The Alchemists: A Paranormal Steampunk Thriller (The Guild Chronicles Book 1)

by J M Bannon

  10. In time of peace I believe I can give as complete satisfaction as any other in the field of architecture, and the construction of both public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another.

  Also I can execute sculpture in marble, bronze and clay. Likewise in painting, I can do everything possible as well as any other, whosoever he may be.

  Moreover, work could be undertaken on the bronze horse which will be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the auspicious memory of His Lordship your father, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.

  And if any of the above-mentioned things seem impossible or impracticable to anyone, I am most readily disposed to demonstrate them in your park or in whatsoever place shall please Your Excellency, to whom I commend myself with all possible humility.

  Leonardo DaVinci

  “THIS IS what I aspire to, being capable of doing so much and when called upon to deliver the results that I claim. What I really love about this letter is that there is another great skill that Leonardo possessed, the skill of reading a man’s character. He knew that the Duke was a man of war and would fight the other Duchies. Leonardo could see the man the Duke wanted to be - a warrior that bronze statues would be cast in his likeness. Like DaVinci, I don’t want to be just one thing unless that one thing is my full potential. Enough of this let's get back to our puzzle.”

  Preston found her passion contagious but not for the love of Leonardo, but for Lorelei and her enthusiasm for knowledge and intellectual rigor.

  “Now let’s find that page to get the letter sequences,” proposed Lorelei. She then copied the Greek letters as they were laid out in the journal illustration on the larger, outer ring and the Latin letters on the smaller circle. “Now we have the formula. This will allow us to decode once we know the settings for the key. It will be a little trial and error until we break through his key. We will now look for clues as to the inner and outer letters that should align then test decoding a section and see if it makes sense.”

  “Let’s try this,” suggested Preston. “Take the Archon name Adonaios. It has eight letters written in Greek while the poems are Latin. Let's count over the number of letters on the Greek wheel then align that corresponding Latin letter with alpha,” they did the work with no resulting decoding.

  Preston realized how late it was, or rather early as they had worked into the morning trying different sequences. Progress thwarted by him and Lorelei going off on intellectual tangents.

  “So, Preston Gilchrist, what was it like being the son of Lord William Gilchrist?”

  “What do I say, it is what I grew up with. He was away for years on expedition and upon his return he would have all this pomp and circumstance with the well- to- do wanting to hear about his exploits in Africa or America,” said Preston, he did not look up from the book he was too busy trying to figure out the key.

  “And you never wanted to go with him to hunt a lion or find some lost tribe?”

  ‘Let’s be clear, the tribe was not lost they knew exactly where they were, and I would wager it was more my father getting lost that led to his discoveries. Have we tried aligning the first letter and the last letter of the Archon’s name Adonaios?” Preston began the transliteration.

  “When I told the old boy, I was leaving Cambridge to hunt down the origins of the book he threw me for a loop. I thought he would lose his mind over my buggering off mid-semester but instead, he was all for it. He said, ‘I don’t want to see you waste your life reading some other old man’s ideas and learning to regurgitate them. Go out and write your own stories, even if they are full of failure they will be real and yours.’ So, what do we have here…”

  The letter transcribed to QUAE, this was a word. He kept going and read out what he had decoded, “quae aperire oculos tuos.

  Did you hear that?” asked Preston, startled.

  “Hear what?”

  “Well, that was strange. It was as if for a moment, I could hear someone else's thoughts, or had someone else’s thoughts in my head.”

  “Have more wine and we will see if that makes more voices come or go.” Lorelei grabbed the bottle and refilled both of their glasses, “to celebrate the cracking of the code.”

  “Salute,” said Preston then they clinked glasses and each took a swig of wine while gazing into each other's eyes. When he finished swallowing and Lorelei’s glass went to the table, he stole a kiss and she gave a passionate return, but then broke it off. “Enough of that Gilchrist, let’s get cracking, as you English say.”

  Preston worked through the first poem and Lorelei worked the second to prove they had cracked Azul’s code.

  Preston read what he had transcribed.

  Your eyes are opening to a path that will lead you through the gateways that block the mortal world from the immortal. I have secured in this book the secret rituals to project your immortal form beyond the material plane and to go beyond heaven and earth. To possess the secret, you must be an intrepid intellectual, prepared to expand a mind beyond that of most men and to walk the long journey, where the end is the beginning.

  Then he read the second and transcribed the third. Lorelei moved over to a lounge and dozed off, but Preston had tapped into newfound energy and continued to translate. Upon completing the fourth when he looked to start the fifth something strange happened he no longer needed the key. He was able to translate the code in his mind. It was as if he has learned to read a new language but stranger still as he read he quickly moved from slow mental translation to some weird fluency.

  Preston took Azul’s challenge to heart that night and put himself on a path that would change him forever.

  6

  FRIDAY, THE 1ST OF JUNE 1860

  7:18 A.M. GILCHRIST MANOR

  The solarium was as close as Preston dared to enter the outdoors. The Gilchrist gardener had labored diligently to create a visually integrated environment inside the glass room with the rear garden. For three years Preston had retired into seclusion, never leaving the manor even once.

