“I wouldn’t have made you a Knight of the Stars if you weren’t possessed of a plethora of useful talents.”

  Altman chuckled. He’d inherited not only his brother’s job but also his rank in the Order, one of the highest titles available, which was good for impressing the Initiates and getting access to the good Scotch. The bottles were locked up below the bar after all. Altman hadn’t even needed to undergo all the tedious intermediary steps, from Initiate to Seeker and on up.

  He’d merely been given a few tests meant to prove his effectiveness and been forced to demonstrate his resilience in the face of supernatural horrors. Down in these very basements, Altman had been confronted with sights that, in Sanford’s words, “have caused lesser men to howl into the void while voiding their bowels.” Altman could take it though, as well as anyone alive could, anyway. He’d seen things in the caves of Afghanistan in 1919 – ancient creatures awakened by the British conflict there – that had forever inoculated him against shock or surprise when it came to such matters. He knew there were terrible things beneath the world.

  He’d killed some of them with a stolen British cavalry sword, and tasted what they had instead of blood, and even seen visions.

  The final ritual had involved swearing loyalty to the Silver Twilight Lodge, his body supine on a stone, in one of those strange rooms that seemed to have its own sky… but the details of that night skittered away from his memory when he looked too closely.

  All of which meant he was more than man enough to open a soggy box. He unpicked the ribbon and put it aside, then peeled back the damp paper, revealing a slightly malformed cardboard box. Once unbound from its wrappings, the closed flaps on the lid were not further secured. Altman lifted them open, gingerly, one after another, and then shut one eye before peering inside – if there was something mind-searing in there, perhaps its impact would be lessened if it were only half viewed.

  Altman grunted. “Looks like wet paper.”

  “Please be more specific.”

  “There’s a gilt-edged card with something written on it, but the ink has run, and underneath it, a lot more paper, in a stack, but it’s all damp… I can’t tell you much more without taking things out and looking more closely.”

  “Not yet,” Sanford said. “Now that the box is open and you’ve made your preliminary examination, we’ll find out if what you’re seeing is what’s really there.”

  Altman lifted his head. He was, frankly, a bit let down. Maybe the contents wouldn’t sparkle and glimmer for him, but he’d expected something at least as interesting as a pulp magazine. What the box held was more like if a mundane comic book had been disassembled, its pages stacked in no particular order, and then the whole lot doused with the contents of a teakettle, with a Victorian era calling card dropped on top. “I assume the shiny mirror in your hand has something to do with that step? One of the relics from your vault?”

  “What do you know about my vault?” Sanford could pivot from bonhomie to suspicion in an instant; it was one of the man’s more irritating qualities, though Altman understood where the habit came from. The master of the Silver Twilight Lodge had been subjected to numerous betrayals… and doubtless committed many more himself. A life like that would give anyone a paranoid streak.

  Altman shrugged. “I’ve seen the odd shiny metal door down here. And the rumor is you have a secret vault down here somewhere, full of priceless relics, guarded by an abomination you conjured from an icy hellscape.”

  Sanford relaxed a fraction. “Oh, that. The more ignorant people are regarding a given subject, the more likely they are to chatter about it, haven’t you found?”

  “It is a truth the world over.” No answer to his question, then, but that was typical. Altman inclined his head toward the object Sanford was gently turning in his hands. “So. The mirror?”

  Sanford held the mirror before his face and gazed into the glass for a long moment before answering. “This once belonged to the occultist John Dee, who served as court astronomer to Elizabeth the First, among other endeavors. Dee claimed the mirror was created by Hermes Trismegistus himself.”

  Occultish stuff, then. “Hermes? Any relation to the fellow with the wings on his helmet and the snakes around his staff? Saw a statue of him once in London.”

  Sanford shook his head, but smiled a little as he did so. “Hermes Trismegistus is a legendary figure, a sorcerer and scholar, and the founder of Hermetic mysticism. He is associated with both the god Hermes, your winged-helmet fellow, and the Egyptian god Thoth, who invented writing and was renowned for his wisdom and magic. It’s doubtful that Trismegistus actually existed, and if he did, it’s doubly doubtful that he ever worked as a silversmith… but regardless of its true provenance, this mirror is an object of considerable power.”

