Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (6 page)

“I have the eggs, but from where should I take the blood?” I asked Magnus, who had already set up a large kettle. It seemed very old and inside of it there was a thick layer of ash.

“I have enough blood, thank you, thank you! We need something made from metal, from pure iron! Even if it is quite impossible to find something so pure,” he giggled and left the room.

I figured that he went to get the blood and took a letter opener from the table, which for me seemed to be metallic enough.

“Great, we have almost everything!” screamed Magnus from afar and entered the room with a small barrel filled with blood.

He poured the entire contents into the kettle and began to stir up the thick mixture of ash and blood. After he added the eggs and then the beetles, that Lucia had given him, he lastly took the cat skull from the table and happily watched it, as it fell inside. He heated the fire up even more and cried out: “Iron, where is the iron?! Quick, otherwise it will spoil!”

I handed him the letter opener, whereupon he licked it and said: “Definitely iron! Very good, Isaac!”

With a delicate throw he added the piece of metal into the mixture and with a bubbling response the kettle accepted it. It was less spectacular than I had expected and it took quite a while. After a few minutes the old man grabbed some kind of big net and began to haul out some residues from the kettle, which seemed to represent the result of his experiment. He took a bucket of water and washed the small crystals.

“And ready is the potassium salt! Let us start, let us start!” he cried and danced.

I was not sure what it was that he needed the small red crystals for, but he was probably about to show us now.

“Crystals are always nice to look at! Now we just need a bit of acid, but I would prefer not to take the expensive kind, because otherwise I will later regret it!” he sang to himself and looked at his work in the inanimate light of the flickering candle on the table.

My first thought was to look in the cupboard and so I looked around to see if the acid was to be found there. I noticed some dusty glasses, behind a leaning shelf that had been overturned. Luckily someone had labelled them in the most illegible handwriting ever to be written.

“Unfortunately, someone labelled these glasses in the foreign language that we found on the papyrus. What colour is the acid?” I asked the old man who was already trying to swallow the crystals.

When he heard me he stopped to lick the crystals and said: “Simply delicious this potassium salt, yes quite delicious. I would like something sweet for dessert, perhaps pudding. We should definitely make pudding. Oh yes, the acid. Hard to say. The colour could be in the range of the visible that much is clear. I believe that I have labelled them, so that shouldn’t be of concern. Just give me the glass with the words 'Spirits of Salt'.”

Since he had decided to not really listen to me, I chose the glass of which its content was slightly red, but the label had faded and only the word 'acid' remained. So I gave it the old man in the hope that he would recognize, whether it was what he was looking for.

He opened the lid and smelled the contents and his eyes began to tear up, whereupon he decided to take a small sip directly from the container. Lucia immediately ran to him and wanted to hold him back, but it seemed that he was not harmed by the acid.

“No, that is not the right one, this is aqua fortis. But you can leave it right here, I may mix myself some aqua regia later. Bring me the second glass from the right. Now hurry up!” he exclaimed at once, as if he had told me from the very beginning, where I could find the acid.

I brought him the glass, of which the contents were colourless, and here he also smelled on the contents and tried them before he came to the conclusion that it was the correct acid. He gave the crystals together with the acid into a tube and shook it slightly until the contents turned blue.

“We did it! Excitement!” he whispered and for the first time, he tried to keep his volume down, which probably meant that he slowly realized what happened.

He began to treat the palimpsest with the tincture and after a short period of time more lines became visible. Lucia took the roll and looked over the text until she spontaneously stopped and said: “Where is the apple?”

“I ate it when you were searching for the missing reagents. I cannot recommend it, as it had a very bitter after-taste,” answered Magnus and scraped rests of it from his teeth.

Lucia began to read the text out loud to reveal the secret of the stone figure.

