Prologue

The room was cast in shadows. Tapestries hung on the walls to keep the chill at bay. A rumpled bed, empty of its owner and draped with heavy red and gold velvet, stood off to the side of the room. A candle burned low, spreading an eerie round glow upon the table at which he sat. At a glance, ink-filled paper scattered on the table had the look of haphazard disarray. To the man hunched over it, madly scribbling, sketching, and mumbling to himself, it was the work of over a decade.

Ink stained his fingers, taking up personal residence in every crack of his aging hands. Crumbs of a long forgotten supper were scattered in his trailing white beard. A nightcap kept his colorless hair out of his way. Most people considered him an artist, a painter. Yet, those pursuits only paved the way for him to keep up his real life’s work: the study of science, in every form. So much to learn! So little time.

Visions would awaken him at night and drag him from his bed. The pull was so strong he had to sit and draw them out of his head, put them on paper. Sketches of machines that could fly, machines that could fully submerge in water and still float, machines for weapons of war, machines that were self-propelled. The notebooks and stacks of pages filled the room, along with his studies of anatomy and the science of the human body, just another machine. All these machines intrigued him, fascinated him, kept him up at nights; nights when his hand flew across the page as fast as it could to capture the ideas in his brain. It was a race against the burning of the candle. Could he finish in time?

It was time that filled his mind. Equations filled the page. Finally he sat back, rubbed the sleepiness out of his eyes, concentrated once more to check and double-check his work. Is this it? He wondered. Could it be? He stood and stretched his aching back. I’m getting too old for this, he mumbled to himself. Gently, he rolled up his completed work and put the scrolls of paper carefully under his arm. Taking a sip of the stale wine that stood in the goblet hidden amongst his papers, he then picked up the candle in its holder. He walked to a tapestry depicting the Huntress Diana and pushed it aside, feeling for the familiar grooves within the wall. He could feel a faint gust of cool air blowing on the edge as he felt for the latch, lifted it, and pushed the hidden door open. The air was cool, but certainly not fresh. The tunnel led from the Chateau de Cloux to the king’s secret passageway in the Chateau d’Amboise. It had many twists and turns, and a few fake tunnels that veered off the main passage to confuse anyone who might be after the king.

It was one of these that he turned into and followed the uneven footing, walking slowly so as not to trip. His legs were weary by the time he came upon the place he was looking for. The light from the candle reflected on the pieces of broken looking glass set in the stone. At first glance, the light bounced off the scattered glass here and there. Upon closer look, one would find that the glass had been strategically placed, forming a full circle from one wall, across the ceiling, down the other wall, and across the floor.

From a niche he’d made in the wall, he pulled out a leather roll with various tools encased within. Reaching in again, he found a bundle wrapped in a damp cloth. Unfolding the cloth, he tested the clay nestled inside for pliancy. Nodding his head with satisfaction, he carefully unrolled his drawings on the ground anchoring them with the candle and his tools. Grabbing an awl, he proceeded to make the adjustments he needed to a bit of glass here and a bit there, turning them this way and that, building them up with clay underneath, until they matched the specifications made by his calculations.

He took his candle and found the small pieces of wax previously melted into the crevices of the wall, placed just so. He lit the first one in the corner and a beam of light shot out reflecting on a piece of glass diagonally across from it, holding a steady beam of blue light. He lit another in the opposite corner and watched another blue beam shoot out and hold, making a perfect X. Rapidly now, he lit the others, until there were too many criss-crossing beams to count. He could feel the hum of a power beyond.

Slowly, tentatively, he reached one hand out to touch the center of light; first his ink-stained fingertips, then his palm, eventually reaching all the way to his wrist. There was a pull on the other side, beckoning him forward. He could no longer see his hand within the light, his forearm was rapidly disappearing and the pull was becoming stronger and stronger as if someone stood on the other side, just beyond the light, slowly pulling. Up to his shoulder now, he took a step forward to make the leap. He stopped abruptly as if he had slammed into a wall, his arm dropping to his side. The flames of the candles had fizzled to the ends of their wicks. The beams of light disappeared. He was once again a lone man, standing in a cold, dark, underground tunnel.

Back in his room, a painting sat on an easel in the far corner. It was the face of a woman smiling, whose eyes followed him everywhere.