3 – Ex Lumina Caelo
"No, no, the third one gets – oh, no, you've messed it up again..."
"For crying out loud, Jordan," cursed Rachel as she and Maddy prodded at the exposed controls under the elevator, "if we're so terrible at this, come down here and do it yourself."
"You are not terrible at this," replied Jordan patiently, "you just can't see the drawing in Saavedro's journal because it's dark down there."
After their discovery that the elevator apparently had to be rotated in order to face the right way at the top, Maddy had thought that they should try sending the elevator up whilst they stayed down, since the switch controlling the elevator was on the wall outside the elevator. When they did so, they saw that under the elevator was a pit the same diameter as the elevator and about two metres deep. A ladder led down into the pit where they saw that in four places the wall covering had been torn away, exposing four sets of controls. Jordan had recalled that in Saavedro's journal there were neat (surprisingly neat considering Saavedro's apparent level of sanity) sketches of devices that resembled these. The entry that those diagrams had been entered in, said Jordan, had mentioned something about having to scavenge parts from another device in the tusk to fix the imager, but the remaining controls "could still be operated by hand".
Jordan climbed down the ladder with the appropriate page from the journal. He handed the paper to Rachel, who moved backwards into the light.
"Right," muttered Jordan, bending over the controls on the screw wheel, "the first one is opened, then turn... the second one is opened, then turn... the third one stays closed. That's it. Let's hope it works this time."
The three of them climbed out of the pit and Maddy pulled on the switch again. The elevator slid smoothly down the railings from the tower and docked inside the rotating cage, which again did its circuit of the elevator. Once everything was still, Rachel slid open the door, the three of them crowded in and closed the door. Maddy pulled on the switch.
There was a resounding clunk from outside, then the elevator gave a jerk as it began to turn. As she watched through the small window, Maddy saw that the rotating cage on the outside of the elevator appeared to have locked with the elevator and was turning it around. When the elevator had turned completely around, another clunk echoed through the elevator and the cage went spinning back to its regular position, leaving the now properly aligned elevator to make the smooth ascent to the tower.
Atrus pushed the door of his bedroom open and made straight for his bookshelf. Pulling down one book, he flicked it open to the last page, examined it briefly, then closed it with a satisfied grunt and left the room.
Once he got back to his observatory, Atrus put the book down on the table and pulled on his coat and gloves, before opening the book to the last page again and touching the glowing panel.
At the top of the tower, Jordan motioned for everyone to keep quiet, then bent down and peered through the window on the door.
The cage that had appeared out of the hole in the ground a while before had opened, rather like a flower, and a small bridge had extended from the dish on the railings to the open cage. As Jordan watched, Saavedro stepped down onto the small bridge and walked over to the open cage. Without even a glance at the people in the elevator, he laid his hand on the small book inside the cage and shimmered out of existence, taking the Releeshahn book with him. The cage then promptly closed and lowered itself back down.
Without pausing even to tell the other two what had happened, Jordan slid the elevator door open and pushed the outer door open, causing all three of them to fall forwards onto the floor of the round tower room. Rachel, who was on top of the pile of people, stood up hurriedly and helped the others up. As they brushed themselves down and Jordan gave a quick explanation, the elevator doors clicked closed behind them.
The three of them surveyed the now deserted tower room. It was comprised of a wide floor bounded by the round wall on the outside and a long, curved railing on the inside. Beyond the railing was the round hole in which the three of them could see the cage containing the book that Saavedro had used. Spaced evenly on the walls were three roughly hemispherical domes that, Jordan recalled, had been open when Saavedro had been in the tower room, but were closed now. On the wall between two of these and directly across from the third one was the door leading back into the elevator shaft, and on the wall next to this was a small lever.
Jordan walked over to the dish where Saavedro had placed the crumpled piece of paper, followed closely by Rachel and Maddy. Here there was a gap in the railing. On the railing next to the dish was a small blue button. Jordan glanced at Rachel and Maddy, and when he received no objections from either of them, he pressed the button.
