Candelabrum

Prologue

A faint click was the only noise heard as the man pressed a key into the glass lock, the last barrier between him and the book.

“Four traps,” he muttered, amused. “Each easier than the last, and no guards. What were they thinking when they built this place?”

The first “trap” had been two illusory guards standing in front of the door to the inner chamber. That had been the hardest, because they spoke to him as if they were real, their mannerisms were natural, and they were not identical. The one thing that gave them away was their eyes—they didn't blink.

The second had been an invisible wire stretched across the first room about four and a half feet from the ground. Had he been walking straight-backed, he would have been bound head to toe in impenetrable cord, designed to hold an intruder until real guards could arrive. As it was, he made it a practice to walk hunched over, as to seem more subservient, so the cord barely brushed the top of his head. Enough to know of it, but not enough to trigger it.

The third was a wall of seven doors. Had he chosen the wrong one, he would have been cast into the Void, the space between worlds, and never seen or heard from again. Current research indicated that there was no way to retrieve someone from the Void, so he had spent quite a bit of time making sure he chose the correct door. There was a distinct difference in the second door from the left that the others did not share—it had a yellow brass door handle, where the rest were gold. An untrained eye may not have been able to tell the difference, but he spotted it immediately. During his life on Earth, he had been a goldsmith, or as close to one as his economic standing would allow.

The last was the seamless glass wall he stood before now. It stretched from floor to ceiling, encircling the precious Book of the Lamb. The lock appeared to be just a keyhole-shaped hole cut into the glass, with no key. However, the inner mechanism was merely hidden behind a glamour. Were the glamour to be dispelled, one would see that the mechanism was also made of glass, or maybe diamond, and that it took up a good square foot of area on the wall. It was made in such a way that if one tried to pick the lock, the entire wall would have shattered and been replaced by a solid steel one, with no lock available to pick. The hardest part had been finding the key. There was a desk in the corner of the room, but it contained nothing, not even a slip of paper or an inkpen.

After a long search, the man had found the key underneath a slightly raised portion of carpet right in front of the glass wall itself. The tiny silver key was no more than an inch long, with a strangely shaped head and intricate carvings all over it. The man had to wiggle the key around and try it in different ways before he discovered that it had to be placed into the lock back-end first and pressed all the way into the keyhole. He smiled as he watched a portion of the glass in front of him shimmer and sink into the floor.

“Excellent,” he murmured to himself.

He stepped through the opening slowly and approached the large book on the stand in the center of the circle. It was open to the last used page, only half-filled with names so far. Near to it, on a separate stand, was a stoppered bottle of ink and an upright quill, balanced in a small glass holder. It was tempting to write some names in the book, but he refrained. The purpose of his mission was not to upset the balance of the worlds. He closed the book gently and lifted it from its place. It was surprisingly light for such a large book. Tucking it under his arm, he made his way out of the room, being careful to replace the key in its hiding place. He avoided the binding wire extra carefully this time, ducking much lower than required on his way out. He took a different route out of the palace, just in case someone had caught on to his scheme, and came out on a balcony overlooking a field with a single footpath cutting through it.

He stopped to marvel at the sight before him. Night in Heaven was different than anywhere else he had visited. The sky turned a deep purple, never quite completely dark. The stars in this sky seemed to shine more brightly than those on Earth, even on the clearest night, so he could see for a long distance. No one was about on this side of the palace. He hopped the balcony railing, landed on his feet, and ran along the path toward the forest.