  “Ugly as sin, though,” Altman asked. “Why’s it covered in eyes?”

  Sanford turned the mirror over and considered the ornate back. “Angels, as depicted in artwork – as winged human figures, most often – do not match the descriptions given in the ancient texts of the Abrahamic faiths. Angels are often described by those who witnessed them as monstrous, often with numerous eyes, and bodies composed of revolving wheels, or rings of fire. Sometimes they have wings, yes, but not the sort you likely imagine. The seraphim, highest order of angels, are said to have six wings each, which they fold up to hide behind, and are reputed to be ‘full of eyes within.’ Some of them have the faces of animals. Some of them have ten thousand faces, each with ten thousand mouths, and each mouth with ten thousand tongues.”

  “I can see why they don’t paint them that way,” Altman said. “It would take forever to get all the tongues right.”

  His wit was wasted on Sanford. “There may indeed be creatures that match such descriptions, but whether they are the servants of a benevolent god… I have my doubts.”

  Altman grunted. “You have a lot of doubts, it sounds like.”

  Now Sanford looked at him, and even offered a smile. “It is important for those who traffic in the occult, as we do, to remain skeptical. We mustn’t become overly credulous. Just because we have seen impossible things, it does not follow that all impossible things are real.” He tilted the mirror this way and that. “I believe this decoration depicts one of those creatures some call angels. The numerous eyes also serve to indicate something of the relic’s nature: this mirror is a glass of true seeing.” He met Altman’s eyes. “Whatever glamour a person or object hides behind, this mirror can reveal the truth beyond the illusion. There is no guile in the glass. Magic is revealed in the reflection, too – as a shimmering cloud of silver if the magic means the bearer of the mirror no harm, and as a seething cloud of darkness if the magic has malice in it.”

  “I can see how that could be useful.” Altman took a step back from the table and made an “after you” gesture.

  Sanford approached the table and extended his hand, tilting the mirror so that the glass reflected the contents of the box. He looked at the image, and he frowned.

  “What do you see?” Altman asked.

  “Nothing,” Sanford said. “Nothing unusual at all! If the mirror is to be believed, it’s just… paper in there.”

  He looked around, then spotted a row of medical instruments on a table nearby. Sanford picked up a long metal surgical probe and reached into the box with it, presumably moving the contents around a bit, then put the probe aside and looked inside with the mirror again. He slowly lowered the mirror and set it on the metal table, glass side down. Altman tried to remember when he’d seen the magus look so troubled, and couldn’t. “I thought perhaps Tillinghast had hidden something under the papers,” Sanford murmured. “But… no.” He straightened his shoulders, arranged his features into a scowl, and reached decisively into the box, removing the gilt-edged card.

  After a long moment, he let out a chuckle, but Altman thought he detected a note of despair or dismay in it. “Take a look at this, Altman.” Sanford handed the card over.

  Altman took the heavy thing, paper stiff as a board, edges heavy with gold, and read. The words were written in flowing purple ink, and said, “Greetings, Mr Sanford. Randall Tillinghast requests the honor of your presence at his shop. Please accept this humble gift by way of introduction. If it suits your schedule, please meet him…” The words beneath were so thoroughly blotted by water that they were just a smear, the date and time eradicated by river water.

  Sanford, meanwhile, was lifting the sopping stack of papers from the box, and he suddenly uttered a strangled cry anguished enough that Altman reached into his coat for a knife, ready to kill whatever serpent had slithered out.

  But the magus just gazed wide-eyed at the wet manuscript in his hands, damaged pieces of it peeling away and drifting to the floor. “This is… this was… a portion of the Pnakotic Manuscripts.” Sanford closed his eyes and murmured what looked very much like a prayer.

