‘Albert’s one of us?’
‘They all are. The Antiquarians run every museum as far back as the Great Library of Alexandria.’
‘So what would you have done?’
‘Just show him the mark.’ She pulled back her sleeve to reveal the snake tattoo. ‘Or in your case, the almanac. Since you don’t have the mark yet.’
She turned a knob on the lamp and clicked a button until it lit. ‘He’s used to bumping into novices out of hours. The Order use this place as a testing ground all the time. Now we need to find a stepping stone.’
‘A what?’
‘Something that can get us back further, one that doesn’t exist in the future. How do you feel about becoming a third-level millenial tonight?’
‘Fine by me. Where are we going?’
She moved off between the exhibits, the beam of her lamp flicking from one side to the other until she found the sign.
In golden capital letters were the directions to the various departments.
‘Anthropology is on level four,’ she sighed. ‘We’re on the wrong bloody floor.’
33
Dalton's Spy
Jarius had worked for Dalton for three years, although ‘work’ was probably the wrong term; there hadn’t been any payment for what he did, only the very vague promise of a position of power once Dalton became a member of the council.
He’d followed Caitlin unnoticed through the various diversions she’d taken in time — it was his speciality. If there had been a need for such skills within the Order he would have risen through the ranks, but there was not. Nobody needed anyone followed. The Copernicans knew where everyone was at any given time and therefore made his innate skills rather redundant. The Draconians were the only other natural choice for his abilities and even he wasn’t suicidal enough to want to join them.
He watched the two figures, haloed in the sphere of lamplight, as they climbed the stairs to the floor above and knew that Dalton had been correct in his assumptions:
‘She’ll take him to the Great Library, probably via the Egyptian exhibition of 11.920,’ Dalton had told Darius during his briefing. ‘Follow her until you know for sure and then come back to me.’
‘So who won last time?’ Josh asked as they climbed the stairs.
‘Dalton,’ she answered through gritted teeth. ‘He brought back the chronometer from HMS Beagle. The ship that Darwin was on when he came up with his theory of evolution.’
‘Doesn’t sound that great. What’s so special about a clock?’ Josh said before realising that was probably the wrong response.
‘It was one of the six owned by the captain, Robert Fitzroy — without them he would never have found the Galapagos Islands.’
Josh wasn’t entirely sure what difference that made to anything. ‘Sounds boring.’
‘Darwin thought it was very entertaining — Yes, he’s one of us,’ she growled. ‘I’m going to beat him this time.’
‘You still haven’t told me how.’
They stepped out onto the landing and Caitlin made straight for the entrance to the ‘Exhibition of the Pharaohs’, as the banner declared — stretched between two golden sarcophagi.
‘He thinks I’m going to the Great Library. It’s where I usually start, but this time I’m changing it — this time we’re going to think a little bigger.’
‘Great! So we’re going back to the Pharaohs?’ Josh asked with wide eyes as he admired the golden objects arrayed inside the display cases.
Caitlin didn’t look up as she kept walking ‘No, we not going there, especially not the second dynasty — it’s forbidden.’
Before Josh could ask why, they left the opulence of Tutankhamen and walked through into the next section. This hall was dull by comparison, flanked by two massive sculptures of winged men with the bodies of lions and immense beards.
‘Assyrian,’ Josh read from one of the displays.
‘Too far back for you.’
‘How far?’
‘At least five thousand years. I promised Methuselah that I wouldn’t take you beyond the tenth epoch.’
‘I could do that easily. I’m not a kid.’
‘Do you know what happens to those who go outside their range?’
‘No, but I guess you’re going to tell me.’
‘That’s the thing, nobody knows. They never return, and not even the best Draconian has ever been able to reach them.’
Josh wondered what it was like to get lost in history. To end up somewhere with a bunch of cavemen sounded as if it would be quite a laugh.
‘So who are these Draconians anyway?’ he asked, changing the subject.
They were nearly through the Assyrian collection and Josh could tell from the way she was walking that Caitlin’s patience was wearing thin.
‘Do you mind if we put the lessons on hold until I’ve won this stupid game?’
The next room was full of old books, ancient manuscripts were laid open to display a beautiful illustrated panel or letterform. Josh tried to read some of the texts, but most were in German or Latin. The heavy characters of the words were so perfect he thought they could had been printed, but in places, he could still make out the pencil lines of the scribe who had prepared them.
‘Here it is,’ she whispered, as she opened the glass case of an ornate leather book, which was held shut with a series of iron bands.
‘What is that?’
She unlocked the book, and the leather cracked as she lifted the cover to reveal the frontispiece.
‘It’s a Wallachian Bible. It was from the time of Vlad the Impaler.’
‘Who?’
‘Dracula?’
‘No shit.’ Josh was suddenly very interested. ‘When was he?’
‘11.431.’
‘I’ve gone further back than that! I thought you were going to take me back another thousand!’
‘I said that in case one of Dalton’s minions was listening. Do you want to come or not?’
