Chapter 88: Chapter 33: Secretum Secretorum

> “‘You now have a foundation,’ I told them. ‘Our world is anxious to see what you will build on it. But one final piece of advice, or perhaps it is a word of caution. Two van Asch branches sprout where one was planted. Those branches will bear fruit. Do not let that fruit poison the tree. Create something everlasting.’”

“Please tell me this isn’t the decorative lobby before we have to walk into yet another hallway to get to yet another chamber before we finally reach where you keep whatever you don’t want anyone living to find?” I said, as Beatrice studied her unblemished palm in the aftermath of her unlocking alchemy.

“As I told you, this is it,” said Beatrice. “The last one. Nothing else left.”

She bent down to pick up the fallen Medoblad, resheathed it, and tucked it in her jacket before stumbling and nearly falling over. I steadied her and directed her over to the uncomfortable looking wooden chair that was sitting in between the first ring of shelves.

“You’re not just talking about this room, are you? That was the last of the magic you had left inside you, wasn’t it?”

Beatrice nodded slowly and tried to stand, but fell back down into the seat.

“Very perceptive. Wasn’t sure I even had enough to unlock the Secreta. That would have been … unfortunate. As it was, that was a much more painful experience than before. I don’t know if I’d want to do it again.”

“Of course it was,” I said. “You sliced your hand open!”

“No, not that,” said Beatrice. “You know that side of the blade cannot really harm me. It was the blue essence itself. It felt dirty. Like …”

“Like you had slaughtered a dozen people and stolen their souls?”

“That’s not what I did and you-”

“Don’t try to sugarcoat it,” I said. “For whatever choices I made, yours are far worse. You can’t run from what you’ve done.”

“You don’t think I know that?” said Beatrice. “That’s why I went after the Ancient. Even in my former state, I was reaching my breaking point. I needed another source, and that tree, its power is pure. Help me up, please.”

I extended my arm, and she grabbed it, then linked hers with mine as we walked forward together. Seeing her up close, I finally noticed the toll that this West Coast excursion had taken on her. It wasn’t just the huge gray streak from before, but little white strands speckled throughout her now-black hair. Her face bore the brunt of it too, and if I had met her for the first time today, I would peg her age about 10 years older than it actually was.

“What?” asked Beatrice, turning us into the third ring of shelves. “You’re staring.”

“Have you looked at yourself recently?”

“No, but I know what you’re thinking. And despite how I may appear, the last five minutes and yesterday’s encounter aside, I’ve never felt better.”

“If you say so,” I said, quietly.

We finally stopped in front of a shelf that was filled with jars of dead animals floating in yellow liquid, some misshapen tree branches, torn vellum, and a small set of vials arranged in a rack. Each had different colored tablets inside, a veritable alchemical pharmacy, I surmised.

“One of each of these will counter whatever ill effects your ‘friends’ are suffering,” said Beatrice.

“That’s it? How do you know? Wait, please don’t tell me. It’s already hard enough for me to forget how you built all of this,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” said Beatrice. “You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it’s all been thoroughly tested.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Do you really think I came up with the memory rings as my first foray into forgetting? When I already had something I thought would do the trick?”

Beatrice unstoppered each of the vials and slowly collected three tablets from each, before offering me the palmful of what could have been knock-off Pez.

“It happened to you too,” I said. “The mental unraveling. How much of yourself did you lose?”

“Too much,” said Beatrice. “Fortunately, I diagnosed the problem fairly quickly and was able to reverse it. I can’t promise the results will be the same for you. A lot more time has passed, and although the mind is more resilient than we know, there is a limit.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I hope it’s enough, but if it’s not, then I’ll just have to live with it.”

“We both will,” she said.

“And umm,” I said, “while you’re doling out magical tablets, I may have promised some of your speed buffs in exchange for someone taking Duncan off my hands.”

I partially explained my bargain with D.C. and his thankless reforging of Durandal, which made Beatrice’s eyes light up.

“What other Relics are you aware of?” she asked abruptly.

“Does this mean you’ll give me some?”

“Depends on your answer,” said Beatrice.

“Fair enough,” I said, trying to catalogue every mystical object I had seen. “There’s the Medoblad, of course. The dagger White Hilt, which is the cause of Polly’s dad’s current predicament. Its wielder Emma might have a second one, a longsword, but what it does, I’m not sure. And then there’s Curtana.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“You mean the sword that Dalia tried to impress us with? You think that’s a Relic too?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I said.

“Fine. Anything else?” asked Beatrice.

“Well,” I said, wondering whether it was smart to reveal the last secret in my arsenal. But a display of good faith was needed if I was going to pry Beatrice’s secrets from hers. “There is one more thing. Although I’m not sure if it technically is a Relic or something greater.”

“Spill, Jen,” she said.

“The Philosopher’s Stone, the Elixir of Life, they’re real.”

Beatrice exhaled sharply before bracing herself against the shelf behind her.

“No, that’s … it’s a fiction made up by Newton,” she said. “He threw away years of his life seeking it, almost destroyed his legacy. It’s. Not. Real.”

“I can assure you that it is,” I said.

“You’ve seen it then?” said Beatrice, a manic look appearing on her face.

“No,” I said. “The Guild doesn’t have one. Dalia sent me to Boston to retrieve the key ingredient. She wants to create one. For what purpose, I don’t know.”

“And you want to hand Dalia her book of lost secrets, then? So she can live forever?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “The Elixir saves you from dying, but it won’t keep you from death.”

“That’s very reassuring,” said Beatrice. “I’ll just wait ’til her body falls apart before sleeping soundly again.”