  “That rare book that Detwiller was talking about?” Altman said. “The one he nicked for Tillinghast?”

  “Acquired, apparently, as a gift for me. And now, ruined, or at least seriously damaged.” He put the waterlogged sheaf of parchment aside and met Altman’s eyes. “I need a brandy. How about you?”

  “May as well,” Altman said. “It’s medicinal, they say.” Seeing the magus like this, outfoxed and nonplussed, was distressing, but also – Altman could admit in the sanctum of his own mind – a little gratifying. The old man was always so smug, so master-of-his-domain, that getting a glimpse of the actual human underneath was a bit of a thrill.

  •••

  They didn’t return upstairs, but descended instead to a region of the basements that Altman had never seen before. It seemed to him the warren of hallways and rooms down here must fill the entirety of French Hill… but it was more likely that some portion of the Lodge wasn’t exactly located in the real world. Geometry and topology could be made malleable in the right hands, after all. In nightmares, when you ran down a hallway, fleeing from monsters, the corridors could extend forward infinitely, telescoping away from you, and Altman had learned that nightmares really could come true. He wondered if they were going to drink brandy beneath red skies in a haunted wasteland. He hoped not.

  Sanford led the way to a thoroughly mundane room, though, one that could have been the private office of a university president: dark wood shelves crowded with clothbound volumes, an impressive desk, leather club chairs, thick Turkish rugs on the floor, and a wet bar that held bottles of the promised brandy.

  “This office is an exact replica,” Sanford said, busying himself at the bar. “Most of the furniture is from the original. The room looks just as it did years ago, when I first came to Arkham and met a fellow named Alexander Peterman. This was his office.”

  Sanford seldom reminisced about his past, preferring to present himself as eternal and unchanging, and Altman listened with interest.

  “Peterman was an occultist, and led a small group of like-minded individuals. They liked to think of themselves as a powerful secret order, and they did some interesting, if unambitious work, though in the process they pledged allegiance to monstrous forces. They called themselves the Order of the Silver Twilight, though their organization bears as much resemblance to the one of today as a lightning bug does to lightning.” Sanford held up a bottle. “Does Armagnac suit you?”

  Considering some of the swill Altman had sipped over the years, Armagnac was more than all right. “Oh, indeed.” He settled into one of the club chairs. Sanford didn’t really seem troubled anymore. He just seemed… thoughtful.

  The magus poured a tiny measure of Armagnac into a snifter and handed it to Altman. He made himself a glass, too, but didn’t sit down. Instead, he remained standing, gazing around at the room. “I took over Peterman’s organization, which has existed in some form or another practically since Arkham’s founding. First, I joined his group, and played the role of the eager neophyte, and learned all I could about their finances, their connections, and their… troublesome associations. Once I’d gathered sufficient information, and leverage on the other members, I simply… Hollowed. Peterman. Out.” He sighed. “The old man tried to take revenge, of course, after I left him penniless and powerless, and took up residence in this very office. He attempted to summon up those same dark forces he’d trafficked in. To call in what he thought were favors they owed to him. That didn’t end well for him.” Sanford swirled the brandy and took a sip, closing his eyes and savoring the liquid. Altman did the same. The Armagnac was sweet and warm, and a portion turned to aromatic vapor as he held it in his mouth.

  Sanford went on. “The creatures, if you can even call them that, which dwell beyond this world, or behind it… they aren’t particularly interested in transactions. Sometimes you can get them to react to stimuli, in somewhat predictable ways, but there’s always a chance they’ll turn on you. Fundamentally, those entities don’t care about people at all – and that’s to our benefit, Altman! Indifference is the best we can hope for. Because when those entities do take an interest in us, it’s often the same interest a sadistic child takes in pulling the legs off a spider.” Sanford finally moved to sit in a chair. He gestured with his glass, indicating the office as a whole. “Peterman removed himself from our conflict, rather messily, and I soon transformed his organization into something grand, but I kept his office. When I expanded the basements in the Lodge, I brought the contents here, and arranged them just so. This room is a reminder, Altman. Do you know what it’s a reminder of?”

