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.