The Stone of Madness

by Nick Baker

  ‘Josef, he’s gone. It worked!’ cried Aurelia as the gate flared in response to Price’s passing, shimmering and glowing in a mesmerising show of pyrotechnics.

  ‘Of course, it worked,’ Frankl replied dismissively, at last visible in the corona of hellfire that surrounded the portal.

  Lily regarded the man as he lumbered towards her. He looked haggard following the exertion of his effort with dark rings surrounding his eyes and heavy jowls masking his jawline.

  ‘Price is a fool. He has no idea of what he’s blundered into. Quickly, Aurelia, you must also follow him. They’ll be waiting.’

  Aurelia hesitated. ‘But … the girl?’

  ‘Leave her to me,’ snapped Frankl, licking his lips in sick anticipation. ‘Go, Aurelia! The energy powering the gate is intrinsically unstable. It won’t hold for much longer.’

  ‘B-but …’

  ‘GO NOW!’ he screamed, looking hungrily at Lily.

  Aurelia hesitated. ‘You’re not planning—’

  ‘GET OUT OF HERE!’ Frankl commanded.

  Aurelia fixed Lily with a look bordering on pity then turned away, unable to hold the young girl’s gaze. She stepped forwards and followed Price into the void. The gate hissed malevolently as she disappeared, flaring in a conflagration of brilliant reds and yellows.

  Lily groaned as grief threatened to consume her, yet she resolved not to waste the opportunity her father had gifted her.

  Since she had been taken, her mind had wandered through brief periods of confused consciousness separated by long hours of drug-induced slumber. She had only fully awoken minutes before her father’s arrival with a thudding headache and the first semblance of sanity. Perhaps in his twisted mind, the man creeping towards her had wanted her to witness her father’s fate, and to be lucid enough for whatever wickedness he had in mind for her. No matter; it was the chink of light she had seized on from the moment her father’s words had stung her into action, and now, with her mind no longer encumbered by the drugs Aurelia had imposed on her, she was free to act.

  Lily closed her mind to the repulsive man edging towards her and sought the knowledge her father had taught her. Up until this point, she had never fully grasped the importance of the laborious alchemical exercises he had made her perform over and over again, but now, finally, she understood. She turned her attention to the cold metal of the manacles biting into her wrists and saw them for what they truly were: an amorphous complex of ferrous oxides masquerading as two rusted iron rings. In a rush of exhilaration, she poured her power into the metal, working her alchemical magic to transform iron into silicon. She felt the transition slide smoothly from one oxide into another—a metal transformed into glass. She smiled; could this be so easy?

  Where once cold, hard metal had bound her wrists, all she felt now was the soothing touch of cool, smooth glass. She clenched her fists, causing the muscles of her forearms to impinge on the brittle bonds that restrained her. With a sharp snap, the shackles shattered, releasing her hands amidst a diaphanous cloud of glass shards that tumbled silently to the floor.

  She watched the puzzled expression that flashed across Frankl’s face before he shrugged his shoulders and continued his advance. As he approached, he slavered, displaying an eager greed in his beetle black eyes. He hesitated ecstatically before stretching out his bloated fingers to touch her face.

  ‘Keep away!’ Lily hissed, pulling away in revulsion at the stench of his foetid breath and the anticipation of his inevitable touch.

  Frankl sniggered. ‘You’re hardly in a position to negotiate,’ he replied dismissively, brushing the matted tangles of hair from Lily’s eyes. ‘You’ve already witnessed the power I wield,’ he said, pointing grandiosely at the gate. ‘What could you possibly do to resist me?’

  ‘What have you done with my father?’ Lily spat.

  ‘Let’s just say he’s with old friends. There’s nothing you can do for him now. He prepares for his death as we speak. Now hush, little girl, your time fast approaches too. If you resist, you’ll only feel more pain,’ he said, allowing his fingers to trail down Lily’s face onto the smooth skin of her neck.

  Any lingering fear that Lily harboured was washed away with Frankl’s touch. She sensed the essence of his corruption and snarled at him like a feral dog. She could not bear his presence any longer, and with a sudden flourish, she brandished her hands and pushed.

