The Spirit Well (Bright Empires) Read online

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  The Bright Empires Series

  “His mastery of the art of description is beyond belief. (I had to stop several times to jump up and down because I loved his style so much, seriously.) His level of attention to details like period mind-set and speech is a delight to behold (especially for die-hard background-first novelists like me).”

  —SIR EMETH M.

  “This is a story that has it all: mystery, history, damsels in distress, and a mindbending meditation on the nature of reality. It is equal parts Raiders of the Lost Ark, National Treasure, and Jumper. Highly recommended!”

  —CHAD J.

  “Filled with descriptions that beguile all five senses and all the beauty and charm of the language I have come to expect from Lawhead, this book is a fascinating blend of fantasy and sci-fi.”

  —JENELLE S.

  “ . . . a hold-your-breath beginning to a new series. This novel mixes ancient history, time travel, alternate realities, mystery, physics, and fantasy, to create a story so compelling that I find myself recommending it to any who will listen.”

  —SHEILA P.

  “[A] sure winner for eager sci-fi readers . . . The vivid imagery and witty lines help keep the reader on the edge of their seats.”

  —JERRY P.

  “Time travel and high adventure abound in this brand new title from veteran author Stephen R. Lawhead.”

  —BEN H.

  “Imagine Narnia merged with Hitchhiker’s Guide, and you have a starting point for the adventures of Kit Livingstone.”

  —RICK M.

  “Lawhead vividly describes the sights, sounds, and smells of the markets in Prague, the streets of Restoration England, and even the dry heat of Ancient Egypt . . . The premise of ley line travel is fascinating yet mysterious, with scientific definitions that are detailed without becoming too technical. The characters are personable and complex, and it’s easy to get caught up in their search for that elusive map.”

  —MALINDA D.

  “ . . . an excellent, mysterious storyline that draws the reader in.”

  —KIERAN

  THE

  SPIRIT WELL

  A BRIGHT EMPIRES NOVEL

  Quest the Third:

  THE

  SPIRIT WELL

  S T E P H E N R.

  L A W H E A D

  © 2012 by Stephen Lawhead

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Page design by Mandi Cofer.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  978-1-40168-787-8 (IE)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lawhead, Steve.

  The spirit well / Stephen R. Lawhead.

  p. cm. -- (Bright empires ; Quest the 3rd)

  ISBN 978-1-59554-806-1 (jacketed hardcover)

  1. Space and time--Fiction. 2. Time travel--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3562.A865S75 2012

  813’.54--dc23

  2012018426

  Printed in the United States of America

  12 13 14 15 16 17 QG 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In memory of Tiffany

  “The past and the present

  are our means;

  the future alone is our end.”

  – BLAISE PASCAL

  Contents

  IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN THE BRIGHT EMPIRES SERIES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PREVIOUSLY IN THE BRIGHT EMPIRES SERIES

