“Do not try to heal yourself,” the Emperor bellowed. “Don’t get rid of the pain. Channel it… I said no.”
Light had begun to shimmer around Alex’s arm and course down the burn on his thigh. With a noise like a whip crack, the sharklike flame dived and speared his bicep. Alex howled again, and his attempt at alchemy faded.
“Now get up.”
Groaning, he hoisted himself onto his good arm and tried to stand. It took a couple of tries, but he managed, staggering up to lopsidedly face his captor.
“Well, go on.”
Alex glanced around, assessing what elements he had to work with. He caught sight of the window above the Emperor and raised his good arm, palm like a knife. The window shattered, and the wind entered properly. Alex focused and willed it downwards, compressing it, hammering it upon his adversary like a boulder.
“You think I am a fool? You think I can’t see Light?”
A dome of crackling Dark energy had formed over the Emperor’s head, and now it inverted, encasing the wind within a sphere.
The Emperor clicked, and the sphere was tossed over towards Alex. The impact was like being smashed with concrete, accompanied by an electric charge that set his nerve endings alight. He fell to his knees, retching.
“I won’t use it,” he said quietly after a long time breathing.
“We will continue this exercise until you do.”
“Well, you might as well kill me now, because I’m not going to.”
“Really?” The Emperor had adopted his insidious rhetorical tone again. “You obviously know enough about Dark alchemy to understand it is formed from internal emotions rather than external elements. I’m sure we can coax it out of you.”
Alex did know about Dark alchemy. He had seen the damage it had wreaked across the worlds he’d visited, including his own. To cave in and use it would make him just as bad as the Cult. “I refuse.”
“That does not make you noble. It makes you weak. You have always been weak. Just as you couldn’t stop your father beating your mother to death when you were seven, so you cannot defend yourself now.”
Alex looked at him sharply. “You know nothing about that.”
“On the contrary, I know everything about that. Or what about the casual drug abuse of your early teenage years?”
Alex was breathing heavily again but this time not out of physical pain. His stomach seemed to flip with the return of memories he had fought so hard to suppress.
“Or your friend Connor, so dear to you, who you were unable to protect from something as mundane as a speeding car?”
“Shut up.” The rage swelled, scouring his insides, threatening to spew from his throat with searing venom.
“Or your undisclosed lifestyle choice, kept concealed with such care?”
“Shut up.” He was dimly aware of the breeze beginning to pick up around him.
“Is that what you so very much wanted to tell Mister Lawson the night you returned to Earth—?”
“Shut up!”
He felt his control escape into the shadows of his mind. A tornado, laced with indigo darts, exploded outwards from around him in all directions, shattering all the remaining windows. The vaults of the crossing were filled with a tremendous rumbling as the fragments clattered to the marble floor.
Alex collapsed, utterly spent. Amongst the torrent of broken glass, the Emperor smirked. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Four days after their arrival at the goblin camp, the priest had returned. It was midmorning, and Lucy had been playing with Doch outside Maht’s tent: a game of the girl’s own invention, which seemed to be something like a cross between hide-and-seek and a doll’s tea party but with the players inexplicably transforming into pterodactyl kittens at random intervals.
Adâ had jogged down the path, waving like a madwoman. Though she might not have done exactly the same, Lucy shared her feeling of urgency: she wasn’t going to miss out on what they’d been waiting for. She deposited Doch with her mother inside and called a few disconnected words of explanation as she ran off towards the center of the camp.
Sipping from a wooden cup, the priest sat cross-legged to the right of the matriarch, his layers of furs rivaling hers. Like her, he was immensely old.
Lucy joined Adâ, Hakim, and Vince on the floor.
Hakim began to speak, but the priest waved him into silence with a frail hand. “The matriarch has explained your wishes to me. We shall go to the Cave. In fact, we shall leave right away.”
