by Mark Hodder
As his awareness sank into the crystalline structure of the stone, Kaundinya was able to position some aspect of himself in its every angle, every line, and every facet. He filled it until no part of it was free from his consciousness. Then he turned inward, delved into the depths of his own brain, and purposely burst a major blood vessel.
The massive haemorrhage killed him instantly, as he'd known it would, and, because he'd infiltrated the entire stone, his death caused it to shatter, tearing apart the minds of every single Naga on the continent of Kumari Kandam.
It was genocide.
Many generations later, the land itself was destroyed when the Earth gave one of its occasional cataclysmic shrugs.
Now, in 1862, little evidence remained of the prehistoric lizard race. They were depicted in carvings in a few Cambodian temples, such as Angkor Wat, but whether these representations were accurate could never be established.
What fascinated Sir Richard Francis Burton, though, was that this myth of a lost reptilian civilisation existed not only in Cambodia but also in South America, where the lizard men-known as Cherufe -were also overthrown by the expanding human race. Their kingdom had been invaded, there had been mass slaughter, and just a few of them had escaped. This small group, carrying their sacred black diamond, had been pursued almost the entire length of the continent, far south to Chile, where they had vanished and were never heard of again.
In Africa, too, there were the Chitahuri of the Zulus, called the Shayturay by the tribes in the central Lake Regions.
It was, of course, surplus information that didn't, as far as he could see, have much bearing on the unsolved theft of the Francois Garnier Collection, but Burton possessed a self-confessed “mania for discovery” which drove him to peel away layer after layer of whatever subject he studied. It at least enabled him to establish a wider and, to him, more interesting context.
There was one more thing.
The Cambodian fragments had been discovered in 1837, when a priest became aware of a low humming while meditating in his quarters. He'd lived in that room for forty-seven years and had never heard the low musical tone before. He traced it to the base of a wall, and a loose brick. The five diamonds were behind it.
1837.
It was to that year Edward Oxford, the man from the far future, had been thrown after his arrival in 1840, where he'd accidentally caused the assassination of Queen Victoria.
A coincidence, surely.
At around six o'clock, Burton got home and was hanging up his hat and coat when Mrs. Angell came down the stairs, looked at him askance, and said: “There's a nasty sheen on your brow, Sir Richard. A relapse?”
“It seems so,” he replied. “I just need to sleep it off. I'll take a dose of quinine and work on my books awhile.”
“You'll take a dose of quinine and go straight to bed!” she corrected.
He didn't have the strength to argue.
Ten minutes later, she brought him up a jug of water and a cup of tea.
He was already asleep.
His afternoon of study invaded his dreams.
He became aware of a fierce light, which burned through his eyelids. He opened them expecting to see firelight flickering on a canvas roof. Instead, he squinted up at a blazing blue desert sky.
Turning his head, he found that he was on his back, with limbs spread out, and wrists and ankles bound with cord to wooden stakes, which were driven deeply into the ground.
Dunes rose up on either side of him. From beyond them came the sound of voices, arguing in one of the languages of the Arabian Peninsula. He couldn't make out the words but one of the voices belonged to a woman.
He opened his mouth to shout for help but only a croak came out. His throat was dry and his skin was burning. The sun had sucked every particle of moisture from the air.
Grains of sand, riding a hot, slow breeze, blew against the side of his face.
He couldn't move.
Something nudged his left hand. He looked. There was a fairy standing by his wrist; a tiny female figure with transparent butterfly wings fluttering from her shoulder blades. She had a colourful mark painted on her forehead-like a bindi, though designed to more resemble an actual third eye.
Burton blinked rapidly. He had the sense that he wasn't bringing the little creature into full focus, despite being able to see her clearly. She seemed only partially present, as if imposed onto something else by his own mind, and he struggled, but failed, to pierce the illusion.
The strange being regarded him with golden-coloured eyes, then turned, bared her tiny pointed teeth, and started to chew at his bonds.
