Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore

It begins with the friendly ghost who appears to release Fernwen the dwarf and Telemach Half-Blood from the Wyrm Queen’s dungeon and start them on their ascent. Moffat describes the ghost through the Toyota’s speakers:

It was tall, made of pale blue light, a creature with long arms and long legs and the shadow of a smile, and above it all, eyes that shone bluer still than its body.

Wait a second.

“What do you seek in this place?” the shade asked plainly.

I fumble to rewind the tape. First I overshoot the mark, so I have to fast-forward, then I miss it again, so I have to rewind, and then the Toyota shakes as it crosses the rumble strips. I pull the steering wheel and point the car straight down the highway and finally press play:

… eyes that shone bluer still than its body. “What do you seek in this place?” the shade asked plainly.

Again:

… bluer still than its body. “What do you seek in this place?”

It is unmistakable: Moffat is doing Penumbra’s voice there. This part of the book isn’t new; I remember the friendly blue ghost in the dungeon from my first reading. But, of course, back then I had no way of knowing Moffat might encode an eccentric San Francisco bookseller into his fantasy epic. And likewise, when I walked through the front door of the 24-Hour Bookstore, I had no way of knowing I’d met Mr. Penumbra a few times already.

Ajax Penumbra is the blue-eyed shade in the dungeon of the Wyrm Queen’s tower. I am absolutely sure of it. And to hear Moffat’s voice, the rough affection in it, as he finishes the scene …

Fernwen’s small hands burned on the ladder. The iron was ice-cold, and it seemed each rung bit him, tried its evil best to send him plummeting back into the dark depths of the dungeon. Telemach was high above, already pulling himself through the portal. Fernwen glanced down below. The shade was there, standing just inside the secret door. It grinned, a pulse of light through spectral blue, and waved its long arms and called out:

“Climb, my boy! Climb!”

And so he did.

… incredible. Penumbra has already earned a touch of immortality. Does he know?

*   *   *

I accelerate back up to cruising speed, shaking my head and smiling to myself. The story is accelerating, too. Now Moffat’s gravelly voice carries the heroes from floor to floor, solving riddles and recruiting allies along the way—a thief, a wolf, a talking chair. Now, for the first time, I get it: the floors are a metaphor for the code-breaking techniques of the Unbroken Spine. Moffat is using the tower to tell the story of his own path through the fellowship.

This is all so obvious when you know what to listen for.

At the very end, after a long weird slog of a story, the heroes arrive at the tower’s summit, the spot from which the Wyrm Queen looks out across the world and plots domination. She is there, waiting for them, and she has her dark legion with her. Their black robes seem more significant now.

While Telemach Half-Blood leads his band of allies into the final battle, Fernwen the scholarly dwarf makes an important discovery. In the cataclysmic commotion, he sneaks over to the Wyrm Queen’s magic telescope and peeks through. From this vantage point, impossibly high up, he can see something amazing. The mountains that divide the Western Continent form letters. They are, Fernwen realizes, a message, and not just any message, but the message promised long ago by Aldrag the Wyrm-Father himself, and when Fernwen speaks the words aloud, he—

Holy shit.

*   *   *

When I finally cross the bridge back into San Francisco, Clark Moffat’s voice in the closing chapters has a new warble; I think the cassette might be stretched out from my rewinding and replaying, rewinding and replaying, again and again. My brain feels a little stretched out, too. It’s carrying a new theory that started as a seed but is now growing fast, all based on what I’ve just heard.