Lucia, if you're reading this, it may already be too late. Prince Marko is planning an attack on the kingdoms of this world. His goal is the first book of which you are holding a copy in your hands. Certainly Magnus Doyle helped you to extract a tincture from the oak apple which allowed you to read this message. The enclosed sound crystal is used to activate the stone figure. Play the song and it will guide you.

“The song? He has written it as if we should know what he is talking about. Or at least you,” I said and examined the palimpsest for further information; while Magnus was busy playing with the remains of the crystal he created.

Lucia took the sound crystal in her hand and immediately ran off and went to a room with a piano.

“I cannot play. Why would my father think that I can play this song?” she said with a sigh and sat down next to me.

When I was a little boy I had often played on the piano of my father. He hoped that it could make me a better person, but it would quickly get boring for me.

“What song did he mean? Maybe I can play it.”

She looked at me and said: “In the distance you are always with me. My mother has always sung it, when I was little. I do not really remember it, but my father told me about it in his letters.”

I knew the song, but the old piano was too unturned for the crystal to detect it. Only when the old man entered the room and started playing it back to me on a flute the crystal began to vibrate and to shine in a bright red. 

Lucia immediately took the crystal and put it inside the figure which now began to emit a bright light. At first we didn’t notice it, but at the ceiling of the room there were now five numbers written in light: 8, 32, 11, 23, and 8.

“Megura. Cell 4747. Uses the numbers,” it echoed through the room and the statue crumbled to dust.

None of us knew exactly what was happening, but now we knew our first objective - the largest prison of our country: Megura.

The Fortress of Shadows, Megura, was the largest prison of Jimosien. Since the unification of the land there was much violence and attacks, both by the anarchists from the north, as well as by the barbarians coming through from the slopes of Jik'Zur, the Gate of Hell. No one had ever managed to escape, but it wasn’t surprising given that most of the prisoners were already executed after a few weeks without any further trial. Only those that remained useful to the king remained alive. He was a cold-hearted man who wanted nothing more than glory and power. His influence however dropped by the days and only a few kingdoms wanted an alliance with him. Now that the era of change began, rumours spread that the royal guard conspired against him to remove him from the throne. But Megura was not only a prison, at the same time it was also the seat of the king himself. Within this place, where his prisoners worked as slaves, he had now entrenched himself and waited in vain for help from the outside. We had no idea how to get in, but at this present time no one seemed to.

Magnus took quite a while to mix and take his 'medicine', as he called it, and so we had nothing left to do, as we waited for Isaac to wake up again. Since it would take several days to reach the main city, it was not surprising that Lucia and I already thought about how we could keep the old man quiet for as long as the trip lasted. His presence made the task, Jasper gave us, not easier and I doubted strongly that it was possible at all.

“We should go home. It is not possible to enter Megura and leave it afterwards. An army can’t storm the complex, why should we?” I asked Lucia, who was still examining the compass, her father had sent her.

“This is the only piece of the puzzle that we cannot solve. We have to trust my father, if we are to progress further. There must be a way in and also a way out. Why has he made it so difficult? Who was onto him?”

I stood up and lit a candle, because the dim light gave me a headache.

“Your father is suspected of having personally conspired against the king. They say that he was a swindler, a failure like I. I have always believed in him, I really have. But what if all this was just a figment of his imagination? We race to our death. Your father has already paid with his life for this madness. Why should we follow him? Do not misunderstand me, I will help you, if you so desire. But if you come to your senses, I wouldn’t mind it either.”

It was hard for her, which of course was understandable, but she still knew what I meant. This time my fear was not entirely unfounded, as even if this compass could help us solve this next piece of the puzzle, of what help could it be, as long as we couldn’t even understand the puzzle itself. I joined Lucia and took the compass from her hand. At first glance it did nothing special. It was a sun compass; I had never seen one myself, but often heard about them from seafarers. You hold the compass horizontally in the direction of the sun and then turn it until the shadow rests on the right mark. This will tell you, where north is located. And if you then point to the north, the shadow will tell you the time of day.

