Chapter 59
Lunhard lifted a hand to the back of his head, let it fall to the nape of his neck, and gave a rueful sigh. "I suppose you have a knack for investigating."
'Pity the same could not be said for your acting,' Hoku thought.
Lowering his head slightly, he looked at Lunhard from beneath his brow. "Just answer the question."
The man lifted a hand to his chin and stroked it once. "I did not leave that one."
Lunhard inclined his head a little before adding, "For the record, I didn't even know that sigil was there. Regardless of where they are laid, these things have a way of telling on themselves."
"Huh?" Hoku was stunned; he had not expected such an answer.
Lunhard seemed to notice, but only busied himself with the candle, idly tracing a small circle with it before steadying it again.
A moment later, he gave a theatrical shrug. "I did mean it when I said you have a head for this."
"Truth be told, I've only been repeating what I know from reading. I know the traits of Basilite well enough, but whoever devised it concealed the actual method with great care. As for making this stone do what we need…" He lifted both hands a little, in plain surrender. "I'm none the wiser. I hope that does not lessen me too badly in your eyes."
Hoku let out a slow breath and brushed the loose strands from his face.
'Does he even think much of me, either?' Hoku thought wryly.
'Maybe I should make it easy and let him know that he's the most performative man I've met so far…'
'Nah, he would probably make a bereavement of it. He shook his head before the thought grew too amusing.
"But there is more I can tell you."
That, at least, brought Hoku's attention back to him.
"This Basilite is a cunning enchantment. Under the right conditions, one facet of it can tear at reality and cause destruction. Most of the time, however, it contents itself with deceiving the eye and drawing it toward things that are not truly there."
Raising the candle until the light found the high curve of his cheekbones, he went on, "It does not hold up well under strong illumination. Therefore, enough light cast upon the seal would sap the deception from it until nothing remains but the symbol. If that process is supported with the proper sort of divination, the effect can even be guided, so that what appears is no more than a contained semblance of the actual destruction."
Hoku had at least understood this much: both the Basilite and the eye set within it had their part in whatever was needed to go further with the Archivist chamber's "unsealing."
What, in particular, was required of him was still unclear.
The last time he had set a lantern upon that seal in the tunnel, the result had hardly been subtle.
'Perhaps that was why the Basilite had yielded so readily beneath the light here in the first place.'
If this sigil truly yielded beneath the candle's starker cast, then setting the candle over it might wear the glamour down a little further.
"What would happen if I set a candle atop it?" Hoku asked, wanting first to make certain he would not be sent through the ground yet again.
Lunhard beckoned him over with a slight lift of his chin.
"Why don't you try it yourself?" he said, sweeping a hand toward the very place. "See what happens."
Hoku swallowed, then lowered himself beside the symbol, steadying himself with one palm as he lifted the candle and set its base onto the center of the eye.
At first, there was only the thin ring of gold around the wick.
Then a viscous sanguine red began at the center, filling the symbol's windings as it darkened outward.
Afterward, a single line welled at the eye's base and trickled away.
Hoku had all but taken it for a circle when its curve passed inward instead of closing, leaving a slender stroke through the middle.
From it, paired curves opened one above another, like boughs set into a seal. The highest of them reached toward the Basilite's far edge and fell just short of it, leaving a narrow margin still clear.
'Why would it just end there? If that part had only been too far from the candle, should it not have grown less clear first instead of stopping while it was still so distinct?' Hoku scratched above his ear, then stood over it and lowered the candles again, only farther along this time. He repeated the arrangement with the mirror until, at the furthest reach, the head of some small animal emerged.
'A lamb head?'
The creature's muzzle was small, and its heavy-lidded eyes seemed nearly closed. Even the wool along its ears had been rendered in tight, curling strokes.
On its forehead shone a finely drawn four-pointed star, unmistakably the same shape Hoku had already seen across the mural and later within each passage.
He muttered a curse under his breath and set the candle's base at its center.
At once, a tar-black darkness spread through the star.
Hoku snatched his hand back and let out a breathy, "Ha—"
But rather than spilling from it, the lamb's left eye darkened first along its rim, and from there a similar trace trickled down the face, slanting toward Lunhard's side until it halted a few feet away.
Hoku stood up straight, retrieved the third candle, and crossed to where the line had ended.
The mirror swiftly brought the next figure through: a fox rendered in fluid black lines. Its body arched in one smooth curve, with tails and wisps trailing behind it like smoke.
One foreleg was drawn back, and on the raised paw lay that same narrow star.
Hoku only glanced at the ghostly figure before setting the third candle upon it. A faint wisp of smoke rose from the wick, and the flame turned sapphire.
Beneath the star's sheen, a cooler pigment accumulated under the wax.
From it, a darker trace exuded farther inward than the last had gone, then ebbed behind it until only the next point remained lit.
By then, the candelabrum was empty, and even the extra candle he had taken from Lunhard's desk had been set downelsewhere.
Having only noticed in passing,Hoku approached the shelf for another, returned, set it at the next point, and repeated the arrangement with the mirror until a fourth figure appeared.
