None of that matters, Travis. You didn’t come to Morindu for magic, but to find Nim. Now you have, and only one thing is important–finding the Last Rune and binding the rifts in the sky. If it’s not too late.
He opened his mouth to say this, but before he could Nim let out a gasp, her eyes widening into circles of fear.
Vani gave Nim a worried look. “What is it, daughter?”
“She’s here,” the girl whispered.
“Who do you mean? Who’s here?”
“The gold lady.”
Nim pointed, and all of them turned around. On the far side of the bridge, a woman stepped from the triangular door in the side of the gilded tetrahedron. She appeared young–no more than twenty‑five. A shift made of glittering beads dripped over the curves of her luscious body, and a red gem adorned her brow. Her hair and eyes were both black as onyx, and her skin was a deep, burnished gold.
Avhir breathed an oath in an ancient tongue, and a sweat broke out on Travis’s skin, as if the temperature inside the dome had suddenly shot up.
“It cannot be,” Vani said, her voice thick with awe. “Yet there is only one woman who could have entered there. Ti’an.”
Farr gave her a piercing look. “Who is Ti’an?”
“The wife of the god‑king Orъ,” Vani said.
The gold‑skinned woman sauntered toward them across the bridge.
38.
Thunder rattled the panes of the library’s windows as Deirdre shut the journal and leaned back in the chair. What time was it? How long had she spent reading and rereading the pages covered with Albrecht’s elegant handwriting? The day had seemed to grow darker as it went on, and the light of the tin lantern had receded to a flickering circle around the desk. By the cramp in her neck and the pounding between her temples, hours had passed. However, the gnawing in her gut was not from hunger.
“It’s all a lie,” she murmured to the gloom.
Everything she had been taught about the Seekers, everything she had believed in–the Motto, the Book and the Vow, the Nine Desiderata–all of it was an elaborate deception, perpetuated over centuries, and wrought so that the Seekers would diligently perform the work of the Philosophers without ever knowing–or even guessing at–the truth about their nature.
We’re puppets, Deirdre. For four centuries they’ve been pulling our strings. We’ve been doing their work, helping themget closer to their magic elixir–a potion that will grant them true immortality. And now they’ve nearly got it.
Anger rose in her, but it was drowned by a wave of sickness. To be betrayed in this way–it was like discovering the world was flat after all, and the sun was a hot coal no more than five hundred miles away. The lie had made so much more sense than the reality that had been revealed to her, yet much as she craved to go back to not knowing, it was impossible. She could not go back. Knowledge was a knife that cut deeply, and whose wounds never healed. The Philosophers were charlatans, nothing more.
Except he was different than the others. Marius.
Deirdre reached out a shaking hand and brushed the cover of the journal. She had read the final few lines so many times she did not need to turn to that page to see them; they were burned into her brain.
Now you know what no other besides our own kind has ever known. Now you know the truth of the origin of the Philosophers.
And now, I beg of you, help me bring about their end. . . .
In over three centuries of existence, he had not forgiven the Philosophers for the way they had used him, had used Alis Faraday, and had used the half‑fairy folk of Greenfellow’s Tavern. Only, by becoming one of the Philosophers, he had unwittingly bound himself to them, and had been unable to gain vengeance against them. Until now. He had led Deirdre there because he believed she could help him. But why her? And why now?
Deirdre didn’t know. All she knew was that the Philosophers were no better than Duratek. No, they were worse. They used the tavern’s denizens, and when they were done with them, the Philosophers abandoned the folk of Greenfellow’s, rewarding them for their help and for their blood with poverty and suffering.
She touched the silver ring on her hand, then brushed hot tears from her cheeks. There was so much in the journal to try to absorb and understand. The Philosophers were immortal–at least so long as they periodically returned to Crete and drank the blood of the Sleeping Ones. That the Sleeping Ones were one and the same with the seven sorcerer‑priests of Orъ, Deirdre had no doubt; it all fit too perfectly with what she had learned from Vani.
Only now Deirdre could add to that story. The Seven of Orъ had not perished with Morindu the Dark. Instead they had fled through a gate, traveling across the Void to the world Earth. They had come to Crete over three thousand years ago and made contact with the civilization there. Then they had sealed themselves in their sarcophagi beneath the palace of Knossos, falling into endless slumber just like Orъ had, and there they had lain, forgotten. Until the Philosophers stumbled upon them over four centuries ago.
But why had the Seven come to Earth? That was one question the journal didn’t ask. Maybe because Marius didn’t know the answer. And maybe that was something the writing on the arch would reveal if they were ever able to translate all of it. She had to go back to London, to talk to Paul Jacoby, to see if he had been able to decipher any more of the–
No. How could she return to the Charterhouse knowing what she did? The Seekers were a sham. The Philosophers didn’t seek to discover other worlds out of scholarly interest. All this time they had been searching for the world the Sleeping Ones came from, hoping to find a way to reach it, to discover what it was that had granted the Seven true, endless, perfect immortality– their Philosopher’s Stone. Now the Philosophers were terribly close. The world they sought was Eldh, and a gate had come to light. All the Philosophers had to do was use the blood of the Sleeping Ones to open the gate and . . .
Deirdre went cold. The pieces clicked together in her brain with mechanical precision. She wanted to deny the result, only she couldn’t. The dying sorcerer in Beltan and Travis’s flat had said the Scirathi stole the stone arch from Crete for someone else, someone they had delivered it to.
“It was the Philosophers,” she said to the gray air. “They hired the Scirathi and used them to retrieve the arch.”
Once the earthquake uncovered the arch, they would have done anything to get it. They had probably been searching for it for centuries, trying to find the means by which the Sleeping Ones had traveled to Earth. Only now perihelion was approaching; the two worlds, Earth and Eldh, were drawing close. One way or another, the Philosophers were going to get what they desired; they were going to reach Eldh.
Unless he gets his revenge on them first.
Before Deirdre could consider what that meant, a chiming noise drifted through the door of the library: the unmistakable sound of a teaspoon stirring in a china cup. Had Eleanor returned with another thermos? She pushed herself up from the chair, walked to the door, and stepped into the manor’s front hall.
A man sat in a chair next to the fireplace, where a cheerful blaze crackled. He wore a sleek, modern black suit, and even sitting he was tall, his long legs crossed before him. His skin was pale, his features fine and aristocratic, his wide mouth framed by sharp lines. Luxurious blond hair tumbled over broad shoulders. On first glance she would have thought him no more than thirty.