Josh held up his hands in surrender, he wasn’t going to turn down a chance to meet the original Lord of the Vampires. There was a small thrill as he placed his hand on the page, he was beginning to think he might enjoy this time travel thing after all.
Darius walked up to the Wallachian Bible, closed the cover and shut the glass case. He was glad he hadn’t left when he’d seen them enter the Egyptian section. Dalton had been wrong, and he was going to enjoy telling him so.
34
Dracul
[Transylvania, Romania. Date: 11.431]
The castle was cold, really cold. It was as if the stone were actually made from blocks of solid ice. Josh felt a shiver run down his spine as they crept down the spiral stairs of one of its towers. A storm lashed at the walls outside; the stairs were slick with the driving rain that sluiced through the arrow slits on every full turn of the staircase. Torches guttered in the icy wind that drained the heat from the flames, leaving only the faintest glimmer by which to see the ever descending steps.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Josh as quietly as he could through chattering teeth.
Caitlin was either ignoring him or couldn’t hear above the howl of the storm and continued down into the dark. Josh tried not to hear the distant screams of pain that were carried in on the wind or think too deeply about what the awful smell was that was rising up from somewhere below them.
He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t realise she’d actually stopped, and he found himself flailing around for a handhold to prevent himself from knocking her down.
They came to a landing. The walls were adorned with tapestries and a portrait of a medieval knight was hanging on the end wall.
‘Not much of a looker, is he?’ said Josh, unnerved by the way the eyes seemed to follow him around the hall.
‘That’s Vlad Dracul II,’ she whispered, ‘father of the impaler.’
‘Dracula had a dad? I thought he was immortal?’
‘Even if he was immortal, which he wasn’t, h
e would still have to be born, and that happened in the winter of 11.431. The father has just been invested in the Order of the Dragon, hence the epithet Dracul.’
‘So when did he start biting people?’
‘He didn’t. You do know that was just a story Bram Stoker made up in 11.897?’
He smirked. ‘So no need for the garlic or the crucifix, then?’
Caitlin wasn’t listening. She was distracted by something she was holding. It was a small ball made of glass.
‘What’s that?’
‘A lensing prism. Lets you split out the various possibilities.’
‘You mean you don’t know where you’re going?’
‘Shut up. I’m trying to concentrate,’ she snapped, closing one eye and holding the prism up.
Josh wandered over to inspect a collection of old shields and swords hanging on one of the walls. Their edges were pitted and nicked as if they had seen a great deal of action. He ran his finger along a blade, sensing the echoes of the terrible battles. Below them were a set of daggers with strangely carved bone handles. Josh took one and felt the weight of it in his hand. These were real historical items, ones that didn’t need a timeline to see what they had experienced.
‘Shit!’ Caitlin cursed under her breath.
Josh turned to see her putting the lens away and taking out a blade and looking around nervously.
‘What’s up?’
‘Monads — real vampires. We have to hurry!’
She grabbed him by the arm and walked quickly down the hall towards the portrait.
There was a door to the right, a small insignificant door with the symbol of a dragon on it.
‘I thought you said there was no such thing?’
‘Not now!’
‘Shouldn’t we just leave?’ Josh asked, but Caitlin was obviously not about to give up her plan. She opened the door slowly, trying not to make the hinges complain too loudly. The room was lit with an amber glow. The heat from a large open fire warmed their faces. It was a finely furnished bedroom with a sumptuous four-poster bed and furs covering every inch of the floor. In one corner was a cot in which a child slept soundly. The nanny sat snoring in the chair next to it. Caitlin nodded to Josh to watch the sleeping nurse, which he duly did — although he had no idea what to do if she woke.
Caitlin went over to the cot and carefully took a look inside.
The fire crackled, and the nanny stirred but did not wake. Josh looked over to the hearth.
Caitlin whispered his name, and he turned back to see her waving at him. He walked over to her, the fur-lined floor muffling any sound of his step.
The boy was no more than four or five years old. He was fast asleep and looked completely innocent of the life to come. Spinning slowly above the child’s head was the talisman of a dragon eating its own tail. Josh assumed that this was why Caitlin had called him over, but when he reached out to touch it she held his hand back and shook her head. She held out a small white tooth in the palm of her hand.
‘What’s that?’
‘His first tooth.’
Josh scoffed. ‘Really? Of all the things you could take? You want to play tooth fairy?’
‘Sometimes it’s not about the value of a thing, but what it represents. Haven’t you learned anything about what we do yet?’
‘Obviously not,’ Josh said with a mystified look.
Suddenly there was an inhuman scream from the other side of the door.
Josh saw Caitlin go white, her eyes wide, and he turned to see a ghostly figure walk through the very solid-looking oak door. The thing had no eyes, and a dark hole where its mouth should have been. Its body was distorted, like a bad copy of a corpse.
Josh instinctively opened the timeline of the dagger he was holding and pulled Caitlin into the first time point he found.
