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“It’s likely that they didn’t figure it out,” Esta said. “If they had, they would have reacted long before you ever showed up to take the crown.”
“But Jack would have realized—Thoth would have known,” Harte said. “It’s clear he’s working with the Committee.”
“Which only proves my theory. Think about it, Harte. If Jack discovered that the Committee had a real artifact, he would have taken it from them. There’s no way it would still be on display nearly fifty years later. It’s more likely he let them believe it was real because it served his purposes.”
Harte couldn’t argue with that logic. “So what do we do now?”
“Patience helped us once before,” Esta said. “Maybe she would be willing to help us again. Even if she doesn’t still have the crown, she might know where it is.”
Hope warmed Harte as the cable car rattled along down California, cutting through a canyon of buildings. He was still a little short of breath, and his legs felt like he’d run for miles, but the cool, damp air brushed against his face, reviving him a little as they traveled along. With everything that had happened, could the Dragon’s Eye truly still be within reach?
Then another thought occurred to him. “It’s been nearly fifty years. I doubt she’s still alive.”
“What about your brother?” Esta asked. “He might know something. He might even have it.”
“Sammie would be close to sixty by now himself.” So much time had passed, Harte wasn’t even sure that the boy would remember him. “He might be gone by now as well.” The thought made his mood sink.
“It’s possible,” Esta agreed, but still, she seemed more determined than disheartened. “But we might as well look into it. If we can’t find them, we’ll be no worse off than we already are.”
Harte felt every second of the day’s excursion. “If Sammie is alive, I don’t know where we’d even start to look for him.…”
Esta still didn’t seem worried. Her mouth curled into a small smile. “Luckily, I do.”
THE ARS ARCANA
1902—New York
Jack Grew was exhausted from the evening of arguing minutia with old men. It was later than he’d intended to stay at the Chandlers’ dinner party, but he still ordered his driver to take him south instead of in the direction of his comfortable town house on the edge of Washington Square. It had been a long day of maneuvering and positioning and pretending, but his plans were progressing… and the evening was still ahead of him.
As the hack carried him through the city, he took a cube of morphine, then tipped his head back against the carriage’s plush interior, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the familiar warmth spreading within his blood. His senses came alive, and he could feel within him that sureness that always grew sharper with the languid, dreamlike warmth of the drug. By the time the carriage arrived at the docks, Jack was relaxed and more than ready to begin the night of work ahead of him.
He unlocked the door of the warehouse and let himself inside its dark, musty interior. Lighting a lamp, he made quick work of securing the door to ensure he wouldn’t be disturbed, then lit the other lamps he’d stationed at various points around the large room. The entire room smelled of axle grease and dust, and in the softly glowing light, he took account of his progress so far. A new machine was rising from the bits of bent metal and broken glass. Without an assistant, progress had been slower than Jack might have liked, but he had time. The Conclave was still months away.
On the far side of the room, a long table held his plans. After the mess at Khafre Hall, he’d found the entire warehouse ransacked. The table had been overturned, and little had been left of the blueprints and models but ash and dust. He’d managed to reproduce what had been lost, just as he would reproduce his machine. Jack smoothed out one of the few documents that had survived the carnage, a half-burned scrap of an illustration depicting the Philosopher’s Hand. In the palm, a fish lay burning in mercurial flames, uniting the elements. It was the symbol for quintessence. Great alchemists understood the importance of this most powerful of all elements. Aether, it was often called, the substance that aligned all other elements. With quintessence, one could turn iron into gold. With quintessence, one could transmute matter—or magic.
Quintessence was the ingredient Jack had been missing before, when his first attempt at building the machine had failed so completely. His desperate desire to solve that problem had blinded him to Esta’s and Darrigan’s treachery, but in the end he’d discovered the solution despite them. Thanks to the Book of Mysteries, Jack now understood exactly what he needed to complete his machine—he needed an object infused with feral energy. As above, so below. Like to like. Not even the purest uncut diamond was durable enough to contain the dangerous power his machine would collect. He needed feral magic to capture feral magic, and he would have exactly what he needed once he obtained the ring he’d been so close to retrieving at the gala.
