The second chamber, in which the commentaries were studied, was like the first, only much smaller: the books here might all be held, flipped through, even studied in the normal span of a single human life. The scholars, too, were fewer, ranged about a large circular table at which each man sat backward, facing away from the center of the room, protecting his reading from the others.

Yehuda Leib wanted to linger here and eavesdrop on the muttered reading, but Mammon hurried them along, beneath the circular table and down a spiral staircase to another ancient man who sat reading beside a single candle.

“Ah,” said the man. “I see you wish to progress into the third chamber.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mammon impatiently.

The ancient man began to stroke his long, curly beard, and in the flickering light of the candle, Bluma noticed that it had twined around the armrest of his chair, like climbing ivy.

“I see,” he said. “Yes. You have studied long and learned much. But before I admit you to the third chamber…”

Mammon heaved a sigh, as if he’d had to endure this speech many times before.

“…before I admit you to the third chamber,” repeated the ancient door guard, “I must ask you this: In all of your learning and all of your study here, in all the commentaries you’ve studied, the treatises you’ve read, what is the number of secrets that you have learned?”

Mammon took a deep chestful of air, as if he intended to blow out the door guard’s feeble candle with his answer, but Yehuda Leib stepped forward.

“None,” he said. “The number of secrets is none.”

“You are wise,” said the door guard, and he lifted up a hatch in the floor. “Proceed.”

“How did you guess?” said Bluma as they scrambled down the ladder into the dim third chamber.

Yehuda Leib shrugged. “It’s the same question as the first,” he said. “Only designed to fool scholars instead of students. If it’s written in a book, and the book is out on a shelf for anyone to read, it can’t be much of a secret, can it?”

“Very good,” said Mammon.

The third chamber was as unlike the first as could be—one small square table in the middle of a cramped, earthen room. There were no chairs here, no benches—only a single, battered book sitting open on the table, illuminated in the paltry, flickering candlelight. Before it, a clutch of seven scholars crowded in to read, all at once. As they watched, one of the men leaned forward to turn the page, but his hand was stilled by the tsking of a slower reader.

There was scarcely enough space for Bluma, Yehuda Leib, and Mammon all to occupy the little room at the same time without disturbing the reading scholars, and Mammon turned directly down a long earthen hallway that sloped toward a single flickering candle in the distance.