NINETEEN

Relief.

Allen stood pissing in the cramped bathroom. He wanted to weep, the relief was so profound. His hands had been taped together in front of him. His ankles were taped together as well. They'd let him hop in like that to use the toilet, but Clover had insisted on the precautions.

As he pissed, he glanced around the small bathroom. There had to be a way out of there. If he could cut himself loose, he might simply dash past them.

"Hurry up in there," called Clover.

Something. A nail file. Anything would do. Maybe he could chew through the tape.

He finished, zipped, and flushed.

He hopped back into the other room, flopped into the easy chair again.

"Feel better?" Clover asked.

"I'd feel better if you'd cut me loose and let me out of here."

"Tough shit."

Yeah.

"Why are you doing this?" Allen asked. "I just want to go home. I don't care what you people are doing."

"Well, you should care, man. That's the whole reason I'm hooked up with this outfit, right? Usually I'm kind of a loner."

"Really? Someone with your social skills?"

Clover went on like she hadn't heard him. "You might not care what's happening in the world, but a lot of us do. A lot of us want to do the right thing. Politics and world leaders and the United Nations and all that bullshit. That's nothing. Window dressing. If you knew the real forces tugging at the fabric of the universe, you'd shit your pants, man. So I do care, okay? I'm part of something bigger than myself, and I've never had that feeling before in my life and I'm not giving it up, okay? I'm one of the good guys, and what I do matters."

"That's a good speech. You rehearse that in front of a mirror?"

"You're kind of a smart-ass motherfucker, aren't you?"

"Spend enough time in duct tape, and the courtesy goes out the window."

"Yeah, well, we need you to stay put," Clover said. "If the bosses say you're valuable, then that's good enough for me."

"I'm flattered, but how could I possibly be valuable?"

"Standard Society MO," Clover said. "Get a guy on the inside. You're in with the Evergreens, and they're key to all this shit that's coming down."

"I really don't know anything about that."

"What you don't know could fill a fucking barn, dude."

"I'll make you a deal," Allen said. "I'll stop being a smart-ass if you stop being a bitch."

"No, I'll make you a deal. You shut the fuck up and I won't put out cigarettes on your scrotum."

The heavy door to the chamber swung open, and Amy rushed inside, flushed and panting. "We've got to go."

Clover leaped to her feet. "What is it?"

"They're coming."

"Shit." Clover grabbed a black backpack, started shoving in her possessions. "How many?"

"It wasn't clear," Amy said. "I think something's obscuring the magic. We've got to get out of here and then spread the word. This location is over. Nobody can come back here."

Clover slung the backpack over her shoulder, motioned at Allen with her chin. "What about him?"

"We've got to scatter. He'll come with me."

"Bullshit."

Amy spun, met Clover's hard gaze. "I said he comes with me."

Clover stepped back, nodded. "Okay."

Amy bent over Allen, touched his cheek softly. "The priests are on their way. You've got to trust me."

"Okay," Allen said.

She produced a switchblade, flicked it open in front of Allen's face. He flinched. She cut him out of the duct tape, then put the knife away. He rubbed the circulation back into his wrists.

"Clover, go out the front. Maybe you can lead them down the hill. They have a car, so stay off the road. You know the footpaths better than they do. Be well, sister."

"The Lady be with you, sister," Clover said.

They kissed quickly, brief and ceremonial.

Clover left.

"Come on." Amy took Allen by the hand, led him to another tunnel. No lights. Amy flicked on a flashlight. They jogged, the tunnel angled steadily downhill.

"Are we going deeper underground?" Allen asked.

"No. This leads to the bottom of the hill."

They jogged for three minutes, then slowed to a fast walk. The tunnel was narrow and dry, the floor covered with dust. The passage had clearly not been used in years.

"Do you know where we're going?"

"Theoretically," Amy said.

At last they came to a rusty iron ladder leading upward. They climbed, came up against a heavy metal manhole cover. Amy shoved against it without luck. "Help me."

"Move. Let me try."

