“Easy, old man,” Simon cautioned gently.
Kate asked Simon, “She seemed content to you?”
“She did. She looked wonderful. Younger. Stronger. As I remember her from my youth. Not as she was when she died.”
“Perhaps seeing you helped heal her. It’s a great gift.”
Simon nodded. “Communing with the dead is a strange business.”
“Hear hear,” Nick cracked sarcastically, holding up the bottle.
“But,” Simon continued with a broad smile, “I’m grateful for a moment with her. She seemed pleased enough with what I’ve made of myself.”
“Did she say anything to you?” Kate asked.
“Good God!” Simon sat up quickly. He pulled the key out of his waistcoat pocket. “She did. She was holding the key and she said a word.”
Kate leaned close with excitement. “What word?”
“What does morthul mean to you?”
She looked up to the ceiling, shuffling through the extensive glossary of languages in her head. “Is it a proper name?”
“I don’t know.”
“It means hammer,” Nick muttered, staring into the fire.
“Hammer?” Simon mused.
“Hammer. In Cornish.” Nick hung his head, fighting fatigue. “Your accent’s atrocious. Maybe hers was too unless she was Cornish.”
“Simon,” Kate said, “fetch a copy of Munro’s Britannica Cornish Grammar.”
Simon laughed. “Sorry, Kate, I don’t have a copy. The closest thing was a stable boy from Truro who once worked here.”
She gave him a glare of scholarly disappointment. “Well, my Cornish isn’t strong. In Welsh, hammer is morthwyl. Similar. But what could she mean?”
Nick looked inebriated, his head in his hands. The whiskey bottle had only a few swallows left. “She didn’t mean anything. You can’t trust what you hear from the dead. Most of it you bring yourself. It might’ve been in your head.”
Simon walked over to Nick’s slumped figure. “Go to bed. You need sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m ready. I’m going for a walk.” Nick stood and stumbled against the hearth. He caught himself and shook Simon off.
“Nick, please. It’s a miracle you can stand.” Simon froze as a hauntingly familiar feeling crept over him. Nick started to argue and Simon snapped, “Quiet! Quiet!”
Kate rose to her feet, watching him.
Simon stared at the key and, without speaking, turned and walked from the room, down the darkened corridor with increasingly long strides. Kate’s footsteps sounded behind him. Then he nearly sprinted up the circular stone steps. He reached the door to his tower sanctum and entered. A quick word raised the soft luminance. He went to his desk and began to pour over a stack of journals.
Breathless, Kate stood in the doorway. “Simon? What is it? Can I help you?”
Simon shook his head without answering. He slammed one book shut and seized another, frantically rifling pages. Leaf after leaf of runic symbols flashed across his vision. Finally, he pressed his finger against a page with a shout of triumph. “Ha! I knew it!”
“What is it?” Kate joined him at the desk.
“Do you read druidic script?” Simon asked.
“I’ve seen some, but very little survives.”
“That’s because my father had it all. He received it from Pendragon. And now I have much of it.” Simon flipped the book toward Kate. It made little difference for most of the script was unfamiliar to her. He pointed to a symbol. In his other hand, he held the key in a tight grip.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know it.”
“It’s druidic runes writing an ancient Celtic language. I think I misheard my mother. I think she was saying marthsyl.”
The key glowed green.
Simon leapt to his feet, holding it out as if he had received an electric shock. It felt warm in his hand, and sharp pinpoints of otherwordly light wrote hidden runes across the gold surface.
The wavering emerald haze colored Kate’s amazed face. “Oh my God, Simon. Oh my God. What’s it doing?”
“I don’t know.” He stared at the key.
“What did you say? Does marthsyl mean hammer?”
“No. It means miracle or wonder.” He glanced up at Kate to see her staring past him with eyes wide in shock. Simon turned and saw a strange glowing spot on the wall. He stepped closer.
“It’s the symbol from the key,” Kate said. “The same one that’s on the wall in my father’s study at Hartley Hall.”