Everyone looked round at him, alarmed, including the matriarch, who evidently saw fit to intervene. “Your Grace, surely your travel has tired you? You must wait a few days and rest—”
With the same rather irritating motion, the priest quieted her. “I am quite well.” He stood, finished his drink, and turned to the Apollonians. “Collect your belongings and meet me at the northern gate.” He nodded to the matriarch and departed.
There was silence as everyone recovered from the abrupt decree.
Then the matriarch spoke again. “It is, of course, the priest’s decision to lead you to the Cave, and I cannot impinge on that. However, something is not right with him. You must keep an eye on him whilst you travel and ensure he comes to no harm.”
The four of them nodded and stood to leave.
Chapter X
espionage
The smog-studded mist had descended once more as Jack, Sardâr, Bál, and Ruth crept through the lamp-lit streets of Albion. They had waited until past midnight, guaranteeing that the last servants would have departed and that the Osbornes would be immobilized by sleep and several superfluous layers of bedsheets.
For the first time in over a week, the four of them had washed thoroughly. Sardâr had rightly pointed out that if they hoped to remain undetected, trailing grime in and out of the house probably wasn’t a good idea. However, the dirt’s resilience had been unpleasantly surprising. By the time Jack had finished flaking off soot, the air of the factory and the entire city had seemed to crawl under his skin again. He looked forward to a proper shower aboard The Golden Turtle.
The corn-yellow moon swooped between chimneys as they approached the Osborne Manor. All the lights appeared to be off and all the curtains drawn.
Ruth led them down a driveway to the left and, withdrawing a thick ring of keys from her belt, unshackled the cast-iron gates. They slipped inside, careful not to let the metal clang, and made their way across the darkened courtyard to the interior door. Ruth repeated the action with a different key, and they were in the house.
Jack peered into the gloom as the door was closed behind him. They were in a servant’s utility or laundry room, with folded piles of clothes loaded on shelves around them.
Ruth crept into the next room, and they followed in single file: through the kitchen with its monstrous stone that reminded Jack of the orphanage back on Earth, up spiral steps in the opposite corner of the dining room, past a colossal wooden table to the main hallway. The front door was directly opposite them at the end of a long Oriental rug. Flickering light shimmered through a curtained window, falling on the banisters of the main staircase.
They reached the top, and Ruth was about to set foot on the carpet, but Sardâr held her back. Silently, and without leaving the stairs, he crouched and examined the floor. He muttered a few syllables and passed his hand a few inches above the weaving. A projection of the floor, carpet threads cast in indigo light, rose from its real counterpart and vanished into the air.
“Alchemical alarm now disabled,” Sardâr whispered, straightening and proceeding. They came to the first door on the left and the elf pressed his palm to it, light flashing and receding, to unlock it.
Ruth eased it open, and they entered.
Sardâr raised his arms, and the lamps flickered to life. The drawing room was exactly as Ruth had left it: icicles clinging to the plastered ceiling and hanging off the overstuffed furniture, frost clasping the wallpaper and curtains.
Even under his ove
rcoat, Jack shivered. “Why is it so cold in here?” It was then that he saw what Ruth had described.
Behind the desk, where a portrait might have hung, a slab of ice the size of a fridge was set into the wall. Encased in it, apparently completely frozen, was a girl in what, inexplicably, appeared to be hiking wear.
“She’s an elf,” he whispered, noticing the pointed ears and Middle Eastern complexion. “Is she alive?”
“I think so,” Sardâr replied, examining the frosty surface. “Otherwise there would be no point keeping her frozen. But we can deal with her in a minute. First, we should find what the Cult is up to.”
Sardâr made his way to the desk and thumbed through the papers. Ruth joined him, indicating where she’d already looked and pointing out the locked drawers. Jack and Bál hung back, checking the door every few seconds with paranoid glances.
Sardâr beckoned them with a hiss. Jack and Bál almost stumbled over a footstool in their haste to get around the desk. The three others leaned in to see. The elf was holding up what seemed to be blueprints of a machine that reminded Jack of something from an H. G. Wells novel: a large sphere suspended above the ground by thin legs, extruding various spindly limbs—a kind of futuristic hunter spider. The only writing was a monogram printed in the corner.
