by Simon Morden
In a hundred years’ time, she would be like them, patting and stroking firm flesh when she could, because it was the one thing she’d never have again.
Or she might be dead. Broken, mad, immolated, disintegrated. Nothing was certain. And certainly not now.
“Is that what I really want?” she said out loud.
It always used to be. It wasn’t just her goal, but every adept’s, to be called to the White Tower and meet with the Master of the Order of the White Robe, to undergo whatever ritual was required of them, to be marked with the tattoos that would confer on them the power they craved.
In the three years since she’d been moved to the adepts’ house, she’d known of two men who’d received that call. There had surely been others before then, and it was her turn next.
So where were the younger masters? They’d been conspicuously missing from the meeting she’d just had. Eckhardt had been the youngest one there, and no one would ever call him young again.
There was something else, too, undefinable and possibly unknowable: a niggling feeling that she was being built up, not for greatness, but for destruction. Eckhardt wasn’t the Master of the Order, and yet he seemed to have assumed that position. The others, on paper just as powerful as him, appeared to take a subordinate role.
Nikoleta remembered their pawing hands, and swallowed bile. She picked up a shrivelled brown chestnut case from the ground by her side. The spines were brittle with age, sharp but easily broken. She shifted the ink on her exposed forearms, threw the seed pod lazily into the air and set it alight with a tiny fireball before it hit the ground.
It sizzled and crisped, a thread of black smoke lifted into the branches above her.
For the first time since she’d turned up at the novices’ house – cold, all but naked, hammering on the door because, of all the places in the world, that place was the one where they understood people like her – she felt ambivalent.
The Order had recognised her abilities, taught her how to use them, scraped symbols on her skin and shown her power beyond reckoning. None of that came for free. She had paid, and paid dearly.
She dragged herself up and carried on down the path. Back in Byzantium, she knew she hadn’t belonged. Here in Carinthia, she’d never felt that old unease until now.
5
Thaler sat at his desk in the library, the satchel burning a hole in the floor between his feet. He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even string one thought after the other. He fidgeted and moved scraps of paper around, and stared off into the distance across the cold, empty space between the balconies to the far side of the reading room.
He was surrounded on three sides by shelves, giving him a little alcove to work in, and a view of the rest of the library. Such were the privileges granted to an under-librarian. He had his own room in the dormitory, an allowance of a few shillings a week, and all the books he could want.
Lights – burnished globes of brass, glowing like suns – hung from the distant ceiling on great chains. He could read all day and all night under their perpetual light if he wanted, and he sometimes did. He was, he considered, the most fortunate of men.
To risk throwing such a life away was not a trifling matter. He hoped one day to contend for the position of master librarian, when the old master died. There would be fierce, but coolly polite, competition for that honour. And if he was caught abusing his position to secretly help a friend – against the hexmasters, no less – he could kiss that hope goodbye. Probably along with his flabby arse.
Even now they were preparing the pressing pit in the main square: not for him, nor Büber, but for some barbarian lord who’d stupidly threatened the prince. He’d rather avoid that fate.
He looked out to the opposite balcony, where one of the other under-librarians had their desk. Thomm wasn’t there. In fact, Thomm was rarely there, and that merely added to the general malaise that had descended over the library of late. The last decade at least.
As far as he knew, the master librarian was in his eyrie, on the balcony one floor up that sat directly beneath the library’s dome, while the apprentice master was one floor down with his half-dozen inky-fingered pupils. He’d counted seven other librarians moving listlessly between the shelves in the reading room. He pursed his lips, bent down to collect the satchel, and tucked it inside his black librarian’s gown.
He listened. Nothing but the slight moan of a draught and the creak of a chain. He pushed his chair back, deliberately making its legs rasp against the dark oak planks. He listened again. No footsteps, no coughs, no squeak of a trolley.
Thaler moved into the next bay, and bent on aching knees to the very bottom shelf where the folio- and larger-sized books were kept. He dragged three of them out, piling them on the floor beside him, then eased a fourth a little way from the back of the shelf. He looked around again, making absolutely sure he couldn’t be spotted by anyone, anyone except the master librarian, and he was always asleep until lunch.
He pressed the satchel into the gap, pinned it close with the book, then reshelved the heavy folios. He shuffled back to inspect his handiwork, and was satisfied. Those particular titles probably hadn’t been moved for the better part of a century, and it was unlikely they’d be disturbed for another hundred years. All he had to do was remember where he’d put it.
He went back to his desk, but still clarity eluded him. He’d hidden the unicorn’s horn. Now he had to discover why Büber had found two of them, without their attendant unicorns.
He needed fresh air. The library was windowless, and, with only the one main door that stayed mostly closed, was still and quiet and musty. Even the walls of the building were powdery with age: the Romans had worshipped their gods here, in their pantheon. That hadn’t suited German ways; they instead raised great pillars of wood in forest clearings and on rock outcrops under the open sky. The statues of Jupiter and Mercury had been turned out and cast into the river, but the space had remained, unused and unloved until one of Gerhard’s ancestors decided on a whim that he wanted a library.