  As he stood looking out into the gardens Brentwood and his team were attending the buffet and setting up a continental breakfast for his visiting party.

  The Baron had risen early to survey the property; he rode up to the house as Henrik ran up to hold the horses while Traube dismounted.

  “Have you made any progress with Lorelei’s Journal’s?” pleaded the Baron as he walked in throwing his riding gloves in his hat and handing it to one of the waiting footmen.

  “I finished about an hour ago.”

  “You did not sleep?” quizzed the Baron.

  Preston could not let his mind rest on most days, but found it more difficult when contemplating that Lorelei could be in trouble. “The problem you brought me required my waking mind and not a sleeping one. Once I found the key, I labored to transpose the notes hoping to provide clue as to her situation. On the table, there I have transposed the coded pages. In the upper right corner, I noted the page number of the Journal."

  Preston didn’t turn from viewing the garden but heard Gustav shuffling through the pages. “Was there anything on her whereabouts, or who may have abducted her?”

  “The notebook was a work journal. There was no personal information in that book only her work notes on the ‘der Tiegel’, the crucible and her recipes for 'proto-gas'.”

  “Well, Preston that has been her personal life, she lives in her laboratory working day and night with Maxwell on the project. That is all I have to go one, may I keep these, maybe someone at the Werks can make something of this.”

  “Why do you think she has been abducted, Baron?”

  “After University, she returned home and worked in my Apothecary. She is quite the alchemist, so much so she was offered an apprenticeship at the Kraft Werks in Königsberg. Now it certainly helps to be a Traube, but her natural ingenuity made her be the first woman to be made a Guildist and would have been so if she was no relation. Her undertaking is earth- shattering and when I was made
aware of her disappearance from the High Elector himself and our Minister of Internal Security, I am sure it is a plot to either steal the secrets of our process or stop us from being able to initialize the process commercially.

  Lorelei has been working together with Professor Maxwell to develop a novel process, we have called the crucible. Once it is built, the new facility within the Kraft Werks will change everything known about alchemy. We will achieve what has alluded alchemists for millennia, the ability to transform one material into another.

  While professor Maxwell has provided electromagnetic innovations, it was my Lorelei that could apply his technology to alchemical processes. I have no doubt it is a secret group attempting to steal our secrets and established themselves as a competitor to the Guild. For all I know it could be some American industrialists or that Englishman Perkins who leads that pack of mauve coated textilists in London. I came to you hoping that Lorelei left a clue and you would be able to find it,” detailed the Baron.

  "There wasn't anything in the notebook that resembled clues or a code. I paid special attention to small notes or scribbles in the margins none appear to be ciphers, most were either calculations or doodles. I am sorry I could not be of more help," explained Preston.

  "Well, Master Gilchrist, you are to wire-type me if you can think of anything that be of help. All my resources are at your disposal. Maybe you should come with me to Prussia and search the estate for clues? I know how she enjoyed her games and how you two would write to each other with your ancient languages and codes," Gustavus suggested.

  The thought of leaving the Manor made Preston’s stomach sink. " I don't think I would be much help, but if I think of something I will indeed wire you, Sir."

  "Just say the word and I will have an airship available to bring you to Prussia or anywhere else you beleivewe need to look for my little girl."

  “If you don’t mind, I will retire now and get some rest” said Preston.

  “Yes, please do, you have worked like a slave and you must be exhausted. I will take my leave with these notes. Do not worry about seeing us off, your hospitality has been tremendous. I do wish you to wire-type me if you can assist further with my daughter,” finished the Baron.

  Preston left the Atrium and walked past the stairs that lead to the bedrooms, heading for the study. He walked in and stopped to stare at the Journal in its glass case. He took a key from a chain around his neck and unlocked the glass doors to open the case. The book perched on a stand and lay open to show the illuminated pages. He turned to the third chapter of the seven Archons and stared at the illustration of the seven-pointed star.

  Preston walked over to his desk and dropped into the leather chair. He was exhausted. His hand reached over to the second drawer and opened to access the contents. In it was the paper that wrapped the parcel. Within the package was a finely crafted wooden box with a parquet tile top made up of various squares and rectangles. He set the box down on his desk then pulled out the wrapping that had kept neatly folded in the drawer since its arrival two days before Traube’s airship arrived. The label on the package was Linostamped by some type of postal machine in Prussia, but across the bottom was the letters in Lorelei’s handwriting.

  RZ EZ QTQEJQTGP DNSWZMDECIMP QZC OTYYPC LE DPGPY EZ DZWGP ESP NZOP

  He didn’t need a key to decode it he had memorized that first code she gave him seven years ago, because he cherished it like most do of the first love note they are passed.

  He knew there were no clues in Lorelei’s notebook, just as he was sure that the box on his desk had a message from Miss Traube.

  7

  MONDAY, THE 4TH OF JUNE 1860

  4:30 P.M. GILCHRIST MANOR

  “Where did you get this?”

  “A friend sent it?” answered Preston Gilchrist.

  “It is beautiful,” gushed Babbage.