“What does FGM stand for?”
“Frederick Goodwin Manufacturing,” a voice answered from the doorway.
The four intruders looked up in shock.
Standing at the door, covered in a flowery nightgown and clasping a candelabra, was a middle-aged woman. Her hawkish eyes were fixed on them not with surprise but with something a little too close to hatred.
“Milady!” Ruth exclaimed. “Begging your pardon, but we were just, erm—”
“I don’t think the formalities are necessary, Ruth,” Sardâr said coldly, staring at the woman.
Jack felt it too. It was the same sensation he had when he saw a member of the Cult of Dionysus. There was something else there, a demonic presence his brain didn’t want to recognize.
“Well observed, elf,” the woman replied. In an instant her dress was gone, replaced by a hooded black cloak. Gone too was the candelabra. Instead, her hand was twisted as if she gripped a chalice, a cloud of ice-blue energy hovering in the center.
“Archbishop Nimue, I presume?”
“Correct, sir. And I believe you are the now somewhat legendary Sardâr Râhnamâ, leader of the Apollonians, who so aggravated the fortunes of the late Iago?”
“Indeed.”
“I must say,” Nimue continued, her aristocratic manners apparently unchanged by the removal of her disguise, “it is a genuine pleasure to share conversation with other Enlightened folk.” She swaggered across the room to seat herself in one of the high armchairs, which had now transfigured into a throne of ice. “We had a maid who happened to overhear a little too much yesterday and, well, fate didn’t smile upon her—”
“What’s this?” Sardâr asked coolly, ignoring the elitist jibes and holding up the blueprints.
Nimue laughed: a high soporific tinkling. “Enlightened but nonetheless ignorant. Do you really think it was pure coincidence that you all ended up employed by us or our associates? Iago’s losing possession of his mirror only lowered him in our estimation. If he had not already suffered the worst punishment imaginable, it would have been multiplied a hundredfold. However, we know what you have seen of us. We made sure you were channeled into places where we could watch you until our work here was done. And here you are, and you are too late.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Sardâr replied, his voice rising.
Nimue laughed again. “This isn’t a novel. I’m not some tragically flawed supervillain who’ll tell you all my plans on the off chance you won’t survive. Suffice it to say, though, you shall not be around to see them come to fruition.”
She rose from her throne into the air like a banshee, lifted on alchemical winds which were now redirected upon the Apollonians. Jack stumbled against the growing gale drawing him into the center of the room, the cord of the Seventh Shard cutting into his neck as it was pulled towards Nimue’s hand. On the other side of the desk, Bál struggled against the same alchemical force, the First Shard drawing closer to the Cultist’s other hand.
Sardâr leapt onto the table and bellowed another alchemical command. Instantly, the wind ceased and the room was filled with alabaster light as glowing weapons flashed into each of their grasps: swords for Jack and Sardâr, an axe for Bál, and a spear for Ruth.
Nimue’s gaze narrowed. “This grows tiresome. I am running on a tight schedule. We shall have to extract the more valuable artifacts from the wreckage upon our return.”
There was a deep rumbling, and Sardâr ducked as the slab of ice was rent from its socket on the wall, the frozen girl pulled through the air to float beside Nimue. Before any of them could react, the Cultist had flung a fireball to the floor, where it surged upwards. Indigo flames licked the walls and furnishings, forming a superheated wall between the two sides.
Nimue raised her hand, the familiar, thorny rose lacing over it, and vanished in a swirl of black smoke.
Jack summoned his energy and held his palms up, drawing upon the moisture in the air. A sphere of water formed between his hands and catapulted into the heart of the fire. He waited expectantly for a hiss of vapor, but none came. Instead, the flames rose even higher.
“It’s Dark alchemy,” Sardâr called over the crackling.
“We need something stronger.”
