City of Dark Magic

by Magnus Flyte

  “The Fleece,” said Nico. “Focus, Sarah. Find the Golden Fleece.”

  Sarah closed her eyes, trying to breathe into it, but suddenly she felt as if she were falling, not just down but sideways, diagonally, up, back. She was being shoved and jerked through time. Not Alice falling down a hole. Alice in the Hadron collider. Sarah opened her eyes.

  A young woman was staring straight at her. Someone she knew she should recognize. She was so familiar, but somehow different. . . . The eyes were filled with such naked greed and desire, such venomous passion that Sarah took a step backward. But the woman wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the object she held in her hands. A golden key.

  “And where is the door that this unlocks?” the woman was asking. Her voice, despite the intensity of her eyes, sounded curiously light and casual, but her fingers worked the ridges of the key greedily. Sarah caught the blurred image of a man beyond the woman’s shoulder. There was no longer a piano in the room. It was almost bare: a few pieces of furniture shrouded in sheets, packing crates, plastic sheeting. ƀuch vePlastic. So it must be nearly the present then. Yes, the clothes and hairstyle of the woman were contemporary, the seventies maybe.

  “I cannot say,” said a low voice, thickly accented. Russian. “Exactly. Maybe I find out. Maybe we search together.”

  “That would be fun,” the woman purred softly, while her eyes blazed. The intensity of the woman made her energy surreally vivid.

  “Superstition,” the man’s voice grumbled. “Religious mania and fantasy. You should forget I told you this silly fairy tale.”

  The woman began unbuttoning her blouse. Her eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t believe you,” she murmured. “I think you know more secrets. Why don’t you whisper them in my ear?”

  Suddenly the man’s face loomed up beside hers. It was the man Sarah had seen in the hidden library, the one who had left the briefcase and taken the amulet. Yuri Bespalov. He pressed his lips against the woman’s ear.

  “Charlotte, Charlotte,” he murmured. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “Holy shit,” Sarah said, so loudly that she clamped a hand over her mouth. But neither one of the couple seemed to hear her. The couple. Charlotte Yates and Yuri Bespalov.

  “It all sounds so romantic.” Charlotte shrugged off her blouse and offered her neck to Yuri’s mouth. “The Order of the Golden Fleece. A special gold key that unlocks the Door That Must Never Be Opened. What’s behind the door, I wonder? The Fleece itself? If it’s as powerful as you say—”

  Yuri laughed. “There is no such thing,” he scoffed. “We think maybe treasure of some kind. But is just a key, maybe. Just old key and old story.”

  “But the Order has been looking for something all this time.” Charlotte laced her fingers in Bespalov’s hair. “Something big. You know how I hate mysteries.” Charlotte guided the Russian down into her cleavage.

  “You know what I am going to do?” Charlotte smiled, stepping back and unzipping her skirt. Sarah scurried out of the way as the future senator crossed to a chair and sank into it, caressing her own legs as she pulled off her skirt and kicked it playfully into the air like a chorus girl. She brought her knees together and smiled up at Yuri, who sank with a groan to his knees in front of her.

  “I’m going to keep this key,” purred Charlotte, leaning forward and unzipping the Russian’s pants. “Until I know exactly what it opens.” She leaned back in the chair and slid her knees apart. But Sarah saw that Yuri deliberately took the golden key out of Charlotte’s hands, even as he buried his face between her legs. And she saw the look of lust and rage on the woman’s face.

  “Sarah!” Max shouted.

  Sarah blinked and yes, there was Max, gripping her wrists. And behind him, Nicolas Pertusato, wearing an incongruously large pair of spectacles and clutching Tycho’s journal.

  “Charlotte Yates,” Sarah spluttered. “Max, Charlotte Yates knows about the Golden Fleece.”

  “Knows what?” Max was pressing something cool against her forehead. “You saw her? In the past, I mean? She wˀth="2as here?”

  Sarah nodded. She found if she focused on discreet physical sensations—the feel of Max’s hands, the callus of his thumb, the slight ache in her left calf muscle, the trickle of cold water on her forehead, a mote of dust in her eye—that

  she could stay more or less in the present. It was a monumental effort, though, and not one she was sure she could sustain.