With a series of sharp clanging noises, the hemispherical dome across from them slid slightly outwards, then the two halves of the dome separated, revealing a small round lens. The lens immediately begain shining a green light towards the domed ceiling of the room. The two other domes on the wall did the same thing, except the one to their right shone red light, and the one to their left shone blue light. The lights combined together just below the dome of the ceiling, and they began to flicker slightly as a face appeared at the centre of the lights.
"My sons," said the hologram of Atrus, "I promised to teach you the secrets of my Ages. This world is the first step along your journey..."
"He looks about twenty years younger," hissed Rachel as the hologram continued to talk. "This must be an old recording."
"Plus, we're not Sirrus and Achenar," Maddy hissed back.
"...linking books. Each connects to an Age, in which you must perform garble warble hiss whirr," said the hologram. The three of them looked back up at it in surprise as Atrus' voice dissolved into a mechanical whirr. The image of his face blurred out of focus as well, and the lights from the lenses on the walls flared brightly for a moment before the image reformed into a different face.
"Hello, Atrus," said the hologram of Saavedro. "It's been a long time."
"He thinks that Atrus came to get the book back!" muttered Maddy. "He must have recorded this before he stole the book, not expecting us to come through after him but expecting Atrus."
"Sorry I'm not there to greet you in person," the recording continued, "but I just didn't think it'd be wise... considering how long I've been stuck here. Trapped in these Lesson Ages by two very greedy little boys. Your sons, Atrus; Sirrus and Achenar."
"Yeah, we're not too fond of them either," muttered Jordan.
"Course, they're not so little any more... not so innocent. I've thought a lot about innocence these past few years and what happens when it gets lost..."
The last word was lost in another mechanical hiss and whirr as Saavedro's face blurred out of focus. The wall lights flickered violently, and Atrus' face was briefly visible through the flickering static before Saavedro's face reformed and the lights settled down again.
"Worried about Releeshahn?" The three of them nodded, then remembered this was a recording. "I have it." A smile formed on Saavedro's face, making him look even crazier, if that was possible. "Worried about friends, relatives, people you can't get back? I know just how you feel." There was a distinct note of spite in Saavedro's voice. "But, if you want to do something about it, you're going to have to open this device. And there's just one problem..." Saavedro paused and stifled a snigger. "I've changed the three symbols that do that. So if you want to reclaim Releeshahn, you're going to have to take your own class!" Saavedro now decided that restraining laughter was pointless; it was several seconds before he became serious again, but when he did, and he spoke, there was more than just a note of malice in his voice.
"Find the three symbols, Atrus. And don't keep me waiting forever."
"Where's Atrus?"
Catherine looked up from the stove. Brittany had come into the kitchen with Jane, who was asleep.
"He went to Rime," replied Catherine. "He said he keeps copies of most of his important books there. And they're pretty unlikely to be damaged by fire there."
"You would think not..." murmured Brittany, seeming distracted. Catherine noticed.
"Something wrong, Brittany?"
Brittany looked up. "I'm just worried about the others, that's all. That man looked crazy."
"I expect he was," replied Catherine with a slight smile. "Don't worry about the others; I'm sure they'll be fine. Frustration will be their biggest problem."
It was about at this point that Atrus wandered over. He had an open book in his hand, a pile of books under his arm and a pile of snow on his hat which he hadn't taken off, making him look rather silly. He did not appear to have noticed that there was snow on his hat, or that Catherine and Brittany were standing right next to him – to be honest, thought Brittany, he doesn't even seem to notice that he's on Tomahna.
About at that point Atrus looked up, and was rather startled to see Catherine and Brittany.
"Oh," said Atrus, regaining his senses. "Hello." He examined the amused looks that Catherine and Brittany were directing at the top of his head and at each other. "Have I got snow on my hat?"
Jordan examined the light reflector with the yellow fire marble on top. If he turned it, he could see a different part of the island through it. But only if he looked in the right end. If he looked in the wrong end, he got blinded.
"If we point it this way," he said to Rachel and Maddy, "the light goes over there." He pointed at the broken pole that looked like it should have had a reflector on it. "But if I point it that way, it goes over there." He pointed at another reflector a few metres away.
"I would say," said Rachel, "that we have to direct light from here to somewhere useful using these light reflectors. With a bit of luck, we might find one of those linking books."
