Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  He climbed up onto the desk again, and sat in the chair. That wasn’t so bad. He reached down for the lantern, and slowly turned around. He put one foot on the chair seat, then the other, and straightened up.

  He was standing on a chair. Hardly a feat worthy of Hercules, yet he felt like he’d slain the Lernaean hydra all by himself. He held the lantern in one trembling hand and pressed his other against the ceiling to steady himself.

  The domed roof had always been smooth inside at the very top, repainted white every decade or so at great expense and no little disruption to the work of the library below.

  Yet he held in his mind two things: firstly, the image of breaking away a layer of rock to reveal a door underneath it, and secondly, the book illustration that showed the pantheon with a circular hole in its roof, the edge of which began almost exactly where he was looking.

  The paintwork was old, and the plaster beneath even older. It was nothing but a patchwork of cracks as fine as any mosaic. But he thought he could make out the beginning of a wider line that extended away from his probing fingertips. Outside, the concrete dome was completely covered in greened copper sheets, with no hint of what they might hide underneath. But if he was right, if there was a hole at the top of the dome, which could let in natural light, they would only have to peel back the copper to reveal it. Of course, the hole would then have to be covered by something to keep the weather out. But no one made glass in sheets that big, and the weight of a leaded window that size would be enormous. How would they get it up there, let alone place it without it collapsing?

  Life was complicated where it used to be simple. All those questions to answer.

  The sound of commotion came from beneath him, and he wobbled. Cold sweat drenched his skin as he braced himself between the ceiling and the chair. He held his breath and closed his eyes, and convinced himself that he wasn’t going to fall.

  Someone was shouting, and not in a good way. Büber: it sounded like Peter Büber.

  He opened his eyes again, one at a time, and carefully climbed down until he was kneeling on the chair, then standing on the table, then back onto the platform. It was inviolable tradition for the master librarian to be stationed here at the top of the library, but he really didn’t fancy it all.

  Time to find out what was going on. He peeked over the edge of the gallery to see. Yes, there was Büber, and the prince, and Sophia, and the librarians, and he couldn’t make out a single word any of them were saying.

  He hurried down the staircases and along the walkways. The noise had subsided by the time he arrived, red-faced and panting, on the ground floor. Büber was crouched on the stone flags, his knees under him, his long back arched like a boulder, his hands pressing his head down as far as it would go.

  Around him was a circle of concerned-looking people, each apparently unable to do or say anything to help.

  Thaler pushed his way through, and instead of asking them what the matter was, he went straight over to his friend and put his arm across his shoulder. He bent his own head low.

  “Peter? Peter, it’s Frederik.” Büber smelt of smoke, bad smoke, the sort of smoke that was acrid and dangerous. “Talk to me, Peter. Tell me what’s wrong?” He looked up to see if Ullmann was also present, but there was no sign of the usher. Instead, everyone was staring at him. If they weren’t going to help, why didn’t they just go away?

  “She’s gone,” Büber said.

  “She’s … gone?” Thaler glanced up again, and noted that both the prince and Sophia looked neither at him, nor at each other. “Who’s gone?”

  “Nikoleta.”

  The magician with whom Büber had been banished. The one who still had power.

  “What happened?” He was beginning to sound as bewildered as Büber. “Did she and Eckhardt …?”

  Büber’s head came up off the floor. “They’re both dead. They’re both dead, Frederik.”

  And Büber clung to Thaler and wept.

  The knowledge that Eckhardt was gone made Thaler’s heart flutter, but there was clearly something more. Büber, the man who had never cried before, who suffered disfiguring pain with little more than a shrug, was in torment.

  “Ah. I understand.” Thaler looked over Büber’s shaking shoulder and pursed his lips. “My lord, if you could afford the huntmaster a moment’s privacy, we would both be so very grateful.”

