Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  “Did you say the lights have gone out?”

  “Yes, Master. The lights have gone out all over the library. Not one is left.”

  “How extraordinary. That’s never happened before, you know.”

  “Yes, Master. I know both that it’s extraordinary, and that it’s never happened before. There seems to be a lot of that about.” He kept the bony hand pinned to his shoulder, and started to retrace his steps.

  If reaching the master librarian’s eyrie had taken time, getting back down again seemed to take several lifetimes. At least, Thaler felt he’d aged that much by the time they’d made it down to the ground floor.

  They’d stopped for a rest so many times, he’d lost count, and the master librarian would ramble on so, often about exactly the same subject they’d just finished discussing and which, as far as Thaler was concerned, had been settled to the satisfaction of all.

  “Where are the lights, Under-librarian?”

  Inwardly, he groaned: his temper, already stretched to breaking point, was plucked taut. Outwardly, he barely did better.

  “The lights,” he said, “have gone. Out.”

  “Have they? How …?”

  “Extraordinary? Yes. Very extraordinary.”

  “It’s never…”

  “Happened before. I know.” Thaler decided that his humouring the old man had gone beyond what duty required. He could either leave him there, or tell him to shut up. “Master? Silence in the library.”

  “What? Oh. Of course, Under-librarian.” And it was as if the gods themselves had intervened, for the endless flow of words simply dried up.

  Why hadn’t he thought of that three floors above?

  He should, by now, be able to see the light spilling in from the porch. That he couldn’t, worried him. Perhaps he had been struck blind after all. But that couldn’t be right: the lights, as the master librarian had so perceptively and repeatedly noticed, had indeed gone out.

  The doors had been closed again. Those outside had decided the building was empty and had attempted to secure the library against thieves. Yes, but anyone who had bothered looking would have realised that both he and the master librarian were missing. They’d closed the doors anyway.

  Cowards.

  There was nothing else to do but feel his way to the main entrance. “Master librarian? Hold tight. There’ll be debris on the floor. Look, why don’t I just carry you?”

  It was the obvious solution, and again, if he could find his own arse in the dark, he’d kick it long and hard for being an idiot.

  “Think, Thaler, think!”

  “What was that, Under-librarian?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Now, put your other hand on my other shoulder. That’s right. Keep still.” He crouched down and backed up, reaching behind him and seizing the master librarian’s spindly legs.

  When was the last time he’d done this? He’d have been a child, playing with his friends in the streets and squares of Juvavum.

  “Hold tight.” Thaler straightened up and, in the event, hardly noticed the extra weight.

  “Oh my,” came the voice in his ear.

  “Hush, Master Librarian. Silence in the library.”

  He set off, treading carefully, scuffing his feet to knock the fallen books, chairs and desks out of his way. The furniture could look after itself: the thought of kicking valuable manuscripts across the floor pained him almost to the point of paralysis. He got a grip on his wits, and continued the painstaking journey.

  He knew that if he kept the wall to his left, he would eventually find the entrance. He found the main desk first: at least, that was what it felt like. Solid, immovable, and long. He crept along one side, then back down the other to the wall.

  And there: light. Two thin rectangles that marked the library doors.

  “Can you see now, Master Librarian?”

  “My eyes! They’re working again.”

  “Yes, Master Librarian. Yes, they are.” Even that mean light hurt after the utter darkness, but he hurried towards it.

  Thaler couldn’t open the huge latch with his teeth: he’d be foolish to try, and he’d had enough of foolishness for one day. He lowered his burden gently to the floor, gripped the catch with both hands and heaved. The latch moved up against its stop with a bang and he heaved the heavy door back.

  He was blind again, dazzled by the brightness, and he covered his face with his fingers.

  “Mr Thaler!”

  Wiping at his watering eyes, Thaler found himself surrounded by a semi-circle of ushers, and, at its midpoint, Glockner.

  “Ah, Mr Glockner. Surprised to see me?”

  Glockner lowered the switch he was wielding and glowered at Thaler.

  “I thought…”

  “Clearly your first mistake, Mr Glockner. I have rescued the master librarian, and would very much like some help carrying him outside.” Thaler put his shoulder to the second door and pushed it back. Damp light poured inside, illuminating an area past where the main desk used to be and into the reading room proper.

  The master librarian lay propped up against the wall, and the shaft of daylight showed two bodies stretched out against the opposite side of the entrance.

  Thaler looked at Glockner with undisguised disdain. “The ushers are present, and are indeed paid, to keep order within the library. As head usher, you are responsible for their conduct and moreover, your own. Are those men dead?”

  “I don’t know, Mr Thaler.”

  “Then perhaps,” roared Thaler, suddenly furious and seeking a target for his pent-up fear, “you had better all go and find out rather than cowering disgracefully behind each other. Order, Mr Glockner. Not chaos.”

  As Glockner and a couple of the other ushers recovered enough to dart forward, Thaler suddenly realised that he was momentarily in charge. Not just of the situation, but of the whole library.

  He felt himself tremble. “Where are the other under-librarians? Where are Grozer and Thomm?”

  None of the ushers responded, and Thaler looked beyond them and out into the square for the first time.

