top of the shadow, and in the center was a figure with four faces, each of burnished brass, one being the face of an eagle, the next of an ox, the third of a lion, and the last face so bright that to tell its visage was not possible.
From the shadow issued more darkness and the chill from beyond the ark.
* * *
—
Wherever Estafen found himself, it wasn’t in the aetherial realm. He stood in a small lane between narrow houses with high-pitched roofs. The night air was smoky, yet still and cold. The windows overlooking the lane appeared lightless, but thin slivers of light at the edges of one or two told him that the houses were not dark within, and that the windows were heavily curtained. The darkness of the alley was barely penetrated by the faint glow of a light on the street less than a block away . . . and by a reddish glow he could barely make out above the roofs of the buildings to his left.
He began to walk toward the streetlight. He knew he had to find a library, or whatever passed for one, and he needed to find it quickly. He slowed as he neared the street, not all that much wider than the alley, but more of a commercial way, with shops on both sides, all of which were closed and shuttered for the night.
“What are you doing?” asked a tall man in a black uniform with a strange silver insignia on his shoulder boards and his belt buckle.
The language the man spoke was precise and harsh, but Estafen understood it and replied in the same tongue. “I’m trying to find the library.”
“Over there.” The soldier or patroller gestured to Estafen’s right. “They’ve just started. You’d better hurry. You aren’t one of them, are you?”
“No,” replied Estafen honestly, since he wasn’t one of whatever groups inhabited the cramped-looking town or city.
“Good. You’d better hurry.”
“Thank you.”
Estafen walked swiftly along the street toward a small square, in the middle of which was a fire, more like a bonfire. Close to fifty people stood circling the fire, all throwing billets into the flames. As he neared the square and the crowd, he looked for a building that might be a library. To his left was a slightly larger structure, the only one with the doors open, and people were trotting down the wide stone steps with their arms full of books, passing them out to those around the fire—who were then tossing the volumes he had first thought to be billets of wood onto the flames.
Estafen winced but angled his way toward the library—it had to be a library with all the leather-bound paper volumes being carried out to the bonfire.
Just as he reached the base of the steps, another man in a black uniform appeared, seemingly from nowhere. “Is this what you want, Estafen? All knowledge being destroyed as evil? Is that the kind of freedom you want?”
“I thought that was your way, the aetherial way. Destroy the knowledge you deem dangerous and keep the faith.”
“Hardly. There’s useful knowledge and dangerous knowledge. You should know that better than anyone.”
“And Faith makes the determination, of course.”
“Better Faith than Knowledge. The most dangerous illusion is that knowledge sets one free. The more one knows, the more one is a slave to knowledge at any cost. Some costs are too great for a society, especially a civilized one, to survive. You know that sad history better than anyone.”
Estafen snorted. “You don’t understand. Societies are built on a foundation of faith and knowledge. Unless faith changes as knowledge increases, societies collapse. It’s not knowledge that creates the Fall, but the limits of unthinking faith.”
“You’ll never learn, Estafen. What you see is what will happen without moral proscriptions.”
“How do you know?”
“It will happen. That I know.”
“There are others, who are not doing this. Who will not do this.” Estafen gestured toward the fire.
“And what will they do? In reaction, they will destroy this town in fire and fury, in flame far greater than this puny bonfire. They will