Jack took the Book from its place near his heart and set it on the table next to the Philosopher’s Hand. With the morphine thick in his blood, he allowed his mind to wander free as he turned the pages. Sometime later, he realized he was staring at a page he’d never seen before, one written in English rather than the strange, unknown languages that filled so many of the other pages.
This wasn’t a new experience. In the weeks since Jack had taken possession of the Ars Arcana, he’d discovered that it was rarely the same book twice. He had not yet come to understand how or why it revealed certain things to him but was grateful that it continued to do so. It had to be a signal of his continued worthiness, a sign that he was destined to prevail.
The writing on these new pages had been done in a cramped, sloping hand. The varying weight of the ink and the discoloration of the thick vellum told Jack that the page had likely been created long ago, before the smooth consistency of fountain pens was even an idea. He flipped through the next few pages, all in the same matching hand. His excitement only grew when he noticed a small notation at the bottom of one of the pages—Is. Newton had been inscribed there, in the same cramped style as the rest. With only a cursory glance, Jack understood immediately what this was. There on those pages, Newton had detailed his creation of the artifacts.
Righting a stool that had been knocked over in the destruction, Jack took another cube of morphine between his teeth and settled himself to read. On those pages, Newton had inscribed detailed illustrations of five precious gemstones, and alongside each drawing were notes about the gemstone’s origin and the properties of the stone itself. Apparently, the old alchemist had carefully selected only the most perfect of materials, gemstones prized for their purity and historical importance. The individual stones had been drawn from the five ancient mystical dynasties, and each was famed for the power that it held. Then Newton had used a ritual involving the Ars Arcana itself to imbue the stones with the feral magic of the most powerful Mageus he could find—each aligning with one of the five elements.
But something had changed. As the notes continued, Newton’s hand grew more erratic and uneven. Later illustrations had been hastily scribbled onto the parchment, and still others had been blotted out. The content of the words matched their appearance. The clear English notes shifted into a confusing and often unintelligible series of arcane phrases. They were most likely coded alchemical recipes, metaphor layered upon metaphor, but Jack couldn’t be sure of the meaning other than to understand that something had scared the old magician. Something had brought Newton to the brink of sanity before he’d managed to pull himself back.
Jack turned another page and found a diagram that looked very much like a copy of the symbol that was carved into the front of the Ars Arcana. The writing here was still erratic and clouded in metaphor, but the illustrations were clearer. The series of diagrams in the following pages seemed to depict the creation of what looked to be silver discs, each inscribed with the same strange design that graced the cover of the Ars Arcana, but when Jack turned the page, the information ceased. The next page was completely blank, as though the Book had decided to withhold its secrets. He couldn’t tell what the purpose of the discs had been, or why Newton seemed so keen to create them.
Jack flipped back through the pages and examined Newton’s notes once more, marveling at how close Newton had come to unlocking the true power within the Book, only to fail. The weight of what he’d been attempting had nearly driven him to madness. In the end, Newton had turned from the occult sciences and back to a safer and far more pedestrian path. Apparently, he had been too weak to handle the enormous potential of what he’d discovered. Instead, he’d given the Ars Arcana to the Order, along with the stones, for safekeeping.
As Jack closed the Book, his mind was still clouded with the haze of morphine. He considered the symbol carved into the cover, and as he meditated on it, he traced its intricate lines with the barest touch of his finger. In and out and around, following the figure as it doubled into itself over and out again, infinite. Impossible. Beyond his reach. Jack understood there was some larger secret here, but the Ars Arcana was not ready to reveal it.
It would soon enough. Jack had utter confidence that once he proved himself worthy, the Book would reveal everything. Until then he would focus on his machine and the destiny before him. Once he had the power contained within the Delphi’s Tear, he would finally finish his great machine and show the world what could be achieved when power and science coalesced. Luckily, the old men of the Inner Circle had put Jack in the perfect position to make all of that possible.
THE DRAGON’S PEARL
1952—San Francisco
