“Orfour,” Anna added.
Gray heard a catch in her voice. “What?”
She took the tablet and tapped at the letters on the screen. As she continued, her frown lines faded. Her eyes grew wider.
“I’m right,” she whispered.
Jason leaned by her shoulder.
“It’s a signature.” She faced the others. “The number four gave it away.”
“Whose signature?” Jason pressed her.
“The egotistical tyrant who hid the library. Thefourthof his name.”
Gray understood and shifted closer. “Ivan the Terrible.”
“Or his official name...” Anna typed onto the screen and showed everyone.
Ivan IV Vasilyevich
“But instead of using the roman numeral for four,” Gray noted, “they used its Glagolitic equivalent.”
Anna nodded as she continued to work. She converted the letters of his name using the limited number of Glagolitic symbols available to them.
“See. You can spell out his full name using only those ten letters and that one number,” Anna explained. “This must be the code to unlock a hidden door.”
Monk stared across the chamber. “Let’s give it a try.”
Clustered in a tight group, they searched the floor again for the mechanized symbols and set about pressing them in the proper order.
They finally reached the last one.
Gray waved to Yelagin. “Would you like to do the honors?”
“Spasibo,” he said with a grin.
The bishop reached with the butt of his staff and pressed the last tile, getting an audibleclick.
Gray braced himself, as did the others. Glances searched the room. But nothing happened.
“Did we spell it correctly?” Jason asked.
“I’m sure we did,” Anna assured everyone. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence that you can spell Ivan’s name with those symbols.”
Gray shook his head. “Not with that conspicuous number four. This must be the correct code.”
Jason grimaced. “Then maybe the mechanism is broken, damaged by age and the conditions down here.”
Monk huffed in exasperation. “Then what do we do?”
Gray closed his eyes, trying to picture the centuries-old mechanism under their feet: its metal wheels and gears, its pulleys and chains. For it all to work in synchrony, the locking mechanism would have to register each press of a tile and hold it until the entire sequence was completed. It would be a point of unbalance for the entire mechanism, one it couldn’t hold for long.
In his ears, he again heard the smallclicks, the tiles returning to their proper place afterward.
“I think we were too slow,” he mumbled—at first tentatively, then with more assurance. “The mechanism must have a built-in timer. If you don’t enter the code quickly enough, it resets mid-sequence.”
“So, we have to enter it faster,” Jason said.