They traded places on the ladder, and Allen heaved himself against the manhole cover. Just at the point he thought he might rupture himself, the lid lifted and he moved it to one side, spilling fresh air and weak daylight into the tunnel. He climbed out, sat panting on a cement slab surrounded by bushes. It was just daybreak. Amy climbed out behind him.

Allen glanced around. They were behind some building, a walking path visible through the bushes. "Where are we?"

"Bottom of Zizkov Hill, I think. The other side of where we climbed up."

A strange tour of Prague, Allen thought. He'd been all over the place and hadn't seen a damn thing.

Allen followed her around the corner of the building and came face-to-face with a large tank, the gun barrel aimed right at his nose.

"The military museum," Amy said. "Yes, this is where I thought we were."

Of course. Allen was losing his mind. The tank was old, a museum piece that clearly hadn't budged in decades.

"We need to get out of sight," Amy said. "We can head toward City Hall and blend in with the tourists, but we'll eventually need to lay low someplace, and I don't know which of the safe houses have been compromised."

Allen thought about it a moment, then said, "Follow me. I think I know a place."

Do you remember what Clover said about the MO of the Society, how they like to have a spy on the inside? She's right. Even hundreds of years ago. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

1599

TWENTY

"Stop wiggling, little worm, or I'll conk you one on the noggin." British. Strong Yorkshire accent.

Edward Kelley stopped wiggling, let them carry him into the pitch black. Three minutes later, they set him gently on the rough cavern floor, the hand still over his mouth.

"How about a light, Edgar?" Another voice in English but a light Czech accent.

"Righto."

A spark and a flash. The man kneeling over him held a candle. A narrow passage, looked like a natural cavern. The man above him had an enormous brown beard, wore a dark green cloak with the hood up, black clothing beneath. Ruddy, full cheeks. A big man, broad through the chest.

The man behind him said, "I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth. Let's keep it quiet, eh?"

Kelley nodded.

The man with the Czech accent took his hand away, and Kelley turned to look at him. Bald. Gray beard. Big, alert eyes.

"We've been watching you, Edward Kelley."

Kelley smiled weakly. "How flattering."

"Let me show you something." The Yorkshireman-Edgar-handed the candle to the Czech. He rolled up his sleeve, showed a tattoo on his upper arm to Kelley. "Do you recognize that?"

Kelley squinted at the tattoo, immediately recognizing the square and compass formed into the shape of a quadrilateral. "Freemasons."

"Look closer."

Kelley leaned in to examine the tattoo in the dim candlelight. In the dead center of the quadrilateral was the sign of the pentagram. Kelley resisted the urge to genuflect.

"The square represents matter, the solid known tangible things of our world," Edgar said as he rolled his sleeve down again. "The compass stands for the spirit or mind."

"And the pentagram stands for evil," Kelley said.

A tolerant smile. "You know better than that. Alchemists are often accused of dark things, are they not?"

True enough. He'd seen some of the older, more superstitious serving women in the castle shy away whenever he or Dr. Dee passed. People feared the unknown. Peasants especially disliked change or anything strange. Kelley had known an old woman back in Ireland who hadn't come out of her cottage for a week because she'd seen a raven with a bit of string in its beak on a dead tree branch. She'd insisted the string had looked like a hangman's noose.

"The pentagram represents something in between mind and matter," Edgar explained. "Truths that are difficult to hold and know but nevertheless govern our universe. Powers that control a balance so precarious that the slightest cosmic sneeze could plunge us all into oblivion."

"I'd like to go home now, please," Kelley said.

"There are things afoot in Prague Castle that would chill you to the marrow if you knew their full extent," Edgar said. "We need your help."

"Me?"

"You."

"You want Dr. Dee. He's your man. To be honest, I'm not a very good alchemist. I can barely brew up a good laxative."

"Even now forces work to drive Dee away. He will flee Prague this very night. I have foreseen it."

"He didn't mention anything about leaving to me."

"This is perhaps not the best place for this discussion," the Czech said.