  The onlookers had been looking for an excuse to go: now, Thaler had given it to them. One by one, they stepped back and pulled away, their pace increasing. Sophia took Felix’s arm and eased him in the direction of the portico. He left reluctantly, repeatedly turning his head as he went.

  He was young. He’d learn.

  When they were alone, Thaler urged Büber to his feet. “Come on. Let’s find somewhere sensible.” And, unresisting, Büber allowed himself to be pushed ahead, towards a side door and down a narrow corridor pierced through the wall of the pantheon.

  There were stairs, and doors, and windows through which Thaler was able to catch fleeting glimpses of outside: he saw that there was smoke rising from the far side of the river. Something seemed well ablaze and there was little sign of it diminishing: the black cloud he could see over the rooftops of Juvavum seemed dense and consistent, no matter which part of the sky he searched.

  He just about managed not to comment aloud on the fire, though he was itching to know its cause.

  Guiding Büber to the last door, he reached past him to open it. It led into the library’s refectory, and they were alone. There were still the remains of a fire in the hefty grate, and Thaler moved them to the end of the table closest to it.

  He pressed Büber onto the bench seat, and went in search of something to drink. It was what his friend needed right now, even if Thaler himself would have preferred a plate of bread and a thickly sliced sausage.

  The kitchens were deserted. It was likely, he concluded, that some of the library staff, cooks and the like, had gone over to Eckhardt. The thought grieved him, even as he banged around, opening cupboards and peering at shelves.

  He finally found a crate of beer under one of the benches, and rather than carry just two bottles back, he unloaded half onto the floor and heaved the rest of them to waist height.

  When he got back to the refectory, Büber was in exactly the same position that he’d left him in.

  Thaler sat opposite, opened the stoppers on two bottles and slid one across the table. He took a swig from his own and waited.

  Eventually, Büber snagged the stone bottle without looking up, and clutched at it without drinking.

  “You loved her,” said Thaler.

  Büber nodded miserably.

  “Bloody disaster all round.” Thaler put his beer back on the table. “I’m really very sorry, Peter.”

  Büber nodded again, and showed no sign of talking.

  “What was she like?”

  That got a reaction. Büber looked up sharply, and his whole body tensed as if he was going to fight. There was only Thaler, though, nudging a bottle of beer around the table with his thumbs.

  “She’s …” he began, and choked up. He loosened his throat with several gulps from his own bottle. “It was crazy, Frederik. Like a madness. We just circled around each other until we couldn’t stand it any longer. Then we just tore at each other like we were rutting animals.”

  Thaler’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead, and he had to make a conscious effort to drag them down again.

  “I don’t even know why. She didn’t either. After that first time, we should have left each other. She to go one way, me another; the world’s a big place, so I’m told. Look at me, Frederik: I’m not the sort of man a woman goes with willingly.”

  “You have other qualities,” ventured Thaler.

  “I look like a fucking troll. I swear that the whores on Gentleman’s Alley take it in turns with me so that I don’t subject any one poor girl to the horror of bedding me twice in a year.”

  “I was talking about loyalty, honesty,
friendship. But never mind.”

  “And now I expect all the trolls are dead, too, so I’m the ugliest bastard left walking Midgard.” Büber sank the rest of his beer, tossed the bottle to one side and reached for another.

  Thaler watched the bottle roll along the table, getting closer and closer to the edge. It teetered and fell, bouncing against the bench seat on its way to cracking apart on the floor.

  “There was a deposit on that,” he murmured. “Although in the grand scheme of things, that’s not really important. Peter, what happened?”

  Büber sighed, drank beer, and rested his elbows on the tabletop. “Ullmann couldn’t get anywhere near Eckhardt. The mob had descended into a … I don’t know what you’d call it … a pack of wolves, except wolves work together. They’d have ripped him to shreds and thrown what was left to Eckhardt. But we’d seen enough to understand that attacking with a militia would just have given him more fuel for his spells.”

  The huntmaster stopped, and didn’t start again for a long time.

