The Mortality Principle

by Alex Archer

  “Actually, I don’t know,” he was forced to admit. “As I said, very little survives from the time. Ravages of war. But I can tell you he fell ill very soon after he arrived here. He may indeed have already been in the slow process of dying before he arrived. We have nothing in our library to suggest he worked on anything during his days here.”

  “He was always working on something,” Roux said. “Always. The man was an obsessive. He couldn’t rest. He seldom slept because his mind would not slow down. There was always something going on. Could he have kept his studies secret while here? Is that possible?” Before the librarian could offer an opinion, Roux continued. “Of course it is. Of course it is. How would you know? He lived in constant fear that someone from the scientific community might either steal his ideas or, worse, laugh outright at them.”

  “Hasn’t that always been the way with so many geniuses? Jealous and secretive? Keeping themselves to themselves, the knowledge lost forever when they are gone?”

  “Indeed,” Roux agreed.

  “So, if I were to read between the lines, I take it that you suspect that he was working on something while he was here, and now you’re hoping to find out what it was.”

  Roux held his hands up in surrender. “Guilty,” he confessed. “As I am sure you’re aware, none of the journals Johannes kept during those last few years of his life have ever come to light. Sadly if they are not here, I suspect the truth is that they never will.”

  The hook was baited. Now all he needed to do was reel the big fish in.

  “I know it’s almost crass to ask, but do you think these lost journals would be valuable?” the librarian asked, biting.

  There were two lies Roux could sell him now. It just came down to which one was more likely to appeal to the man before him—money or knowledge? He picked the latter. Had the man been interested in material gain, he would have been a stockbroker, not the loving curator of a private library in the farthest reaches of the country.

  “In themselves? To be honest, probably not, but the ideas he was working on? Well, you know his mind. Anything on that front could prove invaluable.”

  The librarian nodded sagely, drawing in a slow, musing breath. “If there was anything in the library, I’m sure I would be aware of it,” the younger man said finally.

  “Of course, of course, as no doubt would many others. After all, neither of us are the first to wonder about the fate of those ideas, are we? Not over the course of centuries. It is inconceivable to think that greater men than us haven’t come looking for the same knowledge.”

  “Indeed,” the librarian agreed. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help to you. It is such a shame, given you have come all this way.”

  “Actually, there is something you might be able to help us with,” Annja said. “Would you happen to know where in the castle Kepler stayed when he lived here?”

  “Ah, indeed, yes, I do,” the man said, the smile on his face reappearing as he found himself back on comfortable ground. “Obviously, given the prevailing fears of the day, there was some concern that his illness may be contagious. Both he and his servant were given quarters in one of the outbuildings rather than here in the main building. Their meals were taken to them so they did not need to enter the ecclesiastical buildings.”

  “Would it be possible to take a look at them?” Annja asked.

  “There’s not very much to see, I’m afraid, and sadly I have another appointment in ten minutes so I can’t really give you the grand tour. There are no written materials, or tools of the trade, but if I point you in the right direction, do you think I could leave you to your own devices? Feel free to have a wander around the grounds. It is quite beautiful here at sunset.”

  “Certainly,” Annja said. “And thank you. You’ve really been most helpful.”

  “Well, we try to be accommodating when we can be,” the librarian said. Annja got the distinct impression this was his version of flirtation.

  She rested a hand on the man’s arm as he guided them toward the door. “Checks and balances,” Annja said. “Processes and procedures.”

  “You must think we’re terribly set in our ways.”

  “Not at all,” Annja lied. “It’s rather nice to see somewhere that upholds the nobility and traditions of a better, vanished time.”

  “My thoughts precisely,” the librarian said. “It is a pity you are leaving this evening… I don’t suppose I could interest you in a drink at the beer cellar later? Who knows, perhaps I could find some papers that might be of interest.” This was definitely his version of the mating ritual.

  Annja smiled sweetly at him. “Anything is possible.”

  “I will be done here in an hour.”

  46

  “You’re worse than Garin, you know that? Batting your eyelashes at the poor boy.”

  “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” Annja said as they walked in the direction of the building that the librarian had pointed them toward before he had disappeared inside again. “I guess our luck’s turned.”

  “Luck?” Roux shook his head sadly as he opened the door. He felt around inside the small room for a light switch. A bulb burst into life. “It had very little to do with that, capricious little madam. It was a gray-haired old man who thought things through.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What I said. It’s not luck that meant that our charming friend couldn’t show us around the building because he had another appointment so soon after ours.”

  “Roux, that’s bad,” she said, smiling as a similar grin spread across the old man’s face.

  “I made the call before I left the museum. He had to apologize that he had a couple of time-wasters already on their way to see him, but he was sure that he would make time for a visiting dignitary.”

  “Visiting dignitary? Dare I ask?”

  “Comte de Saint-Germain,” Roux said, with that wicked grin of his. “Son of Francis II Rákóczi.”

  “Who just happens to have been dead for two hundred years?”

  “Or has he?” Roux tapped the side of his nose and smiled. Sometimes she couldn’t help but admire him. It was moments like this that made her grateful these two incredible men had stumbled into her life. “These Germans don’t know their famous French alchemists from their reality-TV stars.”

