London Underground: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 2)

by Blodwedd Mallory

Two attackers, one Illuminati and one Dragon, made a last-ditch attempt to rush me to get the sword. The Illuminati struck first, swinging at me with the sharp prongs of his fist weapon. They connected with my hip, drawing blood with a cold burn.

  The pain of the new wound infuriated me, and I grunted at him. I clenched the fist of my left hand, casting a blood rupture spell which caused his heart to stutter and stop. He fell back, grabbing his chest, and rolled off the stairs to the Mithraeum floor, disappearing in a flash of light.

  I pointed the blade at the Dragon who was scuttling up the stairs toward me on the right with a shotgun held at his waist and feinted an angry jab at him. Finding himself alone on the dais with me and the sword, he backed away, raising his hands and the shotgun in a gesture of surrender. The scar on my middle finger tingled fiercely as if urging me to continue attacking with the sword.

  Luckily my blood corruption was low, so even though I was furious, my mind was utterly clear. I kept the sword trained on the Dragon, ignoring the desire to exceed my training and pursue him. One of the uniformed Templar soldiers captured him from behind by the arms and walked him off the dais, keeping me from second guessing my resolve.

  Taking a deep breath to calm my roiling emotions, I looked around the room and realized that now the fight was over. There were a very few blue- and green-uniformed combatants left standing, and they were being taken into custody by the Templar soldiers. The bodies of those agents who had suffered anima exhaustion had disappeared, leaving only the aftermath of the damage in their wake. Bullet shells, dropped weapons, splatters of blood, chips of stone and dust littered the room as a red-uniformed clean-up crew entered the room and began to tidy up. I looked out the western archway, but there was no sign of Hadad.

  I limped over to Sevenoir who had moved to sit on the dais stairs, his burned legs clearly causing him significant pain, the raw wounds weeping fluid onto his ruined pants. His face was drenched in sweat, and he grimaced as he adjusted himself trying to get more comfortable.

  “Just my bloody luck. My legs will be ruined with scars for beach season,” he said as I approached. “Give me a little nick with the sword to put me out of my misery instead?” He was trying for pithy, but a certain sincerity rang in his words from the pain.

  I cast a mend spell on him to take the edge off his agony, golden light rushing to heal the raw and blistered skin there. He thanked me, panting, as the healing spell brought him some relief. I had a clear recollection myself of how badly burns hurt, and he had endured the pain while continuing to fight.

  Admiration for his skills welled up within me. Sevenoir had guided me throughout the fight as well, even while dealing with the combat and his own injuries.

  “Thank you for helping me with the fight,” I croaked out, my throat still raw.

  “I promised,” he said, wiping his forehead. “And I keep my promises.” He lifted the headset from his jaw and ear and leaned over to me and said in a low voice. “But we need to talk soon about that Dragon you let get away.”

  I nodded and cast my eyes to the floor.

  Dame Julia’s voice crackled through my headset. “Job well done, soldier. I'm actually impressed. How did you manage to pick up the sword? The archeology team has been complaining for weeks that it couldn’t be moved.”

  I looked down at the blade, the golden pommel pressed against the coin-scarred marking in my right hand. I looked up at Sevenoir’s face, and my eyes widened in the alarm at not knowing how to answer her.

  “I’m not sure,” I mouthed and shrugged my shoulders for emphasis.

  Sevenoir put his headset firmly back in place against his jaw. “We’ll make sure all the details are in our report, Dame Julia.”

  “Very well, then. For now, bring the artifact out of there and take it to Mr. Gladstone in the library,” she continued. “Sevenoir, get yourself patched up. This will be a promotion for you. Come see me, and well done.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Reward

  We remained down in the Mithraeum long enough for a healer with the clean-up crew to triage and heal the burn wounds on Sevenoir’s legs and for someone to chase up a new pair of pants for him to wear. After a little searching, I found my black pumps and slipped them back on reluctantly.

