construct and leave the past behind. Not Temperance. He takes a more organic approach.”
“I’ve found it,” Simon announced, leaning over yet another book. “There’s an entire wall behind this wall, only there can’t be. We’re flush against the outside wall of the library.”
I frowned at him, then gestured to the wall. “And that schematic is of this building? Not something that got torn down a long time ago?”
“It’s this building,” Simon said. “But what it’s showing is a structure that extends down into the basement—far down. Like past the edge of the foundation.” He looked at William. “Are there catacombs beneath the library?”
“Well, there are catacombs beneath every sacred building in Ireland, it could be said, especially those in Dublin. The city grew so fast, but the dead always keep pace in the end.”
“So I’ll take that as a yes.” Simon looked at me. “I can’t say for sure this is In Between space, but there’s a very real something space that goes behind this wall and strai
ght down. That’s where we need to go. Armaeus was adamant that the trail to find Temperance started here.”
“Well, it makes sense he would think that, since he searched everywhere else, and this was the one place on Earth he couldn’t get to.” I glanced at William. “This is the only place from which the Magician is blocked, right? That you know of?”
“That I know of.” William nodded. “But I will say, I’ve only set foot inside the In Between at Newgrange. I don’t know anything about a passage to the catacombs here. I’ve been the caretaker of this room for years, and there’s been plenty of odd doings—spectral visions, mists out of nowhere, rushes of cold, and books appearing when you least expect it. All of those would be consistent with a passage to the In Between. But we’ve searched many times for one, as you can well imagine. We’ve even done infrared testing to see through the stone itself, let alone the books. There’s nothing here. It’s all blocks of granite.”
“And there’s nothing in the books that say how to…I don’t know, open the wall?” I asked Simon.
“Nope.” He closed the last one with a thump. “Which makes a certain sort of sense. You wouldn’t want it to be too easy.”
“Of course not,” I groused. Fortunately, I had other options. I fished in my hoodie pocket for my deck, pulling the first cards that came to hand. I flipped them over on the stone table, and we all stared at them. There was Temperance, the Star, and the Tower.
“Hey, all Major Arcana,” Simon observed. “That’s significant.”
“It is,” I allowed. “Temperance is almost a gimme, but the Star is more interesting, I think. She’s kneeling and pouring water into the pool. Temperance also has a thing with water, you see?” I tapped the card showing the white-garbed angelic figure pouring water from cup to cup. “That’s significant too.”
Simon pointed to the third card. “Probably less significant, however, than these people falling out of that tower. That seems like it would be more significant by a longshot, especially if those people are us.”
“Those people probably are us,” I agreed. I could already see how this was going to go, but I needed the catalyst…
I regarded the far wall. As William said, there was nothing particularly special about it. No hooks for artwork or built-in shelves, no ledges or spurs of any kind. The stone floor extended the length of the room and was partially covered by a thick rug. “The rest of this floor of the library is wood, isn’t it? The walkway and alcoves of books?”
“It is,” he agreed. “Only the outer rooms have stone floors.”
“Alchemy is the blend of two disparate elements to create a third. Lead and the philosopher’s stone makes gold,” I mumbled. I once more took in the basin built into the near wall and moved over to it, running my hands over the shallow, scalloped lip of the basin. “How long has it been since this was filled?”
“Probably the eighteen hundreds, I tell you plain. Water and books don’t mix, just as fire and books don’t. The moment we got electricity in to light these rooms, we embraced it. Before then, besides their blessing to those who worked here, those basins were used to douse any flames that couldn’t be safely extinguished otherwise.”
“Simon?”
“On it.” He rummaged again in his pack until he came up with a metal water bottle. “But this isn’t blessed, if that’s what you’re going for.”
“It doesn’t need to be. The stone is.” I poured the contents of the water bottle into the basin, my jaw tightening.
Nothing happened.
“I’m telling you, there’s no way that holy water in that basin was the trigger for anything,” William said. “Otherwise, it would have been documented a long time ago. You’re not the first people to think there may be a passage down to the catacombs from here—it only makes sense. It… What are you doing?”
I cast my hand over the still water, feeling the energy crackling off it, the strength buried deep in the stone transferring to the liquid. I refilled the water bottle to about halfway, then stepped away from the basin. “William, there’s no need for you to come with us.”
“Are you daft? There’s every need in the world,” he countered. “I’ve been working here for ten years, and I’ve never found a passage. I’m not leaving you now, and that’s for certain.” As if to emphasize his words, he sidled up alongside me. Simon crowded in on the other side, his pack in hand.
“Are you seriously going to take that thing everywhere we go?” I asked the Fool.
“Well, I can’t exactly leave it here.”
