Where is finally entering the maze, you have strange visions
and, as happens in the labyrinth, you lose
Reassemble the scriptorium, this time scale for the East, rising to the plan prohibited the light up front us. I thought the words of Alinardo on the maze and I was expecting terrible things.
I was surprised, as in the place where we should not enter, be in a room with seven sides, not very large, no windows, in which reigned, as indeed all over the floor, a strong smell of stale or mold. Nothing terrifying.
The room, I said, had seven walls, but only four of them were opened, between two columns embedded in the wall, a passage, a passage wide enough surmounted by a round arch. Along the walls closed it took enormous closets, loads of books arranged on a regular basis. The closet door a scroll numbered and so their every single shelf: clearly the same numbers we saw in the catalog. In the middle of the room a table, which is also filled with books. All volumes on a fairly light veil of powder, a sign that the books were cleaned frequently. And even on the ground there was sort of filth. Above the arch of a door, a large scroll, painted on the wall that bore the words: Apocalypsis Iesu Christi. It did not seem faded, even if the characters were old. There circumspect later in other rooms, These scrolls were actually carved in stone, and quite deeply, and then the cavities were filled with the color, how do you use to paint the churches.
We passed through one of the gates. We found ourselves in another room, where he opened a window, instead of wearing glasses alabaster slabs, with two solid walls and a gate of the same type as the one from which we had just passed, which gave up another room , which also had two full walls, with a window and another door that opened before us. In the two rooms two scrolls similar in form to the first we saw, but with other words. The cartouche of the first said Thronos viginti Super quatuor, and that of the second: Nomen illi mors. For the rest, even though the two rooms were smaller than that from which we had entered the library (in fact this was heptagonal and two rectangular), the decor was the same cabinets with books and a central table.
access the third room. It was empty of books and no scroll. Under the window a stone altar. There were three doors, one from which we had entered the other room that overlooked the heptagonal already visited, a third placing in us a new room, not unlike the others, except for a scroll saying Obscuratus est sol et aer . From here we went to a new room, whose scroll said Grando et Facta est ignis, had no other ports, or, come to that room could not be taken and it was necessary back.
"right," William said. "Five vaguely trapezoidal or rectangular rooms, each with a window, running around a heptagonal room without windows that go up the ladder. I think elementary school. We are in the east tower, each tower from the outside has five windows and five sides. The bill returns. The empty room is the one that faces east, in the same direction of the church choir, the light of the rising sun illuminates the altar, which I think is just and merciful. The only smart idea seems to me that the slabs of alabaster. By day a nice filtered light at night does not reveal even the moonbeams. It's not a big maze. Now let's see where they lead the other heptagonal two doors in the room. I believe that guide us easily. "
My teacher was wrong and the builders of the library were more skilled than we thought. I do not know to explain what happened, but as we left the keep, the order of the rooms became more confused. Some had two, three doors. All had a window, even those that we take from a room with window and thinking about going to the building's interior. Each had the same type of cabinets and tables, volumes, stacked neatly they all looked the same and certainly not helped us to recognize the site with a glance. We tried to orient ourselves with the scrolls. Once we had crossed a room where it was written In diebus illis and after a few laps it seemed to be back there. But we remembered that the door in front of the window led into a room where it was written Primogenitus mortuorum, but now we find another saying again Apocalypsis Iesu Christi, and was not the heptagonal room where we started. This fact convinced us that the scrolls are sometimes repeated the same in different rooms. We found two rooms with Apocalypsis one after another, and then a star with Cecidit de coelo magna.
where they came from the sentences of the scrolls was clear they were verses from the Apocalypse of John, but it was not clear either why they were painted on the walls, nor by what logic they were prepared. To increase our confusion, we note that some scrolls, not many were red instead of black.
At one point we were starting in the heptagonal room (that was recognizable because it opened the mouth of the scale), and we continued to move toward our right trying to go straight from room to room. We passed through three rooms and then we found ourselves faced with a closed wall. The only passage led into a new room that was just another door, which walked out of the four other rooms and found ourselves once again facing a wall. We returned to the previous room that had two exits, take the one not yet tried, we went to a new room, and we found ourselves in the heptagonal room of departure.
"What was the last room from which we came back," asked William.
