Here he trailed off. He stared into the middle distance, still grasping his cup of tea, as though seeing visions the assembled scions and cavaliers were not privy to. The pause stumbled execrably, fell down the stairs, and lay in a tangle at the bottom in full view of all listeners, who had to watch it bleed out in embarrassment. One of the grotesquely young pair of the Fourth actually tried to fill it in, and bleated: “There’s a—monster in a research laboratory? And we’ve got to—fight it?”

“No, no!” said Teacher impatiently. “Lord Over the River have mercy! The Sleeper cannot die. I doubt they can be wounded; they certainly cannot be killed. The greatest advantage we have is that the Sleeper sleeps deeply! The second threat to your work is if the Sleeper wakes—it has never happened, though I know the Sleeper yearns to escape its incognizant state and pick up where they left off—for if they wake, none of us will live. If the Sleeper meets you on their unconscious peregrinations, your weapon should be stealth; if through unholy means you wake them, there will be no other weapons left. We are reliant on a communal soundlessness. Travel in groups; tread softly; go where I durst not go: because I love my life, and I love noise, also.”

There was no pause here, just a perfect babel:

“—isn’t how it—”

“How much sound is—”

“—doesn’t make any—”

“—what kind of cack-handed—”

“I do not know the answers to any of these questions,” said Teacher calmly. “Only that, already, you are being too loud.”

The babel froze, in midair, on everyone’s lips. Harrowhark, who had never spoken, and Ortus, who had only sweated, almost audibly, stilled further. In that anechoic atmosphere one could have heard a hair split from someone’s scalp and twiddle down to the floor. One could have heard their own heart beating—Harrow did, loud and wet and hot. That silence was absent of anything, except those tiny, helpless noises of living.

“I am making a joke,” said the vigorous little priest, whose cheerful admission did not ease the room. “I josh. I kid. I do that. Believe me when I say that you are safe up here. You see, if you are not, then there is nothing to be done, not really. It is only down through the hatch for which you hold the key that you are in peril, and it is a peril you will bring on both yourself and those around you. Keep your swords sharp and your theorems nimble. I can guide you no further; this place has changed beyond my ken. But I wish you luck,” he added, and the priest with the long salt-and-pepper plait said, very softly, “I wish you luck,” and the tiniest and most wizened priest added in a wheeze, “God grant you luck to carry out your task.”