The Serpent's Curse
Page 28
Wade nearly laughed, then told her about Markus Wolff being seen at the riverside. “If Wolff is there, it has to mean something.”
Sara nodded sharply. “All right then.” She locked eyes with his father, then with each of the others. “We’re going to the river. The hunt is on.”
“Yes!” said Darrell, slapping Wade’s shoulder and giving Lily a high five. “It’s on, all right. It’s on until it’s done!”
Julian smiled. “My limo is just outside. “We can be there in ten minutes.”
As they hurried across the marble floor of the abbey and out into the bustling noisy streets of London, the children knew there would nevermore be an atom of doubt.
They were on their quest once more.
They were the Novizhny.
They were Guardians.
EPILOGUE
North Sea
October 30, 1517
Evening
The whole thing was no more than a blur to Helmut Bern’s fevered mind.
There’d been a flash, and something like a hundred-foot blade going through his chest, and he’d been sucked through an industrial-strength garbage disposal, ground down to nothing, and his bits reassembled. In the proper order, he hoped.
You there, sir . . .
But where in the world was he? His eyes ached when he glanced around.
You there, sir . . .
He appeared to be on the deck of an ancient sailing vessel. His stomach twisted. The ocean was stupid. As the ship tumbled up and down over ridiculous waves, he shivered under a filthy, mouse-ridden blanket of some kind. He was very cold. And also hot. His face felt like a frying pan. But why wasn’t he at Greywolf? And where was the woman? And Kronos?
“You there . . . sir,” a voice said in German.
Some tedious man bent over him. He was dressed in a variety of cloaks and sashes and belts as if it were Halloween. Is that a sword at his waist? Good God!
“You, there, Brother—”
“Yes? Yes? What’s wrong with you?” Helmut snapped. “I hear you. Where the devil am I?”
“Where . . . Brother?”
“Where!” Bern snapped at the man. “As in at what location! And why do you keep calling me ‘brother’?”
The ship rolled suddenly, lifted like a speedboat, then crashed into the waves again. Lord, the air stank. He tried to sit up but couldn’t get his legs unstuck.
“You wear the cloak of a monk, sir,” the man said.
Monk? An image flashed across his mind. Yes, yes. He awoke some hours ago surrounded by stone, didn’t he? A church? Kronos! He saw it. Kronos was in a church. And he had stumbled out of the place and there was the shore, and a ship and . . . He must have blacked out after that, because suddenly he was here.
“What bloody year is this?” Helmut asked.
The Halloween man arched back as if the question were idiotic. He had intelligent, thoughtful eyes, creased with worry and study, perhaps. A scholar, Helmut thought. But a swordsman, too. The man was pleasantly bearded and tanned, well built, perhaps forty or forty-five, with a slouchy velvet hat perched on his head to complete the costume.
“The year of our Lord 1517, sir.”
The gears in Helmut’s brain stuttered. 1517? Copernicus had taken a sea journey from Cádiz in Spain in 1517. He himself had programmed the very coordinates into Kronos. But . . . no! It couldn’t possibly be! Could it? Had he, Bern, actually done it? Had he actually managed to program Kronos I to send him back safe and sound into the past, with such absolute accuracy? He was a genius! Here was the bloody proof!
For the first time, Helmut peered closely at the man standing over him. The look of his face, as clear as it could be through blurry eyes, was as identical to the portraits as any face could be.
“Ha! Ha-ha! You are he!” he cried. “You are Nicolaus Copernicus!”
“Do I know you, sir?” he said. “You rather remind me of someone I once knew.”
“When did we leave Cádiz? And where are we bound?”
“Cádiz, sir?” said the man he suspected to be Copernicus. “We did not leave Cádiz.”
A cold knife blade of fear entered his spine. “Not Cádiz? But . . . then where is this bloody ship going?”
“Brother, we are en route to England.”
“England? England!”
Crouching closer, the man set his palm over Helmut’s forehead and eyes. “But there will be time for talking later, friend. You are unwell. . . .”
Helmut swatted the hand away and tried to rise, but the deck still refused to let him go. He looked down at the position of his legs. There was something wrong with them. And his fingers were curled, his wrists as weak as rope. He tried to examine them more closely, but seawater kept dripping over his eyes. The skin of his hands was dark red, as if he’d fallen asleep under a sunlamp. His cheeks were raw, and the salt spray stung him. Hot and cold again, both at the same time. “What in the world . . .”
“I know these sores,” the man said. “My own brother . . .”
Was Copernicus speaking of his own brother?
The poor Andreas, who everyone knows died of . . . leprosy?
It came at Helmut with the force of a tsunami. The journey in Kronos had not only taken him to the wrong place and time, it had done something else to him. The particle injection! The radioisotope! It had sickened him!
Just then a shape moved behind the astronomer. Was this the legendary young assistant, Hans Novak, creeping behind his master?