I made an effort of memory: "Equus albus."
"Well, ritroviamola." It was easy. From there, if you do not want to retrace their steps, there was nothing to pass to the room called Gratia vobis et pax, and from there to the right there seemed to find a new path that takes us back. In fact, are still in diebus illis and Primogenitus mortuorum (it was the same room just before?), But finally came to a room that seemed to us that you have not visited: Tertia pars terrae ignited east. But by then we knew where we were more than the east tower.
stretch the light forward He pushed me into the next room. A giant menacing proportions, body undulating and floating like a ghost, came to meet me.
"A devil!" I screamed and nearly dropped the lamp, as I turned abruptly and took refuge in the arms of William. They took my hands and moving away from the lumen came forward with a decision that seemed to me sublime. Also saw something, because suddenly withdrew. Then he leaned forward again and held up the lamp. He laughed.
"Really ingenious. A mirror! "
" A mirror? "
" Yes, my brave warrior. Have you launched a lot of courage on a real enemy, just now in the scriptorium, and now you get scared in front of your image. A mirror, which refers you your magnified image and distorted. "
She took my hand and led me in front of the wall facing the entrance to the room. In a corrugated sheet of glass, now that the light illuminating the closer, I saw our two images, grotesquely misshapen, they changed in shape and height depending on how rough it or we leave.
"You have to read some treatise on optics," William said amused, "as some have read the founders of the library. The best are those of the Arabs. Alhazen wrote a treatise in which aspectibus with precise geometrical demonstrations, spoke of the strength of the mirrors. Some of them, depending on how it is modulated their surface, can magnify things more sensitive (and what else are my glasses?), Others make the images appear upside down, or oblique, or show two objects instead of one, and four instead of two. Still others, like this one, make a giant or a dwarf a dwarf of a giant. "
" Lord Jesus, "I said. "So these are the visions that some say they have had in the library?"
"Maybe. Really clever idea. "He read the scroll on the wall above the mirror: Super Thronos viginti quatuor. "We have already found, but it was a room without a mirror. And that, inter alia, has no windows, yet is heptagonal. Where are we? "He looked around and walked over to a closet," Adso, without those blessed with oculi legendum I can not understand what is written on these books. Read me some titles. "
I took a book at random:" Master is not written "
" What? I see that it is written, what you read? "
" I do not read. Are not letters of the alphabet and is not greek, I admit. They look like worms, snakes, flies ... snots "
" Ah, it's Arabic. There are others like this? "
" Yes, some. But here's one in Latin, God willing. Al .. At Kuwarizmi, Tabulae. "
" The astronomical tables Al Kuwarizmi, translated by Adelard of Bath! Opera rare! Go on. "
'Isa ibn Ali, De oculis, Alkindi, De radiis stellatis ..."
"Look now on the table."
I opened a large volume that lay on the table, a De bestiis. I happened on a page where he had been a finely illuminated beautiful unicorn.
"Bella bill," said William, who could see good pictures. "And that?"
I read: "Liber de monstrorum diversis generibus. This, too, with beautiful pictures, but I seem much older. "
William bowed his face on the text:" Miniato by Irish monks, at least five centuries ago. The book of the unicorn is much more recent, I think that the way the French. "Once again I admired the teaching of my teacher. We entered the next room and along the following four rooms, all with windows, and all full volumes in unknown languages, plus a few texts of occult sciences, and came to a wall that forced us to go back because the last five rooms each penetrated in the other without allowing other outputs.
"the inclination of the walls, we should be in the pentagon of another tower," William said, "but there is no central heptagonal room, maybe we're wrong."
"But the windows?" I said. "How can there be so many windows? Can not give all the rooms on the outside. "
" Forget the central well, many of those we have seen are octagon windows overlooking the well. If it was day, the difference in light would tell us what are the external windows and internal such as, and perhaps we even reveal the location of the room to the sun. But the evening does not feel any difference. Let's go back. "
returned to the room mirror and lean towards the third door from which there seemed to be not yet past. We saw before us a flight of three or four rooms, and to the last glimpse of a glimmer.
"Somebody!" I cried in a choked voice.
"If there is, you have already noticed our light, "William said, however, cover the flame with his hand. Risto for a minute or two. The light continued to fluctuate slightly, but that did not stronger or weaker.
