Текст книги "The First Stone"

Автор книги: Mark Anthony

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

I meant to go then. My head, though in pain, was clear of the haze of whiskey for the first time in weeks, and at last I apprehended in full the knowledge I had been masking with drink all this time.

It was my fault Alis had died.

“Is that so?” spoke a soft voice behind me. “Is it truly your fault?”

Had I spoken my anguish aloud? I turned and saw a woman standing above me. She was clad in the flowing black gown of a mourner. Though her lithe figure lent her an air of youth, she leaned upon a cane, and a veil concealed her face.

“Did you know her?” I said, though it was hard to speak.

“Not as you knew her, Marius.”

She lifted her veil. Her face was as pale and luminous as it had been that night at the tavern, though the shadows that gathered in her cheeks were darker than before.

“Why do you blame yourself, Marius?” the fairy-woman said.

I turned away. “I did not tell her.” Grief tore the words out of me in hoarse sobs. “I did not tell her who she really was. My mission was to watch her, to see if she learned of her true nature on her own. Only she didn’t, and now she’s gone.”

A rustling of cloth behind me. “We all must pass in time, Marius. Her kind, our kind. You could not have changed that.”

“But it did not need to be so soon! I might have taken her to the tavern. You could have helped her. She could have endured for many years.”

The woman sighed. “Perhaps she could have endured. Endured in suffering, and in sorrow. For she had thought herself a child of Lord and Lady Faraday, not something other—a changeling, a thing of legend. Perhaps knowing what she truly was would have given her woe rather than comfort. And even if not, why do you place all this blame upon yourself. Did not those you serve know of her true nature before you did?”

A sliver of ice seemed to pierce my heart. Yes, they had known all along what she was, but they had only wanted to watch her as she failed, not to help her. The Philosophers. And how was it they had known Alis was a changeling in the first place?

But there were . . . others, from outside, who convinced them to try. . . .

I hardly saw as something soft was pressed into my hands. “Dry your tears, Marius.” The woman’s voice was hard and clear as glass now. “It will do Alis no honor to cast away your life. If you would serve her now, then do not forget the gift we gave you. . . .”

Her gown fluttered. Like a passing shadow she was gone, and I knew that I would never see her again. I looked down. In my hands was the silver cloth I had taken from my mother, and which I had given to Alis at St. Paul’s. As always, it was unmarked with stain or rent. With it, I brushed the dust from her tomb. Then I stood and ran through the cathedral.

I reached my house an hour later, breathless, and it took me some time to find it amid the chaos and squalor, for the servants had abandoned me weeks ago for want of their wages. At last I found it beneath a table: a small book, bound in frayed leather. In my grief I had forgotten it. I took it now and sat at the table. My hands trembled, and a strong temptation for a drink came upon me—it would have steadied me—but I dismissed it and opened the book.

It was a journal.

The author’s name was one Thomas Atwater, according to the title page, and the journal was begun in the year 1619.

I begin this record even as I begin a new life, the author wrote. For on this day I have joined a newly established order of men and women who call themselves Seekers. Clever, they are, and curious and bold. They were alchemists once, but have since put such frivolous pursuits behind them, and instead search out the source of deeper and truer magicks. I am of great cheer as I write this, for at last I have found a hope of helping myself and those who are like me. . . .

A thrill came over me as I read these words, for the slanted hand in which they were written was entirely familiar to me. There could be no doubt: The author of this journal was one and the same with the writer of the letters I had found in the vaults beneath the Charterhouse. Thomas Atwater had been one of the tavern folk.

And he had been a Seeker as well.

I read on, page after page, eschewing drink or food, only stopping to light several candles as night stole over the city outside. The journal seemed to contain more pages than possible given its size, recording the events of several years, and it was only as the light of dawn touched the windows that I finally reached the end. I set down the book, staring out the window at the new day beginning, and I knew that, once again in my life, I was just beginning as well. For what I had read in the journal had changed me completely and forever.

Atwater’s writings had contained many revelations, but one above all others burned in my brain. And it was simply this: Everything which the Seekers stood for was a lie.