  It was a melee, almost a mob. If it hadn’t been for the rain dampening the impotent rage, there would have been a riot. Shouting, arguing, scuffling even: the good burghers of Juvavum were out on the streets and looking for someone to blame.

  It wasn’t just the library lights that had gone out. It was all the lights. And the fountain across the square. And the cart abandoned on its back near the entrance to Wien Alley.

  The seriousness of it all hit Thaler like a hammer. He wanted to run out into the square and demand to know the meaning of this, just like everyone else. But in the absence of the other under-librarians, and given the incapacity of the master librarian, he was the senior officer. Not just for today, but for the next day too. And beyond.

  He took a deep breath. He felt weak. He put his hand out and leant against one of the pillars that supported the portico. It was cold and slightly rough. More than that, though: it felt old. If the library was going to see tomorrow, then it was going to need some help.

  Starting with some leadership from Thaler.

  “You, what’s your name?”

  “Ullmann, Mr Thaler.” The man was young and biddable, and less under Glockner’s thumb for being so.

  “Take two of your colleagues, and go to the Jews’ Alley – you know where that is? – and knock on the second door on the left. An elderly Jew called Aaron Morgenstern will answer, and I want you to say this to him: ‘Mr Thaler needs lanterns.’”

  Ullmann frowned. “Is that it?”

  “Yes, for now. When you have as many lanterns as you can carry – and make sure they are lanterns, not candlesticks – come straight back here. Go; hurry.” Thaler shooed Ullmann away and turned to the next usher. “Who are you?”

  “Reindl, Under-librarian.”

  “What I want you to do, Mr Reindl, is to find me a stretcher, or something we can use as a stretcher, to get the master librarian away safely and bac
k to his rooms. Very important job, so take one other and go. Come back quickly.”

  He did a head-count of how many ushers he had left. Six. Not enough, but he needed to deplete their numbers further.

  “You, you and you,” he pointed. “Go back to the apprentices’ dorm and the librarians’ rooms. Get everyone you can and make them come here.”

  “Make them, Mr Thaler?” asked one.

  “Yes, by the gods, make them. Beg them, cajole them, remind them of their duty, and, if all else fails, tell them that if they don’t come, I’ll have them thrown out on the street penniless and naked. We need every able-bodied man now.”

  They darted off in the direction of the library’s dormitories, and Thaler gathered the remaining ushers about him. “Gentlemen? We have to defend the library at all costs. Reinforcements are coming, but for now, we’re it. If anyone looks like they want to do the building harm, or to sneak in and grab a book or two for themselves, we repel them. Understand? Throw your switches away, and arm yourselves with broken furniture. Beat any transgressor as though they are barbarians. We’re all that stands between the mob and sweet reason, so let’s acquit ourselves well.”

  Thaler straightened up and stood squarely in the entrance.

  “There will be order,” he said, facing outwards and folding his arms, “in my library.”

  22

  I am twelve years old, thought Felix. Twelve years old and an orphan. Twelve years old, an orphan and a prince.

  He was a lot of other things besides, but at that moment, those three defined him. He was only just becoming aware of how little he knew: not just about the palatinate he was to rule, but about life as a whole. Today hadn’t taught him much. He’d already known how to defend himself from the hairy, stinking barbarian horsemen who’d borne down on him, although he’d never quite grasped just how much it would hurt to parry their furious blows.

  He did now, and he’d broken his collar-bone in the process. Signore Allegretti had laboured hard to save him, but even he could kill only one man at a time. So he knew something new about physical pain, and about how to act through it and despite it, when circumstances were desperate enough.

  Then there was the other kind of pain, the sort that cut from the inside out. It had never seemed particularly important to him that his mother had died in childbirth, that his first breath had come as her last had gone in the same moment. It was a fact he’d grown used to, and there had been nurses and playmates and tutors for company; if his mother had lived, he’d have seen little of her and even less of his father. As it was, Gerhard had become more involved in his son’s upbringing than would have otherwise been the case.

  That part of his life was over. The body of Prince Gerhard V was laid across the horse behind him, wrapped and bound in several torn and blood-stained cloaks they’d found on the battlefield. He was now Prince Felix I of Carinthia, he was an orphan, and he was twelve years old.

  He couldn’t run a country. The idea was ludicrous. But he remembered one time he’d been shown into a jeweller’s workshop over a baker’s in the makers’ market. He’d been younger by a few years – it was certainly before the signore arrived – and his tutor at the time had sat him down so that the nimble-fingered jeweller could explain how he crafted ingots of metal and rough-looking pebbles of crystal into engraved rings and filigree-thin necklaces set with stones that flashed in the light.

  Of course, the object of the lesson, the one he’d missed entirely until now, was to teach him, not how to make jewellery, but that his father had craftsmen of high renown in his realm, and that this was how taxable wealth was created: it was a prince’s duty to make it possible for such people to live and work and trade; do that, and they’d make him rich.

  It was his duty now. He needed to fit his role, so that others could fit theirs. The clothes would be too big for a while, like the armour he wore, but he’d have to grow into them, and quickly.

  “Signore?”

  “My lord.”

