They were in the museum's great central hall, but the exhibits were swathed in gloom. The darkness was relieved only to a minor extent by the great windows set slantwise in the sloping roof that permitted errant rays of moonlight to enter. But he knew this place well enough to pull Marguerite along—she was gawking at the tableaux of ancient Polish kings—until the corridor ended in a stone wall.
"What now?" she asked.
"Watch. I'll show you something about the Jagiellonian most people don't know."
He felt along the wall until his fingers encountered a familiar indentation. He pressed it in a certain way.
With a low rumble a section of wall rolled back on well-balanced hinges, revealing a narrow passage ahead.
"Where does this lead?" Marguerite asked.
He led her down the passageway. It took them to a lofty room crowded with exhibit tables. In this place even Faust was in awe, for it was said that this chamber had existed long before Europe had reached its present state of civilization. Faust and Marguerite tiptoed down the aisles, and saw mystical copper rings from Ur of the Chaldeans, bronze divining rings from Tyre, sacrificial flint knives from Judaea, multiuse Egyptian wish-granting scarabs, sickle-bladed sacrificial knives of the rainbow-worshiping Celts, and more modern objects, such as the brazen head of Roger Bacon, Raymond Lull's machine of universal knowledge said to be useful for converting the heathen, several of Giovanni Battista Vico's Seals and Shadows in easy-to-interpret form, and much else besides.
"This is more like it," Faust said. Already his arms were full of magical objects.
"They'll hang you for this!" Marguerite said.
"They'll have to catch me first," Faust replied. "That's the original Mantle of Turin over there. I wonder if we should take it."
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Marguerite said, draping it over her shoulders nonetheless.
Just then there was a clang of metal from the door by which they had entered, and there was the loud stomping noise of metal-toed shoes of the sort guards wear to prevent enraged criminals from stamping on their toes.
"They have us!" Marguerite cried. "There's no way out!"
"Watch this," Faust said, and put the objects he had taken in a certain order. He waved his hands, words issued from his lips, words which must never be repeated lest they upset the natural order of things.
Marguerite's lips parted in wonder as she saw a nimbus of glory arise from the objects and engulf first Faust, still holding his sack of wine, and then herself.
And so, when the guard arrived, out of breath and with pikes at the ready, trotting into the Closed Chamber, there was no one to arrest.
CHAPTER 11
Faust and Marguerite, somewhat windblown from their flight through the aether, arrived at the dank meadow outside of Rome where the great Witches' Sabbat was customarily held. The meadow lay between two mountains with heads like gargoyles. One rim of the great swollen red setting sun revealed that quite a celebration had been held here not very long ago. But now the party was definitely over.
Empty wine sacks and paper hats were strewn all over. The orchestra players were putting away their instruments and getting ready to return to Budapest. The huge raised altar at the center of the meadow was piled high with sacrifices. But the worshipers had left, and demon servitors were cutting up the meat to distribute to the evil poor, for the poor are always with us, on Earth, above, and below.
He approached one of the workers, a bearded dwarf with stumpy legs cross-gartered with strips of leather, wearing a horned steel cap of Norse design, and with a spade fastened to a little knapsack at his back.
"How is it going?" Faust asked.
"Quite poorly," the dwarf said. "This demon grabbed me and my friends to clean up after this Sabbat, but demons never pay enough, and they never leave anything to drink."
"Drink?" Faust raised the sack of Spanish wine that he had managed to cling to since leaving the Closed Chamber of the Jagiellonian. "I could perhaps offer you some drink."
"Very kind of you, sir! My name is Rognir and I am at your service." He reached for the wine sack, but Faust drew it back out of his grasp.
"Not so fast! There's something you can give me in exchange."
"I knew it was too good to be true," Rognir said. "What do you want?"
"Information," Faust said.
Rognir, whose heavy wrinkled face had been knotting into a scowl, now raised his brows and smiled.
"Information, sir? Aye, you can have all the information you want. I thought you wanted jewels. Whom do you want me to betray?"
"It's nothing so dramatic," Faust said. "I merely seek to find two individuals who were here at this Sabbat.
One was a tall, yellow-haired human, the other a black-haired devil named Mephistopheles."
"Yes indeed, they were here," Rognir said. "Laughing and carrying on they were. You'd think they'd never been to a Witches' Sabbat before."
"Where did they go?" Faust asked.
"That's the sort of thing no one tells a dwarf," Rognir said. "But look you, sir, I have a parchment that Mephistopheles wrote and gave to that red-haired demon over there."
The red-haired demon to whom he alluded was none other than Azzie Elbub, the dapper, fox-faced demon who had Set the previous Millennial contest on behalf of Darkness, but whose creation, Prince Charming, had come to such an equivocal ending that Necessity, who had judged the contest, declared it a push. This found no favor in the eyes of the Lords of Darkness, who had looked forward to victory and the right to rule mankind's destiny for the next thousand years. And so Azzie had not been consulted in the matter this time, the choices being left solely with Mephistopheles and the Archangel Michael.
Faust asked, "This demon, he just handed you the parchment?"
"Not exactly," Rognir said. "He crumpled it up and threw it away angrily as Mephistopheles and his rejuvenated friend vanished in a cloud of smoke and fire."
"Give me the paper!"
They glared at each other, then cautiously exchanged objects. While Rognir was drinking, Faust looked at the parchment and saw a list of places and dates. He knew some of the places: Paris, for example. But not London or the court of the Great Khan in Peking. And the times were all different, some of them in the past, some in the future. One thing stood out, however. The first place on the list was Constantinople, and the date was 1210. Faust remembered from his history that that was the time of the ill-fated Fourth Crusade. That, obviously, would be the first of the situations he had overheard Mephistopheles mention to Mack.
While he was puzzling over this list, a voice at his left shoulder said, "You were talking about me, I believe."
Faust looked up and saw Azzie, the demon to whom Rognir had been alluding, standing beside him.
"How could you overhear me?" Faust said. "I spoke in a whisper."
"Demons always know when someone is talking about them. You're wondering about that parchment? I'll tell you. Mephistopheles has been put in charge of the Millennial games that will decide the destiny of mankind for the next thousand years. They chose him rather than me. And me a two-time winner! He and Michael have agreed that Mephistopheles will put Faust into five situations, and the choices he makes will be judged as to Goodness or Badness, outcome, and motive, by Necessity, whom we know as Ananke."
"But I am Faust!" Faust cried. "Mephistopheles has gotten .the wrong man!"
Azzie eyed him. His bright fox eyes narrowed, and his ruddy demon's body took on a tension that a skilled observer, had one been present, might have found significant.