and airy ale against the back of my throat.
“I wish to know more about the Otherworlds,” I said. Árbogast was not the kind of mage who favored the dillydallytant.
“Indeed.” He buried his head in his mug, and then looked up again, his goatee flecked with white foam. “Why?”
“I want to travel there.”
“So have many others. Very few have returned.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” I said.
“Then it must be treasure of one sort of another,” the professor said. “I never pegged you for a gawker after gold, so it’s something else. Knowledge? No, you were never that much interested in the whys and wherefores, only the hows. Fame? I think not.”
He looked at me more carefully then, studying my face and form and figure, as one might examine an insect under glass.
“Ah!” he finally exclaimed. “Now I see! You have, I note, been living on your own for quite some time. And time is the problem, isn’t it? You are finally beginning to wonder if this is all there is, if time is leaving you behind. Were you a religious man, I’d say you were having a crisis of faith. But religious or not, it’s still a crisis—of self, perhaps. So there must be a woman involved.”
I admitted nothing. “I wish to travel to the Otherworlds,” I repeated, “and return.”
“Then you are a fool, Morpheús. Be content with what you have. You’ve done better than ninety-nine out of a hundred students. In mid-life you’ve already achieved high office. What more do you want?”
“Love?” I ventured.
“An empty gesture, a silly thing that prances and prattles and then goes pfft, a mere posture of lustration. What can love give you that knowledge will not?”
“Someone warm to ease the cold nights?” I said. I was beginning to get irritated, but Doctor Árbogast always had that effect on me. “In truth, I want to find a better way to live my life. I tire of the lie my existence has become.”
He frowned, and then shook his head. “I see that you will not readily be amused,” he finally said. “Very well: the best work on the subject is Probatikos’s The Music of the Spheres. There’s a copy in the library. I’d also suggest a little-known tract, De Transmundis Aliis, by Sillius Funambulus.”
“I’ll certainly look at these,” I said. “But what can you tell me, Professor?”
“I would tell you not to go, but I see that such advice, however sound, will not be heeded. I still remember when Doctor Scarabbaios returned from the æthersphere a half century ago, and the stir that he created on the one occasion when he spoke to the assembled faculty.
“‘The Otherworlds,’ he said, ‘are not at all what you imagine.’
“I questioned him closely during the days that followed, but he wouldn’t give me many details of his experiences—and his memoir, which was published during the time you were taking classes here, while entertaining and at times amusing, revealed very few hard facts.
“My sense, however, is that nothing in his experience contradicted the general idea of the Otherworlds that has emerged in the last few decades.
“Travel through the transit mirrors is relatively easy on our own world, particularly for a mage with basic training. With a few precautions and some advanced study, most mages can master a transit to—and return from—the nearby Otherworlds, those that are most similar in nature to our own.
“The difficulty arises when the separation in time and space becomes ever greater. Accidental or deliberate passages to such worlds can happen infrequently, but returning to Nova Europa from them is extraordinarily difficult—and the measure of difficulty increases with each degree of separation.
“For convenience’s sake, we class those worlds nearest to our own as being members of the First Circle or Sphere. Those created by the splitting of universes prior to one thousand years ago we place in the Second Circle. Those occasioned by splits occurring more than ten thousand years ago are part of the Third Circle. Those breaking off before one hundred thousand years ago are regarded as constituting the Fourth Circle. And those which derive from impossibly ancient times comprise what we call the Fifth Circle. There may be an infinite number of these—no one really knows.
“On each of these worlds, their geography may be the same or at least similar to ours, but their languages, histories, even their races may be entirely different.”
“How can I reach a particular world?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” It was a startling admission from a man whose scholarly knowledge I respected above all others. “We’ve tried several experiments over the years, with many notable failures and no true successes. When I asked Doctor Scarabbaios the same question, he said: ‘You really don’t want to know’.”
“You mean—he’s still alive?”
“Yes,” my former teacher replied, “but he has become reclusive in his old age, and will see no one without an appointment—and such appointments are not readily obtainable by anyone, even me. I’ve encountered him just once in the last few decades, when he came here during the Scriborial Festival two years ago—you know, the one where Apothecarius Magicus Franz von Jarmank was honored?
“However, there is a possibility. Doctor Scarabbaios once served as the Librarian at the University, and he still maintains a passion for rare and odd tomes of magical lore. He’ll do almost anything to find a new one.”
“Even answer my questions?” I asked.
“If anything will gain access to his home and his knowledge, it’s a book that he hasn’t seen before. But I warn you, finding one could be a task worthy of the Labors of Hercules. His collection is said to exceed 35,000 volumes.”
“35,000! So many?”
“Now you understand. Alas, I have to leave you, Oridión”—very few people in the world called me by my true given name—“to teach my next seminar. If you succeed in your quest, please do come back and talk to me once more. My lust, such as it is, has always been for understanding the nuances of la philosophie magique. Perhaps you can unveil a window or two to help enlighten this old soul.”
“I’ll do so,” I promised. “Thank you for your time, Professor.”
Afterwards, I located the two works that Doctor Árbogast had recommended, and found them useful, in a theoretical sort of way. Whether they’d provide any practical advice, however, seemed a bit dubious.
The good doctor had also given me the contact nodes to reach Doctor Scarabbaios. I returned home in good spirits. All I had to do now was to find a book that the old librarian had never seen. This would be easy, I thought.
Of course, I seriously underestimated the difficulty.
CHAPTER NINE
“FISHING FOR IFRITS?”
I was able to reach Doctor Scarabbaios quite readily. That was not the problem, as it turned out.
“Who the Hades are
