Fortune's Observer

 The reception had a long curved desk at the front of it, two security guards stood at one end of it, and three well-dressed, frazzled-looking people behind hit.  Two of them, both women, were sitting on expensive looking office chairs and frowning and the third, a man in a dark-blue suit, was standing just behind them, leaning over the shoulder of the left-most women and seemingly glaring at something.

The desk was made of wood and artfully curved to draw customers along from the entrance and towards the arch that led into the main casino room.  The lighting was subdued at the entrance, where Rafael and Sylvie were standing and it brightened and became more yellow as it approached the casino rooms, where the security guards were standing.  A tall vase behind the desk contained a bunch of sad, withered looking flowers but there was still a strong perfume in the air.  The nearest security guard noticed them and nudged his partner who was staring at his shoes.  The second guard looked up, sighed heavily, and plodded over.

“We’re closed,” he said, sounding like he wanted to sigh again.  “Who let you in?  Was it Derek?  I’ll have his bloody guts for pulling this stunt again.”

“We were asked to come here—“ said Rafael, his eyes narrowing.  Sylvie, who had a good feel for his mood, laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and he tried to shrug her off.

“We’re still closed.  Talk to your friend about your invitation and come again when we’re open.”

“Sure,” said Rafael.  “Nothing I’d like more.”

“We’re here to meet Pech,” said Sylvie, tightening her grip on Rafael’s shoulder as he tried to turn and walk away.  “Probably about the reason that you’re closed right now.”

The other security guard looked up now and started watching them, but he didn’t come over.

“Why didn’t he say that?” complained the security guard who was talking to them.  “What’s the point in coming in here like that and not telling me what you’re here for, eh?”

“That’s enough,” said one of the women behind the desk.  She stood up, revealing that she was dressed in the same dark-blue suit as the man behind her.  “Could you identify yourselves, please?  While I’m sure you are here to see Pech we are a licensed casino and we are required to follow certain procedures before allowing anyone admission.”

Sylvie produced her warrant card and squeezed Rafael’s shoulder until, with less grace, he produced his.  The woman from the reception desk studied them both, then took them behind the desk and carefully scanned them.  There was a short pause, then a double-beep from the computer.

“Thank-you,” she said.  “I was expect— well, that is to say— ah, it’s sort of— no-one told us what to expect.”  She fumbled her way to a conclusion.  “I think I was expecting you to be in uniform,” she said. “That would have made things clearer all round, you see.”

“The silent security guard slipped out a minute ago,” whispered Rafael.  He was nearly soundless, but since Sylvie was gripping his shoulder the words were as clear as if he’d been speaking them into her ear.

“Uniforms are problematic for the Mage Squad,” said Sylvie.  Rafael winced; ‘mage squad’ was what the tabloid press called them.  “In some cases a uniform can be a positive hindrance.  So we have a little more leeway in what to wear.”

“Quite,” said the woman with a look of incomprehension.  “Well, please stand over there,” she gestured to the far side of the reception area, next to a shiny, chromed coffee machine sitting on a dresser, “and help yourself to coffee if you’d like some.  Pech will be… here soon.  I hope.”

Rafael had barely had time to start fiddling with the coffee machine’s settings before there was a soft cough behind him and he and Sylvie turned round.

“Pech,” said a middle-aged man, holding out a hand.  He was shorter than both of them, had a bald spot on the back of his head, and there was a smell like a damp towel hanging around him.

“Malacosa,” said Sylvie, shaking his hand.  As soon as he turned away she wiped her hand discretely on the back of her skirt; his hand was so clammy as to be almost wet.

“Perdito,” said Rafael, also shaking his hand.  “No-one’s told us why you want us here.”

“Blunt,” said Pech, grinning and revealing coffee-stained teeth.  “Nice.  Don’t get a lot of that here.”

“That’s not an answer,” said Rafael.  He was also looking for somewhere to wipe his hand, but Pech hadn’t taken his gaze off him.

“Not here,” said Pech.  He didn’t look round but both the others felt as though he had.  Sylvie nodded once, to herself; Pech had a strong thaumic shadow.  “Too many people wouldn’t understand what we’re talking about and I don’t like having to keep stopping and answering questions.”

“Me neither,” said Rafael.  “Where then?”

“My office.”

Pech’s office had a nameplate on the door but neither Rafael nor Sylvie had time to read it as it was blurred with a secrecy charm.  Both of them could have broken it easily, but not without Pech noticing.  It was a small room with a desk piled high with small white boxes and a chair on which a coat and gloves had been discarded.  A tiny table in one corner held a fist-sized quartz crystal and there was another chair, with a broken leg, tucked in underneath.  There were no windows and a pervasive smell of day-old toast.

