by Magnus Flyte
Max crossed the room in three quick strides. His anger had found a new focal point. He would not threaten the little man physically (not because of political correctness but because Nico had once demonstrated to Max with an uncooked potato a move Nico called “the testicle puree”), but he wasn’t going to let Nico treat this as another entertaining rotation in the great Wheel of Life, or whatever.
“They stole Pollina,” he thundered. “She’s sick and she’s blind and they took her. And now they want Sarah in exchange. Stop acting like it’s prom night.”
“He doesn’t want Sarah.” Nico waved a hand. “He wants Sarah to open up a hell portal. And he found a very efficient means of getting her to do it. He won’t harm the child, whom I will remind you is very close to dying anyway. But nobody wants her to be murdered. This will be prevented. You and Sarah will get her back. She is not important to him.”
“Who? Edward Kelley?”
“Edward Kelley.” Nico’s eyes were shining. “Edward Kelley. Or possibly Dee. It has to be one of them, and from all the little tricks I’m thinking it’s Kelley. Dee was rather a sweetie. I can’t see him snatching little girls.”
“Your ‘Moriarty.’”
“Yes. Kelley must have taken the same drug Tycho forced on me.”
“But why does Edward Kelley want to open a hell portal in the Star Summer Palace?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because that is where the Fleece is. Perhaps it is the presence of the Fleece that creates a hell portal. But if it’s Kelley, he’ll know what the antidote is. He’ll know how to help me die.”
“But how can you be so sure that Kelley will be able to kill you?”
“You cannot have the code for life without the code for death.” Nico smacked the table with his hand. “Death is everything. Death, therefore, art. Therefore, religion. Therefore, sex. Therefore, drugs, wall-to-wall carpeting, salad forks, the Westminster dog show, Barbie, Twitter, soap on a rope, and ShamWow.”
“ShamWow?”
“It’s a towel. Very absorbent. Oksana ordered one off the Internet. I am trying to say good-bye to you.”
“I know. Your requiem sucks. And you might be wrong. Even if it is Kelley, he might not be able to reverse the curse. If he had it, wouldn’t he have used it on himself?”
“Edward Kelley has had a choice!” Nicolas thundered. “That is the difference. I have had no choice. I am Time’s pawn. I am History’s bitch.”
“Okay, that’s a little dramatic, even for you.”
“Pandora opened a jar out of curiosity and all the evils flew into the world. She shut the jar and caught Hope in the lid. It’s all I have. You’ve always been supportive of my suicide. Don’t get soft on me now. This is my moment of exaltation. Kill not my buzz.”
Nico leaned over and flipped open the door to the cage that held the rat. The animal immediately ran up Nico’s outstretched arm, nuzzled the little man’s ear, and then settled himself on Nico’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Hermes,” said Nico, with more tenderness than Max had ever heard in the man’s voice. “I would never leave you here alone. We’ll go together.”
“I can look after the rat,” Max said.
“Not this rat.”
A silence fell between them.
Max found that his anger had dissipated, replaced with a profound sadness. You are the only family I have, Max wanted to say. Don’t leave me.
“You will have a family of your own,” Nico said, as if reading his thoughts. “And you don’t need me as much as you think you do. Also, I’ve stolen a number of things from you.”
“I know you have.”
“And if Sarah had let me sleep with her, I would have.”
“Okay. The moment you’re dead I’m shagging Oksana.” Max turned away, trying to control the spasm in his throat.
“It all comes down to sex, apparently,” said a familiar voice. Max turned. Sarah was standing in the door of the library. She looked like hell. She looked wonderful. “All right, I’m here and I’m ready to open a hell portal to get Pols back. The question is . . . what happens after that?”
“Precisely,” said Nico. “It’s very exciting.”
THIRTY-SIX
During the drive from Innsbruck to Prague Sarah had tried to work through the possibilities of what she was about to face, and to make sense of what she had seen and experienced at the Schloss. She had told Gottfried about what Heinrich had confessed. He had called an ambulance for his brother—and the police. But she couldn’t think about them now.
