“The first coin,” Fearnua repeated.

  Looking vaguely embarrassed, Nicholas handed over a single battered and slightly misshapen denier. “That’s the only coin.”

  Fearnua tossed the coin into the air and neatly caught it. “A penny. It is enough.”

  Silently, Perenelle reached out and took her husband’s hand. Turning it palm up, supporting it, she stretched both their hands across the table.

  Fearnua dropped the leather parcel into the center of Nicholas’s palm. “This is the Codex, the Book of Abraham the Mage,” he said slowly. He slipped the point of his hook under the leather strap at its center and eased it open. “This night your world changes forever.”

  2

  Two cloak-wrapped figures stood on the roof of Notre-Dame. One was no longer entirely human, and the other had never been born. An icy mist rose off the river far below, covering the lead roof tiles in a thin layer of frost. One of the figures moved, almost lost its footing, and only managed to right itself in a windmill of flailing arms and screeching metal.

  “This city will be the death of me.” The voice was a peculiar rasp, a clicking rattle of gears and whirring cogs. The hooded cloak fell away to reveal a body composed of lengths of rusting wire and metal wrapped in red-and-yellow cord and draped in chain mail. Shivering washes of sparks ran across the mail like a pulsing heartbeat. The head looked as if it had once belonged to an antique suit of armor. Gossamer wisps of stinking sulfurous smoke leaked from every joint and crack in the helmet.

  “You know that there are times I regret making you, but mostly, Talos, I regret giving you a voice box.” The second speaker was English, his voice cultured and educated.

  “You wanted someone as clever as you to talk to,” the metallic man continued.

  “There is no one as clever as me.”

  Talos’s mouth opened, let out a belch of smoke, and closed again.

  The Englishman known as Roger Bacon and Dr. Mirabilis had reputedly died sixty-three years previously. All of England had mourned the passing of one of the great scholars of his age. The king, Edward Longshanks, had even sent an emissary to Oxford for the funeral. Bacon, in disguise at the back of the crowd, had been vaguely disappointed that the king himself had not come.

  “Did you know I became immortal in this city seventy-five years ago?” Bacon said quietly.

  “I did not. I remember everything you have told me,” Talos said. “There are some significant gaps in your history. I can only assume you have kept things hidden from me for a reason.”

  “I am protecting you. The Church has always looked askance at my work. You know that there are some rumors of your existence. If you were taken from me and interrogated, you would not be able to answer any questions because you simply do not know.”

  Talos leaked smoke in intricate spirals while he considered the statement. “I believe the appropriate response is ‘Thank you,” he said.

  Bacon raised a long-fingered hand and pointed across the shimmering, ice-creaking river toward a sparkle of lights on the other side of the Seine. “I was a friar in the Franciscan monastery just there, spending my days doing repetitive menial tasks, with no access to my beloved books and letters. On the feast day of John the Hermit—”

  “The twenty-seventh day of March,” Talos offered, each word accompanied by a puff of smoke.

  “—I was visited by two creatures who made me an extraordinary offer.”

  “Were they angels?”

  “I thought so at the time.”

  “Demons, then. Though I have to add that the evidence for angels and demons does not stand up to scientific scrutiny.”

  “You are a talking metal head,” Bacon snapped, “kept alive by a science that is equal parts sorcery and ancient magic. Do not be so quick to dismiss either angels or demons. Magic is just science we do not comprehend yet; perhaps the angelic and the demonic are visitors from unknown lands. The ancients write of Shadowrealms, worlds that link to ours—”

  “The two creatures who visited you?” Talos interrupted, reminding him to continue.

  “Ah yes. Male and female, but alike enough to be twins. Their clothing and jewelry had the look of the Land of Aegypt about them, and indeed, they called themselves Isis and Osiris, after the old gods of the same name. In time, I came to believe that they were the original bearers of those names.”

  “Which would make them over three thousand years old,” Talos stated.

