a shot shivered the branches and ripped through the leaves above Kit’s head.
He scrambled fast on hands and knees. Wilhelmina’s ley lamp grew warm in his palm—enough to let him know that he was not imagining it. He looked around and saw that he had plunged into a narrow game trail: a single rutted line that stretched away on either hand, straight as an arrow’s flight.
Another small explosion sent a bullet tearing through the screening brush, shattering a nearby branch, and Kit, clutching the device, started running down the track. As a third gunshot sliced the air a mere step ahead of him, he stopped, turned, and started back the opposite way. But the surrounding wood had already faded into the shadowy deeps of an all-pervading darkness.
Kit managed another step and yet one more before he tumbled headlong out of one world and into another.
CHAPTER 27
In Which a Little Light Is Shed
The language of the angels allows no earthly utterance,” Friar Bacon explained. “Therefore, it cannot be spoken by mortal tongues.” He emphasised this point with a solemn shake of his tonsured head. “That is not to say that it cannot be understood. With the proper application of intelligence and logic the meaning can be deduced. It can be made to speak to us.”
“What does the book tell you?” asked Douglas. After waiting almost three days while Roger examined it, his endurance was at an end.
“Patience, my friend. All in God’s good time.” The renowned scholar returned to his perusal of the parchments on his worktable. “First we must prepare the soil so that our understanding can be correctly seeded.”
“Of course,” muttered Douglas. “Forgive me, brother, if I seem overanxious.”
The priest brushed away the apology with a sweep of his hand. “As I believe I have indicated on a previous occasion,” he continued, “the script in question is derived from an alphabet of symbols—as are all languages, to be sure. For what is a written text but a collection of symbols that substitute for the elementary sounds of human speech? However, unlike the symbols strung together to form the sounds used in speech, the symbols in this book are abstracted and thus removed from the realm of vocal representation.”
Roger Bacon glanced at his pupil and seemed to require some sign that he had been understood.
“See here,” Bacon said, picking up one of the scraps he had prepared for Douglas’s edification. “Notice how the symbols curve—this one to the right, this one to the left, some up, some down—each particular curve contains meaning, as do the small lines which branch away from the main, as well as those that cross the main. Where the lines branch and cross aids in determining meaning.” He tapped the parchment with a fingertip. “It is a most cunning and ingenious cypher.”
“Indeed,” replied Douglas, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of decoding what amounted to another whole language in order to decipher the book he had stolen from the British Library. “How many symbols are there in total?”
“Hundreds,” replied Roger Bacon simply. “As there must be.”
“To be sure,” Douglas agreed philosophically, thinking the greater part of his work lay before him. Then he remembered something the scholar had told him. “When I first gave you the book, you said you were the one who devised the script. By that, do you mean you invented the symbols in which it is written?”
“Only in part,” Bacon conceded. “For my purposes, I chose a script based on a symbolism that is far, far older than any other. I adapted it for my use, but did not create it.”
Douglas puzzled over the precisely parsed meaning of the priest’s words. “Am I to take it that you wrote this book?”
“You flatter me undeservedly, brother.” He laid a reverent hand on the small volume Douglas had brought him.
“Again, forgive my ignorance, but your name is most prominently displayed in the text.”
“A mere formality of acknowledgement,” replied the learned priest with a curious half smile. “Brother Luciferus, whatever his true identity, is merely declaring his debt to the originator of the script in which his book finds its voice. Nothing more.”
“How fortunate for me,” observed Douglas, “to have found the one man in England who can read it.”
“Yes, and in order that we might gain the benefit of it, I have applied myself to the task of rendering a transliteration of the text for future reference.” He nodded with satisfaction. “I am happy to say that work is now