  “That kings can fall, I imagine.” Altman cleared his throat. “‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies… Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’”

  “Ozymandias!” Sanford cried in delight. “You amaze me. Your brother never quoted poetry, Altman.”

  “Even so, Reggie was more the reader in the family,” Altman admitted. “But I’ve got a mind that holds on to things, and that bit stuck from some English class or another in my youth.”

  “At any rate, yes, you’re quite right. I toppled Peterman, left him shattered in the desert, and took everything that belonged to him. He believed he was founding an empire that would shake the world and persist through the ages, but it all turned to dust. I kept this office to remind me – to make sure that I never became too complacent, too sure of myself, so comfortable on my perch that I take my eyes off the people who want to knock me off it. This morning has been an even sharper reminder.”

  “You’d think after that business with the cult last year, you wouldn’t need reminding.” Was that too close to a rebuke? Altman waited to see if the magus would snap at him.

  Instead, Sanford shook his head. “Cain was a zealot, maddened by his association with the monster he worshipped. He had raw power, which took some effort to defeat, of course, but he possessed no finesse. No subtlety. Tillinghast does. I also knew what Cain wanted – to raise a ravening god to devour the world. I have no idea what Tillinghast wants… so I have to assume he wants what I wanted from Peterman.”

  “Which is?”

  “Everything.” Sanford chuckled. “I look quite the fool, now, don’t I? I had you drop that gift into the river, even though it was harmless! I threw away an invitation to a meeting I’ve been trying to arrange. Hardly my finest hour, eh?”

  “It could be seen in that light,” Altman allowed.

  “I don’t believe it for a moment,” Sanford snarled, his voice suddenly sharp as a lash. “The gift the Dyer woman gave me is not the same gift that showed up dripping wet on my desk. That gift, I have no doubt, was some bauble meant to ensnare my mind – a stratagem that Tillinghast did not expect to succeed, but that he had to try, nevertheless, just as any decent lawyer files a motion to dismiss first thing, even knowing the judge will reject it. When you threw that cursed box in the river, Tillinghast dispatched someone to leave that wet ruin on my desk instead. But it’s a trick, Altman. Designed to make me doubt my own judgment, and to question myself, and to make me feel foolish and chagrined.”

  “That could be,” Altman admitted. “It would have taken some effort to go into the river to get the original box back. I put it in a sack weighed down with rocks, but even so, the package was in pretty good shape, better than I would have expected, unless someone was watching me, and pulled it out as soon as I left–”

  “I am certain of my interpretation,” Sanford interrupted. “Do you know why? Because it’s something that I would do. Tillinghast is good, but he’s not better than me. No one is better than me.”

  “Of course, sir,” Altman said. But privately, he thought the magus was misunderstanding the lesson of Percy Shelley’s poem about the king who’d once ruled the known world, only to have his name forgotten by history. The point of that poem wasn’t to be on guard against would-be usurpers; the point of that poem was that every great endeavor turned to dust, eventually, no matter what you did to stop it.

  “I want you to find the Dyer woman, right away.” Sanford rose from the chair. “I’ll make her take me to Tillinghast, without delay. The spider wants to scheme and move in shadows, creating a network in my city while he hides at the center of his web? No. I won’t have it.”

  Altman liked having a straightforward assignment. “Right you are, sir. Seems the right way to go.”

  They returned to the upper levels of the Lodge, the magus striding forward, clearly invigorated and ready for the next stage in the conflict. Some people are the most alive when they’re in the midst of a battle. Altman had known plenty of fellows like that, and he understood them. He liked this pugnacious version of Sanford better than the one he’d glimpsed briefly in the autopsy room – the one with the lost and baffled gaze.

  A pretty, young Initiate was waiting outside Sanford’s office, standing at attention with her hands clasped before her, eyes wide at proximity to the leader of the Order. “There you are, sir! The warden sent me to find you. She says you have a visitor.”