The Truth

the dwarfs. That sounds like Mr. Windling. It sounds like my father, too, except that at least he can spell ‘undesirable’ and wouldn’t use crayon.”
    “Why not that letter?”
    “Because it’s offensive.”
    “Some people think it’s true, though,” said Sacharissa. “There’s been a lot of trouble.”
    “Yes, but we shouldn’t print it.”
    William called Goodmountain over and showed him the letter. The dwarf read it.
    “Put it in,” he suggested. “It’ll fill a few inches.”
    “But people will object,” said William.
    “Good. Put their letters in, too.”
    Sacharissa sighed. “We’ll probably need them,” she said. “William, Grandfather says no one in the Guild will engrave the iconographs for us.”
    “Why not? We can afford the rates.”
    “We’re not Guild members. It’s all getting unpleasant. Will you tell Otto?”
    William sighed, and walked over to the ladder.
    The dwarfs used the cellar as a bedroom, being naturally happier with a floor over their head. Otto had been allowed to use a dank corner, which he’d made his own by hanging an old sheet across on a rope.
    “Oh, hello, Mr. Villiam,” he said, pouring something noxious from one bottle to another.
    “I am afraid it looks as if we won’t get anyone to engrave your pictures,” said William.
    The vampire seemed unmoved by this.
    “Yes, I vundered about that.”
    “So I’m sorry to say that—”
    “No problem, Villiam. Zere is alvays a vay.”
    “How? You can’t engrave, can you?”
    “No, but…all we are printing is black and vite, yes? And zer paper is vite zo all ve are really printink is black, okay? I looked at how zer dwarfs do the letters, and zey haf all zese bits of metal lying around and…you know how zer engravers can engrave metal wiz acid?”
    “Yes?”
    “Zo, all I haf to do is teach zer imps to paint wiz acid. End of problem. Getting gray took a bit of thought, but I zink I haf—”
    “You mean you can get the imps to etch the picture straight onto a plate?”
    “Yes. It is vun of those ideas that are obvious when you zink about it.” Otto looked wistful. “And I zink about light all zer time. All zer…time.”
    William vaguely remembered something someone had once said: the only thing more dangerous than a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open got channeled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency.
    “Er…why do you need to work in a darkroom, though?” he said. “The imps don’t need it, do they?”
    “Ah, zis is for my experiment,” said Otto proudly. “You know zat another term for an iconographer would be ‘photographer’? From the old word ‘photus’ in Latation, vhich means—”
    “‘To prance around like an idiot ordering everyone about as if you owned the place,’” said William.
    “Ah, you know it!”
    William nodded. He’d always wondered about that word.
    “Vell, I am working on an obscurograph.”
    William’s forehead wrinkled. It was turning into a long day.
    “Taking pictures with darkness?” he ventured.
    “Wiz true darkness, to be precise,” said Otto, excitement entering his voice. “Not just absence of light. Zer light on zer ozzer side of darkness. You could call it…living darkness. Ve can’t see it, but imps can. Did you know zer Uberwaldean Deep Cave land eel emits a burst of dark light ven startled?”
    William glanced at a large glass jar on the bench. A couple of ugly things were coiled up in the bottom.
    “And that will work, will it?”
    “I zink so. Hold it vun minute.”
    “I really ought to be getting back—”
    “Zis vill not take a second…”
    Otto gently lifted one of the eels out of its jar and put it into the hod usually occupied by a salamander. He carefully aimed one of his iconographs at William, and nodded.
    “Vun…two…three…BOO!”
    There was—
    —there was a soft noiseless implosion, a very brief sensation of the world being screwed up small, frozen, smashed into tiny little sharp pins, and hammered through every cell of William’s body. * Then the gloom of the cellar flowed back.
    “That was…very strange,” said William, blinking. “It was like something very cold walking through me…”

“Much may be learned about dark light now ve have left our disgusting past behind us and haf emerged into zer bright new future vhere