She had tried to keep the image of Pollina clear in her head, to let the girl know she was coming, that it would be all right.
Bettina Müller was not the answer. There was another answer. She would find it. She was not afraid.
Now, Sarah looked over her shoulder at Nico, in the backseat of the Mini Countryman Gottfried had not objected to her commandeering. Nico was dressed to the nines in a custom cream silk Armani suit with Bettina’s rat in his lap. A rat that had been made immortal by twenty-first-century alchemy sitting in the lap of a man made immortal by the careless machinations of an astronomer in the first year of the seventeenth century.
Anything was possible, it seemed.
“Did you find anything out about the galleon at the castle?” asked Nico.
“I found something,” Sarah said. “But not that.”
She had the cure for immortality in her pocket. It was what Nico wanted, more than anything else. Had it been for Nico that Philippine had given it to her? Sarah loved Nico, but she hadn’t been thinking of him when she asked Philippine for help. And Philippine would have known that, because for that moment they had been one. The ultimate desire of alchemy. Two into one.
Sarah looked at Max, driving with his usual breakneck speed westward across Prague.
“I love you,” she said.
The car swerved, then straightened.
“I love you, too,” he said.
• • •
The Star Summer Palace was not visible from the entrance of the park, which had been a hunting preserve in Ferdinand’s time. Max parked the car on Libocká. It was freezing cold. They all pulled out flashlights, though the moon was full and luminous. Sarah knew that Max was carrying a gun. Nico slipped into the darkness and she began to run, Max keeping pace beside her, but stopped when they turned into the long avenue that led to the palace.
The building shone white and stark in the darkness. Max had told her in the car that the roof had been rebuilt several times over the years, but the original structure as Ferdinand had designed and built it was intact. A star disguised as a palace. A secret disguised as a star. She told him what she had seen at the von Hohenlohe Schloss in Innsbruck.
The gravel crunched under their feet.
She knew that in the past this place had been the scene of much violence. The Battle of White Mountain had been fought near here in 1620 and—Sarah paused as a horse, screaming and wild-eyed, and dragging a bloody rider behind it, his stomach pierced by a broken stave, thundered past her.
“What?” Max whispered, grabbing her arm. His touch restored her vision. The avenue was once again silent and peaceful. Sarah shook her head. The Westonia should have worn off hours before.
“I think the past here might be stronger than the present,” she said.
She stared at the building before her. The foundation, Nico had told them, was a circle with a radius of sixty feet. From that rose six peaks of the star formation, each set precisely sixty feet from one another. The original height had been sixty feet from bottom to top. The interior was a series of circles and hexagons.
“We’ll have to break in,” Max said. “There’s probably an alarm system, too. Although maybe . . .” He stopped talking.
A figure stood at the entrance to the building. A small figure, in a heavy long black cloak. A figure who now raised an arm in a bizarrely cheerful wave. Nico appeared beside Sarah, squinting.
“Who is that?” he asked sharply.
They drew closer. It was now clear that the figure was a woman, slim, with large eyes set in a pale oval face. Her features were very delicate. Her short hair was almost white.
“You?” said Nico.
The woman narrowed her eyes at Nicolas. “You were a foul abortion in 1601,” she said. “And I see that time has not improved you.”
“Elizabeth Weston,” said Nico. “No.”
“No,” said Sarah. “That’s Bettina Müller.”
They looked at each other, then back at the woman.
“I am Westonia,” she said with a smile. “The Tenth Muse. The greatest poet of her age. And I am Bettina Müller, the greatest scientist of this one. And a great many other names along the way.”
“Okay, fine,” said Sarah. “But right now I don’t care what you call yourself. Because unless you hand over Pollina in about five seconds”—she gripped the bars—“you’re just another cunt I’m sending to Hell.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Where is she?” Sarah rattled the wrought-iron gate. “Pollina. Now.”
Bettina pulled a phone out of her heavy cloak and passed it through the bars. Sarah held it to her ear.
“Pols? Pols?”
“I’m fine,” said the voice, Pollina’s voice. “But, Sarah, don’t do it. Don’t do what she asks. It’s profoundly wrong.”
What is she asking?
