Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  Perhaps, just this once, her community could be as well-informed as the Germans. Even take part in the conversation as to what happened next.

  The soldiers swept past, rattling and chinking, and she waited for a moment to allow a reasonable distance to develop between them and her, before walking out into the middle of the roadway and over the bridge. Her empty basket banged against her side, but she tried to make everything look as natural as possible. Perhaps she was on her way to the makers’ market on the far side. Or to collect some herbs, or just travelling to one of the farms on the outskirts of town.

  She breezed across, worried that someone might turn around and order her away, but that never happened and, realistically, was never going to happen. Thaler and the mayor were intent on their task, and the soldiers grimly set to escort them, despite their better judgement. No one else cared what the unattached Jewish girl was doing, and it was just her guilty conscience that worried at her.

  Thaler’s group took the road to the novices’ house and didn’t stop anywhere on the tree-lined avenue. They carried on to the very end of the short, paved road and, having dodged from trunk to trunk, Sophia watched the mayor gesture sharply at the huge knocker on the tall recessed door.

  Thaler wiped his brow and considered the architecture with his hands on his hips, taking in the short square tower, the high-pitched roofs, the grey stone walls. Then he stepped forward into the shadow of the doorway, and hammered out three sonorous knocks.

  Sophia ducked back when Thaler turned around to talk to the mayor. When she re-emerged, they had already moved away from the novices’ door. But not towards her; down the road to Juvavum.

  They were taking the forbidden path to the next building up the hill.

  It was as if she were watching her father tuck into a juicy pork chop and relish every mouthful. What they were doing was so incredibly transgressive that she couldn’t quite believe it, even though she saw it with her own eyes. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe.

  She clung to the tree-trunk until she could trust herself not to faint. The last of the soldiers disappeared from view – as far as she was concerned, forever – and she was alone.

  Looking around, everything was perfectly still, and nothing out of the ordinary. Except that, when she really looked, she saw that the door at the entrance to the novices’ house was half open.

  She hadn’t seen that: someone must have opened it, and told them to go up the forbidden path. So they might not die after all. But that they’d left the door ajar was very strange.

  The compulsion she felt to go and pull it to was entirely of her own making, but it was strong nevertheless. She checked there was no one else around, then flitted from tree to tree until she was within striking distance of the porch.

  Then she sprinted the rest of the way and stopped only when she was safely hidden within the stone arch. The knocker that Thaler had used was a huge iron hoop fed through the mouth of a dybbuk, so high up that it would have been as much a stretch for him as it was for her.

  To say that she was the only Jew ever to see inside the novices’ house would be a rare thing. No doubt someone like Rosenbaum would say it was forbidden, but he’d devour every last detail while frowning in disapproval.

  Sophia dared to peek, not even touching the wood of the door, at what lay beyond. She couldn’t see much, just part of a wide corridor. It was as dark inside as her own house was when she’d blown out the last candle, but the light leaked in through the gap.

  It wasn’t what she expected. She’d thought it would be much tidier. There were things – a book with its binding ripped, a few loose pages lying nearby like lost feathers, a drift of white cloth.

  When she realised she couldn’t make sense of the scene, she put down the basket that she’d been carrying all that time and pressed her fingertips against the door. It opened easily, swinging back and revealing that what she’d glimpsed was repeated everywhere she looked. Not just a mess, but as if the place had been ransacked.

  Things she imagined would have immense value simply lay abandoned. Vandalised books, both paper and boards, had been systematically destroyed and cast into the air to fall where they might land. The piles of cloth she now recognised as the robes of the Order themselves; they, too, had been thrown off.

  Other things she failed to recognise, but that looked arcane, were crushed and bent, or broken and shattered.

  She took a single step inside, to see down the corridor better. She was standing in her own light now, and the shadows deepened and shifted, but she could see even more of the destruction wrought. The corridor that extended off to her right was filled with debris: some of it seemingly flung from the series of rooms to which it led.

  Straight on was a set of stairs, and, judging from the pile of material that had built up on the staircase, things had been thrown from above and then trampled and kicked by the passage of feet heading down.

  To her left was another corridor where detail vanished all too soon, consumed by the darkness. The story that had been told in the entrance hall was repeated. The whole place looked as if a mob had risen up inside and trashed everything on their way out.

  She bent down and slid a single page across the floor until she could comfortably ruck it up against her shoe. Her fingers gripped the parchment, and she retreated back outside to inspect it.

  The stiff paper shook in her hands, making a sound like distant thunder. To her surprise, it was written in Latin: she could read it, and she knew she shouldn’t.

  “Ecce iterum symbolum et a summo ac vincendo nomen Dei.” Behold anew the symbol and the name of a sovereign and conquering god.

  Enough. She threw the page back through the doorway and rubbed her hands together to remove any lingering taint. What was she even doing there? She peered around the porch to the road that led to the next set of buildings where Thaler and the mayor had gone.

  They hadn’t got permission from the novices’ house at all. Thaler had glanced inside and come to the same conclusion she had. The novices, and their masters, had gone. And if Thaler was in the mood for demanding answers, even from sorcerers, the adepts’ house would be their next stop.

