Serpents and Stairways

Chapter VIII - Part 3

A woman with hair of iron slept in a transparent box, suspended on four golden chains like a hammock, inside one of many displays of the Merry Alchemist. "Our revolutionary sleeping potion is the solution to your sleeping problems!" the sign claimed. The curls of thin foil glimmered—the displays were lit even at night. Georg wanted to turn away, but kept on looking at her until the moment they passed, walking alongside the building on more or less the same route as the shape in a macintosh.

When they turned the corner: there was no one on the wide and unobscured street.

"Oooh... A mysterious disappearance! Classic." Georg shook off the image of the non-sleeping woman.

Her chest wasn't moving, was it?

There was another pompous entrance on this side of the building—just as locked for the night as the last—facing a small (by local standards) square. Behind a low fence stood on its hind legs the horse of a bronzed rider, bird-weathered. Dead winds had filled his frozen, motionless cape, his dull sword raised in militant anticipation. To the right and left of the commander were placed two dated canons—heavyweight wall- and flesh-tearing murderers, now awkward and bulky, but serving as horses for children in daylight.

Through darkness and pavestones hatched a few other large buildings and gingerbread painted facades: cafes, ready-made dress shops and many other entertainment spaces—just as closed, judging by the dark windows. Although, of course, the witchlights that don't shine outside might've been lit inside, but it was unlikely that the person—

"Look." Michel stopped and pointed at the arch of the department store, "It'll be gone by morning."

Georg looked. On the column, in chalk, there was a quatrain—the one they'd heard from Iolaus today, with its slant rhyme:

The gryphon, gold, in chains gold,

His future known, his fate sold:

To hold the firmament, to bear globe,

To serve, until the world is old.

"I see," he said.

"Well, yes," Michel said.

Those were the signs their lives were paved with: signs they could not ignore. And maybe, on any other day, in any other mood he would've walked right by, but coincidences like this one were the flow of Fatum, and he had promised Michel to stop trying to swim against it, at least for a while.

Young men walked along the displays, in a way to, as if by accident, discover a spot where their silhouettes, merging with statues and trees, would be especially hidden from any accidental bystander.

Such a place did exist. A door, where ended the stairway and all the adornments of the main entrance: the columns, the signboards, the display nooks with particularly enticing wares (in front of them—an imitation of an ancient manuscript surrounded with, not any more genuine, but vibrant ingredients in glass jars, dubiously large for emphasis)—a tiny auxiliary door which one must've crouched to enter. Out of precaution, both assumed a look of outright profound interest in the old text which had stopped them in their tracks—inconspicuously in shadow, benevolently off the street.

"Shall we look for anything unusual?" Georg asked, although it wasn't as much a question as an invitation.

Instead of replying, Michel shifted his foot and revealed the branding on a pavement stone: a sign with a castle wall—like sometimes were stamped on bricks, marking their manufacturer.

Georg sat down over it, taking from an inner pocket a set of lockpicks, and with one's handle, which resembled a lancelet, tried to pry the stone. It gave easily. Water rushed into the hole that it left behind.