with a cane, “but I suppose in this case we may make an exception to the members only rule…” Erect at last, he tottered toward the door behind him. “If you’d bring the lamp and step this way,” he said, and the reference to a fortune earned Doyle the addition of a grudging “sir.”
The door swung inward with such creaking that Doyle knew it hadn’t been opened in quite some time, and when he’d stepped inside behind Moss, and the lamp illuminated the narrow room beyond, he could see why.
Stacks of mildewed, leather-bound journals filled the place from floor to ceiling, and had in places collapsed, spilling crumbled fragments of age-browned paper across the damp floor. Doyle reached for the top volume of a stalagmite stack that only came up chest-high, but rain had leaked into the room at some time and melted or germinated the ancient bindings into one solid mass. Doyle’s prying was exciting to madness a nation of spiders, so he stopped and looked at a shelf that contained several pairs of mummified boots. Catching a glitter by the heel of one, he looked closer and saw a three-inch length of fine gold chain trailing from the ancient leather. All the boots proved to have chains, though most were copper long since gone green.
“Why chains?”
“Mm? Oh, it’s… traditional, in our formal functions, to wear a chain attached to the heel of the right boot. I don’t know how the custom got started, just one of those peculiarities, I expect, like cuff buttons that don’t—”
“What do you know about the origins of the custom?” Doyle growled, for like Byron’s remark about bare feet and dirt floors, this seemed to remind him of something. “Think!”
“Now see here, sir… no need to… wrathful tones … but let’s see, I believe members wore the chains at all times during the reign of Charles the Second… oh, of course, and they didn’t just staple it to the heel as they do now, the chain actually entered the boot through a hole and passed through the stocking and was knotted around the ankle. God knows why. Over the years it’s been simplified… prevent chafing … “
Doyle had begun dismantling one of the drier and older-looking book stacks. He found that they were roughly chronological, arranged in the same pattern as geological strata, and that the journal entries from the eighteenth century chronicled nothing but a dwindling involvement in social affairs—a dinner at which Samuel Johnson was expected but didn’t show, a complaint against adulterated port wines, a protest against gold and silver galloon, whatever that might be, adorning men’s hats—but when he had unearthed the upper volumes of the seventeenth century the notes abruptly became sparser and more cryptic, and were generally slips of paper glued or laid into the books rather than written on the pages. He was unable to follow any gist of these older records, which consisted of lists, in some code, or maps with incomprehensibly abbreviated street names; but at length he found one volume that seemed to be entirely devoted to the occurrences of one night, that of February the fourth, 1684. The pieces of paper laid in it were generally hastily scrawled and in plain English, as if there hadn’t been time to use a cipher.
The writers of them did, though, seem to take it for granted that any reader would be familiar with the situation, and interested only in the details.
“… Then we followed him and his hellish retinue back a-crosse the ice from the Pork-Chopp Lane stayres to the Southwark side,” Doyle read on one slip, “our party dextrously in a Boat with wheeles, piloted by B. and our unnam’d Informant, and although we took care to avoid any clear conflict while on the water, onely endeav’ring to drive them onto the land… the Connexion of course being no good upon the frozen water… there ensu’d Troubles.” Another fragment read, “… destroied entirely, and their leader kill’d by a pistol-ball in the face… ” Toward the front of the book there was an entry actually written on a page: “As wee were about to set about dynynge upon sawfages and a rare chine of beef, in hee burst, and sadlie call’d us away from what was to bee one of the fine dinners.”
He read it, and for the first time during all his adventures and mishaps he actually doubted his sanity.
The note read: “IHAY, ENDANBRAY. ANCAY OUYAY IGITDAY?”—and it was in his own handwriting, though the ink was as faded with age as every other notation in the book.
Suddenly dizzy, he sat down on a stack of books, which exploded to dust under his weight, spilling him backward against another pile, which toppled down upon him, burying him in damp, disintegrating parchment and showers of panicked spiders and silverfish.
The appalled Moss actually fled when the incoherently shouting giant, now garlanded with bugs and rotting paper, rose from the ruin like a Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse embodying Decay.
The man who at this point didn’t know whether he was Doyle or Ashbless or some long-dead member of the Antaeus Brotherhood got his feet under him and, still shouting, and slapping bugs out of his beard, ran out of the archive closet and through the sitting room into the hall. A cuckoo clock hung on the wall, and impelled by an impulse he didn’t pause to question he seized one of the dangling pendulum chains, yanked the brass pinecone- shaped weight off the end of it, and then drew the end of the chain up through the clock’s works and out free. He stumbled away down the stairs, clutching the length of chain and leaving the clock stopped forever behind him.
* * *
The heat of the burning platform was intense, and when Doctor Romany turned and took several steps away, the night air was frigid on his sweaty face. He clenched his fist and opened it, grimacing at the stickiness of the blood that had run down his arm during the repeated lancetings. He sighed deeply and wished he could sit down on the grass. At that moment it seemed to him that the freedom to just sit down on the ground must be the dearest of the countless things he’d had to forfeit in order to pursue sorcery.
Wearily, still facing out beyond the wheel of red firelight into the darkness that was connected to him by his long shadow, he took the stained lancet and the sticky bowl out of his pocket for one more try.
Before he could once more prod the exhausted vein in his arm, though, a voice like the drawing of a violin bow across a choked-up E string sang from behind him. “I see shoes.” There was merry savagery in the inhuman voice.
“I do, too,” replied another like it.
Romany breathed a sigh of thanks to dead gods, then braced himself for the always disconcerting sight of the yags, and turned around.
The awakened columns of flame had assumed roughly human outlines, so that at a quick glance they looked like burning giants waving their hands over their heads.
“The shoes face us now,” rang another voice over the crackling of the flames. “I believe they must belong to our indistinct summoner.”
Romany licked his lips, annoyed as always that the elementals couldn’t really see him. “These shoes do indeed belong to your summoner,” he said sternly.
“I hear a dog barking,” sang one of the fire giants.
“Oh, a dog, is it?” said Romany, angry now. “Well, fine. A dog couldn’t unveil for you the excellent toy under the sheet behind me, now could he?”
“You’ve got a toy? What does it do?”
“What are you asking a dog for?” said Romany.
For a few moments the bright figures waved their arms without speaking, then one said, “We beg your pardon, sir sorcerer. Show us the toy.”
“I’ll show it to you,” Romany said, bobbing on his spring-shoes over to the shrouded shape, “but I won’t turn it on until you’ve promised to do something for me.” He drew the sheet off the village Bavarois, pleased to see that the candles all still glowed in their proper places behind the windows of the miniature houses. “As you can see,” he said, trying to appear confident that the thing would work, and that the yags would keep any promise they might make, “it’s a Bavarian village. When it’s working, all the little men you see there walk around, and these sleds move, pulled by these horses, whose legs actually bend! And these girls dance to a, uh, refreshing accordion tune.” The tall flames were arched over toward him as if by a strong wind, and their outlines were no longer so carefully human, an indication that they were getting excited. “T-t-tuuurn… it on,” stuttered one of them.
Very carefully. Doctor Romany reached for the switch. “I will let you see it move for a moment only,” he said.
