Bedtime Story (35 page)

David passed the silver disk to the magus. Setting the map down on the book, Loren carefully placed the compass rose into the hole in the map. It fit perfectly.

Pulling the blanket tight around himself, David craned his neck to see the map more clearly.

“The rose,” the magus said, “seems to be centred over the canyon. You can see the entry here.” He pointed. “We’re about here.” He moved his finger to a spot partway downriver.

The river ran from the compass rose along the top edge of the page. It took David a moment to get his bearings. He touched the river near the edge of the vellum.

“So this, where we are, that’s north.”

The magus nodded.

“Does it tell us where to go?” the captain pressed.

“There’s something written here,” the magus said slowly, looking intently at the area of the scroll below the silver disk.

Leaning in, David could see the faint writing. It didn’t look much like any of the printing in books that he had ever seen, with lots of tails and whorls, but he was able to follow along silently as the magus read the words out loud:

The captain grunted his disapproval.

“Instructions, I think,” the magus said. “It seems clear that something will happen with the Stone at dawn, something to show us the way.”

David looked up from the writing to Loren’s face. He waited for the magus to continue, but the old man didn’t read aloud the final four lines:

David was about to ask about the final four lines, when Matt cried out,
David, don’t!

He snapped his mouth shut.

He’s hiding something
, said Matt.

But he’s not covering up the words
.

Because he doesn’t know you can read
.

After a long meeting with the chief of Nursing, Jacqui’s supervisor granted her a one-month leave of absence, with an option to renew if David’s condition required it.

I had stayed at the hospital during the meeting because I wanted to be there when Dr. Rutherford returned with the test results. They revealed nothing out of the ordinary: I didn’t know if that was good news or bad.

I had also stayed at the hospital for David. I couldn’t bear the idea of him being alone.

To be completely honest, though, I stayed also because I had nowhere else to go. My quest was done—I had discovered the root of David’s suffering, but there was nothing I could do to alleviate it.

Later, I helped Jacqui bathe him, lifting him slightly from the bed so she could take off his gown, holding one arm up, then the other, as she wiped at him, quickly and efficiently, with a warm, wet cloth. We dressed him in a clean gown, and she used a fresh cloth to wash his face. She lingered over his mouth, his stitches, the inside corners of his eyes, the gentle seam where his nose met his cheeks.

“I’ll go downstairs for a bit,” she said, after we had lowered him back down to the bed.

The words had come out of nowhere. “What? Why?”

“Isn’t it storytime?” she asked. “I thought I’d give you guys a little time alone.”

Of everything that Lazarus Took had done, the need to keep reading David the story that had crippled him was probably the cruellest. As I read, I could feel the bile in my throat, and the words turned to dust in my mouth. But I forced myself to read them, wondering what other stories were lurking just underneath. I savoured the moment that David’s hands and eyes stilled, but any solace that I had once taken was tainted by the knowledge of Took’s absolute control over my son’s life, even from beyond the grave.

When I finally went home, I poured several fingers of vodka into a glass and tossed it back without feeling it, then poured two fingers more. I carried the glass over to the desk, shoving some of the books and papers aside to clear a place to set it. I slumped into the chair and stared at the
mess. All that work, all those answers, and it didn’t make any difference.

Reaching out without straightening, I woke up my computer.

Another message from Roger’s assistant, reminding me of dinner in New York. A short note from Tony Markus, asking if there was any way I could send him even a photocopy of
To the Four Directions
.

They were both going to be disappointed.

The last e-mail was from Cat Took, titled, simply, “Thank you!”

I smiled bitterly to myself: Tony Markus had taken the ball and run with it.

Picking up my glass, I absently scrolled through Cat’s message. Below her thank you was the entirety of our correspondence. I glanced at it idly—it all felt like so long ago, back in the days when every message seemed like it might hold a clue.

Yesterday. The day before.

I stopped scrolling down, but I wasn’t sure why. I reread what was on the screen twice, trying to figure out what had twigged my subconscious. Then I saw it.

Reaching into my pocket for my notebook, I fumbled it open for the page where I had written down Sarah and Nora’s phone number. My fingers shook as I dialled.