  “Older,” Bacon said, shaking his head, ice sparkling in his mane of fine white hair. “Much, much older. They offered me two gifts and made a request.” The old man paused, waiting for Talos to ask about the gifts or the request, then turned away from the river to look at the sparkling metal figure. “What: no smart suggestion?”

  “I do not have enough data with which to formulate a response. However, you have stated that you become immortal in this city; then you spoke of the visitation by the two Aegyptian figures. It is not unreasonable to suggest that they made you immortal. Therefore, I have no question to ask or statement to make.”

  “If you were human,” Bacon snapped, “you would be very irritating.”

  “I am created in your image,” Talos muttered. “What did Isis and Osiris offer you?”

  “They offered me immortality. What human could refuse such a gift?”

  Talos’s metal head was wreathed in smoke as he processed the idea. “I can list several reasons for refusing it.”

  “Well, yes, yes, so can I, now. But at the time I did not. I had not anticipated that I would have to fake my own death, and have to continue to do so every fifty or sixty years for the rest of my very long life. It seems almost ridiculous. However, they were insistent that I not reveal the secret of my immortality.”

  “Why do you keep me hidden?” Talos asked suddenly.

  “Because the humans would fear you,” Bacon answered. “And, in their fear, destroy you.”

  “And why would they fear me?”

  “Because you are different,” Bacon said.

  Sparks shifted in a wavy pattern along Talos’s chain-mail covering. “The humans may have respected you, Doctor Mirabilis, but you know that respect was tempered with fear. If they discovered that you were unaging, that you were different, they would have killed you.”

  Bacon sighed. “You are correct, of course.” The white-haired old man reached beneath his cloak and unsheathed a short sword. Wan starlight ran like liquid on its blue-black stone blade. “This was their second gift to me.”

  “An unprepossessing weapon in the style of a Roman gladius,” Talos answered. “The stone is unusual, however.”

  “I believe it is actually made of ice.” Bacon held the sword up to the black Parisian night. Tendrils of chill white mist curled off the blade, and when he moved it, the air parted with a high-pitched musical whine. “This is the sword Caledfwlch.”

  “Excalibur!” Talos breathed a surprised puff of yellow smoke. He reached for the sword with a three-fingered metal gauntlet.

  Bacon yanked the sword away. “Best not to touch it. Who knows what it would do to your metal workings.”

  Talos snatched his fingers back. “So, Excalibur is not a myth.”

  “At the heart of every myth,” Bacon said, “there is a grain of truth.”

  “But if Excalibur is real, then so too is Arthur, and the Round Table.”

  “Just so.” Bacon said. He moved the sword through the air again, the night parting with the faintest of whistles. “Two gifts: immortality and the sword.”

  “And you said these gifts came with a request attached?” Talos asked.

  “They wanted me to retrieve a book that had been stolen from them.”

  “That seems simple enough,” Talos concluded.

  “If creatures who are almost ten thousand years old, who possess one of the legendary Swords of Power and can gift immortality, cannot recover their own book, then there must be a problem,” Bacon said. “It is clearly no ordinary book. And no ordinary thief either.”

  Talos turned to look out over Paris, glowing yellow eyes peering through the smog of ten thousand chimneys. “And you are sure it is here?”

  Roger Bacon picked his way carefully over the roof of Notre-Dame, tapping the carved gargoyles with the flat of the black-bladed sword. The sword flared silver and black with each touch, white smoke seeping off it, soaking into the stone statues, leaving them covered in sparkling frost. “Oh, I am quite sure,” he said. “Ten days ago, the mysterious Isis and Osiris spoke to me from a mirror and told me that the book would arrive in Paris this very night.”

  “The book that is too dangerous for them to acquire themselves?” Talos asked. “I presume it must be protected by an army.”

