"Of course," she said, breathing softly into his ear, "there would be no reason to go on inconveniencing your mother — or Duck — if we came to a mutual agreement."
The image of Duck's lifeless yellow coat, stuffed hastily into his knapsack, filled Blake with guilt. All of this was his fault. He'd got obsessed with the book — to the point of abandoning her. Still, he couldn't help it: the book was his. Endymion Spring had chosen him. For hundreds of years scholars had searched for what he, Blake Winters, had found. And the Person in Shadow — Diana — wanted it for all the wrong reasons.
Slowly, she tilted his chin towards her, so that he could see into her cold, gray eyes. They were as hard and unflinching as stone. "Where is the Last Book, Blake?"
His heart cowered inside him. He had no choice but to hand over the book to save his sister. The sinister riddle from two nights ago had warned him as much:
The Sun must look the Shadow in the Eye
Then forfeit the Book lest one Half die…
He started to shiver uncontrollably.
"I'll help you on one condition," he said finally, gritting his teeth. The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
"You have a condition?" She almost laughed. "And what might that condition be?" She considered him like a cat toying with a bird."
"Ive hidden the book," he lied. "I'll take you to it, but only once I know my sister is OK. I need to see her first."
Diana sounded bored. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"
Blake was thinking fast. "You need me to read from it," he said quickly.
His response seemed to trigger a reaction, for she regarded him less certainly for a moment.
"I want to see Duck," he said again.
"Enough!" cried Diana, losing her patience. "I'll take you to see your odious little sister, but then you'll hand over the book. No funny games."
Still gripping his arm tightly behind his back, she marched him towards the far door. He fought desperately to come up with a plan, a way of escape, but the pain shooting across his shoulder blocked out any coherent pattern of thought. He was terrified. All he could do for now was obey.
"One careless move and I assure you your sister will suffer the consequences," lisped Diana behind him, almost biting his ear.
◬
Diana ushered Blake through the blue and gold doors and sharply to the right, up a final flight of steps to the Upper Reading Room, nestled beneath the roof of the library. The thin double doors were open a fraction and she guided him into a large room full of study carrels and hard wooden chairs.
The air was stuffy and dim, like a museum. Frescoed faces watched them from a frieze above the book-lined shelves; yet the ancient scholars who had helped to shape the university's illustrious history now turned a blind eye to his predicament. There was no one to help him.
The blinds on the windows had been pulled down, shutting out the outside world, and the cork linoleum deadened their footsteps. There was no sign of Duck anywhere — neither here in the vast reading room, nor around the corner where Blake encountered yet more tables, followed by a series of computer terminals and a central desk, where library staff presumably distributed books.
Hidden in the corner was a cream door that led up to the tall square tower that formed the principal peak on the library's prickly skyline. Diana motioned him towards it.
Another spiral staircase corkscrewed away from him — this time rising to what must be the very top of the library. What was she going to do? Throw him off the roof?
She forced him inside.
"Where are we going?" he asked nervously as she locked the door behind them and followed him up the stairs. The steps were tight and treacherous; his legs trembled. The bottom was a long way down.
Diana responded by prodding him sharply in the back with the tip of her key. He kept going, marching upwards — past two thin lancet windows and a tiny wooden door.
Blake's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Where's Duck?" he asked.
His question was answered by a frantic hammering on the other side of the door.
"Duck!" he cried, leaping towards it. He grasped the handle and pulled. "I'm here! I've come to get you out!"
The door was locked and would not budge. His sister was thrashing even more urgently now she could hear him. He knew she must be terrified. Duck hated confined spaces.
He turned to Diana, enraged. She was dangling a precious silver key from her fingertip. He lunged to grab it, but she deftly closed her hand in a fist.
"What's wrong with her?" he hollered. "Why can't she speak?"
"I took the liberty of gagging your sister's mouth," replied Diana curtly. "She was driving me to distraction."