  The strength of a slight, teenage girl was no match for a man of Frankl’s stature, but as Lily drove forwards, she did so as much with her mind as with her hands. With a sense of violence tinged with glee, she released the power coursing through her arms and sent Frankl toppling towards the seething void behind him.

  Frankl barely had time to register a look of incredulity on his face before he crashed through the gate and disappeared from view. With his passing, the gate released an arc of flames that erupted high into the room like a solar flare.

  Lily struggled to her feet, blinded by retinal burn. She staggered forwards, intent on following Frankl into the void, but as the blindness cloaking her eyes dispersed, she gawped helplessly at the empty abyss, dark and lifeless, where the gate had stood. She immediately understood that the portal had gone forever, and with it, her only chance of following her father. With an overwhelming feeling of despair, she fell to her knees, tears silently streaming down her face.

  How long she remained there, alone and desolate, in the summit of the dark, cold tower, she did not know. When the racking sobs finally ceased, she pulled herself up, and after casting a forlorn glance at the spot where she had last seen her father, she fled the room as fast as her enfeebled legs would carry her.

  30

  THE STONE OF MADNESS

  Pearly Black

  HENRY PRICE FLOATED WEIGHTLESSLY in the ethereal void where time held no earthly significance. It seemed like hours had passed in that grey and nameless place, but in reality, the time it took to traverse the gate was no more than a fleeting instant. He stretched his aching limbs and licked feverishly at his lips, head spinning. The stone floor felt cool and damp to the touch. His vision was blurred and insubstantial, but he could sense several indistinct figures standing around him beyond a circle of five stout candles that flickered uncertainly in a dank, windowless room. He hauled himself to his feet, but immediately collapsed back to the ground, restrained by an invisible barrier that held him in the cramped space into which he had materialised. He blinked away the rheum, and in time, his vision cleared to reveal the hazy outline of three figures.

  ‘Welcome to the vault. I’m so glad you could join us,’ said the man standing directly in front of him. The words were softly spoken and melodic, but sent a chill into Price’s soul, for this was a voice he had not heard for many years. He squinted at the face of a man he had never expected to see again, and in truth, could not believe he was seeing now.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the trouble we had in bringing you here, but such a convoluted trail was necessary, I’m afraid,’ the man declared. ‘Your allies were searching for your daughter everywhere, you see; we had to get her out of the city to a place they’d never find her. It was inevitable you’d follow her, which left us with the simple task of bringing you here.

  ‘Now, I hope you didn’t find the mode of travel too upsetting for your constitution, but even you must appreciate the beauty of utilising exotic matter in such a manner,’ the man continued in the same hushed tone. ‘You’ve just travelled through a Conjoined Spatial Gate. What do you think of the name, by the way? I thought of it myself, of course, but it could never do justice to the scale of my achievement. I always knew it was possible to create a tunnel through space, harnessing gravity to bend the very fabric of the universe, but as to creating a portal to allow passage, Henry, well who’d have thought it? But I digress, for I well remember how you dabbled with exotic matter, but it was just a little too sophisticated for you, wasn’t it?’

  Price stared in disbelief. He tried to respond but his throat was dry an
d all that came out was an unintelligible croak.

  ‘With time, even you might come to understand how a tunnel linking two points in space can be stabilised by exotic matter. Naturally, you require two exceptional alchemists on either side of the gate to maintain the energy for long enough, but, as you can see, we’ve power here in abundance,’ the man announced in a mellifluous tone.

  As Price’s vision gradually accommodated to the dim surroundings, the man’s features coalesced into a recognisable form. What he saw only confirmed the fear that had grown from the moment he had heard the man’s voice—a voice he had last encountered on the rooftop of a cold, deserted factory ten years previously.