  I held onto the sword. I didn’t want to put it down, and no one seemed intent on asking me to. Dame Julia had told me to deliver it to Mr. Gladstone—the Templar Chief Librarian according to Sevenoir—and deliver it to him I would. I was actually delighted to have a reason to go there and meet him. Not only was I looking forward to seeing the library and its infamous magical tomes and artifacts, but I still needed access to a good Latin dictionary. Handing over a historical sword seemed like a good way to get started off on the right foot with the guy in charge of all the books.

  When Sevenoir was ready, we made our way out the same way we’d come in, although climbing the metal stairs in the Bazalgette was no fun. My legs were tired, and my feet ached from tromping around underground barefoot, then stuffing them back into the pumps. Once again I stepped on the balls of my feet to keep from breaking off a heel in the metal grates of the stair treads.

  By the time we got back to Temple Hall itself, Dame Julia was back at her usual station in front of two giant, ornately carved wooden doors on the far wall of the hall. Sevenoir explained that in addition to being the Special Assignment Supervisor, Dame Julia was also the Outer Warden of the inner Temple itself, the holiest of holies. I asked him if he’d ever been inside the Temple. He smiled enigmatically at me and didn’t answer the question, although he did point out that the Templar structure—the Temple, the hall, and the outer court—was positioned to point to the southeast and Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

  “That’s all the mysteries you’ll get from me today,” Sevenoir added as he finished with the explanation of the architecture. “The rest will need to wait until you are a full Templar.”

  I pouted, but by then, we had crossed the hall to Dame Julia.

  She greeted Sevenoir, then turned to me.

  “I see you’re back as well. I’m not sure I asked you specifically to return, but,” Dame Julia made eye contact again with Sevenoir as she gestured to us both, “it’s good to see you two in one piece.”

  She put her hands back on her hips. “Sevenoir, this is a step up in rank for you for your excellent work in protecting the sword and Ms. Mallory here, as well as holding your ground until reinforcements could arrive, and all while you were injured in the battle. We’ll see to your advancement shortly. Thank you for your good work.”

  Sevenoir nodded, and I muttered a half-hearted thanks under my breath, thinking to myself, “What am I, chopped liver?”

  Dame Julia narrowed her eyes and scowled, visibly counting to ten, and Sevenoir looked at me in horrified amazement, stifling a laugh.

  Whoops. I may have actually thought that out loud. Damn it. That sub-vocalizing headset had me all confused as to what was inside my head and what wasn’t.

  She scowled at Sevenoir, who was struggling to keep a straight face, and drew in a deep breath, before continuing. “Look, I've been a soldier all my life, Ms. Mallory, and I'm not sure I can give you the appreciation you're looking for and, maybe, deserve. You remind me of myself at your age, going on wild adventures with Miss Plimmswood, saving the world and turning conventions on their head.”

  I looked up at her, surprised and pleased, giving her a bright smile. Maybe there was hope for me yet.

  Her eyes widened with alarm, and she shook her head at me sternly in response. “Don't take this as a sign that we’re becoming friendly. I do not fraternize with anyone, least of all those below my rank. I believe in rules, traditions, and decorum. Still, you are showing promise. We will talk again, I'm sure. Until then, go take that sword to Gladstone as I asked.”

  Dame Julia shooed me away with her hand while she indicated to Sevenoir that he should stay so they could talk about plans for all the new recruits anticipated to start hitting Eal
dwic in the next week.

  Ugh. I was still being treated like a child, being sent from the room whenever the conversation got interesting.

  I scowled in frustration as I shuffled back across the hall. I was at a loss as to what to do. I thought I’d done a good job down at the Mithraeum and held my own in the fight. However, Dame Julia had boiled that all down to “showing promise.”

  Clearly, I was not yet welcome at the Templar bosom. I looked down at the priceless sword still in my hand, I figured that like a good soldier I had better do as I’d been told if I had any hopes of winning Dame Julia’s acceptance for real.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Road Back

  I walked down the steps and west across the courtyard to the Library, which sat on the left side of the road in front of Temple Hall. Temple Library had a suitably grand entrance in keeping with its collection’s prominence in the occult world. A set of stone stairs led into the building, which was lit up like candles on a birthday cake.

