Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

I studied the painting closely with my Sight, holding the key tightly in my hand, and the whole portrait seemed to blaze with an inner light. And finally I noticed something I’d never seen before. There was a small, carefully disguised keyhole in the silver frame, hidden in some ornate scrollwork. I pointed it out to Molly, and then slowly eased the Armourer’s key into the hole. It fit perfectly. I turned the key, and just like that the whole portrait came alive. I wasn’t looking at a painting anymore but a scene from life, an opening into another place. A doorway into the old library. I took Molly by the hand, and together we stepped through.

The old library wasn’t lost, wasn’t gone, just hidden in plain sight. Hanging in front of all our eyes, for all these years. The old library, real and intact, all its ancient history and knowledge preserved after all. (Preserved for whom? No. Think about that later.) I stood very still just inside the doorway, looking about me. The old library stretched away in every direction, endless towering stacks and shelves packed with books and manuscripts and scrolls for as far as the eye could see. I looked behind me, and beyond the open space of the doorway I could see more stacks, more shelves.

I walked slowly forward down the aisle before me, almost numb with shock. The greatest tragedy in my family’s history was a lie. I shouldn’t have been surprised, after everything else I’d learned, but to deliberately conceal so much knowledge, so much wisdom…was a sin almost beyond understanding. I took down some of the oversized books, handling them very carefully, and opened them. The leather bindings creaked noisily, and the pages seemed to exhale dust and ancient smells. They were handwritten, illuminated manuscripts, the kind monks laboured over for years. Latin mostly, some ancient Greek. Other tongues, equally old or obscure. There were palimpsests and parchments and piles of scrolls, some so delicate looking I didn’t want even to breathe too heavily near them.

"There’s some kind of magic suppressor field operating in here," Molly said suddenly. "I can feel it."

"I’m not surprised," I said absently, absorbed in a scroll concerning King Harold and the Soul of Albion. "Must be a security measure, to protect the contents."

"I could probably force through a few small magics, if necessary," said Molly. "If we have to defend ourselves."

"Will you relax?" I said. "We’re the only ones in here."

I rolled the scroll up again, retied the ribbon, and carefully put in back in its place. The answer to my earlier thought was clear. The only people who could have hidden the old library like this…were the inner circle of the Droods. The Matriarch, her council, and her favourites. Our history and true beginnings weren’t lost, weren’t destroyed; they were deliberately hidden away from the rest of us for the benefit of the chosen few. But what could be here that was so important, so dangerous, that it had to be hidden away? That they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, share with the rest of us? I moved on through the stacks, opening books and scrolls at random, almost drunk on the prospect of so many answers to so many questions, and all mine for the taking. (Maybe that’s why they kept it just for themselves…so they could feel like this.) As I moved deeper into the stacks, I discovered histories written in languages no one had used for centuries; works put down on parchment and tanned hide by the Saxons, the Celts, the Angles and the Danes and the Norse. And other tongues so old nobody had spoken them aloud in centuries.

"All this was here," I said finally. "And I never knew it. My family’s true heritage, stolen away from us by those we were always taught to trust and revere. This should have been made freely available to all of us. We have a right to know where we came from! Who our ancestors were, what they did, and why they did it. It makes me wonder what other secrets the inner circle have been hiding from the rest of us; from the rank and file and all the good little soldiers who went out to fight and die for the honour of the family…We’ve reached the end of the trail, Molly. The answer is here; I know it."

"The answer?" Molly said carefully. "Which particular answer is that, Eddie?"

"To how it all started! Where we came from. Where the armour came from. How we became Droods." I looked at Molly. "I did wonder, sometimes, if maybe my ancestors made some kind of deal with the Devil."

"No," Molly said immediately. "If that was the case, I would have known."

I decided I wouldn’t ask. This was no time to get distracted. I looked around, using my Sight. A complex latticework of protective spells lay over everything, some of them quite impressively strong. And nasty. Some books and scrolls shone brightly on their shelves, radiating strange energies. And one blazed like a beacon, full of ancient power. It turned out to be a simple scroll, words inked on roughly tanned animal hide. The outer markings were in a language I didn’t even recognise. Molly crowded in close beside me.

"Any idea what that is?"

"The answer," I said.

"Well, yes, but apart from that…"

"Only one way to find out," I said, and touched the wax seals holding the scroll closed with Oath Breaker. The activating Words just popped into my mind from the old ironwood staff itself, and as I said them, one by one, the protections around the scroll shattered and disappeared. I unrolled it very carefully, and the dark ink on the interior stood out clearly against the coffee-coloured hide. The text was Druidic, from Roman times. Which was unusual in itself, because Druidic learning was strictly an oral tradition, passed down mouth to mouth from generation to generation. Never written down, in case it might fall into the hands of enemies. But they’d made an exception for this; and I could see why.

"It’s Latin," said Molly, peering curiously over my shoulder. "Strange dialect. Something about a bargain."

"You read Latin?" I said, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.

She glared at me. "I may not have had the benefits of your private education, but I know a thing or two. You can’t work any of the major magics without at least a working knowledge of Latin. Most of the old pacts and bindings are written in it. What we’re looking at here…is a spell. A spell to reveal hidden truths…about the beginnings of the Drood family! You were right, Eddie; it is the answer. So, do we use the spell? Right here and now?"

"Of course," I said. "We might not get another chance."

"Is this something you need to do alone?" said Molly. "I mean, I’d understand if you—"

"No," I said immediately. "We’ve come this far together; it’s only right we go the last mile together too."

So we both spoke the spell in unison, chanting the ancient Latin aloud, and the world we knew blew away on a wave of wild magic, as the spell gave us a vision of time past.

We were not there. We saw and heard everything, but we were not present. This was the past, and we had no place in it, except as observers.

Before us lay old Britain. The Romans called it the Tin Islands, because that was all we had that interested them. The land of the Britons: a savage place, back when we all lived in the forest, in the wild woods, in the dark places the Romans dared not follow us. The vision shifted and changed, showing us sights charged with meaning and significance. We watched, and learned.

In this time, Drood history began. Fierce men in ragged furs, with blue woad daubed on their snarling faces, ran howling through the trees. My ancestors, the Druids. So fierce, so savage, they shocked even the hardened Roman legionnaires. They fought; tribes against armies, bronze against steel. And yet at first the Druids won, forcing the invading Romans all the way back to their waiting ships, and then slaughtering them in the shallows until it seemed the whole ocean ran red with their blood. The survivors sailed away; but they came back. The Romans came again, and again, until finally they triumphed through steel and tactics and weight of numbers. Because they were an army, and we were just scattered tribes who often hated each other as much as we did the invaders.