  ‘P-Pearly?’ said Price incredulously as the man’s piercing blue eyes locked with his own. Price stared open-mouthed at the man’s face, still unsure of whether he could truly believe what he was seeing. The mop of black, shoulder length hair remained the same, as did the slight upturn of the man’s mouth, set in a supercilious smile. Black’s thick moustache remained, as ever, wickedly downturned at its ends, but it was the intensity of the spectre’s electric blue eyes that told him that this was no illusion. The only noticeable difference was the deathly pallor of his skin, evident even in the flickering murkiness of the enclosed space. Barely daring to take his eyes off the man’s face, Price turned his head to the right in response to a blur of movement as someone materialised out of nowhere, stepping forwards to join the group surrounding him. Price immediately recognised the woman who had mocked him and tugged at Lily’s hair, but her earlier malevolent glee was gone. She looked fraught and dishevelled, and still a little breathless following her journey through the portal.

  ‘Well met, Aurelia,’ said the man on his left, whom Price immediately recognised as Liquid Lex from mugshots of the perennial crook.

  Lex appeared unfazed by Price’s scrutiny, picking nonchalantly at long, grubby fingernails, but his reaction was in stark contrast to the final man making up the quartet as he lurked hesitantly in the shadows. Price looked over his shoulder and flinched, instantly recognising the man, despite the glare of candlelight flickering unerringly in the thick lenses of his glasses. Abel Strange bowed his head, averting his eyes in, was it pity or fear, under Price’s terrible gaze?

  ‘Get up,’ commanded Black, and as he spoke, Price felt the bonds holding him momentarily slacken.

  He rose and looked around him. He was standing in the centre of a pentagram formed by the intersection of five lines running from the points of a star delineated by a candle positioned on each vertex and etched on the stone floor in bold, white, geometrically precise lines. At the apex of the shape stood Black with his confederates located on the other points apart from a single space that remained oddly unoccupied.

  Just then, there was a loud pop before an amorphous figure emerged from nowhere, toppling forwards as if propelled by a redoubtable boot up the backside. The man fell in a heap from the momentum of his fall and slowly rolled to a halt in the vacant space adjacent to Strange.

  Josef Frankl struggled inelegantly to his feet and looked sheepishly at the astonished faces staring directly at him.

  ‘Bit of a dramatic entrance, Josef,’ said Black, his words heavily laced with irony.

  ‘I was, er, having some problems maintaining the link,’ replied Frankl, looking flustered after his inauspicious arrival.

  ‘That’s odd,’ replied Black suspiciously, ‘there seemed to be no problems at this end. Still, at least you’re here. And the girl?’ he added expectantly.

  ‘She’s, er, been dealt with,’ replied Frankl, failing to meet Black’s quizzical stare.

  Price looked over his shoulder to scrutinise the bloated features of Josef Frankl, surmising that this was the man lurking in the shadows at the summit of the tower. He had detected the hesitation in the man’s voice, inferring that he was lying, and for a brief moment, his heart soared.

  ‘Good,’ replied Black noncommittally. ‘At least now the pentagram is closed, and our guest is inescapably bound.’

  With these words, Price fully understood the significance of the symbol engraved on the stone floor. The five-sided figure was a religious sign of mysticism and power with a practical significance for many alchemical sects, and here, maintained by the collective will of his captors, it was a means to incarcerate him in an invisible cell. To create and uphold such an obstacle was too great a burden for a single alchemist, even with the potency of Black, but with the support of his allies to aid him, Price knew that any attempt at escape was futile.

  Price shook his head as if he could not quite believe what he was seeing. ‘Well, Pearly, I must confess I didn’t expect to find you at the root of such a convoluted trail, but here you are,’ he began with as much composure as he could muster. He knew that Black meant to kill him, and if he was going to thwart him, he needed time to think. ‘I always knew you coveted eternal life, Pearly, that much was obvious from your time at the Academy, but I never supposed you’d actually achieve it,’ he continued, enunciating his words deliberately.

  ‘The facts are irrefutable. I saw you tumble from the rooftop and witnessed you perish with my very own eyes. No one, even you, Pearly, could have survived such a fall. And yet, here you are. How can that be, I wonder?