A second fairy appeared, also female, and clamped her jaws around the cord binding his right arm.
Movement at his ankles told him there were fairies at work there, too.
A fifth fluttered onto his stomach and ran up onto his chest. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at his face.
Burton felt his mind manipulated until words emerged from it, and he heard, in his own voice: “The long slow cycle of the ages turns, turns, and turns, O human. Thou art one of the few who knowest how an individual of thy strange kind didst spring from the next level of the spiral into that which thou currently inhabits, into that which thou callest thine own time. This action marked a dividing. Yet the path thou treadst echoes the one that is lost, and upon both a transition begins-a melting of one great cycle into another. Be warned!-tumultuous the change that comes! The storm shall wipe many of thy soft-skinned kinsfolk from the Earth, and thou shall be present when the thunder sounds, for the time allotted to thee is filled with paradox. There is a role assigned to thee, and thou must play the part out to its end. Thy kind infest a world in which there is only dark because there is light, there is only death because there is life, there is only evil because there is good. Be thou aware that a world conceived in opposites only creates cycles and ceaseless recurrence. Only equivalence can lead to destruction or a final transcendence. Remember that, Richard Francis Burton. Do not forget it. Only equivalence can lead to destruction.”
Or a final transcendence, he wanted to add.
The bonds fell from his ankles and wrists.
The five fairies backed away from him, floated into the air, landed on the sand, fell onto all fours, scampered like lizards, and burrowed into it. They vanished from sight.
He lifted his arms and rubbed his wrists.
A figure strode into view and looked down at him from the top of a dune. It was Isabel Arundell, dressed in flowing white robes and looking radiantly beautiful.
She opened her mouth to speak.
He sat up.
Light was filtering through his bedroom curtains.
It was late on Tuesday morning.
He stretched, reached for the bell cord that hung beside his bed, and gave it a tug. Moments later, the door opened and his valet stepped in.
“The usual, please, Nelson.”
The clockwork man saluted and departed.
Only equivalence can lead to destruction.
Meaningless nonsense. As for the rest of it, obviously Countess Sabina's words had become jumbled with his research, populating his nocturnal imaginings with little people and gobbledygook about vast cycles of time.
The little ones are not as they appear
The king's agent sat and pondered until his valet delivered a basin of hot water and a breakfast tray. He got out of bed, took a small bottle from a drawer, and poured five drops from it into a glass of water, which he swallowed in a single gulp. Dr. Steinhaueser had instructed him to use quinine and nothing else when his attacks came on, but, secretly, Burton had also been dosing himself with Saltzmann's Tincture, which Steinhaueser scorned on the basis that its manufacturer had never disclosed the medicine's full ingredients. He'd warned that it almost certainly contained cocaine, which could lead to dependency.
Burton washed and shaved at the basin. A warm vitality soaked into his flesh as the tincture took effect-honey and sunlight oozing through his arter
ies. Nevertheless, he was still feeling weak and decided to spend the rest of this Tuesday wrapped in his jubbah, dedicating himself to driving out the last vestiges of malaria with strong tobacco and perhaps a brandy or two.
After finishing his toilet and winding the brass man's key, he repaired to the study, lit a Manila, and began to leaf through the morning newspapers. A great many of their pages were devoted to the Tichborne case, and he quickly realised that he was still lacking sufficient background information about the affair. It was time, he decided, to start earning his salary.
A little later, when Mrs. Angell brought him a coffee, he asked her to take a note: To Mr. Henry Arundell, My dear sir, though, to my deep regret, relations continue to be strained between us, I hope I can go some way to repairing them by doing you a service with regard to the Tichborne situation. The prime minister has commissioned me to look into the matter, and I would greatly appreciate the advice of one who has greater knowledge of the family than I. To that end, may I extend to you an invitation to dine with me at the Venetia Royal Hotel at seven o'clock this evening?
Ever yours sincerely,
Rich'd F. Burton
“Send that by runner, please. Mr. Arundell is currently residing at the family's town house, 32 Oxford Square.”