Bál raised his newly conjured axe. “We’ll try something else, then.” He tensed his forearm, and a thick wreath of crimson flame unfurled from the end of the weapon, arching into the purple wall.
Jack’s surprise at the dwarf’s willingness to resort to alchemy was quickly outdone by his dismay at its complete lack of effect. The wave of indigo engulfed the crimson, growing even stronger.
“What are we going to do?” Ruth exclaimed.
With a loud crack, part of the floor collapsed, remnants of flaming furniture tumbling into the dark hole that had opened.
The four of them backed against the wall, and Sardâr began focusing bright light between his hands. Every few seconds, more of the floor disappeared in a flurry of sparks. The hideous furnishings had been nearly consumed; only increasingly charred plaster and wood remained.
Yells could be heard from the window near Jack. He leaned over and peered between the curtains at the street below. People were emerging from other houses on the street, staring up at the incendiary manor. As he watched, a wagon pulled up in front of the gates and a few navy-coated men clambered out to direct civilians away from the fire.
Sardâr’s cry of pain pulled Jack’s gaze back into the room. Loosened by the flames, a section of ceiling had collapsed, crushing one of the elf’s legs. The light between his hands flickered and faded. The flames, seeming to sense this, took their chance. They began slithering over to him and wrapped their cords around his limbs, pulling him into the roaring fire.
Ruth and Bál took an arm each and hauled him back.
“This way,” Jack shouted, ripping aside the curtains and yanking the window open.
“We can’t jump from here,” Ruth screamed, joining him at the window.
“What choice have we got?” Jack shouted.
The flames had consumed most of the room, leaving them with only a shrinking island behind the desk. Within moments, the desk was gone too, sliding into the corona oblivion below. Under other circumstances, Jack could have used the Seventh Shard to overcome this alchemy, but he knew that was exactly what Nimue wanted—for them to put out the fire and deal with the consequences whilst she continued with her plans unimpeded. At that moment, they had to flee rather than fight.
Jack and Ruth joined Bál in pulling Sardâr to his feet and assisting him to the window. Jack looked at the three sooty faces: Bál nodding, resolute; Ruth shaking her head, terrified; Sardâr grimacing, pained. He looked through t
he second-story window at the pavement below.
They jumped.
Perhaps naturally for someone who’d grown up on a steady diet of James Bond and Die Hard, Jack still retained some faith that leaping several meters down onto stone would be fine and would not hurt. It wasn’t, and it did.
He hit the ground on his side and heard a couple of snaps, nuclear agony exploding across his upper body. He had spent three weeks in combat training, been hit by Dark alchemical lightning, and journeyed in and out of a volcano, and this still factored high on the pain scale. He tried to pull himself to his feet but was unable. He couldn’t move his left arm at all, and even lifting his neck shot arrows across his nerves.
All he could see were the boots of those navy-coated men marching towards them. Ruth and Bál’s explanations turned to cries of protest as they were hauled to the wagon. The dwarf’s struggle was proving too much for the captor, but Bál was soon restrained by several more whilst one beat him to his knees with a truncheon.
Jack recognized his own voice shouting just as he felt a force on his shoulders. He was being dragged across the road towards the same wagon, his wounded arm scraping the street.
The pain was too much. He blacked out.
Chapter XI
the slammer
Jack became aware of the pain before he properly woke. As he rose out of the depths of his unconscious mind, the dull ache grew stronger and stronger, until he could feel he was lying on a hard surface. His eyes flicked open, and he got his first look at the room.
It was a small chamber constructed entirely of stone: underground, it seemed, by the way the barred window was crammed in the very top corner. The only light—that of the fog-masked moon and flickering street lamps—filtered through these bars, and from this Jack could just about make out the scene.
Sardâr lay on a bench opposite him, unconscious, whilst Bál slumped on the floor rubbing his truncheon wounds. Ruth, the only one who looked unharmed, was standing, apparently unable to keep still. Seeing he was awake, she flurried over to him.
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