The sword of Roland and the dwarf who was to repair it were equally pitted. The blade was dark and chipped, and the smith was pocked and warty. Auric Nachash’s hair was tangled string, his beard wispy splotches, his leather apron spotted with stains, and his hands a scabby red. His hovel on the Golden Lane was noxious, its small forge laboring to exhaust fumes through a slumping chimney. A permanent fog hung in the room. What the waddling creature did exhibit was competent curiosity, handling Durendal with a craftsman’s intensity.
“Of course I can fuse hilt to blade,” he said. “But the steel is old, oddly discolored, and warped. What happened to it?”
“It was struck by lightning.”
He laughed, or rather cackled, nervously jiggling from leg to leg. “Tempered by a thunderbolt? Was that God’s wrath or God’s favor? And where did you get the hilt?”
“That’s none of your concern. Where did you learn to smith?”
“That’s none of your concern. I’m an unusual man, who required unusual teachers for unusual tastes.” He looked at me over the rim of the blade, eyes sharp as pins. They seemed to crawl over my features with the alacrity of spiders. “I instill magic in my steel, Monsieur . . .”
“Franklin. Hieronymus Franklin.”
It seemed cautious to use my false name. Aaron had made inquiries and was told that this ugly artisan was rumored to practice dark magic and petty crime. However, there was no one in all of Prague more skilled at metallurgy. Since experience with women convinced me that there was little correlation between appearance and character, I was willing to give the midget magician a chance. Could he know the source of my son’s marble? And what monstrous luck if he did!
As precaution, we’d found a hiding place for Gideon in a bell tower that overlooked the Golden Lane. The street itself had a presumptuous name for a gutter gathering of frauds, strumpets, beggars, moneylenders, and magicians. Every old city has a place like that, but I was especially wary in this alley. The street was tight, the hovel odd, and its occupant odder still. He smacked his lips and licked with his tongue when thinking, not noticing the strange sounds he made. His home had bubbling chemicals, jars of dead and aborted animals, and hanks of weed, herbs, and garlic hanging from joists like witches’ hair. There was a rude bed, sagging cupboards, and blackened cauldrons.
Adding to my disquiet was the fact that Auric seemed more interested in me than in my weapon, eyeing me like a vintner deciding when to time the crush. I didn’t care for the look, and sensed that he didn’t care that I didn’t care. The dwarf had no doubt gotten plenty of peculiar looks himself.
Best to keep things brisk and businesslike. “Can its strength be restored?”
His gaze swung from me to calculating appraisal. The broken hilt fit the sword blade at the break perfectly.
“Why would you care, Monsieur Franklin? Are you a medieval knight?”
“An expert in antiquities. Even to a collector, what good is a fragile sword?”
“In an age of artillery, what good is a sword at all?”
“Of use when your enemies get close.” Best to remind him I wasn’t helpless. “And people think this relic is still important.”
He fingered the metal like flesh. “Which people?”
“None of your concern, again. Inspired by old legends. Which must exist for a reason.”
“Ah, reason.” The dwarf nodded, waddling to his anvil. “Reason that I am small and twisted, reason that you are alone and poor, reason that bloodthirsty generals are elevated to lords, and reason that alchemists are mistrusted for nonsense and superstition. We live in an age of reason, where everything is known and nothing understood.” He stared back at me. “Do you believe in the unity of all things, pilgrim?”
I thought of Astiza and Harry. “I long for it.”
“Belief is part of healing, be it body or steel. I see you favoring a shoulder.”
“I was wounded at Austerlitz.”
“Serving which side?”
“My own.”
He approved of my answer. “Believe in your own recovery. You must not just hope but know that restoration is possible. Birth played a trick on me, so I pursue alchemy to repair myself. Dross can become silver. Ugly ducklings can become swans. Enduring pain teaches us to tolerate pain. Inflicting pain relieves pain. I heal myself.”
It didn’t seem to be working, given that he looked as though his profession was poisoning him. But I’ve met my share of unfortunates. Some are ennobled by their troubles, and others corrupted. We don’t control fate, but we control our reaction to it. Was this little smith tempered, or bent? “I just want to heal the sword.”
“You must envision the completed blade in order to restore it. Many an alchemical experiment has gone awry because of a single wisp of doubt. I know a seeker right now who seems troubled. So I put it to you again, traveler: Do you believe in unity?”
