by Стив Хиллард
Cadence sat and picked up a glossy brochure from the coffee table. It was bi-lingual, an English version conveniently provided on the opposing pages.
Up till now, she hadn’t given L’Institut des Inspecteurs much thought, but flipping through the brochure and reading the qualifications of the experts made her feel a little queasy with apprehension. They were scarily qualified professionals who would go over every centimeter of her grandfather’s documents. What frightened her most of all was the idea that maybe the entire thing was a fake. If so, what did that make of Osley and everything she’d experienced since getting here?
The receptionist suddenly asked her if she would like a cup of coffee. Cadence shook her head, and the receptionist smiled back in relief. Cadence watched the institutional wall clock tick off fifteen minutes.
Finally the receptionist stood up and Cadence was whisked into a large office where she was met by a tall, goateed gentleman whose dress and manner struck her as elegant, veering dangerously close to affected. Brian de Bois-Gilbert. He began speaking to her in French, or what her baffled ear assumed was French. Then she caught a stray English word, and another, and it became clear that he was speaking grammatically perfect English in an almost impenetrable accent. Her ear finally straightened it out. “Mademoiselle Cadence, I understand that you have certain lost documents, allegedly part of a secret cache owned by Monsieur Tolkien. May I have the sample documents, please?”
Without waiting for an answer, he deftly plucked the envelope from her clutched hand.
“This is but a preliminary meeting,” he told her. “Our team of experts will be examining these today and will give you their findings tomorrow morning.”
“They’re here? In New York? The people in this brochure?”
He smiled indulgently as she flapped the glossy brochure at him. “But of course. Where did you think they’d be?”
In France, she was about to say, but he didn’t wait for her reply. As he went on, itemizing the various aspects of the documents to be examined, she wondered what kind of organization this was that traveled in a pack across the ocean. Who paid for this? And where were the other experts’ offices? Surely not here, for the suite of offices was much too small. In retrospect she counted maybe two offices, or this one plus a restroom.
“… custody, ink, paper, calligraphy, type, and context. These are but some of the elements our panel of experts will examine. These will be the proofs.”
Again she got that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The reception desk phone rang and Bois-Gilbert answered it smartly. He spoke at length in French before she realized her meeting had ended. When she reached hesitantly for her handbag, he confirmed it by waving an exuberant good-bye.
She found her way back to the reception area, where she was given a different address for the next morning’s meeting: Eleventh Avenue and West Sixty-first Street. Why a different address? It didn’t make any sense.
After leaving the Institute, Cadence took a bus toward downtown. She got a window seat and let the blocks and stops roll by. She wanted to see if Ara escaped from the pursuers. She pulled out the last pages Osley had handed her. She laughed despite herself, thinking of his manic flurries with pen and paper. His translation read:
Ara made it to the rocks. There the hawk, immobile save for the bitter wind rippling through its feathers, rested on a tree that guarded the cleft between two giant boulders. Far above, on the purple flank of the mountain, snow fell and gales moaned to herald the coming winter. The cave was nestled behind a chaos of fallen rocks that gave no encouragement to explore its fissures. Indeed, the entrance twisted between stones so closely spaced that, save for a thin line of shadow, its passage could not be seen from the outside. To enter was an act of faith.
She frantically made her preparations and, with Hafoc unhooded but jessed to one arm, and a crude torch held high before her, Ara slid between the stones.
She soon found a broadening cave, cool and damp at first, which had a single, well-excavated pathway. She followed this for some time, feeling the air grow warmer. She began to hear a distant, subterranean sound, like massive, sonorous breathing. On top of that sound danced the creak of wood and the chip and thud of hammers. At last, she entered a high-roofed cavern, illuminated with an orange glow.