  Inside the main foyer with the four-armed cross etched into the marble floor was a grand staircase that branched gracefully to the right and left. There were Templar guards sprinkled throughout, impressive in their red and black uniforms. I had read that the library was at the very heart of the building, surrounded on all sides by meeting spaces and lounges and that it was a frequent spot for people to gather to chat or study. I trudged up the staircase to find out, beginning to feel somewhat awkward about wandering around with an unsheathed ancient sword in my hand. However, it didn’t garner much notice. Apparently, historical artifacts were commonplace in the heart of Templardom.

  On the second floor, I stepped off the landing through the threshold into one of the lounges. The room was boldly decorated in deep red, from the carpet to the walls, the color broken up only by the sparkling white crystal chandeliers hanging from the wooden paneled ceiling and the golden sconces which lined the walls. Even the overstuffed leather seats and couches were red, and I ruminated sourly to myself that this would be a great place to stage a bloody massacre. No one would ever know it had happened.

  I turned right to move toward the inside of the building, and at last, the glory of the Templar library itself was revealed. It was a circular, two-story space, the walls lined with bookshelves, a giant translucent dome of leaded glass overhead filling the space with ambient light. There must have been thousands of texts here. Delicate wrought-iron staircases wound around to the second-floor catwalk, the shelves of volumes there broken up periodically by large classical oil paintings of scenes from antiquity. The center of the room was filled with wooden reading tables, lit with low golden lamps.

  It was a book lover’s paradise, and I took a deep breath in to enjoy the evoked scents of chocolate and coffee that wafted from the antique pages. I could hardly wait to spend time here looking at the collection in more detail.

  Almost directly across the room from where I entered, I could see a bearded man in a black tunic talking to two short-haired women in very short dresses. I wondered if this was who I was looking for.

  He looked up from the conversation and waved me over.

  “You must be Wedd,” he said as I approached. “Dame Julia sent a courier, although I could hardly miss you. Not everyone runs around with a sword, at least in here.” He smiled and gestured around the room. “I’m Iain Tibet Gladstone. Welcome to my library. Or, at least, a tiny part of it.”

  I cocked my head at him. “Where is the rest?”

  “Oh, underground, of course,” he answered.

  Well, of course it was. I fought the urge to face-palm. I’d been underground quite enough for the past few days.

  “Let’s have a look at that sword, shall we?” Leaving his companions standing at the wall, Gladstone directed me to a big desk in the center of the room. I placed the sword on the wooden top carefully, feeling a twinge of regret as it left my hand. To cover the feeling, I rubbed my hands together briskly.

  “Ah, the famed sword of Caesar, the ‘yellow death’ as it was called, or Crocea Mors in the historical vernacular.”

  “Why ‘yellow death’?” I asked.

  “Well that’s a good question, and I’m not sure we know the answer for certain,” he said, scratching his beard. “Depending on who is telling the story, it was also called ‘red death’ or ‘grey death.’ It was Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain, however, who called it ‘crocea’ after the ‘crocus sativus,’ the flower which was cultivated for saffron. The golden yellow of that spice is perhaps a good match for the pommel of this sword, is it not?”

  He pulled a glass jeweler’s eye ring out of his pocket and bent down to look closely at the gladius, which was in fantastic shape for a weapon that was nearly 2,000 years old. Gladstone mumbled and oohed under his breath as he examined the sword.

  Finally, he stood up straight and clapped his hands with glee. “My favorite kind of artifact! A magic sword, with a checkered past, not unlike my own. There are a few, you know, which are reportedly lost here in the British Isles. Some of them quite well known. This one is perhaps not as infamous as some, but all the more interesting because it is apparently not the conjuration of a lake undine or a would-be historian.”

  He paused and cleared his throat. “Oh. You’re no doubt related to old Tom of Warwick. Sorry. No offense intended.”

  Huh? I stared at him in bafflement. Old Tom of Warwick? What was he talking about? A lightbulb went off in my head. Sir Thomas Malory. Le Morte d’Arthur. Magic swords. Excalibur. Right.

