Tom Harper - The Book of Secrets

I stood and confronted the angel, putting myself between him and Kaspar. I had dropped my knife in the fire and was defenceless. He swung his sickle at me and I retreated – tripped on Kaspar’s limp body and stumbled back. I spread my arms to catch myself on the wall.

All I felt was the emptiness of open space, the awful horror of nothingness. I was falling. My arm struck the wheel with a sickening crack. I bounced off it like a stone and landed in the churning black water.

The screen dimmed. In the windowless office, Nick almost screamed in frustration. Had a goblin stabbed him? His health bar still showed life. He looked around. It wasn’t the slow fade of death, but a giant shadow crossing the sky. As the sun returned he saw an enormous fish eagle swooping down towards the black knight. Its outstretched talons tore into his armour, carving deep rents in the steel.

The goblins abandoned Urthred’s dissolving corpse and charged. A beat of the fish eagle’s giant wings swept them off their feet and hurled them back, bowling over the ranks behind.

Nick saw his opening. With the goblins programmed to rally against the biggest threat, a way had opened to the tree. He ran forward, hurdling the few spears that still stabbed at him, knocking others out of the way before they could strike. At the corner of the screen, he saw the fish eagle batting its wings to fend off the goblins, who had at last managed to get within range. The black knight picked up his lance and aimed it like a javelin, right at the fish eagle’s heart.

The bird rose into the air, a couple of goblins screaming and writhing in its claws. The knight hurled the lance. The fish eagle twisted to avoid it, but its very size impeded it. The spear pierced its beating wing. It lurched, swooped and plunged back to the ground.

The black knight was already running, back to the tree and the prize floating in its branches. But the Wanderer was closer. He bounced over the tangled roots, leaped up and snatched the ball of light. Branches rushed past his face, though they could not scratch him. With a cry of fury, the black knight whirled his mace and flung it like a hammer, straight at the Wanderer’s head. At the bottom of the screen, a message in a Gothic font announced:

File acquired

Nick hit ESCAPE.

The river was strong, far stronger than my exhausted limbs. It took all my power just to keep my head afloat. I shouted to keep myself awake, to prove to the darkness I still lived. I shouted to my father and cursed him for bringing me into the world. I shouted to Kaspar. I told him I was sorry. I told him I loved him.

The current carried me far downriver until I came to a place where it eased into a broad bend. There, on the near shore, I saw the glow of lamplight. It was almost too late. I had sunk into a cold stupor: I might never have roused myself. But I owed it to Kaspar to stay alive. With the last of my strength I splashed to the shore and waded through the shallows until I found a place where cattle had trodden a ramp in the riverbank. I crawled up it and sprawled in the mud.

‘Is there somewhere we can print this out?’

Nick’s fingers felt arthritic, the sinews in his wrists knotted from the battle. He looked up from the computer. Sabine was standing in the door, breathing hard.

‘Your machine’s already connected to the printer in my office.’

Nick clicked the button. He pushed back the chair, but Emily was already standing.

‘I’ll go.’

Sabine pointed to an office across the hall. She let Emily past and leaned against the door frame, her arms folded across her chest.

‘Who was that guy – the black knight?’

‘You saw him?’ Nick’s head was pounding like a drum; the merest twitch of his eyes drew stabs of pain in his temples.

Sabine turned her body and lifted her right arm slightly. For the first time, Nick noticed the tattoo on her bare shoulder. A giant fish eagle, wings back and talons bared.

‘Randall told me to look out for you.’

‘Thanks.’ He pushed his memory stick into the computer and copied the file across. He hadn’t even looked at it yet. ‘If you hadn’t saved me we’d have lost everything. Whatever it is we got.’

‘Nick?’ Emily pushed past Sabine back into the room. She looked dazed. Her hand trembled as she put down the printout.

‘I know what Gillian found.’

Near Strassburg

I knelt in the chapel and prayed. Candles burned in every alcove, flickering off the painted ranks of saints and prophets on the walls. In the dome of the apse, above the altar, Christ stared down at me clutching an enormous open book against his chest. I could not look at him without weeping.

Miracles had occurred that night, though more would be needed before dawn. The cattle who trod the path to the river belonged to a monastery whose light I had seen from the river. Somehow in the dark I had staggered across the field to the gates. At first they would not open them: they thought it was an Armagnak ruse – and certainly I must have seemed a wretched, crazed creature to appear before them so late. At last my desperation convinced them. All their cells were full, so they brought me to the chapel.

Incense lingered in the air from the previous night’s vespers. Soon it would be dawn and the monks would return for matins. For now, I was alone.

I prayed. I prayed as I had not prayed since I was a boy, when I still thought I had a soul worth saving. I prayed with every ounce of my being. I emptied my self and made it a vessel for God. I despised every sin I had ever committed. I begged forgiveness. I renounced all evil. Henceforth I would live a blameless life. If only God would rescue Kaspar.

But I was a feeble vessel, cracked and riddled with holes. As hard as I poured in my prayers they spilled out. In the stillness of the chapel, other thoughts seeped in. My past flowed through me.

A blind man in Paris. Do you know what the Stone really is? It is medicine, a tonic for all the diseased matter of this world.

Nicholas, sitting at his desk in a bare room. You do not desert me, but guard me at every turn with the most tender care.

At the front of the church stood a lectern. The panoply of creation was carved into its stem, striving to ascend it: from flowers and beasts at the base, through men to the four angels who supported the great Bible spread open on their shoulders.

I walked around to look at it. Each page was the size of a gravestone, written in an outsized hand that even the blindest monk could read by candlelight. There were few of the ornaments and embellishments that would have delighted Kaspar. This was an austere beauty.

I screwed my eyes shut and touched my finger to a random part of the page. I prayed God would speak to me, show me words of comfort and hope. I looked to see what I had chosen.

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already were kindled.’

The words offered no comfort. But in my despair, what enraged me most was not the cruelty of the words but the error in the text: ‘were already were’. It mocked me. How I could I find solace in God’s perfection, when a mere slip of the scribe’s pen could corrupt it? I stared at the writing, so clean and bold and neat and wrong. I thought of the impressions from my copper plates: messy and ragged, sometimes barely legible, but pure in meaning.

I gazed up at the Christ and wondered what was written in His book. More memories spoke inside me.

The mint master, earnestly trying to impress my father. Each must be exactly the same, or all would be worthless.

Nicholas again: Diversity leads to error, and error to sin.

Kaspar: You were an artist; now you are a moneychanger.

I knew why the mistake in the Bible offended me. It was me. My soul was a book, dictated by God but so corrupted by copyists’ errors as to be meaningless.