  “Allegretti was there. Eckhardt had made him his … I don’t know … his pet?”

  “Did he …?”

  “He died. Lots of them died.” His face turned sour. “I should have taken out Eckhardt when I had the chance. I was close enough to take a pot at him with my bow, and he was … busy.”

  “Busy.”

  “They’re still alive, afterwards, his victims. Just. What he does to them: it turns them into little old men, starving-thin, no strength to move, speak, breathe. They lie there and blink. Gods only know what’s happened to them.” His shoulders slumped. “I should have had a go. Nikoleta didn’t want me to, so I didn’t. I should have ignored her.”

  “I imagine she thought she was protecting you.” Thaler finished his own beer. He set the bottle carefully back in the crate, and collected another.

  “She ignored me instead. We were supposed to go together: Eckhardt couldn’t sense me, and I was to get close enough to be able to tell her when to strike. She left me like a fucking idiot and just went at him with everything she had. And it worked. She had him beaten. He used a spell to get back to the White Tower, and she chased after him as fast as she could. She was on fire, and I don’t think she even noticed. I’d run all the way to the novices’ house in time to see Eckhardt vanish, and then I had to run all the way up the fucking mountain, before working out which of the tunnels she’d gone down, and by the time I’d got there it was over.” He took a shuddering breath. “One of the caves. It was like an oven. I saw her, Peter. I saw her burning.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That fucker Eckhardt crawled out of the fire. The flesh had boiled from his bones, and he looked up at me from the floor, with his grinning skull and his eyes all melted away, and he reached out for my leg.”

  Thaler hung on to the table for support, and Büber looked him in the eye for the first time since they’d sat down.

  “Don’t worry. He’s not coming back after what I did to him.”

  It was Thaler’s turn to nod and be silent.

  “What happens now?” asked Büber, reaching for his third beer.

  “Whatever it is, it’s out of my hands. We have a boy-prince and no earls, and I don’t know how that’s supposed to work.” Thaler contemplated his bottle, and looked up at the high windows that were now the refectory’s only illumination. “I do know what I’m going to do, though. That’s about the only thing I can control at the moment.”

  “What’s that?”

  Thaler couldn’t tell if Büber was just making polite noises to humour him, but he carried on regardless. “I’m going to finish cataloguing the books. In fact, I’m going to start again. We’re going to go through every book, every scrap of paper, and we’re going to work out exactly what each one contains. And then, we’re going to shelve each and every one of them so we know where to find them again. We’re going to organise them not by how big the book is but by subject; all the maps in one place, all the bestiaries in another, the histories and the geometry and astrology next to each other.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. No, it’s not. We’re going to learn from them. We’re going to find out how this world works, and we’re going to bend it to our will. That is our destination. If we want water that flows, wheels that turn, barges that run, lights in our homes, then we’re going to have to do all of that for ourselves.”

  Büber shook his head. “Frederik, there’s no more magic. The days of miracles are over.”

  Something stirred inside Thaler’s chest. It might have been been no more than hubris, but to him it felt like the first sight of land after a long, storm-chased voyage.

  “Those days, Peter, have only just begun.”

  PART 3

  Ember

  50

  It only occurred to her later that she’d been the first woman in the library, not just in living memory, but perhaps forever. That night, when she’d led the men down from the fortress to the town, forced the mob back with swords and spears and clubs, then crossed the threshold to greet her prince.

  Neither Jews nor women entered the library. The spell had been as broken as the door by the time she’d entered, if it had ever been anything more substantial than habit and history in the first place; the magic might have gone, but those two forces stayed just as strong.

  Sophia walked up the scrubbed steps to the portico, and into its whispering shadows. The rehung door was open, the coat of paint on it fresh and bright, and a newly constituted group of ushers guarded it.

  If the library was the most important building in the entire palatinate, possibly the entire continent, then using a bunch of boys to look after it wasn’t necessarily the best decision Thaler could have made; habit and history again.