  It was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid of them. Most likely, both.

  Sophia couldn’t see anything of the adepts’ house but the high grey roofs, and she wasn’t going to use the path to get closer, in case she was spotted. But if she walked up the slope behind the novices’ house and through the trees, perhaps she could spy on Thaler’s party from there.

  She set off again, following the outer wall of the building as it climbed uphill and hid itself among the woods. It was hard going: the tree roots were forced to the surface by the rock of the mountain itself, and made a web of knots within which a foot could easily catch. The way steepened, and she found herself using her hands more and more to pull on branches and push her fingers into the thin soil. She straightened up every so often to get her bearings, and when she looked back across the valley to Juvavum, she saw it as so very few ever had. It looked different from that new perspective, although she could easily pick out the fortress, the river and its quayside, the library, and parts of the encircling town wall.

  She was at the corner of the rear wall now. All she had to do was strike uphill, and keep down when she got to the top, and she could see without being seen. She glanced to her left along the length of the back wall, just to see if there was anyone there, but looked more closely when she realised that the midden heap centuries of novices had created had built the land up to almost the top of the crenellations.

  The weedy, sherd-strewn rubbish had formed a bank that stretched along half of the back wall. It looked straightforward to climb, and if she picked her spot carefully, she’d be able to see over the top of the wall to the courtyard below. It would only take a short while, then she could get on with her illicit ascent of Goat Mountain.

  The debris was dry and loose, crackling and shifting slightly under her, but the tough
plants that eked out their existence on the older parts of the midden seemed to hold it together enough to stop her sliding back down. She lifted her skirts and took a short run at the slope, and found herself at the top.

  She listened carefully, then looked over, her fingers gripping the stonework to pull her head to eye height.

  The wall was thick enough to carry a walkway as well as the battlements. The courtyard itself was bare stone, with a drain in the middle covered by a round metal grating. Apart from that feature, and some sort of wooden frame that had been thrown down, there was nothing of interest.

  Sophia craned her neck a little further, and her footing gave way with a sharp pop. Her foot only fell an inch or two before it reconnected with solid ground, but she caught her chin on the wall on the way down, and when she put her hand to it, she found that she’d grazed it enough to make it bleed.

  She looked down to extricate her shoe from the hole it had made, and it slowly dawned on her that she’d broken someone’s skull. Next to it was a disarticulated jaw, still with its teeth. And there, a finger, and the broken ends of ribs, and vertebrae: animal and human remains mixed in with the broken pottery and fragments of wood, all just thrown over the back wall to rot.

  There had to be dozens of bodies. Everywhere she looked she could see an empty eye socket or weather-worn pelvis. And the mound on which she was standing was some fifteen feet tall.

  Gehenna, the place of burning.

  She scrambled down and stared back up at the wall. Her heart was banging against the inside of her chest and her breaths caught in her strangled throat. Who would do such a thing?

  The Order would.

  She thought hard about just running for home, where it was safe, where there was not, and never had been, any magic. Where the thickness of a wooden door could shut out the terror.

  She might have even taken a few steps in that direction, down the hill. But she stopped. She needed to warn Thaler that the people he wanted honest answers from were not the kind of people who would willingly give them up. Sophia turned herself around and started back up the wooded slope.

  28

  Messinger stopped and looked back down the hill. “Do you have the feeling that we’re being watched?”

  “Only ever since I set foot on this accursed hill.” Thaler mopped at his forehead and scanned the gaps between the trees for any signs of movement. “They can turn themselves invisible, can’t they?”

  “You said …” The mayor glared at the librarian.

  “Apologies. They used to be able to turn themselves invisible.” Thaler could pretend to be as confident as he liked, but up here, on Goat Mountain itself, with the White Tower looming over them, with the strange silence that seemed to infect the landscape? Confidence was a mere affectation: the place could be crawling with wizards and witches, and he’d never be able to tell.

  The dozen guards the mayor had insisted they bring with them muttered darkly to each other, the rattle and chink of their armour the only other sound.

  “We’d better get on,” said Messinger. “Before I become convinced that this is a stupid idea.”

  “I thought you were convinced already.” Thaler rested his hands in the small of his back and something went click. This was the most exercise he’d had in years.

  “I am. I just can’t think of anything else to do.” Messinger kicked at the road, and set off again, Thaler in pursuit. “There’s no doubt about what we saw, is there?”

  “The novices’ house? No. It’s as if the novices had risen up, rioted, and run. The place was deserted.”

  “We didn’t go in,” said the mayor. “We could be being deceived, deliberately.”

  Thaler didn’t think so. “When I was a young librarian, I sometimes ran the messages to the Order from the library. That front door was always locked, and with more than bolts. There was always someone on the door, too, no matter the hour of day or night. They made the library look slipshod and disorderly.”

  “So where in Midgard did they all go? I’m uncomfortable with the idea of gods-know how many apprentice sorcerers wandering the countryside.” Messinger stopped again and looked around. “Are you sure we’re not being followed?”