“Sorry about the mess,” said Pech without sounding sorry at all.  “The casino is supposed to come and collect all the confiscated items every couple of days but they’re always behind on them.  And then there’s the current situation, which has been going on for—“ he checked his watch— “a little over thirty hours now.”

“What’s the situation?” said Rafael, sounding just a touch aggressive.

“No-one’s winning,” said Pech.

“Isn’t that always the case?” asked Sylvie.  She moved a little closer to the crystal on the small table.

“No,” said Pech.  “You might be thinking of the house edge, I guess?  That’s built-in.  The idea is that customers win or lose according to the whims of chance, and the house takes a tiny sliver from the money they gamble with as payment for providing the services and entertainment.  If customers only ever lost no-one would play after a short while.  Just like if they only ever won they’d stop playing too because it would be boring, but no-one’s supposed to get the chance to find out.”

“So what do you do then?” said Rafael.  He looked around the room.  “Stop people cheating?”

Pech nodded.  “That’s a big part of it,” he said.  “People come up with the most amazing ideas of how we’re cheating them, and then they try and ‘make things fair again’ by cheating themselves.”  He patted the boxes on the table.  “Each box has a gadget or magical item in it that someone’s tried to sneak in.  We get most of them at the doors or reception, but every now and then someone puts some real effort into it, spends some serious money and we have to catch them on the floor.  It’s amazing how much effort they’ll put into trying to beat a game of chance when the same effort at their day job would get them a double promotion and a bonus.”

“What’s the other part of it?” asked Sylvie, sounding a little distracted.  The quartz crystal felt like it was beckoning her.

“I’m Fortune’s Observer,” said Pech.

A matter of chance

   Rafael frowned as though he’d been given a maths problem to solve and only five minutes to find the answer.  “Can you repeat that, please?” he said at last, a note of weariness entering his voice.

“Which bit?” said the slightly nasal sounding voice on the other side of the radio connection.

“All of it, please,” he said.  He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes tightly, wishing that the headache that was forming would go away.  In the passenger seat of the patrol car his partner, La Malacosa, giggled.  

“Um, well… you’re to go to the Hallways Casino, that’s the big one off Sycamore Square and not the little one near the train station, and when you get there you’re to ask for Pech—“ he pronounced it like peck but with the last sound made breathy somehow “— and they’ll explain what the problem is.  Uh, is that clear now?”

“As mud,” said Rafael.  “Why are we going to a casino?  Is there an assault?  Or a drug deal gone wrong?  Something, you know, criminal, happening there?”

“All I have here is that Pech will tell you when you get there,” said the dispatcher.  He sounded a touch unhappy.

“Right, yes, well I guess that’s what we’ve got then,” said Rafael.  “Thanks.  We’re on our way.”

He flicked the switch on the radio that turned transmitting off and looked over at Sylvie, better known by her department nickname of Malacosa.  “This has got to be some kind of joke, right, Mal?  How can there be a crime going on in a casino that’s a secret?’

“I have no idea,” said Sylvie.  She saw his look of disbelief and shrugged.  “No, really, I don’t.  I know as much as you do, Perdito.”  Perdito was Rafael’s nickname.

“Well that’s just about nothing then.”  He glared out through the windshield, hoping to see an actual crime being committed that would allow him to pass the casino case onto someone else, but the streets were quiet.  A couple of children were levitating over a playground, and a young woman was walking two fish on a leash, but otherwise there was nothing to see.

“Get a move on,” said Sylvie, shifting in her seat.  “It’s not going to get better if we’re late getting there.”

The Hallways Casino was a squat rectangular building on the corner of Tremble Street, supposedly named for a 19^th century politician, with no windows that Rafael could see but a very grand, porticoed entrance with wide double doors and a doorman on either side.

“Do you think they open a door each?” he said as he parked the car in a space reserved for disabled parking.

“No, I think they’re there to make you feel special when you go in,” said Sylvie.  She tsked when she saw that the space was reserved.  “You can’t park here, you know.”

“I can,” said Rafael.  “The tickets always get lost before they reach me.”

“That’s really not the point.”

“I know, but unless you want to move the car yourself, that’s where it’s parked.”

Sylvie shrugged.  “I’m not the one who’ll get the ticket,” she said.  “Although it sounds like you’re not either.  Who does get the ticket?”

“I’ve never found out,” said Rafael, smiling for the first time since they’d been despatched.  “Come on, let’s go and see if we warrant both doormen or just one.”

Both doormen ignored him and Sylvie as they approached and as Rafael pulled open a door and walked through into a long, gloomy corridor.

“I guess that’s how special we ar— whoah!  What the hell was that?”