  “How many lives have you actually lived, you old rascal?”

  “Sometimes I think too many, other times not enough.”

  “Good answer. How long do you think we’ve got before he starts to wonder why his ancient dignitary hasn’t turned up?”

  “Oh, we should have a good twenty minutes, I would think. Maybe longer, if he allows for the fashionably late quirks of the rich and famous. I warned him that I was visiting a school before our meeting, and there was every chance it might overrun by a few minutes given the unruly nature of children. He was quite understanding.”

  “You’re a disturbingly convincing liar, Roux. Have I ever told you that?”

  “I’m not sure you have. But I’ll take a compliment when it’s on offer, assuming that was a compliment. It makes life that little bit more interesting if you can spin a good story.”

  Annja followed him inside the first room. There was nothing at all remarkable about it. The room’s walls were whitewashed, the floor bare stone. A collection of broken furniture was stacked against the far wall: a couple of straight-backed wooden chairs that had broken stakes, a cabinet that had a slit up one side. All of the pieces looked as if they might be repairable, and almost certainly antique, which would explain the reluctance to discard them.

  The next room had a workbench in the middle and was dominated by the smell of fresh sawdust and varnish.

  “Some kind of workshop?” Annja suggested.

  “Or at least a storage room for while the salvageable stuff waits for repair,” Roux replied. He walked over to the bench and picked up a small disk. He turned it over in his hand, holding it up to the light before putting it down again.<
br />
  “Do you think Kepler worked in here? Or did he just sleep and eat while he was ill, knowing that the end was growing nearer every time he closed his eyes?”

  “It’s possible,” Roux said. “He wasn’t just an astronomer. He was an astrologer, a mathematician. He was many things.”

  He scuffed his foot through some of the sawdust on the ground.

  The old man seemed to be lost in his thoughts.

  Annja could tell from his furrowed brow that something was nagging at him.

  Finally he said, “Do you suppose that whoever has been working in here has finished for the day?”

  She looked around at the debris. It was impossible to be sure it was from that day or three months ago: the tools that were scattered across the bench, the piece of wood still gripped in the vice and the sawdust that seemed to cover everything.

  “Have you ever been in a workshop like this before?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Well, in every one that I’ve ever been in the mess has always been cleared up at the end of the day so the craftsman has a clean start the next morning.”

  “You think he’s coming back?”

  “No,” Roux said. “I think he’s still here.”

  He crouched and ushered her over to take a look as he brushed away more of the sawdust.

  “What am I looking for?” she asked, then saw what was wrong with the picture. The detritus didn’t move as he brushed his fingers over it.

  “I don’t…”

  Roux held a finger to his lips, and with his other hand felt around until he eventually found the edge of what appeared to be a piece of carpet.

  As he lifted the edge, the sawdust didn’t move. There was a thin polyurethane glaze across the surface, gluing it in place. As he drew the carpet aside, he revealed an iron rung set into the stone floor. There was a square outline where the hatch of the trapdoor had been recessed. It looked incredibly heavy. Heavier than would have been comfortable for an average guy like the librarian to lift. But not heavy for a brute like the killer. She noticed a thin filament thread attached to the carpet and looped through the iron rung and realized that whoever was down there could easily have drawn the rug back across the stone door from the inside to hide it after they sealed themselves in down there. Unless someone was looking for it, he or she would never notice it. And who came into a place like this looking for a secret door? She looked around again, seeing the thin patina of dust on the tools and the disarray of the jumbled furniture, and realized it was very unlikely a carpenter ever worked in the room at all. There was something about it that smacked of abandonment. She was used to abandoned places; they had a certain air about them. This room had that quality.

  Roux touched a finger to his lips again and shuffled back so that he could tug at the ring. He winced as he knelt, favoring his broken leg. Again she was amazed at his ungodly powers of recovery. That bone should have kept him off his feet for months, not hours. She’d seen it sticking out through his skin. Ordinary people didn’t just get up and walk away from that kind of damage; but then Roux wasn’t an ordinary person, was he?

  Annja didn’t need to be told what she needed to do.

  She braced herself, closing her eyes to focus on the outline of the sword in her mind’s eye as she flexed her fingers and concentrated. The sword was ready for her, as eager to feel her touch as she was to close her fingers around the hilt.

  Annja drew the blade gently from the otherwhere.

  The metal felt alive in her hand.

  It was so much more than a length of cold steel. It was so much more than a weapon designed for dealing out death. It was part of her soul, that immortal timeless thing that existed inside her and bonded Annja to this universe. It was fire to her ice. It was steel to her silk. It was faith to her doubt.

  “Ready?” Roux whispered, the word barely above a breath.

  She nodded.

  He grasped the iron rung and, with two hands, heaved, gritting his teeth against the stab of pain as he drew the heavy stone out of its setting. It came away easier than he expected, because it was on some kind of elaborate hinge mechanism that took most of the weight. The device lifted it clear of the hole and dropped it smoothly on the other side, making a doorway wide enough to allow Annja to pass through. Roux shuffled his feet, stepping back from the aperture. Sweat beaded his brow. His skin looked pale, waxen. She wasn’t used to seeing him like this; he looked lessened. Weak.