Blake could not contain his anger. "Let her out!" he screamed. "She can hardly breathe in there! If anything happens to her, I'll—"
"You'll what?" asked Diana savagely, shoving him forwards. His ankle twisted and he fell, his knee catching the edge of a sharp stone step. He cried out in pain. Remorseless, Diana pulled him to his feet and pushed him further up the twisting staircase.
"I'll come back…" he called out to Duck, his voice cracking.
They came to a tall door with university archives engraved above it in the stone. A brass plaque on a central panel read: dr. d. bentley, archivist.
Blake looked behind him, surprised. "You work here?" he asked.
Diana frowned. "Naturally. Do you think Giles is the only person in a position of power?"
She unlocked the door and shoved him inside.
Blake stumbled against a desk in the middle of the spacious room and fell to the floor, winded. Dazed, he took in his surroundings. Four enormous windows, partially obscured by large wooden cupboards, provided spectacular views of the surrounding domes and spires. A choir of angelic figures stood on top of one of the nearby buildings, playing their silent instruments, while a statue of blindfolded Justice turned her back to him on the other side of the glass.
He raced to one of the giant windows and tried to flag down help from the people in the street far below. Tiny figures, no more than matchstick men, marched back and forth. The window had no latch and all he could do was hammer on the glass with his fist. The muffled sound did not travel far.
"Had enough?" asked Diana, behind him. "I have kept my part of the bargain. Now I suggest you keep yours."
He turned to face her. She was calmly inspecting a row of books in one of the cupboards.
"These are my favorites," she said, indicating several volumes, as large as Bibles, fastened with iron clasps. "I keep them up here, so that no one — not even Giles — can touch them." She stroked the dimpled black surfaces with her fingers. "They're books that date back to the foundation of the library."
Blake didn't respond. His eyes dashed to the door, which Diana nudged to with her foot.
"Don't even think about it," she said. "You can't go far. Besides, I have all the keys between you, your sister and freedom. The only way out of here is to give me what I want."
"I told you I don't have the Last Book," he said defiantly. "I couldn't even find it."
"Oh, I doubt that," said Diana with a knowing smile. "You were chosen."
She slowly advanced towards him and he took two steps back.
"Give it to me," she said.
Blake flushed. "No," he defied her again, and involuntarily tightened his grip on the straps of his knapsack. He backed into a glass cabinet full of handwritten documents sealed with flattened dollops of red wax, like squashed bugs. Two more lines from Endymion Spring's riddle floated unbidden into his mind:
The Lesion of Darkness cannot be healed
Until, with Child's Blood, the Whole is sealed…
His eyes landed on a sleek, silver paperknife placed crosswise on a pile of unopened correspondence on the desk.
"If you want the book so badly," he lashed out, "why don't you come over here and take it?" His heart felt like a bomb ticking down inside him. At any moment, it might explode.
/> "Yes, I suppose I could," said Diana without enthusiasm. He noticed her long white gloves and panicked, realizing that she had been careful not to leave any fingerprints behind. He could imagine her sliding her hands around his neck and throttling him.
Sensing the direction of his gaze, she slowly removed one of the gloves. She peeled back the smooth white material and pulled it from her fingers. Blake gasped. All of the fingernails on her left hand were black.
"It's like Professor Jolyon," he blurted out.
"Oh, this?" she said calmly, assessing her bruised nails. "Yes, I was snubbed by the book too. Just like Jolyon."
"Do you mean you're in on this together?" he asked, his mind working furiously. A recollection of a dark-haired Diana flirting with the youthful Jolyon in the Libris Society photograph flashed in his memory.
Diana was appalled by his insinuation. "Heavens, no. Jolyon and I haven't agreed on anything since the foundation of the Libris Society. However, we are both interested in the Last Book and would love to get our hands on it…for different reasons.
She watched his face register surprise. "Jolyon isn't such an angel either," she said coldly. "Disappointing, isn't it?"
"I don't understand."
She reached for a piece of powdered confectionery in a crystal bowl on her desk. Turkish delight. She bit into it with relish.
