"Writing," growled Jager. "In what language is that?"
"It's English," pronounced Lanark, "but set down backward—from right to left, as Leonardo da Vinci wrote."
The young woman nodded eagerly at this, as though to say that she had already seen as much.
"Have you a mirror?" Jager asked her, then came to a simpler solution. He took the paper and held it up to the light, written side away from him. "Now it shows through," he announced. "Will one of you try to read? I haven't my glasses with me."
Lanark squinted and made shift to read:
"'Any man may look lightly into heaven, to the highest star; but who dares require of the bowels of Earth their abysmal secrets?'"
"That is my stepfather's handwriting," whispered Enid, her head close to Lanark's shoulder.
He read on: "'The rewards of Good are unproven; but the revenges of Evil are great, and manifest on all sides. Fear will always vanquish love.'"
He grinned slightly, harshly. Jager remembered having seen that grin in the old army days, before a battle.
"I think we're being warned," Lanark said to his old sergeant. "It's a challenge, meant to frighten us. But challenges have always drawn me."