“A nice area for those that can afford it,” the old lady opined. “If you don't mind me asking, has there been any word from Miss Isabel?”
“The last I heard, her parents had received two letters. It seems my former fiancee is running around with the notorious Jane Digby, the bandit queen of Damascus. I believe they've gathered quite a force of brigands and are currently raiding caravans on the Arabian Peninsula.”
“My stars!” Mrs. Angel exclaimed. “Who'd have thought?”
“The Arundells still consider that my breaking the engagement caused her to run off to Arabia in the first place. I expect to receive a frosty response from her father.”
His housekeeper left the room, went downstairs, lifted a whistle from a hook, opened the front door, and blew three quick blasts. Moments later, a runner arrived on the doorstep. It jogged, turned in circles, and whined restlessly until she produced a tin from beneath a hall table. She took a chunk of roast beef from it and fed it to the ravenous hound. Then she placed the waxed envelope between its teeth and stated the delivery address. The dog turned and sped away.
In his study, Burton had settled at his main desk and was writing in his journal, copying out the notes he'd taken at the British Library and adding copious annotations and cross references. An hour later, he moved to a different desk and began work on a tale from The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. He employed a unique device for this: a mechanical contraption invented by Mrs. Angell's late husband. It was the only one of its kind, an “autoscribe,” which Burton played rather like a piano. Each of its keys corresponded to a letter of the alphabet or an item of punctuation and printed it onto a sheet of paper when pressed. It had taken the king's agent two weeks to master the machine but, having done so, he was now able to write at a phenomenal speed.
At four o'clock, a runner brought a reply from Henry Arundell: Sir Richard, The Venetia is booked solid by a large private party. I have reserved a table for us at the Athenaeum Club instead. I will see you there at seven.
H. Arundell
“To the point but satisfactory,” Burton muttered.
He abandoned the desk, flopped into his armchair, and contemplated the case at hand.
Burton met his former prospective father-in-law at the appointed time and place. As they shook hands, the elder man exclaimed: “You look positively skeletal!”
“A bout of malaria,” Burton explained.
“Still bothering you, eh?”
“Yes, though the attacks come less frequently. Have you heard from Isabel?”
“I don't want to discuss my daughter, let's have that clear from the outset.”
“Very well, sir,” Burton replied. He noticed that Arundell's face was haggard and careworn, and felt a pang of guilt as they made their way into the club's dining room.
The Athenaeum was crowded as usual, but in keeping with its reputation as one of the bastions of British Society, the members restricted their voices to a civilised murmur. A low buzz of conversation enveloped the two men as they passed into the opulent dining room and were escorted to their table by the maitre d’. They ordered a bottle of wine, deciding to take a glass before commencing their meal.
Arundell wasted no time with niceties. “Why has Lord Palmerston taken an interest?” he asked.
“I really don't know.”
“You haven't enquired?”
“Have you ever met Palmerston?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know how blasted tight-lipped he is, and I don't mean the surgery!”
Burton was referring to the Eugenicist treatments the prime minister had received in an attempt to maintain his youth. His lifespan had been extended to, it was estimated, about a hundred and ten years, and his body had been stretched and smoothed until he resembled an expressionless waxwork.
“He's evasive, that's true,” Arundell mused. “As are all politicians. Goes with the territory. But I'd have thought he'd at least give you something to go on.”
Burton shook his head. “When he offered me my first commission, last year, it was simply a case of ‘look into this,’ then he left me to it. This is the same. Perhaps he doesn't want to plant any preconceptions.”
“Maybe so. Very well, how can I help?”
“By telling me about the Tichborne family curse and their prodigal son.”
Henry Arundell tapped his forefinger on the table, gazed at his wine glass, and looked thoughtful for a few moments. He raised his eyes to Burton and gave a curt nod.
