by D D Everest
But when Archie had been to the Darchive he’d travelled there by the seats of learning, so he had never seen the archive before.
He fitted his key in the lock and was surprised to feel it turn of its own accord, making a loud click. Twisting the door handle, he stepped inside. He found himself in a long, low-ceilinged chamber, like an underground vault. Ahead of him he could see other smaller rooms opening off the main one and a series of alcoves where fat white candles flickered. The way the wax had melted and run down, they looked like stalagmites in a cave.
Bookcases lined the walls and there were racks containing scrolls and other parchment documents. In the centre of the main room were several reading tables with crystal lanterns suspended overhead casting a golden light. A pile of books and scrolls had been placed on one of the tables. Archie guessed that these were the documents Hawke had asked Morag Pandrama to leave out for him.
He casually flicked through the titles. Mostly they were historical texts relating to individual magical books and artefacts. He opened one and read a description of the dagger Hawke kept on his desk.
Shadow Blade: An enchanted blade made from the reflection of a shooting star captured in the black glass of obsidian. A shadow blade is a potent weapon against dark magical creatures because it can penetrate any darkness – and the darkest of hearts.
But it was a thick black book with the title Most Wanted that caught Archie’s attention. It was a catalogue of the most sought-after lost books and artefacts. He looked up the one that was on his mind.
The Book of Night: (proper title The Book of Nightmares): was written by three darchemists to summon the Flame of Pandemonium from the underworld. Opening The Book of Night will release the Dark Flame and the Pale Writers, the spirits of the darchemists who wrote it. The Pale Writers seek The Opus Magus to control the primary spell and bring a dark age of magic.
Archie flicked on through the book until he found The Opus Magus. He had once looked it up in his father’s reference book Magical Greats: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but this was more detailed.
The Opus Magus: ‘The Great Work’ is the founding spell of magic. The original Opus Magus was housed in the Great Library of Alexandria, and disappeared when the library was destroyed. Only when The Opus Magus is rewritten will magic be restored to its former glory.
The wording reminded Archie of the pledge the Alchemists’ Club, always recited at the start of their meetings: ‘We swear allegiance to the Alchemists’ Club. We promise to do all we can to restore magic to its former glory.’ They had taken it from Fabian Grey’s original Alchemists’ Club oath.
Once again, Archie felt Grey’s shadow. He glanced at the gold ring on his finger. It felt suddenly tighter. Archie didn’t seem to be able to get away from the alchemist.
Archie walked up and down between the bookcases and racks of scrolls. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but he was enjoying exploring. It was a chance to practise his delving skills, even though the archive didn’t contain magical books; it just contained historical documents and reference books.
He closed his eyes and practised looking with his mind. Hawke had said it was possible to detect magical energy that way.
He was wandering with his eyes shut when he felt something. He had a tingling sensation. It seemed to be coming from Fabian Grey’s gold ring on his finger. As he walked down the aisles he could feel it getting stronger. It was accompanied by a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he’d been there before. Something felt familiar – like a forgotten secret.
He opened his eyes and came face to face with a creature with bat ears and fangs. It gave him a start until he realised it was a stone gargoyle. Another one crouched on the other side of a large door with iron studs and a heavy lock. They looked as though they were guarding it. Archie had seen the door and the gargoyles before – they marked the entrance to the Darchive.
That explained why he could detect magic. The Darchive contained all sorts of dark magical objects, which was why it was strictly off limits.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going in!’ he said aloud, patting the first gargoyle on the shoulder. It stared back at him stony-faced.
Archie moved away, heading back the way he’d come. He was just about to enter the first vaulted chamber when he noticed an alcove off to one side. A small door led into another room. He was beginning to realise what a maze the archive was. He felt the tingling sensation again and an urge to see what was behind the small door, but he was interrupted.
‘Archie?’ It was Hawke’s voice. The head of Lost Books must have come looking for him.
‘In here,’ Archie called.
Hawke appeared in the doorway connecting the two rooms. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’
Archie glanced at the alcove, made a mental note to come back and investigate it later, then hurried after Hawke. The head of Lost Books led him into a small antechamber that opened into another room with a very low ceiling. It was so low that he had to duck to enter. This room had a domed ceiling carved out of rock, in the Gothic style.
In the middle was a glass case containing two strange objects. They were the size and shape of duck eggs and made of an opaque golden waxy material that looked like amber. Around the outside were two protective bands of silver, one running lengthways and the other widthways so that they crossed each other. When Archie reached out his hand he felt a pulse of magical energy.
‘What are they?’ he gasped.
‘Torchstones,’ said Hawke. ‘The magisters used them to transport the Flame of Pharos to Oxford.’
Hawke opened the case and picked up one of the objects, holding it between his thumb and forefinger so Archie could see it more clearly.
The silver band had a verse engraved on it.
‘I carry the flame
To light the dark.
Let shadows flee
My sacred spark.’
It was hinged in the middle. Hawke squeezed it gently and the Torchstone sprang open, the two halves separating to reveal a hollow chamber inside.