Indeed it was the stylized compass icon forged into the top of the key, and it was burning bright green against the rough white plaster. Then suddenly, between Simon and the glowing sigil on the wall, a strange wavering patch appeared in the air. He blinked hard at first, suspecting his vision was blurred. But the weaving distortion was the air itself, swimming before him, just above his eye level.
“Simon, step back,” Kate called.
The weird quavering space began to coalesce into a recognizable vision. It became a pulsating oval and in its center was a map of the world. Simon looked at Kate in wonder, and she was already coming around the desk to join him. There were marks on the map in various places, many of them overlapping and crowded atop one another. There was one on London, and several more around Britain, including one that was likely Warden Abbey where they stood. Some were clearly recognizable just from their geography. London. Paris. Cairo. Calcutta. New Orleans. Java.
“I know what many of those are.” Kate pointed at the glistening world suspended in midair. “They’re my father’s travels. Those must be all the places he went using the key. He was in New Orleans, just as Ambassador Mansfield said. And he was also in Cairo.” She reached out toward the map and where her hand came near, the scene suddenly reoriented itself to her touch, zooming in. The view drew tight on the eastern Mediterranean and new dots became visible including Alexandria and Jerusalem. She pulled her arm back, shaking it. “It tingles.”
Simon raised a finger to the dot over Cairo. The entire map shimmered and vanished in a swirl of energy. Both Simon and Kate stepped back as the aether whirlpooled before them. Out of the disorienting lines of power swimming in endless circles, recognizable shapes coalesced into a scene. A sandy street bathed in thin morning light. Walls rising up around it. Awnings. And the telltale enclosed wooden balconies that Simon had seen in drawings of Cairo streets.
“It’s Egypt,” Kate breathed. “It’s right in front of us. I can feel the heat. Look! There’s someone moving. We’re looking at Cairo!”
“It’s not real,” came Nick’s slurred comment from the door. “It’s a glamour or an illusion.”
Simon reached into his pocket and brought out a shilling. He thumbed it toward the portal. The coin flipped through the air and created ripples across the scene like a pebble striking the surface of a pond. The distortion quickly stilled and the shilling appeared midair in the Egyptian dawn and fell to the street with a puff of dust.
Kate laughed wildly.
“It’s real.” Simon gazed down at the small coin lying on the ground. It had traveled a few feet and now rested thousands of miles away. “It’s a portal through space. That is Cairo, even as we speak, within arm’s reach, as we stand here in Bedfordshire. Our fathers made a miracle.”
Kate grabbed his arm. “Let’s go through! Let’s step into Cairo. We could see the pyramids. The pyramids, Simon!”
“No, Kate,” Simon said without conviction. “We have other pressing business before the pyramids. Plus, we don’t truly know how to operate it.”
“My father obviously used it many times. Probably your father too. There is a mark here at Warden Abbey.”
“Yes, but we must be cautious. If we were trapped in Cairo, at best it would be months getting back.”
“Why do you want to come back?” Nick’s voice broke his reverie. “There’s your great mystery solved. You’ve mastered the key left to you by your father. Let’s use that thing to go som
ewhere far away. It’s a sign. You spoke to your mother tonight. And now here’s your father saying the same thing. He never meant for you to stay in one place. He gave you the power to go anywhere now, in the blink of an eye. Think of the magic you can learn. No one could find us.”
Simon continued to gaze at the common Cairene alley as if it was the most exotic place in the world. He was tempted to lift the sole of his foot off the freezing floor of Warden Abbey and set it down in the sands of Egypt. He held his hand up and could feel the hot sun of Cairo.
He quickly waved his hand over the shimmering portal, and the scene vanished, replaced by the world map. He then touched the dot that corresponded to Hartley Hall and the portal swirled. Soon they were staring through the threshold into Sir Roland’s study in Surrey. “Here is a location we can test, I think. Let me just tell Winston that we’re on our way, so he doesn’t wonder where we’ve gotten to.”
Kate grinned with excitement.
Simon left her the key and went off to make arrangements. After he had a quick word with his trusted butler, he returned to find Kate staring with wonder at the room where she had been countless times. Nick slumped in a corner with his chin propped in his hand.
“Right,” Simon said, “are we ready?”