Sylvie had stopped just inside the entrance and the door hit her ungently on the shoulders, nudging her forwards.

“Strong,” she said, not moving any further.  “That’s got to be at least five kilothaums.  And… it’s not moving, it’s static.”

Rafael walked a little further and then stopped.  “It ends here,” he said.  He looked up and down the corridor.  “About three-quarters of the way along.  Might be a security field?”

“Might be why we’re here,” said Sylvie.  “I’m pretty sure that the use of magic in a casino is regulated.”

Rafael looked along the corridor again.  “Arguably we’re still outside the casino proper,” he said.  “But I wouldn’t want to be standing in front of a judge making that argument.”

“Good choice,” said Sylvie.  She took a step forward.  “I don’t like it,” she said.  “Gives me the creeps.”

Rafael took a few steps back until he was inside the magical field again.  The sensation was like a bucket of cold water being poured over his head: a sudden shock that made him tingle everywhere, and then he kept tingling even as the shock died away.  The tingle seemed strongest in his fingers and toes but he knew that that was just because the nerve endings there were especially sensitive to thaumic fields.

“It’s strong but it doesn’t feel odd,” he said.  “And nullies wouldn’t even detect it.  Maybe it’s just to identify people with magical ability to prevent them from getting into the casino proper?  Part of the regulations?”

“That would make some sense,” said Sylvie.  She seemed to steel herself against something unseen and walked along the corridor.  She didn’t run, but she was clearly hurrying.  “But,” she said when she reached the end with a gasp that suggested she’d been holding her breath, “it surely doesn’t need to be so strong for that.  And why not have an alarm attached to it?”

“Maybe it does, but it’s not sounding here?”

“Could be.”  Sylvie looked around.  “Maybe we should stop guessing and find someone with some answers though.”

“This Peach person?”

“Pech.”  Sylvie corrected him with a faint smile.  “Looks like the coatrooms are to the left and the reception area is to the right.”  She pointed at some faded signs on the wall.  “Reception sounds like where we might be expected.”

The treader of dust

 I picked myself up and knelt there, first feeling my nose to see if I’d broken it (I had not, as far as I could tell) and then cautiously groping about the floor trying to find the flashlight, which had skittered somewhere during my fall.  I realised that the floor was not free from dust, but that in here the dust layer was perhaps a centimetre thick compared with the ten centimetres in the hallway.  Eventually my questing yet fearful fingers found the flashlight while encountering nothing more disgusting to the touch than dust, and I turned it and got back up.

I allowed myself a smile.  No matter how strange this journey had been so far, I had surely hit the jackpot at last!  This room was a study of some kind.  There was a mullioned window at the far end — surely the one I’d seen on my approach — and a large wooden desk with two pillars of drawers supporting it on either side.  A wooden and leather chair was sat slightly to one side, as though someone had just stood up and left.  The wall to my left was taken over by bookshelves; three in total of varying heights.  There were books and papers crammed onto every shelf and I had to stop myself from eagerly perusing them and look further around still.  On the other side of the room there was a globe on a stand, a fireplace filled with cold grey ash and surrounded with marble tiling and a coatstand.  The coatstand was, to my relief, empty.  Had there been evidence that someone lived here despite the dust in the hallway I think I might have reconsidered looking for Tesstament, at least until morning.

Satisfied that I was alone and that this was surely where the Testament had been stored I looked first on the desk.  There was a dark-red leather blotter placed squarely and centrally and an ink-well to the top left.  A pen rested against the ink-well but the desk was otherwise clear.  I felt a little disappointed that the Testament wasn’t there, but as I thought about I supposed it made little sense to hide the book here and then leave it out in plain sight.  So I turned to the bookshelves.

There I found only calamity.  I barely brushed my fingertip against the spine of the first book, something ornithological, and it crumbled into dust, cracking and dissolving into a trickle, which became a veritable waterfall of desiccated paper and aged ink.  The whole book collapsed in on itself as though it had been sat there for centuries, slowly and invisibly decaying until my careless caress unbound whatever still cohered it and returned to the dust we all come from.  I stepped back, shocked, and a little wary after my coughing fit of inhaling more dust and starting again.  When the book had finished its particulate descent to the floor I tried, as gently as possible, to ease the one next to it out to look at its cover, but it too disintegrated into a cloud of grey powder rather than be observed.

Now I was worried.  If the Testament was in this same condition I could imagine no way to salvage it and my journey here had been entirely in vain.  I looked along the shelf, placing my hands behind my back to avoid touching anything and holding my breath lest any of the works prove even more fragile than those first two, and to my immense relief could not find the Testament among the books there at all.