In the center sat some one or some thing. She approached with caution and looked closely. It was warped in the way of a large beast misshapen, its design errant from the intended stamp of some obscure race of men. Its face, if such could still be said of it, was shadowed by the flickering light of a small fire. Hidden in wreaths of smoke that lifted slowly upward, this being was such as men do not see in a thousand years, and halflings, never. Its face was monstrous. Folds and creases, rather than mouth and nose and ears, were its hallmarks. Ragged, tortured, deeply scarred from upper left to lower right, it was a face tired beyond the endless toil of lifetimes. But a glint shone from an eye socket. All those that rarest chance brought before this creature sensed that here sat a being — not man, not wizard, not named — of knowledge to match those years.
She gazed further into the torch-lit, glowing depths and saw a dozen men sitting before a wall of the cave. The thing before her precariously raised a long, spiraled, goat horn ear trumpet to the nob on the side of its head. Suitably equipped for conversation, it pointed an arthritic finger toward the men and spoke in a strangely heightened voice.
“There sit prisoners unchained save by their ignorance. See how they stare giddily at the wall, entranced by shadows? They came as looters, yet they stay by their own free will. Do you, Aragranessa, do better? Do you know when the unreal is real, and the real is but a shadow? … And what of your stewards?”
Stewards? Cadence physically jumped. The drums in her mind thumped in rapid beats. She read on:
Ara replied, “Of stewards I have none, for I carry myself and all that I need. What the mists of things-to-be may bring, I know not. Such is beyond the vision of our kind.” She gazed at the “looters,” ragged and long-bearded, and saw that much of the light etching the shadows came from a side chamber. From there also protruded a scaled tail. The very breath of some long-sleeping, lesser dragon was the source of the light that shackled these men to a false world. So would they all stay. Men tethered by bonds as solid as clanking iron yet tenuous as untested superstition.
The unbeheld dragon did what unbeheld dragons do best, furnishing unto men false shadows and the spell of its glow until, at some moment, in some tale long hence, it would inexorably awake and visit itself upon the world.
She turned to the figure before her, and their discourse, if such it was, has been lost from this chronicle, save the now-famous wisdom he imparted to her. “Of all beliefs, a vow is the most precious, because it is the giver who must believe.”
Aside from the path down which she fled to arrive in this cavern, there was only one way out. The opening which pulsed with the glow that fed the fantastical shadows. As she watched, they expanded and contracted like inky, vaulting phantoms. She left the misshapen creature, ear trumpet still poised, and walked toward the glow. She passed by the prisoners, saw in their glittering eyes and cracked smiles the way of self-delusion and false paths. She hurried ahead, toward the slowly pulsing light of the worm’s breathing. An undercurrent smell of something nasty and revolting hung in the air.
In a moment, she stood next to the entrance to a side tunnel, its sides worn smooth by the passage of immense, granite-hard coils. The sounds of picks and hammers and creaky wood wheels and gears came from here. The smell was worse.
She paused, Hafoc still on her arm, then braved a step over the protruding trail to look inside.
It was impossible to comprehend all that she saw, so intense and varied was the activity. Nonetheless, its elements were clear. The dragon was wound on itself. Coil upon coil, edged back into the formless darkness. It lay still, except along one of its sides there opened and closed a vent of scales and flesh. From this came light and heat, timed to
the cycle of beats of its many hearts. What astounded her was all the activity, oblivious to the danger. Scores of dwarves toiled on and around the worm. They had erected scaffolds, and metal gear wheels, and a massive maul, designed after the engine of a catapult. It pounded the rock with shuddering impact. They were mining at the very foot of the beast, reckless to their peril. The rock they mined was festooned with glistening treasure.
It was not rock such as men knew. The worm had vomited up a foul cement to protect its treasury during its long slumber. Hundreds of dwarves were working the stinking debris with picks and hammers. Jewels and gold, weapons and coins and silver crowns were in piles next to their work.
She thought them as foolish as the prisoners. They would doubtless delve here till they awoke the dragon.
Hafoc fluttered from her arm and sailed in slow wing sweeps into the darkness of the main tunnel ahead. She ran after him, oblivious to peril or time or direction.