"Or one of the symbols," added Jordan. Rachel nodded. Maddy pointed at one of the tusks.
"That tusk had a sort of light device outside it," she said. "The door was locked, but maybe if we point the light at it with the reflectors it'll open."
Jordan turned the reflector to face the second reflector, which had a blue fire marble set into the top of it. The three of them jumped down onto the sand and walked over to the second reflector. A few seconds later, they had pointed the blue reflector at a third reflector, this one green, that was across the lake from the blue one.
After the three of them had spent a good five or ten minutes walking back and forth around the island playing with reflectors, they ended up standing outside the still locked door of the westernmost tusk. The device in front of the door was shining five different colours onto a circle on the door of the tusk – yellow, blue, purple, green, red. Each colour had a button in the middle of it. The problem, however, was that the door was still locked.
"So I guess we have to press buttons in a specific order to open the door," sighed Jordan. "Any ideas?"
"It's interesting," mused Maddy, "that there's only five colours there. Usually there would be six. There's no light blue."
Rachel, as usual, had an answer for this. "I think that's because light blue fire marbles look too similar to dark blue ones." When the others looked at her strangely, she continued. "Yellow, dark blue, purple, green, red. Those are the colours of the fire marbles on top of the reflectors. Two red ones, two yellow ones, one each of the others. We started at the close yellow one, then went to the blue one..." She stepped over to the door, pressing the yellow button, then the blue button. "The green one, then the far red one..." Green button, red button. "Far yellow, purple, close red." Yellow again, purple, red again. She stepped back. There was a clunk deep within the tusk, the handle of the door turned and it swung open.
Rachel smiled at two stunned faces. "Easy," she said, and went inside. Jordan and Maddy looked at each other, shrugged in unison, and followed her.
The interior of the tusk was decorated in a fiery orange colour. It was a round room, small in diameter but colossal in height, and completely empty except for four lamps and a large device on the wall opposite the door. The device consisted of a small pillar with four rings on the top of it and a button in the middle, and above this was a cage that was the same shape as the large cage in the tower room, but much smaller and open in the front. Inside the cage was a book, bound in the same colour as the floor of the room.
"You have to admire Atrus' colour coordination," said Jordan, "but how do we get that book down here?"
Maddy walked over to the pillar and examined it. Each ring had a small marble set into it, which could move around the rings. Rachel approached behind her and also looked down at the pillar.
"You know," she said, "when we were in the tower, I looked into one of those lenses that ran the projector. Through it I could see a symbol, which was on the lens, and through the lens I could see one of the tusks. Around the edges were four small marbles. There were levers attached near the lens, and when I moved the levers the display changed – zoomed in, zoomed out, changed focus, changed position, whatever... and the marbles moved as well. Do you think that -"
"If we get that into a certain position it would show us the arrangement of marbles that will open this machine?" finished Jordan, who had also come over to look at the pillar. "Yes, I think you might be right, Rach. Let's go back up to the tower and see what we can do."
Saavedro kicked the door of the bunker open and hurled the hairpin that was in his hand over the edge of the island. It clattered onto the ice shield, but he didn't hear it – he was already slamming the door behind him.
Atrus was a clever man, he thought. The lock on the book was a smart idea, and the nara was making it near impossible to break the lock, so he was using his limited lockpicking skills to try and get the book open. He was not, however, getting very far. D'ni locks were not meant to be easy pickings, so to speak.
Jordan glanced again at the diagram he'd drawn in his journal and moved the fourth marble into place on the pillar. He compared the pattern on the pillar to the diagram once more, then pressed the button and took a step back.
There was a clunk, and the marbles on the pillar snapped back into their starting positions. Before any of them had time to blink, the cage suspended above the pillar came clattering down with a groan of machinery until it rested over the pillar. Maddy, always the brave one, stepped towards the cage and examined the book. Emblazoned on the cover was the same symbol that they had seen in the lens in the tower – sort of like a ship of some description – with the word "Voltaic" above it. When she opened the book to the last page, she saw a slowly shifting image of a small island with a small craggy stone building on it. With little pause for thought, she laid her hand on the image and let the blackness swallow her.