  THE SPIRIT WELL

  PART ONE: THE GHOST ROAD

  CHAPTER 1: IN WHICH FRIDAY TAKES A HOLIDAY

  CHAPTER 2: IN WHICH THE SECRET CANYON GIVES UP ITS SECRET

  CHAPTER 3: IN WHICH KIT CONTEMPLATES A MIRACLE

  CHAPTER 4: IN WHICH CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL

  CHAPTER 5: IN WHICH LORD BURLEIGH TAKES A STROLL

  CHAPTER 6: IN WHICH A NEW THING COMES TO PASS

  CHAPTER 7: IN WHICH SUBVERSION IS PLOTTED

  PART TWO: THE JAGGED MOUNTAIN

  CHAPTER 8: IN WHICH A NEW GOD IS EXTOLLED

  CHAPTER 9: IN WHICH WILHELMINA PURSUES A MOUNTAINTOP EXPERIENCE

  CHAPTER 10: IN WHICH FALSE IDENTITIES ARE EXPOSED

  CHAPTER 11: IN WHICH TRACKS ARE MADE AND COVERED

  CHAPTER 12: IN WHICH KIT LEARNS THE USES OF A MARMOT SKULL

  CHAPTER 13: IN WHICH AN ASSAULT IS LAUNCHED

  PART THREE: THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT

  CHAPTER 14: IN WHICH SOME THINGS ARE NOT TO BE

  CHAPTER 15: IN WHICH OLD HAUNTS ARE REVISITED

  CHAPTER 16: IN WHICH A LONG-PROMISED TEA IS TAKEN

  CHAPTER 17: IN WHICH AN UNWANTED PARTNERSHIP IS FORGED

  CHAPTER 18: IN WHICH KIT TAKES A DETOUR

  CHAPTER 19: IN WHICH A SISTERHOOD IS JOINED

  CHAPTER 20: IN WHICH A GOOD DOCTOR IS HARD TO FIND

  PART FOUR: THE OMEGA POINT

  CHAPTER 21: IN WHICH TIME IS MEASURED IN EMPIRES CRUMBLED TO DUST

  CHAPTER 22: IN WHICH DESPAIR GIVES BIRTH TO AUDACITY

  CHAPTER 23: IN WHICH KIT PLAYS THE WAITING GAME

  CHAPTER 24: IN WHICH COMMUNICATION BREAKS DOWN

  CHAPTER 25: IN WHICH THE BEST THEORY IS EXPOUNDED

  CHAPTER 26: IN WHICH ASTRAL DISLOCATION FINDS EXPLICATION

  PART FIVE: FIVE SMOOTH STONES

  CHAPTER 27: IN WHICH A NEW RECRUIT IS CANVASSED

  CHAPTER 28: IN WHICH THE MOMENT OF DECISION ARRIVES

  CHAPTER 29: IN WHICH A DEBT IS PAID IN CANDLES

  CHAPTER 30: IN WHICH PRIORITIES ARE REALIGNED

  CHAPTER 31: IN WHICH A FAMILIAL CONNECTION IS FORGED

  CHAPTER 32: IN WHICH THE NEWEST MEMBER IS FÊTED

  CHAPTER 33: IN WHICH HASTE MAKES HIDEOUS WASTE

  EPILOGUE

  ESSAY: “ON THE ROAD AGAIN” BY STEPHEN LAWHEAD

  Important People

  Anen—Friend of Arthur Flinders-Petrie, High Priest of the Temple of Amun in Egypt, 18th dynasty.

  Archelaeus Burleigh, Earl of Sutherland—Nemesis of Flinders-Petrie, Cosimo, Kit, and all right-thinking people.

  Arthur Flinders-Petrie—Also known as The Man Who Is Map, patriarch of his line. Begat Benedict, who begat Charles, who begat Douglas.

  Friar Roger Bacon—An early philosopher, scientist, and theologian who worked and taught first at Paris and then Oxford from around 1240 to 1290; he has been called Doctor Mirabilis for his wonderful teaching.

  Balthazar Bazalgette—The Lord High Alchemist at the Court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, friend and confidant of Wilhelmina.

  Benedict Flinders-Petrie—The son of Arthur and Xian-Li, and father of Charles.

  Burley Men—Con, Dex, Mal, and Tav. Lord Burleigh’s henchmen. They keep a Stone Age cat called Baby.

  Charles Flinders-Petrie—Son of Benedict and father of Douglas, he is grandson of Arthur.

  Cosimo Christopher Livingstone, the Elder, aka Cosimo —A Victorian gentleman who seeks to reunite the Skin Map and u
nderstand the key to the future.

  Cosimo Christopher Livingstone, the Younger, aka Kit—Cosimo’s great-grandson.

  Dardok—The head of the River City Clan whom Kit first encounters in the Stone Age; also known as Big Hunter.

  Douglas Flinders-Petrie—Son of Charles, and great-grandson of Arthur; he is quietly pursuing his own search for the Skin Map, one piece of which is in his possession.

  Emperor Rudolf II—King of Bohemia and Hungary, Archduke of Austria and King of the Romans, he is also known as the Holy Roman Emperor and is quite mad.

