Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (4 page)

“Our journey has only just begun and it seems to end here. We cannot turn back now, or what do you think?” I asked Lucia and helped her from the carriage.

“This place gives me the chills. But we still have no other choice; we are here and must stay overnight. Let us once again look at the items in the box. Perhaps my father didn’t want me or Doyle himself to see these things, maybe he only hid something at his place.”

This mostly logical explanation seemed to be something I had overlooked, which for me was the first indication that something at this place didn’t agree with me. Why didn’t I fear this house? As it was getting dark, we grabbed our things and opened the heavy wooden front door; the wood it was made of had already absorbed all the humidity of the environment. It was as if the house had merged with the environmental ecosystem. Inside we saw, to our right, an antique hat rack, on which hung two small hats and a rain jacket. They looked as if they had only recently been worn and they were the first signs of life. We decided to progress onward quietly from here, because we couldn’t be sure that it was Doyle who was waiting for us. Countless paintings adorned the walls and torn carpets hung down, half to the wall and half on the floor of the ruined villa.

The musty smell and the absence of light made it hard to concentrate on certain things, and although I was accustomed to live in such a giant house, I could not imagine what had happened here.

“Truth is that you? Have you found me, you miserable one? Villain! I sought thee, but now show yourself to me and learn what it means to suffer!” cried a wild little old man, who suddenly appeared before us, with short grey hair hardly covering his head. He wore torn clothing, that covered only the most important parts of his body - or at least the most necessary - and I hardly dared to imagine how long he had already been here. In his right hand he held a dull butter knife, which probably had once seen better times, as had the old man.

“Truth, I have found thee! Now tell me where I should go, what must I do? Is the strength of my soul diminishing? Why have you forsaken me?” he cried viciously waving about with the knife in his hand.

“We are here because Jasper Lawrence sends us. It is important that you look at something,” Lucia said and made a step closer to the man, but I stopped her.

“Lawrence? I do not know! Never heard of it! It is not you? What a real shame. I have to go, no time,” replied the man with a reduced and sad voice, letting go off the knife.

He ran away and we tried to follow him. Passing by huge halls, beautiful rooms, decorated with old art and artefacts, which now did nothing more than collect the dust of time. We reached a room, deep under the complex in which the old man had set up an ineffable laboratory. Many hundreds of different plants arrayed in numbered pots, one behind the other. Vials, long lead and copper pistons and reagents piled up on the tables that surrounded us. We heard the bubbling of the reactions and felt the heat they emitted. And the smell alone made me understand that all this was not natural at all.

“A little salt and a little water, wet, wet, wet! I am looking for you too long already, oh, that’s why I simply catch you now. 

Light is off, nothing happens, today I kill the mouse,” sang the old man to himself and grabbed one of the many mice, which he held in different cages.

“What exactly are you doing here?” I asked him and looked around while he loaded up a capacitor.

“I find the truth! Finally I will find it.”

In his right hand he held the mouse that was struggling to get free. With his left he grabbed a syringe on the table.

“And now the light returns from source, yes of course, yes of course. It rains on all the wetted paths; the rain hits man and also mouse, it hits the roof of every house. So we move and clap our hands, close the plastic walls, sending electricity, and hope that lightning falls. And now, the artificial lightning hits our mouse, which in water we had doused.”

The man continued to sing while he prepared his experiment and began to discharge the capacitor. He led the power directly into the cage of the mouse and started to dance.

“The mouse is dead, oh I am glad! But now we inject you the truth, with a prickle - please!”

He used the syringe on the dead mouse and injected it with a serum and miraculously the mouse began to move again after a few seconds.

“How is that possible? It was dead, or wasn’t it?” Lucia asked almost immediately and I knew what false hope she had found here.

“As dead as god himself! But the truth can save us all! Save, Save, our hands we wave!” giggled the apparently severely disturbed man.

I took Lucia to the side in order to speak with her, but in her expression I saw already, what I had feared.

“This is madness. Who knows what he does with these animals. And even if he manages to revive a mouse, it does not mean that he is also capable of doing it with a man,” I said to Lucia and underestimated the hearing of the old man, who understood every single one of my words.

“Of course I can revive a man! No problem, no problem. Only need to find what I am looking for, oh how I curse you. Need it now, otherwise I cannot do it! But it keeps mocking me, this villain! Argh! Truth!” he cried and began to hit his own head.

I brought Lucia back to the top floor led her to the outside in front of the carriage. I was not sure whether this man really was the man we had been looking for.

“He knows the solution. This must be the treasure that my father told us about, I am sure. We must help him, and then he can perhaps save my father.”

“Death is final. I do not know why I took so long to see what is real. It was crazy of us to come here. We should go. This man is obviously not in a position to help us. He cannot even help himself.”

The door of the house opened and there was this bizarre picture. The old man stood in the middle of the entrance wearing both his rain coat as well as his hat. He seemed more human to me than before. But what made of all this so special for me was the fear that I saw in his eyes.

“I can help you! But I cannot walk away from here, not anymore. If you trust me, then I can show you what you are looking for. Come, come!” he called flailing around with his arms.

It began to snow and the cold wind made me realize that I had to make another choice.

“We give him a chance. If you do not like what he tells us, then we leave tomorrow. I promise you,” Lucia asked of me. How could I refuse in a moment like this?

This was the real world with the real Magnus Doyle. And what I didn’t understand back then, was that I hadn’t felt real fear in all my life. My hesitation led me to dangers I couldn’t comprehend, and with me all those who followed.

I sat in the chair and observed Lucia, as she helped the old man with his work. None of his movements seemed to be planned. It was as if an invisible hand was steering him. He sorted books, sang and rhymed, and now and again he began to strongly wheeze, just because he forgot how to breathe. But while being so strange, he was also so smart. He, being so difficult to understand, made coming back to my old self much easier. I feared that he wasn’t telling us all he knew.