"Maybe it's just a lamp," William said, "those items to convince the monks that the library is inhabited by the souls of the departed. But you should know. You are here covering the light, I go forward with caution. "
still a shame for the poor figure made out of the mirror, I wanted to redeem myself in the eyes of William:" No, I am going, "I said," you stay here. Proceed cautiously, are smaller and lighter. Just make myself realize that there is no risk I'll call you. "
And I did. I proceeded to walk three-room hugging the walls, light as a cat (or fall as a novice in the kitchen to steal the cheese in the pantry, a firm in which he excelled at Melk). I arrived at the threshold of the room from which came the light, very weak, creeping along the wall behind the column that served as the right jamb and peeked into the room. There was none. A kind of lamp was placed on the table, turned, and fumigation stunted. It was not a lamp such as ours, it seemed rather a censer discovered, not flaming, but a small smoldering ashes burning something. I plucked up my courage and went inside. Censer on the table next to a book lying open colored lively. I appressai and saw on page four strips of different colors, yellow, cinnabar, turquoise and burnt sienna. We field a beast, horrible to behold, a great dragon with ten heads the corner behind it drew the stars of heaven, and did fall upon the earth. And suddenly I saw that the dragon is multiplied, and the scales of her skin became like a forest of glittering slivers that were detached from the sheet and came to rotarmi around the head. I arrovesciai back and saw the ceiling of the room and leaned down over me, then I heard a hissing sound like a thousand snakes, but not scary, almost seductive, and there appeared a woman bathed in light that came his breath on my face face. The walked away with outstretched hands and it seemed that my hands touched the books in front of the cabinet, or that they magnify dramatically. I was not more aware of where I was, and where was the land and where the sky. Berengar I saw in the middle of the room staring at me with a hateful smile, dripping with lust. I covered my face with my hands and my hands seemed to me the legs of a toad, palmate and slimy. I cried, I think, felt a sour taste in my mouth, then sank into an infinite darkness, which seemed to be increasingly opened up under me and I heard no more.
I woke up after a period of centuries that I deemed it, I heard shots resounded in my head. I was lying on the ground and William was giving me slapping her cheeks. I was no longer in that room and my eyes saw a scroll that said Requiescant to laboribus suis.
"Come on, Adso," William whispered to me. "It's nothing ..."
"Things ..." I said, still raving. "Over there, the beast ..."
"No beast. I've found who raves at the foot of a table with a nice apocalypse Mozarabic, open the page of the mulier amicta sun facing the dragon. But I realized that you had breathed in the smell of something bad and I immediately took him away. Me too hurt his head. "
" But what I saw? "
" You have not seen anything. And 'that there were burning of substances able to give visions, I recognized the smell is a thing of the Arabs, perhaps the same as the Old Man of the Mountain gave to aspire to her killers before pushing them to their businesses. And so we have explained the mystery of vision. Someone put magic herbs during the night to convince visitors that the library is inappropriate protected by diabolical presences. How did you feel, then? "
confusion, as I remember, I told him of my vision, and William laughed:" For half were about what you had seen in the book and the other half let them talk to your desires and your fears . This is the operation that activate these herbs. Tomorrow we must talk with Severino, I think I know more than they would have us believe. Are grasses, herbs alone, without those preparations necromantic that we spoke the glazier. Herbs, mirrors ... This place of forbidden knowledge is defended by many wise and variety. The science used to conceal rather than illuminate. I do not like. A perverse mind presides over the holy defense of the library. But it was a heavy night, must go for now. You are upset and you need water and fresh air. Useless to try to open these windows, perhaps too high and closed for decades. How have you been thinking that Adelmo is thrown from here? "Exit
William said. As if it were easy. We knew that the library was accessible from a single tower, the eastern one. But where we were that time? We had completely lost their bearings. The mistake we made, with the fear of not ever get out of that place, I always shaky and seized with vomiting, William quite concerned for me, and annoyed by the paucity of his knowledge, he gave us, which gave him an idea for the next day. We should return to the library, if ever we would go out it out with a brand of burnt wood, or other substance capable of leaving marks on the walls.