“It is heavy. I mean, I do not think that such a simple compass should be this heavy. Maybe you’re really right with your claim,” I said, and verified my theory.

I opened the glass of the compass and noticed that the cone in the middle of the apparatus was movable. I tipped it to the side and heard a mechanical click in the interior.

“Okay. Left up to 8, then on to 11 to 23 and then 32 back to 11 and then go to 8. Done!” I said and the disc on the inside of the compass opened up.

Inside I found a metallic plate with the face of an entity unknown to me. Whatever it was, we would surely need it.

“You did it! Very good, Iago! I had almost doubted my father. We must not give up, it is not a fantasy.”

I was glad to see her so happy again, but I myself still had no clue what it was, that I was actually doing all this for. Did I do it for her happiness in search of a treasure that in the end could just not exist at all or my own happiness by exploiting her? It felt so wrong to help her, because I myself questioned this journey so much, but maybe it was just that I felt, that I was losing time. I wouldn’t have waited as long for Jasper as she did. For me all of this only meant something because of Lucia.

“The drink is done, the drink is here, now onto drink this wondrous beer!” sang the old man and entered the room.

Finally it was ready and we could involve Isaac in our findings. It did not take long for Magnus to collapse and Isaac brought himself up from the ground and fixed his tie and the rest of his clothes.

“Give me just a minute, then we can get going,” he said, and fell completely exhausted into the chair.

“While you take a short rest, I will begin to load up the carriage, both of you can follow, as soon as you are ready,” said Lucia and went outside.

Isaac could see it in my eyes now, what I thought, and he knew that I didn’t trust him as much as before.

“I will tell you the whole truth. My father has been paying the price for his research for a long time, even before our fusion. You have probably already noticed that he is not afraid to try to out everything imaginable. Over time his body developed enormous abilities, but his spirit was beginning to slowly be destroyed by the consumption of drugs and alcohol. He once probably was the most brilliant alchemist of the world, but now he doesn’t even know what year we have. I was afraid that you would decide against us both if you knew the truth. This is my last chance to find a means of salvation for us.”

It was strange seeing such concern for their own father in the eyes of two people, whereas I found nothing but hatred for my own. I had hidden these emotions for a very long time and nothing had ever brought me so far as to think about the man who saw me as nothing more than a mistake. But perhaps it was time to try and make him proud. To ignore him had never helped.

“Your concern was unfounded. You see this disc? Do you know what it is? We found it in the interior of the compass.”

He looked at the disc with a keen eye and although I could see that he had a presumption, it wasn’t enough to tell me about it. I took the case as it was, and accepted it as closed for the moment. I still distrusted him and if I would see that he would lie openly to me, I would take appropriate action.

“How do you both intend to enter the prison? According to all that I have heard, the city is besieged.”

“I already have an idea, no worries. We should rather think about how we get out of this place at the end,” I said and prepared for the departure.

Megura was on the way back home and even if I did not want to return yet, it was still the first time I felt real homesickness.

It was the middle of the night when we prepared the carriage and the dense and strong snowfall had now already lasted for a whole day. The torches on the wagon burned bright, and as I was looking at Isaac’s face I wondered what kind of fire was burning in him. What was the real reason behind his desire to help? We both made ourselves comfortable in the driver seat, while Lucia chose to sit in the back of the carriage. I felt the cold air in my hands and when I looked around and the carriage slowly started to move, I asked myself what I wanted. This was not the way I once imagined my life to be, but looking back I have never had a real idea, of what the future might bring. My self-reproach may have been gratuitous, but I had still betrayed my father, and these thoughts haunted me every night.

“Why have you saved your father? His life could have ended on that day. But you have decided to lose your own life so that he could still be with you. And even if that would have been the reason, why do it, if he himself can’t even understand it?” I asked Isaac, who stared into the dark night and whose soul seemed to be flooded by dark thoughts.