Shaking slightly now, with the effort of not breathing while staring at spine after spine, praying not to find the Testament in such a state, I moved to the chair and sat down.

The chair collapsed around me in a plume of the selfsame dust, dumping me on the floor as it, reduced to microscopic fragments, showered around me.  I threw myself forwards to escape from the cloud, dreading the damage that a coughing fit might wreak in here, and collided with the coatstand which, with a single loud crack, splintered and collapsed around me as though struck by lightning.

I got to my feet, wiping my hands ineffectually on my trousers, picked up the flashlight which was rolling on the floor and casting strange chiaroscuro on the ceiling, and retreated to the door.  It was obvious to me that this room was like an old photograph — you could see how things were in the past, but touching it caused it to split and fragment, destroying it piecemeal.  There was nothing to be found in here and I did not want to be held responsible for the devastation that I had already caused.

I paused at the door though.  In the hallway my footprints were clearly visible in the dust, like prints in wet cement, but now — and I was sure that they had not been there when I walked across the hall to this door — there were additional marks in the dust.  They were small and at first I thought they were paw-marks, but when I played the flashlight over them and looked more carefully they seemed like human feet only the size of a very small child.  Or perhaps, I considered briefly, someone who had been a victim of foot-binding at some point.  Nonetheless, there were additional paw- or foot-prints in the dust and they appeared to have approached the door and then retreated while I, unknowing, was reducing the contents of this room to dust.

I stood there for several minutes, my heart racing, blood pounding in my ears even though I strained as hard as I could to hear any external sounds at all, at a loss.  Should I call out, and confront whoever — or whatever — else might be in this house of dust?  Should I leave, perhaps wait until morning?  Or should I press on, find the wretched Testament and leave as quickly as possible?

I pressed on, if only because no sounds came to my ears no matter how hard I listened and because I couldn’t quite bring myself to give up on the Testament when I was so close.  Who knew when someone else might crack the ciphers and follow the starlight path here?

I pushed less hard on the other door and it, too, opened easily to reveal a kitchen.  The stone-flagged floor had a thin layer of dust on it, much less than that in the hallway but similar to that in the study.  There was a staircase off to the left leading upwards and a half-ajar door on the right appeared to guard a pantry.  There was a large table, set around with five chairs, in the middle of the floor and on it, laid open as though someone had been reading, was a large book bound in what might have been leather.

An icy hand seemed to clutch at my heart — what if this room was as aged and crumbling as the study?  The book on the table — surely it must be the Testament.  I desperately wanted to run forward and inspect it, but after all my experience so far such an act would undoubtedly cause the floor to cave in, or the ceiling to collapse… I was too close to fall prey to such traps now, surely.

I edged across the floor, eyeing the ceiling as though it had malevolent intent, and I laid a gentle hand on the nearest chair, dreading its dissipation into a cloud of sinking greyness.  The chair remained solid though, and the one next to it, and the table as well.  I reached out to the book and then stopped.  If the book should crumble away, then I should at least read the two pages that lay open here in front of me so that this journey be not in vain.

I read those pages and now I understand what trap Vermistaad laid to protect them.  I will not write here what I read, though the words are burned so firmly in my mind that all I have to do to recall them is close my eyes.  I read them, and I understood them, and I knew then that the book was entirely safe to touch and that I would not be taking it from that strange little house; nor would I be notifying anyone of my discovery of the ciphers.  The purpose of that book is to summon the Treader of Dust and I cannot imagine what ends that might serve.

I returned to my home for one purpose only: to destroy my notes and computer programmes.  Already Vermistaad’s curse is afflicting me; everything I touch ages visibly and if I maintain skin-contact with anything for more than a minute it begins to crumble into a fine grey dust.  Wherever I walk I leave faint dusty footprints behind as though I am burning the ground behind me.  I took a faint, macabre pleasure in destroying the evidence of my discoveries simply by resting my hands upon them and watching them break down into that fine, clinging dust that will eventually summon the Treader.

These words, intrepid reader, you may have, but there is nothing in here that will help you find that strange house, or the secrets of Vermistaad’s ciphers.  Now there is nothing left for me to do but my hands together and pray that there is some god out there that will take my soul before the Treader approaches and seizes it for its own unthinkable purposes.

