They sat then, side by side in the soporific warmth, the glimner and the prentice, Numps humming, Rossamund wishing heartily that he could come here again. Safe and warm and brimming with peace, it was simply the best place in the whole Half-Continent. In the soft darkness of the old forgotten bloom baths, Rossamund slept.
15
Moss-light also known as a limnulin or limulight; this is a small, pocketable device, a simple biologue consisting of a lidded box holding a clump of naturally phosphorescent mosslike lichens (either funkelmoos or micareen), set on a thick bed of nutrient to keep it alive. This nutrient bed can be reinvigorated with drops of liquid similar to seltzer. The light provided by a limnulin is not bright, but can give you enough to see your way right on a dark night, and is diffuse enough not to attract immediate attention.
With a panicked, convulsing suck of breath, Rossamund awoke. He sat up in disoriented fright, looking every way with hasty, sightless alarm as the swilling of water trickled all about.Then easy realization brought peace: he was still in the undercroft, with the bloom baths.
Numps stirred more peaceably, saying sleepily, "Oh, oh, wake up, sleepyheads, no time for dozing."
"What's the o'clock?" Rossamund asked loudly, still a little mizzled.
Numps scratched his head. "Uh, sorry, Mister Rossamund, I'm a glimner, not a night-clerk."
Rossamund got to his feet. "It feels late," he said, and ran up the steps to observe the sky through the grate. With profound consternation he discovered that the clear black dome of night hung above. He could not quite believe it. His heart skipping several beats, he opened the grate and clambered up to the square to get a better view. Maudlin green was riding high in the dark. It was desperately, impossibly late. Douse-lanterns had come and was long gone and all prentices should be in their cells asleep. No one was permitted to roam the grounds at night, especially not some lowly lantern-stick. A quick trot to the jakes across the hall was all a prentice was allowed during the night-watches.To be at large now was the worst breach, punishable by an afternoon in the pillory by the Feuterer's Cottage.
Rossamund leaped back down the steps, three at a time, utterly flustered, dreading the worst punishments. "I'm late. I'm locked out. Frogs and toads, Mister Numps! How am I to get back into my cell?"
Numps was still sitting as the prentice had left him.
"I have to go right now, Mister Numps." Rossamund's voice quavered with anxiety. "It's past douse-lanterns… Oh, I'm in so much trouble…"
"Oh-oh-um, oh dear-there's better ways home again." Numps nodded. "Numps' hiding-hole goes more places than just here." With that he stood and jogged off through the baths.
Rossamund followed.
Through the convoluted clearances between the battery of baths they hastened. In the farthest corner of the undercroft was a hole in the wall, round like a drain. Upon a hook at the apex of the drain's arch hung a bright-limn with the healthiest looking bloom Rossamund had ever seen glowing bright in its near-clear seltzer. Beyond the throw of clean light the cavity of the drain was exquisitely black and blank and mysterious. Numps took the bright-limn off its stay and, with a solemn nod to Rossamund and a soft "shh," entered the round gap.
Close behind, the prentice saw that they were in a tunnel, most probably an ancient sewer pipe. On left and right down the length of the tunnel they passed the small dark mouths of lesser pipes beady with reflecting retinas and echoing with light patters and rodent squeaks. The gray-mousers that haunted the manse could grow happily fat down here.
In this moldy, claustrophobic place Rossamund's sense of distance began to distort, and with it time. To him it felt that they had walked far enough to be somewhere out on the Harrowmath. Several times the tunnel kinked and branched till Rossamund was disoriented and very glad that the glimner knew the way. Numps finally took a right turn and they began to descend. The new way was of greater diameter than the previous drain and took them down so sharply that Rossamund was made to lean backward with the effort of climbing, scrabbling at the slimy bricks to prevent a slip.
Lifting the bright-limn high, Numps paused when the tunnel became level again. "We are right under the manse-house," the glimner said, looking up and ducking his head.
Looking to the immuring bricks just above, Rossamund shrank a little at the thought of the great press of masonry, the tons of stone and hundreds of sleeping lighters and staff all on top of him. It was so deep not even the vermin ventured here.
Shouldn't we be going up? Rossamund fretted.
Numps continued forward, and there, by an intersecting pipe, was a small door of corroding iron a few feet above the floor, reached by three large steps. He grinned at Rossamund, his geniality made ghastly by the play of seltzer light on his scars. Rossamund smiled back, alive to the immense trust the glimner was showing him, the secrets the man was revealing.
"Through here now, and up, up, up," Numps said softly. He produced a key pulled from somewhere on his person, unlocked the rusty door and shone the seltzer light through. Beyond was the landing of a tight stairway of near-failing timbers, rising into shadows of architectural gloom.
Another furtigrade!
Unlike the one reached through the kitchens, this was not lit at all.
How often does he come here? Rossamund's whole sense of Winstermill shifted with the thought of the glimner wandering about beneath them as they labored, ate, even slept.
Numps stood by the door, waiting.
"Mister Numps?"
"I don't like to go up to the manse." The glimner's face was drawn and gray, his eyes animated with deep troubles. "I won't go any farther-oh dear no; I don't like it in the manse… never have."
"Can I find my own way from here?" Rossamund asked.
The glimner clucked his tongue. "Mister Rossamund can indeed go himself."
"What more is ahead?" the prentice asked.
Numps looked to the furtigrade distractedly. "Oh-oh, more tunnels, more stairs: just go up-up-up-up-do not stop at any doors until the very top and turn the bolt and slide the door, down the passage and through the hole and you shall come out on to the lectury floor."
A start of panic knotted in Rossamund's innards. "Are you sure?" he pressed.
Numps nodded emphatically. The glimner had led him a long and twisted way but now he must go ahead alone-to a place that might not lead anywhere. I could be lost or found out late! — between the stone and the sty, as Fransitart would say. I found my way to Winstermill and I can do this too.
Stepping onto the tiny landing, Rossamund looked up. He could see only a few flights above, beyond which darkness brooded. He listened: he could hear nothing but his own workings beating, lub-dub lub-dub.
"You must go gently-gently," said the glimner. "Some others are up here too, all a-wandering. I hear them sometimes down here but they don't hear me. Oh no." He took something from his satchel and pressed it into Rossamund's hands. "Here, Mister Rossamund, take this; it's too dark up there." It was a small pewter box, like those in which pediteers carried their playing cards, but this had a thick leather strap attached and felt almost empty. The prentice did not know what to say.
"It's a moss-light," Numps explained. "Push-push at the top."
Rossamund did as instructed.The top panel proved to be a lid that, when slid up, exposed a diffuse blue-green glow within.With a closer look he found the box was hollow with a glass top, and stuffed with a bizarre kind of plant, its tiny leaves radiant with that odd, natural effulgence like bloom.
"So you will find the way." Numps blessed Rossamund with his crooked smile once more.