Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy Read online

  In the final year or so I spent with my family I was considered a figure of note – handsome enough, more than wealthy enough, blessed with various talents. With some retrospective irony, it was openly speculated upon, in that last summer, that I might prove an ideal match for Lady Maria Dangrave, eldest daughter of the Earl of Mercia.

  She would have made a fine match too, pretty and intelligent, with a wry humour, and I think we liked each other well enough. Of course, little could I have known then that she was of the same bloodstock as the demon that had unwittingly shaped me.

  Lady Maria Dangrave. I think back on her now, her curls of fair hair, her lively eyes, delicate lips, and I cannot help but think what a short, happy life I might have lived with her. I say this even as I know it is pointless to think on it, for it wasn’t to be.

  Within twelve months of each other, my great-uncle and my grandfather had died, and my mother decided the time had come to conclude my education abroad. I have sometimes wondered if she was driven by the alarm she felt at my growing attachment to Maria. Whatever her motive, the timing was fortuitous in one regard – after all, it’s the only reason I’m telling my story now, two hundred years after I should have died an old man.

  8

  When Will got to the house, he turned and walked across the east lawns instead of going inside. He reached the ruins and strolled among them. It was something he’d avoided until now because it filled him with sadness to see the remnants of these walls standing jagged like broken teeth.

  So much of his world had survived in the city, and at times he would glance along streets or up at the walls or at the church itself and momentarily forget that he’d been cast adrift in the future. Yet Marland, the image of which was still so firmly fixed in his mind, the monks and their herb gardens and apiaries and their devotions, the quiet order and beauty of it all, had been reduced to these fallen walls.

  He’d come now only because something had occurred to him, something that should have suggested itself earlier. Some of the walls had been so demolished as to leave something resembling a raised stone footpath in places, and he clambered about on it, and looked at the views into all those lost rooms. He tried not to think of what had once been there, but of another memory.

  And as he climbed up on to a small buttress of stones and looked across to an ornate window arch that appeared almost free-standing, the images slipped into place and he knew this was it. This was the place he’d been dreaming of since November, the ruins among which he’d walked constantly with Eloise on a summer’s day.

  He stepped down on to the grass, which crunched beneath him, and he sat on the wall and looked across at the window arch and the other views across the ruins. He couldn’t begin to think why he was being tormented with dreams of something he could never see. Yes, he could see these ruins in front of him now, he could bring Eloise here, but he could never recreate those visions.

  That sunlit afternoon was something that could never and would never be his, just as his relationship with Eloise could never be what it often seemed to be in those dreams. It was a uniquely cruel torture that his mind should show him glimpses again and again of things he wasn’t permitted to know.

  He sat there for a while, his mind skipping back and forth between his memories of the dreams and the strange, conflicting thoughts brought on by being in Eloise’s room. He wished he could see meaning in it, but there was none, only that she was a beautiful girl, that he wished she had lived and been of his class in 1256, that he had not fallen sick – too many wishes.

  Will stood abruptly, a surge of energy coming on the back of all that frustration, and walked quickly back to the house. Wallowing in regret was all very well, but he had too much to do before dawn, and before he could bring Eloise here again. He had feared too much for her in those tunnels, and realised only now how foolish he had been to take her there unprepared. The attack by the crows had convinced him that he couldn’t let his guard drop. It had shown him that, despite what Eloise might have thought, he wasn’t always strong enough and couldn’t always protect her.

  Something down there had also put fear into him, though he couldn’t think what he had to fear, except perhaps the truth of who he was. Whatever it was, he was determined he would face it alone before being so reckless as to expose Eloise to it again.

  Will headed for the billiard room once he was inside the house. There was a display of three sabres on the wall above the table and he took one down, then another, testing their weight and feel. He selected one, put the other back in its place and headed for the library.

  He’d have to replace the sabre before daybreak because it seemed every day or so someone came and checked over the house and he wouldn’t want its absence to be noted. He looked at the clock in the hall as he passed through it, estimating he had six hours, maybe only five, if he wanted to be sure of being back in the cellars before dawn.

  The cellars – that was the worst of it, spending the daylight hours in those cellars with almost nothing to distract him from the gnawing need for blood. It was even worse when he could hear someone in the house above, and if the caretaker or security guard, whoever it was looking after the house, had ventured into the cellars at any point, Will wasn’t sure he’d have been able to exercise the self-control that had kept him from notice all these centuries.

  In the library he pressed the button to the side of the bookshelves that opened the secret panel, stepped inside and let the door close behind him. He slid the sabre through his belt and placed his hands on the wall. The mechanism ground into motion and the wall slid away to reveal the entrance to the steps.

  Will stared, but didn’t move. When he did move, it was first to reach for his dark glasses, then to pull the sabre free. The lights were on in the tunnels, but he remembered clearly that they’d turned them off on leaving.

  It reminded him too readily of the last time they’d found lights on unexpectedly, in the cathedral library, and he wondered if once again it was a sign that one of Wyndham’s apparently numerous disciples was also searching the tunnel complex.