  “The key that unlocks the Door. The Door that must not be opened. Does that make sense? It’s connected to the Fleece. The Fleece is behind the Door, I think.”

  “Nico?” Max snapped. “What is she talking about?”

  “Yes, the key,” the little man said. “Tycho made it for the emperor. Tell Sarah to find Tycho. I think the key might lead us to the location of the Fleece.”

  “The key,” mumbled Sarah, trying to stay upright. She was slipping through time again. There was something on the floor. Blood? Someone was crying, a child. When? Where?

  “Take me to Prague,” said Sarah. “Hurry!”

  “I will get the car,” said Nicolas. “Max, keep her calm. Physical stimulation seems to work best.”

  Max propped her up against a wall and pulled one of her legs up and around his waist. With his other hand he reached under her shirt.

  “Well,” she heard the little man say, “that seems to be . . . helpful. Although crude in execution. Max, there are a number of books I could lend you that would—”

  “Get the car!” Max shouted.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Nicolas drove the roadster at top speed, while Max held Sarah and Moritz panted anxiously. The little man was driving fast enough that the pockets of emotion they were driving through existed only as blurry wavy lines of colored light. Sarah went from feeling slightly sick to feeling definitely aroused, and then amused. “This . . . ” she tried to say, “is fun!” And except for the vertigo and the occasional sounds of screaming in different languages, it was actually fun. Max was being a trouper. You had to give the man points for stamina.

  Anyone else would be mumbling something about carpal tunnel syndrome by now. Well, he was a musician. Sarah was finding it easier now to divide her attention: part of it with Max and Nico, and part of it with searching and listening through the maze of energies.

  “It’s like cables,” she tried to explain to Max. “Lines. All around. Colors. Music. Strings.”

  Nico mumbled out loud to himself.

  “Are we going to Golden Lane?” Max asked. “I saw you there with Tycho, Nico. You were arranging to ‘borrow’ the Fleece.”

  “They moved it right after that,” said Nico. “I think they suspected. And Rudolf’s poor lover was beheaded.”

  They were in the city now. Sarah could see Charles Bridge, tourists, the lights of nighttime Prague glittering. She could also see another Pra΀t size="gue, much blacker, with a cloudy moon, rank and putrid smells, torches, horses.

  “Turn here,” Sarah ordered. Nicolas made a sharp turn.

  “Charles Bridge,” Sarah said. “He’s there. Tycho. I can see his . . . strand or whatever now. He’s moving though. Wait. Stop.” The car pulled to a stop at a light. Sarah pressed her face against the glass window and gasped.

  A man, dressed in a rough dark cloak. His face was covered by a hood, but underneath it she saw a gleam of copper. Her attention swiveled and locked into the energy of the man, and his outline became sharper, more focused.

  “Tycho,” she said, and opened the car door. She heard Max behind her calling her name, but she pushed against an obstacle in front of her—a body? a cart?—and followed the shrouded figure onto the bridge. A part of her knew the bridge was crowded with tourists carrying cameras and backpacks and jabbering in a mixture of languages, but she shoved this aside to find the moonlit night, the dark figure, the deserted bridge.

  “Sarah, what is it?” Max, behind her, holding her hand now, guiding her around the people in her path she could
n’t see. Tycho paused in the middle of the bridge, grasped the railing, and looked into the glittering water below. No, he wasn’t alone. There was another man, wearing a long brown cape over a high stiff collar. His curly beard was tucked into his cape; a soft four-cornered cap was drawn low over his forehead. His eyes were worried. Sarah felt his fear.

  “You are not thinking of drowning yourself,” said Tycho. Sarah wasn’t sure if she could hear his voice or his thoughts; it was strange. And difficult because Tycho’s tone was mocking and casual, but his emotions were taut, almost manic.

  The man with the curly beard responded, “I came to tell you that I am leaving Prague, Brahe.”

  “Leaving? Whatever for? Things are only now becoming interesting.”

  “I am going back to England.”

  “It is that ass, Kelley,” Tycho laughed harshly. “I told you he was after your wife, Dee.”