"I'm disappointed in you, Blake. Are you really so dim?"
He nodded; it was safer to keep her talking.
"Oh, very well," she muttered, brushing a smattering of icing sugar from her lips. "Jolyon broke the clasp on the blank book a long time ago, soon after the Libris Society was formed. He was convinced he could find the Last Book without any help from the rest of us. Of course, he was mistaken. He tried to steal the book from George Psalmanazar, who had found the book originally, but the clasp broke off and stabbed him in the thumb, branding him a traitor."
Blake inhaled deeply. His mind was spinning. No wonder the professor had seemed so agitated when he'd first mentioned Endymion Spring at the college dinner. No wonder he'd been unwilling to confess his involvement in the past…
Diana glanced at her blackened fingernails. "Of course, I rather fancied him more after that," she said dryly, clearly enjoying pulling off the scabs of Blake's delusion, "but he became so incredibly penitent afterwards. It was tiresome. He vowed never to go near the book again."
Her voice was filled with scorn. "He became boring."
"And what did you do?" asked Blake, eyeing her fearfully. "What turned your fingernails black?"
The smile died instantly on her face. "After the book rejected Jolyon, I had to connive my way closer to that ugly wretch, George." She spat out the name with distaste. "I could tell he was going to hide the blank book and I needed to lay my hands on it before the key to the Last Book eluded my grasp forever. It was my only chance — or so I thought."
Her eyes gleamed and her fingers clawed the air. "It was almost in my hands," she said, reliving the experience, "but then that wretch saw what I was doing and slammed the book shut on my fingers. The clasp stung me! It was sheer agony! Yet I managed to hold on to one section of the book and ripped that from the volume."
"The section Psalmanazar gave me," Blake whispered to himself.
Diana was rubbing the tips of her charred fingers. "I didn't know his strength," she remarked. "He wrestled even that away from me, unwilling to let a single part of the book escape, saying that even the tiniest scrap of paper held the strongest magical power, that the Last Book would never work without all the pieces."
"But why go to so much trouble?" asked Blake. "It's only a book. Surely, it can't be that powerful."
All the while she talked, he was inching closer to the desk and the temptingly sharp paperknife.
Diana snarled at him. "Foolish boy! You have no idea what the book contains! It is the key to everything you've ever desired. All the power and riches in the world!" Her face contorted, as if possessed by greed. "The book demands an innocent to unleash its words, but only a person with true ambition can fully know their worth. Johann Fust knew as much…as did Horatio Middleton, Jeremiah Wood, Lucius St. Boniface de la Croix and all the others who have searched for the book for years."
As she said this, a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and transformed the surrounding spires and domes to a shimmer of burnished gold, but its warmth stopped short at the window. Blake had turned ice-cold. He recognized those names. They had been staring at him from the walls of St. Jerome's College ever since he arrived in Oxford. They were the ancient scholars in the portraits, all clutching their sacred, unidentified leather books, feeding on him with their eyes.
As if in answer, Diana withdrew a think black book from her pocket and waved it in the air. He saw a shadowy F stamped into its unsightly cover and realized with a start that it was the Faustbuch he had found in the secondhand bookshop.
"That book…" he said, confused.
"Yes, you really were most considerate, finding this for me," she said with a devious smile. "The Faustbuch holds the key to the entire history of Endymion Spring. Not only how the Last Book came to Oxford, but also how to see inside it, to decipher its riddles and make use of its power. Of course, it's rather ruined now — it's been handed down for centuries, ever since the anonymous author first penned it — but it really has come in useful…"
Blake shivered. His eyes returned to the desk and the paperknife, which disappeared into Diana's fingers. She was regarding him steadily.
"Did you really think you could outsmart me?" she said. "You're just a boy. Now hand over the book."
Knees quivering, Blake crabbed sideways to the window.
Diana followed him, balancing the tip of the paperknife against her fingers. His skin pricked with fright, but she merely placed the knife and the Faustbuch on top of one of the cabinets, out of reach.
