In the dark of winter in the town of Dulwich, people are more desperate than ever. There's little food, little money, and even less hope. But what the people of Dulwich do have in abundance are secrets. And one man, Godric, has devoted his life to the illegal practice of alchemy in the quest to uncover the Great Secret: of making gold, and of immortality. Yet just as he is on the brink of a great discovery, he keels over, nearly dead.

The Book Without Words

A Fable of Medieval MagicBy Avi

Hyperion Books

Copyright ©2005 Avi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780786808298

Chapter One

1

It was in the year 1046, on a cold winter's night, when a fog, thick as wool and dank as a dead man's hand, crept up from the River Scrogg into the ancient town of Fulworth. The fog settled like an icy shroud over the town, filling the mud-clogged streets and crooked lanes from Westgate to Bishopsgate, from Three Rats Quay upon the decaying riverbanks to Saint Osyth's Cathedral by the city center. It clung to the crumbling city walls. It heightened the stench of rotten hay and offal, of vinegary wine and rancid ale. It muffled the sound of pealing church bells calling the weary faithful to apprehensive prayers.

In a neglected corner of town, at the bottom of Clutterbuck Lane, with its grimy courtyard and noxious well, against the town's walls, stood a dilapidated two-story stone house. The first-level windows were blocked up with stone. A single second-floor window was curtained.

In a large room on the second floor stood a very old man by the name of Thorston. His dirty, high-cheek-boned face - with baggy eyes and long narrow nose - was deeply lined. His mouth was toothless. His eyes were green. Unkempt hair, hoary eyebrows, and wispy beard were as sparse as they were gray. He was wearing an old, torn blue robe to which was attached - at his waist - a small leather purse.

In the trembling light provided by an all but guttered candle, Thorston fed bits of sea coal into a brazier and watched its blaze change from red to blue. He sprinkled in some copper grains: the flames turned green.

"Green," whispered Thorston. "The color of life." The thought brought an anxious recollection of Brother Wilfrid's eyes. "No," he murmured. "There shall be no death for me."

He peered back into the room's shifting shadows. Nearest to him was a tar-black raven. The sleeping bird - his name was Odo - was perched on a cracked human skull that rested atop a column of leather-bound books.

Farther on, in a small back room, Thorston could see his servant girl, Sybil, asleep on her straw pallet. She had been with him for just four months and knew nothing about him - not who he was, not what he was doing - nothing.

The old man shuffled to his dirty, rumpled bed where the Book Without Words lay open. He read it. "Yes," he muttered, "one by one - in the proper sequence, at the proper moment, and I at the proper age."

He went back to the brazier. With twisted, twig-thin, and stained fingers, Thorston took up an iron pot and placed it over the green flames. "All is ready," he said.

With his left hand, he reached into a round box and removed a perfect cube of white clay. With his right hand, he kneaded the clay until it became as soft as the nape of a newborn's neck. With his left hand, he placed the clay at the bottom of the pot - in its exact center.

Weak heart fluttering with excitement, Thorston used his right hand to pour a flagon of water over the clay. The water was holy water siphoned secretly from the cathedral's baptismal font, then tinted pink with a drop of his own blood.

Taking the items from his hip purse, the old man rapidly added to the mix; bits of shredded gargoyle ears, chimera crumbs, scales from a fire-lizard's tail, two dozen white spider legs, thirteen and a half nightshade leaves, sixteen hairs from the tip of a Manx cat's tail, plus six white pearls of dried unicorn tears. He also dropped in the blackest of the raven's black feathers.

Using a spoon made of Jerusalem silver, Thorston stirred the mixture eighty-six times to the left - once for each year of his life. He stirred to the right eighty-one more times - once for each day of his eighty-sixth year. When the brew smelled like the sweet breath of a resurrected phoenix, he knew he was close. His pulse quickened.

From the small leather purse on his belt, he drew forth a box made of narwhale bone. Within lay the dusty remains of Pythagoras, most ancient of philosophers. Thorston paused: the dust had cost him much - all the gold he could make - gold that would soon crumble. The other ingredients in the formula had taken more false gold. Thorston didn't care that it was false. His new life would make him - for all practical purposes - invisible. As he had planned things, by the time his gold turned to sand, he would not be found.

Thorston sprinkled Pythagoras's remains grain by grain into the pot, until the brew frothed, foamed, and fumed.

His excitement rising, Thorston scurried to his bed, checked the book anew, then hastened back to stir the recipe: one stir to the right - for the midnight sky. Three stirs to the left - for the heavenly Three. One stir across - for the noonday sun. A final stir for the cold and distant moon.

"Now," he said, unable to suppress his exhilaration, "the final ingredient ... the girl's life."

2

In quite another part of Fulworth, a monk appeared at the entrance of a small and bleak cemetery. His name was Brother Wilfrid, and he too was very old. Indeed, his face was a web of wrinkles upon skin so thin, so translucent, the skull beneath offered up its own yellow cast. Upon his mottled head hung shreds of lank white hair. His small, green-hued eyes were sunk deep and forever leaking tears. His nose was all but fleshless, his mouth almost without lips. Knobby feet were bare. Stooped and limping, Brother Wilfrid wore an old brown tunic, more tattered than complete.

In one clawlike hand, he held up a smoldering torch. The light of the feeble flame seeped through the shifting veils of fog, a fog that drifted back and forth like the ebb and flow of open sea. The monk prowled about the cemetery, over the oozing black mire, pausing before cracked gravestones, holding his torch close to examine obscure names. From time to time he rubbed encrusted dirt away to read Latin or Runic words.

"Not here," he murmured at last.

Leaving his spent torch behind, the old monk limped out of the cemetery and into the church. It was a small, ancient structure built with gray stone. Its modest single tower was sharply pointed. Wilfrid entered by a narrow, arched doorway, stepping noiselessly into the building. It was deserted. On the old stone altar, a solitary candle burned, its muted light making the outer reaches of the building indistinct. But on the eastern wall was a large painting. Wilfrid looked at it and gasped. "Saint Elfleda!" he cried. The saint was portrayed larger than life, garbed in white, floating in the air. One hand held a belt, the other hand was lifted in blessing. Her large, dark eyes were almond-shaped and full of pain.

Wilfrid sank to his knees. "Help me," he pleaded. "Help me help you."

A short time later, the old monk left the church, went out into the roiling fog, and roamed through Fulworth, making his way along stinking, narrow streets, constricted lanes, and neglected courtyards. But in truth, Wilfrid did not look where he was going so much as he sniffed.

Suddenly he halted, lifted his frail head, and breathed deeply. He had smelled something. Goat reek! Thorston's stink! A smell he could never forget.

The monk, breathing deeply, old heart pounding, went on. His nose led him to a neglected corner of town, to the bottom of Clutterbuck Lane and its grimy courtyard centered by a fetid well. There, against the city's crumbling walls, he saw a dilapidated two-story...