  John Dee, Sarah thought, looking at the man in the brown cloak.

  “I have also come to tell you, to plead with you, to stop,” said Dee.

  “I will never stop.”

  “My friend, we have come too far—”

  “Yes,” Tycho said, pulling the man closer to him, almost in an embrace. “We have come too far. Think of what we are close to, my friend. Think of what we can understand. Only everything.”

  “We are not meant to know everything,” Dee said, his voice trembling. “I was wrong to bring it here.”

  “You are a coward,” said Brahe, bitterly.

  “Yes, I am a coward,” Dee agreed. “But I can only see darkness ahead on the path you are choosing.”

  “And you think you will find light in England?” Tycho sneered. “With Elizabeth? The queen is a viper, she will sink her fangs in your flesh soon enough. And what of our work?”

  “It is not my work anymore,” Dee said. “I am a mathematician.”

  “And what am I? We are men of science, not necromancers. Let Kelley fill the emperor’s ears with angelic babble and potions from his own urine. God is speaking to us in the true language. The language of the elements. The earth, the moon. He is showing us his secrets.”

  “It is not God that is speaking,” Dee cried. “It is the Devil!”

  “There is no difference at all between them,” laughed Tycho. “I am late to meet Baron Kurz.” He strode off.

  “Sarah?”

  She turned and saw Max beside her, Nico panting at his side. Moritz was guarding the car. Behind them she could make out a group of Korean tourists. When she turned back, Brahe and Dee were gone.

  “Dee,” she whispered.

  “John Dee?” Nicolas said. “It can’t be later than 1589, then. I think you need to move ahead a few years.”

  “They were arguing,” Sarah explained. “And saying good-bye.”

  “Did he have the key?” Max asked. “Did he say anything about the Fleece?”

  “It wasn’t clear. He said something about Baron Kurz.”

  “Kurz Summer Palace.” Nico nodded. “Yes. A good place to look. Rudolf had brought us from Benátky because he wanted us closer. But the master needed more room and privacy. We need to go to Kurz Summer Palace. This was our last residence in Prague before the master died.”

  “I’ve never heard of Kurz Summer Palace,” Max said doubtfully.

  “At Pohorelec,” Nicolas said. “Just behind Cernin Palace.”

  • •

  •

  It was very dark now. Sarah knew roughly where they were in the city: west of the castle grounds, near the Loreto and Cernin Palace. With concentration she could make out what Max and Nico were looking at, but there wasn’t much to see. Streetlights illuminated tram tracks and what seemed like, especially for Prague, some very ordinary industrial buildings. A row of parking spaces. A giant monument in front of them. Two men standing on a stone plinth, one of them with the bulging forehead, long mustache, and lace ruff that characterized all depictions of the Danish astrologer. Tycho Brahe carried a giant sextant. Next to him, Johannes Kepler, a scroll tucked under his arm, gazed at the heavens.

  “Where’s this summer palace?” Max asked.

  “It was torn down quite a long time ago,” Nico said. “They built this on top of it. Another palimpsest, of sorts. This is a grammar school. The Gymnázium Jana Keplera. Their motto is: Per aspera ad astra. I think the master would be a little annoyed it’s not the Gymnázium Tycho Brahe, but he does have the very nice tomb at Týn and—”

  Per aspera ad astra. From hardship to the stars.

  “I see a palace,” Sarah said, pointing.

  “Excellent,” said Nico. “Let us proceed. I will have to pick a lock or two.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  For Max and Nico it was just a school—there were children’s drawings pinned to the walls, and the usual rows of lockers. Lockers that Sarah immediately slammed into, since she was operating on a completely different floor plan.

  “A little help here,” she called out. As she oriented on the energy of the palace, the functionalist four-story white school building with blue window frames disappeared and she saw only a lovely Renaissance palace, freshly constructed and beautifully furnished. And here was Baron Kurz himself, talking to masons and artists who were working on a series of frescos.

  “Baron Kurz,” she said to Max and Nico.

