I T was after Compline. Vespers had been sung two hours before, the monks had consumed their evening meal and most of them were in their cells preparing for bed. Charibon was settling down for the long midwinter night, and a bitter wind was hurling flurries of snow down from the Cimbrics, drowning out the howls of the wolves. The streets of the city were deserted and even the cathedral Justiciars were preparing for bed, having trimmed the votive lamps and shut the great doors of Charibon’s main place of worship.

Albrec’s door was rapped softly and he opened it, shivering in the cold wind which he admitted.

“Ready, Albrec?” Avila stood there, muffled in hood and scarf.

“No one saw you leave?”

“The whole dormitory have their heads under their blankets. It’s a bitter night.”

“You brought a lamp? We’ll need two.”

“A good one. It won’t be missed until Matins. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“Yes. Are you?”

Avila sighed. “No, but I’m in it up to my neck now. And besides, curiosity is a terrible thing to live with, like an itch which cannot be scratched.”

“Here’s hoping we can scratch your itch tonight, Avila. Here, take this.” The little monk handed his Inceptine friend something hard and angular and heavy.

“A mattock! Where did you pilfer this from?”

“Call it a loan, for the greater glory of God. I got it from the gardens. Come—it’s time we were on our way.”

The pair of them left Albrec’s cell and whispered along the wide corridors of the chapter-house where Albrec slept. Due to his position of Assistant Librarian, he had a cell to himself whereas Avila slept in a dormitory with a dozen other junior Inceptine clerics, for he had laid aside his novice’s hood only three years before.

They crossed an arctic courtyard, their habits billowing in the biting wind. Scant minutes later, they found themselves outside the tall double doors of the Library of Saint Garaso. But Albrec led his friend around the side of the rime-white building, kicking his frozen, sandalled feet through piled snow and halting at a half-buried postern door. He poked his key into the hole and twisted it with a snap, then pushed the door open.

“More discreet here,” he grunted, for the hinges were stiff. “No one will see us come and go.”

But Avila was staring at the snowy ground about them. “Blast it, Albrec, what about our tracks? We’ve left a trail for the world to see.”

“It can’t be helped. With luck they’ll be snowed over by morning. Come on, Avila.”

Shaking his head the tall Inceptine followed his diminutive friend into the musty, old-smelling darkness of the library. Albrec locked the door behind them and they stood silent for a second, alarmed by the quiet of massive masonry and waiting books, the wind a mere groaning in the rafters.

Avila struck a light and their shadows leaped at them from the walls as the lamp caught. They threw back their hoods and shook snow from their shoulders.

“We are alone,” Albrec said.

“How do you know?”

“I know this place, winter and summer. I can feel when the library is empty—or as empty as it ever becomes, with its memories.”

“Don’t talk like that, Albrec. I’m as jumpy as a springtime hare already.”

“Let’s go then, and stay close. And don’t touch anything.”

“All right, all right. Lead on, master librarian.”

They navigated the many rooms and halls and corridors of the library in silence, tall cases of books and scrolls looming over them like walls. Then they began to descend, taking to narrow staircases which to Avila seemed to have been built into the very walls of the building. Finally they hauled up a trapdoor of iron-bound wood which had been concealed by a mat of threadbare hessian. Steep steps going down into uttermost dark. The catacombs.

They started down, the weight and bulk of the library hanging over and around them like a cloud. The fact that it was a winter-dark and wolf-haunted night outside should have made no difference to the darkness in here, but somehow it did. A sense of isolation stole over the pair as they stumbled through the accumulated rubbish in the catacombs and coughed at the dust they raised. It was as if they were two explorers who had somehow chanced upon the ruins of a dead city, and were creeping through its bowels like maggots in the belly of a corpse.

“Which wall is the north one?” Avila asked.

“The one to your left. It’s damper than the others. Keep to the sides and don’t trip up.”

They felt their way along the walls, lifting the lamp to peer at the stonework. Chiselled granite, the very gutrock of the mountains hewn and sculpted as though it were clay.

“The Fimbrians must have been twenty years carving out this place,” Avila breathed. “Solid stone, and never a trace of mortar.”

“They were a strange people, the builders of empire,” Albrec said. “They seemed to feel the need to leave a mark on the world. Wherever they went, they built to last. Half the public buildings of the Five Kingdoms date from the Fimbrian Hegemony, and no one has ever built on the same scale since. Old Gambio reckons it was pride brought the empire down as much as anything else. God humbled them because they thought they could order the world as they saw fit.”

“And so they did, for three centuries or so,” Avila said dryly.

“Hush, Avila. Here we are.” Albrec ranged the lamp about the wall where there were mortared blocks instead of the solid stone of the rest of the place. The light showed the crevice in which Albrec’s precious document had been discovered.

“Light the other lamp,” the little Antillian said, and he reached into the crevice with a lack of hesitation which made Avila shudder. There might be anything in that hole.

“There’s a room on the other side of this, no doubt about it. A substantial space, at any rate.”

Avila found a staved-in cask amid the wreckage and rubbish. He set it on its end and placed the two lamps upon it. “What now? The mattock?”

“Yes. Give it here.”

“No, Albrec. Valiant though you are, you haven’t the build for it. Move aside, and keep a look out.”

Avila hefted the heavy tool, eyed the wall for a second, and then swung the mattock in a short, savage arc against the poorly mortared stonework.

A sharp crack which seemed incredibly loud in their ears. Avila paused.

“Are you sure no one will hear this?”

“The library is deserted, and there are five floors of it above us. Trust me.”

“Trust him,” Avila said in a long-suffering voice. Then he began to swing the mattock in earnest.

The old mortar cracked and fell away in a shower. Avila hacked at the wall until the stones it held began to shift. He picked them out with the flat blade of the mattock and soon had a cavity perhaps six inches deep and two feet wide. He stopped and wiped his brow.

“Albrec, you are the only person I know who could cause me to break sweat in midwinter.”

“Come on, Avila—you’re nearly through!”

“All right, all right. Taskmaster.”

A few more blows and then there was a sliding shower of stones and powder and dust which left them coughing in a cloud that swirled in the light of the lamps like a golden fog.

Albrec seized a lamp and got down on his knees, pushing the lamp into the hole which suddenly gaped there.

“Sweet Saints, Albrec!” Avila said in a horrified whisper. “Look what we’ve done. We’ll never block up that hole again.”

“We’ll pile rubbish in front of it,” Albrec said impatiently, and then, his voice suddenly hoarse: “Avila, we’re through the wall. I can see what’s on the other side.”

“What—what is it?”

But Albrec was already crawling out of sight, his shoulders dislodging more stones and grit. He looked like a rotund rabbit burrowing its way into a hole too small for it.

H E was able to stand. Hardly aware of Avila’s urgent enquiries on the other side of the wall, Albrec straightened and held up his lamp.