The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

peering at a page of densely written parchment. To the savant’s right was spread a cloth roll of metal tools, picks and knives and tiny sharp shears, and to his left was a row of glass vials connected to one another by distilling coils. Svenson saw the bandolier of metal flasks slung over a chair—the Doctor’s store of refined indigo clay from the quarry.
    On the side of the table nearer to Svenson sat another functionary smoking a cigar. Two others stood by the hearth, tending several metal vessels hanging over the fire, unsettling combinations of a tea kettle and a medieval helmet, vaguely round, banded and bolted with steel, with shiny metal spouts that spat steam. These men wore heavy leather gauntlets. All four men looked up at Svenson in surprise.
    * * *
    As if he was born to it, fear and fatigue curling in an instant into brutal expedience, Svenson took two steps to the table, swinging with all his strength before the man in the chair could move. The hook landed with a
thwock
, pinning his right hand to the table top. The man screamed. Svenson released the hook and kicked the chair out from under the man, who cried out again as he fell to the floor and drove more weight against his pinioned hand. Svenson dropped the satchel and swung the chair as hard as he could at the nearest man from the fire, already charging at him. The chair struck the man’s outstretched arms cruelly and broke his momentum. Stepping aside like a bullfighter—or how he
imagined
a bullfighter might step—Svenson swung again, this time across the fellow’s head and shoulders. The chair snapped to pieces and the man went down. The first man was still shrieking. Lorenz was bawling for help. The second man from the fire had charged. Svenson dashed away toward the rack of pans—beyond the rack was a heavy butcher block. Svenson dove to it as he felt the man’s hands take hold of his jacket. There was a row of knives but his grasping hand could not reach them. The man pulled him away and spun him around, driving an elbow across his jaw. Svenson was knocked into the butcher block with a grunt, the edge slamming across his arching back with a vicious impact. His hand groped behind him and caught some handle, some tool, and he whipped it forward at the man, just as a fist slammed into his stomach. Svenson doubled over, but his own blow struck hard enough to cause his opponent to stumble back. The Doctor looked up, gasping for breath. He was holding a heavy wooden mallet for tenderizing meat, the flat hammer head cut into sharp wooden spikes for quicker, deeper work. Blood trickled down the staggered fellow’s head. Svenson swung again, landing square on the ear, and the man went down.
    He looked to Lorenz. The man at the table was still pinned, his face white and drawn. Doctor Lorenz dug furiously at his cloak, glaring at Svenson with hatred. If he could get that bandolier! Svenson heaved himself back toward the table, raising the mallet.
    The pinned man saw him coming and dropped to his knees with another scream. Lorenz’s face contorted with effort and he finally freed his prize—a small black pistol! The Doctors stared at each other for a brief suspended moment.
    “You’re as persistent as bed lice!” hissed Lorenz.
    “You’re all doomed,” whispered Svenson. “Every one of you.”
    “Ridiculous!
Ridiculous
!”
    Lorenz extended his arm, taking aim. Svenson threw the hammer into the line of glass vials, smashing them utterly, and flung himself to the floor. Lorenz cried out with dismay—both at the ruined experiment and the broken glass flying up at his face—and the bullet sailed across the room to splinter the far door. Svenson felt the satchel under his hand and once more snatched it up. Lorenz fired again but Svenson had the luck to trip on a pan (screaming himself at yet another searing jolt to his ankle) and so was no longer where Lorenz had aimed. He reached the door and burst through—a third shot splitting the wood near his head—stumbled into the hall, slipped, and sat down hard in a heap. Behind him Lorenz bellowed like a bullock. Svenson lurched across the main hall to another passage, in hopes that he might find Lord Vandaariff’s trophy room … before his stuffed head took up a place of honor in it.
    He limped blindly down the corridor, seeing no doors, his anxiety rising toward paralysis as he realized what he had just done—the compressed savagery, the calculated mayhem. What had happened to