“Tichborne House sits on a hundred-and-sixteen-acre estate near the village of Alresford, not far from Winchester. The Bishop of Winchester granted it to Walter de Tichborne in 1135, and it was, just a few years later, inherited by his son, Roger de Tichborne, a soldier, a womaniser, and a brute. It was his treatment of his wife as she lay dying from a wasting disease that brought about the curse.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“What sayest thou, Physician Jankyn? Shall the bitch die this night?”
Squire Roger de Tichborne threw his riding crop onto a table and dropped into a chair, which creaked beneath his considerable bulk. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. He'd been riding with the hounds, but the one fox he and his colleagues had flushed out had been a mangy little thing with no fight in it. The dogs had brought it down in a matter of minutes. He and the men had vented their frustration in a tavern. He was now drunk and in a foul mood.
He yelled at his valet, though the man was less than fifteen feet away: “Hobson! Dost thou stand there a doltish idler? Get these accursed boots off me, man!”
The valet, a short and meek individual, hurried to his master's feet, knelt, and started to tug at a boot.
“Well, Jankyn? Answer me! Am I to be free at last, or wouldst the filthy harridan dally?”
Physician Jankyn, tall, bony, and gloomy in aspect, wrung his large hands nervously, his mouth twitching.
“The Lady Mabella be sore stricken, my lord,” he announced. “Yet she may bide awhile.”
Hobson, gripping de Tichborne's left calf, looked up and said: “My Lady doth wish to see thee anon, sire.”
De Tichborne pulled back his right leg and, with a vicious grunt, sent his heel thudding into his valet's face. Hobson yelped and tumbled backward onto the floor, blood spurting from his nose.
“Pardieux! That's the case, is it?” de Tichborne snarled. “Get thee upstairs, thou whimpering dog, and tell the harpy that I'll see her at my own convenience and not at hers, the hell-spawned witch! Get out of my sight!”
The valet clambered to his feet and staggered away across the opulent parlour, knocked into the corner of a table, almost fell, and stumbled out of the room.
“So thinkest thou
she'll tarry, hey?” de Tichborne enquired of the medical man. He bent and started to yank at his boots. “For how long, pray? Hours? Days? Weeks, may God preserve me?”
“Weeks? Nay, my lord. Not a week-nary a day. I have it that she'll live but the night through and will be taken by sunup.”
Finally liberating his right leg, de Tichborne flung the riding boot across the room. It hit a wall and dropped to the floor.
“Praise be! Fetch me a draught, wouldst thou, Master Physician? And take one for thyself.”
Jankyn nodded and moved from the fireplace to a bureau upon which decanters of wine stood. He filled two goblets and took one over to de Tichborne, placing it on an occasional table beside his host's chair.
The squire's second boot came free and followed the first through the air. It crashed into a vase atop a cabinet, shattered the ornament, and fell to the floor amid the fragments.
“Fortune grant me a single boon: to be free of that damnable nag by the morn!” the aristocrat muttered.
He took the wine and downed it in a single gulp, then jumped to his stockinged feet, pushed past the doctor, and crossed to the bureau to pour himself another.
“Prithee, repair to the library awhile, Physician. I shall take me up to see the whore.”
“But my lord!” Jankyn protested. “The Lady Mabella is in no fit condition to receive!”
“She'll receive her damned husband, and if the effort should kill her, thou canst aid me in quaffing by way of celebration!”
Jankyn moistened his lips, hesitated, nodded unhappily, and, with goblet in hand, shuffled out of the parlour through the door that led to the library.
Casting a sneer at the elderly physician's back, de Tichborne turned and also left the room. He paced to the reception hall, retrieved his shoes, buckled them on, and stamped up the broad, sweeping staircase to the gallery above. Here he stopped and emptied his goblet. He tossed it over the balustrade and wiped his mouth as the tin vessel clattered on the tiled floor below. He proceeded along a corridor to his wife's bedchamber.
One of her nurses, sitting outside the room, stood as he approached the door. She curtseyed and moved aside.