A day or days later, Ara emerged from the cave on the south face of Everdivide. She was ravenous. She recovered in a dell of warm sunshine that preserved on the bushes a few berries. Fearful of time, she soon was on a pathway beneath golden-leafed aspens. In those groves the leaves fell lazily, like a gentle, season-changing rain of endless yellow drops. The air was full of flashes of color as the leaves floated like butterflies through the dappled sunlight. The carpeted trail welcomed them. Her feet made a swoosh-swoosh sound to mix with her laughter.
Her thirst grew in this glen, and she came upon a freshet splashing over rocks into a pool. It was smooth and reflected the light and color about her. She bent to drink, watching the water sport bright fans of red and gold.
And she saw in its depths a wonder: a young woman’s face peering back at her in amazement.
“That’s it! That’s me!” Cadence shouted, causing the other passengers to jump up and the bus driver to pump his brakes and regard her sternly in the mirror. Cadence knew that was Ara looking right at her in the pool. Cadence liked Ara, more and more. She felt a courage she could admire. She was confident she could stay to a path and detect a wolf-like presence, man or beast, as well as her halfling counterpart. She felt, finally, that she had embarked on her own journey. It would lead somewhere.
Her stop was coming up.
Chapter 25
OCTOBER 26. 3:44 P.M
The more Barren thought about it, his training days at Riker’s Island had been invaluable. He moved quickly to complete mastery of the guise and mien of residents of this clamorous village. It was all in preparation. He told himself he would, as always, complete his duty without hesitation or mercy.
His base skill set — stealth, lying, assassination — was fully intact. Long practice in the arts of concealment in the service of evil had honed these talents to the acute focus of an exquisitely sharpened blade. And yet, just yesterday, he had stayed his hand. Never before had he done such a thing. He knew that such weakness, once indulged, could infect its host with corrosive sentiment. So while he reprieved Cadence’s life for a few days, it was but a temporary stay.
He stood drab and unnoticed in a knit pullover cap, once again outside the West Forty-Fourth Street entrance to the Algonquin.
Cadence emerged, a plastic shopping bag in hand. Following a mere step behind her, he naturally assessed the quick kill he might execute without a break in his stride. But that was not the instruction for this errand. No.
Bind her, trembling and quick-lipped, to the place of your choosing. There answers may be taken as to the hiding place of these writings.
Cadence, all but oblivious to his presence, rubbed the annoying tingle at the nape of her neck. She walked for another block, finally reaching Fifth Avenue. She bounded up the steps to the New York Public Library.
Barren followed, almost at her side, just another patron impatient to enter. He passed the stone lions, bemused by their inert and ineffectual presence. They were hardly the watchful gateway sentinels of the Valley of Shadows.
As he watched her, she checked at the information desk and then struck out, maneuvering hallways and perusing door numbers.
Cadence scanned the door numbers. There it was. 229. The office of the library’s paleographer. As long as she was subjecting herself to Les Inspecteurs, she was going to get more opinions. She knocked politely, heard a voice invite her in, and turned the door handle.
As she entered, a man in his late twenties, tall, lean, and wearing horn-rimmed reading glasses, got up from a desk and came to shake her hand. “Ms. Grande? Bossier Thornton.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Boe-sher. Cajun grandparents. With that last name you must have some French in your family?”
That same question, she thought, embarrassed by the answer.
“I don’t really know. My pedigree is pretty fuzzy. American, I guess.”
“Can’t beat that. So.”
She took in his watch, smart not flashy, his shined shoes and trimmed hair.
“Thank you for seeing me on your day off.”
“That’s OK. I don’t really have any of those.”
“You look more like a detective than a forensic paleographer.”
He looked at her, surprised.
“The museum website. Your bio?”
“Well, you do your homework. Take your pick. Right now, I’m both. I can’t tell which job I’m moonlighting. Neither one pays much.” He smiled. “Sit down, please. Now show me the documents.”
