Bedtime Story (46 page)

Very insular. They weren’t looking for new members, so there was no need to publish their ‘sacred learning’ the way Crowley did with
The Book of the Law
. This would have been strictly for their personal use.”

Like creating spells to trap little boys.

I flipped farther into the book: every page was full, right to the end. The careful, precise script never faltered, never gave way to even a hint of sloppiness or fatigue. It made me think of hand-lettered bibles from the Middle Ages, every page a small work of art.

“I know it’s probably not much use to you or what you’re working on, but I thought you might like to see it. Given the symbols used on the cover of that novel especially.” He looked at the book, sitting so innocently on the desk.

I tried to contain my excitement. “No, it’s great. Thank you. It’ll make for good background material.”

“Then I’ll leave it here with you,” he said, turning back toward the door.

I sat down at the desk and laid the book carefully in front of me. My hands were shaking so badly I had to take a few deep breaths before I took my cell phone out of my pocket. Opening the book to the first page of writing, I held it wide with two fingers as I steadied my phone above it. I focused the image on the screen to take in a single page, then carefully pressed down on the shutter button. Shifting to the next page, I repeated the process, and quickly e-mailed both images.

Then I called Sarah and Nora.

“Did you find it?” Sarah asked excitedly.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “That’s what I need you to tell me. Check the pictures that I just e-mailed, let me know if I’m on the right track.”

“Okay,” she said. “Do you want to stay on the line?”

I glanced at the door, knowing that it could open at any time. I didn’t want Ernest to catch me with my phone. He hadn’t asked for it, but if he knew I was taking photographs …

“No, call me back.”

She hung up without saying goodbye. I set the phone to vibrate and tucked it into my pocket.

The waiting was agony. I tried to read some of
The Language of
Sighs
, but I was lost after only a few words. I danced my fingers on the desk. This had to be it. It
had
to be.

I picked up the phone as soon as it started to buzz.

“Is this it?” I asked. “Is it the lexicon?” I bit my lip.

“It looks like it,” Sarah said. “We’ll be able to work with it.”

The relief washed over me like a wave.

“It’s a bit grainy when I blow it up. But I can read it.”

It took almost an hour to photograph and e-mail the handbook. I started with the front cover, not wanting to take anything for granted, then shot every page, studying each image in the screen of my phone before sending it to her.

I cc’d each image to my own e-mail, as a backup. Better safe than sorry.

A couple of minutes after sending the picture of the back cover, I called Sarah.

“How do those look?” I asked.

“Good,” she said. “Now we just need the book. When do you fly in?”

“Tomorrow. In the afternoon.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

My first impulse was to grab my stuff and get out of the library as quickly as I could. I had the information I needed. But instead, I went back to one of the boxes from the day before and pulled out the scrapbook, going through the articles one last time. I didn’t think that I had missed anything, but in light of Nora’s theory I read the articles about Pilbream and “the accident” with a more cynical eye.

I couldn’t get over the sheer maliciousness, the scale of Took’s planning, the amount of thought that had gone into building Took’s trap. Pilbream’s accident had occurred in 1946—that meant that Took had been working on the spell before that, for who knows how long. And the book wasn’t published until 1951—after he had died.

Was this whole thing Took’s revenge on the world that had driven him from his home, from his country, a lingering curse that would ensure his power lived on so long as his book continued to be read?

And wasn’t that what every writer wanted? Immortality?

“There are three kinds of stones,” the magus explained as they walked the quiet trail back to the camp. “The vast majority of stones have absolutely no magical properties whatsoever. Almost every stone one sees in one’s lifetime is in this first group—it’s virtually impossible for someone not trained, or naturally gifted, to simply happen upon a magical stone. It occurs so rarely that when it does, it is the stuff of legend.”

David nodded, thinking about all the beaches he had walked, all the stones that he had skipped.

“Of the magical stones, some are inherently magical. They have their own powers, their own strengths, which they confer upon their possessor. There are defensive stones, which protect their wearers, and healing stones, which can care for the fallen. These stones are powerful in and of themselves: it requires no special skill to wield them.”

They had slowed in their walk back to the camp, giving the magus time to speak.

“The other type of stone, like the one I wear, has no inherent power of its own, but it can be used to focus and to magnify the strengths of the one who holds it. Its powers are therefore twice-limited, by the holder’s abilities, and by the natural properties of the stone itself, its physical form, its purity.”

“So without the stone, you don’t have any powers?” David asked.

“My strengths”—the magus was taking great care with his words—“would be substantially reduced, which is why I keep it close.”

“Does the captain know about your powers?”

