Chapter 16 #2
She tugged off her goggles. Inside the salt casing was an envelope emblazoned with a series of mazes and knots, all surrounding an illustration of Dürer’s magic square. The same square carved above a doorway to the courtyard at Sterling Library. More traps for demons.
“Compelling.” Darlington touched his fingers to the square of numbers. “Kittscher said they took precautions. I think they stored this before they made the descent.”
Carefully he untied the string holding the envelope closed and shook free a sheaf of papers. They spread them over the table.
“Dawes is going to be so mad,” Alex said.
“What are these?” asked Turner.
Darlington held one up. “They’re pages from the old Lethe Armory Catalogue. But most of the text is redacted.”
“Four of them,” said Alex, eyes skimming the titles of the pages.
Heart of Gold; Provenance: Egypt
Hand of God; Provenance: Unknown
Feet of Clay; Provenance: Anatolia
Head of the Dragon; Provenance: Cornwall
“These are all in the armory?” she asked.
“At one point they were,” said Darlington. He flipped over the envelope and gestured to one of the symbols inscribed on it. “This isn’t just a knot. It’s the knot of Isis. It’s called the tyet and it’s a symbol of protection.”
“Another demon distraction,” said Turner. “But you think it’s something more?”
“It might be. Isis retrieved the pieces of her husband’s body and reassembled them, brought Osiris back to life.”
“We’re going to summon an Egyptian god?”
“No.” Darlington paced through the armory, tugging off his goggles, then his gloves.
His eyes flashed gold, the bands at his neck and wrists gleaming, but Alex knew it was his human mind at work.
“Not a god. A golem. An automaton. To make one you need a collection of sacred objects or body parts. The animating spell is sometimes called an Osiris Machine.”
Turner shuffled through the pages. “Heart, Hand, Feet, Head. Kittscher said we couldn’t defeat Golgarot. But maybe he meant someone—or something else could.”
Abruptly, Darlington stopped pacing and his face broke into a grin. “Now you’re thinking like a demon.”
“Don’t make me shoot you.”
Alex was struggling to keep up. “You’re saying we can use these artifacts to build some kind of Frankenstein’s monster?”
“A lot of the societies played around with golems in the early days,” said Darlington.
“Until?” asked Turner.
He cleared his throat. “Until one of their creations ripped the arms off a theology professor.”
“That does dampen the mood,” said Turner. “Do you people ever find a cure that isn’t worse than the disease?”
“There’s a logic to it,” Darlington said.
“This should be good.” Alex wasn’t just being difficult. She needed Darlington to convince her this wasn’t another bit of Lethe madness, more pride before the fall.
Darlington held up one of the pages. “We know Golgarot won’t venture out of hell until we’re weak enough or he’s strong enough to win.
We also know we won’t survive another descent.
We barely escaped him the last time. Maybe this is the fail-safe.
The thing that could fight Golgarot on his own territory and win. ”
“Let’s say you’re right,” said Turner. “Let’s say this is real and all these artifacts are still lying around and we somehow make it work. What if we build this thing and we can’t control it?”
“If you have a better solution, I’m eager to hear it,” said Darlington.
Turner didn’t look convinced. “We create this golem and we send it to hell and just cross our fingers?”
“And we don’t let it return.”
“There’s something printed inside the envelope,” Alex said. “I can’t read it.”
“May I?” Darlington asked politely, though she knew he wanted to snatch it from her hands. He peered inside. “I need a knife.”
Turner handed him a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. Of course the Eagle Scout was prepared. Carefully, Darlington sliced along the seam of the envelope and spread it open.
“It’s a blueprint,” said Turner.
Alex cocked her head to the side. It looked familiar—
“That’s the Memorial Quadrangle,” Darlington said. He tapped the corner of the plan. “That’s Harkness Tower.”
“Where we saw the first demon,” Alex murmured.
The blueprint was familiar because Alex passed these buildings every day.
The plan showed a big square that encompassed Branford and Saybrook colleges with their multiple courtyards.
It was bordered by Elm to the north and the Library Walk to the south—Alex’s college and dorm room were just off the map.
“This is High Street?” Alex asked, running her finger down the artery on the far left of the page, trying to orient herself.
Darlington nodded. He was frowning, arms crossed over his chest, eyes distant. “The entrance to Sterling Library sits almost directly north. They have a similar footprint in terms of square area. It creates a kind of mirror.”
“I don’t like it when he gets ideas,” said Turner.
“But he keeps doing it,” said Alex. “So we might as well get this over with. What are you piecing together, Darlington?”
Darlington’s eyes were still gazing at nothing she could see, and Alex felt a strange mix of pleasure and envy watching him solve this puzzle, his agile mind sifting through the history he drank like water and savored like wine.
“Ned Harkness’s brother Edward died young.
He and his mother built the tower and the quadrangle as a memorial to him. ”
“Sterling is a memorial too,” said Alex.
“Yes,” said Darlington. “And I think you can guess who Harkness chose as his architect.”
Alex felt a sudden sense of vertigo, as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff. “James Gamble Rogers.” The same man who had built the Gauntlet into the library.
“That’s right. Lee Lawrie did the stonework for both too.”
“Which came first?” asked Turner.
“The library was finished first,” said Darlington. “Harkness Tower opened in 1922, but the quadrangle wasn’t finished until…” He looked up from the plans. “1933.”
The year the original pilgrims made their descent. They’d focused on the construction of Sterling, but maybe the library had been one small part of a larger plan.
“Then these buildings could have something to do with the precautions Kittscher said they took,” Turner said. “It could be part of the fail-safe?”
The biggest benefactors of the societies had constructed the Gauntlet. It was more than possible they had used their money and resources to build other structures into the heart of Yale.
“I think…” Darlington said. “I don’t know how it’s connected. I think it’s something more.”
He was being cautious, but for the first time in months, Alex glimpsed a hint of hope.
The meeting with the board and the trip to New York, their showdown with Kittscher’s demon—it hadn’t been for nothing.
The real Kittscher had found a way to point them down the right path even as his demon had forced him to play this game.
“This is it,” Alex said, rapping her knuckles against the stolen armory entries one by one. “This is our chance to beat Golgarot.”
“We’re missing something,” Darlington said. “I just don’t know what. There’s something more to the quadrangle and its connection to these relics. There has to be.”
Turner echoed Alex’s movement, tapping each of the pages. “If those objects aren’t in the armory anymore, how do we find all of them? How do we even know they still exist?”
“They would have stored them in separate places,” Alex said. “You never put your whole stash in one spot.”
Darlington held up his fingers. “Harkness was in Wolf’s Head.
His roommate Henry Sloane Coffin was in Skull and Bones, same as Sterling.
They tapped James Gamble Rogers as their architect.
He was in Scroll and Key. The three oldest societies at Yale.
It would make sense if the original pilgrims came from those societies too. ”
“I thought Book and Snake was older than Wolf’s Head,” said Alex. At least that was what she remembered from her less than thorough reading of The Life of Lethe.
“A subject of some debate. But I’ll tell you something we can be sure of: The Memorial Quadrangle is covered in stonework, full of symbols and quotations and inside jokes—just like Sterling.
Amid all that mess and whimsy, there is only one mention of the societies.
Here. On the Elm Street wall, the wall that faces the library.
” He ran his long fingers down the northern border of the quadrangle.
“This is where the symbols of three societies are rendered in stone: Wolf’s Head, Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key.
We’ll find the relics at those societies. ”
“And the fourth?” Alex asked. “The final piece?”
Darlington’s eyes glimmered in the lamplight. “The house of the fourth pilgrim. The final artifact is hidden right here at Lethe.”