Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

But that was probably for the best. The two-page spreads on my laptop screen—heavy Gerritszoon glyphs lit harshly by the GrumbleGear camera flashes—still made me feel strange. Penumbra’s expectation was that his codex vitae wouldn’t be read until after he was gone. I decided I wouldn’t crack open a man’s book of life just to find his home address.

Finally, genius depleted, I checked with Tyndall and Lapin and Fedorov. None of them had heard from Penumbra, either. They were all preparing to move east, to take refuge with the Unbroken Spine in New York and join Corvina’s chain gang there. If you ask me, it’s futile: we took Manutius’s codex vitae and bent it until it broke. At best, the fellowship is founded on a false hope, and at worst, it’s founded on a lie. Tyndall and the rest haven’t faced up to this, but at some point they’ll have to.

If all of this seems grim: it is. And I feel terrible because, if you trace it back step-by-step, you cannot avoid the fact that all of it is my fault.

My mind is wandering. It’s taken me many nights to get this far again, but Moffat is finally wrapping up Volume II. I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say, it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely happens inside your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes:

“The Golden Horn of Griffo is finely wrought,” Zenodotus said, tracing his finger along the curve of Telemach’s treasure. “And the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here—none that I can detect.”

Moffat’s Zenodotus voice is not what I expected. Instead of a rich, dramatic wizard’s rumble, it’s clipped and clinical. It’s the voice of a corporate magic consultant.

Fernwen’s eyes widened at that. Hadn’t they just braved a swamp of horrors to reclaim this enchanted trumpet? And now the First Wizard claimed it carried no real power at all?

“Magic is not the only power in this world,” the old mage said gently, handing the horn back to its royal owner. “Griffo made an instrument so perfect that even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spells or dragon-songs. I wish that I could do the same.”

With Moffat reading, I can hear the sinister intent in the First Wizard’s voice. It’s so obvious what’s coming:

“Even Aldrag the Wyrm-Father would envy such a thing.”

Wait, what?

So far, every line out of Moffat’s mouth has been pleasant repetition. His voice has been a needle bobbing comfortably through a deep groove in my brain. But that line—I have never read that line.

That line is new.

My finger twitches over the Walkman’s pause button, but I don’t want to mess up Neel’s recording. Instead, I pad quickly to my room and pull Volume II from the shelf. I flip to the end, and yes, I’m right: there’s no mention of Aldrag the Wyrm-Father here. He was the first dragon to sing, and he used the power of his dragon-song to forge the first dwarves out of molten rock, but that’s not the point—the point is, that line is not in the book.

So what else isn’t in the book? What else is different? Why is Moffat freestyling?

These audiobooks were produced in 1987, just after Volume III had been published. Therefore, it was also just after Clark Moffat’s entanglement with the Unbroken Spine. My spider-sense is tingling: this is connected.

But I can think of only three people in the world who might possess clues to Moffat’s intent. The first is the dark lord of the Unbroken Spine, but I have absolutely no desire to communicate with Corvina or any of his henchmen at the Festina Lente Company, above- or belowground. Besides, I’m still afraid my IP address might be listed on one of their pirate rosters.

The second is my erstwhile employer, and I have a deep desire to communicate with Penumbra, but I don’t know how. Lying here on the floor, listening to the hiss of empty tape, I realize something very sad: this skinny, blue-eyed man bent my life into a crazy curlicue … and all I know about him is what it says on the front of his store.