Where dust goes to die

 I am neither a brave man nor a particularly well-traveled or adventured one.  I fear to argue with the butcher when I ask for lamb and he picks up beef.  I once took the wrong medicine for two months because my doctor handed me a prescription written for someone else and I could not bring myself to challenge his authority and ask for the right one.  So, finding myself on an overgrown Lancashire moor as the sun set, with only a flashlight, some spare batteries, a backup flashlight and a large kitchen knife sheathed in a teatowel lest I accidentally cut myself, a sense of intense dread came over me as slowly and inexorably as the setting of the sun.  The light seeped away and slowly the landscape became a silhouette of itself and the noises of nocturnal animals waking in their abodes made me shiver and quail.  I turned the flashlight on, and quickly turned it off again; reassured that it was working and terrified that the batteries might die before I found my way back to civilisation if I used it unnecessarily.  I clutched the tea-towelled knife tightly in my other hand and stared up at the sky which, despite darkening, seemed not to want to let the stars out.

Vermistaad calls the constellation that I was looking for Vulgaris but it has a better-known name today and I had looked it up, first in a star catalogue and then in a more useful almanac.  I knew to look for it in the east, and as the sun had set I had carefully set my back in that direction so that I was facing the right way, but now I feared to move in case I disoriented myself and could not find the constellation again.  My feet ached and my legs tingled with the onset of pins and needles and my hand ached from gripping the knife that I hoped I would not need to use and I wished that this was already all over and done with so that I could retire to my bed and shelter under the covers from the terrors of night.

Finally the stars winked into existence as though they’d always been there and I looked among them eagerly.  Standing alone and still for so long had chased my fear back and left my desire to do something — anything! — foremost.  I had a moment of cold panic when it seemed like Vulgaris was missing, but then I found a star in the right place and traced another one to its left, and slowly, with growing confidence, I identified it.  I felt a momentary sense of pride, swept away by the pain of the chill in my toes as I started to move.

Keeping Vulgaris over my left shoulder I looked about for the path that Vermistaad had written about and, as I expected, saw nothing at first.  Then it seemed as though there was a faint flicker of light, as though a firefly had signalled, and then another, and when I concentrated on them there was the dim shape of what might be a path across the moor.  When I started walking along it my doubts dissipated; a faint silvery glow seemed to emanate from it — surely the effect of moonlight on dew settling out of the cooling night-air onto a manmade declivity in the ground.  That there was no moon that night didn’t occur to me until much later, but I am sure that starlight would be an adequate substitute.

The path was narrow and twisty and at times I stopped and cast about me for where it had gone for it seemed to disappear and reappear according to whim rather than geography or geometry.  At one point it vanished altogether and I crouched down on the ground, frantically feeling around for anything to guide me, my breath rasping in my throat and my heart pounding in my chest.  I was certain I was about to be set upon and eaten; that Vermistaad’s cryptic words were guarded by more than ciphers and that I had unwittingly fallen into his subtle trap.  Then the path glimmered back into view and my relief was so severe that I think I would have fallen over had I not been already crouched down so low to the ground.  It seemed, momentarily, as though it was going back on itself, but that thought rapidly dispersed as the landscape around me seemed no more familiar than before.

The path led me thus, hither and thither, for a good twenty minutes before a large, dark object loomed ahead of me.  Seeing that path was leading now directly towards it I turned on the flashlight, holding my breath with anxiety, and cast the pale, whitish-yellow circle of light over the thing ahead.  Brick walls revealed themselves, and then a dark, mullioned window.  I had encountered a house of some measure, and I turned the flashlight off and pressed onwards, sure that this must be where Vermistaad had hidden the Testament.

The path led around the house to the right and ended at a small wooden gate constructed from several palings and held together by crosswise-nailed planks.  The gate was latched but not locked and swung open easily onto a short paved path with a garden on one side and a lawn on the other.  The far side of the lawn — scarcely three metres away, was bordered by a high hedge that I could not see over, and the garden was scraggly at best.  A gardener might have commented more favourably on it, but to me it looked if not dead then trying to die quietly and with dignity.  I hesitated at the door — should I knock?  There was a large iron knocker set in the middle of the door; a simple wrought-iron ring that struck a narrow plate beneath it.  When I picked the ring up though the door moved slightly and, leaning on it, it opened fully into darkness.

I turned the flashlight on and looked for a light-switch beyond the door, reasoning that if anyone lived here they would surely notice my intrusion and make themselves known.  Then all I needed from them was the Testament, whose value they undoubtedly did not know, and I would be gone.  I was trying so hard to convince myself of this that it took me a couple of minutes to realise that there was no light-switch anywhere on the wall by the door.

I stepped into what was a narrow hallway with a door to my left and a door at the end and a cloud of dust swirled up.  I leapt back, sure that this was a diabolic conjuring, a demon spirit set to guard the Testament from would-be thieves and inhaled sharply.  Acrid grey dust was sucked into my lungs and my coughing fit was so loud and long that the tubercular inhabitants of Thomas Mann’s sanatorium would have applauded me.  Every time I coughed myself to asphyxia I wheezingly sucked in a desperate breath that dragged more dust from the air into my lungs.  Only by staggering backwards into the night air until I reached the gate did I finally get free from the dust-cloud and was able to choke off my coughing and recover, leaning on the gate like a geriatric and clutching my aching chest with the hand holding the flashlight.  Though I never noticed myself letting go of it, I am sure that that is where I lost the knife.