I thought of the strange things I’d seen in the bowels of the pyramids, the tombs of the ancients, the sacred tree of the Dakotas, and the voodoo swamps of Haiti. Aye, there’s more to existence than we admit. “I don’t just believe, blacksmith—I’ve experienced unity. All are aspects of one. I’ve had exhilarating glimpses of the secret order of the universe. Terrifying ones. Hopeful ones.”
“Then you could have answered your own question about the sword’s repair.” He fingered the blade. “I can tell that this was truly a hero’s sword, forged with magic, annealed in holy water, and consecrated in blood. Steel like fiber, woven in the loom of the forge. A hilt as sturdy as a root. A shape to sing as it cuts the air. Sharp as dawn at one time, and indestructible as the stars. It’s Durendal, is it not?”
How could he possibly know that?
Auric cackled at my surprise. “Yes, Rudolf was rumored to have put this stub of rust in that peculiar palace—Star Summer, they called it. You have stolen it?”
“Retrieved it.”
He held the blade high. “Durendal, Durendal! Even the name is poetry! Seekers have searched for it. And now, to have it on my forge? Oh, yes, I’ll restore it. It will whisper its past as I work to create it anew.” He held it to his ear. “Once more it will strip skin from muscle, meat from bone, and stir the finest soups. Durendal!”
The dwarf was clearly balmy, while I was clearly desperate.
“How do you know its name?”
“All Prague knows it. And this blade hums to me.”
Perhaps the sword truly was a talisman to finding the trail of Rosenkreutz and the Brazen Head. When I did that, I’d find my family, too, or so I hoped. No, believed, I corrected myself.
“Then repair it.” I deliberately used a tone of impatient authority to keep the lunatic under control.
“For a gold coin, master.”
“Agreed.” I had the last of Richter’s purse.
“I’ll have to overlap and weld the two parts. The finished product will be a few inches shorter.”
“A shortened sword is better than a broken one.”
“The philosopher offers a maxim!”
The little smith bent to his task, using coal to make a hotter fire. At his demand I pumped the bellows, baking myself to a fine sheen. Auric inserted the two broken ends in the coals until they glowed, set them on his anvil and had me hold a chisel at the break while he gave a smart swing with a hammer. We cut two lengthwise slits, one on the long blade and the other on the stub. Then the two pieces were reheated, twisted, and shoved together.
“Not very elegant-looking,” I remarked.
“Neither is procreation at its most awkward moments. Patience.”
The sword was heated again, brought out white at the joint, laid flat on the anvil, and beaten flat by my squat Vulcan, sparks flying. He doused, reheated, and hammered over and over again, working with sure swiftness. There was a final quenching with an explosive hiss, and then he sighted along the blade and began to smooth and sharpen with file, grindstone, and pumice. Durendal was beginning to look fit for a Roland.
“Satisfied, philosopher?”
I hefted it with my right arm, and then my aching left, before handing it back. I could now suspend such weight. “Impressed.”
“Yes, and now the rest of your lesson. You’ll need a scabbard. Go to my cupboard for leather and thread and a tape to measure, while I finish sharpening.”
I rummaged for supplies and stopped.
In the cupboard was a plain clay bowl. In the bowl was a silver necklace. And on the necklace were two pendants, an Egyptian ankh and an Eye of Horus, a decorative piece inspired by the eye of the Egyptian hawk god.
First the marble, and now this. It was as if Astiza and Harry had inscribed their names. Why had I been led to a dwarf with trinkets from my wife?
I grasped them and turned. “Why do you have relics of my family?”
But I discovered that the newly annealed sword was now pointed at my chest, the dwarf’s gaze grim with warning. “Do not move, gambler.”
“Why do you call me a gambler?”
“I know everything about you, Ethan Gage. I know you’re an impostor, a liar, and I know more about you than you know yourself.”
So he’d known my identity from the beginning.
“You’re no Franklin man, and no philosopher. You’re a spy, an adventurer, a dilettante, a rake, a sycophant to the powerful, a heretic, a treasure hunter, a conspirator, and a libertine.”
“And famous, apparently.” His list reminded me to create my own.
“I know your wife, I know your child, and I know your real purpose in Bohemia. You’re here as a thief, to find and steal another relic.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“You seek the Brazen Head.” The sword tip wavered a foot from my chest. I could grab it, but not without slicing my hand and risking a plunge to my heart.
