Imbolc. Anthony had written that they were the eight major holidays of the year. Inside the first circle was another circle. These symbols I recognized as astrological signs.
66
Great. More puzzles. I was guessing I’d have to line up the astrological signs with specific holidays. Maybe I’d need to invest in a telescope. I ran my fingers over the polished wood, tracing one of the wheel’s spokes until my hand reached the intricately carved compass rose at its center. When I touched the rose, I thought I felt the wheel move.
I put more pressure on the wood. The rose caved, retreating within the center of the wheel. Ignoring the sudden jump in my pulse, I pushed steadily until I heard a solid click.
What had been an invisible line along the edge of the bookcase column widened, revealing a gap in the wood. I slid my fingers in the space and pulled. With a soft groan the panel swung open, revealing a hollow chamber inside the column.
My heart was trying to climb out of my throat as I peered inside.
More shelves were hidden in the dark space, and they weren’t only filled with books. Jars filled with what I could only guess was formaldehyde neatly lined one shelf. My guess was formaldehyde because of the objects floating in the jars. One looked like a rat fetus. Another held a heart. My own heart now had serious competition from my stomach for trying to relocate somewhere outside my body.
I decided to stop looking at the jars and gazed at another shelf.
The objects I found were just as disturbing as the jars. A whip rested next to a sickle-shaped blade. Beside these were a mortar and pestle and still more jars, but these held dried herbs, not next week’s biology dissection assignment.
The top shelf was stacked with books. These books, however, weren’t the known works of literature I’d found in the rest of the library. They were obviously much older. I took one of the books from the shelf. It was large, and I rested it on the floor so I could easily look at it.
Whether a biology text or some kind of bestiary, its contents were strange. It had no title or table of contents. Each page was filled 67
with notes and illustrations that didn’t make any sense. I recognized some of the creatures as the same types that filled the gardens outside in statue form. In the book, however, they were laid out like speci-mens. Sometimes drawn in full form, others dissected as if the author intended his readers to desire close inspection of the mythic beasts.
The most unusual illustrations appeared at the end of the book.
One page featured a man in a style that reminded me of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” and on the opposite page was not a man, but a wolf drawn in the same style. The next dozen or so pages of the book held variations on the same theme, man and wolf. Sometimes completely separate, but sometimes the images were blended in forms ranging from grotesque to simply frightening. Though weird and morbidly fascinating, I didn’t know how it connected to the clues we’d found in the books. Not wanting to get off track, I set it aside and pulled down another book.
Like the first book, this text was obviously very, very old. The title jumped off the cover in letters so black it looked like someone had stamped it there with a branding iron. I felt my eyes go wide as I read the words.
Bellum Omnia Contra Omnes
“I know this,” I said. A chill, like fingers brushing along my neck, made me jump at the same time I whirled around because I thought I’d heard something. A sound like a long, sad sigh had filled the room. My gaze swept the library, one, two, three times, but I was alone.
The bright, gemstone colors from the stained glass windows were giving way to the thick pour of twilight. I didn’t want to be in the library after dark. I returned the animal book to the shelf but took the second text out of the library when I returned to my room.
If this book was what I thought it was, I’d stumbled on a
66
Great. More puzzles. I was guessing I’d have to line up the astrological signs with specific holidays. Maybe I’d need to invest in a telescope. I ran my fingers over the polished wood, tracing one of the wheel’s spokes until my hand reached the intricately carved compass rose at its center. When I touched the rose, I thought I felt the wheel move.
I put more pressure on the wood. The rose caved, retreating within the center of the wheel. Ignoring the sudden jump in my pulse, I pushed steadily until I heard a solid click.
What had been an invisible line along the edge of the bookcase column widened, revealing a gap in the wood. I slid my fingers in the space and pulled. With a soft groan the panel swung open, revealing a hollow chamber inside the column.
My heart was trying to climb out of my throat as I peered inside.
More shelves were hidden in the dark space, and they weren’t only filled with books. Jars filled with what I could only guess was formaldehyde neatly lined one shelf. My guess was formaldehyde because of the objects floating in the jars. One looked like a rat fetus. Another held a heart. My own heart now had serious competition from my stomach for trying to relocate somewhere outside my body.
I decided to stop looking at the jars and gazed at another shelf.
The objects I found were just as disturbing as the jars. A whip rested next to a sickle-shaped blade. Beside these were a mortar and pestle and still more jars, but these held dried herbs, not next week’s biology dissection assignment.
The top shelf was stacked with books. These books, however, weren’t the known works of literature I’d found in the rest of the library. They were obviously much older. I took one of the books from the shelf. It was large, and I rested it on the floor so I could easily look at it.
Whether a biology text or some kind of bestiary, its contents were strange. It had no title or table of contents. Each page was filled 67
with notes and illustrations that didn’t make any sense. I recognized some of the creatures as the same types that filled the gardens outside in statue form. In the book, however, they were laid out like speci-mens. Sometimes drawn in full form, others dissected as if the author intended his readers to desire close inspection of the mythic beasts.
The most unusual illustrations appeared at the end of the book.
One page featured a man in a style that reminded me of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” and on the opposite page was not a man, but a wolf drawn in the same style. The next dozen or so pages of the book held variations on the same theme, man and wolf. Sometimes completely separate, but sometimes the images were blended in forms ranging from grotesque to simply frightening. Though weird and morbidly fascinating, I didn’t know how it connected to the clues we’d found in the books. Not wanting to get off track, I set it aside and pulled down another book.
Like the first book, this text was obviously very, very old. The title jumped off the cover in letters so black it looked like someone had stamped it there with a branding iron. I felt my eyes go wide as I read the words.
Bellum Omnia Contra Omnes
“I know this,” I said. A chill, like fingers brushing along my neck, made me jump at the same time I whirled around because I thought I’d heard something. A sound like a long, sad sigh had filled the room. My gaze swept the library, one, two, three times, but I was alone.
The bright, gemstone colors from the stained glass windows were giving way to the thick pour of twilight. I didn’t want to be in the library after dark. I returned the animal book to the shelf but took the second text out of the library when I returned to my room.
If this book was what I thought it was, I’d stumbled on a
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