by Simon Toyne
The second door slid open, disgorging him into the entrance hall, and he glanced round at the few circles of light bobbing in the darkness with the dark form of a monk at the centre of each, like a tadpole ready to hatch. They were black cloaks mostly, librarians come to tidy up after a day of messy scholarship. He spotted Brother Malachi, the head librarian, seated by the entrance to the main chambers. He looked up as Thomas entered and immediately rose from his chair. Thomas had expected him to be here. Nevertheless, seeing him now, walking towards him with his sharp, serious face set wings of fear fluttering against the walls of his chest. Thomas was not used to keeping secrets. It did not suit him.
‘Father Thomas,’ Malachi said, leaning in close and conspiratorial, ‘I have removed those scrolls and tablets from the prehistoric section as requested.’
‘Ah good,’ Thomas replied, aware of the strain in his voice.
‘Might I ask what purpose their removal serves?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Thomas said, fighting to keep his voice low and under control. ‘The sensors have registered some anomalous moisture peaks in that section of the cave. I’ve isolated it to a specific area and need free access to the shelves there to check the tanking and run some diagnostics on the climate-control systems. It’s just a precaution.’
He saw Malachi’s eyes glaze over. The introduction of the printing press was the height of technological sophistication as far as he was concerned. Anything more recent baffled him. ‘I see,’ the librarian said. ‘Let me know when your work is complete and I will arrange for the texts to be re-sited.’
‘Of course,’ Thomas said. ‘Shouldn’t be long. I’m just going to run the diagnostics now.’ He performed a shallow bow then turned and headed, as casually as his racing heart would allow, over to a small door opposite the entrance which he opened and slipped gratefully inside.
Beyond the door was a small room containing a desk, a computer terminal and a man wearing the burnt-earth-coloured cassock of a guard. He looked up.
‘Evening, Brother,’ Thomas said cheerfully, continuing past him towards another door set in the far wall. ‘Any problems?’ The guard shook his head slowly. He was chewing on a piece of bread someone had brought him. ‘Good,’ Thomas said as he arrived at the door and tapped a code into the security lock next to it. ‘I’m just running some checks on the lighting matrix. There’s been a delay in some of the follow lights. Your terminal might go offline briefly,’ he said, pointing at the computer on the monk’s desk. ‘Shouldn’t take long.’ He twisted the door handle and disappeared into the next room before the guard had a chance to reply.
Inside, the air was cool and hummed with the insectile noise of busy electronics. Every wall was filled with racking shelves containing the hardwired brain of the library’s lighting, air-con and security systems. Thomas headed down the corridor of wires and air-cooled circuitry towards the user station set in the middle of the right-hand wall.
He logged on, tapped in an administrator password and a wire-frame floor plan of the library appeared on the flat-screen monitor. Small dots quivered on the screen, floating within the black like bright specks of pollen. Each one represented someone currently inside the library. He moved the mouse arrow over one of the dots, and a window opened next to it identifying it as Brother Barabbas, one of the librarians. He repeated the process, parking the arrow over each quivering dot in turn, until he finally found who he was looking for drifting erratically across the centre of the cave of Roman texts. He glanced nervously at the door, though he knew the guard did not have the code to access the room. Satisfied he was alone, he pressed three keys simultaneously to open a command window and started to run a small program he’d written earlier on a remote terminal. The screen froze briefly as the program initialized, then all the tiny dots jumped back to life, drifting and quivering across the black screen as before.
It was done.
Thomas felt the prickle of sweat on his scalp despite the cooled air inside the machine room. He took a few calming breaths then closed the command module and exited the room.
‘Everything still online?’ he asked, emerging through the door and squinting past the guard at his screen. The guard nodded, his mouth too full of bread and cheese to allow speech. ‘Good,’ Thomas said, turning sharply on his heel and skittering quickly through the room and out to the main entrance hall to avoid further discussion or questions.
