Astiza
In medieval times, the silver mines of Kutná Hora made Bohemia one of the richest provinces of the Holy Roman Empire. Sixty miles of tunnels wormed through veins of ore, and thousands of miners with picks and shovels crouched and crawled to their stations like doomed troglodytes. The mines have since played out and been abandoned. The city of Kutná Hora remains, half-forgotten, making it a discreet hideaway for occult alchemical experiments. Horus and I were bound by ropes in Prague and transported by sealed wagon. My muscles cramped and my son was feverish, moaning from burns to his hands. He’d been thrashed, starved, and threatened. I’d been told that only my abject cooperation could save him from worse. I’d fallen in with monsters, and waited to be raped. Yet Fulcanelli—no, Richter—was so mutilated and in such pain that he’d lost any immediate interest in possessing me. Auric painted him with ointment and swathed his lower head with bandages. While the dwarf drove, Richter would open a shutter from the driver’s bench and peer at us with dark, sharklike eyes, betraying no feeling at all. He didn’t speak on the journey.
We traveled many hours—I lost all sense of time—and after an eternity stopped in the old mining town, none but ghosts awake. There were growling hounds at the wagon wheels to discourage escape, and Harry shrank against me, whimpering. I wept with him, furious at my own folly in trusting a “bishop” who was clearly not. Then we were carried into a tower tied to the old mines below. We were pushed down winding stairs hewn from solid rock. At the bottom we passed cells with iron bars and were shoved into a windowless underground apartment used for magical experiments.
It was dim as a dungeon in our new prison. Richter took a seat on a stool in the alchemical laboratory, caped and bandaged, a rapier at his side. Despite his disfigurement, he posed erect as if sitting for a painting, watching us as we looked around. The primary chamber had stoves, distilleries, bookshelves, flasks, bowls, and crucibles. Beyond was a tiny cave for sleeping, with more books. There was a crude chimney, and the stink of fumes. The baron took some satisfaction from our sense of doom. Unless we escaped or were rescued, my son and I would eventually face far ghastlier pain than he had. The only question was when.
My tongue was thick with thirst—we’d had no food or drink for a full day and night at least—but I managed a croak. “Where are we?”
“The place where you will rejoin your husband.”
Like a fool, I actually looked about. Ethan here? Or his body? But that wasn’t what Richter meant. Still, the words gave me wild hope. My heart stuttered.
“You’ve dissolved my face, but not our partnership,” Richter said, his teeth clenched from pain. “In fact, your hellion has sealed our alchemical wedding. You’ve been enlisted in the Invisible College, madame—that mystic fraternity that follows the secrets of the rose. Congratulations, witch.”
“But with me as master, and you as a slave,” hissed Auric.
“Yes, as our slave, my little friend.” He stared hard at me. “You will obey my dwarf in all things. If you don’t, your boy will become supper.”
My gaze darted. Two candles guttered in a chamber fifteen feet wide and thirty long. The door was made of stout and ancient wood. There were cauldrons, hanging hooks of iron, buckets, and vials. “So you are cannibals.” My guilt at trapping my son ground at me like a millstone, and the only thing that assuaged it was fury. How I longed to kill our two tormentors! But I needed a plan, not an impulse.
“I don’t share my assistant’s peculiar tastes, which are for pleasure, not nutrition.”
“I’ll do what I must to protect my son.” At this point I’d sacrifice my body. It is, after all, a temporary husk.
“Trust me, I’ve lost any attraction I once had for you,” Richter said.
“It’s me you have to placate.” Auric licked his lips again, enjoying my reaction. He cackled and jigged, dancing from foot to foot. What strategy to use on the insane?
And then my son spoke up, in a brave little voice honed by far too many hardships. “If you touch Mama, I will burn you, too.”
Auric was startled, and actually recoiled. “Goblin,” he hissed. But he was afraid.
