Our concern, young man, is with the books themselves, not with their contents.” I caught the amusement in his tone. “I think you know the contents of every book here, sieur.”
“Hardly. But
“Aren't there any great serpents, sieur, or flying women?”
“Oh, yes,” Master Ultan answered, stooping as he spoke. “But not in the legend of the Historians.” Triumphantly, he held up a small volume bound in flaking leather. “Have a look at this, young man, and see if I've got the right one.” I had to set the candelabrum on the floor and crouch beside it. The book in my hands was so old and stiff and musty that it seemed impossible that it had been opened within the past century, but the title page confirmed the old man's boast. A subtitle announced: “
“Well,” asked Master Ultan, “was I right or no?” I opened the book at random and read, “... by which means a picture might be graven with such skill that the whole of it, should it be destroyed, might be recreated from a small part, and that small part might be any part.” I suppose it was the word graven that suggested to me the events I had witnessed on the night I had received my chrisos. “Master,” I answered, “you are phenomenal.”
“No, but I am seldom mistaken.”
“You, of all men, will excuse me when I tell you I tarried a moment to read a few lines of this book. Master, you know of the corpse-eaters, surely. I have heard it said that by devouring the flesh of the dead, together with a certain pharmacon, they are able to relive the lives of their victims.”
“It is unwise to know too much about these practices,” the archivist murmured, “though when I think of sharing the mind of a historian like Loman, or Hermas...”
In his years of blindness he must have forgotten how nakedly our faces can betray our deepest feelings. By the light of the candles I saw his twisted in such an agony of desire that out of decency I turned away; his voice remained as calm as some solemn bell. “But from what I once read, you are correct, though I do not now recall that the book you hold treats of it.”
“Master,” I said, “I give you my word I would never suspect you of such a thing. But tell me this — suppose two collaborate in the robbing of a grave, and one takes the right band for his share, and the other the left. Does he who ate the right hand have but half the dead man's life, and the other the rest? And if so, what if a third were to come and devour a foot?”
“It's a pity you are a torturer,” Ultan said. “You might have been a philosopher. No, as I understand this noxious matter, each has the entire life.”
“Then a man's whole life is in his right hand and in his left as well. Is it in each finger too?”
“I believe each participant must consume more than a mouthful for the practice to be effective. But I suppose that in theory at least, what you say is correct. The entire life is in each finger.”
We were already walking back in the direction we had come. Since the aisle was too narrow for us to pass one another, I now carried the candelabrum before him, and a stranger, seeing us, would surely have thought I lighted his way. “But Master,” I said, “how can that be? By the same argument, the life must reside in each joint of every finger, and surely that is impossible.”
“How big is a man's life?” asked Ultan.
“I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that?”
“You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been. I suppose that is why the depraved creatures who devour the bodies of the dead seek more. Let me ask you this — are you aware that a son often strikingly resembles his father?”
“I have heard it said, yes. And I believe it,” I answered. I could not help thinking as I did of the parents I would never know.
“Then it is possible, you will agree, since each son may resemble his father, for a face to endure through many generations. That is, if the son resembles the father, and his son resembles him, and that son's son resembles him, then the fourth in lint, the great-grandson, resembles his great-grandfather.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yet the seed of all of them was contained in a drachm of sticky fluid. If they did not come from there, from where did they come?”
I could make no answer to that, and walked along in puzzlement until we reached the door through which I had entered this lowest level of the great library. Here we met Cyby carrying the other books mentioned in Master Gurloes's letter. I took them from him, bade goodbye to Master Ultan, and very gratefully left the stifling atmosphere of the library stacks. To the upper levels of that place I returned several times; but I never again entered that tomblike cellar, or ever wished to.
One of the three volumes Cyby bad brought was as large as the top of a small table, a cubit in width and a scant ell in height; from the arms impressed upon its saffian cover, I supposed it to be the history of some old noble family. The others were much smaller. A green book hardly larger than my hand and no thicker than my index finger appeared to be a collection of devotions, full of enameled pictures of ascetic pantocrators and hypostases with black halos and gemlike robes. I stopped for a time to look at them, sharing a little, forgotten garden full of winter sunshine with a dry fountain.
Before I had so much as opened any of the other volumes, I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indication we have left childhood behind. I had already been two watches at least on a simple errand, and soon the light would fade. I gathered up the books and hurried along, though I did not know it, to meet my destiny and eventually myself in the Chatelaine Thecla.
The Traitress
It was already time for me to carry their meals to the journeymen on duty in the oubliette. Drotte was in charge of the first level, and I brought his last because I wanted to talk to him before I went up again. The truth was that my head was still swimming with thoughts engendered by my visit to the archivist, and I wanted to tell
