Free The Compleat Crow by Brian Lumley Page B

gasped. The Mysteries of the Worm ! He had seen a copy in Carstairs’ library, had even handled it. Old Ludwig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis !
    Seeing his look, Sedgewick said: “Oh? Have I said something right?”
    “Prinn,” Crow’s agitation was obvious. “He was Flemish, wasn’t he?”
    “Correct! A sorcerer, alchemist and necromancer. He was burned in Brussels. He wrote his book in prison shortly before his execution, and the manuscript found its way to Cologne where it was posthumously published.”
    “Do you have a copy in English?”
    Sedgewick smiled and shook his head. “I believe there is such a copy—circa 1820, the work of one Charles Leggett, who translated it from the German black-letter—but we don’t have it. I can let you see a black-letter, if you like?”
    Crow shook his head. “No, it gives me a headache just thinking of it. My knowledge of antique German simply wouldn’t run to it. What about the Latin?”
    “We have half of it. Very fragile. You can see but you can’t touch.”
    “Can’t touch? Sir—I want to borrow it!”
    “Out of the question, old chap. Worth my job.”
    “The black-letter, then,” Crow was desperate. “Can I have a good long look at it? Here? Privately?”
    The other pursed his lips and thought it over for a moment or two, and finally smiled. “Oh, I dare say so. And I suppose you’d like some paper and a pen, too, eh? Come on, then.”
    A few minutes later, seated at a table in a tiny private room, Crow opened the black-letter—and from the start he knew he was in for a bad time, that the task was near hopeless. Nonetheless he struggled on, and two hours later Sedgewick looked in to find him deep in concentration, poring over the decorative but difficult pages. Hearing the master librarian enter, Crow looked up.
    “This could be exactly what I’m looking for,” he said. “I think it’s here—in the chapter called Saracenic Rituals .”
    “Ah, the Dark Rites of the Saracens, eh?” said Sedgewick. “Well, why didn’t you say so? We have the Rituals in a translation!”
    “In English?” Crow jumped to his feet.
    Sedgewick nodded. “The work is anonymous, I’m afraid—by Clergyman X, or some such, and of course I can’t guarantee its reliability—but if you want it—”
    “I do!” said Crow.
    Sedgewick’s face grew serious. “Listen, we’re closing up shop soon. If I get it for you—that is if I let you take it with you—I must have your word that you’ll take infinite care of it. I mean, my heart will quite literally be in my mouth until it’s returned.”
    “You know you have my word,” Crow answered at once.
    Ten minutes later Sedgewick saw him out of the building. Along the way Crow asked him, “Now how do you suppose Prinn, a native of Brussels, knew so much about the practice of black magic among the Syria-Arabian nomads?”
    Sedgewick opened his encyclopedic mind. “I’ve read something about that somewhere,” he said. “He was a much-travelled man, Prinn, and lived for many years among an order of Syrian wizards in the Jebel el Ansariye. That’s where he would have learned his stuff. Disguised as beggars or holy men, he and others of the order would make pilgrimages to the world’s most evil places, which were said to be conducive to the study of demonology. I remember one such focal point of evil struck me as singularly unusual, being as it was situated on the shore of Galilee! Old Prinn lived in the ruins there for some time. Indeed, he names it somewhere in his book.” Sedgewick frowned. “Now what was the place called…?”
    “Chorazin!” said Crow flatly, cold fingers clutching at his heart.
    “Yes, that’s right,” answered the other, favouring Crow with an appraising glance. “You know, sometimes I think you’re after my job! Now do look after that pamphlet, won’t you?”
     

     
    That night, through Saturday and all of Sunday, Crow spent his time engrossed in the Saracenic Rituals reduced to the