“I would wager that the captain has heard the stories of the Brotherhood. Every child does. But I suspect that he believes those stories to be just that—stories. Legends. Nursery tales.” The magus smiled. “To him, I am little more than an old man, too comfortable with his books to have much impact on the world.”

David was surprised to hear the magus add, “And that is not a bad thing.”

“What do you mean?”

Be careful, David
.

The magus took a deep breath. “The captain is a man of action, a
soldier, utterly loyal, utterly reliable. He answers not to his heart, nor to his conscience, but only to the Queen. It is best that he think that any abilities of the Brotherhood are strictly the stuff of legend.”

It took David a moment to work the magus’s words around in his mind. “You’re talking about the attack on the Berok camp. If Captain Bream had known of your powers, he would have ordered you—”

“That, and other matters. The captain and I have a slightly different understanding of our present endeavour. To him, it is a matter of retrieving the Sunstone, and returning with it to the Queen. All other concerns are secondary.”

“And you?”

“My responsibility is you, Dafyd. I am here to ensure that you succeed in your quest to retrieve the Sunstone, but also to ensure your survival and return to Colcott. Should you fail, even if we succeed in retrieving the stone, I shall have failed in my duties.”

“I don’t understand,” David said. “I know that the book says that I’m the only one who can retrieve the Stone, but after that … why is it so important that I return to Colcott alive?”

Not that that’s something to complain about
.

“It is so written,” the magus said. “And I have been so commanded.”

With a turn of the trail David saw that they were upon the camp.

“No more of this,” the magus said quietly. “For your sake and mine.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Captain Bream barely glanced up at their return.

Marci was already at a table when I got to the bar. She waved to me as I came in, beckoned me over.

I wasn’t looking for her. Not really.

But I was strangely glad to see her. The hours that I had spent with her over the previous couple of days had been a welcome respite.

She smiled at me as I sat down across from her.

“I guess we’re both done early today,” she said, glancing at her watch. It was barely five.

“At least we beat the rush.”

“And I managed to get us a table.”

Something about the way she spoke that sentence, the way “us” seemed to be subtly underlined.

When I asked Marci about her day, she shrugged off the question. “Productive,” she said.

“Ah.” I leaned back as the waitress set a drink in front of me. “I see.”

“And yours?”

“The same, actually. Mixed. I made some headway. Then had some setbacks.” I wanted to tell her everything, but that, of course, would make me sound like a lunatic.

“To decidedly mixed days,” she said, lifting her glass.

I toasted her across the table.

Her eyes glittered.

“So when do you fly out?” Marci asked.

I had hit that point of drunkenness when everything seemed freighted with significance, touched by an almost unbearable beauty. I watched the way she dabbed her napkin to the corner of her lips, the way she cleared her throat, the way the napkin started to unfold itself after she set it down on her plate. Blossoming.

Then I noticed she was looking at me and I realized that I hadn’t answered her. “Seven-thirty,” I said. “I figure I need to leave for the airport around five. International flight. Customs. Immigration. All that stuff.”

“Right, right.” She toyed with the stem of her wineglass. “So it’s your last night in the big city.”

I nodded.

“And you’re wasting it with me.”

I shrugged. “What was I gonna do, spend the time packing?”

“Hey, the world’s your oyster, right? Sky’s the limit.”

“I suppose.”

“Listen,” she said, her voice dropping as she leaned across the table.

“What?” I asked, leaning forward to meet her, maintaining the jocular tone of the conversation.

“What room are you in?”

“2316,” I said. “Why?” The air seemed to crackle around us.

“Because I’m going to go up to my room and freshen up and in about fifteen minutes I’m going to come down to your room. I’ve got a nice bottle of wine that I got from one of my Japanese investors that I really don’t want to have to carry home.” She left the words lying there on the table as she leaned back in her chair, watching me.

I had no idea how to respond.

“Or you could spend the time packing.”

Just past dawn the next morning, the captain mustered his men.

“Search carefully,” he said. “Every stone, every bush. Stay in sight of the man nearest you. By sundown, I want not a footfall of this forest left unseen.”

“Captain,” one of the men said, to David’s surprise. It was the first time he had heard a guardsman respond to one of the captain’s orders with anything other than a grunted “Hai” of agreement.

The captain looked surprised as well. “A question?”

The man seemed suddenly wary in light of the captain’s stare. “What are we looking for, sir?”

The captain was almost smirking as he turned to the magus. “Loren?”

The magus cleared his throat. “There is nothing in the books or on the map to indicate what, precisely, we are looking for.” The men muttered and groaned. “No clues, or mentions of trickery, which leads me to believe that it will be something fairly apparent when you find it.”