  “I asked the same question,” Bacon said. He touched the gargoyles again with the point of the swords, scraping a triangular symbol into the stone. The chill night air was broken by the sound of rock grinding off stone. “They told me it would be in the possession of one man. Immortal like me, powerful, but not invulnerable.”

  “A man? Just one man?”

  “Just one,” Bacon said. “I thought it odd myself.”

  Talos leaked stinking smoke across the roof. “Can I suggest that if Isis and Osiris were afraid to face this man, then we should be terrified? Or rather, you should be terrified. I am incapable of fear.”

  Rock crunched and pebbles rattled off the lead tiles. Talos turned as three of Notre-Dame’s huge carved gargoyles came to shuddering life. Stone eyes blinked a dull gray light, and dirty smoke dripped between stone fangs. One appeared to be a cross between a dragon and a lizard; the second looked like a squat, incredibly muscular man with long pointed ears and an almost human face. A horn jutted from its forehead. The largest of the gargoyles was a three-headed dog with an unnaturally long body so thin that ribs showed through the stone flesh. Instead of paws, it had lion’s claws. The metal man turned away from the animated stone statues. He’d seen Bacon bring statues to life before. It was little more than a useless trick. “Does this mysterious man have a name?”

  “They told me he was called Marethyu. I do not know if that is a name or a title.”

  “Both,” Talos answered. “Marethyu is one of the many names for Death.”

  And then, like distant thunder, something ancient and elemental pulsed across the city in a long slow wave. The night, which had been punctuated by barking dogs, grew silent, and from their vantage point high over the city, Bacon and Talos could see the lights from fires and candles blink out in ever-expanding concentric circles, plunging the entire city into darkness.

  “There.” Bacon raised the black-bladed sword and pointed toward the center of the circle. The trio of stone gargoyles, freed from their frozen forms, scrambled down the side of the cathedral, claws tearing holes in the soft stone. Moments later, they reached the ground in a clatter of rocks and raced off into the deserted streets.

  * * *

  —

  “You will have time enough to read it later.” Perenelle snatched the book from her husband’s hands and shoved it into one of the two leather satchels on the bed.

  Nicholas stood in the center of the tiny bedroom and turned around. The usually neat room was in chaos, and the carved wooden box at the end of their bed gaped open, clothes spilling out onto the bed. “We can’t just leave,” he said.

  “We are leaving,” Perenelle answered firmly. “Something is coming, and we do not want to be here when it arrives.” She looked at two pairs of shoes, then shoved one pair into a leather satchel and tossed the others aside. “We have space for one pair of trousers,” she said. “Do you want the black ones with the hole in the knee or the brown ones with the torn pocket?”

  “Black,” he muttered. “I’ll need the pockets.”

  Perenelle strapped up the worn leather bag and shoved it toward her husband. “Empty the lockbox. Take the money and any papers you think might be useful.”

  “What sorts of papers?”

  “The important ones. Deeds to the house. Wills. Also, the letters you wrote me when we were courting.”

  “You’re talking as if we might not be back.”

  Perenelle continued to pack the second bag. “And while you’re downstairs, make sure the fire in the basement is out. We don’t want it flaring up in the middle of the night and burning the street down. Go. Quickly now. I’ll finish up here.” She heard Nicholas clomp down the wooden stairs, and then, moments later, there was a metallic rapping on the bedroom door. “It’s open,” she called.

  Fearnua pushed the door open but did not step into the room. In the light of the single candle, only his eyes and the metal hook at his wrist were visible. “We don’t have much time,” he said quietly.

  “I know that.” Perenelle lifted her head, eyes closed, and turned toward the river. “I can feel something unnatural…a disturbance.”

  “You are sensitive to the elemental magics. Something inanimate has been animated.” Perenelle turned back to face Fearnua and saw the liquid flash of his tongue moving across his lips. “It has the taste of stone about it. A statue, no doubt,” he said.

  “And you can tell that by the taste in the air?”

  “In time, Mistress Perenelle, you too will share these gifts.”