  ‘Let me see,’ Price continued seamlessly, ‘first of all a book goes missing from my library; a book I deemed to be of little consequence, yet the nature of its theft suggested otherwise. It transpires that this book was one of a pair written by Alfons Piotrowski, which when held in unison with its twin would reveal the darkest secret of the Esoteric Brotherhood. Yet I still had no idea of the exact nature of the secret, but with you standing here before me now, at last, I finally understand. I don’t suppose I’ve ever congratulated you on your achievements before, Pearly, as so much of your work has been abhorrent to me, but at last, you’ve succeeded in something that has evaded some of our greatest predecessors. The control of exotic matter is one thing, but as for resurrection, well, who’d have thought it?’ he said, shaking his head in mock bewilderment.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Black announced to his allies, who were observing the exchanges with interest. ‘The great Henry Price offering me his congratulations,’ he continued, before returning his attention to his enemy. ‘It should be music to my ears, but you don’t fool me, Price. I hear the derision in your voice, yet you shouldn’t mock me until you’ve learnt the truth. Only then will you realise how utterly you are defeated and know the depths of betrayal of those you consider your allies. Look no further than one of those amongst us,’ he added, gesturing over Price’s shoulder towards Strange.

  Price smiled. ‘It comes as no surprise to me, Pearly. Abel was always swayed by your easy charm and flattery, but have no doubt, he’s been a rather useful ally all these years. I knew that by keeping him close, I’d be forewarned of a re-emergence of the Order, and on that count, I was right.’

  Black’s eyes flashed, but a calmness rapidly returned to his alabaster face. ‘You’d be ill-advised to provoke me, Price. Perhaps you’re yet to grasp the gravity of your predicament. Your assumptions regarding Piotrowski are not as precise as you may think, but before you die, you’ll understand how utterly you’re under my sway.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ Black continued glibly. ‘The manuscript behind our emotional reunion was right under your nose all along. How does that make you feel, Price?’

  Price bowed his head, determined not to respond to Black’s goading. He knew it would be impossible to overwhelm so many opponents, and if only to verify this, he flexed his hands speculatively against the invisible barrier and felt the insurmountable strength of the force that held him. No. There had to be another way. He had to keep Black talking.

  ‘Go on then, Pearly, you’re dying to tell me about Piotrowski and his terrible secret.’

  ‘Ah, yes, this is a story that is both convoluted and strange.

  ‘Piotrowski gleaned much of his information concerning the stone from Nicolas Flame
l,’ began Black in full oratorical flow. ‘Flamel had previously learnt of the living stone in the fabled book of Abraham the Jew, but as my friends eventually discovered, that work was fatally flawed.

  ‘Piotrowski’s attempts at manufacturing the stone ended in disaster. After implanting the stone into an unsuspecting guinea pig, Piotrowski soon discovered that something was terribly wrong. When his victim escaped and embarked on a murderous spree, the Brotherhood were infuriated to learn of Piotrowski’s duplicity, and conspired to cast him from their ranks. Piotrowski was never heard of again … well, at least not by that name,’ he added conspiratorially.

  ‘Piotrowski escaped?’ Frankl ejaculated.

  ‘Exactly! When the Brotherhood forced Piotrowski to cease his work, they made him write everything down so that his knowledge would never be lost. Once he had completed the task, Piotrowski fled on the very eve assassins were sent to dispatch him.’

  ‘So Piotrowski wasn’t murdered,’ said Frankl, shaking his head.

  ‘Bravo!’ Black replied sarcastically. ‘Piotrowski knew the Brotherhood would never allow him to leave, and while he was enciphering his secret, he was also plotting his escape after forging an alliance with alchemists in England. He travelled incognito to London and spent the rest of his years living in secrecy under the protection of the Cyllene Order, a clique of Rosicrucians who were happy to provide him with the resources to finish his work.’

  ‘How are you so sure of this?’ queried Price.

  ‘Because I, too, became part of the same Rosicrucian Order over four hundred years after Piotrowski’s death,’ said Black triumphantly. ‘When the Rosicrucians learnt of Piotrowski’s predicament, they helped him escape, no doubt because of what they’d already gleaned of his work. The sect comprised of eight disciples, each sworn on pain of death to uphold the Order’s traditions and to select their successor before their own death. Not long after Piotrowski arrived in London, a brother of the Cyllene Order was found in the gutters with his throat slit, seamlessly facilitating Piotrowski’s transition into the sect.