He spotted Athanasius standing by the corridor leading to the older texts as he emerged. He was consulting a floor plan fixed to the wall, his finger tracing the maze of chambers, his smooth forehead knitted in concentration. Father Thomas walked up beside him and made a show of consulting the map. ‘He’s in the Roman section,’ he said softly, then turned and drifted away.
Athanasius waited a few seconds then followed him, his eyes fixed on his friend’s circle of light bobbing ahead of him, receding into the vast darkness of the great library of Ruin.
Chapter 102
Liv stared at the network of scars criss-crossing the old man’s dark skin. She looked into his eyes, her brows knitting into a question.
‘I lived in the Citadel for four years,’ Oscar explained. ‘I was scheduled to be ordained as a full Sancti when I was . . . discovered.’
Liv shook her head, recalling the background reading she’d done on the plane. ‘But I thought no one had ever come out of the Citadel.’
‘Oh, they have. But never for very long. They are always ruthlessly hunted down and silenced. What you see before you,’ he said, a smile crinkling his face as he carefully folded his shirt in half, ‘is a dead man.’ He laid it gently in his lap and smoothed it down with his hand. ‘You know the story of the Trojan Horse?’ he asked, looking up.
Liv nodded. ‘The classic example of how to break a siege.’
‘Exactly. Just like the frustrated Greeks at the gates of Troy, our people eventually decided to use guile instead of might to try and penetrate the impenetrable and reclaim the divine mandate of the Sacrament. They devised their own Trojan Horse.’
‘You!’
‘Yes. They found me in an orphanage at the turn of the twentieth century. No parents. No siblings. No relatives of any kind; the perfect background to be considered for the brotherhood. I entered the Citadel when I was fourteen on a secret, open-ended mission to discover the identity of the Sacrament and escape the mountain with the knowledge of it.
‘It took me three years to get even close. Most of that time I spent working amongst the vast collection of books they hoard in their library, sorting through the boxes of new acquisitions. One day, a couple of years into my time there, a crate arrived full of relics from an archaeological dig in ancient Nineveh. The documentation with it referred to the contents being part of a forbidden book possibly relating to the Sacrament. Inside were hundreds of slate fragments. I stole one of the larger pieces before the head librarian noticed what the case contained and moved me on to something else. In private I examined the piece, but it was written in a language I had never seen, so I began to learn. I would assist the older monks in the library, picking up the skills and knowledge I hoped would help me decipher it while continuing to scour each new acquisition for anything that might help unlock the secret of the Sacrament. In the end fate guided me along a more direct route. My enthusiasm for learning was noticed by the senior monks and I was singled out to join the novitiate of the highest order within the Citadel – the Sanctus Custodis Deus Specialis, the Keepers of God’s Holy Secret, the only ones who know the identity of the Sacrament.’
Liv looked at his scars, the same ones her brother bore. ‘What caused those marks?’ she asked.
‘Part of the preparation is a ceremony, held every month in an ante-chamber in the restricted upper part of the mountain. Each novice is given a wooden Tau with a sacrificial dagger concealed within it. We were expected to cut deep,’ he said, his eyes looking inward, his finger drawing along the circular line at the top of his left arm as he remembered what had caused it. ‘Deep cuts. Si
gnifying deep commitment. A regular act of faith – always rewarded by a miracle.’ His finger drifted across to the other side of his chest, continuing its slow sweep of remembrance along the lines of his former suffering. ‘For no matter how deeply we sliced our flesh,’ he said, ‘our wounds healed, almost immediately.’ He looked back up. ‘Closeness to the Sacrament was rewarded with great health and great age. I am nearly one hundred and six years old,’ he said, ‘yet I remain as fit as a man forty years my junior. Had your brother lived, he too would have enjoyed long life, for he was being groomed, as I had been groomed before him.’
He tapped the keyboard on the desk and a familiar image faded up to replace the screensaver. It was one of the photos from the post-mortem showing the raised brand on Samuel’s left arm – the sign of the Tau. ‘Your brother got further than I,’ Oscar said, pointing at the screen. ‘He bears the symbol of the Sacrament. And as you can see,’ he said, turning to reveal his own bare arm, ‘I do not. Only those who were fully ordained received that mark. He knew the secret.’
