Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) Read online

  Lucia did not utter even a single word, but I knew what she thought. I was sure that there’d be nothing that could stop her from fulfilling the last wish of her father. She had waited her whole life for him, but now that he had died, she could not wait any longer. It was time to act.

  Chapter 4: Request, Dream, Venture

  To dare something means risking everything despite a relevant potential of losing it all, just so you can try and realize your wishes and dreams. For me it stood for nothing more than stupidity and reflected the dimension of your own suicidal tendencies. But in the last few days this view had changed more and more. I had dared to stand against my father, to voice my own thoughts, and even if this is normal for some people, I couldn’t have been more proud of the risks I took.

  “It is already late; you should go to sleep now. In the morning we’ll consider what we do from here. I can’t believe that your father really has been killed. Everything will be alright,” I said when I woke up and noticed that Lucia was still awake, looking into the box that her father had sent her.

  She grabbed every single piece from it, examined it and looked through most of my old books in search for the language on the papyrus. But in the end it was clear to her that all these things were nothing more than scrap.

  “Everything will be alright? I hardly think so. My desire to leave this village, it had always been the most important dream of mine. But what is out there?” she asked and looked at the map of the world that was in the box.

  “I have asked myself this question so many times, believe me. I know that I haven’t overcome my fear yet, because the thought of disappearing with you from here, to look for your father only invokes dreams of death and despair in me.”

  “No one can help my father now. He is dead. It took me so long to realize that my mother had died, that I don’t want to fool myself again. He has asked me to follow him and find this one last treasure with him. I don’t care what the world things of me, but he was an adventurer, he was a hero. His dreams gave you the strength to help me. We need to understand what he sent me.”

  Slowly she understood that the hatred which she felt was nothing more than the fear that I also felt every day. She was ashamed for not believing in her father anymore, and I was ashamed to have done the same thing.

  “You're right. Even if he was still alive, he can take care of himself. He asked you for a favour and I will help you to fulfil it. Show me the map once again.”

  I took the map from her hands and analysed it thoroughly. It showed a rough outline of the old seven kingdoms and in the centre, near the extinct volcano Ignis, Jasper had marked and circled something.

  “Doyle? Do you know what that means?” Lucia asked and I had an idea.

  “Magnus Doyle, the alchemist, he has managed to immunize himself. He spent his whole life trying to reproduce this procedure. There are many books about him and by him,” I said and made a decision. “We need to go.”

  “Right now? It is in the middle of the night, how should we travel there in the dark? It must be at least a seven days march. We should better prepare something, don’t you think?”

  “You are more afraid than I am? If we look at the circumstances, this is our only chance. We take what we can carry, and leave this village behind us. I know that it is a gamble and my knees are trembling at the thought what hides there in this darkness, but if we do not hurry, my father will do everything he can to stop us.”

  She looked at me and fixated the map with all of her thoughts.

  “Let's do it. Let us find a treasure,” she said with a smile.

  It did not take long until we had packed everything we needed. The last obstacle we had to face were Lucia's grandparents, because I was sure that we would not be able to leave unnoticed from here.

  It was absolutely necessary to take supplies with us which we did not in any way intend to steal. I was ready to take another risk, but I didn’t want to leave nothing but ruins behind me.

  “What exactly are you two planning?” asked Emmerich Lugh, who got wind of our plan even faster than expected.

  “We are leaving to honour the last wish of my father. I know what you think of him, but I cannot wait any longer,” Lucia responded while I grabbed the supplies and saw that Lior, Lucia's grandmother, also entered the room.

  “Your father is dead; he has made his choice. His life was marked by failure and bad decisions of which he himself was ashamed. Do you want to end like him? Shouldn’t his death have shown you where such a path leads? Why do you want to give up on a better life; a life that is normal?” asked Emmerich and beat on the cabinet next to him with his walking stick.

  “Let them go. It is not our decision Emmerich. Lucia has waited her whole life with the desire to see her father again, just like you want to see our daughter once again. But what good has all this waiting done? We need to separate ourselves from what lies in the past. Let them follow this way, because only then will they see what is right,” said Lior and put her hand on the shoulder of Emmerich, who calmly lowered his head.

  “I just need to do this. You were always there for me and you gave me everything you had. But today it is different. No matter what you give me, as long as I do not understand what happened to him, I can no longer be happy. He always said that he loves me and that I am everything that he could have wished for, but he has never said it to me in person. My memories of him are descriptions and pages in a crate. It is no longer enough for me.”

  I had stashed our food and opened the door. The temperature had already fallen sharply, and now that the winter months approached, we only had such little time to follow the tracks of Lawrence.

  “Good luck,” whispered Emmerich and turned away with a lowered head, while going back to his room.

