Eifelheim Read Free

problem, or Albrecht? He marked his place in the book for Lauds; then he placed a fresh hour-candle in the candlestick, trimmed the wick, and lit it with a taper from the stub of the old.
    Albrecht had written,
Experimentum solum certificat in talibus
. Experiment is the only safe guide.
    He silhouetted the woolen sleeve of his gown before the candle flame, and a smile slowly creased his lips. He felt that curious satisfaction that always enveloped him when he had reasoned his way to a question and then coaxed an answer from the world.
    The woolen fibers of his sleeve stood also upright.
Ergo
, he thought, the impetus impressed upon his hair was both external and material, as a woolen cassock had no ghostly part to be frightened. So, the nameless dread that troubled him was no more than a reflection of that material impression upon his soul.
    But the knowledge, however satisfying to the intellect, did not quiet the will.
    L ATER, AS Dietrich crossed to the church to pray the morning Mass, a whine drew his gaze to the shadowed corner beside the church steps and, in the flickering light from his torch, he saw a black and yellow dog cowering with its front paws crossed over its muzzle. The spots on its fur blended into the shadows so that it looked like some mad creature, half-dog and half—swiss cheese. The cur followed Dietrich with hopeful eyes.
    From the crest of Church Hill, Dietrich saw that a lustrous glow, like the pale cast that bleached the morning skies, suffused the Great Woods on the far side of the valley. But it was too early—and in the wrong sky. Atop the church spire, blue-flamed corposants swirled around the cross. Had even those asleep in the cemetery been aroused by the dread? But
that
sign was not promised until the last days of the world.
    He uttered a hasty prayer against occult danger and turned his back on the strange manifestations, facing the church walls, seeking comfort in their familiarity.
    My wooden cathedral
, Dietrich had sometimes called it, for above its stone foundation St. Catherine’s oak walls and posts and doors had been whittled by generations of earnest woodsmen into a wild congeries of saints and beasts and mythic creatures.
    Beside the door, the sinuous figure of St. Catherine herself rested her hand upon the wheel whereon they had thought to break her.
Who has triumphed?
her wan smile asked.
Those who turned the wheel are gone, but I abide
. Upon the doorposts, lion, eagle, man, and ox twisted upward toward the tympanum, in which the
Last Supper
had been carved.
    Elsewhere: Gargoyles leered from the roof’s edge, fantastic in horns and wings. In spring, their gaping mouths disgorged the flow of melting snows from the steep-pitched tiles of the roof. Under the eaves, kobolds hammered. On lintels and window jambs, in panels and columns, yet more fantastic creatures were relieved from the wood. Basilisks glared, griffins and wyverns reared. Centaurs leaped; panthers exuded their sweet, alluring breath. Here, a dragon fled from Amaling knights; there, a
sciopod
stood on his single enormous foot. Headless
blemyae
stared back from eyes affixed to their bellies.
    The oaken corner-posts of the building had been carved into the images of mountain giants upholding the roof. Grim and Hilde and Sigenot and Ecke, the villagers called them; and Ecke, at least, seemed a proper name for acorner-post. Someone with a sense of humor had worked the pedestal of each column into the form of a weary and irritable dwarf upholding the giant and glaring with resignation at passersby.
    The wonderful riot of figures, emerging from the wood but never entirely separate, seemed indeed to be a living part of it.
Somewhere
, he thought,
there are creatures like these
.
    When the wind blew hard or the snow lay heavy upon the roof, the menagerie would whisper and groan. It was only the shifting and bending of joists and rafters, yet it often seemed as if Sigenot rumbled and dwarfish Alberich squeaked and St.