  Perenelle shoved the last of her clothes into the bag, strapped it tightly, and slung it over her shoulder. She turned to look at Fearnua. “I do not believe you are lying to me.”

  “I am not.”

  “And even if you were, then I know there is nothing I can do about it.” She glanced toward the river again. “You’ve led something dark and dangerous to my home.”

  “It only became a danger when you accepted the book.”

  “Had you any doubts?”

  “No. I knew you would take it.”

  “Did we have a choice?”

  “There is always free will,” Fearnua said.

  Perenelle stepped closer, cold green eyes fixed on Fearnua’s face. “If anything happens to my husband tonight, I will burn your precious book to cinders.”

  “Mistress Perenelle, you do know that the book is as much yours as it is your husband’s. There are pages that only you will be able to decipher, spells only you can cast.”

  “The only reason I encouraged Nicholas to accept the book is that I cannot see a future for us beyond this night.”

  He nodded. “The future was awaiting your decision. Now that you have made the decision, your future will begin to unroll.”

  “But I have always known that our future is not in this house.”

  “Is that why you seem willing to leave all this with less regret than your husband?” Fearnua asked.

  “All that is important to me I carry here”—Perenelle tapped her head—“and here.” She rested her hand over her heart. “Everything else can be replaced. If the book is as you say it is, then we will soon have more money than we know what to do with. I can buy new clothes, shoes, and jewelry.”

  “The book is all that I say it is,” the man answered. “Within its pages you will find how to turn base metal into gold, and on the last two pages you will find a recipe—a unique concoction of herbs and spices, a mixture of salts and metals—that you must only brew and drink every month upon the full of the moon. It is the second great secret of alchemy: it will extend your lives indefinitely. Choose the moment when you first activate it carefully. You will never age beyond that day. But while you will become immortal, you will not be invulnerable. You can be killed. And from tonight, you will be forever hunted by creatures both natural and unnatural.” He nodded toward the satchel dangling from her shoulder. “The book—the Codex—exudes an essence, a stink of ancient power. When I unwrapped it this evening, that power pulsed over the city and highlighted our position. In time, you will learn how to block and disguise the book’s power. But be aware, Mistress Perenelle, that no matter where you go in this world, there will be those who will want this book: humans, inhumans, immortals, creatures of myth, monsters from legend, those you would call gods, and others who wear the guises of daemons. When you and your husband accepted the book, you took on the duty of guarding it for the rest of your lives.”

  “Guarding it?” Perenelle asked. “Why do I think we are merely holding it for someone else?”

  “In time, you will be able to translate the book. In time, your destinies will be revealed and you will know exactly what you must do. But yes, you are now the guardians of the Codex. There will come a time, and this will be many years hence, when you will know what to do with the book.”

  Perenelle nodded. She glanced over her shoulder at the tossed bed and scattered clothing.

  “This is the first night of the rest of your lives,” Fearnua said.

  Footsteps suddenly pounded up the stairs. Nicholas’s face appeared out of the gloom, his eyes wide and dark with terror. “There’s something outside. It’s scratching at the door.”

  “This night might also be the last,” Perenelle added softly.

  * * *

  —

  Roger Bacon stopped at the top of the narrow street and peered down. Behind him, Talos stood so close that his rotten-egg odor completely engulfed Bacon. “I am never going to get your stink out of these clothes,” the old man grumbled.

  “You should have used something other than sulfur to power me,” Talos said, gears clicking softly as he attempted to whisper. “I cannot smell it myself, but I understand it is quite noxious.”

  “You stink of sour milk, unwashed feet, and rotten eggs,” Bacon muttered.

  “I presume you are equally fragrant.”

  “I had a bath last Christmas Eve,” Bacon said, indignant. “Excessive washing removes the essential oils from a man’s skin.”

  “History would suggest that that is a complete fallacy. Both the Greeks and the Romans bathed every day….”

 

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