Even the skull on the title page appeared to her more like a warning than a decoration. It had reminded her of a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison. Even the promise of immortality seemed too hard won if it required such ghastly procedures to achieve such an end.
Later, at the bunker, she had been reminded of the moral quandary faced by the medical community following World War II: whether or not to use Nazi research from their sadistic experimentation on prisoners. Such thoughts only whetted her misgivings. It was part of the reason she had suggested burning the book as they stood at the hidden door. It was not only to keep theConfrériefrom the treasures beyond, but to perhaps end any further exploration into the dark section at the back of Saint-Germain’s text.
Because ofallof this, when she had faced Julian Wright, she knew she could never give him the book. By then, she had also come to suspect the nature of thekeythat was tied to this golden vault.
I had it in my hand.
The answer had been all around her.
In the room of transmutation, they had been forced to learn how to turn dull lead into bright gold. This act had been both a test and a lesson. Only by letting go of the promise of immortality—of recognizing that the Third Adage was an atrocity in written form—could one move forward. You had to be willing to burn it away, to purify the darkness to reveal the brighter treasure beyond.
She pictured the coarse menorah shedding its dross to shine in all its glory.
That was what Saint-Germain wanted us to take away from this demonstration.
To burn away dark ambition to gain the ultimate reward.
She also knew its trigger. Such a miracle would require more than ordinary fire. It would take the menorah’s flames, a wonder fueled by alchemy.
So, in that frantic moment, she trusted herself, she trusted Saint-Germain, and she lit the book on fire.
And even if she was wrong, she knew she was right.
The book had cost too many lives. No one should have this power. It was time to end it either way. And more than anything, she refused to grant such miracles to the likes of Julian Wright.
Still, as the text burned in her hand, she did not know what to expect. She had tossed it behind the gold table to keep it out of sight, then dropped to her knees and watched closely, even as a firefight broke out.
As she did, she witnessed thebloomingof the book.
There was no other way to describe it. She watched the flames burn away paper and leather, exposing its hard skeleton—a possible hint foretold by the Third Adage’s macabre drawings of stripped bodies. Plates of copper took the place of leather covers, which fell open, freeing the metallic filaments that Laurent had described within, those fibrils veined through paper and woven in its bindings.
As the flames faded, the copper threads, strands, and fibers swirled into a mesh above the plates, fueled by whatever alchemy had melted lead off gold earlier. As she watched, the woven net formed a three-dimensional topographic map, showing a cluster of three islands.
Two small, one larger.
She let the shining image burn into her retina, knowing what was being shown to her. A map to the Temple of Water. As if confirming this, from the twining mass, a new sun rose. The crystal orb reappeared, transformed into a bright diamond, pear-shaped and pinched on the bottom.
The miracle rose and spun in place, its sharp tip pointing at the northern end of the largest island, near a tiny bay. She barely had time to fix the image in her mind’s eye before the miracle collapsed, dissolving away, like a fading rose in winter.
Then it was gone, and the world crashed down upon her again.
Afterward, during the chaos, she had kept this secret to herself, not even trusting Laurent with the truth. She had learned another lesson from all of this: to give out her trust sparingly. Plus, she did not know how connected theConfrérieand theGardiensmight be after all of this.
So, instead, she had kept this revelation to her small group.
Working together, it had taken a month to try to figure outwherethe cluster of islands might be. It didn’t help that her sketches, drawn from memory, had been crude, possibly full of errors. Finally, though, one location had seemed the most plausible.
The Republic of Malta.
Even still, Sharyn had begun to doubt herself, her memory.
Then additional support came from Duncan, who had unflaggingly believed in her, sometimes to the point of irritation. While seated in a booth at the Ram, Duncan had held down a map of the Mediterranean with pint glasses. He then took a ruler and drew a line from the volcanic fields in central Libya to the peak of Monte Antelao in northern Italy.
“See,” he had said. “The line ends up running straight across the islands of Malta. And not only that, the country lies equidistant between those two locations. That can’t be a coincidence.”
Tag reached over and tapped the inked line. “The Temple of Earth lies at one end. The Temple of Fire at the other.”
Naomi pointed to the middle. “With the Temple of Water between them. Malta must be right.”