Kate took his hand. “Always.”
Simon and Kate stood squarely before the strange window to another place. They looked at one another with expectant nods. He squeezed her hand and stepped forward. It felt like submerging in warm water. Immediately he was bombarded with sight and sound, bright and loud, and odd smells as well. The magic of aether burned his nostrils and the thick mist swirled around him as if alive. It pulled at him. For a moment, Simon was terrified he was becoming lost, but he could still feel Kate’s hand, and he realized the aether was towing him in a specific direction. He stopped fighting against it.
He felt solid ground beneath his feet though he didn’t remember not having it under him before. His knees nearly buckled and he reached out to steady himself. His hand struck a bookcase and he leaned against it, breathing hard. He could smell cold musty air and the mildewed scent of old books.
Kate stood next to him, wavering on her feet. “Are we really in Hartley Hall?”
Simon laughed and kissed her cheek. “You feel real enough.” He looked back at the portal. He could see his private sanctuary at Warden Abbey. And he saw Nick standing on the other side. Simon waved him forward with a jovial grin.
Nick shook his head and held his hand up in a farewell gesture. He turned for the door.
“Nick!” Simon shouted as the door closed. “I’ll go back for him. He’s still confused from the necromancy. I knew I shouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Simon.” Kate grabbed him. “Let him go. He isn’t disoriented. He doesn’t want to be here. Give him time. He said he was leaving before, then he came back. Nick obviously loves you. He’ll come around again.”
Simon let out a disappointed sigh, watching the empty room through rippling air.
Kate handed him the key. “Why didn’t you tell him about the curse? He might have been able to help you.”
“He can’t.”
“He might have tried.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell him.” Simon held up the key and said, “Marthsyl.”
The window on his boyhood shrank to a pinpoint in an instant and was gone.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Red Orchid salon stood in the pale light of the winter moon. The house itself was finally quiet although the neighborhood was still active with tradesmen and costermongers and laborers trudging into another night. Wagons full of tomorrow’s catch of fish teetered past.
In the shadow of chimney pots, Malcolm blew on his chapped hands while crouching beneath his black greatcoat. From his rooftop post, he could see the front door, the window of Barnes’s private bedroom, and the other cellar exit into the alley. He had a vantage point on the three lanes that led away from the house. Malcolm had been waiting like a soot-blackened stone for three days. Every limb was cramped. It reminded him of how long it had been since he had hunted from ambush.
The modified rifle lay across the peak of the roof with its metal wrapped in dark cloth to suppress glints. His stiff, cold fingers flipped two of the magnifying glass lenses down, adjusting the range once more. He leaned over to squint into the scope and peered at a small crack on the door. He positioned the rifle to train it on Barnes’s bedroom, which appeared to be empty.
A sound behind him brought him onto one knee. His heavy dagger flashed up, blade tip between his thumb and forefinger, raised above his shoulder. He spotted a dark figure below him at the eaves of the roof.
“Don’t!” Penny fell against the tiles. “It’s me!”
Malcolm lowered the knife and said matter-of-factly, “Careful. You’re on a rooftop.”
“I know that!” The engineer spat angrily. She rose nervously to her feet, glancing over the edge to the street thirty feet below. She pulled strange metal discs with small spikes off her hands with a scowl. “Don’t stab me. I brought you a present.”
Malcolm indicated the metal discs that she slipped in her pocket. “Did you climb up here?”
“Yes, for the pleasure of you trying to kill me.” Penny picked up a leather satchel she had dropped. “Didn’t you climb? How did you get up?”
“I walked up the stairs and stepped out an attic window.” He slid down and helped her up with him.
She settled just below the peak. “How is the starlight telescope working?”
“Excellent. I can see all the places where he hasn’t shown himself very clearly and very brightly.”
Penny pulled a small piece of oilcloth from inside her bag. She unfolded the cloth to reveal two long cartridges. She seemed very proud, but they didn’t look appreciably different than the ordnance he was already using.
“More shells?” Malcolm asked.
The engineer held one up. She shook it slightly and small wings popped out of the casing. Malcolm leaned in for a closer look and Penny took obvious pride in his intense stare.