  Thaler came to a halt, too, as did the militia. “Gentlemen, absolute silence if you please.” He listened very carefully.

  It was his name that came through the trees, faint but recognisable. He resisted the urge to snatch one of the soldiers’ spears and brace it against attack. There had to be some rational explanation for this. Besides, no malevolent spirit would be hunting him down and calling him “Mr Thaler” at the same time. The last he’d heard, such beings didn’t announce their intentions at all, let alone do so politely.

  He went to the edge of the path and looked down to where he thought the sound was coming from. He squinted, and was rewarded with a flash of movement – a darker green against the browns of the tree-trunks and the leaf litter.

  “There.” He pointed the place out to the mayor. “A stadia or two away.”

  “I can’t see anything.” The mayor, being shorter, had a more restricted view, but he moved closer and was rewarded with a fleeting glimpse himself. Then a longer one. “It’s a woman.”

  “Gods. I recognise her.” Thaler tried to think of anywhere more unlikely to see her but halfway up Goat Mountain, but couldn’t. “It’s Aaron Morgenstern’s daughter.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Now the threat had a name, and it was seemingly mortal, the mayor relaxed just a little. “What does she think she’s doing?”

  “I have absolutely no idea at all.” The slope she needed to climb was steep, and he thought the best thing to do would be to go and help her. He hesitated for a moment before stepping off the path and slipping down to the next tree.

  She chose that moment to look up, wild-eyed and dishevelled. “Mr Thaler!”

  “Miss Morgenstern. A great number of pertinent questions spring irresistibly to mind, but they would be better served if we could communicate in something less than a full-throated bellow.”

  Sophia had no energy left to blush. She carried on using every handhold in her effort to climb, and eventually she and Thaler met at a mountain ash: he, hanging down from the slim trunk, extending his hand, and she, reaching up, her fingers encrusted with black soil and decaying plants.

  He caught hold of her and pulled. He wasn’t strong, but she was surprisingly light. And, fortunately, the tree they were both clutching took their combined weight.

  “Mr Thaler,” she gasped.

  “Miss Morgenstern.” Her face was bare inches from his, flushed and panting. “Does your father know where you are?”

  She blinked, and growled at him, “Just get me to the top.”

  “Most people would use the perfectly serviceable road.” Thaler looked up at the mayor and all the soldiers staring down at them. “We did.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ve come this far. I’ll do it myself.”

  Sophia carried on scrambling up, until one of the soldiers lowered his spear-haft and she could hold on to it. Thaler followed after her, respectfully turning his head: she was, after all, wearing a skirt, and modesty made demands on him that his curiosity didn’t quite overwhelm. Climbing was difficult, muddy work after all that rain, and the same soldier who’d helped the Jewess found Thaler a much weightier proposition.

  “Gods,” Thaler muttered. His hands were now just as filthy as hers, and the hem of his robe was snagged and littered with leaves. He batted himself down and tried to dislodge some of the grime with an expression of distaste. “Master Messinger, may I present to you Miss Sophia Morgenstern?”

  The mayor made no attempt at pleasantries. The tension of being somewhere he knew he ought not to be exploded. “Wotan’s one eye, girl, what do you think you’re doing? Go back home this instant – it’s death for you to be here.”

  Defiant, she said: “And for you, sir.” She shook some twigs from her hair and stood her ground. “Yet here w
e all are.”

  Messinger’s fists tightened. “Do you want me to beat you back to your father?”

  “Beat me if you want,” she said. “Now, do you want to hear what I have to say, or are you just going to ignore me?”

  Thaler interposed his body between them. “This is all very irregular. We understand the risks we’re taking, Miss Morgenstern. The mayor is representing the town, I am representing the library. Why are you here?”

  “I followed you.” She looked down at her exceptionally muddy shoes. “I suppose that wasn’t very sensible.”

  “Indeed, young lady. I have no idea what I’m going to tell your father.” Thaler glanced over his shoulder at the adepts’ house. “This is no place for, well, anyone. As you say, here we all are, but some of us are not here by choice. You should really go home, Miss Morgenstern.”

  “I found bodies,” she blurted.

  Messinger shoved in front of Thaler. “Bodies?”

  “At the back of the novices’ house. There are …” she shivered, “skeletons. Hundreds of them, I think. Just thrown over the back wall. But the whole of the forest floor has bits of bone in it, just below the surface.”

  “Men?”

  “Yes. And women, I suppose. Tossed out with the rubbish.”

  “Hundreds?”

  “I didn’t count them, but there were more than I could count in the time I had.”

  Messinger pressed his chins against his chest, digesting the news, so Sophia spoke over his head to Thaler.

  “I had to tell you straight away. They must have been killing people for years.”

  “Not our people,” said Messinger. “We’d know.”

  Thaler suddenly felt very ill indeed. “Gods. The children.” He staggered, and was caught by one of the militia. Their arm-guards pressed uncomfortably into his flesh, but all he could think about was what Martin Kelner had told him.