I thumbed again through the journal, trying to absorb all the knowledge contained within its pages. The author of those first happy lines had been utterly different than the sober and vengeful man who wrote the last pages. Atwater had joined the Seekers, as he had said, out of hope—a hope that their investigation into otherworldly magicks might reveal a way to help his kindred at the tavern, the folk of fairy descent, to ease their suffering at dwelling on this world.

It did not end that way.

Thomas was born to a maid who worked at the tavern, a woman who was badly used by a mortal man—a young lord who promised to give her a new life, then cast her into the gutter once he successfully deflowered her. She died, crushed by the weight of this world as the tavern folk often were, and Atwater was raised by the tavern’s owner, Quincy Greenfellow, father to Sadie and her brothers.

Quincy Greenfellow’s father had founded the tavern, in the village of Brixistane, south of London, as a haven and refuge for those who were like him—those who found the burden of this world heavy to bear. Over time, through whisper and rumor, folk similar to Greenfellow heard of the tavern, and as they came together there, they began to piece together just why it was they were different. They did not know their full history, but they knew they were descended from beings who were something other than human—beings other people called fairies.

In its early days, there were others who were attracted to the tavern besides those of more than mortal extraction. It became a favored haunt for would-be wizards as well, for those who trod down the dark, secret, and smoky paths of alchemy.

Chief among these alchemists who frequented the tavern was John Dee. At the time, Dee was widely known as Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, though he had long researched in secret the art of alchemy. In time, Dee’s work led him into disfavor, poverty, and madness. But before the end, he made a discovery that greatly animated him, and which he brought to the tavern to show Greenfellow. It was an ancient scroll that Dee claimed was written by the legendary alchemist Hermes Trismegistus himself, and which he said contained writings about a tomb lost beneath the ruined palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete—a tomb that held the answer to the greatest mystery of magic the alchemists sought to unlock: the mystery of transmutation.

Dee never journeyed to Crete, for he fell ill and perished soon after this. But the scroll fell into the hands of some of the other alchemists who frequented the tavern, lesser magicians who had hoped to learn secrets of the craft from Dee. They vanished from the tavern and were not seen again for some years.

Then, one day, several of these alchemists did return to the tavern, and they were much changed. They were clad all in black, and their eyes were gold, and an aura of power cloaked them, as tangible to the folk of the tavern as the dark garments they wore. They called themselves Philosophers now, for they claimed to have learned the ultimate secret of the alchemists: the magic of transmutation and perfection.

These Philosophers, as they styled themselves, did not speak of what they had found on Crete, or what had changed them, but they brought several artifacts with them. Chief among these was a keystone taken from a doorway. They claimed there was a magic in the keystone, one that if they could fathom how to work it would open a door to another world—a world in which the folk of the tavern, those with the blood of fairykind in their veins, would know no pain, no suffering.

Greenfellow gave the Philosophers his blessing to erect a stone arch inside the tavern, and the keystone was set into it. The Philosophers worked many experiments on the stone, and often these involved blood taken from the folk of the tavern. More blood the Philosophers asked for, and more, and always it was given freely, for the folk would do anything if it might mean opening a doorway to a place they could belong, if it meant the end of their pain. For as the world grew more crowded with people and buildings and things wrought of iron, their suffering grew as well.

However, no matter how much blood they received, the Philosophers could not make the stone work. “The worlds must draw closer together first,” they said. And finally they withdrew from the tavern, and did not come back, and for all their help the folk of the tavern were rewarded with nothing.

Years passed, and the tavern folk waited. Surely the worlds would draw closer soon, and the Philosophers would return. Only they did not. Some heard whispers that the Philosophers had begun a new organization, and finally one young man of the tavern grew bold enough to seek out this new order in hopes of finding a way to convince the Philosophers to return to Greenfellow’s and help its denizens.

And that was how Thomas Atwater joined the Seekers.

The Seekers were reluctant to let him join the order at first. They weren’t certain he had the proper background, and they intended to research his origins more fully, only before they could do so word came down from the Philosophers themselves, and so he was admitted to the order—but on one condition. While he was a Seeker, he must never return to Greenfellow’s Tavern. Such was his desire to help his kindred that Atwater readily acquiesced to this request, and he thought nothing of it.