But it was not Novak. It was not a boy at all. It was a girl. Long brown hair, wet, clinging to her face. A . . . parka . . . a modern parka; her cheeks wet, splashed by salt waves; bearing a crazed, puzzled expression; . . . and . . . I . . . know her!
“I know you!” Helmut screamed in English. “The American girl from Greywolf! They called you . . . Becca! What . . . what are you—”
Yet in that instant, just as she focused before his eyes, the girl vanished from the deck, as if the very air and waves had washed her into oblivion. Or back into the future from when she came.
“I am lost! Lost!” Helmut cried at the top of his lungs. “Bring me home!”
“Sir?”
“Bring me home! Bring me home! Bring me home!”
TO BE CONTINUED in The Copernicus Archives: Becca and the Prisoner’s Cross . . . and The Copernicus Legacy: The Golden Vendetta.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve always been fascinated by the layering of imagined story and factual research in a novel and how the two finally become (or should become) indistinguishable.
The Serpent’s Curse is of course a piece of fiction, though behind (and above and in between) that fiction was woven a good deal of reading, travel, conversation, code making and breaking, artwork, and a host of other oddments.
Of the books that have seeped into the present story, there are a good number; here are some of the main ones: Arthur Koestler’s brilliant novel about a man’s fight against inhumanity, Darkness at Noon, was a constant, not least for supplying me with the name Rubashov, but also for a certain sparkling bleakness of tone. Oh, and for the bit about pacing back and forth in a small cell that more than one character does here. Gulag: A History, by Anne Applebaum, and The Gulag Archipelago: 1918–1956, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, along with In Siberia, by Colin Thubron, were the prime sources for the setting of the Siberian work camp. James H. Billington’s The Icon and the Axe was useful as a starting place for study of the late-medieval period in Russia. Masha Gessen’s Words Will Break Cement and The Snowden Files, by Luke Harding, were helpful with background color and because they recount current events. On the lighter side, I have to mention Daniel Silva’s Moscow Rules and The English Girl, both delightful nightstand companions during the writing of this book.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go first to my family. They are the foundation upon which I am blessed to be able to write at all. Heartfelt gratitude also goes to Andrew Freeburg for his close reading of the story’s Russian pages, for his sugge
stions, and for correcting my more obvious mistakes in language and setting. Thanks to Patti Woods for her careful reading of the Venice episode; I do not, however, apologize for her subsequent desire to return there. To Kathryn Silsand and Karen Sherman, my copy editors, countless thanks (or rather, six hundred sixty thanks, based on the latest revision). To Karen, especially, who somehow read the story as deeply and fully as I wrote it, I send my best wishes and kindest thoughts and apologies for the length of the book. You are the best. As before and always, to Claudia Gabel, Melissa Miller, and Katherine Tegen, my good companions on this relic quest, my thanks beyond all thanks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Thomas Sayers Ellis
TONY ABBOTT is the author of nearly a hundred books for young readers, including the bestselling series The Secrets of Droon. Tony has worked in libraries, in bookstores, and in a publishing company and currently teaches college English. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs. You can visit him online at www.tonyabbottbooks.com.
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PRAISE FOR
THE COPERNICUS LEGACY SERIES
“I had to keep reminding myself The Copernicus Legacy
was intended for a young audience. Full of mystery and
intrigue, this book had me completely transfixed.”
—Ridley Pearson, New York Times bestselling author
of the Kingdom Keepers series
“The Copernicus Legacy takes you on a fantastical journey that
is as eye-opening as it is page-turning. With mysteries hiding
behind secrets coded in riddle, this book is like a Dan
Brown thriller for young readers. The further
you get, the more you must read!”
—Angie Sage, New York Times bestselling author
of the Septimus Heap series
“The Copernicus Legacy has it all: A secret code, priceless relics,
murderous knights, a five-hundred-year-old mystery, and
a story full of friendship, family, humor, and intelligence.”
—Wendy Mass, New York Times bestselling author
of The Candymakers and Every Soul a Star
“With engaging characters, a globe-trotting plot, and dangerous villains,
it is hard to find something not to like. Equal parts edge-of-your-seat
suspense and heartfelt coming-of-age.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Fast-paced and clever, the novel reads like a mash-up of the National
Treasure films and The Da Vinci Code.”
—Publishers Weekly
BOOKS BY TONY ABBOTT
The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone
The Copernicus Archives #1: Wade and the Scorpion’s Claw
CREDITS
Cover art © 2014 by Bill Perkins
Logo design by Jason Cook/Début Art
Cover design by Tom Forget
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COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE COPERNICUS LEGACY: THE SERPENT’S CURSE. Text copyright © 2014 by HarperCollins Publishers. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Bill Perkins. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014937634
ISBN 978-0-06-219446-6 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-235159-3 (int.)
EPub Edition August 2014 ISBN 9780062194503
1415161718CG/RRDH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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