The Book of Blood and Shadow (52 page)

Adriane watched us, her eyes red. Two of us, one of her: Nothing was the way it was supposed to be.

Maybe nothing ever is.

“We should go,” Eli said again.

Adriane’s face went pale with panic. Her good hand was wrapped tight around the police tape, as if it were a security blanket. “I can’t do this,” she said, in a small voice. “Nora, what am I supposed to do now?”

“You go home,” I said, Eli’s hand warm in mine. I couldn’t give her my other hand. I still couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t smile. Not here, where the smell of grass and leaves was tinged with an acrid edge of smoke, where skulls watched us from piles of toppled brick and stone, where a small red flag marked the scorched earth where Max’s body had burned to nothing. She had taken too much away, and even if she hadn’t meant to, if she hadn’t wanted to, she was still the only one left to bear the blame.

But she was the only one left, and I couldn’t leave her, too. “We go home.”

29

No trace of the
Lumen Dei
was ever found. No mourners came forward to claim Max as their own. No one was arrested for the destruction of Sedlec Ossuary, which was written off in the Czech press as, officially, a tragic accident that claimed one innocent life.

It had claimed both more and less than that.

We tried not to talk about what the
Lumen Dei
had done, and why. Whether it had been supernatural, demonic, divine, or just
the combustive force of four-hundred-year-old chemicals, I didn’t want to know. Trying to find the answer would be too much like trying again.

Amid the ashes and the bones, investigators found a letter, miraculously unharmed, which was eventually donated to the libraries at the Strahov Monastery.

Eli tracked it down for me. I was too afraid to ask him whether he still cared, or why. I was almost too afraid to read the letter. But I had to know.

I had to know, brother. I had to see. The machine was a part of our Father, and so a part of me. And after all I had done to bring it into this world, I had to know what would be done with it. Václav had me deliver the
Lumen Dei
to a crumbling house not far from where our Father once lived in Nové Mesto, and it was there I returned, day and night, watching and waiting, until it was time. My reward, his men said, would arrive once they had activated the machine and had proof that I had delivered it intact. Until then, I dared not face Groot, dared not face our Mother or Thomas, and so I became a ghost, haunting my own life, and haunting the thieves who had helped steal it away. Through a small grate at the base of the western wall I peered into their dark lair and saw all
.

Václav was not their leader, I understood this at once. He had betrayed Groot only to fall at the feet of another master, a man with eyes as silvery as his hair, whose face I recognized from those long-ago séances our Father performed, and thus yet another of our Father’s maxims was borne true: A man has no greater enemy than his greatest friend. Floating through my memory was an image of him leaning over a smoking cauldron
,
his face illuminated by the glowing metals within—his face, and the faces of Groot and our Father—but as I reached for it, the image burst, delicate as a soap bubble, gone forever. His name escaped me, but it did not matter then, and it matters less now
.

The workings of the machine baffled them, even Václav, who had been so instrumental in its creation, but they swiftly found the cure for that ail, in Groot himself. I saw the great man brought to his knees, bound and gagged, cursing Václav and Prague and the Emperor and God, and then silent, as, infuriated by his refusals, his loyal servant slit his throat. With his final breath, he cursed them, and me
.

—The girl. She will save you. Or destroy you
.

Death took him, and I will never know his meaning. But I do not doubt my powers of destruction
.

The silver-haired man spoke, and beckoned into the darkness
.

—We know enough to begin. Ready the source
.

I had to see, but I would do anything to unsee this
.

Thomas, bound. Thomas, quaking. Thomas, dragged out of the shadows and placed before the
Lumen Dei.
He did not struggle. Not even when he saw the knife
.

The sound that ripped open the night was the sound of my heart, screaming his name. They say life is an endless circle, the snake that devours its own tail, and it must be true, for here I was back again, cowardly and hidden, as dark forces menaced the one I loved the most. I failed our Father. I would not fail Thomas. It was not a thought but a need that
drove me to my feet and into the house, flying at the silver-haired man, at Václav, at Thomas, my arms outstretched in useless supplication, my lungs bursting with the pathetic cry
.
No. No
.

No
.

I had no weapon. I had no power. I had nothing but the will to save him. And that was not enough
.

—Take her out and dispose of her
.

It was the silvery man, who had no doubt patted my shoulder or stroked my head when I was a child, who spoke. But it was Václav who gathered me up with his clawlike fingers and dragged me away. Thomas looked at me only once through this nightmare, and that was the moment the knife plunged into his heart
.

The knife, wielded by the silver-haired man. In his other hand, he held a silver goblet to catch the gush of blood
.

The screams left me. It felt as if life itself left me, draining out as quickly as it drained out of Thomas, an endless river of red
.

As the goblet of blood tipped into the
Lumen Dei,
Václav dragged me from the building. I imagined I could hear the gears whirring to life, filling the silence left by Thomas’s heartbeat
.

I will never know what Václav would have done with me that night, nor can I help but wonder whether escaping with my life was a gift or a curse
.

I could not cry for Thomas. Thomas, I knew, was gone. And yet, as if the universe mourned his absence as fiercely as I, the night filled with screams
.

Flames burst from within the stone walls. Flames that danced with a white heat like nothing I have ever known
.

Behind them, from the men who had murdered Thomas, came howls of agony as the fire consumed them
.

