Arcanum
Chapter 26 : To her left was another corridor where detail vanished all too soon, consumed by the da

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 G.o.d.

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 s.h.i.+fting 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 G.o.ds-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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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."

"G.o.ds. 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.

"G.o.ds," 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 we 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 s.h.i.+vered, "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. "G.o.ds. 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.

"What is it, man?" asked the mayor. "What do you know that I don't?"

"That children have been disappearing over the last few months. But," and Thaler righted himself again, "that doesn't explain tens of bodies, let alone hundreds."

"If the woman's right, of course."

Thaler saw that Sophia was about to have her own explosion, and deflected it. "I'm certain that Miss Morgenstern saw what she says she saw. It may be that missing Carinthian children are the least of it." He turned his sights back to the adepts' house. "Perhaps we can find someone anyone at home prepared to give us an explanation for that as well as for why the magic has suddenly gone."

Messinger grunted with dissatisfaction. "I don't like it, Mr Thaler. This whole enterprise is looking madder by the moment."

"You may like the next turn of events even less, Master Messinger. I propose that Miss Morgenstern stays with us until we return to town and I can repatriate her to her father's care. It would seem foolish in the extreme to abandon either our sworn task, or the young lady."

The mayor closed his eyes and shook his head. "G.o.ds, man. Come on, then. Let's get this over with."

He tramped up the road, and Sophia mouthed a heartfelt "thank you" to Thaler, who raised a sceptical eyebrow and fell into step with her.

"I still fail to understand what possessed you to follow us. It's dangerous here just how dangerous you appear to have discovered and it's no place for anyone unaccompanied. I wouldn't have done it alone, which says something about either your courage or your foolishness, or both."

"I'm not brave, Mr Thaler. I'm quaking in my shoes."

"Well then," he said. "Let's call it what it is: foolishness. You've added an unnecessary complication to an already fraught situation. I would have expected better from someone who's read Euclid."

Sophia sighed. "I'm very sorry, Mr Thaler."

He kept looking straight forward, and despite his serious demeanour, he couldn't help give a grudging smile. Courage it was then. "And if you would at least pretend to mean it, I could pretend to believe you."

She had no answer to that, and neither was she supposed to. She had to realise that there was a line, and she'd crossed it. As had he, for that matter, but he felt his mission had more about it than simple curiosity.

The adepts' house slowly came into view. It looked both old and eternal: built in a late Roman style, added to and taken from until it looked more thrown together than designed. Perhaps the adepts had been expected to change the shape of a wall as a test of craft, create a new courtyard or tower to order. Or perhaps the masters had done so to frustrate and confuse their pupils.

Whichever, it looked wrong.

"Is there a door?" asked Messinger.

"There, look," pointed Sophia. Reminded of her presence, the mayor scowled, but she'd spotted a dark opening and the semblance of an arch.

"You did the last one," said Messinger. "I suppose I should do this one." He looked less than happy.

"Nonsense. We'll both go."

Except that when they set off for the door, there were three sets of footsteps on the path.

"Miss Morgenstern, what are you doing?"

"Keeping you company, Mr Thaler," she said.

The reason the doorway was dark was because the door itself was off its hinges, lying inside, and the corridor beyond was pitch black. The scene was similar to the one they'd found inside the novices' house, but with more violence. Some of the discarded robes were bloodied, and a few of them were still filled with the shrouded bodies of the dead.