  “Oh, we needn’t bother with him,” the little man said. “He was a very nice man, incredibly generous, but not so precise in his mathematics. He sent the master a drawing of an alidade that was clever but erroneous. But he managed to procure figs just for me even in winter, so I will forever remember him fondly.”

  Max and Nico helped her climb a set of stairs she couldn’t see, which made it feel like flying, and she found herself in a waiting room with large, graciously arched windows. Outside the street scene was bizarre. The lanes were thronged with people. It was a winter day, and she could hear the wind rattling the windowpanes. Soldiers on horseback in strange uniforms with breastplates and pikes galloped through the streets, where people were setting fire to buildings and throwing rocks. And yet the people were also wearing masks and costumes, and drinking, as if a party had gone horribly wrong.

  Sarah could hear screams. She watched a priest run under the window, chased by a man in full harlequin costume carrying an ax.

  “Something very weird.” Sarah did her best to explain what she was seeing.

  “Ah yes,” said Nico. “You need to go back another decade. That sounds like February 1611. That old crank the Bishop of Passau decided to invade the city on Mardi Gras. It was confusing even if you weren’t on drugs.”

  Sarah shook her head to clear the vision and replaced it with the image of Tycho Brahe. Where are you? she thought. Suddenly she was moving quickly, Nico and Max helping when the current utilitarian design of the building impeded her progress. But here it was, a lavishly decorated bedroom, a blond man with a bushy russet beard and long mustache seated in a chair. A piece of copper was fixed across the bridge of his nose, though Sarah couldn’t tell how it was attached exactly, and at his feet . . .

  The little man at Brahe’s feet was wearing yellow stockings and bright green slippers. A pink smock shirt decorated with bells and ribbons. A skull cap in blue covered his head. But he was unmistakable.

  “I found you, Nico,” said Sarah. “And you look spiffy.”

  “Jepp,” Nicolas corrected. “That was my name then.”

  “So tell me,” Tycho demanded of the dwarf. “What is the news at court?”

  The little man—Jepp—poured a glass of beer from a pitcher on the floor and handed it to his master. He retained the pitcher for himself, drinking deeply from it. Tycho chuckled indulgently.

  “The Hungarians are exhausted by this war. They no longer care about fighting the Turks, they just want to be left alone. Can you blame them? Almost eight years they’ve been fighting a war they don’t even understand.” The bassoon voice was the same. Sarah had to fight between the urge to do nothing but compare the two
little men.

  “What about Mattias?” Brahe inquired. “Is Rudolf’s brother stirring the pot?”

  “He is.” Jepp nodded. “Mattias is telling the foreign courtiers that Rudolf is losing his mind, that this war is costing too much, that he buys too much art, that he needs to focus on matters closer to home, the Jews, the Protestants, the merchants, the guilds, the sparring nobles.”

  “Those old vultures. And?”

  “Rabbi Loew came to plead with the emperor about protection for his people. There is talk of the golem again. People say that a monster lives in the Jewish quarter.”

  “Mmph,” Tycho snorted. “And?”

  “Apparently the emperor’s new painting is quite scandalous. A nun fainted when it was unveiled.”

  “And you saw it?”

  Jepp looked insulted. “Of course.”

  “Describe it, man!”

  “It’s Italian. Someone named Correggio. Portrait of Danae it is called. The Italian has painted a woman unclothed with the sheet pulled down to here—” Jepp indicated his crotch and splayed back on his cushion in imitation of the pose, his legs wide open. “Boobies in all directions. Everyone got stiff just looking! And here’s the best part. Jupiter is showing her how much he loves her . . . with a golden rain.” Jepp laughed into his pitcher.

  “A golden rain? You mean he’s pissing on her?!” Tycho laughed out loud and clapped Jepp on the back.

  “So, Nico, you’ve always been kind of twisted, I see,” Sarah commented.

  “What am I missing?” said Max.

  “One of the world’s most famous astronomers is talking about golden shower porn,” she said.

  “Really? What’s he saying? Can you see it?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. Some things were truly eternal.

  Jepp/Nico continued, quaffing his beer. “The court chamberlain von Rumpf is in a snit because Rudy spent the night with that hateful valet Philip Lang again last night.”