At first, the light in your hand tells you merely that this dark room is the largest one you have been in down here so far. Furniture seems to leap out from the shadows as you swing your hand around, and you can hardly see the ceiling.

Then you start to notice the many candles. You cannot resist the urge to light first one, then another . . .

. . . then a tall taper candle on a wrought-iron stand . . .

. . . and soon the room . . .

The more candles you light, the more of them you see. Thin ones bundled in corners. Short fat ones standing in clusters on one of the two tables that dominate the room. Small candles floating in a brass basin on the other table. Candles harmoniously arranged in various candelabra. Tucked into small alcoves. Lying on trays. Sitting on the stone benches that flank the tables. Hanging from the ceiling in an enormous chandelier.

Mixed in among them are knives, small glass bowls, lengths of wick, jars of oil, and other implements and equipment not so easy to recognize.

You look around the room, bemusedly. There must easily be at least two hundred candles here, of which you have lit perhaps twenty or so. The air now begins to tell you that some of the ones you lit were not merely colored, but scented.

And, your mind suddenly realizes, the long gleaming object rising from the floor in the west end of this stone chamber is in fact a flight of metal stairs, leading up to a dark opening in the high ceiling.

You wander around the room, surveying things briefly. Besides the candles, and their accompanying trays, bowls, strings, blocks of wax, snuffers, and other items, the room does not appear to hold much else. Well, there are long curtains and tapestries hanging on the walls in places. An archway in the western wall shows you another unlit chamber. In the northwest corner, some thick rugs cover the stone floor, and atop them rests a sizable pile of pillows and blankets.