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its owner. Tall iron ladders, their base rungs connected to a central rail, shift along the book-clad walls. Certain shelves nearest the great vaulted ceiling have gold-leafed bars locked over them to keep their contents away from prying eyes, but the Count has provided me with keys to them all. When I asked him if, for the sake of privacy, he would care to sort the books before I cast my gaze upon them (after all, he is a member of the Carpathian aristocracy, and who knows what family secrets hide here) he demurred, insisting that I should have full run of the place. He is a charming man, strange and distant in his thoughts, and altogether too much of an Easterner for me to ever fully gain his confidence, for I act as the representative of an Empire far too domesticated for his tastes, and I suspect, too diminished in his mind.
    Yes, diminished, for there is little doubt he regards the British intellect as soft and sated, even though there is much in it that he admires. He comes a from a long line of bloodletting lords, who ruled with the sword-blade and despised any show of compassion, dismissing it as frailty. He is proud of his heritage, of course, yet learning to be ashamed, contrition being the only civilised response to the sins of the past.
    I think perhaps he regards this vast library, with its impossible mythologies and ghastly depictions of events that may never happen, as part of that bloody legacy he is keen to put behind him. He is, after all, the last of his line. I suspect he is allowing me to catalogue these books with a view to placing the contents up for auction. The problem, though, is that it is almost impossible for me to judge how I should place a price on such objects. Regardless of what is contained within, the bindings themselves are frequently studded with precious and semi-precious jewels, bound in gold-leaf and green leather, and in one case what suspiciously appears to be human skin. There is no precedent to them, and therefore there can be no accurate estimate of value.
    How, then, am I to proceed?
    From the Journal of Jonathan Harker, July 15th 1893
    Regarding the library: I have devised a system that allows me to create a table of approximate values, and that for now must suffice. First, I examine the binding of the book, noting the use of valuable ornamentation and pigments. Then I make note of the author and the subject, gauging their popularity and stature; how many copies have been printed (if indicated) and where; how many editions; the age of the work and its length; and finally, content, whether scandalous and likely to cause offence, whether of general interest, usefulness and the like. To this end I find myself making odd decisions, putting a history of Romanian road-mapping before the Life and Times of Vladimir the Terrible because the former may be of more utility in charting this neglected territory. Thus the banal triumphs over the lurid, the ordinary over the outrageous, the obvious over the obscure. A fanciful mind might imagine that I was somehow robbing the library of its power by reclassifying these tomes in such a manner, that by quantifying them I am reducing the spell they cast. Fancies grow within these walls. The castle is conducive to them.
    In my tenth week I started upon the high barred shelves, and what I find there surprises, delights and occasionally revolts me. Little histories, human fables set in years yet to be, that reveal how little our basest nature changes with the passing decades. These books interest me the most.
    I had not intended to begin reading any of the volumes, you understand, for the simple reason that it would slow my rate of progress to a crawl, and there are still so many shelves to document. Many books require handling with the utmost care, for their condition is so delicate that their gossamer pages crumble in the heat of a human hand. However, I now permit myself to read in the evenings, in order that I might put from my mind the worsening