  Lior went to Lucia and said her goodbye with a last embrace. Even if I couldn’t see the face of Lucia in this moment, I knew that a tear ran down her cheeks, finally releasing the anger and fear that held her prisoner.

  “Thank you,” Lucia remarked and left the house without a further look back.

  She had what I always wanted; a real family. And even if this treasure was important for her, she still had to give up on it for now. Sometimes we find that our happiness is not shaped by abundance. Since the house of Doyle was located far away, I had thought of a plan that would prove to my father that I was truly his son. Every night the carriage was left in the mews, but the security measures left a lot to be desired. In these villages on the edge of the continent, it was easy to make our trip just a little bit faster.

  “Steal the carriage? Iago, what is the matter with you? Aren’t you afraid that they could follow us? And what if they catch us red-handed?”

  I remember this time very well and I especially remember the pride that had overtaken me. This feeling as if you were invulnerable. At this time I didn’t realize that I was acting against everything I ever stood for.

  “Trust me, they will not notice us.”

  Chapter 5: Magnus Doyle

  It did not take long for us to reach the house in which Doyle lived according to Lawrence, but it had cost Lucia and me much energy. The situation in the kingdom had aggravated even more and while we made it past the city, we felt the impact of the violent attacks on the castle. It probably wouldn’t be long before the destruction also reached the rest of the country, but the house in front of us seemed to be already severely damaged. The windows were all broken and were hardly in the frame, while coarse long cracks stretched along the whole facade of the house, and in some cases even the foundation. The garden was completely overgrown and some of the plants, which were of completely unknown type to me, concealed the label with the name of the family Doyle. I was, at first glance, unsure if any man could be living in such an environment.

  “Our journey has only just begun and it seems to end here. We cannot turn back now, or what do you think?” I asked Lucia and helped her from the carriage.

  “This place gives me the chills. But we still have no
other choice; we are here and must stay overnight. Let us once again look at the items in the box. Perhaps my father didn’t want me or Doyle himself to see these things, maybe he only hid something at his place.”

  This mostly logical explanation seemed to be something I had overlooked, which for me was the first indication that something at this place didn’t agree with me. Why didn’t I fear this house? As it was getting dark, we grabbed our things and opened the heavy wooden front door; the wood it was made of had already absorbed all the humidity of the environment. It was as if the house had merged with the environmental ecosystem. Inside we saw, to our right, an antique hat rack, on which hung two small hats and a rain jacket. They looked as if they had only recently been worn and they were the first signs of life. We decided to progress onward quietly from here, because we couldn’t be sure that it was Doyle who was waiting for us. Countless paintings adorned the walls and torn carpets hung down, half to the wall and half on the floor of the ruined villa.

  The musty smell and the absence of light made it hard to concentrate on certain things, and although I was accustomed to live in such a giant house, I could not imagine what had happened here.

  “Truth is that you? Have you found me, you miserable one? Villain! I sought thee, but now show yourself to me and learn what it means to suffer!” cried a wild little old man, who suddenly appeared before us, with short grey hair hardly covering his head. He wore torn clothing, that covered only the most important parts of his body - or at least the most necessary - and I hardly dared to imagine how long he had already been here. In his right hand he held a dull butter knife, which probably had once seen better times, as had the old man.

  “Truth, I have found thee! Now tell me where I should go, what must I do? Is the strength of my soul diminishing? Why have you forsaken me?” he cried viciously waving about with the knife in his hand.

  “We are here because Jasper Lawrence sends us. It is important that you look at something,” Lucia said and made a step closer to the man, but I stopped her.

  “Lawrence? I do not know! Never heard of it! It is not you? What a real shame. I have to go, no time,” replied the man with a reduced and sad voice, letting go off the knife.

  He ran away and we tried to follow him. Passing by huge halls, beautiful rooms, decorated with old art and artefacts, which now did nothing more than collect the dust of time. We reached a room, deep under the complex in which the old man had set up an ineffable laboratory. Many hundreds of different plants arrayed in numbered pots, one behind the other. Vials, long lead and copper pistons and reagents piled up on the tables that surrounded us. We heard the bubbling of the reactions and felt the heat they emitted. And the smell alone made me understand that all this was not natural at all.

  “A little salt and a little water, wet, wet, wet! I am looking for you too long already, oh, that’s why I simply catch you now.

  Light is off, nothing happens, today I kill the mouse,” sang the old man to himself and grabbed one of the many mice, which he held in different cages.

  “What exactly are you doing here?” I asked him and looked around while he loaded up a capacitor.

  “I find the truth! Finally I will find it.”

  In his right hand he held the mouse that was struggling to get free. With his left he grabbed a syringe on the table.