  He couldn’t pick up a scent, nothing at all, and could hear nothing either, but the labyrinth was so vast it was possible he wouldn’t be able to detect another visitor from here anyway. He reached out to the light switch, reasoning that he might as well turn his own superior night vision to his advantage if he was about to face an enemy. But he flicked the switch first one way, then the other, and the lights remained on.

  Will laughed a little to himself, then louder, finally finding some admiration for this Wyndham, for his ingenuity and his determination, for his irritating ability to throw obstacles in Will’s way. It was even more amusing for the fact that Will didn’t even know where he was meant to be heading – Wyndham would have probably had just as much success in denying Will his destiny by simply leaving him alone, floundering in ignorance.

  He took his glasses off and stared down into the lights, which were not as bright as those he regularly encountered in the city. The pain, which was still considerable, even helped take his mind off his hunger, and slowly he adjusted until his vision was unimpaired. It was a small gesture, perhaps even petty, but it was his way of throwing the gauntlet back at the sorcerer, making clear that he would need more than electrical trickery to defeat William of Mercia.

  He closed the wall behind him and descended the steps, listening, inhaling deeply, ready to strike first at whomever or whatever he encountered.

  At the bottom of the steps he followed the connecting tunnel to the beginning of the labyrinth proper, then turned left instead of right, aiming to cover all of the remaining tunnels in Eloise’s absence. If there were hiding places or signs that others were also here, he wanted to find them.

  The decoration was the same everywhere Will looked, the runic writing and other even more archaic scripts, the symbols, paintings of men and fantastic creatures. It had undoubtedly been a massive undertaking, and that made it seem all the more significant that the pentag
onal chamber had walls that were almost bare.

  Something else was the same throughout, that brooding sense of menace he’d experienced the first time. He walked in silence. The air carried only the smell of dust, but he was so certain he was heading towards something that he felt himself tensing with each corner or opening he approached.

  Yet, as with the first visit, each turn revealed nothing, just the gloomy tunnel leading away to another corner, another junction. It didn’t matter how many times he failed to be confronted by someone, didn’t matter that he sensed nothing living, he still expected the next turn to bring him face to face with … he knew not what.

  Finally Will reached the pentagonal chamber, coming to it from one of the other four lit entrances. There was the fifth tunnel too, still in darkness, and as Will moved about the chamber, he tried to keep it in his line of sight, never turning his back on it.

  He looked at the bronze relief on the floor, the boar’s head medallion and the four swords, each leading out to a point on the walls where those runic names had been inscribed. He crouched down and touched the boar’s head, almost expecting it to be warm as the medallion had been warm around his neck – it wasn’t, and now when he reached up, he realised there was no longer any warmth coming from his own fragment of bronze.

  He stood again, looking at the walls. Had those ancient artists left this room bare to highlight the four names, the four swordsmen? A thought sprang into his mind and he immediately wished he hadn’t left Jex’s notebook in the city – could these four names, these four swords, represent the four kings Jex had spoken of in his book? And if so, was it possible that one of these inscriptions was an ancient form of the name Lorcan Labraid? He had read it in the notebook, he was sure – Lorcan Labraid was the Suspended King, one of the four. If Will was right, this chamber was the closest he had been to finding him.

  He walked around the room, touching each of the names in turn, a token gesture, wanting to touch the name of the evil that had done this to him, wanting in some way to bring himself closer to the destiny that had been mapped out for him that night so long ago. And now that the thought had planted itself, he stared again at the relief in the floor, seeing a new meaning in it. The boar’s head represented Will and his family, the Mercian Earls who had been so cruelly treated, held prisoner by the swords of these four barbarian kings.

  He heard a noise, and looked up, immediately readying his sword. Had it been a footstep? He took in the air, picking up nothing, but he had heard a noise and it had come from the one place he had known he would have to face sooner or later, the darkened tunnel.

  Will took a step towards it and then stopped again as the lights flickered on along its length and in the chamber that lay maybe twenty paces beyond. It was almost as if he was being invited in. The only thing he didn’t know was the identity of the person or creature issuing the invitation.

  He walked on, not hesitating this time, but heading directly into the tunnel. He was halfway along it when the lights flickered, for a second only, a rapid descent into darkness and an equally sudden return to light. And now Will felt the cold in his spine again because in that second a figure had walked past the far entrance.

  The chamber ahead appeared empty now, but he had seen a figure cross, he was certain of it. He walked on, cautious, ready to strike first, and was almost at the end of the tunnel when once again the lights blacked out before firing back more brightly than before, or so it seemed.

  Will’s eyes smarted against the sudden glare, but he stood his ground, holding his sabre at arm’s length in front of him. He blinked, desperate to get his vision back, because one thing he could see through the light blindness – he was no longer alone.

  A figure stood in the middle of the chamber, facing him, fair-haired, wearing a dark suit and a dog collar, looking quite alive – Reverend Fairburn, Wyndham’s spy from the cathedral library. He looked as solid as he had in the moments before falling to his death.

