He had been playing in the street with several other children, and one of the masons we had seen repairing the Lincoln Monument called him home. I knew now that those masons were Orbis Suleimani who worked for Cornelius. The mason had clearly borne a resemblance to the boy and seemed to be his father. Could it be his position as Cornelius’s guide that led the Scrying Pool of Naughty and Nice to show him to me as if he were part of our family?
As I smiled at the boy, I was reminded of the many years I spent serving my father. A wave of sympathy for this child, who would probably rather be out sledding, washed over me. For an instant, I felt as if it were I who dutifully led the blind Cornelius out the door.
I had begun to rise. Now, I dropped back into my chair and sat, shaken. It had happened again, this strange empathy with a stranger. But what did it mean?
Theo exited the room, still chuckling and coughing, He was followed by Cornelius and his young guide, and a moment later, by an eager Mephisto. This left Erasmus and me alone, amidst masks and feathers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Chamber of Gold
“Erasmus, why do you hate me so?” I asked.
“Surely, you know,” Erasmus replied, his mocking dark eyes smiling at me from beneath his straight black hair.
“Humor me,” I said tiredly. “Why?”
“Oh, I think not,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and sipping his mango juice. “I know better than to sharpen my enemy’s weapons.”
I sighed. “May I see Father’s journal, the one you quoted from?”
“Certainly not! You might sully it.”
My eyes narrowed. “You made all this up, didn’t you? There is no journal!”
“There’s a journal, all right!” Erasmus replied. When I continued to look skeptical, he said, “Oh, very well! But you must promise to wash your hands first.”
Rising, he led me back toward the library.
A maid had opened one of the library windows, and a cold breeze had blown away the aroma of perfume and chai, leaving the room chilly and smelling of snow. An enormously fat cat covered with black and white splotches lay curled in Erasmus’s chair by the desk. I had to look twice before I recognized him as Redesmere, Erasmus’s familiar and the dire enemy of Tybalt. I paused briefly to give him a pat. Erasmus glared at me, but I remained undaunted. After all, his glare was nothing compared to the stare my own familiar would have given me if he had caught me at it.
Redesmere opened one golden eye, contentedly observed my homage with the nobles oblige of true royalty, and closed it again.
At the far end of the chamber, Erasmus pulled out a key to open a door set between two bookshelves. Shelves were set into this door as well. To unlock it, he had to reach down a narrow gap between two books.
It opened into a short corridor, also lined with bookshelves. At the back was another locked door. The key to this door, when he pulled it out, glittered yellow in the dim light of the overhead bulb.
As he opened this second door, he flipped on the light, illuminating a chamber ablaze with gold. I raised my hand to shade my eyes and peered through my fingers. Beyond, everything sparkled and flashed. A golden chandelier hung from a gilded ceiling, shining its light upon a windowless hexagonal library. Delicate chairs of finely wrought gold stood around a table with a mirrored surface and burnished crackle legs upon which sat a chess set of onyx and gold. Upon the table sat pens, ink wells, and paper organizers, all of them of the gleaming yellow metal.
The books, older and rarer than those in the main library, rested upon heavy bookshelves of solid gold. I recalled the effort he had gone to gathering the ore and learning to smith it—and two occasions upon which an entire floor had collapsed under their tremendous weight. The wooden ladder that slid along the bookshelves, allowing access to upper shelves, was gilded, and the small stepping stools shone like little rectangular suns. Even the white marble of the floor contained aurulent flecks.
In my youth, we would have called wealth like this “a king’s ransom.” Nowadays, men count wealth in terms of how many aircraft carriers or bombers it will build. Amidst the fourteen karat bookshelves, the dazzling table, and the rest, there was more than enough to ransom a king, but I doubted all of this would be enough to buy even a single aircraft carrier.
“Impressive,” I murmured, blinking.
“Ah, gold . . .” he smiled lazily. “The most beautiful substance in the world, like sunlight trapped in solid form. Doesn’t age, rust, or rot.”