It seemed useless to deny. “How can I steal what was stolen from the French two hundred years ago?” I eyed the sword’s point. “Or do you mean Roland’s sword, another French relic carried off to Bohemia?” I could overpower this Auric if I could get past the blade, but the cell we in worked was small, giving me no room to maneuver. “And how do you know about my wife?”
“She was here.”
At last! Blood pounded so fast that I was dizzy. “Is she alive?”
“Only for so long as you cooperate, Monsieur Gage,” a new voice said from behind me, its injured lisp all too familiar. “Your son did not, spoiling my appearance.”
I turned with dread and resignation. Baron Wolf Richter held two pistols aimed squarely at my torso. Because I had already been shot once, their muzzles looked even more gigantic to me than usual. Richter himself seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, just like the stranger Aaron had encountered in the Lane. It’s an odd trick, becoming invisible, and almost as useful as being dead. In this case he wore dun-colored clothes that blended with burlap curtains I’d assumed screened a pantry. He’d been watching us, still as stone, the whole time.
“So you’re in league with Catherine Marceau,” I said.
“Hardly. Rabbi Abraham Stern betrayed us by deciding to cooperate with the agents of Talleyrand. We’re Czech patriots who believe our heritage belongs to Prague, not Paris. Aren’t we, Auric?”
“We’re the rightful caretakers of the automaton, if it exists.”
“Then you don’t support the aspirations of the Jews?”
“The Jews are doing quite well. They don’t need Napoleon—or you.”
“Where are my wife and son?”
“You can join them, if you wish.” The pistols had not wavered, and Durendal was still pointed as well.
I stalled for opportunity. “You really should do something about your complexion, Baron.” I hadn’t had time to study the full scale of his disfigurement in Venice, but it looked as if someone had dipped the lower half of his face in boiling acid. By thunder, these two were the ugliest pair of poltroons I’d ever encountered, and that’s saying something.
“Your son did this to me, Gage. I’ve yet to take my full revenge on him.”
I was sweating, and from more than the heat. “Harry? My boy is friendly to everything but rabid dogs.”
“He’s not seen the sun since he scarred me, and never will again unless you cooperate. His sin I can attribute to youth. Your sins to greed and pride. And your wife’s . . . I sought you out in Venice out of curiosity and revenge, and you dared steal from me. But I’m much less impulsive than you are. I handle cards better, too.” An amused smile, if it hadn’t been so twisted by chemicals.
“Harry wouldn’t have hurt you if you didn’t deserve it. What were you doing to him?”
“I barely struck the hellion. It was a misunderstanding with his mother.”
My rage was swelling. “You assaulted her?”
“How could I, when she’d fallen in love with me?”
“What?”
“Ask her yourself. It’s quite a tragedy, the three of us. So—do you want to see them alive? Do you want help in finding the Brazen Head? Or will you condemn them by doing something heroic and foolish, ending your life and theirs?”
The door opened. Two more caped men stepped through it, these holding wide-bore muskets. Auric let the heavy sword point drop. Did it give me a chance? No.
“Bind him,” Richter ordered. “Wrists to belt, so his captivity won’t be too conspicuous when we leave. We don’t want trouble in the Lane.”
“What do you want? Why don’t you leave us alone?”
“Your wife has made some progress on alchemical experiments but is asking for chemicals to complete her concoctions. One is a seed of gold. Do you still have my winnings?”
“They’re mine, since you cheated, and no.” I wasn’t about to give him the last of my meager traveling fund, and, judging from his Venetian palace, he didn’t need it.
“Then, alas, she will fail, and it will be cheaper to simply kill your family.”
When there is no alternative, surrender and wait. “What do you really want, Wolf?”
“Astiza says she’s concocting the Spit of the Moon, whatever that is, to complete her experiments. She wants chemicals, gold, and you, though why she cares for that final item I cannot fathom. As the noblest of our triangle, I propose cooperation. You’ll be brought to her, at the price of your purse. No one steals from me. Ever.”
“Take the damn money.” They’d find it anyway. I took a strip of coins from my boot.
“If she achieves the Philosopher’s Stone, you’ll be reunited. And together, in the name of legend and science, we’ll seek the Brazen Head. The two of you have resourcefulness the Invisible College can put to use.”
“And then?”
“You’ll join our fraternity forever.”
“And why would I do that?”
“To keep me,” the little man said, “from cooking and eating your little boy.”