Finally, wiping tears from my eyes and sniffing mucus back into my raw throat, I recovered enough to try again.  Now pointing the flashlight at the floor I saw that the house was covered in dust: where I had stepped were two scuffed footprints in dust so thick and ancient that it had felted down into a kind of carpet.  I knelt and carefully poked a finger down into it; I got as far as the knuckle and still did not feel the floor beneath it.  The door however, glided over the surface barely touching it, and by dint of more poking around I discovered that there were steps inside, hidden beneath the dust, and that the floor of the house was lower than the surrounding ground.

I almost gave up at that point, wondering if the Testrament could really have been left in a place this decrepit and filthy.  What sane mind could conceive of this as a safe place for something as valuable as the Testament of Carnamagos?  And then a wheedling little internal voice asked me how sane I thought Vermistaad was when he was writing in multiple languages and ciphers in order to hide something he thought important enough to write a book on.

I placed my feet as delicately and carefully in the dust as possible, picking them up high and setting them down again gently and slowly so as to disturb the dust as little as possible and took the five steps needed to get to the first door.  I pushed on it harder than I probably should have done, because I was certain that more thick dust would lie behind it and probably stop it from opening.  So when the door moved easily and silently, I fell through it and landed on my face.

Vermistaad's book

 As dust falls

It was a Tuesday in June when I cracked the third of Vermistaad’s ciphers and could, after months of struggling, read the second chapter of his magnum opus: Diaries of Carnamagos.  

The first chapter was written in a mixture of Latin and Greek, and though scholars disagreed on the intent behind it, all agreed that it was disturbing material and that Vermistaad must have written it shortly before, or perhaps even slightly after, he was committed to the New Bethlehem Asylum.  All subsequent chapters were seemingly gibberish but many had postulated that they might be written in code.  Several scholars, including deGriff, had investigated the possibility and had discovered the first cipher — an achievement in itself as it turned out that Vermistaad, confusingly, had switched to writing in French.  Sadly the cipher appeared to apply to random sentences throughout the chapter and did not appear to work for any later chapters; the inability to make progress was why many scholars had given up at this point.  It further didn’t help that the deciphered and translated lines were, if anything, more disturbing than the previous chapter.

The second cipher was uncovered by me last year.  I considered letting the scholarly community know about this breakthrough but the additional lines, bringing the total decipherment to a little over half the text of the chapter, was both chilling and thrilling at the same time.  It seemed that Vermistaad had, as the book alluded to, owned a copy of the Testament of Carnamagos and had read it.  That strange tome, of which all copies and editions are considered lost, would be worth a fortune to the occultists and collectors and, as venal as it may be, I did not want to risk letting someone else beat me to such a prize.  Being a scholar does not bring wealth and fortune in general and I relished the idea that I might be able to afford to spend my days in study in a warmer climate with other people looking after the mundane drudgery of life for me.  It seemed a just reward for my efforts to decipher Vermistaad’s text.

The third cipher fell to my efforts (and my computers) only when I considered that Vermistaad might have chosen yet another language to have written in.  Neither Dutch nor German yielded any results, but curiously Portuguese turned out to be the missing link.  When I woke that Tuesday morning and found my computer placidly sitting there with the full, undeciphered text on the screen and an initial translation — poor, as is to be expected when using online translation tools — waiting to be read I nearly fainted.  I forced myself to make a cup of tea and then sat down to drink it and read what Vermistaad had to say.

Even knowing that Vermistaad was quite likely mad when he wrote this the chapter was barely coherent and hints and allusions were so thick that it was hard to locate a single sentence that concretely described anything.  My tea grew cold as I sat there, sifting through his words, trying to make sense of something it was quite clear he had failed to make sense of.  I was certain after a couple of hours that his experience with the Testament had affected him quite severely, and for the substantially worse, but beyond that there was little to go on.  I reached the final page, sat back and stretched, and then was astonished to find that the text was practically lucid!  For four paragraphs Vermistaad explained where he’d found the Testament and that he’d decided, after studying it, that it was not safe to leave it lying around where anyone might claim it.

And then the inchoate mixing of thoughts returned and the last few paragraphs, those that should tell me where he hid the Testament, were as opaque and illucid as all the rest of the chapter.