I had forgotten about Erasmus’s love of gold. It was not the wealth of it that drew him, as it might Cornelius or Ulysses, but its immunity to the ravages of time, and thus to his Staff of Decay.
“Odd choice to house a library of fragile old books,” I mused aloud.
“I thought the contrast fitting,” he replied airily.
Walking to one of the six walls, he slid out a long flat drawer upon which lay a very old tome. The leather of the cover was brittle and cracked, and flakes of parchment lay about the ragged edge of the pages. Yet, despite its great age, I recognized it, recalling the thousands of times my child self had come upon Father writing in that very book.
Yet, how old it had become. How fragile! Seeing it now, I could almost forgive Erasmus for not wanting to let me touch it.
My brother opened the book with great care, turning almost immediately to the page containing the quote he had mentioned. The musty odor of decaying parchment assailed my nostrils. I sneezed.
To my dismay, the passage was just as he had recited it. Farther down the page were additional unpleasant descriptions of Sycorax’s unruly child.
“What makes you think this passage here refers to me, rather than Caliban?” I pointed at the page. “Here, Father uses the masculine form of ‘child.’ ”
“It is common to use the masculine for ‘child’ in Greek, regardless of the gender of the offspring,” Erasmus replied. Smirking, he pointed. “Just there, he describes the child as a force for destruction even though it is ‘no higher than his thigh.’ Caliban, who was already living on the island with his mother when Father arrived, would have been larger than that. Wasn’t he already half grown when Father arrived?”
I clenched my fists and glared down at the journal. I disliked talk of Caliban. The mere thought of him still filled me with an old rage. Caliban . . . my brother?
As I stared dull-eyed at the passage, a strand of my pale silver hair, escaped from its clip, floated beside my cheek. I caught it and frowned, trying to figure out how to poke it back into my coiffure. Erasmus misinterpreted my dismay.
“You looked so much lovelier when your hair was vibrant and black, Dear Sister.” My brother’s smirk widened. “But then, we all know how vanity is a sin! So, perhaps you should thank me.”
My sharp retort was halted by a thought. Father’s essay on the horrors of contact with demons claimed that each demon had a vice and any mortal who remained too long in its company would become vulnerable to that vice. What vice was associated with the demon in Erasmus’s staff? Did this bitterness that ate at him, causing him to constantly attack me, originate from the demon in the Staff of Decay?
“Did you know our staffs have demons in them?” I asked bluntly.
“Of course,” he replied blithely. “Didn’t you? No? Daddy didn’t see fit to tell you, eh? Probably thought little Miss Perfect would have a hissy fit. How did you find out?”
I turned back to Father’s journal and continued reading, ignoring his barb. There was no point in bickering for bickering’s sake. Were I to answer, my brother would either accuse me of consorting with demons or mock me for believing an incubus; never mind that Erasmus himself had just attested to the truth of Seir’s words. Coming to the bottom of the page, I reached out to turn it.
“Ah, ah, ah! No touchy.” My brother stepped between me and the book. “You did not stop and wash your hands.”
“Very well, you turn the pages.” I crossed my arms.
“Now see here, I am har
dly . . .” Erasmus trailed off, frowning thoughtfully at the top of my head. “Wait here!” He pointed at the spot where I was standing. “Touch nothing until I return!”
He departed, locking me into the golden room so I could not flee with his precious books and riches.
I considered yanking out the nearest book on principle, reasoning that since Erasmus had left without obtaining my agreement, I was not obliged to obey his wishes. As my eyes trailed over the shelves, however, my sympathy for him increased.
I stood amid a rare-book collector’s paradise. A brief glance revealed three-hundred-year-old volumes of Shakespeare and Bacon, original works by Leibniz and Spinoza, disintegrating editions of Descartes, and a hand-illuminated Harvey, probably filled with notes written by Erasmus during his time as a student of that great father of modern medicine.
In among these ancient worthies were titles of a more arcane or esoteric nature, some of which I had been seeking for centuries! The Secret of Secrets by Duban the Sage, Iconography from the High House of Dreaming, Habitats of Water Nymphs, The Journeys of Randolph Carter, Oneironaut, The Theonomicon, Seven Nights In Elfland: an Eye-Witness Account, and Four Hundred and Seventeen Alchemical Salts, this last, apparently, by Erasmus himself.