Liv’s vision started to swim as her eyes filled with tears. ‘So what happened?’ she said. ‘How come you didn’t discover it?’
‘We were not the only ones who had read our history,’ he said, pulling the cotton turtleneck back over his head. ‘The Sancti had placed someone within our organization too and they discovered my existence, though fortunately not my identity.’ He smoothed the shirt down over his arms and adjusted the collar round his neck until all the scars were hidden. ‘There was a witch hunt inside the Citadel to try and find me. Fellow monks began accusing each other, often just to settle old scores. It was unbearable. I knew my time was short so I took risks. Became careless. A fellow novice called Tiberius saw me pocket a fragment of slate. When he turned to leave the library I knew he was out to betray me, even though he was my friend. So I started a fire in the library and used the smoke and chaos to cloak my escape. I ran to the lower section of the mountain, threw a bench through one of the windows and followed it out into the night. I fell more than a hundred feet into the moat and swam for my life. The world was at war back then. It was July 1918. A false trail of my flight was laid all the way to the trenches of Belgium and my identity swapped with some poor unfortunate who’d been torn beyond all recognition by a shell. The knights of the Sacrament – the Carmina – followed the trail, found the broken man and returned, satisfied that I had succeeded only in running from the Citadel and into the arms of death. Meanwhile I was transported to Brazil. I have lived there in secret ever since.’
‘So why return now?’ Liv asked. ‘What is so significant about my brother’s death that brings you out of hiding and makes others want to kill me?’
‘Because when I escaped I carried that stolen slate fragment in my hand and the knowledge in my head to translate it. It revealed the first few lines of a prophecy foretelling a time when the Sacrament would be revealed and proper order would be restored. The cross will fall / The cross will rise / To unlock the Sacrament / And bring forth a new age.
‘It gave us hope. Then twenty years ago another piece of the prophecy was found. The man who discovered it was called John Mann.’ He looked across at Kathryn, whose bright eyes seemed to dim at the mention of his name. ‘My daughter’s husband. Gabriel’s father. It was in a collection of fragments forming part of a book. From the few pieces he found, John worked out that it described an alternative creation story to the book of Genesis. But news of his discovery reached the Citadel. They have informers everywhere. The dig site was remote. There was a brutal attack, by whom we do not know for sure, but we can guess. We never found his body, or the material he had discovered.’ Oscar blinked and looked down, his silence saying far more than any words. The room went quiet as each of them became lost in their own remembrance, the flickering screen of the forgotten TV the only thing that moved.
‘My father died seeking the truth,’ Gabriel said. ‘And not all of the fragments he found were lost. He had taken precautions. The most important one stayed safe. We put it together with the piece my grandfather had taken and found a fuller reading of the prophecy.
The one true cross will appear on earth
All will see it in a single moment – all will wonder
The cross will fall
The cross will rise
To unlock the Sacrament
And bring forth a new age
Liv listened to the words and saw the image of her brother standing on the summit of the mountain making the sign of the Tau with his body. He started to topple.
The cross will fall.
She looked down at the drawing in her notebook and her eyes lit on another fallen cross, the one on her brother’s side marking the place where she had once been joined to him. Her hand rose up to the site of her own scar.
The cross will rise.
She looked up at Oscar.
‘There’s something you should know about me and my brother,’ she said. Then she stood up, and in an echo of Oscar’s earlier gesture, started pulling up her shirt.
Chapter 103
Athanasius and Father Thomas entered the Roman section of the library and stood for a moment, searching the darkness and the deadened silence for any signs of occupation.
The Roman section was one of the largest of the older vaults and contained, amongst other treasures, all the apostolic documents that had been collated into the first Bible. Consequently the individual auras of light that accompanied them through the vast darkness had now dimmed to a burnished copper. The only other light in the chamber came from the thin filament of guide lamps embedded in the stone floor. Apart from that, the chamber appeared to be empty.
