The candles crackled and spat, the dancing flames making the shadows shift. Mr Zhi held the parcel for another moment with both hands, running his thumbs over the leather wrapping. Then he squeezed it fondly as if bidding it farewell and pushed it across the counter.
“Take a look at this.”
Sylas’s eyes ran over the neat folds of worn leather and the carefully tied twine that bound it. As he took hold of it, he felt the same stirrings of excitement that he had experienced when he had first entered the shop. It was surprisingly warm to the touch, the leather soft and yielding against his skin.
With a glance at Mr Zhi, he took hold of one end of the twine and pulled. The knot untied itself instantly and both the twine and the soft leather wrapping fell away as though they were made of silk.
Sylas’s eyes widened. “Wow...” he whispered.
Between his palms lay the most exquisite book he had ever seen. The cover was made of mottled brown leather that had seen better days, its once smooth finish now dented and grazed by its many years of use. But into this drab leather had been laid the most beautiful decorations of gold, silver and dark red stones. Sylas turned it so that it caught the candlelight and saw that they formed a pattern: a row of gems, seven on each edge, placed on the outside of a stitched, golden zigzag that ran along the four sides, the thread sewn so tightly that the stitches could hardly be seen. Within this border a superbly adorned symbol had been laid into the leather: a large snaking S made of gold at the top and silver at the bottom. The back cover was beautiful too, with the same zigzagging border around its four edges, this time in silver.
He looked back at Mr Zhi and saw that the old man was also transfixed by the book. It took a moment for their eyes to meet.
“It’s beautiful,” said Sylas in a whisper. “Is it old?”
“Very old.”
“And what does the S mean?”
“Most people who know about this book call it the Samarok, and it is thought that the S comes from that name. Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Yes – yes, of course.”
Sylas allowed the book to fall open. The pages turned in a flurry of paper until they settled on what must have been the weakest part of the binding, towards the end of the book. The first thing to strike him was the wonderful woody, rich aroma of old books – much more intense than he had smelt before – like dry oak leaves on a forest floor. Then he saw the words, written in black lettering that marched a little irregularly across the page, the lines undulating slightly as they went. It was not a printed book, but one written by hand.
He looked up at Mr Zhi, who was placing some spectacles on his nose.
“Someone wrote this by hand?”
“Not one person, Sylas, many,” replied the shopkeeper, clearly enjoying Sylas’s amazement. He leaned over and peered through his spectacles at the open book. “Have a look.”
Sylas turned the page with great care and saw that the next was written in strange looping tails and graceful lines. The page opposite was written in another crowded, huddling scrawl. He flicked through towards the front of the book and, sure enough, almost every page was written in a new hand, with smudges here and crossings-out there, giving the appearance of some sort of collected journal. But when he reached a point around halfway through, the style changed and it was written in one measured, unremarkable hand in almost perfectly straight lines. There were still errors, and parts of pages were faded and illegible, but it looked far more like a normal book.
“There are two parts to the book,” explained Mr Zhi. “The first part is a copy of an ancient text that has now been lost. These few pages are all that remain of many volumes, which were written to provide answers to some of the questions we have spoken about. The second part is a collection of writings by many people, each of whom followed a path not unlike the one that lies ahead of you.”
Sylas frowned and looked up. “What path?”
Mr Zhi simply smiled. “We’ll come to that. Read me a line or two,” he said.
Sylas shrugged, pressed down two pages and ran his eyes along the first line. The shapes of the letters and even the words seemed familiar, but they made no sense. He started at the beginning again, but for some reason the letters did not form words.
“Strange…” he mumbled.
He turned to a page at the back of the book, which was written in an old-fashioned, slanting hand. Again, he stared at the first line, trying to make sense of it. He shook his head, turned the page and began running his finger over the first sentence of another entry, but after a few moments he stopped and let out a sigh.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “The words look familiar, but they don’t make sense. Is it another language?”
“Not a language,” replied Mr Zhi, smiling once again. “A cipher. A code.”
Sylas’s eyes leapt back to the page. “A code?”
“Yes. Time is short, but let us just try one final thing before you go. Close the book.”
Sylas pressed the ancient covers shut.
“Now, clear your mind, and remove all thoughts of what you have just seen in the book. When I say so, I want you to open the book again, but this time don’t expect to be able to read what you find. In fact, I want you to think of something else entirely – anything, as long as it is not to do with books or writing of any kind.”
Sylas knew that he would find that very easy. He closed his eyes and the image of his mother’s face instantly filled his mind.
“When you have that thought in your head, you may open the book,” said Mr Zhi in a whisper.
Sylas clung to the image of his mother, then quickly opened his eyes and picked up the book. He turned to a page somewhere in the second part and cast his eyes over the strange, carefully drafted script.
It looked as it had before, written in a strange hand in a dark ink, but as his eyes focused on the first word, he saw to his amazement that it was not made up of letters as he had previously thought, but strange symbols. They were not familiar – they were not even similar to those in the alphabet, but were much more complex, forming patterns that rose and fell from each line. Sylas looked up at Mr Zhi in astonishment.
“But... the words didn’t look like this a minute ago.”
“What did they look like?” asked Mr Zhi, clearly enjoying himself.
“I’m not sure…” said Sylas. “Like normal words, I suppose.”
“That’s right, because that is what you thought you would see. The brilliance of this cipher is that it tricks your eye into seeing whatever you expect. You thought you would see words written in English, so that is what you saw. But they were meaningless. In truth you were looking at one of the world’s most ancient codes: a cipher known as Ravel Runes.”
Sylas repeated the words under his breath.
“The problem for anyone trying to read Ravel Runes is that they must first learn to see the symbols as they really are, before they can even begin to work out what they might stand for.”
Sylas looked back at the book and, sure enough, the writing once again looked encouragingly familiar and easy to read. But it made no sense. He blinked hard.
“That’s weird,” he said, shaking his head and laughing. “Just weird!”
“Weird is one way of putting it,” said Mr Zhi with a smile, “and wonderful is another. Ravel Runes are difficult enough to read, but just imagine how hard they are to write. Think of the time it takes.” He leaned over the counter and for a while they both stared in silence at the writing, admiring the hand that wrote it.
“Time!”