In her bag was a scroll on a wooden spindle, along with some of Osley’s translations. She took the scroll and opened it. There before them, in the middle of an ornate forest of Elvish, lay the great rune that resembled an “A” with eyes and other filigree about it. Ara’s sign. Bossier put on rubber gloves and gingerly unrolled the entire scroll on a large plastic examination table. He weighted its corners and sides with beanbags. He flicked a switch and the table surface illuminated, giving a rich, yellow glow to the parchment. She watched his movements, the careful note-taking, the apparent cross-reference to his computer.
After awhile he looked up at her. “It’s a very old document or a very clever fake. I can give you a pretty clear answer right now, to about seventy per cent certainty.” He uncased a small digital device that looked like a hand-held scanner. “Behold the Mancuso Analytics 43. A test model. Wireless, non-invasive, no sample needed. Laser-enabled. Designed for quick analysis in the field and for national security uses. It’s a chemical and atomic variance reader. Uses Raman patterns. Instant and accurate enough for on-the-ground decisions. The real brains are in the 429-level server slaved to it.”
“Uh-huh.” She sounded dubious. “Sounds like Spock’s tri-corder.”
“Raman — no relation to Romulon and not a noodle dish. He was an Indian scientist. He won the Nobel Prize in 1928. In any case, put simply, it’s a digital bloodhound.” He held it up, his eyebrows lifting in question.
“OK, let’s do it.”
He ran the device over the middle of the document. A touch screen menu gave him access to several national databases. After a few moments he looked up at her.
“Unless someone had eight-hundred year-old ink and vellum, this is legit.”
Cadence blinked at him. “You’re finished? Already? And it’s real …”
Bossier nodded. “Yeah, you can’t fake this.”
She held her breath as she looked at him. “I’d been afraid to ask.”
“That’s just the science, of course. The real truth, the magic, I like to call it, may be in what it says.”
“Well, you want to read some? Here’s a translation of some of this stuff. Knock yourself out. Please.”
She handed him several pages and pointed to a spot. “Start here.” She sat back in a chair and he began reading in silence.
After a few moments he looked up. “OK, Ms. Grande, this is pretty … out there. I was expecting some royal decrees or land-rent tallies.”
“Just keep going, please.”
He gave the slightest ‘oh
-well’ shift of the eyes and continued to read.
When he finished, he put down the translation and gave a courtesy cough. Cadence stared at him like he was the last sane man on the planet. “What do you think?”
“It’s some made-up story from long ago. I wouldn’t think it’s all that important. The physical document, not its contents, may be the real prize here.”
She thought about the pragmatic wisdom in his words. “Only one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone thought this story was important enough to preserve on this scroll and a bunch of others.”
“So what are you going to do with this?”
“That’s a really, really good question. Look, I want to thank you.” Then she hesitated, “Is there a charge?”
“No, not for using this bloodhound. Here’s my card. Call me if you have any other questions.”
“OK I will.”
Cadence left and ran for the stairs, passing a figure in a knit cap studying a 1930s mural of American Industrial Progress: heroic figures, big skies and big machines. She glanced at the man and the mural but kept going. Before following her, Barren stayed a moment longer, lingering to study the great towers and trains and boats and planes.
He felt resolved now. He would gather his allies and then close on this steward when she had her precious scribblings in hand.
Besides, other of the Dark Lord’s emissaries, unknown to Barren but surely already here, would be hunting her now. If her fate was to be in his hands, he must set his traps with speed.
Chapter 26
OCTOBER 27. 10:15 A.M
Cadence did not anticipate the trap set for her by L’Institut des Inspecteurs.
Clues abounded, but they eluded her. The address was on a steep block on West Sixty-first Street that spilled down to the Hudson River. No tony office buildings here — only warehouses, storage rental buildings and housing projects that must have seemed forlorn when they were built in the early sixties.