Atwater’s first two years in the Seekers were ones of wonder and constant discovery. He learned quickly, and seemed to have an uncanny knack for finding meanings and connections where others could not. Soon he was promoted from apprentice to journeyman, and his future in the Seekers looked bright.

However, Atwater never forgot his true purpose in joining the order. Always he sought to learn more about Knossos, and the archway, and why the Philosophers believed it might open a doorway to another world. He kept his research in this regard to himself, doing it in secret at night, apart from his other work, for the Philosophers had commanded him not to speak of his true origins to the other Seekers, and he feared if the others knew what he was doing, he would be forced to tell them of the tavern.

His secrecy proved both boon and bane. Such was his skill and cleverness that he was soon left to his own devices, and was allowed access to all the same vaults of books that the masters themselves used. And in his night work, he finally learned the truth—or at least something of the truth—about the Philosophers.

He found it in a box of papers—records set down by the Philosophers themselves, and which surely had been meant for their private library, but which had, by some mistake, been forgotten in a corner of the vaults. A corner in which Atwater would one day hide some of his own writings.

The papers were fragmentary; they did not tell Atwater everything, but they told him enough.

The Philosophers had indeed sought to open a doorway using the keystone in the tavern. However, the keystone was not the only discovery they made beneath the ruined palace at Knossos. They had found other things as well—things that changed them, and convinced them there was another world they might journey to, a world other than this Earth, where the true secret of transmutation would be revealed.

The Sleeping Ones have shown us that a state of true perfection is possible. But their blood, while a powerful catalyst for transmutation itself, is not by itself enough. It provides life, but not immortality, and must be drunk again and again for the effects to be maintained. Surely the Sleeping Ones knew of this true catalyst, what we would call the Philosopher’s Stone, for their golden bodies do not age. And if the gate could be made to open, we might travel to their world and find it there. . . .

Their words had been lies. The Philosophers had not found the true secret of perfection, of transmutation, on Crete. They sought it still, and they had used those with fairy blood to try to gain it. Only when they failed, they had abandoned the tavern folk to poverty and suffering.

Rage filled Atwater at this betrayal, and despair. The last hastily written pages of the journal told how Atwater had hidden some of his papers in the vaults, hoping to retrieve them later. Then he intended to defy the order of the Philosophers and return to Greenfellow’s, to take the journal to his people, that they might know the truth.

They did not wish for their own Seekers to know about us, Atwater wrote on the final page. They feared the Seekers might learn too much about their true nature. That was why the Philosophers forbade me to return to the tavern. They did not want me to lead the Seekers there.

That they will destroy me for what I intend to do, I have no doubt. It will not come at once—they will not wish to call attention to my defiance of their order, for fear it will lead the Seekers to the tavern—but it will come. And one day it will be my blood that will stain the keystone. That is why I leave this journal, as a record of the truth, of the cruelty and lies of the Philosophers. May it one day come into the hands of one who can seek vengeance for all of us.

There the journal ended. I closed the book, gripping it to keep my hands from trembling.

It was not my fault alone that Alis had perished. The Philosophers had known of the tavern all along. They had caused Alis to be sent out into the world, and had made me watch her—one more experiment just like those they had performed on the tavern folk.

“I am the one, Thomas,” I murmured. “I am the one who can seek vengeance for you.”

And thus began my plot to destroy the Philosophers.

My thirst for whiskey was forgotten; my mind was as clear and sharp as a knife made of glass. To ruin the founders of the Seekers, my first task would be to become, once again, the perfect Seeker myself. There was no other way to remain close to the Philosophers, to gain the knowledge I would need. With this in mind, I took my love for Alis, as well as my sorrow and pain, and put them away like precious things in a box, hiding them for a future when my revenge would be complete. That very day, I set out to become what I had once before resolved to be: the greatest Seeker the order had ever known.

The events of those next years are beyond the bounds of this tale. You can read of them easily enough—indeed, I’m sure you have done so already—in the annals of the Seekers.