  “And now the light returns from source, yes of course, yes of course. It rains on all the wetted paths; the rain hits man and also mouse, it hits the roof of every house. So we move and clap our hands, close the plastic walls, sending electricity, and hope that lightning falls. And now, the artificial lightning hits our mouse, which in water we had doused.”

  The man continued to sing while he prepared his experiment and began to discharge the capacitor. He led the power directly into the cage of the mouse and started to dance.

  “The mouse is dead, oh I am glad! But now we inject you the truth, with a prickle - please!”

  He used the syringe on the dead mouse and injected it with a serum and miraculously the mouse began to move again after a few seconds.

  “How is that possible? It was dead, or wasn’t it?” Lucia asked almost immediately and I knew what false hope she had found here.

  “As dead as god himself! But the truth can save us all! Save, Save, our hands we wave!” giggled the apparently severely disturbed man.

  I took Lucia to the side in order to speak with her, but in her expression I saw already, what I had feared.

  “This is madness. Who knows what he does with these animals. And even if he manages to revive a mouse, it does not mean that he is also capable of doing it with a man,” I said to Lucia and underestimated the hearing of the old man, who understood every single one of my words.

  “Of course I can revive a man! No problem, no problem. Only need to find what I am looking for, oh how I curse you. Need it now, otherwise I cannot do it! But it keeps mocking me, this villain! Argh! Truth!” he cried and began to hit his own head.

  I brought Lucia back to the top floor led her to the outside in front of the carriage. I was not sure whether this man really was the man we had been looking for.

  “He knows the solution. This must be the treasure that my father told us about, I am sure. We must help him, and then he can perhaps save my father.”

  “Death is final. I do not know why I took so long to see what is real. It was crazy of us to come here. We should go. This man is obviously not in a position to help us. He cannot even help himself.”

  The door of the house opened and there was this bizarre picture. The old man stood in the middle of the entrance wearing both his rain coat as well as his hat. He seemed more human to me than before. But what made of all this so special for me was the fear that I saw in his eyes.

  “I can help you! But I cannot walk away from here, not anymore. If you trust me, then I can show you what you are looking for. Come, come!” he called flailing around with his arms.

  It began to snow and the cold wind made me realize that I had to make another choice.

  “We give him a chance. If you do not like what he tells us, then we leave tomorrow. I promise you,” Lucia asked of me. How could I refuse in a moment like this?

  This was the real world with the real Magnus Doyle. And what I didn’t understand back then, was that I hadn’t felt real fear in all my life. My hesitation led me to dangers I couldn’t comprehend, and with me all those who followed.

  Chapter 6: The Palimpsest

  I sat in the chair and observed Lucia, as she helped the old man with his work. None of his movements seemed to be planned. It was as if an invisible hand was steering him. He sorted books, sang and rhymed, and now and again he began to strongly wheeze, just because he forgot how to breathe. But while being so strange, he was also so smart. He, being so difficult to understand, made coming back to my old self much easier. I feared that he wasn’t telling us all he knew.

  “Something to drink? Yes? Drinking is good, you draw new courage! Somewhere I have alcohol. Normally I use it for my experiments. Sometimes they are self-experiments, of course,” he giggled and grunted while he desperately searched empty bottles for liquid.

  He checked the neck of each bottle with his tongue in order to recognize the content and not only was it strange to witness, but also extremely disgusting. When he finally had found what he was looking for, he put a bottle ‘Farion Silver Cloud’ on the table. I knew this brew very well, as my father used to often drink it. The silvery colour was created through the extreme alcohol concentration and some 'secret ingredients'. Actually it was pure alcohol, with silver dust from Farion mines. Back in the days it was a drink of magicians and scholars, since many centuries ago people believed that a high percentage of silver in the blood would amplify the magical powers. But later they found out that large amounts of silver in the bloodstream tend to be lethal, which is why the production has been mostly stopped. Today it has become more of a symbolic token rather than a real drink.

  “Two slugs sip
and swig! It shakes me and it shakes me good!,” the old man uttered as he went ahead and took a big gulp directly from the old bottle that send him shivering to the ground.

  He offered me the bottle, but I declined his offer gratefully and waited for Lucia to also join us in our round.

  “Could you look at this here?” she asked and put the box on the table.

  The old man just laughed and looked at the both of us as if he wanted to hear something from us.

  “Time for my medicine!” he called out and then jumped away. Like being possessed by a demon he stormed through the room and stretched out his arms. Finally he made stop in front of a shelf and took a large suitcase out, which he opened to take out ten small vials. “Red to blue, yes that is smart, but yellow to green that’s never clean. Colours, glass and tincture remind me of my oath. Everything is what it was, this drink demands a toast!”