"Come." Edgar took Kelley's hand, pulled him to his feet. "This is a lot of strange news to drop on a man's head all at once. I know where we can talk, and there's a bottle of good brandy there." He slapped Kelley on the back. "Perhaps a drink would help fortify you, friend."

"Yes, please."

I can't possibly explain how time works for a ghost. Or, at the very least, how it works for this ghost. Sometimes I feel like I exist outside of time. Or perhaps I exist in all times at once. Or maybe I don't exist at all, and therefore time is meaningless. I'm not flowing in it, or maybe it doesn't flow around me. Are we each on a little raft, flowing in the river of time, or do we stand on the bank and watch it wind its way under our noses?

I've had nothing but time to think about it.

Intellectually, I know that the walk with Edgar through the tunnels beneath Prague Castle took perhaps twenty minutes, but in that deeper way we sense things, some peculiar machination of memory that mixes up duration and importance, the tunnels seemed like one lifetime. As I came out of the cave in the woods behind the castle, emerging into the daylight, I felt myself entering another lifetime.

I remembered the short hike to the little shepherd's shack not at all.

The brandy perhaps had something to do with this.

TWENTY-ONE

A rough wooden table, two chairs, a bedroll in the corner. A window. Thin beams of daylight slicing through the thatched roof. Dirt floor. Edgar built a fire in the small, stone fireplace in spite of the fact that it was damn hot enough already. All in all, the shack was a pretty miserable affair. Kelley had gotten used to life at the castle.

But the brandy was good. Edgar refilled the wooden cups again, and Kelley sipped. Very good indeed, better than Kelley could usually afford. It warmed his belly, made his head feel pleasantly light.

"Your friend doesn't want to join us?"

"He's keeping watch," Edgar said. "We should be safe here, but it pays to be careful."

Kelley paused, the cup halfway to his lips. "It has always been my impression that the Freemasons were influential people with powerful friends, yet I get the impression that you're hiding."

"Yes, I suppose I should explain," Edgar said. "Our Czech friend-never mind his name-is watching for Templars. The Society is, or was, a secret order of the Freemasons. We have broken from them, and now they hunt us. We have become an embarrassment to them, but they don't realize that only we stand between chaos and order. So we have been shunned and driven underground, but we hold fast to our mission still."

"How does your mission bring you to Prague?" Kelley gulped the brandy. The pleasure was almost sexual. The warmth spread to his limbs, the lingering remains of his hangover drifting away like smoke.

"Rudolph the Second." Edgar sipped at his own brandy more slowly. "The Holy Roman Emperor is delving into the arcane. Astrologers and wizards from the four corners of the earth have descended upon the emperor's court."

"And alchemists," Kelley hiccoughed.

"Indeed." Edgar topped off Kelley's cup. "Let me ask you this, Master Kelley. Can I call you Edward?"

"Please do."

"Let me ask you this, Edward. Would you take immortality if it were offered to you? Would you choose to live forever?"

"I suppose that might be useful."

"Would you trade your soul for this immortality?"

Kelley frowned, shook his head slowly. "No."

"Of course you wouldn't," Edgar said. "But that's what Rudolph would do. More than that, he'd trade the soul of the whole world. He thinks he can live forever, and he's not stopping to consider the power he will unleash in his blind quest to achieve his goals. That's why we of the Society must stand against such blind insanity. No one else can do it."

Kelley sipped the brandy and recalled his brief meeting with the emperor. The man had not been raving, had not outwardly seemed crazy. Kelley had to ask himself what was more likely. Was it reasonable to think the leader of the empire a lunatic bent on using arcane powers to achieve immortality? Or was it more likely that the man sitting across from him, in a shabby shack in the woods, who believed that only he and his Society could change the world, was in fact the one who might not be in full possession of his faculties?

On the other hand, Kelley could not deny the influx of strange scholars and astrologers into the castle. Dr. Dee himself had hinted at odd happenings at court. Kelley thought it quite possible that he had madmen on all sides of him. Maybe it wasn't too late for Sicily. Istanbul! Perhaps he could go east.