Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy

by K. J. Wignall

  This was the only way into the chamber, he knew that much. It was unsporting of Wyndham, he thought, to let them come this far when he’d had this final trick in reserve all along. Will turned back to Eloise as the vibrations reduced once more to a background hum and the dust settled.

  She was shocked, but still managed to make light of it, saying, “OK, so the walls can be moved after all. But how do we get in now?”

  Will responded by walking to the point in the walls where the passage had been. He put his hands on the stone, once again reasoning that there had to be a mechanism involved. He stood there for a second and felt the stones stirring into life beneath his fingers. For a moment, he felt triumphant, but with his thoughts taking a sickening lurch, he realised he wasn’t opening the tunnel up again – the walls were certainly moving, but it wasn’t Will who was moving them.

  “Eloise, run! Into one of the tunnels – keep running!”

  He leapt backwards from the wall as it slid inwards and left. He turned, saw Eloise heeding his advice, darting into the tunnel they’d just used to get here. He started after her, but all five walls moved now, as if the pentagon was being twisted in on itself, and he realised the gaps in each of the four remaining passages were already too small for him to escape.

  “Will?”

  “I’m fine, keep going!”

  The pentagon of the chamber seemed to twist again, the five walls sliding over each other, the pentagon becoming smaller, the earth beneath him still vibrating. Another turn of the screw, and now the walls had almost reached the hilts of the bronze swords in the floor.

  There was no mistaking the intention. At some point these walls would meet, crushing him in the process. Will found himself oddly distracted by the question of whether that would kill him, or just leave him imprisoned and maimed for all eternity.

  But he had his sabre in his hand. If necessary, and while he still had space, he could attempt to sever his own head, at least ending things on something resembling his own terms. It sickened him though to think that Wyndham, who as far as Will knew had no reason to hate him, would succeed in destroying him this close to what Will had hoped was the end of his journey.

  “Will?”

  “I’m fine,” he called back, his anger building. He was angry with himself now, for always being so quick to embrace the idea of an easy death, for behaving as though Eloise meant nothing to him. He would not allow it to end like this.

  The walls started to move again, and this time he ran and leapt at one of the walls as it slid towards him, planting his feet on it. The stone shuddered as he fell to the floor, another cloud of dust spitting into the room, the stones crackling and crumbling. He was swiftly back on to his haunches. The wall alongside kept moving, and for a second, a gap appeared between the two. Will didn’t hesitate, diving for the opening, rolling through it, hoping only that a tunnel still lay beyond.

  “Will, where are you?”

  He heard the walls grinding into place behind him, then realised the narrow tunnel he was in was also closing in on itself. He jumped to his feet, sword still in hand, and ran forward, the stones crunching together behind him, and he kept going until the section of the labyrinth he was in felt and sounded stable. He could still hear the creaking and grinding in the distance as the pentagonal chamber was consumed by its own walls.

  He called out, “Eloise, I’m here. Call back to me.”

  He could hear a rumbling coming from elsewhere in the complex, but he was certain he could hear her voice beyond it. He walked in that direction, no longer trying to follow his memory of the maze now that it had been redesigned before their eyes – instead he walked instinctively, making turns when he needed to, heading for the sound of her.

  “Call to me again!”

  “I’m here!”

  He walked on and after a few more minutes, he shouted, “Call …”

  “Will, I’m here.” She was close, the other side of a dead end he’d been about to walk away from.

  “Thank God.” The walls had stopped moving now, the energy no longer apparent, and he sighed and put his hand on the stone and said, “I’m on the other side of this wall. We’re safe.”

  Her voice was close when she responded, and he imagined her own hand pressed on the other side, almost touching his.

  “I thought you’d got trapped.”

  “No, I’m fine. Now stay where you are and I’ll find my way to you.”

  “You can’t, Will. There’s no way in. It closed around me.”

  “How much space have you got?”

  “It’s as wide as the tunnels were, and …” There was silence for a moment and her voice was a little more distant as she said, “About six paces long. I’m OK, but there’s no way out.”

  He put his sabre on the floor and said, “Then I’ll get you out. Stay away from this wall for now.”

  Will took a step back and banged his fist against the stone to test it. The wall shuddered with the impact, but it felt thick enough that he would struggle to break through using only his strength. On the other hand, he didn’t want to leave her there while he went to get tools.

  He looked around the edges, imagining it as a huge stone door, then noticed the smallest of gaps where it had squashed against the electric cables running along the passage it had blocked. He pushed the tips of his fingers in either side of the cable, struggling to get any kind of purchase on the stone.

  The wall had been slid shut like a door and so it would slide open again. It had to – what had been closed could always be opened. He picked up the sabre again, positioned his fingers, braced himself, pulled at the wall. It moved a fraction but nothing for the effort he’d put into it.

  He heard a light humming, perhaps coming from the electric cable. He pushed his fingertips further into the gap, pulling, bracing, and as soon as the gap had opened wide enough, he rammed the hilt of the sabre into it and let go. The wall immediately tried to close the gap again, clenching tight round the hilt of the sword.