  But they knew her, and stood aside for her. She collected a lantern from the rack, had it lit by the librarian on duty, and asked for Master Thaler’s whereabouts.

  The librarian shrugged good-naturedly. Thaler was never in one place. Thaler was everywhere, all at once, his actual presence only detectable by the trail of harassed note-takers frantically scribbling in his wake.

  “I’ll find him,” she said, “even if I have to stand in one place and wait for him to pass.”

  “A sound strategy, my lady.”

  “It’s Wess, isn’t it?” She had a decent memory for faces. “Now under-librarian?”

  “And he has me handing out lanterns.” Wess smiled ruefully. “There are still so very few of us, and, as Master Thaler points out, making sure a faulty lantern doesn’t burn the library down is a vital task.”

  “All the same, Mr Wess. I’ll have a word with him.” Her brows crinkled as she frowned. “No, I’ll have more than a word.”

  She carried on into the library proper. Carpenters were replacing the missing balustrades on the stairs, and in the centre of the dome, a huge scaffold was taking shape. In the dark, high up, there were lights and figures, hammering and augering.

  It was hardly silent, yet all around the base of the structure, librarians were hard at work, pulling books off the shelves and placing them on tiered trolleys. In another part was a long table where senior staff were attempting to categorise each book as it came along.

  It reminded her of an ant’s nest. No one was still.

  She took a deep breath, and, despite her given title of Princess Consort, bellowed in a most unladylike way, “Master Thaler?”

  A momentary pause in the activity, then everyone who wasn’t Thaler got back to work. The one who was peered over the edge of a second-tier balcony. “Mistress Morgenstern?”

  She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Stay there. Exactly there, Master Thaler. Do not move. I’ll be right up.”

  She had to negotiate passage with the carpenters, but after that, things became easier. Despite her haste, Thaler was itching to move on by the time she reached him, although the cloud of scribes surrounding him seemed relieved at the prospect of a rest.

  “Mistress Mo
rgenstern, surely this can wait. I am a very busy man.”

  “Yes you are, Master Thaler.” She looked left and right. “I’d like to talk to the master librarian alone, please.”

  His assistants were more than pleased to comply, and Thaler found himself frustrated.

  “Really, this is…”

  “A moment between friends, where I tell you in all honesty that you cannot carry on this way.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he blustered, but even by lamp-light, she could see him blush.

  “You’re exhausting everyone. You have poor Wess handing out lanterns. How many languages does he know?”

  “I believe it’s about the half-dozen mark.”

  Sophia put her lantern down on a table, and pushed a chair towards Thaler. “Then you are wasting his talent, and yours. Sit down, Frederik.”

  “But I…”

  “Sit. Down.” She dusted off a chair for herself and sat upright on it, hands folded in her lap.

  Thaler sighed and sat down. The chair creaked with his weight, though less than it would have done previously.

  “You’ve been eating, of course?” She gazed absently upwards at the growing scaffolding. It had almost reached the top of the dome and the master librarian’s eyrie.

  “Sometimes. There is a great deal to do, Sophia.”

  “I know. But it doesn’t have to be done by you, does it?”

  Thaler was silent for the first time in days, and eventually said: “I suppose not. But I feel responsible for everything. It’s all so important.”

  “You’ll have no argument from me about that. Felix asked me to find out how everything is, whether you have what you need.”

  “If I had twice as many people it’d be too few.” Thaler rested his hands on his knees, and visibly sagged. “We don’t have enough of anything. We don’t have enough craftsmen to make the internal alterations, make trolleys, and knock up new shelves. What will happen when we start to take the roof off is anyone’s guess. We don’t have enough librarians to read and catalogue the books, classify them, move them to their temporary positions. We don’t have enough candles, even. We’re working from before dawn to long after sunset, and we don’t have enough cooks, nor enough to cook with or cook on. It’s all a bit of a mess really.”