head, and there was still wonder on his face—“the world had changed."
"When I met you in Paris, you told me that you'd only just come back. Was that when you returned?"
"More or less. I had been back a few years by then, enough to learn my way around to some degree, but not enough to keep from being pickpocketed by a spell that hadn't even been invented in my day but was old hat in the eighteenth century."
"By Manassier's grandfather."
"Yes. He and an associate were living in that nebulous world betwixt and between. The Circle had rejected them for unbecoming conduct—and, I suspect, gross incompetence—but they didn't have any skills wanted by the dark. They made a precarious living relieving naive country bumpkins of their worldly possessions and, whenever possible, draining them of their magic. They couldn't get past my shields to make the latter possible, but they did manage to make off with the Codex."
"And that mysterious spell you were going to tell me about."
Pritkin propped his head on one hand, a tired gesture I could never remember seeing before. "I have made many mistakes in life, but the worst of all had to be writing down that blasted spell."
"But Nick said it was never written down. That it was lost after the temple burned and the priests all died."
"One survived and, in extreme old age, left exactly one copy. I don't know whether he was senile, or merely unwilling to let his most precious secret die with him. Perhaps he'd forgotten what it does; maybe he never knew. I only know that I found his scribbled ramblings in an old temple in Angelsey. How they got there." He shrugged. "Possibly a Roman legionary picked them up as a curiosity in the East before being reassigned. I never knew."
"How did you find it?"
"Because I was searching for it. Not that spell specifically but anything old that might have survived. I didn't have high hopes—the place had been burnt by the Romans during their Druid-killing sprees, and what was left was plundered by the Saxons a few centuries later. But no one had thought an old scroll to be of much use, especially one in a language none of them could read, and it somehow survived. Languages have always been a specialty of mine. And I pounced on it."
"For what?"
"For curiosity partly. For the rest…I was so proud of myself, thought I'd found my life's work, before I understood how long that life might be. It seemed an utter good—cataloging and preserving the old knowledge at a time in which the whole world seemed to be coming down around our ears. I had no way of knowing that what I recorded might well bring that to pass much more efficiently than the damn Saxons ever could!"
"But what does it do?" I thought I was going to go crazy if he didn't just tell me.
"The Ephesian Letters is a spell and a counterspell in one, depending on voice, inflection and which way it is read. One way closes a door; the other opens it."
"What door?"
"The door between worlds. Rosier fears that if the spell is found, someone might reverse it, opening a gateway to rivals his kind have not had to face in—" He had been sorting through the pile of pages at his elbow and had picked one out of the group. It must have been the translation Nick was working on, unless ancient Ephesian priests used lined notebook paper. His breath caught. "What is this?"
I glanced at it. "Nick was translating the counterspell for me, for the geis."
"This isn't the counterspell," Pritkin said, his face draining of color as I watched. I glanced down at the paper, but it didn't make much sense.
ASKION: Shadowless ones. Where gods once ruled,
KATASKION: Shadowy. Humans now do.
LIX: Earth. Earth is blocked
TETRAX: Time. To Time's Guardian.
DAMNAMENEUS: Sun overpowered. With this, the sun is overpowered.
AISION: True Voice. And the oracle speaks with a true voice.
Pritkin grabbed me by the arms. "Take us back, quickly!"
"Back where?"
"To the moment Nick got up to leave! I have to catch him!"
"Why, what did he—"
"There's no time to explain. Just do it!"
I pushed a limp strand of hair out of my eyes and tried to focus. God, I was so tired. "I can't shift right now. Maybe tomorrow—"
Pritkin swore. "If I don't find him, there won't be a tomorrow!" And he was gone. I didn't even see him leave, just the door slamming shut behind him.