I poured the tea away, made another cup, and sat down again.  The promise of having the Testament in my hands — or rather, a secure bank vault guarded night and day — was too much to pass up.  I had broken two of the ciphers that Vermistaad had used to hide things; I could find a way to pierce the veil of his confusion and locate the Testament itself.

It took a full week of dead-ends, blind alleys and stumbling around as though in a darkened room full of sharp and mobile objects.  Every time I thought I was making progress with one allusion another one would bring me up sharply and force me to admit that I was wrong.  The hints seemed to link to each other but when I tried following a path through them I invariably found myself turned around and going backwards.  Even when I assumed, improbable though it was, that each hint was intended to be used more than once I made no progress.  But slowly I found small things that were invariable and as I pieced them together the text started to show a greater cohesion than I believed possible.  When I set my pen down Tuesday evening, one week after deciphering the text, I had the strangest set of instructions I have ever been given: under the light of the full moon, when a certain constellation was high enough in the sky, there was a path to be found that would lead to the place where Vermistaad had placed the Testament.

It sounds magical, and it may have been intended that way, but written out coldly and devoid of Vermistaad’s mazing words, I understood it to mean that it was like Stonehenge.  Vermistaad’s path was visible always if you knew what you were looking for, but until then you had to be there at the right time when the light was right and then you could see the way to go.  I did not believe for a moment that strange gods would open diabolical ways for me to tread, or that Vermistaad had (as he appeared to claim at one point) hidden the book outside of time and space; only that I would be pushing through trees and bushes that overgrew a forgotten path in the Lancashire countryside.

I shuddered.  I do not like hiking.

Pete and the Knee-high

 The meadow was green, though with clover not with grass.  There were cows moving around at the far end of it where a small stand of trees offered shade from the still-hot autumn sunshine and while they looked over, brown eyes gazing disinterestedly at Pete, they showed no inclination to leave the shade and investigate him.  He eyed them back, more cautiously: cows were big and, more importantly, valuable.  No matter how he might claim he was defending himself the local courts would be sure to demand that he paid for the costs of an injured or dead animal.  When he was sure that they weren’t interested in him he glared at the clover as though it had done him a personal wrong, and stalked through it across the meadow.

Insects darted up into the air, jewel like eyes and filigree wings fluttering and sparkling in the sunlight, as he walked stiffly, aggressively, across the ground cover.  He ignored them; a week ago he’d been trekking his way through a swamp and the insects there were viciously bloodthirsty creatures that had sapped his will to swat everything that moved.  These seemed happy to get out of his way and return to their business, whatever it might be, after he had passed and he was stoically delighted about that.  A smell, one he couldn’t place but assumed was that of crushed clover, rose up around him making him think of green things and freshness and he felt his shoulders relax just a little and his gait became less of a stalk and more of a stroll.

The end of the meadow came far too soon and a waist-high stone wall barred his progress until he vaulted it, one hand gripping a large rough weatherworn stone and his feet landing smartly on the mud-and-rocks path on the other side.  There was a slight squelch; clearly the path wasn’t entirely dry.  He made sure he had his balance, let go of the wall and looked around.

“Where the bloody hell is this Shire, then?” he muttered.  The path, and it was clearly something used mostly for driving cattle along and couldn’t be graced with a better name, led round a corner in one direction where more tall, old trees grew obscuring his view, and back around the edge of the meadow in the other direction.  It wasn’t quite the way he’d come, but it was close enough that he wasn’t going that way without something to justify it, and there was no sign of buildings, no smoke from fires or chimneys, and nothing but the likelihood of ending up back in the swamp.

“Onwards,” he muttered.  He had an idea that talking to himself like this was a sign of madness but there was no-one to ask about it except for perhaps the cows and he didn’t like to think about what it might mean if they answered him.  Even if they just moo-ed.

The path bent only reluctantly round the tree, narrowing substantially and making it feel like the tree was somehow an obstruction and an inconvenience. He edged by, his rough leather jacket, much weathered from his travels, rubbing scratchily against the bark of the tree trunk and wondered how the farmer who owned the cows ever got them past this.  Then the tree was gone again and he could see the stone walls that divided the land up into fields, meadows and paddocks and hinted at humans somewhere about, and the path that led up a gentle slope and then over the top.  With little else to do he sighed and stomped up the hill to see what could be seen from the top.

There was another stand of trees at the top and the path led up just to one side of them.  He stopped, resting a hand on the waist-thick trunk of a tree with yellow-green leaves that seemed to be fluttering in a breeze Pete couldn’t feel and looked out.  Finally there was signs of life, though they were odd: there were half-sized houses that seemed to be dug into the earth here there and everywhere.  Paths, mostly with low stone walls to the sides of them, did run through but rather than defining the settlement they seemed to be habitual routes between doors.  The whole thing had a distinctly organic feel to it that seemed unnatural to Pete.

