The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [52]
By the time I went to the evening meal, I had made up my mind to go to the doctor’s chamber that very night.
Then I saw Selmar.
Ariel led her into the kitchens. She moved like a puppet, and when Ariel went away from her, she sat without moving. Her face was bloodless. Even her lips were white, and her eyes stared blankly ahead as if she was as blind as Dameon. But unlike the empath, her face was empty of all expression. She was like a body without a mind.
Cameo was sitting at the same table as Selmar, and her eyes were fixed on the older girl. She looked terrified.
17
THE HALLS WERE chill and silent as I slipped along them in stocking feet. I encountered many closed doors, but their locks were simple enough to require very little power, and I did not let myself become discouraged by the amount of time it was taking me to get to the doctor’s chamber. The sight of Selmar had been enough to make me absolutely determined to find a map.
At last I reached the entrance hall. Slipping across it, I hesitated, for there were several hallways leading off from it. But only one was lit by greenish candles. I hurried along it to the door at the end, then into the waiting room where Willie had left me. I listened at the door that led to Madam Vega’s office before unlocking it. There was neither fire nor candles, but the room was bright with moonlight coming through the windows behind the desk. I crossed the room and felt for the latch that worked the door in the paneling alongside the fireplace. I would have liked to leave it open, but it was too much of a risk. Stepping into the musty hall, I closed it and was plunged into inky blackness. I groped my way along the short hall to the other door. This time I exerted a tiny farsensing probe to make sure the chamber beyond was empty. I could sense no one, but that did not mean the doctor or someone else was not there, sleeping. It was almost impossible to sense a sleeping presence.
I opened the door carefully and froze at the sight of firelight flickering on the walls. But then I saw that there was only a dying fire in the enormous hearth, and no lanterns or candles. I glanced around the room and my eyes fell on the portrait of Marisa Seraphim. Closing the door behind me, I crossed the room to look more closely at it.
The dim, shifty light cast by the flames made it seem as if her eyes followed me. I thought she looked less cold than before. Indeed, it seemed to me now that there was a gleam of amusement in the set of her mouth and heavily lidded yellow eyes. Reminding myself that I had not come to look at a painting, I turned to scan the room, trying to remember where I had spotted the maps. The trouble was that there were so many books and papers. So many tables and shelves. A closer look revealed that I had been right in thinking many of the books had come from the Beforetime. Such books were forbidden now, but there had been a time when the ban had not been so strict and unilateral. This collection must have been amassed in that time. Impulsively, I reached out and took one from the shelves. As I remembered from the few tattered books my mother had possessed, the pages were thin and silky smooth and the scribing impossibly small and perfect. Who could guess how long it had taken to scribe it?
The book itself turned out to be uninteresting being filled with diagrams, symbols, and words that made no sense to me. On the book’s spine