It took several months and many acts of contrition to convince Rebecca and the rest of the Seekers that I was over my madness, that I had understood the error of my ways, that I had learned well from my mistakes. As a boy in Edinburgh, I had deceived many fair ladies into thinking me a pitiable waif in need of aid, and those skills served me now. Such was the apparent sincerity of my claims that in time the Seekers could not resist them, and I was readmitted to the order—under Rebecca’s supervision, of course, and as a journeyman again.

However, these limitations were temporary. By the end of that first year I had achieved several major breakthroughs, and it seemed even the Philosophers had forgotten my past transgressions, for I was elevated again to the rank of master, and given free rein in conducting my investigations. And if I was grimmer than before, more likely to spend late nights poring over manuscripts and records than drinking with the younger Seekers at pub, then it was seen simply as an indication of my maturity and the important lessons I had learned so hard.

By the end of four years I was the Seeker you heard legends about upon first joining the order. I devised the Encounter Class system still used today, and I had achieved numerous otherworldly encounters myself, including several Class One Encounters. James Sarsin was only the first otherworldly traveler I met, but none of those events are important now. All that matters is that by the summer of 1684, I had achieved my goals. All regarded me as the finest specimen of Seekerhood ever to exist.

All that is, perhaps, save Rebecca. Her manner was ever cool and courteous to me. Indeed, we had worked on several cases together. Yet I knew she remained suspicious. She had never learned the truth of Byron’s death, and it gnawed at her. I did not care; she would not stop me. And that summer I knew it was time at last to set my plan in motion.

Never, since that day they came to Madstone Hall, had I seen the Philosophers. Yet I knew they were ever present, observing what the Seekers were doing, and issuing their orders by written missives that mysteriously appeared inside a locked chest in a room in the Charterhouse.

By order of the Philosophers, no Seeker was to enter the room that contained the chest between sunset and dawn. It was during that time the missives were delivered, and I was determined to find out how it was done. If I could see who delivered the letters from the Philosophers, then I could follow him back to their hiding place. And once there, I believed I could learn what I needed to make my plan complete.

After leaving the Charterhouse for the day—making certain several Seekers saw me depart—I waited until dusk, then employed one of my oldest tricks, gathering the night shadows around myself, and slipped back into the Charterhouse. I crept into the room with the locked chest. Moments later I heard footsteps, and the door opened.

It was Rebecca. I froze as she scanned the chamber, but her eyes passed over the corner where I hid. She nodded, then shut the door, and I heard a key turning. I was locked inside the room; there were no windows by which I might escape.

I waited long hours, until I was certain midnight had passed. A headache came over me, as they still often did, and I began to drift. Then I heard a noise that at once made me alert: a scraping sound. In the gloom, I watched as one of the stone slabs that paved the floor lifted up. Gold light spilled through the opening.

A figure draped in black climbed through the trapdoor, then approached the chest, unlocked it, and placed a sealed parchment inside. The figure locked the chest again and retreated through the trapdoor, shutting it behind.

I forced myself to count a hundred heartbeats, though these were rapid enough, then crept forward, groping the floor with my hands. The trapdoor was so skillfully made that no trace of it could be detected even as I ran my fingers over it. Yet I had other senses, honed in my years in the dark labyrinth beneath Edinburgh. Now that I knew to seek it, I could detect the hollowness beneath one piece of slate. However, I could find no way to lift it. I tried to wedge my knife into the crack, but the blade broke. It was useless; the trapdoor could only be opened from within. I laid my head down on the floor in despair.

And heard voices.

“I’ve delivered the missive,” said a man’s voice I did not recognize.

A woman answered. “Very good. I believe it is past time he had new orders.”

The stone beneath my ear hummed, bringing their voices to me, as if by some trick of echoes and angles like that in the Whispering Gallery. There must have been a passage below where the two stood. I pressed my ear closer to the floor, straining to hear their words.

“. . . and he has redeemed himself,” the woman was saying. “It seems Adalbrecht’s ill influence has not ruined him after all, for we have made a fine Seeker of him at last.”