  He’d be able to get both hands into the gap now, to exert more force. Of course, he didn’t even know if there was a gap for this section of wall to slide into, but it had moved a little so he had to try to move it more.

  The humming was louder now, and Will realised it wasn’t coming from the electricity, but from the air around them, not the earth-tremor quality of the vibrations they’d heard earlier, but no less disturbing for that.

  “Will, can you hear that?” Despite the slight gap in the wall, Eloise sounded more distant now.

  “Yes, but don’t worry, I’m nearly there.”

  He gripped on to the wall with both hands, put one foot up on to the adjacent wall and pulled backwards, his whole body bracing against it. He heard the sabre fall which meant the stone had to be moving, but he couldn’t actually feel it.

  The humming became louder, more insistent.

  “Will, please hurry.”

  Even as he strained to pull the stone clear, at least to make a big enough gap for her to escape, he could hear her whispering to herself and he couldn’t make out the words, but she sounded fearful, more so than in the whole time he’d known her.

  “I’m nearly there, Eloise, everything’s fine, just be ready to move when I tell you.”

  “But something’s happening in here, Will. There’s something …” With increasing alarm, he heard her say almost to herself, “Oh my God, what is that …”

  Eloise screamed, no words, no call for help, just a scream, absolute terror, and the wall wasn’t moving. She screamed again, and stopped. Will jumped clear of the wall and immediately it slammed back into position, the lights flickering in response, dust billowing out.

  “Eloise?”

  Silence.

  He no longer thought of what was possible. He ran a few paces back and then hurled himself at the wall with full force. It shuddered, cracks appearing across its surface. He ran again, threw himself again, the entire tunnel shaking loose its dust and that humming still everywhe
re around him.

  He hammered on the wall with both fists, a frenzied attack, and the cracked stone began to fall away. He hit harder, then stood back and kicked and smashed it with his fists a final time and the middle of the wall disintegrated before him in a cloud of dust and rubble.

  He leapt through the gap and immediately came to a halt, a wave of relief washing over him. Eloise was at the far end, sitting on the floor, but unharmed as far as he could see, and there was nothing else in the tunnel.

  Only as Will took the final few steps towards her did he realise something was very wrong. The wave ebbed away again, leaving him stranded on a foreign and frightening shore.

  Eloise was staring directly ahead, as if shocked by the sight of the collapsed wall in front of her. But her eyes were locked and frozen, her face disturbingly pale and so full of fear that it had gone beyond fear and become an expressionless blank.

  He knelt down in front of her, looked into eyes that did not look back, and said, “Eloise, I’m here, you’re safe. Whatever you saw wasn’t real.”

  “I saw …” she said, her voice still as distant as it had been from behind that wall.

  “What did you see?”

  But she spoke no more. Will held her face, then took her hands in his, but it was as if there was nothing responsive left within her. And his hands were inadequate, too cold to provide the comfort she needed, to reassure her that she was safe now.

  What had she seen? What horror had she witnessed in those few seconds that could have reduced her to this? It was his fault, there was no denying that, not Wyndham’s, but his. Will stared into her eyes, desperately hoping for some response, and he felt as if his heart, long dormant, had now been torn in two.

  16

  We lived like monks, Rossinière and I. Part of the cost of extended life was the abandonment of it – we led controlled, almost desolate existences, eating little, drinking less, forsaking the company of women.

  Rossinière, who had lived so much longer than I, seemed hardly to notice women, though he told me he had once been married, that his wife had died in her first childbirth, together with the infant. My appetites diminished little by little, but diminish they did, for so much of the desire to eat and drink and love is born of the knowledge that we will all die. Remove that certainty and the attraction of each new dinner, each new girl becomes less and less.

  Yes, we lived like monks, and watched as the world changed around us. My mother died in 1783. It was a terrible year for Europe. A volcanic eruption in Iceland filled the air with poisonous fumes and brought on a ferocious winter. My mother, as old as the century, and already suffering a disorder of the lungs, was quick to succumb.

  Even at the end she had sent word from her deathbed that I was not to return, that my studies were more important, even though she must have believed me a man approaching conventional old age myself. I was not – I still looked no older than thirty-five, and appeared rather healthier, rather more youthful than I had when I’d first met Rossinière in the desert.

  I look older now, a fit man of fifty perhaps, though I suspect I’m stronger and more agile than any normal man of thirty. In part, I look older because I am still a man, and the process of ageing is slowed but not halted. For the most part though I have aged in jolts, never fully recovering the ground lost during some shock or other. The first of these, and the greatest, took place in 1791, the year I truly understood my late mother’s wisdom.

  It was a tumultuous time. France was lost in the turmoil of revolution, and in the following two years the guillotine would do its work on the King and the Nobility of that country and on many others besides. The rest of the Continent was peaceful enough, but the air contained something feverish, a promise of the conflicts to follow over the next fifteen years.