He did have a point. Without arguing further, I stepped forward to where the floor extended out from the stone wall and chased under the thick rug. There didn’t seem to be anything to indicate where a good point would be to pour the water. Further, now that I was right up against the wall, there was also no indication this wasn’t simply a very dumb idea. Then again, if it didn’t work, I wasn’t out anything except for a little pride.
I poured the water out onto the floor.
The water sat on top of the stone for a long moment, apparently spiteful at the audacity I had to dump it out so unceremoniously. But as we watched, it didn’t so much settle into the stone as…get sucked into it.
And then, so did we.
All things being equal, it probably wasn’t our best move to scream at the top of our lungs as the floor fell away beneath us in one smooth, sickening drop. There was no crumbling, no stairway that formed, no rings suddenly appearing hammered into the wall. It was simply that, one moment, there was a thick granite floor, and the next, a black hole opened wide and swallowed us whole.
We dropped down a deep chute of smooth stone, banging against either side of the narrow shaft. For whatever reason, Simon seemed to hit the ground first, his body sprawling as his pack bounced and crashed beside him. I dropped heavily next, missing Simon by inches as I thudded onto his pack, and then spinning around just in time to catch William as he tumbled into the black pit.
A resounding crack seemed to rock the very foundations of the building, and far, far above us, the thin rectangle of light winked out.
“That’s it?” spluttered William, staring high above him. “That’s all it took? All these years, all these theories, and blessed water from the basin is all that was required? I can’t believe it!”
“Simon?”
Simon had reached his pack and pulled out a computer, which he set up on his pack after drawing it deeper into the room.
“No signal,” he groaned, shaking his head. “There should be a signal. There’s no way there’s not, frankly. Maybe…lemme try another device. Some of these should be gathering data even if we’re off the grid…”
“What’s this stone made of, anyway?” William asked, frowning at the wall as Simon’s voice devolved into muttering. “I can’t quite—ouch.” He flinched back from the stone, rubbing his nose. “Smacked right into it.”
“No, you didn’t.” I flicked my third eye open, surveying the surface. The wall was there, all right—only there was more of it now. More where there shouldn’t be more. “The wall smacked into you.”
“Well, that serves me right, I suppose—”
“No, I don’t think you understand. Simon, do you have anything else handy to lead you to Temperance if he’s stuck in here, anything at all? Enchanted compass, pixie dust, Magic Eight Ball?”
“What?” The Fool stood, reshouldering his pack and waving a shiny glittering screen at me. “No. Not without a functional laptop. This thing’s working, but it’s not getting connection either. I mean, I’m recording, I’m pretty sure, but as far as nav goes, you probably have a better chance at reading your cards than I can offer—and again, that shouldn’t be the case. The connection should have been strong enough.”
“Right,” I said, taking a careful step away from the wall as I watched it closely. It seemed to shift with me, tracking my movement, tracking William’s too. The strands of its energy reached out for him hungrily, like the twining serpents of a Celtic
illuminated page. This was not benevolent magic here. This was a trap.
Why had my cards led me into a trap?
“Guys,” I said quietly, glancing around quickly to where the energy patterns split, the first rustle of quiet laughter reaching my ears. “There’s a path out of this room over there. Do you see the door?”
Simon pivoted with his typical good cheer, swinging his pack around. The wall stretched toward him another crucial inch. “I sure do. But what’s wrong with your voice, Sara? Why are you sounding so strangled?”
“Do. You. See. The door.”
“Yes, yes—I see the door,” Simon said, as more giggling slipped around us, this time to my left. “Geez. You’d make a shitty dungeon master.”
“Start edging toward it. Edging, not running. Not even walking. Edging. Like you’re an amoeba. You know what an amoeba is, William?”
“Yes,” he whispered, his glassy eyes on the wall. He flinched at the next roll of laughter. He’d gotten an inkling of the truth, I thought, even if he couldn’t understand it. “Why are we being an amoeba, though? That seems bad.”
“It’s a little bad,” I agreed. “Amoeba, Simon.”
“But there’s something close to the wall like this,” Simon said, looking down at his handheld and ignoring me. “I think I might be able to get a signal here. And there’s another blip right through the door. Yesss…” Oblivious, he fist-pumped, turned, and held up the device, not seeing what I was seeing, which was the eager movement of the wall toward him, forming a land bridge that stretched out like an accusing finger toward the Fool. Simon either couldn’t see it or didn’t care, but beside me, William started muttering the Lord’s Prayer in Irish.
“You guys, seriously, you’ve got to look at this,” Simon said. “This is amazing what I’m picking up!”
Apparently tired of waiting for us, Simon turned and dashed through the door.
Behind us, the wall hissed with excitement and bulged out, a burst of laughter rising up with it, this time with discernible words. Hallowed, the very rocks breathed. Hallowed, hallowed, hallowed!