Gods bless him for doing so.
Thaler got up from his desk again, and carried his outdoor shoes down the creaking staircase to the ground floor. From there, he made his way to the entrance hall, passing the huge desk that blocked the way to visitors – not that there were ever many, or even a few – and the dozing form of Glockner, the head usher, as crumpled and dusty as the books he supposedly guarded.
He kicked off his library slippers, nudging them back to a pair against the stonework of the hall, and eased on his shoes. As he fumbled his fat fingers into the heels, he looked up at the vast dome, the encircling galleries, the heavy lights on their solid chains, the stadia of shelves beneath. His lip trembled for a moment, before he stiffened it.
It could be brilliant, with a little more care, a few more librarians, a touch more of the prince’s money. They could do only so much with the meagre resources they had, and that grieved him. When he was the Master, he’d go to Gerhard and tell him so.
The front doors were heavy, studded with iron, dark with pitch. It took genuine effort to lift the latch and pull the ring. The outside poured in through the crack, and Thaler had to keep the door moving until it was wide enough to get his bulk across the threshold. He turned, and strained again until the door banged shut.
There, that should wake Glockner.
He was under the colonnaded portico of the pantheon, in shadow and cold. Out in Library Square, a fountain played with the spring breezes, and over in the corner, a sausage seller was setting out his stall. In comparison to the inside, the square was teeming with activity. Carts, more or less steered by their drivers, rumbled across the cobbles, and busy people with baskets and sacks crossed from one street to another, disappearing up narrow alleys and emerging from doors.
Distraction and familiarity, that was what he needed.
He turned left, down the hill. The cobbles were still glistening with melting frost, and it was chilly enough in between
the tall town houses to make him wrap himself tightly in his black librarian’s gown.
Sunlight was striking the eaves of the east-facing roofs, so he chose to walk down to the quay. There was little heat in the spring sun, but it would be something, and the river didn’t trap the air like the narrow alleyways of the Old Town.
He threaded his way by the most direct route, which is to say not direct at all, and suddenly popped out between two high walls onto the quayside. Two long barges were being loaded, bundles and crates passed up from carts and onto the flat-bottomed boats by a chain of shirt-sleeved men. A third was undergoing the reverse process, and when a cart was full, it was pushed off its chocks so that it wheeled itself across the wide quay, mostly in the direction of the waiting warehouses.
Across the river, beside the new town, were another two barges. One was casting off, orders shouted in the river-workers’ cant ringing clear across the fast-flowing water. Its pointed bow aimed upstream, and for a moment the barge drifted backwards, its front threatening to turn across the current.
Then the heavily tattooed bargemaster put his hand to the tiller, his inked arms flashing darkly. The boat steadied and held its position. With seemingly no effort, and with the barge-hands busy with securing the ropes on deck, the vessel started to make headway. Little waves broke against its wooden sides as it pushed forward against the mountain meltwater.
Thaler walked upstream too, but the barge crept ahead of his pace. It threaded through the central arch of the bridge and he lost sight of it. His eyes were drawn instead to the forested flanks of the ridge that ran east to west across the valley, neatly bisected by the river.
On top of the western ridge was the White Fortress, bright and shining against the green of the wood and the blue of the sky. On the eastern side, the White Tower, as dark as the other was bright. Everyone passing through – south to the mountain passes or north to the cities on the plains – was aware of those two authorities.
He looked from one monumental edifice to the other. It wasn’t by chance or accident of geography that the town had grown up under the walls of the fortress, rather than huddling close to the flanks of Goat Mountain. As much as the prince’s subjects feared their lord’s temporal power, the laws that they were made to live by were at least comprehensible by mortals.
Magical things – like unicorns – were wild, quixotic, barely understood. That was the hexmasters’ world, and poor Büber, who had always lived on the line between, had finally crossed over into it.
There were books about magic in the library, but no books of magic. Those were all carefully sequestered away and kept under lock, key, and far more arcane guards somewhere inside the ill-named White Tower.
An uninitiated man, even of Thaler’s standing, would never get to see what was written in those books: it gave him an odd feeling in his stomach, to know that they were denied to him, even though the thought of opening even the most elementary primer in magic made him sweat.
There might be a way around that prohibition, though. It was risky, and he wouldn’t take it yet. There were other avenues to be exhausted first.
This was better. He had started to plan, tentatively yes, but a solid course of action nevertheless. He breathed deeply, and caught the scent of pine on the wind. So: when he got back to the library, he would still have his duties to perform. His main work was overseeing the cataloguing and indexing of every book in the library, a task that had been barely started when he first entered the cool marble dome as a thin, pale youth, and that would still be incomplete when they carried him out feet first, however many years in the future that might be.
No one would be checking on him, though. He could, if he wanted, spend each and every day trawling the shelves for books of lore, the bestiaries and the philosophies, until he found his answer. He’d have to dig through the layers of manuscripts, and start with the very oldest. He would have to keep notes of his search – in code, perhaps. Yes, a code: a complex cipher, not one that could be solved with a moment’s glance.
