The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

was obsessed with getting it back, a mission we both undertook knowing the possible penalties should we fail. It took time to find him, and when at last we did, we knew our task would require us to gain access to his household, to win the family’s trust. I befriended Lafcadio at his school in Salzburg—and Pandora met Hermione and the children, finally moving into the Behn house itself in Vienna. But no one could know that just as our efforts were about to bear fruit, Hermione would fall gravely ill. When the brain sickness took her so swiftly and she died, Hieronymus raped Pandora that very night and forced her into marriage without delay. The man was the darkest scoundrel. But when she married him, she was already married to me. For some time, I couldn’t accept that she’d subjected us all to such a fate—for what could be worse than having your pregnant wife despoiled by another man, who then casts her out ignominiously while kidnapping the child—”

“Kidnapping?” I said in shock. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean your father was not abandoned by anyone,” he told me clearly. “When Hieronymus Behn discovered Pandora had indeed succeeded in recovering what she was seeking, he threw her into the streets, then shut up the house and absconded with our child. Augustus was held hostage for a ransom we would never pay, Pandora and I, even if we had the means to do so.”

“Ransom!” I said. But then of course I got the picture. Neither of us glanced at the bag sitting between us under the table. My mind was so frayed that when he spoke, it took me a minute to process what he said.

“Perhaps you don’t know exactly what the contents of your satchel are, my dear,” he said, “but you must have a very clear idea of their value and their danger. Had you not, you’d have sold them, or burned them, or left them behind when you came. You would never have made so great a commitment as to bring them with you halfway around the world. So when Wolfgang Hauser said he believed they were in your possession and I made the decision to tell you everything about our family—including our Romani roots—I quickly sent him away. You see, the information about those papers in your possession meant something to me that was fortunately lost on him. I asked him to meet us a short distance from here, a quarter hour from now.”

He paused and looked me directly in the eye. I froze when I heard his next words:

“You could only just have learned the importance of these documents, and from someone who had far more than a superficial grasp of their true meaning. Since it wasn’t myself, and all the others have taken their secret to the grave, I presume you’ve learned it from the person who last held them in his possession. This strongly suggests that your cousin Samuel is alive—and that you’ve spoken with him quite recently.”

THE AXIS

The branches and fruit of the … World Tree appear in the art and myth of Greece, but its roots are in Asia.… The World Tree is a symbol which complements, or on occasion overlaps with, that of the Central Mountain, both forms being only more elaborate forms of the Cosmic Axis or Pillar of the World.

—E.A.S. Butterworth,

The Tree at the Navel of the Earth

In a universe where planets revolve around suns, and moons turn about planets, where force alone forever masters weakness, compelling it to be an obedient slave or else crushing it, there can be no special laws for man. For him, too, the eternal principles of this ultimate wisdom hold sway. He can try to comprehend them, but escape them, never.

—Adolf Hitler,

Mein Kampf

I was a mess. A real mess. I felt truly ill. How could I have been so naive as to imagine that an innocent girl nuke like me, with no training in espionage, could save these dangerous manuscripts and protect Sam too, when the first two people who saw me had figured out at once what I was toting in my bag?

I tried to mask my churning emotions as the waiter arrived to reckon our bill. God knows how I managed to crawl from the booth, yank my coat on, and navigate the length of the restaurant. Dacian Bassarides followed without a word. Out in the middle of the Herrengasse, I hung on to my lethal shoulder bag in a white-knuckled grip.

“My dear, your fears are almost palpable,” Dacian said. “But fear is a necessary and healthy thing. It sharpens our awareness, it isn’t something to be suppressed—”

“You don’t understand,” I interrupted with urgency. “If you and Wolfgang guessed that I have these papers, maybe others have figured it out, too. Sam’s in terrible danger—people have tried to kill him. But I don’t even know what these manuscripts are, much less how to protect them. I don’t know who to trust!”

“The answer is plain,” Dacian said. He calmly removed my hand from my bag and tucked it beneath his arm. “You must trust the one person who does know what they are and who can advise you, for the moment anyway, what to do with them—which in both cases happens to be me. Furthermore, since our friend Herr Hauser believes you have these papers, it would be a mistake to arouse his suspicions by pretending you haven’t. You must take him into your confidence at least so far as what he’s already guessed, a gesture which may prove expedient in other ways as well. But he’s waiting for us not far from here, so let’s join him. I have something I want to show you both.”

I tried to calm down as Dacian, still cradling my hand, led me through narrow streets to where the Graben dovetailed into the Kärntner Strasse, another avenue of fashionable shops, and the Stephansplatz fanned out to display