I tensed, and not only because I knew they were speaking of me, as well as of my former master, but because I recognized her voice. Years ago I had crouched in the shadows outside my master’s study and had listened to this very same voice tell him, We have come.

I had been a fool. The Philosophers employed no messengers who might lead me to them; they would never risk their secrecy in that way. They delivered the missives themselves. Only they believed no one was in the room above, and my hearing, always sharp, had been made preternaturally keen by my excitement and dread.

“Adalbrecht,” the man said, his voice thick with disgust. “We must go to Knossos next month, else we shall end up as he did.”

“You need not tell me.” The woman’s voice was sharp; I could imagine her gold eyes flashing.

“I still wonder why he chose as he did,” the man said. His voice was beginning to fade; they were moving away. “Why he chose death.”

“Adalbrecht was always the weakest of us. Remember, he was the last to drink of the Sleeping Ones and be . . .” I lost her voice, and I thought them gone. Then the stone whispered once more in my ear. “. . . and he always had strange notions. Yet we never discovered anything of his writings. I suppose we shall never know what his thoughts were, and nor does it matter. He is dead now.”

“Something we shall never be.”

The man’s laughter was the last thing I heard. Then the stone ceased its humming.

I rose to me knees, and I knew what I had to do.

Crete. I had to go to Crete, to the ruins of Knossos. They would be traveling there soon, they had said so; I could get close to them there. But I needed to know more. I needed to find the secret way beneath the ruins, to the tomb of those they called the Sleeping Ones, so I could lay in wait for them. But how could I discover it?

We shall never know what his thoughts were. . . .

Yes, that was it. I wished to get close to the Philosophers, that I might learn how to destroy them. But had I not lived for years with a Philosopher? Master Albrecht had been one of their kind. After his death, I had searched his library and had found his old journal, from the years when he was still mortal. But surely he had left other records behind—records that would help me find the tomb beneath Knossos.

I waited until the room was unlocked and, concealing myself in shadows once again, slipped outside. I appeared at the Charterhouse later that morning, feigning surprise when Rebecca informed me I had new orders from the Philosophers themselves. I opened the missive and could not help but smile.

“Is it an assignment you favor, then?” Rebecca said, arching an eyebrow.

“Very much so,” I said, tucking the missive inside my coat. The Philosophers wished me to go to Scotland, to investigate legends of a magical portal in a cave in the Highlands. It would be just the excuse I needed; no one would question my leaving London and going north.

I departed that very morning, and after several days of jostling in carriages down muddy roads, I reached Madstone Hall. As I stepped out of the carriage, I laid eyes on my manor for the first time in nearly ten years. Despite all that had happened to me, I smiled at the familiar sight. I was received in the front hall with great deference—and equal trepidation—by several servants I vaguely recognized. I looked around, then asked them where I could find Pietro.

An older man blinked watery eyes. “But did you not receive the letters, sir?”

“Letters?” It had been long since I had received a missive from Madstone. I could not remember the last.

“It was some years ago, sir. It was a fever that took him. Your solicitors mind the affairs of the manor now, and we keep the house in good order.” He swallowed. “For your return, of course, sir.”

His words were like a blow to me. The letters must have come four years ago, in the months of my madness after Alis died. I suppose I had thrown them in the fire without ever opening them. Thus I had never heard the news of Pietro’s death, and it struck me now as if it had just occurred. There was nothing left to connect me to him, to Master Albrecht.

Only that wasn’t true. There had to be something there, something more.

“Unpack my things,” I told the servants. “I shall be staying at Madstone Hall for a time.”

They stared at me with wide eyes, then did as I bid them.

I began my search that day, beginning with the library. The silver key was in the desk drawer where I had left it, and I used it to unlock the cabinet of arcane books. Inside was the small wooden box with the diary and the vial of dark fluid. I had no doubt that the reason Rebecca and Byron came to Madstone after Master Albrecht died was to search for these things by order of the Philosophers. Only I had found them first. Then, before we departed for London, I had spirited them back into the cabinet. And here they were, just as I had left them.

