strangeness that was not assuaged by the gleaming brass fixtures and resiny smell of cedar. The passage was lined with doors, but unlike those in other parts of the lodge, they were all closed.
And now we were nearing the end of the corridor. There was a heavy oaken door with a brass handle, a little brass plaque that read
“Here,” murmured Professor Warnick.
I stopped and shook my head. “No. I mean,
Professor Warnick slid a key into the lock, turned it, and listened for the clicking of hidden tumblers.
“I didn’t
“This isn’t about your drugs,” he said, grasping the doorknob. “It’s—”
“No!” I cried; but at that moment the door creaked open.
“—it’s just my study,” said Professor Warnick gently, raising an eyebrow. “Please, come inside.”
I went inside.
It was a large room, very dark until Balthazar switched on a tall floor lamp. A fringed maroon paisley throw had been tossed over the shade, and its rosy glow did a lot to make the place look less threatening, more like an eccentric scholar’s homely lair. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of flaking leather volumes and curling manuscripts, sheaves of computer printouts and encyclopedias and something that looked very much like papyrus.
“I won’t keep you very long, Katherine. Have a seat.”
I remained standing. Balthazar had crossed to the far wall, a wall taken up by an enormous bay window with many small, mullioned panes. On the window’s wide sill there was a small brightly colored model of the solar system. Balthazar stared at it thoughtfully. The orbs representing the planets were enameled in bright, almost violent, colors—scarlet, cyan, Tyrian purple—and embellished with odd symbols and curlicues. The sun was sheathed in gold with a network of black wires across its surface. After a moment he picked up the orrery and stared at it, brow furrowed.
“It is changing,” he murmured.
Balthazar raised the model to his face and poked one of the glowing beads with a finger—the ball that was enameled emerald green and blue, the orb that was third from the sun. It turned languidly, a marble in slow motion. With a sigh Balthazar pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Worlds within worlds,” he began, and stopped.
In his hand the planets in their shining orbits trembled. A thin sound filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. A sound like shattering crystal; a sound I had heard before.
Balthazar’s eyes widened and he raised the orrery, as he had done with the sistrum all those weeks before. In the air before him the globes began to spin: slowly at first, but more and more quickly, until it seemed he was beset by a cloud of bees. Tendrils of grey smoke rose from their blurred circuits. Balthazar’s ruddy face grew pale.
“No,” he whispered, then grimaced in pain. He swore and snatched his hands from the model, as though it burned his fingers; but instead of falling the orrery remained in the air before him. With a crackling sound, flames erupted from the dizzying vortex. Professor Warnick fell back against the window.
“No!—”
There was a roar, a sound as though somewhere miles beneath us the earth was collapsing. The floor lamp swayed perilously back and forth before it crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness—save where the orrery burned in the empty air. Its brightness terrified me: as though waves of liquid flame poured forth from some depthless fiery sea. Yet the flaming globe gave off no heat. And while the roar continued it was muted now, a pervasive vibration that made my bones and blood hum.
“Get back, Katherine!”
The orrery candled into a single glowing mass, not the warm gold of any fire I have ever seen but a blinding silvery white, with a black core. It pulsed like a swimming medusa, and then suddenly, soundlessly, its dark heart exploded outward. I was staring at a spherical void, a black hole crowned by a fiery white corona. At its center glowed a bloody-looking crescent. Dark liquid streamed from it onto the floor.
“Professor Warnick!” I cried. I could barely see him behind the luminous apparition, but I lunged across the room, knocking aside a chair as I tried to reach him. “Professor Warnick, can you hear me?”
“Stay back—don’t come near—”
His voice sounded faint and thin; it might have been the sound of branches scraping at the window. Behind the dazzling crescent he was all but invisible, enveloped by the black heart of that flaming mass.
“Get away—” His voice echoed faintly. “—warn them—!”
An anguished shout came from behind the glowing sigil, then a scraping sound, a sort of
By now I had all but lost sight of him. The gnawing sound gave way to avid lapping. To my horror I realized that the luminous sphere was moving. This was no illusion of darkness and radiance: the spectral moon was
Silence. The fluid lapping sound faded. I could see nothing
The rug beneath me was soaked through with warm liquid. I stumbled back to my feet, straining to see something in the clouded darkness. I drew my hands in front of me; I could barely discern that they were stained black. I could smell something hot and bitter-rich, and realized that I was soaked with blood. Desperately I looked around for Balthazar.
He was there, a few feet away, shielding his eyes from the terrible radiance that surrounded us. He looked tiny and wizened, and unbelievably ancient. Like one of those mummified cadavers dragged from the bottom of a peat bog, his skin turned to friable leather, his hair a few damp strands across his skull. His hands were drawn before his face and his mouth was open as though he were screaming in agony, but he made no sound.
Around us that awful light billowed and pulsed. On the nap of the worn rug in front of me I could see the tiny star-bright image of the moon, its body black and swollen, capped by a shining crescent like the indentation left by a fingernail. Like one of those images you make of the solar eclipse, using a piece of cardboard with a pinhole in it. I took a deep breath, my throat still raw with cold, and reached for Balthazar, then, with all my strength, crushed the image of the moon beneath my boot.
A shriek pierced the air—a woman’s voice. At that moment my arms closed around Balthazar. Beneath his heavy sweater his bones were like bundled twigs. The shriek grew into a roar. But worst of all, worst of any of the things I could have imagined, there came a cry so faint it was scarce a sound at all—
“Angelica!” I gasped.
She was there. Dazzling flames flowed from her, and upon her breast the moon shone like a beacon—only it was not the moon but the lunula, brighter than any moon, brighter than the sun. Her face was like the face I had seen that night upon the Mound, terrible and beautiful, her hair a streaming darkness as she reached for me, her sweet voice begging me to come to her. And I would have gone, would have embraced her as eagerly and heedlessly as I had done before, had not Balthazar Warnick pulled me away.
“Sweeney, no!”
For an instant we strained against each other: me striving to flee into Angelica’s arms, Balthazar holding me back.
She wailed my name as though her heart would break, and I felt my own heart torn inside me. I lunged forward, trying to shake Balthazar from me.
“Come to me!” cried Angelica, her voice piercing me with sorrow and longing as her fingers grasped at mine.
She was aflame, the tendrils of her hair whipped about me but I didn’t care, didn’t care about anything