"To find the way out of a maze," he recited in fact William, "there is but half. At each new node, that is never visited before, the path of arrival will be marked with three signs. If, because of previous signs on some of the paths of the node, you will see that this node has already been visited, there will be a single sign on route of arrival. If all the gates have already been marked then need to redo the road, coming back. But if one or two access points to the node are still no signs, if they choose any one, two, marked with signs. Set out along a path that leads one sign, there apporremo other two, so now you take that gate three. All parts of the maze should have been covered if, arriving at a node, you do not ever take the path with three signs, unless no other access points is now of no signs. "
" How do you know? Are you an expert on labyrinths? "
"No, I play from an ancient text I once read."
"And according to this rule comes out?"
"Almost never, to my knowledge. But we will try the same. And then in the next few days I will have the lenses and I have time to dwell more on books. It may be that where the location of the scrolls confuses us, the book gives us a rule. "
" You get the lenses? How will you back? "
" I said that I will have the lenses. I'll make the others. I believe that the glazier do not wait more than an occasion for such a new experience. If you have the right tools for grinding up the pieces. As for the pieces in the shop has many. "While
wandered the streets looking for, suddenly, in the center of a room, I was stroking the face by an invisible hand, while a groan that was not human and it was not animal, and echoed in that compartment and in the next, as if spectrum wandered from room to room. I should be prepared for surprises in the library, but once again I terrorizzai and I jumped back. Even William must have had an experience similar to mine, because he was touching her cheek, lifting up the light and looked around
He raised his hand, then looked at the flame that now seemed more lively, then moistened a finger and kept straight ahead.
"It 's clear," he said, and showed me two points on two opposite walls at eye level. Opened there two narrow slits, bringing the hand to which you could feel the cold air coming from outside. Then approaching the ear could hear a rustle, as if the wind pulled out now.
"The library was to have an even ventilation system," William said, "otherwise the atmosphere would be stifling, especially in the summer. Moreover, these slots also provide the right amount of moisture, so the parchments will not dry out. But the wisdom of the founders did not stop here. Placing second slits certain angles, you are guaranteed that on nights when the wind gusts that penetrate these meatus cross each other with blows, ingorghino and by the escape of the room, producing the sounds we heard. These, together with mirrors and herbs, increase the fear that we enter the unwary, like us, without knowing the place well. And we have thought for a moment that we breathe on the face of the ghosts. There have realized only now because only now the wind has risen. And this mystery is solved. But for all that we do not know how to get out! "So saying
roamed empty, now lost, failing to read the scrolls, which seemed all the same. Stumbled upon a new heptagonal room, we went to the nearby rooms, we find no exit. Retracing our steps, we walked for almost an hour, giving I know where we were. At one point William decided that we were defeated, do was go to sleep in some room and hope that the day after Malachi there was. While we complained to the miserable end of our great undertaking, we found unexpectedly the room from which the scale. Fervently thanked the heavens and come down with great joy.
Once in the kitchen, threw it toward the fireplace, we entered the corridor of the ossuary and swear that the deadly grin bare heads of those I thought the smile of a loved one. Return to the church and walked out of the north door, then sitting down happily on slabs of stone tombs. The beautiful air of the night seemed a divine balm. The stars shone around us, and visions the library seemed to me very far.
"How beautiful the world is and how ugly labyrinths," I said relieved.
"How beautiful the world would be if there was a rule to run in mazes," said my teacher.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"I lost track of time. But it will be good to find that sound in our cells before morning. "
skirted the left side of the church, past the portal (I turned away so as not to see the elders of the Apocalypse, super quatuor Thronos viginti!) And crossed the cloister to the hotel for pilgrims.
the door of the building was the abbot, who looked at us with severity. "It 'all night long you try," said William. "There I found in my cell, I have not found in the church ..."
"We followed a trail ..." William said vaguely, with visible embarrassment. The abbot looked at him long and then said, his voice slow and severe, "I tried immediately after Compline. Berengar was not in choir. "
" How about never! "Said William hilarious air. In fact, it was now clear who had nested in the scriptorium.
"It was not in choir Compline," repeated the abbot, "and has not returned to his cell. Is about to ring in the morning, and we will check now if reappears. Otherwise I fear some new calamity. " A morning
Berengar was not there.
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