“Where are you?” Sarah pressed the phone hard into her ear.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you get outside? Can you hear anything? Smell anything that would tell us where you are?”
Sarah glanced over and saw Bettina standing there calmly, arms crossed, watching her. Max and Nico, too, were waiting for a signal.
“Nothing. I’m locked in. But listen to me, Sarah. I need you to really listen.”
“Okay,” said Sarah, crouching down. Her heart was pounding, her breath making frosty clouds in the air. Only a mile or so away, it was just another late fall night in Prague. She could hear faint blasts of Donna Summer from a nearby club. And yet here she was, dealing with—what?—a crazed scientist? A four-hundred-year-old psychopathic poetess? She was going to stick with the former for now. She focused on what Pols was saying.
“I’m okay with dying,” Pols said. “If this is the end, here, it’s all right. Do you understand? I know I’m only thirteen, but I’ve done everything I hoped to do. I’ve loved and been loved. I’ve made music. I have had the best of life. And I’m going to die anyway.”
“Don’t say that.” It couldn’t end like this, over the phone.
“I’ve always known I wouldn’t live a long life. I think if you look into your heart you’ll realize you’ve always known it, too. So you must let me go. Let me go, Sarah. I will always be with you. Don’t put such stock in this physical body. It’s not what lasts. Love is what matters. You know that. That’s what the visions have shown you, isn’t it? Passion, in all its forms, that’s what endures.”
Sarah couldn’t speak.
Pols continued. Her voice was clear and calm. “God has always had a special plan for me, and I don’t want anyone messing with that. Okay?”
Sarah refused to accept what Pols was saying. If she did, she had the sense she would fall into an abyss there was no climbing out of.
“I’m coming to get you,” she said. The phone went dead. Sarah examined it. A burner phone, no other calls on it.
“I love modern technology,” said Bettina as she unlocked the gate. “You have no idea how annoying this all would have been in another century. Letters, carriage rides, messengers to bribe . . .”
“Spare me,” said Sarah. Her adrenaline was heightening all of her senses. She could smell things on Bettina—metallic scents, herbs, something harsh and chemical as well. No fear. That was bad.
Bettina gave a tight smile as Sarah, Max, and Nico came through the gate. “I’ve given the security guard a little tranquilizer so we’ll have the place to ourselves. And I’ve shut off the electricity—we don’t want anything interfering with the natural energy of the site.”
Max had his gun out in an instant and pointing at Bettina.
“I’m immortal,” she said impatiently. “I’m surprised I need to spell it out for you all. If you don’t do exactly as I ask, Pollina will die.” She looked at Max. “Harriet will see to that.”
Harriet stepped out of the shadows, eyes downcast. She was dressed in court costume of the seventeenth century and seemed barely able to stand. Her eyes were rolling. Drugged. She lurched toward Max, who held her by the shoulders, looking horrified.
“You did this to her?”
“She did it to herself,” Bettina said calmly. “She was a very willing participant. But not a very good spy. Still, she is being rewarded. You will see.”
“You’ve known about me?” This was Nico now, coming forward. “All this time?”
Bettina pursed her lips. “Only recently did you come to my attention. We’ve been looking for the same things, though I suspect for different reasons. I hope you enjoyed all my little cards. You know, several times I almost called you and suggested we go have a nice chai latte at Starbucks and talk over the old days. We should be friends. And yet—”
Nico’s lip twisted in a sneer. “You cannot stoop so low. Nor can I. But . . . you found it?” The little man was trembling.
“Found what? I’ve found many things.”
Nico looked toward the palace, hopeful.
She opened the front door for them, a heavy wooden Renaissance-era door crisscrossed with iron. It slammed shut behind them with a heavy clunk.
They were standing now in a foyer between two of the points of the six-pointed star. The room was empty, except for a pile of boxes in one angle of the star, and lit with torches that cast shadows on the whitewashed walls and stone fireplace. In the flickering light, Sarah could see empty-eyed plaster masks staring down at them. Laughing, crying, staring, grimacing. The hair on the back of her neck went up, and the key between her breasts began to vibrate.