“Hello?”

“Sarah? It’s Chris. Chris Knox. I’m sorry for calling so late.”

“It’s not that late,” she said. “We’re just playing a couple of hands of gin before Mom goes to bed. What is it? Did something happen to your son?”

“No, no. Listen, I need to … I need to see you both.”

“Why? What is it?”

I looked at the computer screen, at a paragraph from one of Cat’s earlier e-mails.

“I think I know where I can find the lexicon,” I said.

T
HE NIGHT PASSED SLOWLY
. They let the fire go out before the darkness set in, and the air was cold. He hadn’t felt warm since he had come out of the river, even with his clothes dry again. Still, it was a small price to pay for being alive.

Sort of.

He held his hand up against the moon, marvelling at the size of it.

David. Dafyd.

Where did Dafyd end and David begin?

Triumph over death

The words from the scroll tumbled through his head, like pieces to a puzzle that needed solving. He was utterly exhausted, his body aching and battered, but every time he closed his eyes he saw the lines of verse on the map, the brown ink faint against the cream-coloured vellum.

The chosen shall rise to the challenge alone

The words Loren hadn’t read aloud.

What did you mean, when you said that Loren didn’t know I could read?
David thought.

Remember, they don’t know that you’re … you
, Matt said.
All they see is Dafyd, the tavern woman’s son. Most people, in books like this, they don’t go to school. Unless they’re noble, or part of a religious group
.

Like the soldier at the garrison gate
, David remembered.
Captain Bream said he couldn’t read
.

Captain Bream probably can’t read either
, Matt said.
Or any of the soldiers. Why do you think they brought Loren along?

David thought back to all the conversations he had had with Bream
and Loren, and with the Queen herself. All that talk about deciphering the ancient scrolls …

How do you know all this?
he asked Matt.

I love books like this one
, he said.
Don’t you?

I’m not sure
, David confessed.
I don’t read that much
.

Oh shit, man
, Matt muttered.
Are you ever in over your head
.

David nodded, his mind flashing back to the last lines on the map.

So what do you think Loren is hiding?
David asked.

Something about you
, Matt answered, echoing David’s deepest suspicions.
I mean, you are the chosen one, right?

That’s what he says
.

He was the one who chose you—chose Dafyd—for this. There has to be some reason why
.

He said it was written in the ancient scrolls
.

David thought about the oversized book that the magus carried with him, and what secrets it might be hiding.

It only took unpacking my laptop bag to recreate a facsimile of my desk in the hotel room, complete with computer, notebooks, a couple of novels, a folder with hotel information and notes for the trip. The only thing missing was an ashtray: the whole of the Grand Hyatt had gone non-smoking since the last time I stayed there.

I had planned on cancelling my trip to New York, but Cat’s reference to her grandfather’s papers being sold to the Hunter Barlow Library had changed my mind.

“Are you sure it’s there?” Sarah had asked when I told her of my plan. She, Nora and I were again sitting around the kitchen table.

“Not one hundred percent, no,” I confessed. “But his granddaughter told me that that’s where most of his papers ended up. I just need to know what I’m looking for. I have no idea what a lexicon might look like.”

“It could look like anything,” Nora said.

“That’s not really helpful.”

“It’s a code. A key, for translation. If he was using it for rituals, for the Order as a whole, it might be a pamphlet or a small book, explaining
each symbol, why it was chosen, giving a bit of arcane history …”

“Pamphlet,” I said, jotting notes. “How will I know I’ve got the right one? What if there are a whole bunch of different codes?”

Nora leaned forward. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. The symbols used on the book are very powerful. They weren’t chosen lightly, and my guess is that they’ve built up a lot of power from their use by this order. I think that once this system was developed, they stuck with it. We’re not talking about dabblers, here.”

As I was leaving, less than an hour later, Nora embraced me in the doorway.

“Here,” she said as she stepped back. She fumbled at the back of her neck, her hands coming away with the crystal dangling from its length of chain. “I think you should have this.” I lowered my head, and she fastened the chain around my neck. “It probably won’t help you at all. There’s no spell on it”—she smiled—“but crystal does help one focus and see things clearly, so …”