suddenly blocked his way. Her face was ruthless and cold. Losing all hope, he waved Duck's coat in the air and cried again for help.
Below him, people were struggling to restrain Alice, who was leaping crazily at the gates. Others were pointing at the library's many windows, trying to locate the source of the disruption. Finally, someone spotted a yellow shape flapping in the wind and caught sight of Blake. A number of startled faces peered up.
There was an astonished silence — then shrieks filled the air. People yelled and jumped, pointing behind him.
Blake turned round…but he was too slow. A blinding blow — the
He rubbed the side of his face and was sickened as his fingers came away wet with blood. Suddenly the world swam before his eyes. Everything slowed down. Helplessly, he appealed to Diana, who was clutching the
'You will do as I say and open the book,' she said. 'Or I will kill you.'
He shook his head, barely able to from the words to defy her.
'No,' he muttered weakly.
She studied him with silent hatred and then said: 'So be it.'
With sudden vehemence, she locked one of her elbows round his neck and pulled him off his feet. His face felt as tight as a red balloon. 'If I don't get the book,' she snarled into his ear, 'then neither do you.'
Blake was powerless to resist. His arms fell to his sides, too heavy and too tired to fight back. He was exhausted. The shadow had won.
Diana's glove chafed against his skin, tightening its grip on his neck. He could barely breathe. He raked in dry, desperate gulps and his knees went weak.
Faintly, he could hear people yelling in the street. Hundreds of faces were looking up in horror, some taking pictures, but the sights and sounds reached him only dimly, drifting in on waves. He was drowning in mid-air. There was nothing anyone could do to help.
'I will not lose the book,' spat Diana, and pinned him against the stone railing. He could feel the sharp edge of a quatrefoil biting into his side. 'What a pity it has to end this way.'
'No!' he roared one last time, twisting and turning and biting and fighting with all his might.
Taken by surprise, Diana opened her hand and accidentally dropped the book. They both watched, horrified, as it fell through the open quatrefoil and into empty space.
Diana immediately released him from her grasp and groped at the air with her gloved fingertips, desperate to recapture the book as it tumbled over the side of the tower and plummeted down…down…down…into the waiting arms of Duck's yellow raincoat, which lay like a dead body a hundred feet below.
And then Blake slunk, senseless, to the ground.
I felt like I was flying.
Crowds reeled drunkenly around me, spinning on their heads, while houses, taverns and spires turned somersaults. Booths with canvas awnings swung at weird angles.
I could not tell where I was. The ground was thatched with mud and straw, and the sky stretched far above me like an impossibly blue ocean. My arms flailed uselessly to either side, the limbs of a dead man.
A stranger, I realized dimly, was transporting me through a market in the back of his cart. My head jolted painfully each time the wheels struck a loose stone, and twice I vomited.
A round, worried face peered down at me from the side of the cart. 'Be not afraid,' it said in the softest of voices — first in English, which I could not understand, and then in Latin, which I could. 'You are safe with me, Endymion.'
My brow furrowed. How did he know my name?
Then, sensing my confusion, the man smiled and added, 'I am Theodoric. I am taking you to St. Jerome's.'
A circle of unruly hair crowned his head like a halo and a long black robe cloaked his body. His hands were as smooth and white as vellum, but covered in inky scribbles — like my Master's.
For a moment I feared an angel had come to take me up to heaven and I struggled to be set free. I still had my task to complete. I could feel the book of dragon skin strapped to my back, cutting into my flesh. Yet try as I might, I could not move. I could not even sit up.
The world swayed sickeningly around me and my head lolled weakly in the straw.
'Faster, Methuselah,' Theodoric urged the grizzled mule, which pulled the cart behind it and brayed objectionably at the extra load it was carrying.
Then everything plunged into darkness.
I dreamed a lion swallowed me. Its teeth were set in a silent roar, a shoulder's width apart, but luckily they had no bite. I passed through its stone mouth into a chamber full of books. The walls were pierced with light and the room divided into alcoves by a number of sloping desks and large chests. The air was quiet with the sound of quills and whispering parchment.
Bleary-eyed, I looked around me. Black-robed figures hunched over the desks, hard at work. Some were writing in a beautiful script that flowed from their quills in streams of ink, while others pressed thin sheets of gold to the capital letters they were adorning. Still more dipped their brushes in oyster shells of crushed crimson powder, which they applied to the flowers they were painting in the margins of a wonderful manuscript.
All of a sudden I understood the marks on Theodoric's hands. He was a scribe, an illuminator. He had taken me to one of Oxford's monastic colleges.
The book of dragon skin stirred again on my back and I squirmed, trying to get down; but Theodoric refused to let go. He carried me in his arms to the front of the room, where a small, white-haired man was seated on a large, thronelike chair. The Abbot was deep in prayer: His eyes closed, his fingers fumbling with beads of a rosary.
An ancient librarian with skin like melted wax sat close beside him, reading from a tiny book. His lips made a soft sound like a sputtering candle as he recited the words to himself and traced them in his Psalter. Suddenly, he stopped. One of his eyes was milky blue and rolled alarmingly in his head; the other, as clear as day, drifted towards me and fixed on my face.
Unnerved, I glanced away. Through the window, I could see a sapling in an enclosed garden, its pale green leaves shuddering in a breeze.
Luckily, the Abbot took one look at me, crossed himself and rushed to my aid. Despite his wild thistledown hair, he showed no signs of a prickly disposition. He clamped his hand to my forehead and checked for symptoms of disease. Then, ignoring the protests of Ignatius, the librarian beside me, he indicated the Theodoric should escort me to the infirmary.
Words were unnecessary. They communicated by means of a system of simple hand gestures.
Theodoric, however, stood his ground and slowly drew the Abbot's attention to the leather toolkit I normally wore beneath my belt. It had transformed itself into a sealed notebook ages ago. Somehow it had worked itself free.
I reached out to grab it, but Ignatius was too quick. He snatched the book before either I or the Abbot could lay our fingers on it.
I watched helplessly as the old man turned the notebook over in his hands and tried unsuccessfully to prize the covers apart. He studied the clasps more intently. No matter what he tried, he could not get the book to open. His brow creased in consternation and he shot me a suspicious look, as though the Devil lurked somewhere behind my