"Tell me," she said. "Have the pages come alive? Have the words emerged from hiding?"
He stiffened as she drew up beside him and prized his chin in her hands. Her fingers were long and cold, like icicles, except they didn't melt.
Snakelike, she peered into his eyes. Blake glanced away.
From far below came the sound of crowds milling in the street. A dog barked somewhere. The noise caught his ear and he checked the window. The glint of an iron fire escape leading up the side of the tower flashed in the corner of his eye. Perhaps, after all, there was a way out…He wanted to run, but felt trapped by the cold hands on his face, the fierce glare of her eyes.
"Show me the book!" roared Diana, and flung him ferociously towards the center of the room. He collided heavily with the desk and slid to the floor. A throbbing pain cleaved his chest and a strange iron tang filled his mouth. Blood.
Defenseless, he watched as she stooped over him and casually plucked the bag from his shoulders, throwing it on the table.
Like a beast ripping into prey, she tore open the main compartment and cast Duck's coat aside. Then she found what she was looking for: the unspectacular brown leather book at the bottom of the bag. Endymion Spring. She dipped in her hands to retrieve it and whisked them away, as though stung.
"It bit me!" she howled with rage.
Blake gazed at her, his vision blurry, barely comprehending what was going on.
She drew on her long white glove and tried again to withdraw the book. Succeeding this time, she laid it carefully on the table.
She stared at the cover closely — Endymion Spring 's name was still inscribed on the leather in rounded letters — and the began to turn the pages with the tips of her gloves, impatient to garner their knowledge.
"But that's not right!" she hollered, lifting her face from the book. "Why you deceptive little beast, what have you done?"
She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him sharply to his feet. Dazzling lights popped and fizzed before his eyes. She slammed her fist on the table.
Speechless with surprise, Blake forced himself to focus on the page in front of
him. Apart from the black section in the middle of the book, the remaining pages had reverted to their natural, unsullied white. There were no words to be seen.
"I don't understand," he began. "They were—"
"Well, they're gone now!" screamed Diana.
He blinked again. As his eyes adjusted to the glowing whiteness of the paper, he realized that the words had not disappeared, but were recoiling into the book like snails into their shells. They were still there, but only for those with eyes to see them.
The deception, he feared, would not last long. Already he could see a faint shadow of ink leaching through the paper, as though all of the books and the marvelous secrets they contained would soon reappear.
Thinking quickly, he said, "It's not yet complete. I tried to tell you. Something's wrong." He hoped that the statement would deter her.
"Yes, but what?"
Presuming he had outwitted her, he added more confidently, "There's still a section of the book missing. It won't work without that."
He turned to the black page and showed her the torn corner. "See?"
Diana hissed with fury, but then a smile slowly returned to her lips. "Ah yes, how very foolish of me," she said. Her mouth curled into a sneer. "I can fix that."
Unclasping the butterfly pin from her cloak, she carefully plucked the paper wings from its body and lined them up with the book. They were a perfect fit. The delicate black paper fluttered with life.
"But…" Blake stammered.
She smiled at him victoriously. "I didn't say George was successful, did I? I managed to steal just one corner of one page, which I kept as a little reminder of what I most desired: the Last Book! "
Blake stared at her, appalled. Paying no attention, she pressed the blackened wing of paper onto the page in front of her and he watched helplessly as it began to reattach itself to the book with an invisible seam. Like a dark snowflake, the ashlike paper melted into the volume and the pages inside started to spin. The book shone with a fierce white light.
"Yes, imagine my surprise when this little slip of paper alerted me the other day to the fact that someone had rediscovered Endymion Spring," she said. "It seemed too good to be true. All I had to do was look for someone sufficiently…idealistic…to draw Endymion Spring out of hiding. I was quite pleased to make your acquaintance and then to see you slipping out, oh, so surreptitiously, you thought, from the college dinner."
Endymion Spring Page 23