Athanasius glanced at Father Thomas, then turned and headed away down the first row of shelves. As he hurried down the dark passageway his breathing became more rapid, the desiccated air sucking moisture from his mouth until it was as dry as the scrolls in honeycombed stacks all around him. He reached the end of the passage and came to a junction where another corridor jutted away to the right and continued along the length of the wall, parallel to the central corridor. He stopped and looked back along the path he had just come down. At the end he could see the orangey circle of Father Thomas’s light, wavering like a distant candle in the darkness. He kept his eyes fixed on it and started slowly walking up the new corridor. He passed the edge of the bookcase and saw it reappear in the distance as Thomas matched his pace. By this method, Thomas had suggested as they’d plotted in the chapel earlier, they should be able to see anything in the passageway between them silhouetted against each other’s light. With luck it would speed up the search.
They continued their steady pace, each row of scrolls, parchments and carved tablets revealing itself then passing quickly into darkness as Thomas’s light blinked on and off like a distant lighthouse. With each rhythmic flash the glow dimmed a little more until Athanasius had to squint to make out the distant blob of light. The fading light also created the illusion that Thomas was getting further away, and gave Athanasius a mild feeling of panic. He hated the library at the best of times – and this was very far from being that. It was as this concern rose up, threatening to cloud his mind with irrational fear, that he rounded the edge of another bookcase and saw it – a ragged human form, silhouetted in Thomas’s distant light, about halfway down the row.
Athanasius stopped. Peered at it. Tried to discern whether or not it was moving. Thomas must have seen it also for his light remained steady at the far end of the row. Athanasius took a few shallow breaths to steady his nerves then stepped forward, moving silently, narrowing the gap between himself and the apparition. He saw Thomas’s orange blob of light wobble and start to grow as he did the same. Thomas reached the shadow first. ‘Brother Ponti,’ he exclaimed, loud enough for Athanasius to hear, ‘it’s you.’
Athanasius watched the stooped form of the blind caretaker appear out of the darkness a few feet in front of him, illuminated by the spill from Thomas’s light.
‘W
ho else,’ Ponti rasped in a voice dried by dust and darkness.
Even in the sudden warmth of the shared light everything about Ponti seemed white and bloodless, like the spiders and other pale creatures that somehow managed to live in the permanent darkness of the mountain.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ Thomas continued amiably. ‘I was just running a routine test and a query came up against your trace. The system didn’t seem to recognize you. Did you log in properly?’
‘Same way as always,’ Ponti said, holding up a thin hand in front of milky eyes.
Athanasius edged closer, saying nothing, carefully placing his footfalls so he made no sound. He watched the edge of his own light creep towards the spectral form of the caretaker until it passed over him and he was almost close enough to touch.
At that moment, back in the control room, the program Father Thomas had installed activated. Anyone looking at the main screen showing the floor plan may have noticed the three dots converging in the Roman vault, but they would not have noticed anything out of the ordinary about them. In fact Father Thomas’s program had just switched the identity of two of the dots, so the main security system was now tracking Athanasius as if he were Ponti – and vice versa.
In the vault Athanasius stood stock still and held his breath. He’d said nothing and made no noise, yet Ponti, sensing something, turned and stared straight through him with pale, sightless eyes. He raised his head like a rat sniffing the air and made to step forward when Father Thomas caught his arm.
‘Could you do me a favour,’ he asked, pulling him gently away down the tunnel of books. ‘If you’ll just step back through the entrance sensor I’m sure the system will re-acquire you and correct itself.’ Ponti continued to stare blindly at Athanasius as he was eased away, then turned and obediently shuffled off.
Athanasius felt relief flood through him as he watched them walking away, but it was short lived. He watched the warm orange bubble bob away down the narrow tunnel, with Thomas and Ponti at its centre, carrying the comforting sound of their voices with it until that too was smothered by the strange acoustics. The light got smaller until finally it slipped away on to the main corridor, leaving him suddenly alone in the silent darkness of the library.