Traffic was much thicker and I realized I’d been in Purcell’s house long enough for rush hour to overtake me. The clerk in the newsagent’s had mentioned an Underground station nearby, and I paused near the priory gate to look at the system diagram on the back of my map book.
Farringdon. Right. I started off down St. John’s Lane, thinking I would cross at Albion Place. But somehow I didn’t find it.
The slanting light of afternoon played tricks on me in the Grey, and I turned onto a street much narrower than I’d expected. I seemed to be walking forever without finding any other large lane or roadway that crossed the street I was on. I turned south onto an even smaller lane, sure I’d become entirely turned around but would see a larger street soon if I kept going—I was still in the City of London and, as the driver had said, it was only one square mile. As I turned, the worlds quaked and the road jarred under my feet in a way I hadn’t felt in nearly two years. Thick silver fog pressed close and receded to take misty shapes.
It reminded me so much of my first encounters with the Grey after I’d died for those two fateful minutes that I was disoriented and a bolt of unaccustomed fear shot through me. I stopped and looked around, trying to get my bearings for where or when in the Grey I was, slowing the racing of my heart and telling myself this was not the first time. There wasn’t a monster waiting to snap me up in its grinding jaws or a vampire with an agenda waiting to plunge a knot of Grey into my chest and give me a “gift” I never wanted. Not this time.
The path ahead was very narrow—just about wide enough for two people to walk abreast, but no more—and the buildings loomed over the street in a drunken, tilted fashion. Some of them were brick and stone and others were faced with plaster over wood or something much rougher. The smell of horse droppings and garbage filled the air, and I could hear a chattering of distant voices coming from several directions.
I’d “slipped”—inadvertently stepped sideways through space and time to emerge someplace I had no control over because the Grey had wanted me so badly. I’d learned to control that slippage long ago, so I wondered why it was happening now. The narrow alley gave no clue.
I crept forward, noticing that my feet were just a little above the ground. I wasn’t entirely in the visible plane of time but physically in another with a higher street level while I could only see this one. I moved down the alley, which opened a little into a small courtyard for about half a block. The court was lined with narrow, ramshackle houses on one side and a stable yard on the other—which explained the odor. Twilight already held sway in this slice of the past, and I could see a candlelit window at the end of the alley with the preternatural clarity of something magical afoot. It was so blatant that I had to assume something or someone wanted me to see whatever unearthly thing had happened by its long-ago light. I sighed and shuffled across the road I couldn’t see to the tiny house on the south end of the darkened alley.
I looked in through the window and saw a young man and an older one sitting at a worktable in an old kitchen. Both the men were bearded and had dark hair that flowed from under close-fitting caps and hung over their collars. They wore robes of some kind that looked like daily clothes, not costumes or ceremonial vestments. An iron pot steamed on a hook over the fire in an open hearth. A third man slumped in a shadowy corner farther from the fire, looking either deeply asleep or dead drunk. A clutter of bottles sat on the table in front of him, so I was betting on the latter.
The oldest man put a slab of marble on the table between himself and the younger man, pushing aside a collection of bowls and bottles and what looked like surgical instruments. He stood up and fetched a ladleful of whatever was bubbling in the pot and poured it slowly onto the marble so it steamed off the cool stone.
“Quick, work it together,” he ordered the younger man. “Don’t let it run off the stone.”
The younger man plunged his hands into the steaming mess and exclaimed in pain. “Ah! It burns, Master Simeon!”
“Of course, Ezra. It’s just been boiling. It will cool swiftly, but it must be worked together first.” Simeon returned the ladle to the pot and sat back down, helping Ezra keep the runny glop on the marble, scraping, turning, poking, and squeezing it together until it had cooled into a soft, steaming lump the color of shale.
“You must have all four elements to create life: earth and water, air and fire,” the older man lectured, oblivious to the heat of the material they worked with.
“Is it not blasphemy to create life—to play at godhood?” Ezra asked, keeping his eyes on the stiffening pile of goo.
Simeon spit on the floor. “This for your blasphemy. Dabbling in magic is forbidden as it is. But this is not truly life, boy. Only a shadow that lasts a mere instant. A semblance.”
Ezra scowled as he worked, not seeming satisfied with the excuse but not arguing, either. A vulpine intelligence gleamed in his eyes.
They rolled the lump into a cylinder and Simeon turned it over to Ezra. “Pinch it into form but leave openings in the chest and head.”
Ezra, his hands reddened and blistered, formed the cylinder into a rough human shape about as big as his hand. He pushed his fingernails into the clay to create gaping wounds in the head and chest of the figure.
“This is the water and earth,” the instructor said, watching his student work. Then he handed the young man a small knife. “Breath comes last, but for now we need the fire of life. I think a bit of ear will do.”
Ezra looked startled. The older man pointed to the drunk at the end of the table. “His, you fool. Not yours.”
Nervous, Ezra crept up on the sleeping man and pinched at his right ear.
“Don’t shilly-shally! We must finish while the clay is hot! He shan’t feel a thing—he’s too gone in drink,” his instructor chided. “Just nip off the lobe and have done!”
With a swift, guilty swipe, the younger man sliced off a chunk of the sleeping man’s right earlobe. The drunk squalled like a branded calf. Then he shook himself, blinked, and dropped his head back onto his chest, unconscious again. Ezra scurried back with his prize, blood spattered on his hands and the sleeves of his robe.
His instructor pointed at the clay figure. “A drop or two in the head and the chest. Then your ring. And close it up quickly.”
“What? My ring? Why?” Ezra objected.
His master pinched him on the arm with a vicious twist. “Do as I say! Quickly, quickly!”
Ezra did as he was bidden, squeezing the little bit of earlobe over the pits in the figurine’s head and chest before wrenching the small silver ring from his pinkie and dropping it into the chest cavity. He pinched the clay closed, making the figure look as whole as possible.
“It needs a face, nincompoop,” Simeon chided. “You can’t breathe life into it if it hasn’t got a mouth or nostrils.”
Ezra shaped a rough face onto his doll, featuring an oversized nose and hollow eyes over a small slash of a mouth. The older man muttered some words and circled his finger counterclockwise over the little figure. In a moment the effigy turned brick red and a small white cloud of steam puffed from it.
“Ah, fire. Indeed. Well done,” the teacher added offhand.
Ezra beamed.
Simeon looked at the little red figure. “You’ve made the nose big enough to breathe the whole stink of London into. Well, no matter—this shan’t walk abroad for long. Now speak the words, breathe them into it.”
“The. Name?”
“No, dunderhead!” the older man shouted, cuffing Ezra over the ear with a sharp clap of his hand. “You’re the one who was so concerned about playing at God. You’ve far too filthy a soul to speak the Name and live. Call down a very apocalypse upon the lot of us, you would!” He pointed with the knife at something carved into the tabletop. “Those words, boy. Those. And only those! Don’t get any be-damned ideas above yourself—talent or no, you’re still only a bloody apprentice. Drink the wine there, then speak. And don’t touch the golem with your muddy hands while you do it—you’ll undo the stoking of the fire.”