To my astonishment, I even found books I had thought lost or that should not exist at all: Euclid’s Book Four, Aristotle’s Dialogues, Andromeda and Helena by Euripides. Where had he gotten these? Revelations of Hali, The Whole Art of Detection, The Architecture of Small Country Houses by John Drinkwater? I had believed these last three volumes merely imaginary!
I stared goggle-eyed at this bibliographic feast, my mouth watering. Ever since childhood, back on Prospero’s Island, books had been among my favorite companions. Of late, I had been concentrating on Father’s journals and seeking hints regarding the secrets of the Sibyl, but there had been a time when I had read nearly every volume available to the known world. That was impossible now, of course, due to the recent increase in the number of books published, but it had been possible in my youth.
As I came to the next shelf, my heart nearly stopped. The entire bookshelf, from top to bottom, held black leather volumes bound with a strip of yellow cloth along the spine. I recognized those books. They were Father’s Libri Arcani, the journals into which he entered the results of his magical experiments. When Father retired, he gave me his personal diaries, black leather volumes bound with a strip of red, into which he noted his daily thoughts and contemplations. When none of the ancient yellow-striped volumes were among the collection, I thought they had been lost. Yet, here they were, pristine and whole, in Erasmus’s library. I moved my hands across them, my fingers hovering a hair’s width above the spine, then leaned in to breathe deeply of their musty leather.
As I came around to my starting point, I noticed the spine of the Spinoza was charred. Seeing the blackened binding evoked a memory. I recalled Erasmus kneeling on the grass, surrounded by scattered books, weeping bitterly. The rest of us stood around him, watching tongues of flame flickering in the windows of our great Scottish mansion. The books lying on the grass were the armfuls he had brought out on his first two trips. He had tried to run back into the flames yet again, but my other brothers had stopped him; Theo and Titus restraining him physically.
It was a tense few hours for all of us, for our staffs were still inside, and we did not know if they would survive the conflagration. It was worst for Erasmus, however, who lost most of the library he had been gathering for over two hundred years, some volumes of which were the last-known existing copy of a particular work. This loss pained me as well, but less so, partially because, while I loved reading as much or more than my brother, I was not a collector, and partially because the books I loved most were in my chapel and, consequently, not in danger from the fire.
When the blaze finally died away, and we were able to return to the blackened hulk of our home, only a few volumes of Erasmus’s ten-thousand-book library had survived. This copy of Spinoza’s Ethics had been one of them.
I dropped into one of the delicate filigreed chairs and absentmindedly slid the queen’s bishop’s pawn forward, imitating an opening I had tried the last time I had played Erasmus. In our youth, I often beat my brother, I who had spent so much time playing Father in my youth. But Erasmus stuck to the game and I did not, and so he had become the master, even besting the supernatural competition at some of the Centennial Balls. Only the subtle elf lord Fincunir was his better.
Shakespeare had presented me as playing chess with Ferdinand—most likely because chess was one of the few activities that a young man and woman could perform alone without her virtue being considered compromised. In the play, my namesake worried about whether Ferdinand would play me false, before claiming that she would not mind even if he wrangled kingdoms from her. The scene was entirely of Shakespeare’s invention; I had beaten Ferdinand soundly on the few occasions that we had played.
And yet, I wished I had not recalled this, for the notion of Ferdinand playing me false caused a sudden chill. I released the chess piece and glanced back at the burnt copy of Spinoza upon the shelves.
Perhaps Father and I were not the only ones who would be dismayed by the loss of the ancient tomes that had been damaged during Seir of the Shadows’s first attack in the Great Hall of Prospero’s Mansion. Any sympathy I might have felt for my bibliophile brother faded, however, as I considered how he would react if I told him of this recent tragedy. I could picture him sneering triumphantly, as he contrived some way to imply that the attack on Prospero’s Mansion was my fault. Whatever else one might say about Erasmus, he was tremendously good at sneering.