“I told you back at the house, you’re not on the Guild’s radar,” I said.

“Sure. But they happen to know that I have the Compendium and that you are supposed to get it back,” said Beatrice. “And when you don’t, someone else will come here looking for it. Either way, I’m screwed.”

“Does that mean you’re going to give it to me? Are you sure that the empty Compendium isn’t lying on one of these shelves?” I asked before Beatrice shot me a dirty look. “What? Can’t blame me for asking.”

“Yes, I can,” she said. “I wish we had just given her the stupid book that day.”

“So does Dalia,” I offered.

“Not helping,” said Beatrice. “I’ll give you the speed buff, but that’s it. I figure by the time you get back to New York and announce your failure, I’ll be long gone from here anyway.”

“About that,” I said. “You think I used the clues you left to find you. But I didn’t. We found another way to track you. And Hugo still has it. If he stays on Dalia’s side, he’ll come after you, no matter where you run to.”

I stepped away, waiting for Beatrice to lunge at me with the Medoblad, but she just crouched down on the floor and gripped the back of her black hair tightly as if she going to tear it out.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I would get the book from you and then we would go our separate ways. I figured you would want the Guild off your case after all this time.”

“It seems you’ve backed me into a corner. And there’s only one way out,” she said softly, before staring off into the distance. “You’re going to kill me.”

“What? No, I’m not. What are you even suggesting?”

“Yes,” said Beatrice, who pushed herself up from the floor with a buoyant energy that scared me. “It’s the only way. Of course, I won’t actually be dead, but in your memories, there will be a struggle. You tried to be reasonable, but I attacked you. And you had no choice but to fight back with the only thing within your reach. The Medoblad. The blade will have to be ‘destroyed,’ too. Maybe that vial over there will shatter after it’s over. Engulfing my statue and the blade. Yes, that will do. I can make up anything in the memory, as long it looks believable enough to whoever comes prying into your head.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not doing that.”

“I didn’t say you had a choice in the matter,” said Beatrice. “Do you think you could stop me?”

“Depends on what we’re fighting with,” I said, the various skills I had imbibed from the Guild’s library ping-ponging around in my brain, waiting to be released. “And even if you get the upper hand, me thinking you’re dead still won’t do anything to get your hair out of Hugo’s tracker.”

“Why would anyone go looking for a dead woman?” said Beatrice. “Especially if you bring back the Compendium.”

“That’s your trade?” I asked. “You’ll give me the book in exchange for…”

I considered it for longer than I should have. It would solve a lot of my problems and end this stupid Quest. I would return the victor and allow Beatrice get on with whatever she wanted to make of her life. Except that second part would be a lie. A lie that would put yet another weight on my soul, another person dead at my hands. And it wasn’t a lie I could let my naive self live with.

“I can’t,” I said.

“I figured,” said Beatrice.

“So what now?” I asked, trying to ignore that I was surrounded by an arsenal of alchemy and a woman not afraid to use it to get what she wanted.

“I don’t know,” she said. “As much as this plan makes sense, and I know you won’t believe what I’m about to say, I don’t want to force you to go through with it.”

“Why not? You’ve never shied away from forcing others to do anything before.”

Beatrice sighed.

“Yes, you keep reminding me of my past after handing it back to me. Can we just move on?”

“How can I when it keeps resurfacing? Either we figure this out together or I’ll hand you over to the Guild myself.”

I skulked away with a flourish and left Beatrice to her thoughts, confident that in her current state, she couldn’t chase after me. Her Secrata was impressive, for Beatrice Taylor standards of secret locations. I wasn’t sure how she had accumulated so many books and vials and random artifacts in the months since I had helped relocate her possessions to her island. Had she been holding out on me this whole time? But then I too had leveled up my own skills and knowledge as well, thanks to the Guild’s electrum. And suddenly I knew how I was going to pry the Compendium’s location out of Beatrice.

I walked back over to her and sat down next to her to remove my right boot. Although I had left a sizable collection in my overnight bag that was hopefully still on Hugo’s plane, I had purposefully secured one particular morsel of knowledge on my person. The thought had crossed my mind when I had made my library withdrawal that the electrum could be used to bargain with Beatrice.

“What are you doing?” she asked me, as I collected the oldest recorded memory in the Guild’s library from in-between my big and pointer toes.

“Proposing a new trade,” I said. “Do you trust me?”

I offered the electrum to Beatrice, and she looked at it like a cat eyeing a crispy treat.

“Yes, but only because I don’t think you’re clever enough to trick me into swallowing poison. What is this?”

“You have to eat it,” I said and Beatrice shook her head vociferously.

“Oh no. I am not going down that road again. Even if I just remembered it for the first time.”

“What are you talking about? You know about electrum?” I asked.

“Electrum? Never heard of it. But orichalcum, I have a bad history with, apparently.”

“As much as I would love to hear that story,” I said, “this is nothing like that.”

I lied.

“How would you even know?” said Beatrice.

“Because anything that scares you would petrify me and I’ve already eaten a dozen of these. You’ll be fine!”

“I will turn you to stone for several days if I’m not!” said Beatrice, who finally grabbed the bead from my palm and put it in her mouth. After a few seconds of chewing, her eyes rolled into the back of her head like mine had and off she went into the memory ether. I took the intervening half hour to carefully secure the Medoblad somewhere out of her reach so that when she reemerged from the past, no stabbing would be forthcoming.

“You’re a goddamn liar, Jen,” she said upon waking. “But that was … extraordinary.”

“What did you learn?” I said in Dutch.

“A great deal,” she replied. “How much of this are you offering for the Compendium?”

“Alles ervan,” I said. “All of it.”