“Charming, isn’t it?” said Bettina. “Ferdinand did love his symbolism. Max, the folio?”
Max looked at Sarah. She nodded and looked away. She couldn’t look at Max.
She needed to hold on to her anger, stoke its fire, keep it at the boiling point. Anger was good. Anger fed action.
“I’ve read it,” said Nico as Bettina flipped through the papers. “The building is supposed to represent the cosmos and all that is contained within. All of the stucco work has alchemical parallels. Heroism, transmutation, incest, the chemical wedding. If the Fleece is here, it must be buried. Unless you already have it—?”
Bettina laughed. “Is that what you’re after?”
“Fuck the Fleece,” Sarah shouted. “I want Pollina back.”
“Don’t fight her.” Harriet in all her finery slunk against a wall. “She is Elizabeth Weston. You should do as she says.”
“Fuck the Fleece indeed,” said Elizabeth. “I stopped looking for that a long time ago.”
“Then what do you want?” Nico came forward and stared up at Elizabeth.
“To be reunited with my daughter,” said Elizabeth.
“Oh, I remember,” said Nico. “Which one do you want? The dribbler? Or the spitter? Or the cougher?”
With one hand Elizabeth grabbed Nico by the hair and threw him across the room. Before Sarah could even react, Max had Elizabeth by the throat.
“You may be immortal,” snarled Max, holding the butt of his gun to her head, “but I will club you like a carp if you touch my friends.”
“A Lobkowicz with something in his codpiece,” said Elizabeth. “Polyxena would be proud. Let me go. Remember your little Pols.” Max released her. Nico started to stand, and then sat down, heavily, his head in his hands.
“You want to die?” asked Sarah. She very much needed not to look at Nico right now. “And be with your daughter? Because I can send you to her. We don’t need a portal. I have the antidote. I’ll give it to
you after you give me Pols.”
She produced the vial from her pocket. Elizabeth stared at it.
“I have no idea what that is,” she laughed. “But I don’t care. Even if it is the antidote, I don’t need it. I don’t want to die.”
“You can’t want to live,” Nico whispered. “Not anymore. This is a curse.”
“You idiot,” Elizabeth spat. “A curse? You have done nothing with your time if you can’t think of anything better than dying. Ah, but your perspective is so small, isn’t it? Four hundred years and a dwarf is still small. But woman? Woman has risen! Woman will continue to rise! I want my DAUGHTER. She will live forever by my side. Together we will live to see the end of man. And now I have a way to bring Portia to me. That’s what I have been working for, all these years. I will bring her back. I will cure her sickness. And then, when her body is healthy and strong and pure, I will bind her telomeres with gold. And we will never be parted again.”
“It is impossible.” Sarah’s mind was spinning.
“You understand, Sarah,” said Elizabeth softly. “I know you do. The anguish at not being able to save the one you love? In that we are the same, we Weston women, aren’t we?”
“Don’t,” said Sarah. “Don’t try to girl bond with me. And how do you think Portia is going to be returned to you?”
Elizabeth spread her arms wide.
“You are going to take a dose of a time-perception drug, which a little bird tells me Tycho named after me. You will find Portia, and you will bring her with you through the portal. This can be done. I’ve been practicing.” Elizabeth turned to Max. “You can vouch for that.”
“Saint John,” Max said. “Jan Kubiš. You brought them through. How?”
“Time,” Elizabeth laughed. “Time brought me the answer. Time is the answer. The last century taught me that. Einstein taught us all that space-time can be bent by the presence of an enormously huge mass. Which is what a hell portal is, of course. A pocket of dark matter. But I needed the precise measurements of this power and how to manage it, which has taken practice. Another century. And I needed a portal here in Prague, near where Portia was. Not having a convenient key like mademoiselle here, I had to use a fair bit of alchemy to open the portals. I thought I had found all of them, until Harriet described the markings on the folio. Philippine bound this place very thoroughly with her spells so we must do things the old-fashioned way to find where the portal is hidden. And then I need you, Sarah, to open the door and be Portia’s guide. According to Harriet, you’re quite the little time-walker.”