  Annja nodded. “You okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me.” He was breathing heavily. “I won’t be far behind you.”

  47

  A flight of stone steps led down into the darkness. The middle of each was worn smooth and dipped more than an inch below the sides. A rope had been strung down the wall to act as a handrail.

  She could have used Roux’s flashlight, but even without it she could make out just enough to see where to place her feet. Before she reached the last step, Annja could see the faint glow of a light along the passageway leading away from the stairs. She paused on the bottom step and listened for an unseen threat.

  The darkness was alive with creaks and groans.

  The light from above disappeared as Roux lowered the trapdoor in place above him. Suddenly cut off from the world above, the darkness took on another quality; it felt like a grave.

  Roux felt his way down in the darkness.

  Annja stepped off the last step and moved to the side to allow him down.

  Once he was beside her Annja took a step toward the light.

  She held Saint Joan’s sword in front of her, a two-handed grip on the hilt. The dim light flickered along the length of the blade, adding to its ethereal other-worldly quality. Her breath came in slow, calm, deep breaths. She had no idea what was going to happen in the next few minutes, but knew that everything she knew and accepted was on a knife’s edge and could fall either way. Garin could be proved to be the friend she knew in her heart he was, or the foe Roux seemed determined to prove he had always been.

  And then there was the killer.

  Annja scoped out the narrow passage, which was much like the warren beneath the castle at Benátky, she realized.

  Unlike the state of the workshop above them, the tunnel was free of clutter once they were away from the worn steps.

  Despite the fact there was no debris underfoot and the ground was flat and smooth, Annja moved carefully.

  They weren’t creaks and groans, she realized as she moved closer to the source. They were clicks. Click, click, click.

  She’d heard that sound before.

  Her eyes adjusted gradually to the meager light spilling into the tunnel from up ahead. It drew her on like a moth. Annja lengthened her stride, covering the ground quickly, but still placing her feet down lightly, careful to make as little noise as possible.

  She had to bite back a startled gasp as Roux placed a hand on her shoulder.

  She stopped in her tracks and turned to look at him.

  “Let me,” he said. “This is my fight, not yours. Don’t argue.”

  But she wanted to argue with him. He was in no fit state to fight, but before she could open her mouth to object, Roux took a step past her and was between Annja and the light.

  She wanted to say, “Stop being a fool. I’m the one with a weapon. Let the thing come for me. I can handle myself,” but someone else beat her to it.

  “Finally. I was beginning to think I’d die of old age before you got here,” a voice from beyond the light said. “You’re only just in time.”

  “In time for what?” the old man asked the light.

  “Don’t be shy. Come in and take a look for yourself. You’ve come all this way. A few more steps won’t make any difference.”

  Roux waited, then took a single step inside.

  Annja edged a little closer—close enough to make out a few more details in the room and what lay closer to the source of the light.

  “You, too, Annja. Join the party,” Garin
called.

  She didn’t move a muscle.

  “She’s not here,” Roux said. “She’s flirting with the librarian.”

  “Ah, dear old Frederick. He likes to think that he’s God’s gift when we all know that’s me. He’s just a glorified cleaner. As far as I can tell, all he does is dust the books. I’m amazed he managed to see you at such short notice given all the dusting he has to do.”

  “Let’s stop this silliness, Garin. You’ve got about thirty seconds to convince me not to kill you, and a good twenty-nine of them are already gone.”

  “Why is it always a fight with you, old man?”

  “There are two types of people in this world—mice and snakes. And you are no mouse.”

  “There’s a compliment hidden in there somewhere, I think.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on it. Okay, Garin, time’s up. This ends now.”

  “Here’s the thing. I don’t see a gun or a sword. Now me, I’ve got a gun. I mean, who would go to a gunfight empty-handed?”

  “I don’t need a gun to kill you, Garin. Not when I’ve got these.” Annja saw the shadow shapes on the ground move as Roux lifted his hands. “Now, where’s your murderous friend?”

  “Friend? Oh, right, you mean Joe.”

  “Joe?”

  “It seemed as good a name as any. The poor fellow is mute, can’t read or write, and has absolutely no way of contradicting me when I call him that.”

  “Good for you. Where is it?”

  “He is resting,” Garin said, stressing the personal pronoun to emphasize the difference in how he considered the brute compared to how the old man did. “He’s rarely up and about during daylight hours, you recall? Give it half an hour or so, and he’ll make an appearance.”

  “You’ve got one chance to explain this, Garin. You’ve had us chasing you across Europe…”

  “That’s a slight exaggeration, Roux. You only had to cross one border. I’d forgive the poor grasp of geography if you were from another continent, but from a European, and no less, a Frenchman? I expect better.” Garin let out an exaggerated sigh.

  “No need to be so damned pedantic,” Roux snapped. “I really don’t care what you have to say. I’m just offering you the chance to explain yourself, to make your peace with God, before you finally meet Him.”