The cavern floor had the smooth but uneven feel of water-eroded rock. With the help of stalactites, the string of gaslights around the perimeter cast strange patterns of light and shadow on the ceiling. The unevenness of the stone and insufficiency of the lighting made it difficult to say if there was only one cavern, or if there were passages leading away to a network of caves.
Elsa walked forward, trying to get a better feel for the space, and a wave of nausea flowed through her. Her face flushed hot and her stomach clenched. She checked her air supply but found nothing amiss. So what was that feeling? Another kind of trap scribed into the world? She turned to warn the others and saw something exceedingly strange.
Her three companions were still there in the room, but they were moving so fast their features blurred and she could barely tell one from another. Then one of them sped toward her, resolving into Leo as he approached. He held one arm back, connected to the blurs that were Porzia and Faraz, and threw his other arm toward her, still moving faster than a person should.
She reached out—he was gesturing at her impatiently—and took his hand. He yanked roughly on her arm, and she winced. As he drew her closer, though, the nausea washed over her again, and everyone slowed down to normal speed.
“What—” Elsa said, baffled.
“Temporal pockets,” Porzia explained. “You were stuck in there for ten minutes—we weren’t sure how to get you out safely.”
Elsa blinked. “Felt like seconds. Good thing I stopped walking when I did.”
“If we’re not careful, we could spend centuries down here and not even know it. Montaigne does seem to love nested security measures, doesn’t he?” Porzia set her hands on her hips and glared at nothing in particular.
Leo adjusted his facemask. “There must be a way through to wherever the book is. Montaigne got out, after all.”
An idea occurred to Elsa. “Leo, do you have your pocket watch on you?”
“Of course,” Leo said, taking his out. “Name me a mechanist who leaves home without a pocket watch.”
Elsa declined to point out that she, obviously, did not own one; otherwise she wouldn’t have asked. Instead, she explained, “Hold it out in front of you at arm’s length. If the second hand slows down, we know not to walk in that direction.”
Leo did as she instructed. The progress was slow, but after a few minutes they had mapped out the pattern of temporal dilation in the cavern. The bubbles of slow-time were everywhere around them, with only one invisible passageway large enough to admit a person.
“I suppose it’s this way, by process of elimination,” Leo said. “Watch your knees and elbows, everyone.”
He inched forward, sweeping the pocket watch left and right to detect the curves of the passageway. Elsa and the others followed single file, carefully watching where Leo stepped and matching his route exactly.
At the front of the line, Leo stopped suddenly, and Elsa nearly crashed into him. They were close to one wall of the cavern, but other than that, nothing seemed odd about the spot.
“What is it? Another temporal bubble?”
“No,” Leo said, lowering his pocket watch. “I think we’ve arrived at our final destination.”
He stepped aside to give her a clear view. Set into the stone wall were four large, faceted wheels, each facet carved with a different number, zero through nine. A combination lock. Beside the wheels was a single lever, presumably to be pulled once the proper combination was entered.
“Four digits,” Porzia observed. “Possibly a year, but which one?”
Elsa reached out and thumbed the first wheel, setting it to the number one. Then, figuring that Montaigne wasn’t much of a historian, she set the second digit to eight. She withdrew her hand, considering what to do next.
Leo ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Even assuming the code is a date from this century, we still have ninety-one possible combinations. We don’t have enough oxygen left to try them all.”
“Hold on.” Elsa thought hard, trying to imagine this from Montaigne’s perspective. Even after everything that had happened with Jumi, Veldana was still his greatest accomplishment—the victory that Jumi had wrenched from his grasp. Could he really be so egotistical?
Elsa set the last two numbers. “1873,” she said. “The year he completed the Veldana worldbook, and made history as the first scriptologist to create sentient people.”
Porzia asked, “Are you sure?”
“One way to find out.” She pulled the lever.
From deep within the wall there was a click click click click, and a whirring of gears, a grating of stone, and on the floor two stone panels swung upward. Elsa had to back up hastily to get out of the way. When the hole in the floor opened, a pedestal rose out of it, and upon the pedestal was a large leather-bound volume. The spine was marked in Jumi’s elegant script.
“Careful,” Faraz warned. “Could be yet another trap.”
“Mm,” Elsa agreed.
She circled the pedestal, examining it from all angles. No hidden weapons compartments, no pressure plates, no suspicious-looking materials, no electrodes. She tapped the front cover with one finger and quickly withdrew her hand. Nothing.
Leo fiddled with his pocket watch impatiently. “Oh, just pick the damned thing up, already.”
“Fine,” Elsa said, “but if the ceiling caves in, I’m blaming you.”
Still, she hesitated. This was her mother’s secret creation, part of the legacy she was born to inherit. Jumi had chosen to hide it from her, and that knowledge pinched like a thorn between her ribs.
Elsa placed both hands on the worldbook. Even through the cover, the pages seemed to sing to her. The air close to the book vibrated, as if it were made of butterfly wings instead of paper. And Elsa found that she did want to pick it up—deeply yearned to, in fact.
She lifted the book.
The ceiling did not collapse, though Elsa might not have noticed if it had.
No one wanted to cut it close with the oxygen, so Leo led them back through the minefield of temporal pockets. As they climbed the stairs, Elsa cradled her mother’s book in her arms the way another person might hold a young babe.
“Don’t just hug it,” said Porzia, stepping out into the courtyard. “Let’s crack that cover and give it a read, shall we? Find out what sort of weapons are inside.”
An anxious tentacle tugged at Elsa’s skirt, but she had her hands full with the book. Faraz lifted Skandar to his shoulder while Elsa opened to the first page.
As she read through the text, she could feel the weight of their gazes upon her. She didn’t need to look up at Leo to know the wait was killing him.
“So?” he finally said. “What kind of worldbook is it?”
“It’s … not.” Elsa scanned the front pages a second time, but the usual properties—gravity, land, air, heat—remained stubbornly absent.
“Not what?” Porzia leaned closer, scowling at the Veldanese text as if she could understand it by force of will alone.
“Not a scribed world at all. You see these references here?” Elsa pointed to a particular section; though Porzia couldn’t read the words, she might recognize the structure and formatting. “The text is linked to Earth, like my doorbook.”