mountain and the seemingly endless parade of recent calamities that had plagued the Citadel had only made him more rather than less so. He would be a hard man to convince, but the letter in Athanasius’s hand offered the first real glimmer of hope he had encountered in some time and he was not about to let it go.
‘Then we will just have to convince him,’ he said, and smiled for what seemed like the first time in days as he strode away across the blasted garden, heading towards the Great Library at the heart of the mountain.
37
The Great Library spread like a maze through forty-two chambers of varying sizes, deep in the heart of the mountain. It was one of the greatest treasures of the Citadel, the most valuable and unique collection of books and ancient texts anywhere in the world, gleaned from thousands of years of acquisitions and donations. It was also one of the reasons for the mountain’s millennia-old tradition of isolation and secrecy. There were texts housed in the library’s restricted sections containing knowledge so dangerous that few had ever been allowed to see them, even inside the cloistered and secretive world of the Citadel.
Athanasius approached the entrance, a steel-and-glass door cut into the solid rock of the tunnel that looked like it belonged more in a hi-tech science facility than an ancient monastery. He placed his hand against a scanner set into the wall and a cold blue light swept across it to check and verify his identity.
‘Don’t show him the letter,’ Father Thomas said, arriving breathless at his side. ‘It is an appeal for us to help save lives. Malachi cares little for people. All that matters to him are his precious books.’
‘Agreed,’ Athanasius nodded.
The door into the airlock slid open in a hiss of hydraulics. It was only large enough for one person at a time and Athanasius took the lead, stepping inside and waiting for the outer door to close behind him. A light blinked above a second scanner and a down-draught of air swept over him as impurities and dust were cycled down to filters built into the floor. The library was climate-controlled: a constant sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and a dry, 35 per cent relative humidity to protect all the precious paper, papyrus and vellum from moisture and the attendant damage it could wreak. The light stopped blinking and Athanasius placed his palm on a second scanner that controlled the final door into the library.
Nothing happened.
The blue light that should have crept down his hand did not appear and the door leading into the library remained closed. Athanasius peered through the window set into it but saw only perpetual darkness beyond.
‘Try it again,’ Father Thomas shouted from outside, his voice muffled by the door, his face framed in the window and frowning at the dead scanner as if its failure to do its job was a deliberate act of mutiny. Father Thomas had designed and updated all the security and control systems in the library and took any faults, no matter how small, very personally.
Athanasius placed his hand back on the glass. This time something did happen. The door behind him opened again, allowing him back out into the corridor.
‘Someone’s tampered with the entry system,’ Father Thomas said, looking as if he was about to explode with anger. He glared past Athanasius at the mutinous locking system then focused on something over his shoulder. ‘Malachi,’ he said.
Athanasius turned and saw what had caught his attention. Through the window of the closed door a small orb of light had appeared in the distant dark of the library, growing larger as it wobbled towards them. This was another of Father Thomas’s genius innovations, a movement-sensitive lighting system that followed every visitor and illuminated only their immediate surroundings as they made their way through the library leaving the vast majority of the precious collection in almost permanent darkness. The frequency of light even changed as one progressed further into the collection, turning through soft orange to red when the older and more delicate surfaces and inks were reached.
‘Remember our mission here,’ Athanasius whispered. ‘Do not let your anger overshadow our greater purpose.’
Thomas grunted and fumed quietly as the orb of bobbing light drew closer and revealed the bearish, hunched figure of Father Malachi like a tadpole at the centre of a luminous orb of spawn. He shuffled along, taking his time as he followed the thin filament of guide lights set into the floor