35
Lost
[Northwest Europe. Date: Unknown]
Josh woke slowly, surfacing from a dream in which he had travelled back to Dracula’s castle and been killed by a werewolf — who’d been the boy’s nanny. He’d been cold, frozen to the core — which must be what death felt like.
He tried to move but found that his arms were held down by something warm and thick. He attempted to open his eyes, but it was too dark to see.
‘Lie still,’ a woman’s voice whispered in his ear. ‘They’ll find us soon.’
He could feel her body warm against him, her breath on his neck, and he closed his eyes once more and fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next time Josh woke he felt more alert and this time when he opened his eyes he saw daylight. His arm brushed the furs that covered his naked body and without needing to turn he knew that Caitlin was curled up behind him. He listened to her breathing and felt her body rise and fall against his back. It was triggering all sorts of sensations. His heart started to beat faster as the blood began moving exactly where he didn’t want it to.
Josh tried to think of something else. Looking up, he saw that they were in a cave, although what they were doing here was a mystery. He could remember nothing after he had used the dagger to escape the monster.
‘You’re awake. I can tell from your breathing,’ Caitlin whispered in his ear. ‘Don’t move.’
There was a shock of cold air as she wriggled away from him, dragging some of the furs with her.
‘And don’t get any ideas. We had to conserve body heat, and this was the best I could do.’
He could hear her feet slapping against the rock floor as she walked away.
‘OK. You can look now.’
He raised himself up on his elbow to find that he had been lying on a bed of tatty old furs in a cave full of skulls of creatures he’d never seen. Caitlin was wearing a mixture of skins and fur that covered most of her body. She threw something at him that looked like a long vest made from animal hide.
‘Put that on,’ she ordered, and disappeared further into the cave.
He could hear gurgling from somewhere, and a few minutes later Caitlin returned with a crude wooden bowl full of clear spring water.
‘Drink this,’ she ordered in a tone that inferred she was pissed off with him.
He did as he was told. The water was freezing and tasted of rock, but it was refreshing, and he drank the whole bowl in one go.
She sat down by the remnants of a fire and poked at it with a bone, then slowly added dry tinder and sticks until it was burning well.
Josh was disorientated, his head was still fuzzy and his stomach was empty, which made him feel weak. He sat down opposite her and let the fire warm his body.
‘You should put something else on,’ she muttered. ‘We have to stay here for a while. Until they come.’
‘Who?’
‘The Draconians, of course. They’re the only ones who can find us. Probably once we’ve died of hunger,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘What happened?’
She looked at him through eyes filled with fire. He could see the storm building in her. ‘You happened, that’s what happened. What were you thinking? What was your brilliant plan? I’m dying to hear it.’
‘I don’t know. I panicked.’
She picked up the handle of the dagger, there was nothing left of the blade. ‘You used a natural. Do you know how dangerous it is to use natural materials?’
He shook his head.
She waved her hand around the cave and then at their furs. ‘This dangerous. You made a jump into the periphery — the unknown past. We’re off the grid. I have no idea how far back. The tachyons don’t even work back here.’
He looked at his own watch. She was right, the dials had all frozen — it also explained why their clothes had disappeared.
‘But these Draconians will find us?’ he said, trying to sound hopeful.
‘They should be able to. The tachyons will be found in the future and then traced back.’
‘How far into the future?’
‘Oh, I’d say in about fourteen thousand years. By the
look of the ice, I would estimate we are somewhere in the Mesolithic.’
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Caitlin poked the fire absentmindedly while he tried not to think about how hungry he was, but he didn’t dare ask if there was any food.
‘Why didn’t you just use the tachyon to take us back,’ she asked, breaking their reverie.
‘Then you would have lost the game.’
‘It was only a game — no one was supposed to die,’ she sighed.
‘We’re not going to die,’ he said, pulling another fur around himself.
The wind roared, driving the snow into the cave and over his feet. Josh stood at the cave entrance; he could feel his hands going numb and went to put them in his pockets — which was when he realised he didn’t have any. The furs were warm, but they weren’t stitched together, and the cold air had an exceptional ability to find the gaps.
Caitlin was inspecting the bone handle, holding it up to the firelight to get a better view of the carvings. ‘This is a ceremonial handle, probably for a stone blade. They used them for skinning animals.’
Josh was only half listening; the noise of the wind was overwhelming. He watched as it scattered drifts of snow across the tundra. A herd of mammoth was making slow progress across the short stubby grassland, their coats matted with ice as they battled into the winds. He took a long, deep breath of the sharp, cold air — it was pure, as if the world were just waking from a long winter’s sleep.
Caitlin had said something about a land bridge and that the plateau before them would be the English Channel one day. They could walk to France, or Eurasia as she called it, if they could survive the cold.
Josh went back into the cave. ‘So what was that thing that came through the door?’
‘A monad — time wraith,’ Caitlin replied.
Josh dropped the gorse bushes that he’d collected on to the meagre pile of other burnable stuff they’d found. He rubbed his hands over the fire to warm them. They were raw from the cuts of the prickly thorns.
The Infinity Engines Books 1-3 Page 20