It was a pale creature, tall and spare like an elk, with several tails fanning out behind it.
From its shoulders rose two necks, each tapering into a narrow head, and both were turned slightly forward, fixed on the third star suspended in the open space between them.
Hoku pressed his nail beneath his lower lip, lightly scraping it against a front tooth.
If this was truly the Nymareth of all things, it confirmed what he had already begun to suspect more surely than even the lamb's head, the stars, or the eye had.
He left a slight imprint in the softened wax as he withdrew his hand.
Faint golden traces had crept out from the lamb, the fox, and the elk–only partway– leaving darker patches toward the center that quickly joined together.
Soon, upright strokes and curving lines resolved into something tree-like: a slim vertical trunk, broad spreads like low-reaching roots or hems, and above them layered curves opening into a canopy wrought more like an emblem than any living crown.
Beneath it, the silhouette of a person lay nearly folded into the roots.
Dark hair spilled over the face, rendering it blank and unreadable.
Only the pale line of a cheek and the utter stillness of the body kept it from looking like a tightly cloaked figure.
A larger star was forming within it, nearly as large as the one he'd first sighted with his compass.
Grabbing another candle from a higher shelf on the bookcase, he returned to the Basilite.
'…Ugh. My hands are suddenly sweaty. It stings.'
He drew his fingers in and opened them again, the raw skin across his palm tightening as he did.
Even if this was only a weak impression, he could hardly mistake it. But if the image had already shown itself, what was he meant to do now?
When he looked back, Hoku half expected to find Lunhard's attention still on him.
Of all times, he had fallen to braiding his hair to one side with one hand, the candle left in the crook of his arm.
He rolled his eyes without a word, stepped back, lifted his heel, and bent to lower the candle.
"Nothing's changing even when I hold it close… so it must already be done," Hoku muttered. He reasoned that if anything bizarre had appeared, there must be more to reverse– yet nothing at all moved.
He made one more sweep with the candle and, finding nothing different, moved his hand over the large star. He had not heard Lunhard come up beside him.
Fingers closed around his wrist, and he recoiled hard enough that Lunhard started too, both hands flying to his throat before they fell again.
"Why?—" was all Hoku managed. His mouth stayed slightly open after, but nothing else followed.
Lunhard lowered his hands and kept his gaze on the Basilite. He set his own candle beside Hoku's, just off the figure.
Several strands had slipped from Lunhard's braid.
The detachment he had worn before was no longer visible.
He seemed to trust his own judgment; his hand had gone to Hoku's shoulder without the least searching.
Just then, something in Hoku's peripheral darkened, and he instinctively whipped toward it.
The curving strokes that had faded were surfacing again, each putting out smaller offshoots of uneven length, while the heavier ones slowed and thickened to a denser black the nearer they drew to the figure.
More hair appeared around her than he had first supposed, spreading farther from the head and down along the body, until the narrowness he had seen before no longer seemed so disproportionate.
The other three symbols remained in their appointed reaches of the Basilite.
"They're the keepers of each passage," Lunhard spoke again, and Hoku straightened a little. "Not all such things show themselves through ordinary divination. Only with that sight can you perceive them."
He tilted his head slightly. "I can't sense them now, but you likely can. There are several presences here."
Hoku remained still while the colors that filled the stars faded swiftly to black, ebbing from their outer edges in grainy, soft waves.
Before long, Hoku had noticed that there were characters.
A 'I' had formed on the star at the lamb's brow; II lay on the fox's raised paw; and between the elk's two heads, III. At the center, the woman bore no number at all. Only the great star above her thickened with something beyond counting, grown weighty with the last remnants of light in the Basilite.
From there, his thoughts returned to the last time he had been with the others, all save Yu Ze and Cheshire.
A similar arrangement had appeared on the mural before, though in a far more desolate form. However, in this room, the Basilite cast it differently, setting the keepers and the figure apart.
Hence, whatever likeness the two shared, they were not quite the same. Hoku had only the sense of standing at the mouth of a long, winding corridor, with one door visible at the far end.
He turned it over once more, then set it aside and drew out his pocket-watch.
"So if I put the compass there—"
"Hm, not quite," Lunhard interrupted. "Try a different key."
Lunhard lifted a hand to his ear and popped open the last link of the chain.
A small key fell into his palm, which he immediately cupped and concealed as he stepped away from the basilite. A series of clicks followed as he unlocked a panel in the desk, revealing a long silver chain with a watch fob at its end.
Lunhard toyed with the fob, swinging it around his finger as he returned to Hoku, then pointed downward.
Hoku offered his hand and squinted as Lunhard let the object slip from his finger. It landed loosely in Hoku's palm.
Lunhard stepped back and ran a hand through his hair, undoing the braid.
"My gift to you—" Lunhard's grin widened. "For being the first guest I've received here since the old tragedy."
There was pleasure in Lunhard's voice as Hoku took the fob, yet the moment it had come free into his hand, he was filled with a subtle verocity.