“You can get lost now,” said a gruff voice from somewhere near the ground.  Pete looked around first, and only then down.  There was a short man with a shock of curly brown hair peering up at him and sucking on a briar pipe.

“Sauron’s breath!” Pete jumped backwards, one hand reaching for the hilt of a sword that wasn’t there.  “A bloody knee-high!”

“That’s hobbit to anyone who doesn’t want to be cut down to size,” said the hobbit taking his pipe out of his mouth.  “And I mean that entirely literally, just in case you’re having trouble with your thinking.”

“You’re all supposed to be dead!”

“Then I’m a ghost.  Boo!”

Pete shook himself, but didn’t approach the hobbit.  He was fairly certain that they weren’t a ghost but he’d seen some odd things on his journey, especially through the swamp, and wasn’t keen on meeting any more.

“I met a knee — a hobbit,” he said.  “They’re called knee-highs in the Lowlands, you know.  He was a bit odd.”

“There’re no hobbits in the Lowlands,” said the hobbit with the pipe.  He inhaled from it and a smell of blackcurrant rose up on the air.  “Hobbits don’t leave the Shire much, except maybe those over at Bree and they’re not real hobbits.  Halflings, they are, and a bit special with it.”  He tapped the side of his forehead as he said special and looked at Pete as though he should know what that meant.

“It was just the one,” said Pete.  “A traveller.  Well, a mercenary, actually.  Said his name was… something strange.  Happy, or Sneezy, or something like that.  Only had one arm.  Kept going on about the Shire and Froggo and a grand elf wizard.”

The hobbit with the pipe stared down at the Shire and smoked his pipe quietly.  After a minute or so, when Pete was wondering if he was just ignoring him, he said in a thoughtful voice, “Would that be Frodo by any chance?  And perhaps Gandalf the wizard?”

Pete thought about it. “Maybe,” he said, reluctantly.  “Froggo had a bag of some kind, I recall that.  And the Shire was empty, all the knee-highs were killed by some trees.  Though that had to be Happy raving as trees don’t kill people unless they fall on them.”

“Frodo Baggins,” said the hobbit.  He took the pipe out of his mouth and carefully tapped it out on a flat stone that looked like it was used a lot for the purpose.  “Oh dear, oh dear.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

“Look, I’m just here to see if the Shire exists,” said Pete.  He hesitated.  “And Happy might have said something about a valuable ring.  So if you just hand a nice ring over, say gold, or maybe silver, I’ll take it and go and we’ll say no more, right?  I’ve had to kill a lot of things on my way here, and will probably have to kill more on the way back. A knee-high or six isn’t really going to bother me.”  For a moment he had a flashback to the swamp and the thing that had an orc’s head and six legs and strange arms that seemed to grab at things that weren’t there but somehow were and had limped off with his sword sticking out of its chest.

“Look,” said the hobbit sounding sad.  “It’s a bit more complicated than you think.”

“I don’t think much,” said Pete.  “I just do.  And I really, really want to go home right now.  So ring, cash, whatever.  Just find something to make it worth my while and I’ll be on my way.  Pick someone you don’t like and I’ll throw in killing them for you too.”

“No,” said the hobbit.  “You make a convincing argument, I’ll give you that, but it’s not me you need to talk to.”

“You’ll do,” said Pete.  “Do I have get my knife out?”

“No,” said the hobbit.  “And it won’t do you much good, neither.  That wizard you mentioned?  Well, he’s here.  And he’s already collected up all the valuable stuff.”

Pete drummed his fingers on his empty scabbard.  “That sounds like stalling to me,” he said.

“It’s the truth.  Gandalf the Magnificent, Gandalf the White, whatever he’s calling himself this morning, is holed up, hah, in the Inn of the Shire and is holding the whole Shire hostage.  You want to kill someone?  Go kill him.  But he’s been killed once, by a Balrog no less, and he came back, so you need to do a better job of it than the Balrog did.”

Pete stopped drumming his fingers and eyed the hobbit warily.  The hobbit eyed him back just as warily.

“Happy might have mentioned PTSD,” he said.

“That’d be the only thing he didn’t lie to you about then,” said the hobbit.

“Right,” said Pete.  “Right.  Only… I shouldn’t go believing any knee-highs then, should I?”

The hobbit glared at him.  “You’re only making trouble for yourself calling us that,” he said.  “How’d you like it if I called you Whitey Too-tall, huh?”

Pete nodded.  “I’d probably cut your throat.”  He drew his knife.  “And every way I look at this, that’s probably the right thing to do at this point anyway.”