“Something to drink? Yes? Drinking is good, you draw new courage! Somewhere I have alcohol. Normally I use it for my experiments. Sometimes they are self-experiments, of course,” he giggled and grunted while he desperately searched empty bottles for liquid.

He checked the neck of each bottle with his tongue in order to recognize the content and not only was it strange to witness, but also extremely disgusting. When he finally had found what he was looking for, he put a bottle ‘Farion Silver Cloud’ on the table. I knew this brew very well, as my father used to often drink it. The silvery colour was created through the extreme alcohol concentration and some 'secret ingredients'. Actually it was pure alcohol, with silver dust from Farion mines. Back in the days it was a drink of magicians and scholars, since many centuries ago people believed that a high percentage of silver in the blood would amplify the magical powers. But later they found out that large amounts of silver in the bloodstream tend to be lethal, which is why the production has been mostly stopped. Today it has become more of a symbolic token rather than a real drink.

“Two slugs sip and swig! It shakes me and it shakes me good!,” the old man uttered as he went ahead and took a big gulp directly from the old bottle that send him shivering to the ground.

He offered me the bottle, but I declined his offer gratefully and waited for Lucia to also join us in our round.

“Could you look at this here?” she asked and put the box on the table.

The old man just laughed and looked at the both of us as if he wanted to hear something from us.

“Time for my medicine!” he called out and then jumped away. Like being possessed by a demon he stormed through the room and stretched out his arms. Finally he made stop in front of a shelf and took a large suitcase out, which he opened to take out ten small vials. “Red to blue, yes that is smart, but yellow to green that’s never clean. Colours, glass and tincture remind me of my oath. Everything is what it was, this drink demands a toast!”

He poured the contents of the vials around with wild gestures and gathered them together in a single bigger vial. The mixture, which was created as a result, had a disgusting black colour and it began to emit a dark smoke cloud. With a quick sip he drank the entire contents and froze in place before us, falling to the ground just a second later as if he would have died.

“Great, now he has dropped dead. I cannot say that I didn’t see that coming,” I said calmly, while Lucia leaned over him and immediately checked his pulse.

It did not take long for his body to begin trembling and we were about witness a truly special transformation.

From the old and frail he changed to a tall young man who no longer fit in his clothing. He stretched and stood up slowly from the floor. Even though he seemed to have survived the transformation well, severe headache and cramps still tormented him.

“Excuse my rude behaviour. But you already know my father. My name is Isaac, Isaac Doyle,” he said and started to tear of the scraps of fabric from his body.

“Would you mind putting on something new first? It is already difficult enough to understand this situation,” said Lucia and took a step back from him, while the young man could not resist laughing out loudly.

He nodded and turned away from us. With a few looks around, he ultimately fixed his gaze on what he was looking for. He threw on his new wardrobe, which seemed old and dusted. And I was still unsure what kind of being Magnus Doyle truly was. But nevertheless there was now a new man in front of us in a noble suit. And when he finished fixing his tie and clearing his throat, the grey hair on his head began to fall out until nothing of it was left. And seconds later, new black hair grew from his scalp, until it reached down to his shoulders. He used his right hand to go through his hair and seemed pleased that it worked.

“Believe me I always fear, that the hair may one day not grow back. I do not know exactly why, but apparently it can only grow after the transformation has finished,” he said with a wink and put on a lorgnette.

“You wanted to show me something? Bring it to me, he said dry and sat down next to me as if an old man hadn’t just disappeared.

It was very difficult to keep my composure. The more I tried to understand what was going on, the more I was at a loss.

“It’s in the box. We hope that you can tell us what the contents are. There are some old pieces,” said Lucia and opened the wooden box.

Isaac, as he now called himself, took out the compass first and put it to the side without comment. Also the map of the world and the apple were not of interest to him. But as he touched the small metallic rod, he took his glasses and whispered “Interesting”.

“Oh really? What is so interesting?” I asked him, but he did not immediately answer.

Instead he took the stone figure out and reviewed it happily, as if was a long lost toy he had found again. But when he saw the papyrus roll even the figure lost any value for him. He cast it to the side and his hand quickly went after the roll. When he opened it, he asked emphatically: “How did you acquire this? Answer me!”

“My father has sent it to me. He has asked me to help him.”

“If he is in possession of this he can use all the help he can get. This is a part of something. Do you know where the rest is?” he asked without disclosing anything.

“Now, finally tells us what it is! If we knew where the rest would be, we probably would also know what it is, that we have here,” I demanded of Isaac who took a deep breath and lowered down into his chair.

“This is from the first book,” he explained and it seemed as if he himself could not believe what he said.

I pushed the bottle on the table to the side for a better view on the document, but I still couldn’t understand what he meant.

“The first books were certainly not written on papyrus roles. What do you mean by 'the first book'?”

“Legend says that in the ages before us the gods lived among us and ruled as our kings. As a dispute broke out, one of the gods wrote down the secrets of the universe in a book. It was the first book that people knew, because before that they were not entitled to know of the knowledge of the gods. The anger of the other gods and the defilement of their secrets would lead to a war, which would in its end bring upon the fragmentation of the planet and the creation of the world we know today. Over the centuries many scholars wrote down the contents of this first book, in order to protect them, and this is a part of a larger palimpsest.”

“A palimpsest? So you mean a roll that has been overwritten several times?”

“Exactly. I believe that your father left a message on this palimpsest, a reference to the place where the rest is located. This is why he sent you this crystal,” he said and held the small metallic rod into the air.

“This is a crystal? It looks more like a lump of coal,” I exclaimed and amused the young Isaac.