The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

right—the kind of silly misdirection that could have easily flummoxed him for another half hour. He dug his fingers around the odd-shaped knob and turned it. The well-oiled lock opened silently and Chang felt the weight of the door shift in his hands. He pushed it open and stepped through.
    * * *
    He knew it was Vandaariff’s study immediately, for the man himself sat before him at an enormous desk, scratching earnestly away at a long page of parchment with an old-fashioned feathered quill. Lord Robert did not look up. Chang took another step, still holding the door open with his shoulder, his eyes darting around at the room. The carpets were red and black and the long room was subdivided into functional areas by the furniture: a long meeting table lined with high-backed chairs, a knot of larger, more upholstered armchairs and sofas, an assistant’s desk, a row of tall locked cabinets for papers, and then the great man’s desk, as large as the meeting table and covered with documents, rolled-up maps, and a litter of glasses and mugs—all driven to the edge of his present work like flotsam on a beach.
    No one else was in the room.
    Still, Lord Vandaariff did not acknowledge Chang’s presence, his face gravely focused on his writing. Chang remembered his main errand, a secret way to the great chamber. He couldn’t see it. On the far wall beyond the table was the main entrance, but it seemed like the only one.
    As he stepped forward something caught Chang’s attention at the corner of his eye … it was the painting behind him—he hadn’t looked at it in the light. He glanced again at Vandaariff—who gave Chang no attention at all—and opened the door wide. Another canvas by Oskar Veilandt, but no similar sort of image … instead its front was like the back of the
Annunciation
fragments and other paintings—what at first glance seemed mere cross-hatched lines was in truth a densely wrought web of symbols and diagrams. The overall shape of the formulae, Chang saw more with instinct than with understanding, was a horseshoe … mathematical equations made in the shape of Harschmort House. It was also, he realized with a certain self-consciousness, wondering if the insight was merely the product of his own low mind, perversely anatomical—the curving U of the house and the peculiarly shaped cylindrical figure, longer than he had imagined, of the great chamber clearly inserted within it … whatever else Veilandt’s alchemy intended, itwas quite clear that its roots lay as much in sexual congress as any elemental transmutation—or was the point that these were the same? Chang did not know what this had to do with the ceremony in the chamber, or with Vandaariff. And yet … he tried to remember when Vandaariff had purchased and re-fitted Harschmort Prison—at most a year or two previously. Hadn’t the gallery agent told them Veilandt had been dead
five
years? That was impossible—the alchemical painting on the door was definitely the same man’s work. Could it be that Veilandt hadn’t died at all? Could it be that he was here—perhaps willingly, but given the degree to which Vandaariff and d’Orkancz were exploiting his every discovery it seemed suddenly more likely he was a prisoner, or even worse, fallen victim to his own alchemy, his mind drained into a glass book for others to consume.
    And yet—even within his exhaustion and despair Chang could not prevent himself from indulging this tendril of hope—if Veilandt were alive he could be
found
! Where else might they learn how to resist or overturn the effects of the glass? With a stab into his heart Chang realized this was even a chance to save Angelique. At once his heart was torn—his determination to save Celeste, this last prayer to preserve Angelique—it was impossible. Veilandt could be anywhere—shackled in a cage or drooling in a forgotten corner … or, if he retained his sanity and his mind, where he could best aid the Cabal … with the Comte d’Orkancz at the base of the great tower.
    Chang looked again at the painting. It
was
a map of Harschmort … as it was equally an alchemical formula of dazzling complexity … and also distinctly pornographic. Focusing on the map (for he had no knowledge of alchemy and no time for the lurid), he located to the best of his ability the spot where, within the house, he presently stood. Was there any obvious path depicted to the great chamber and the panopticon column tower within it?
    The room