The memory of my brother weeping gave way to a recollection of the time he auctioned off his shares of Prospero, Inc. Once, all ten of us, Father and we children, had owned shares of the company. After Gregor died, and Theo had abandoned us, Father gave control of Gregor’s shares to Cornelius and Theo’s to me. Over the next quarter century, the others bailed out as well. Since, under our charter, they received a stipend whether they owed stock or not, they felt they would prefer not to be bothered the annoyance of attending stockholders’ meetings and running the company. Titus and Logistilla gave their shares to Cornelius. Mephisto and Ulysses gave theirs to me. Father—who was already preparing for his retirement, though he did not officially retire until three years ago—decided I would succeed him as C.E.O. and signed over his shares to me. This left only Cornelius, Erasmus, and me as shareholders.
One frosty day in February of 1975, Erasmus announced he, too, had decided to bow out of Prospero, Inc., and he wished to auction off his shares to the highest bidder. If I won, I would have a clear majority, sixty percent to Cornelius’s forty. If Cornelius won, we would be tied fifty-fifty. Since the idea of a deadlocked board, with no tie-breaker available, seemed daunting, I was willing to do anything reasonable to win Erasmus’s shares.
What Erasmus asked in return for choosing me was beyond the pale of reason! He wanted a full carafe of the Water of Life. I offered him a little vial of Water, but that was not enough; only a full carafe would do.
I did not have enough Water left to fill a carafe. To meet his requirement, I would have to take the journey of a year and a day to the Well at the World’s End. I argued with Erasmus for three days, explaining how this was a very bad time for me to take a year off. Normally, I prepared for these journeys decades in advance—and that was before I became the C.E.O of Prospero, Inc.—but he was adamant.
Resolved to win the auction and protect the company, I took the journey. A year and a day later, I returned with a full carafe, which I took directly to Erasmus. He met me on the steps of his palatial mansion, near Philadelphia, and announced with a smirk that I was too late. He had gotten tired of waiting, he declared with a casual wave of his hand, and had given his shares to Cornelius.
I objected that I could not possibly have arrived any sooner and pointed out how he knew this would be the case when he asked me to go. Erasmus just s
hrugged and replied that he had never intended to give me his shares. He had held the auction for the purpose of irritating me.
When I arrived back at my office the next day, I learned that, while I was gone, a contractual dispute between the Aerie Ones and the Eastern undines had led to the worst typhoon in a century. Their dispute had been over a simple matter. Had I been present, or even had proper time to prepare before I departed, I could easily have solved the dispute; however, I had taken my flute with me. Without it, even Father could do nothing. A hundred thousand Chinese died because I had left my post, because Erasmus found it entertaining to irritate me.
As I stood there, fuming at the memory, I heard his footsteps in the hallway. He unlocked the door and came striding back into the hexagonal chamber, singing merrily. On his right hand, he wore a gauntlet of shining silver-white, the mate of the gauntlet Caurus used to wield the Wounding Wand. In the gauntlet’s grip, he carried a five-foot tube of a transparent material. Enclosed within it was a square staff with alternating sides of black and white. Erasmus tapped the clear exterior against the carpet once and then held it up. Within it, the square black and white staff began to rotate, whirling and humming as it gained speed, until it appeared as if Erasmus grasped a single gray blur.
I took two steps back.
“Fear not, my cowardly sibling. You are not my target today,” my brother announced lightly. “Have you destroyed anything while I was gone, hmm?” He glanced over the shelves. “No? What a lucky accident for us. Slipping up, are you, Sister?” Then, holding his staff aloft, he strode to the back of the library, singing to himself cheerfully.
I waited wary.
Stopping before Father’s journal, Erasmus raised the Staff of Decay and brought its whirring length down upon the ancient book.
“No!” I cried, leaping forward. I would have thrown myself forward to save the precious journal, except I knew Erasmus would have been only too happy to wither me along with it, happier, most likely. He did not harm books easily. “Don’t destroy Father’s journal on my account!” I cried. “Please! I’ll—”
Prospero in Hell Page 18