‘Embers from the Flame of Pharos can be placed in here,’ said Hawke, indicating the hidden compartment. ‘The Torchstone protects them from harm.’
‘Why are there two?’ asked Archie.
‘That’s the spare. It’s a precaution,’ said Hawke. ‘Two flame carriers are selected from among the Flame Keepers. If the Flame of Pharos is threatened, then they carry the Torchstones. It’s a great honour to be chosen.’
He flicked his wrist and the Torchstone clicked shut, returning to its egg shape once more. Hawke placed it back inside the glass case.
He gave Archie a meaningful look. ‘I am a flame carrier. But if something were to happen to me, I hope that as my apprentice you would take my place,’ he said.
*
Archie made his way to the Aisle of White. Hawke had told him to go on practising his delving skills and he’d decided to try his luck in Fabian Grey’s secret laboratory. Only the members of the Alchemists’ Club knew where it was so he’d have the place to himself.
It also gave him an excuse to drop in on Old Zeb. He hadn’t seen the bookbinder since he’d started working in Lost Books over a week ago and he missed him.
As he crossed the courtyard to the bookshop, Archie was still thinking about the Torchstones. He’d never really considered how the Flame of Pharos had been transported from Alexandria to Oxford. He tried to imagine the long journey. He could see why carrying a torch on such a long voyage wouldn’t be advisable, or even very safe. The Torchstones were an ingenious solution.
When Archie opened the door to the bookshop, the bell clanged loudly. Marjorie Gudge was standing behind the shop counter. She filled in for Geoffrey Screech when he had to go out.
‘Hello, Archie,’ she said, her eyes magnified by her thick glasses. ‘If you’ve come to see Old Zeb, he’s not here. He’s taken some books back to the museum.’
Archie was disappointed to have missed him. H
e knew the old bookbinder hadn’t found a new apprentice yet so he would have to run his own errands.
‘Actually, I’ve come to pick up my tool bag,’ he said, saying the first thing he could think of so that Marjorie wouldn’t wonder what he was really up to. ‘I’ll let myself in,’ he added, smiling.
The mended books in the bookcase behind the black curtain, the ones that had volunteered to help Archie find his family, were gone. They would be the ones the old bookbinder had taken to the museum. Archie felt his hopes rise that they might discover which book his father was trapped in.
In their place was a box of new arrivals to be repaired. Archie picked up the box, out of habit, and carried it down the spiral staircase and along the corridor to the mending workshop.
Putting the box on the workbench, he took the black key to the lab, which was kept on a hook with lots of other keys, and hurried along the corridor.
It smelled earthy down here and the only light came from burning torches set in brackets in the wall. Even these ended just past the door to the workshop so that the part of the passageway where Archie was now was poorly lit.
The laboratory was behind a black door that was concealed in the shadows.
Three members of the original Alchemists’ Club, Braxton Foxe, Roderick Trevallen and Angelica Ripley, had taken refuge in the laboratory after they had accidently started the Great Fire of London. But after a scorpion sting had killed Roderick as part of the Alchemist’s Curse, the lab was sealed up and forgotten about. For three hundred and fifty years its location had remained unknown, until Archie and Thistle had discovered it.
Archie fitted the key into the black door and unlocked it. The door groaned open. When he stepped inside, the room smelled stale, with traces of amora, the smell of magic, and burnt chemicals. It had been weeks since he was last in here. There hadn’t been an official club meeting since Rupert had joined the Royal Society.
Archie lit the torches on the wall and surveyed the room. It always gave him a thrill to think that this was where the original Alchemists’ Club had met.
It was where Grey had carried out his magical experiments while he was still an apprentice at the museum and had first produced the magical substance azoth.
A wooden plaque above the bench said: ‘We pledge to restore magic to its former glory.’
The Most Wanted book had said that rewriting The Opus Magus would restore all the fading magical books.
Archie inspected the glass jars on the shelves. They were filled with murky solutions. One contained a perfectly preserved scorpion – the same scorpion whose sting had killed Rupert’s ancestor Roderick Trevallan.
Down the middle of the room ran a long wooden bench with glass flasks connected by a tangle of rubber tubing, like a mad chemistry experiment. Grey’s old magical reference books were in a neat stack at one end where Archie and Thistle had put them for safekeeping. Black scorch marks all along the bench were evidence of magical experiments that had gone wrong.
Archie closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He reached out with his mind, delving for hidden sources of magic. He spoke the spell that Hawke had taught him.
‘Secret volumes
Placed in stealth
Books of magic
Reveal yourselves.’
Silence. He tried again but nothing happened. So there weren’t any magical books concealed in the laboratory. But that didn’t mean there weren’t other secrets hidden there.
Archie was still thinking about this when he spotted an envelope on the bench. It was sitting in full view and he wondered how he could have missed it before. He had been so preoccupied with his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed it. It was addressed to the Alchemists’ Club in a firm hand. Whoever had put it there wanted it to be found. He glanced around the room.
As far as he was aware the only people who knew about the laboratory were the five members of the Alchemists’ Club and Katerina Krone.
But she was now in an asylum for the magically ill, so she couldn’t have left the message. So where had it come from?