  “The question in my mind,” Gladstone said, changing topics, his right eye overly large and startling behind the jeweler’s ring as he peered at me, “is, how did you pick it up? The archaeologists who were excavating the Mithraeum were convinced that the sword was fused in some manner to the altar there.”

  “I… I don’t know. I just put my right hand on the pommel and picked it up.” I said “The area near the altar was on fire and I was afraid the artifact would be damaged. I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to… move.”

  “You did the right thing,” Gladstone assured me. He stretched a bit, the beaded pendant he was wearing around his neck bouncing off his breast. “It needed to move. Protecting that Mithraeum, as you know, was becoming a bit of the bother with the Dragon and Illuminati hot on the trail.”

  Gladstone leaned in conspiratorially, “Did you know that this particular sword is alleged to kill everything the wielder strikes with it instantaneously? In a battle between the Romans and the troops of Canterbury and what is now London, Nennius, an ancient British prince, captured it from Caesar in personal combat when it got stuck in his shield. Nennius wasted no time and freed the sword to use it to massacre the rest of the Romans who got within reach. Unfortunately for the prince, Caesar had clobbered him in the skull with the sword before it got stuck in the shield. Ultimately, that did him in.”

  Gladstone clucked his tongue ruefully. “Infection, two weeks later. Well, I suppose to a magic gladius, a death is a death…”

  I gave him an awkward smile, suddenly glad that I hadn’t actually hit anything with the sword myself. There was no need to tempt fate. With my luck, I was surprised I hadn’t tripped over it or something. Or accidentally stabbed Renee with it, I thought, with a gulp. I rubbed my hands together again, nervously, running the fingers of my left hand over the scar on my right.

  “Nennius was supposedly buried with the sword near the North Gate of the old city, which is…” breaking off from his story, Gladstone eyed my palm as I rubbed it.

  “Say, what’s that you’ve got there? That’s quite a scar.”

  I turned my palm over so he could inspect it, the precise brand of Caesar’s profile and name imprinted there from my run-in with the superheated coin. The scar now looked years old, even though it had only been there a few days.

  “Hmm…” Gladstone looked at me speculatively. “And you say you just picked the sword up by the pommel.”

  I showed him the scars
of the sun and the moon on the ends of my fingers as well.

  “Oh! To have the sun emblazoned on your finger. The sun! There a topic close to my heart. And close to yours too, since it is branded onto your heart finger!” he crowed with delight. “What this all means shall be a fascinating set of events to watch unfold, Wedd.”

  At my look of concern, he gestured to reassure me. “The unconquered sun, defining your heart’s purpose and your ability to distinguish right from wrong. It's only natural, of course, to be alarmed. Light and darkness: life and death. The sun has fascinated and frightened humanity from the day we crawled out of the black oceans.”

  I was further alarmed by his glib explanation and pulled a face.

  He chuckled and gestured to the south wall of the second floor. “And there are a hundred books on this topic right up here for you to study to consider the implications.”

  I followed his gesture with my head and looked in awe at the sheer number of volumes that awaited me. Still, this was worrisome information. “What do you think the moon on my ring finger means?”

  “It could mean any number of things. Affinity with blood. Eternity. The feminine balancing force…to the masculine force of the sun.” Gladstone tapped a finger against his lips. “We shall see what it means in the future.”

  “You mean…you don’t know now?” I asked anxiously. “It’s not in one of these books?”

  “Bah,” Gladstone said with an irritated swipe of his hand at the room. “One thing you learn quickly in a place like this is that there's no singular truth. There are no facts. History is…is mutable, history morphs, in form and shape, context and content. All us historians can do—arcane or not—is pick through the wreckage and attempt to piece together the broken bits in the hope that it'll teach us something.”

  He gestured to a Templar guard standing at the wall, who joined us at the desk, and gave him instructions as to where to place the gladius in temporary storage pending further investigation. Rather than invite the question of whether anyone else could move it, I picked the gladius up off the table and placed it in the guard’s gloved hands, who gave me a brief nod and retreated to follow Gladstone’s instructions.