  Rossinière and I were in Northern Europe (it matters not where, for the curious would find nothing now of what we found then – all I will say is that we were further north than Transylvania). We heard tales of a region that had been plagued by strange deaths, and one town in particular, which had witnessed five bloodless corpses within the space of two years.

  Such was our curiosity for the world that we were bound to investigate, but I must confess that I did not link these mysterious deaths in any way with the quest which had governed my life for nearly half a century.

  It was a remote region of mountains and forests, the town containing no more than five thousand people in huddled and picturesque streets (no doubt my memory has erased the smell and the squalor – I have been back to that town in the last half-century and it is considerably larger, but also much cleaner than it was then).

  There was an inn of sorts, but the local nobleman welcomed us into his castle and was eager for us to make use of his library – we gratefully accepted and pretended to find knowledge there that we didn’t already possess.

  When we told him the purpose of our journey, we thought he might respond with exasperation at the backwardness of his subjects, their superstitions and nonsensical beliefs. Instead he responded with the utmost relief, as if we had been sent by God to deliver him and his people from the evil that persecuted them.

  For this nobleman – and I am purposefully avoiding his name in this – was convinced not only that the murderer was to be found somewhere within his castle, but that it was in fact some ancestor of his.

  “Your ancestor?” Rossinière’s thoughts leapt ahead and he said, “Am I to understand you think a vampire responsible for these murders?”

  I had heard the term before during our travels, but had never thought more of it than a backward superstition. Perhaps Rossinière had thought the same because he seemed both astonished and full of anticipation as he awaited an answer.

  The nobleman nodded sadly and said, “It sounds ridiculous to say so in an age of science, but I do believe that, for two reasons. The first is that I’ve studied the private papers of my family over the last three centuries and this same plague has occurred repeatedly, claiming victims for years on end, disappearing for decades, only to return again, and in the papers of both my grandfather and his grandfather, there are comments suggesting a mysterious figure had been seen repeatedly within the castle. That would be reason enough in itself.”

  “But you have a second reason,” I said.

  “Yes, perhaps more compelling than the first.” He stood and said, “Gentlemen, if you would accompany me to the crypt, there is something there I’m certain you’ll find of interest.”

  By candlelight, he led us down into the castle’s crypt and there showed us the tomb of one of his ancestors, a man who’d died at the beginning of the fifteenth century at the age of twenty-eight. He’d been on a military campaign, had fallen sick with a fever and died shortly after. His body had been brought home and laid to rest.

  Rather than call his servants, the nobleman had us help him remove the stone lid from the tomb. An empty casket lay within, the lid resting to the side of it.

  “The lid of the casket is the real key,” he said, and had us lift it clear with him.

  Rossinière and I stared at it in a state of wonder. The one appetite we had never lost was curiosity, the thirst for more knowledge, and this coffin lid spoke of knowledge even we had not yet discovered.

  The inside was badly scratched, the unmistakable scars left by sharpened fingernails. This in itself would have been merely a curio, for it’s sad to say that the accidental burial of living people was not so very uncommon at that time.

  But the coffin lid was also split, despite the thickness of the wood, and the damage had apparently been made by a heavy blow from the inside, as if the buried man had punched the lid free. The fierceness of the blow that would have been required to break out of such a solidly built casket was plain for us all to see.

  After a moment’s silence, Rossinière said, “How was this discovered?”

  “The first attack took place thirty years after his death. At the time, the daughter of the house dreamt again and again of this
tomb so her father had it opened. It was found to be empty, just as I’ve shown you now.”

  “But the lid of the tomb had been replaced,” I said.

  “Exactly. There was no damage to the tomb itself, so I can only presume that once free of his coffin, he was more careful in removing the stone above him, and he was certainly careful in replacing it afterwards. There have been no signs that he has ever returned to it.”

  Rossinière tapped the edge of the open casket and said, “In the stories I have heard, these creatures sleep by day and live by night, but the timings you give suggest something very different. Is it not possible that they hibernate for many years at a time, then are active for similar periods? If so, then somewhere within this castle right now, somewhere hidden beyond the eyes of your family and servants, your ancestor is active.”

  The nobleman smiled and said, “My family, as you may have noticed, is absent – I sent them to stay with my wife’s brother.”

  “Has anyone within the castle itself ever been a victim?”

  “Many years ago, one of the serving girls. The family has been spared, and I like to believe that even possessed by demons my ancestor respects the family line, but I would rather not tempt fate where my own children are concerned.”

  Of course, I know now why his ancestor spared him and his family. In part it would have been an act of self-preservation – if a nobleman’s wife had been slain, he might have torn the castle apart in search of the demon. But the noblemen themselves, and their children, had been spared for a simpler reason.

  These demons cannot breed, but this cannot always have been so because I know now that some people carry the vampire bloodline within them. If bitten, it is these people who return as demons. And it seems these same people provide no sustenance to the vampire because they are rarely, if ever, chosen as victims. This is why the demon in the castle spared the noble family, because their blood offered him nothing, except possible companionship.