While the objects had not changed, I had, and I knew better what they were. The diary was written by my master before he became a Philosopher, when he was simply Martin Adalbrecht, one of the young alchemists who had frequented Greenfellow’s Tavern with John Dee. Then, with his cronies, he had gone to Knossos, and there they had been . . . transformed. However, the journal had been written before that time; it could not help me.

I lifted the vial, and I thought I knew what it was as well. It was blood, taken from those they called the Sleeping Ones. Who these beings were—whence they came and why they slumbered—I did not know. All I knew was that drinking their blood had changed the Philosophers, giving them eyes of gold. And it continued to give them life.

The vial seemed hot in my hand. I shut it back in the box with the journal and locked them back in the cabinet.

I continued my search of the manor, looking for anything that might help me—any letters he wrote, any records he kept, any notes he might have scribbled in the margins of books. Soon I had the servants frantic, for they would no sooner clean a room than I would tear it apart, looking for some clue that could help me. Only there was nothing.

Days became a week, then a fortnight. I did not sleep, did not eat, and I began to crave whiskey again. The servants fled at the mere sight of my coming. The manor had become a ruin. I had punched holes in the walls and torn up floorboards in my search, but still had found nothing of my master’s. The only writing of his in the house was his old journal. . . .

The journal. Midnight found me sitting in his library, staring at the journal. I read through it again, but it was the same as before: the foolish hopes and dreams of a man who believed magic was real.

Yet he had been right, hadn’t he? It wasreal.

I picked up the vial. The gold spider on the stopper shone in the candlelight, the ruby set into its abdomen winking at me. Then, before I could reconsider, I unstopped the vial, held it to my lips, and tilted my head back. The fluid coursed down my throat, hot and thick. I knew fiery pain, then only blackness.

It was morning when one of the servingwomen found me, sprawled on the floor of the library. She shook my shoulder, begging me to wake, but when I finally opened my eyes she clasped her hand to her mouth, stifling a scream, and fled.

I pulled myself up and caught my reflection in the glass doors of a cabinet. Startled eyes stared back at me, gold as coins. By all that was holy, what had I done?

A strange sensation came over me. I felt, not stronger, but horribly weak, as if for the first time in my life I sensed the encroaching decrepitude, the constant rotting of my body, that was a correlate of mortality. And I also sensed that, for the moment, that mortal progress had ceased.

I called for the servants to help me, but no one answered my call. Shaking, I pulled myself up to the desk and sat. My eyes fell upon the open journal, and a breath of wonder escaped me, for I saw words upon the pages I had not seen before.

A palimpsest—I had heard of such things. They were twice-written books, created when a monk or scribe took an old book, rubbed its pages clean with sand, and cut and sewed them anew to make a fresh book to write in. However, sometimes, in the right light, the old words might yet be seen, bleeding through behind the new.

The journal was like a palimpsest. Only it was the old words that had been easily read, and the newer words that could only be seen in the right conditions. However, it was not light that showed these other words, but rather new, golden eyes. The writing seemed to dance upon the page, bright and shining, as if written with molten metal.

As I have begun a new life, so I begin this journal anew. We are di ferent now. The Philosophers, we call ourselves, as though all mysteries are ours to understand. But I know, as perhaps the others do not, that there is far more for us yet to learn, that this is only the beginning. . . .

I clutched the journal and read. The house was silent; no servants disturbed me. At last the light outside the windows failed. I shut the little book and buried my face in my hands. What a fool I was. I had been wrong about everything.

“It wasn’t you, Alis,” I murmured. Anguish burned in me, hotter than the blood I had consumed. “It wasn’t you at all. It was I.”

“What are you talking about, Marius?”

I looked up. In my despair, I had not heard her footsteps on the carpet. She stood in the door of library, dressed in red, a smirk on her lips.

“Rebecca,” I croaked. “What are you doing here?”

She sauntered in. “I might ask the same of you. This is hardly a cave in the Highlands. I had a feeling you might be up to something, Marius. You had a secretive air about you when you left, so I decided I would follow you and see what you were up to. I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in, but there’s no sign of your servants anywhere, so I—”