Václav released me and ran into the night, screaming that I was a sorceress, that I had destroyed his master and destroyed all. As I had. I could not run. I could do nothing but watch the fire and listen to the screams. I imagined, in that hellish chorus, I could hear Thomas’s voice, and when I close my eyes, that is how I cannot help but remember him. Bloody and tormented, as his body burned and the one he loved did nothing to save him
.

The building burned through the night. Screams and panic coursed through the streets. Families fled, their belongings bundled in their arms, expecting the fire to burn through the district. But the flames never spread. Nor were they weakened by water, as a brigade of brave men dashed them with bucket after bucket. The fire was impervious, and soon even the most courageous had fled in the face of its might
.

I stayed, waiting for it to consume me, waiting for something to which I could put no name, until the flames burned themselves out, and I faced the rubble. There were no corpses. Nothing recognizably human, nothing alive. Nothing but the
Lumen Dei.
It was intact. Waiting for me
.

I could not rescue Thomas. I could only rescue the machine that killed him
.

You see now, dearest brother, why I thought to dash it to pieces. Why I still long to do so
.

Why I am afraid to try
.

Only Václav survived that night. I know this because I have seen him, stalking me from dark corners and narrow alleys. Now he is the ghost, and I am the haunted. But I fear him not. What can he take from me? What remains?

Only you, and only this
.

I bury its final remains here
.

I confess, my brother, I have yet to decide whether I will ever guide you to this letter. It is our Father’s legacy, yes. But it is a legacy of death. Was that its ultimate purpose from the start? Perhaps my Father’s gift for Rudolf was not so different from the one I would have desired. Perhaps, had I trusted him, and followed his final wishes, Thomas would be with me now, and all would be different
.

But the principles behind the device are sound, and I must believe that our Father, whatever his intentions toward the Emperor, pursued a higher purpose. The mind of God is knowable, and the
Lumen Dei
is the path to knowledge. So perhaps it was not the device. Perhaps it was the blood. Thomas’s blood, taken by force, taken with rage. I know of no God that would accept such an offering, and reward it with His grace. No God, that is, that I would choose to believe in
.

I do not know what to believe
.

I made my choice, and I chose poorly
.

Now the choice will be yours, and I tell you my story so you understand what this
Lumen Dei
can do. Not just to stone walls, but to bodies, to minds, to loyalty, and to love. Today I lay the beast to rest, and I trust that you will resurrect it only if you can tame it, as I fear I cannot. I trust you more than I trust myself
.

I have lost so much, and yet every day I draw breath. Every day I greet a new sunrise. I eat and speak and perhaps someday I will even laugh once again. I have lost so much, and still I live, because I have no other choice, and only because I know one thing to be true, and I cling to that truth with my life. This monster will never consume another soul. No other will lose what I have lost. The
Lumen Dei
has turned Thomas to ash. It has turned me to stone. But it will consume no more. I end it now
.

I end it here
.

15 November 1600
.

If she had broken the machine, rather than preserving it as her brother’s birthright; if she had trusted her own choices, rather than leaving the choice to him; if she had understood that creating had given her the permission and responsibility to destroy; if she hadn’t believed the
Lumen Dei
was safely hidden underground; if she hadn’t left it there even when her brother was dead, even when there was no reason not to smash it to pieces, unless, secretly, she suspected one day she would want to try again; if she hadn’t screwed everything up so very badly; if we hadn’t; if I hadn’t.

These were things I didn’t let myself think about.

The
Lumen Dei
had survived one fire; I would not let myself think it might have survived another. I had seen the rubble myself; arson experts had been through it with shovels and magnifying glasses; there was nothing left.

Elizabeth had probably died believing she had ended it, believing it was over. She’d put the monster in the ground and told herself she was safe, to marry a man she didn’t love and pretend the life she still had left was enough. It was like she said, she
did what she needed to survive, and maybe even forget. She had lied to herself.

This time, it was the truth. The fire had done its job. The monster had been vanquished, never to rise again.

We were safe, I told myself. This time, it really was over.

And I chose to believe it.

AFTERWORD

It’s said that Prague was founded by a witch—a fitting legend for a city that was, for decades, the center of Renaissance alchemy, astrology, mysticism, and natural magic. Sixteenth-century Prague was a strange and wondrous place, equal parts philosophical enlightenment and bloody destruction.

Its secretive leader, Emperor Rudolf II, collected paintings, relics, freaks, curiosities—but most of all, people. The alchemist Edward Kelley and his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Jane Weston, were among them. When Kelley landed in prison, where he died under mysterious circumstances, Elizabeth and her mother were thrown into poverty. Little is known about Elizabeth’s youth, or how she surmounted her circumstances to become one of the most famous female poets of her age—I hope she wouldn’t mind me using my imagination to fill in some of the blanks.

The letters and events in this book are wholly imagined, but informed as much as possible by the real people, places, and ideas that shaped Elizabeth’s world. Rudolf’s
Kunstkammer
was infamous, his illegitimate and sociopathic son, Don Giulio, equally so. Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel’s golem is apocryphal, but his stewardship of Prague’s Jewish community through a golden age is very real. Cornelius Groot, though fictional, is based on Cornelius Drebbel, an eccentric Dutch inventor who became Renaissance Prague’s master of mechanical and clockwork curiosities.

The Voynich manuscript, too, is real, its code still waiting to be cracked. Many have called it the most mysterious book in the world, and while decades of historians, cryptographers, and amateur enthusiasts have taken it on, the book guards its secrets to this day.