Thaler took one last deep breath of the morning riverside air, and turned to go back the way he’d come: the alleys of the Old Town were such that the shortest way to the library was to take the long way around.
Walking back along the quay, he paused to let a carter nudge the wheels of his barrow towards the waiting warehouse. As his gaze followed the man’s broad back, he caught sight of a woman collecting an oilskin-wrapped bundle from a merchant.
He knew her, and guessed what she was now carrying, a heavy load caught up in both her arms and clutched to her chest. She was intending to go towards the Town Hall, away from where Thaler was, but she sensed she was being watched.
She turned quickly, curls of long dark hair escaping from her loose plait.
“Mr Thaler? Can you now smell books?”
She smiled and stopped. The weight she was carrying made it seem boorish to expect her to walk a single extra step towards him, so he went to her instead.
“Miss Morgenstern.” There was something else he should be saying. “Happy…”
“Purim, Mr Thaler. It starts on Friday.” She smiled at him. “Happy Purim indeed.”
“And this Purim? You build tents, yes?”
“That’s the Feast of Tabernacles, Mr Thaler. At Purim we get wildly, incoherently drunk and burn an effigy of the wicked Haman.” She smiled again, and hugged the bundle of books a little tighter. “The men do, at least.”
Thaler nodded with satisfaction. “Just like all our festivals, then. We’ll make good Wotan-worshippers of you Jews yet.”
“I think Father would have something to say about that.” She hefted the books again. They were clearly heavy. She looked down at them, then up at Thaler. “I’m sure he’d welcome you to our house later, if you wanted to pay a visit. He’s busy now organising the wood for the bonfire, and a hundred other things I’m sure.”
“Do you know …?”
She looked up at the sky with a little flick and shake of her head. “A copy of the works of Josephus, which I’m sure you already have, a part of Maimonides – I’m not sure which part, and I don’t think Father does either – and a Berber translation of a discourse on Greek geometry. Euclid? Or did he say of the school of Euclid? I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, Mr Thaler.”
That a Jewess knew of Euclid, let alone carried one of his books in her arms, was odd enough. “Tell your father I may well drop by. I’d like to check his Maimonides against ours.”
“He’ll be delighted as always, if a little distracted. I have to go, or I’ll drop them on the way. Tell me, Mr Thaler, why do they have to make books so big?” She adjusted her load one last time and, before he had a chance to answer, started to stride up the quayside, her skirts flapping and snapping like a sail.
“The words, Miss Morgenstern,” Thaler replied. “It’s because of all the words.”
She didn’t wave to show that she’d heard, just carried on towards the bridge and the road that led off it, up the hill to the Old Market and Jews’ Alley where most of her kind lived. There was even room for a man as unorthodox – that was their word, not his – as Aaron Morgenstern.
So: no more delay. To work – the first books to find would be whatever the library carried of the Rabbi Maimonides, and then he’d see about Büber’s unicorn. The confusion he’d felt had gone like a mist burnt away by the rising sun. He set out, his footsteps over the cobbles almost energetic.
He hated winter, hated the cold and the dark and the damp. Even the library, bathed in perpetual light, seemed smaller and more joyless under a thick blanket of iron-hard snow. Everything was just more difficult.
And now it was spring. The Ostara festival had been earlier that week, an excuse for eating and drinking and being as merry as the Jews were planning to get for their Purim celebrations. Not that librarians were supposed to get drunk, though they sometimes did. Neither were they supposed to engage in the more earthy offerings of the goddess, though that, too, was sometimes hon
oured more in the breach. And they weren’t supposed to marry: their books were to be their wives, their fellow librarians their family.
It was mostly enough for Thaler. Only sometimes – as with the mention of Büber’s casual whoring – did it suddenly bite him hard. He kept himself insulated against the world for the most part, with an armour of leather binding, glued spines and black lettering.
Up Coin Street: windows were open, and the tap-tap of hammers and hiss of scalding steam drifted out from the workshops, bringing the smell of hot metal with it. Everyone seemed hard at work, except him. He felt ashamed, and started to hurry.
6
When it was done, and the guards had escorted Gerhard and a white-faced Felix back to the fortress, Büber stood in silent contemplation in front of the pressing pit, his teeth grazing at the scar-tissue of one of his finger stumps.
The crowd, which had gathered to hear Walter of Danzig’s bones crack, started to leave, and Reinhardt, who’d been in charge of the execution, waited for Büber to give the nod and start the business of raising the massive stone slab.
The sacred grove of ash trees was in the main square of the town, surrounded by tall houses in the same way that the grove surrounded the bleached, smoothed pole of the irminsul. Büber looked up at the pale, ancient trunk, crowned with thick iron nails that bled rust.
The pit was at the base of the irminsul itself. Long ago, their priest-princes had sacrificed captives to Wotan One-Eye by hanging them from the trees. More civilised times had decided that the gods didn’t need blood to keep the crops growing and the summer returning, and the pressing pit had been devised to execute criminals out of sight, if not out of hearing.
Quite how crushing a man’s breath from his body until his ribs snapped and his skull shattered counted as civilised escaped Büber. There were quicker, cleaner deaths to be had.