  Will stepped into the circular chamber, his sword still at the ready, but Fairburn looked down at it and said, “There’s no need for that, nor would it be of much use – I’m an apparition.”

  Will looked around the chamber. He noticed the walls here were decorated, unlike the chamber with the bronze relief, but all he really wanted to see was that they were alone in there. Once satisfied of that, Will slipped the sword back into his belt, but moved away from the tunnel and edged round the chamber until he could see both the spirit and the way out.

  He looked at the ghost of Fairburn and said, “Is it not enough that Wyndham made you his servant in life? Now he enslaves you even in death, denying you your peace.”

  “Oh, I came gladly for this task. You seek your destiny, isn’t that so?”

  “We all seek our destinies in one way or another.”

  “True. Well, William of Mercia, prepare yourself because I’m about to show you yours.”

  Will laughed and said, “You’re about to show me what Wyndham would have me believe. You may be a spirit, you may have been dragged from the next world just as my brother was, but neither you nor Wyndham know any more about my destiny than I do. Tell me Wyndham’s lies if you wish, but they will be just that, lies.”

  Fairburn’s expression didn’t change. He turned and stared directly at Will, the thing he had tried to avoid so much at their last meeting, and said, “You killed me. I know I jumped, but it was the lesser evil. You killed me, William of Mercia, that is why I am here. I am about to show you the true nature of your destiny, and trust me, you will know it to be the truth and you will despair.”

  9

  “Do your worst,” said Will, sceptical and yet still intrigued. “Whatever my destiny, I know my own heart.”

  “Do you?”

  Will had stepped back against the wall to prepare for whatever was about to happen, his left hand still poised to reach for his sword if needed. Fairburn remained in the middle of the chamber, but raised his hands now as if invoking a short prayer. When he lowered them again, he smiled and said, “Behold.”

  For a moment nothing happened, but then Will noticed the walls had become less solid around them, shimmering in the way he remembered the air on the hottest summer days. Across the room, a figure appeared, at first like a carved stone relief within the wall, then taking more shape, then colour, before emerging solid and real into the chamber.

  Another ghost, another he recognised, from the bare feet and grubby blue top, the scraggly beard. The spirit walked past Fairburn, heading towards a point just to the right of Will where he disappeared into the wall as if made of nothing more substantial than mist. He had looked solid for the time he’d been within the chamber and yet something had been missing. He hadn’t looked at Will as Fairburn had, hadn’t looked at anything, his eyes and expression vacant.

  “You recognised him, of course,” said Fairburn once the figure had disappeared. “He called himself Jex. His real name, if it concerns you, was Stephen Leonard. He was a troubled young man, but healthy, a perfect victim … for you.”

  Even as Fairburn spoke, another figure was emerging out of the walls, taking on form and colour before breaking free, and Will felt his certainties crumble at the sight of her. He had forgotten the precise likeness of her face, and saw now that despite the short hair, the slightly different clothes, she bore more than a passing resemblance to Eloise and could so easily have been her. With an additional twinge of regret, he remembered how playful her eyes had been, and saw now how dulled and empty they were, how lost her expression.

  “Did you even know her name? Helen, and she was just fourteen years old back in 1988. A runaway, naturally, one of the many unlucky vulnerable people to have crossed your path.”

  Even as Fairburn spoke, two more figures were emerging from the walls, then a third. And when Will looked, Helen – whose name he hadn’t known, it was true – had disappeared.

  Fairburn started to speak, but Will interrupted, saying, “Why do they not see me as you do? These are
not spirits, these are mere images, impressions of people who once existed.”

  Half a dozen were crossing the chamber in different directions in front of him. Two crossed paths, the apparitions passing through each other and becoming some misty amalgam before reforming again and continuing their journey towards the more total oblivion of the chamber wall.

  Fairburn said, “I was your most recent victim, no less than any of these, but I was fortunate indeed to take my own life before you could perform your wickedness upon me. You see, William of Mercia, a spirit and a soul are two different things, and you took their souls when you killed them. This is what you made of them, empty vessels wandering the afterlife with no purpose, no reward. You didn’t just rob them of life, you robbed them of so much more.”

  Will shook his head, struggling to accept these words, struggling with the scores of spirits now crisscrossing the room in front of him, some disappearing into the walls either side of him, so close that he could have reached out and touched them.

  The air seemed to be crackling now, charged with all this energy as more and more spirits emerged. And Fairburn was becoming triumphant and manic, calling out comments here and there as each new spirit appeared.

  “This woman was with child when you killed her, two deaths, not one. Ah, George Cuthbertson, 1813, but he was merely a stable boy, nothing to a nobleman like you, hardly worthy of consideration. And here we are in 1741, young Tom, fresh to the city – how generous the poor have been to you, William of Mercia.”

  One thing Will could not deny was that these were all his victims, and the face of every one of them found a match in his memory, even after all this time. He had often thought of them, cushioned only by the knowledge of the many more deaths he had seen during his long existence.