  Already, their relationship had changed. Allegretti acted towards him in the same way he had towards his father, and the switch had been instantaneous on his realising that the game of succession had been played out. The Italian had even removed his helmet and knelt in the mud before him, something he’d never done before. Felix had moved from snot-nosed princeling bent over his tutor’s knee one moment, to the master of all he surveyed with the power of life and death on the tip of his tongue the next.

  “You will stay with me, won’t you?”

  “If you believe I can be of benefit to you, my lord, I will stay for a while.”

  They rode side by side down the potholed road, heading back towards the bridge at Simbach. The wagons, and most of their equipment, were back where Obernberg had been. The wheels had all stopped turning, and though the explanations offered by Allegretti and Mistress Agana as to why this had happened seemed inadequate and incomplete, it hadn’t been possible to start them again.

  If the magic had failed, why could the witch still cast her spells?

  Apparently, she didn’t know. She had pledged her allegiance to him, however, and promised to protect him. For some reason, her words brought tears pricking to his eyes in a way that seeing his father’s corpse rudely laid out on scavenged cloth had not.

  “A while? I want you to stay…”

  “Forever, my lord? Forgive me, but I am good for teaching blows and blocks. You have already learnt those, and well, may I add. A lesser man would have fallen.” Allegretti nodded to himself. “But not you.”

  “You still have something to teach me, surely.”

  “A sword-master is for young earls, not for princes. You must learn other lessons now.”

  “But I trust you, signore.” Felix changed his tack. “What if I commanded you to stay?”

  The Italian shrugged. “Then I would be your prisoner for as long as you could hold me.”

  “And if I begged you to stay? For me?” He felt his lip tremble, which wasn’t very princely. He looked away until he thought he had it under control.

  “Then I will stay for as long as you need me, my lord.”

  Relief was like a warm bath. “Thank you.”

  “My lord, if I can lay one condition down?”

  “Yes, of course. What is it?”

  “That you use me,” said Allegretti. “I would not want to be that old relic you keep around the castle, to be remembered once in a while, dusted off and aired, then put back in the cupboard where you found me. If you take me into your confidence, I will repay your trust.”

  “I don’t know anything about what I’m supposed to do, signore. How do I get people to do what I want them to do? How do I make decisions? How do I even know what needs doing?” The task had come to him too soon, he knew that, and he felt frozen.

  “All in good time, my lord,” said Allegretti. “You will have me, and you will, in time, gather others around your royal person who will help you rule. A prince needs a court of loyal advisers who owe no man fealty but only to the throne.”

  “Like the mistress?” Felix twisted around in his saddle to look at her. She was on a Teuton horse. She looked different, sounded different when she spoke: less deferential, and more authoritative. She was back in her white robes, even if she had covered them with a waxed cape. She caught him looking, though she had been riding with her head down the moment before, deep in thought.

  She was a hexmaster. Why shouldn’t she know when someone was looking at her? She held his gaze for as long as he could take its intensity, then deliberately turned her head just before he did.

  She was riding alone. The huntmaster, who up until the battle had seemed to be content with her company, was towards the back of the bedraggled line, guarding his father’s body, which he could see bouncing with every laboured step of the horse that was bearing it. Felix didn’t want to see that, so he turned back.

  Allegretti pursed his lips. “My lord, if I may be so bold: you cannot trust Mistress Agana. Cannot.” />
  “But she said …” and he wanted to turn around and look at her again, just to check she was still there.

  “My lord, people lie. Even to themselves. But, eventually, the truth works its way towards the light, like a seed, where it will grow to full fruit.” The Italian steered his horse closer to Felix’s. “She will betray you, though she does not know that yet. She will seize your throne one day, and crown herself in your place.”

  Felix’s instinctive reaction was to blurt: “That’s just silly, signore. Girls can’t become princes.”

  “Some barbarians have queens to rule them, my lord. It is not completely unknown.” Allegretti sniffed. “Could you stop her? Could your army overcome her?”

  “I don’t have an army, signore. You know that.”

  “Then, until you do, she is a threat to you and to all Carinthia. You begged me to stay: I beg you to listen. If she is the only hexmaster left, there is no force in this or any other land that can oppose her. She could, if she wished, kill every last one of us and tell her own story to Juvavum. We are currently too weak to defend ourselves against her.”

  Felix felt his lip go again, and he used his good hand to clamp it tight against his face. He didn’t trust himself to speak without his voice wavering.

  Allegretti, on the other hand, spoke with the utmost conviction. “Your first priority, after your coronation, needs to be consolidating your power. She represents another flag around which the earls might rally. Civil war is … ugly, my lord.”

  “She said she would serve me,” said Felix. His words squeaked out.

  “But you cannot control her. She cannot control herself: one look at Master Büber’s face tells you all you need to know.”

  And yes, his father’s huntmaster now had eyes that had seen too much. That, and the complete destruction of Obernberg, gave credence to the sword-master’s warning.

  “At the very least, even if you will not dispose of her soon, you must devise a way by which you could dispose of her should the necessity arise. In the short term, she will be useful, I have no doubt, but the more you use her, the more powerful she will become.”