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. . . .