Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos-Theo 1 (14 page)

He came to full attention at the word "spells," and for one horrible moment I thought I'd made a hideous blunder.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I know about the spells. Why don't you tell me what
you
know about them?"

"Well, you're the first person I've met who actually knows they exist. Besides me, I mean. Mother and Father never sense them, but I can usually tell the first time I lay eyes on an artifact. It feels like icy-footed beetles are crawling down my back. Is that how you know they're there, too?"

Lord Wigmere's mustache twitched slightly. "Ah, no. We have other ways of telling if the objects are bespelled."

"Wax? That's my Second Level Test."

Wigmere sat back and folded his arms. "Tell me about this Second Level Test."

"Well, when I've determined the artifact might be cursed I place a small circle of wax bits—"

"Where do you get this wax?"

"I save up the ends of candles and such. Anyway, I place a little circle of wax bits around the object. I check it a few hours later and if the wax is a dirty gray or black, I know I was right and the object is cursed."

"Have you ever been wrong? Has the wax ever stayed white?"

"Never."

"Fascinating," he said under his breath. Then he asked, "Do you conduct any other tests?"

"Well, yes. If it passes the wax test I then do a Level Three Test. The Moonlight Test."

Wigmere raised his eyebrows, and I rushed my words because when you say them out loud they sound foolish. "I have to check the artifacts at night. When moonlight shines on them, I can ... I can see the curses swimming around on the object."

Wigmere's eyes burned with interest. "Really? What do they look like?"

"Well, they're hieroglyphs. But they move and swim, like a swarm of bees looking for someone to sting, and they give off a buzzing feeling." I paused. "Haven't you ever seen them? In the moonlight like that?"

"No." Wigmere shook his head and looked a bit sad about it. "So the hieroglyphs tell you the nature of the curse?"

"No. They actually
are
the curse. As written on the object by whoever cursed it in the first place."

Wigmere leaned back in his chair, studying me as if I were a particularly interesting artifact he'd just stumbled upon. "Remarkable. And when did you first discover you had this unusual talent?"

"Unusual, sir? But isn't that how you do it?"

"No. I'm afraid not. Our ways are much more mundane and laborious. Indeed, it would save us all a great deal of time and trouble if we had your gift."

For some reason I couldn't explain, this made me a bit queasy. "Well, I've had it since I was very young." Then I explained to him how I'd discovered research and used that to arm myself. "That's how I learned about the different tests and found the different recipes for removing the curses."

"Recipes?"

"Well, yes. Aren't they rather like recipes? You follow the steps using the right ingredients, only instead of a cake or a leg of mutton you end up with an uncursed object."

"Well, it's not quite that simple for most people." Abruptly, Wigmere turned his chair around to a large cupboard built into the wall behind his desk. He pulled a key from his trousers and unlocked one of the doors, then took out a long, black stone box. He turned back around and placed it in front of me. His eyes fixed on me the whole time, he carefully lifted the lid.

Inside there was an ornately carved, long thin statue of the most hideous gaping serpent I had ever seen. It had jagged scales and enormous fangs, and the eyes were two small bits of red carnelian. It felt old, older almost than time itself. I raised my eyes from the artifact and saw Wigmere watching me intensely.

"Well, it's as ugly as sin," I said when I realized he was waiting for me to speak. "And one of the most vile representations of the Serpent of Chaos I've ever seen. But there's no curse on it, if that's what you're wondering."

Wigmere fingered his chin and looked thoughtfully from the serpent back to me. He turned back to the cupboard and pulled another box from the shelves. This one was of light gray soapstone, and carved with many hieroglyphs and symbols, some I'd never seen before.

He placed the box on the desk in front of me and removed the top. As soon as the lid was off, the skin on my back lifted from my spine and felt like it was trying to run out of the room.

I stared down at the small, carved hippopotamus that looked as harmless as a child's toy. It wasn't. I could sense ill luck and abominable curses writhing on its surface. I shuddered, then reached for the lid and plunked it back on the box. "Seth. In one of his more innocent forms." Not that anything about the god of chaos and destruction could be called truly innocent. "Heavily cursed. Feels like death-and-destruction stuff, but I'm not sure."

A slightly triumphant look crossed Wigmere's face. "But I thought you said you could see the curse on the object itself?"

I sighed. "But only in the moonlight." How disappointing. I suppose it is too much to ask that an adult, especially one as grand as Wigmere, pay attention to everything someone my age has to say.

His mustache twitched, a response I was beginning to recognize. "You
were
listening! This was just a test! To see if I was telling the truth!"

Wigmere looked a bit sheepish. "Well, you can hardly blame me. Your talents are truly remarkable. Never seen anything like them."

Pride warred with dismay. While I fancied being unique, I wasn't sure how I felt about being the only one with this particular skill. That was too uncomfortably close to being off one's nut. "Well, how do
you
tell, then?"

"By studying the origins and history of the piece. Sometimes we get hunches, but never a shiver down my back that nearly shakes me out of my chair. It's a lot of guesswork, actually."

I didn't know what to say.

Lord Wigmere continued. "It must be some inborn trait, some intuition or talent you possess. Like being able to ride a horse well or being good at playing the piano."

"But then, wouldn't my parents be able to see the curses? Or Henry?"

"Henry doesn't see them, then?"

"No."

Wigmere shrugged. "Well, I'm just hazarding guesses here. This is something I've never run into before. Although I do know that some people's natures are simply more open to magic than others'." He paused for a moment, his eyes focused just past my head.

"What?" I asked.

"I was just remembering something. From when I was a boy."

I scooted forward to the edge of my seat. "What?"