“These shells,” she said, “will increase your accuracy tenfold at least. I’ve only had time to make two, so don’t miss. At least not twice.” She folded the wings tight against the brass casing and handed both shells to Malcolm.
He quickly took up the rifle and snapped it open. He fished out the shell and replaced it with the new winged cartridge. Closing the breech, he said, “I’ll only need one. But I’ll keep the other. Thank you.”
“So, no sign of him?”
“Brief glimpses. No chance of a shot.”
The wind changed and black coal smoke descended over them. Penny began a hacking cough and clamped the inside of her elbow over her mouth and nose. “Even I can’t breathe up here. How do you manage?”
“I stopped breathing yesterday.” Malcolm took the rifle and replaced it in its perch just as the front door of the Red Orchid opened.
A crowd of people emerged onto the street below. They were all clad in red-and-white robes. Malcolm recognized a broad-shouldered shape in the center as the behemoth corpse he had fought in the cellar of the Red Orchid salon. Rowan Barnes was in the center. Malcolm dropped flat on the roof, the rifle pressed close to his shoulder, and he laid the sights on Barnes. He heard Penny speaking, but her voice was a soft buzz as he focused only on the target. He slipped a lens into place and the dim nightscape burned yellow like sunlight. Barnes was surrounded by a group of fifteen women who were distressingly active with giddy frolics, leaping about, holding hands, dancing together around the great man. Barnes smiled with not a care in the world. Every time he appeared in the scope, a women’s head drifted in front of the rifle’s sights. Malcolm recognized Eleanor and Lilith among the group.
Damnation. Barnes stopped, focused on something out of Malcolm’s view. The hunter now brought his target into sharp focus, settling his breath. The necromancer was as good as dead.
Malcolm didn’t pull the trigger. He
saw the face of Kate, quietly distraught at the idea that killing Barnes meant endless agony for Simon. The scribe wouldn’t care; he understood. But Kate cared for Simon, and Malcolm was about to drive an aching pain into those beautiful green eyes.
Barnes vanished from the scope when he bent over but then popped up again. Another shape wavered into view. It was a young girl, no older than Charlotte. Barnes lifted the waif onto his shoulders as if he were a loving father. Then it caught Malcolm by surprise when the necromancer looked up to stare at him directly with a smile twisted with diabolical glee. Barnes actually winked at him. Malcolm clenched his teeth and his finger tightened against the trigger.
Barnes and his acolytes started off down the street. Malcolm was sure he could place a shell in the man’s head without hitting the little girl. Relatively sure. So he didn’t. Barnes and his group turned a corner and vanished.
“Damn it!” He pushed the rifle away. “He knew I was here the whole time. Idiot! Idiot!”
“Where he’s going?” Penny asked.
“He’s about to kill one of those women.” Malcolm slapped a furious hand against the bricks. “We don’t know which church.”
“We’ll split up,” Penny said. “I’ll go to St. Mary Woolnoth. You go to St. George.”
“All right. Be careful. You’re armed, I take it?”
Penny grinned and slid down the roof to the eaves. She affixed her climbing gizmos to her hands. “Worry about yourself, Malcolm.”
He waved her gone and headed for the window.
Malcolm managed to find a hansom. The rifle was hidden in the folds of his coat and the driver paid him little mind, grateful for the coin on such a cold night. The cab moved onto the Ratcliffe Highway. Malcolm’s grip on the rifle was tight, all the while hoping Penny didn’t do something foolish if she did encounter Barnes.
The hansom made good time to St. George and Malcolm stepped from the cab. He entered the creaking gate and blended in with the dark shadows that permeated the grounds. The air was heavy with moisture, and if the temperature dropped any further, there would be snow. He tripped over something on the ground and stumbled against a gravestone. It was a body, a man in a long coat and cheap hat. His face had frozen in a grimace of pain, and his hands had locked on his chest, clutching at his heart. A lantern lay extinguished on the ground nearby. The watchman, no doubt, paid by Simon’s friend Henry to keep an eye on the church. He had had no time to raise an alarm. He had been no match.
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