“You are a bad man like the other bad man, and I don’t like you and I don’t like it here.” Harry put on his best scowl, as if about to throw a tantrum. I moved closer to him and we grasped hands, our courage growing from it. To be defended by a child! My own strength and determination soared. I’d bring down these men. I’d destroy them, and their nest, and their ambitions.
The dwarf had the confused look of all bullies faced with defiance.
The baron interrupted. “You will touch neither of them unless I expressly allow it,” Richter mildly commanded the dwarf, in a manner that showed he expected total obedience. “We want answers, not screams.”
“Then let us go,” I begged hopelessly. “Our meeting was a colossal mistake for both of us.”
“On the contrary. You’ve studied in Egypt, home of great magic. You learned the African arts amid the slaves of the Caribbean. You’ve studied in the greatest libraries, and by some rumors have read the Book of Thoth itself.”
I was shaking my head. “No, no, you give me too much credit. I exaggerated, to impress you. I led you on. I’m little more than a gypsy reader of the tarot.”
“You seek the Brazen Head.”
“As an amusement for my husband.”
“Whom I will enlist as well. Then I will bend all of you to our will.”
Would these monsters really reunite us? With Ethan, escape seemed truly possible. Or would I suck him down into hell as well? My mind hopped like a bird, pecking at flitting hope. “You’ll find him?”
“Perhaps. I believe you speculated he might come through Venice. I’ll seek him there. Meanwhile, do you wish for reunification?”
“Of course.”
“Then you must earn it. And pay me back for my face.”
“It was an accident. You were threatening me. My son was frightened.”
“First, your husband is going to learn of your imprisonment.”
Hope again. “How?”
“News will be sent to Spain, where he is some kind of courier between the navies. You will be reported to be in dire peril. That should encourage him to come, and together we will find the Brazen Head. But without the French.”
“We can’t lead you from down here.” I shuddered, looking at Auric. “Instead you brought us to this midget monster. Why, Baron—or Bishop—or whatever you are? Why this dwarf? Why bring us here?”
“So you can serve the Invisible College while we wait for clues your husband will unwittingly bring. You will seek the Philosopher’s Stone by refining gold from base metals.”
“No one has ever found the stone that provides immortality and salvation.”
“Haven’t they? The Comte de Saint-Germain said he had lived for centuries. Other alchemists and magicians have made the same claims, going back to Merlin, Enoch, and Hermes Trismegistus. You will be my chemist, Astiza, and discover and deliver to me the transformation men have sought for ten thousand years.”
“I can’t. Not in a hole like this. Where am I?”
“The silver mines of Kutná Hora, sorceress,” Auric piped up. “A labyrinth of half-drowned tunnels no person has ever fully mapped. A kingdom of darkness. The pit of the underworld. The portal to Satan. The abyss of despair.”
“A laboratory,” Richter corrected. “And you will succeed, because your whelp’s life is at stake. Isn’t that right, Auric?”
“Boy soup. You promised, master. Should she not produce gold . . .”
“You will succeed, or watch your son boiled and eaten before your very eyes.”
I shut them. “Succeed at alchemy?”
“Succeed at magic.”
“By threatening me with your little demon?”
“This demon will be your assistant and overseer. Auric knows the dark arts as you know the light. He won’t hurt you if you do as I say.”
My mind was frantic as a rabbit, darting this way and that. I’d no doubt their intention was to lure Ethan, use him, kill him, and then use me. But I was their prisoner, ransom for my husband. I’d promise to do what can’t be done.
“How can I believe you? You said Ethan might be dead. Now you said you’ll get word of my imprisonment to him. Which is it?”
“He’s a duplicitous agent for both France and England, I’ve been informed, serving as go-between among great men. If the navies have clashed, he may well be dead. But if he survives, I’ll find him.”
“How? You’re not French.”
“The Invisible College is vast and interconnected. France uses us as agents at times, but has no idea that we use France. We must find the Brazen Head before men like Talleyrand do. We must keep it from their conspirators.”
“Which conspirator?”
“An agent you may remember. The Comtesse Catherine Marceau.”