  “Yes, The box is finely crafted from exotic woods,” replied Preston.

  Preston had reached out to Sir Charles Babbage on account of a letter the man had written in the Journal of the Society of Arts on cipher writing and had struck up a friendship around Babbage’s work on keyless code decryption a few years back. When the old polymath learned of Preston’s work and experience with lost languages and coding systems of antiquity, they found common ground. While Babbage was notorious for his feud with the Mechanist’s concerning the use of mechanical computation, what was kept out of the press was his code-cracking skills. During the Crimean War, Babbage broke Vigenère's auto key cipher and although he had bragged about it to Preston, the Crown’s ability to decipher enemy messages was still a secret.

  “Not the design, the mathematical precision.” Babbage took out calipers and checked the dimensions, first measuring the three dimensions of the entire box then the rectangle parquet inlay.

  Who brings calipers to visit someone in the country? "Sir Charles, this is why I asked you here today. I believe this is a puzzle meant to be solved, I need to expedite the solution; I thought your skill set would suit the case," proposed Preston.

  “I thank you for thinking of me, and I would say I can help as this is born of the mathematics that underlay the universal. The box is designed to the golden ratio. You see how the whole box surface is divided into sections of different color woods, the proportions of the darker wood to the lighter wood hints at a proportional sequence. This box is a mathematical puzzle you see, the parquet pieces that make the top are a further clue, a Fibonacci ratio.” The old man drew the shapes on a piece of paper as if he was lecturing back at Cambridge. “We call these ratios Fibonacci numbers; ratio sequences that have a steadfast relationship to each other.”

  Preston wasn’t following beyond that this was just the scavenger hunt he expected Lorelei would send him on. This puzzle box could be trusted more than the notebook her father had given him. “I know the name Fibonacci an Italian mathematician, but what does this have to do with the box?”

  "You see my boy, these squares are all in relation to each other This darker wood section is a section with an area of twenty-one by twenty-one centimeters; the lighter wood is thirteen by twenty-one. The twenty-one is made up by the thirteen and another section that is eight centimeters, this is a Fibonacci sequence: 21,13,8,5,3,2,1,1 and this is so important to us mathematicians because the sequence is found everywhere in nature. The spirals on a nautilus shell, the leaves on a fern. It is mathematical harmony," explained Sir Charles.

  “Does this help you to solve the puzzle? I thank you for giving me this understanding but the knowledge I need urgently is inside this box,” pleaded Preston.

  “I suspect it is a mathematical code.”

  “Since I received it, I have been fiddling with it hoping to fumble on the way to open it. You can see here are two pieces that break the border and go against the grain, they both move out, then you can move other parquet pieces but they seem to only move in one direction; eventually I get stuck,” said Preston.

  Babbage took a piece of paper and laid it on top of the box, then produced his silver graphite stylus. He removed the stick of graphite and rubbed the side of it gently on the surface of the paper. The faint outlines of the parquet appeared on the paper. Removing the paper from the box he used a ruler and an ink pen to measure out the sections and dividing them with indigo guidelines. Preston could now visualize the sequence of smaller and smaller boxes. Finally, Babbage drew a curved line that intersected all the boxes. “You see, like I said, the form of a seashell.”

  Preston could now visualize the spiral.

  “I suspect we need to follow a path that is in line with this spiral. Not a random maze but a deliberate path from the larger square to this point where these two tiny blocks are near the smallest part of the spiral that I have drawn. That will be the goal, May I give it a go?”

  “Certainly.” Preston watched the old man lift the tracing paper off the box to map his route along the closest pieces of parquet, aligning with his spiral drawing. “You see, Preston, the blocks roughly f
ollow the pattern and I suggest we look to keep on the spiral path. If this does not work, I can always take this back to my shop and see about creating a model that we can program into the difference machine to speed up a solution. Ah, see the pieces only move in two directions only left- right or up- down, and there is a pattern: left up, left down, right down, left up again. Let's see if this holds true.” Preston thought it would; Lorelei was one for patterns and systems.

  “I think we have it here,” said Babbage as he manipulated the box with the enthusiasm of a small boy with a new toy, as the ratios grew smaller in size. As he reached the two smallest squares, Babbage moved the one down then the next one into the place where its twin was and heard a click, but the box did not open. He tilted and looked at the box from underneath his furrowed bushy brow trying to find something different. “I’m flummoxed, I thought that would do it.”

  Preston picked up the box to look and see if there were any other changes, like another recessed panel showing. Nothing.

  Gilchrist pushed the last square back into its original position thinking it might require going back through the sequence but when it clicked back into its original position, the box lid popped open.

  Inside was a glass test tube with a cork. Preston peered into the vial and saw a piece of paper and an iron key with a pentagon-shaped bow. He uncorked the vial and let the paper and key drop into his hand. On the small piece of paper were the initials L.T. in Lorelei’s handwriting.

  “Well, that was a bundle of work for nothing.” Sir Charles uttered, exhausted.

  "No Sir, it is not. I know exactly where the lock is that this key will open," stated Preston while his stomach churned and he felt a cold sweat break out. The lock was in Germany.