He opened the envelope. There was a note inside.
I fear the Greaders are preparing to open The Book of Night. When they do, you must be ready to fight for the future of magic.
I will contact you again when I can.
FG
Archie’s heart leaped into his throat. The letter was signed FG, and next to the initials was a picture of a raven. His mind raced. Could it be from Fabian Grey? But no, that was silly. The real Fabian Grey had been dead for over three hundred and fifty years. It must be someone who wanted them to think he was alive. But were they friend or foe?
*
When Archie showed the mysterious note to Bramble, Thistle and Arabella that evening, they all shook their heads. None of them had any idea how it could have got there. Someone else obviously knew about the lab and had used that knowledge as a way to get a message to them.
The Alchemists’ Club had already arranged to meet on Saturday, as Rupert would be back in Oxford for the weekend, so they could all be together. But finding the note made the meeting even more urgent. The secret informer had indicated they would make contact again, but how, and when?
8
Faustus Gaunt
When Archie arrived at Lost Books the next day, Hawke was sitting in his office staring into space. On the desk in front of him was the green glass bottle Archie had seen before. It definitely looked like a medicine bottle. When he heard Archie come in, Hawke slipped it into the side pocket of his moleskin jacket.
‘Ah, it’s you, Archie,’ he said, turning to face the door. ‘I thought it might be Faustus. I’m expecting him any moment.’
Archie began tidying the room. It was his routine now every morning. He stacked up the books that were strewn all over the floor, being careful not to close any open ones so that he didn’t lose Hawke’s place in them. He gathered up the scrolls that were all over the armchair by the fire and put them back on the shelves. After a few minutes of picking up he could see the Persian carpet again.
Yet no matter how often he cleared up, the room was just as cluttered by the next morning. Hawke must spend every night poring over books. Archie guessed that he was searching for clues about how to defeat the Dark Flame.
‘I wondered where that had got to,’ said Hawke, as Archie picked up the imagining glass with the silvery lens from the mantelpiece and replaced it on the desk. ‘I must have put it there last night and forgotten.’
He shook his head absent-mindedly. Archie noticed he was looking a little dishevelled, as if he’d slept in his clothes. It occurred to him that he didn’t know very much about Hawke. Did he live at the museum or did he go home at night like the other elders? Perhaps he slept on the leather sofa. It certainly looked comfortable enough for a bed and Hawke was very attached to it. He was still pondering this when there was a knock at the door and Faustus Gaunt appeared in the doorway. In his hand he held a battered old notebook.
‘Ah, good morning, Faustus,’ said Hawke, rising to greet his visitor.
‘Is this a good time?’ enquired Gaunt.
‘Yes,’ said Hawke. ‘In fact your timing couldn’t be better. Archie is here now and I want him to hear what you have to say.’
Gaunt cast a look at Archie. ‘Very well, Gideon, if that is your wish.’
‘Archie is my apprentice,’ explained Hawke. ‘He must know everything that we know.’
Archie felt flattered by Hawke’s confidence in him. He hoped he could live up to it.
Gaunt took a seat at one end of the old sofa with the notebook on his lap, and Hawke indicated for Archie to sit at the other end. The head of Lost Books sat facing them in the wing-backed chair next to the fire, his fingers steepled in thought. When they were all sitting comfortably, Hawke’s keen eyes bored into Gaunt’s.
‘Well, what have you discovered, Faustus?’
Gaunt took a deep breath. ‘I have examined the text that Morag found in the archive, and I can confir
m that it is genuine. It is one of John Dee’s final prophecies, written towards the end of his life.
‘As you know, Dee was the greatest scryer in England. He used his magical ability to see into the future. Like most of Dee’s prophecies, it is written as a riddle.’
Gaunt took some spectacles from his jacket pocket, unfolded them and perched them on the end of his nose. Then he opened the old book to a marked page and read out what was written there.
‘When white burns black
And shadows prey
Then hope must lie
With all that’s grey.
The raven knows
What was forgot
The secret key
To magic’s lock.’
When he finished, there was a silence. Archie tried to absorb what he’d just heard.
‘The meaning is deliberately veiled,’ said Gaunt. ‘That is Dee’s way. But I believe it foreshadows what Fabian Grey saw in The Book of Prophecy.’
Archie gave a start. Grey again! Wherever he turned, the alchemist’s name seemed to crop up. He turned Grey’s gold ring on his finger, trying to loosen it. Gaunt was still speaking.
‘We know that when Grey was an apprentice at the museum he consulted The Book of Prophecy and it changed him. Grey believed that he had a special destiny. He’d seen a vision that showed that the future of magic rested on his shoulders. He told Braxton Foxe as much.’
Archie had heard this before from Braxton Foxe’s book ghast, the spirit of his unfulfilled dream.
‘I think what Grey saw in his vision was how to defeat the Dark Flame. Dee’s riddle hints at it. “When white burns black” could be a reference to the Dark Flame burning on white spell parchment. “When shadows prey” could refer to the Pale Writers being released. And the last line of that verse is surely a direct reference to Grey himself.’