Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [101]
Since no windows opened onto the secret reading room, he found himself fumbling in the dark. But no windows meant no glass. There were no drinking utensils, no mirrors. He should be safe in the stone-wall chamber, for a little while at least. Feeling along the edge of the reading table, he located the large candlestick standing there. Using tapers stored in a box near the base, he ran his fingers up the length of the candle to the wick. Striking one taper, he lit the cylinder of beeswax and then another on the other side of the table. Warm, safe light suffused the room. Faintly, he could hear the assembling horde keening and moaning horribly on the other side of the bookcase door. Fists of heavy black glass began to pound rhythmically against the barrier, like distant drums. The pivoting gateway held, but for how long it would continue to do so he could not be sure.
Pulling priceless volumes off the wall, he finally found the one he was searching for and carried it to the table. It was bound in fraying old leather and weighed as much as a small saddle. If he could not send word to a magician, then he would make his own magic. He had done so on a limited basis in the past, and he would do so again now. Always more dilettante than pupil, he wished now that he had paid more attention to such studies. But why bother to learn the intricacies of the mystic arts when one could always hire a professional to do the job better?
As the pounding outside increased, he was encouraged by the continued stability of the doorway. Working the index, which was an entire book unto itself, he finally found the item he was looking for. By the steady, reassuring illumination of the twin candles he flipped through the heavy weight of pages until his fingers stopped them at the appropriate chapter.
There it was: a simple recitation for banishing spirits that might arise up out of statues. Leaning over the open book and squinting in the flickering light, he saw that the spell was deemed effective on sculpture rendered in any medium: stone, metal, wood, bone, shell—and glass.
Turning to the thudding portal, he raised a clenched fist and bellowed defiance. “Pound away, brood of foreign devils! In another moment you’ll all be dead and gone, extinguished, like steam off a hot stove! Nothing and no one besieges Cuween Bisgrath in his own house!”
Turning back to the book, he bent low over the relevant paragraphs. Though writ small, they appeared elemental and shorn of unpronounceable terms. To make sure he committed no potentially hazardous errors in the reciting of the formula, he reached automatically for the pair of reading glasses that were always kept safe in the single pull-out drawer beneath the reading table.
And made the mistake of putting them on.
XVI
Hoy, bruther, what did you give to that poor little thing, anyway?”
“Nothing much.” Ehomba strode along easily as they climbed into the first foothills. “It was a little doll, a carving that had been given to me by one of the women of the village.” He glanced over to where the emancipated Knucker was stopping to inspect every flower they passed, as if seeing and sniffing each one for the first time. “When you are going away on a long journey, people give you peculiar odds and ends, in the hope that this or that frippery might at some time prove useful. I saw no particular use for the carving, and thought that since the girl appeared to be losing everything she owned, she might enjoy the comfort of a doll, however small and hard.”
The swordsman took a playful swipe at the tuft on the end of Ahlitah’s switching tail. Looking back, the big cat’s eyes narrowed. With great dignity, it loped on ahead, effortlessly outdistancing its human companions.
“Maybe you have got kids of your own, bruther, but your woman must have done the raising. No girl that age is going to cuddle up to a piece of black rock.”
“It was not rock.” Ehomba stepped carefully over a patch