"It was my first trip to the British Museum. I remember being fascinated by the Egyptology room. As an adult, I've always thought that's when my career decision was made, but now I'm remembering it wasn't so much the artifacts, although those were very interesting."

He paused again. I wanted to get up and shake him. "Yes?" I prompted.

"But now I remember having a distinct case of the willies the whole time. I remember wondering why the place was so blasted cold. My parents finally bundled me out of there, I was shivering so badly."

"And now you're wondering if you weren't reacting to the exhibits the same way I do to cursed objects?"

"Exactly. As if it were an ability one has as a child, but loses as an adult."

Well that was rubbish. I had no intention of losing this ability when I turned into a grownup. "But wait," I said. "What about all the people who wrote the books on Egyptian magic in the first place? They weren't children."

Wigmere reached up and began stroking his mustache. "No. That's true enough. But those books were also written centuries after the fact. Those authors most likely never experienced any of the magic firsthand. They were just copying from the ancient Egyptian texts."

"Well, what about the ancient Egyptians, then? They weren't all children."

"No, but they lived in much closer contact with their gods than we do. However," Wigmere said, turning away from the past. "None of this conjecture will help us today. It is very possible, Miss Theodosia, that we will need to tap in to your talent from time to time."

"I would be honored to help in any way I can, Lord Wigmere. But who is
we
?"

"We, my dear girl, are the Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers. A group of men, a society if you will—"

Just then a quiet knock at the door brought Wigmere instantly to his feet. Honestly. The comings and goings here were far worse than at Charing Cross Station! "Excuse me," he said, then limped over to the door, opened it, and spoke in hushed tones.

"Are you up to taking a short walk down to Level Six?" he asked. "Stokes has regained consciousness and is asking for me. I thought perhaps you'd like to see him yourself so he can thank you."

I jumped to my feet. Of course I was dying to see Level Six, but all I said was "If you'd like."

W
E WALKED DOWN THE HALL
until we came to a small narrow door marked P
RIVATE
, N
O
E
NTRY
. Wigmere ignored the sign and stepped inside, with me close on his heels.

It was a small room, no bigger than a large closet really, with heavy curtains covering the east wall. Wigmere went over to the curtains and pulled them aside.

There was a door behind the curtains! A flat shiny metal door with no handles, only a seam running down the middle.

Wigmere pushed a button on the wall and they opened. I gasped. It was a lift. Right here in Somerset House. Amazing!

I followed him into the small compartment. He nodded at the fellow manning the control panel on the wall. "Level Six, please." The man pushed a button, then the whole world dropped out from under my feet and my stomach nearly came out my nose.

I reached out and placed a hand against the wall to steady myself.

"All right?" Wigmere asked.

I nodded.

"Takes a bit of getting used to."

I'll say.

With a grind of gears and a lurch we reached Level Six. I followed Wigmere off the lift, none too sorry to have solid floor beneath my feet.

The excitement of the lift was quickly forgotten as I stared at the hustle and bustle all around me. Dozens and dozens of desks were set up in tidy rows. But that was the only neat thing about the place. Everything else was a jumbled mess. Men sat at desks stacked with old parchment, papyrus scrolls, and clay tablets. Telegraph machines tapped out messages in quick staccato bursts. Men scurried back and forth, carrying files and books. It was like a library gone mad.

A thoroughly modern library, I might add. There wasn't a single gas lamp in sight. It was all electric lights!

"Welcome to Level Six, the heart of our operations," Wigmere said, with no small amount of pride in his voice.

I estimated there were somewhere between twenty and thirty men (it was hard to tell because they all kept moving around). There were worktables and workstations and artifacts spilling about like so much forgotten rubbish. Everything was a tangled, disorderly mess, and it was absolutely lovely to behold! Well, except for the faint smell of curses that clung to the corners of the room.

Wigmere limped along at a rather furious clip. I had a hard time keeping up because I was so busy trying to take everything in.

We passed several large basins of quartzite and a huge sarcophagus made out of alabaster. Very curious. I'd never seen anything that big made out of alabaster before. A few feet away from that was a tub, a regular clawfooted bathtub like we had at home. Only this tub was full of thick reddish mud.

"Mud?" I asked.

"Yes. Nile River mud. We find it can sometimes absorb the curses and nullify them. What do
you
do when a curse escapes an artifact and works its way into a person?" he asked.

A vision of poor Isis flashed in my mind. "Oh, that's never happened," I said, eyeing the mud thoughtfully. It wasn't strictly a lie. Isis
isn't
a person.

We resumed walking and passed a wall of offices with large glass windows. In one of them, two men leaned forward, examining something on a table. An artifact of some sort. One of the men reached out and lifted it up.

I could see the air swirl around the artifact and the man's arm, like heat waves rising up from the pavement in the dog days of summer. Suddenly, the man screamed and clutched his hand. His partner leaped up from the table and ran over to a switch on the wall and flipped it.

Immediately a buzzer sounded and the entire room erupted into frenzied activity. "Stay here," Wigmere barked, then limped as fast as he could toward the commotion.

Needless to say, I followed.

***

A crew of operatives burst into the small office and dragged the man out into the main room, toward the large mud-filled tub.

As I drew closer, I could see the skin on the injured man's hand hiss and bubble and blister all the way up to his wrist. There was the foul stink of sulfur in the air.

They shoved his arm into the tub, covering it completely in the Nile River mud.

A few seconds later they removed his arm from the tub and rinsed it off. We all watched the man's arm closely. Slowly, like a serpent waking, the bubbling resumed and began working up toward his elbow. The poor fellow was close to panicking. The medic treating him looked to Wigmere for direction. "Now what, sir?"