  Engelbert Stiffelbeam—A baker from Rosenheim in Germany, affectionately known as Etzel.

  En-Ul—The elder statesman of the River City Clan.

  Giles Standfast—Sir Henry Fayth’s coachman and Kit’s ally.

  Gustavus Rosenkreuz—The Chief Assistant to the Lord High Alchemist and Wilhelmina’s ally.

  Lady Haven Fayth—Sir Henry’s headstrong and mercurial niece.

  Sir Henry Fayth, Lord Castlemain—Member of the Royal Society, staunch friend and ally of Cosimo. Haven’s uncle.

  Snipe—Feral child and malignant aide to Douglas Flinders-Petrie.

  Turms— A king of Etruria, one of the Immortals, and a friend of Arthur; he oversees the birth of Benedict Flinders-Petrie when Xian-Li’s pregnancy becomes problematic.

  Wilhelmina Klug, aka Mina—In another life, a London baker and Kit’s girlfriend. In this life, owns Prague’s Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus with Etzel.

  Dr. Thomas Young—Physician, scientist, a certified polymath with a keen interest in the archaeology of ancient Egypt, his astonishing breadth and depth of accomplishment led to his epithet: “The Last Man in the World to Know Everything.”

  Xian-Li—Wife of Arthur Flinders-Petrie and mother of Benedict; daughter of the tattooist Wu Chen Hu of Macao.

  Acknowledgments

  Nabile Mallah was my guide and instructor whilst travelling in Syria during troubled times, and his enthusiasm was inspiring. Adrian Woodford led that trip with skill and wisdom—thanks.

  Scott and Kelli Lawhead generously introduced me to the strange beauty of Sedona.

  Richard Rodriguez, Hailey Johnson Burgess, Matthew Knell, Daniele Basile, and Sabine Biskup kindly proofed the Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, and German dialogue in this book.

  As always, the errors belong to me.

  Previously

  The phenomenon known as ley leaping or ley travel is an endeavour fraught with complication and error. Far from being an exact science, using ley lines to travel among, between, and across the various known dimensions of the multidimensional Omniverse is at best an art that can only be perfected through long apprenticeship, and even the most expert of explorers is likely to go astray—a fact that Kit Livingstone knows only too well. Using a ley line discovered by Wilhelmina, his former girlfriend, Kit has succeeded in eluding capture by Lord Archelaeus Burleigh, a ruthless and violent man determined to possess the fabled Skin Map at any cost.

  In Kit’s desperation to escape Burleigh’s clutches, however, something has gone amiss; for although he landed in the right place, it seems to be entirely the wrong time. At least, the epoch in which Kit finds himself is definitely not the one Wilhelmina had in mind when she advised him to use that particular ley line for his getaway. Suffice it to say that for the time being, and perhaps the foreseeable future, Kit seems to be stuck in the Stone Age. Making the best of his predicament, Kit has stumbled upon a discovery that could prove important to the ongoing proceedings. It would appear that against all odds he has discovered the fabled Well of Souls or, as it is perhaps better known to readers of these pages, the Spirit Well.

  Meanwhile, back in seventeenth-century Prague, Wilhelmina’s enterprises go from strength to strength; her Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus is a rousing success and a boon to the city’s population. Engelbert “Etzel” Stiffelbeam, Mina’s business partner and a baker by trade, provides tasty pastries and invigorating coffee to a wildly appreciative public, as well as stalwart support to Wilhelmina. Her material welfare thus guaranteed, Mina now has time and money to spend in pursuit of the quest to find the scattered pieces of the Skin Map. To this end, she has formed a shaky alliance with the mercurial Lady Fayth against the same Lord Burleigh and his gang of base ruffians, the nefarious Burley Men. Yet, we ask ourselves, can Lady Fayth be trusted?

  It should be remembered that Giles Standfast, the late Sir Henry Fayth’s footman and driver, was sorely wounded in the attempt to flee Burleigh on the night Kit vanished and was taken to the Kaffeehaus for medical attention. The unfortunate Mr. Standfast has been returned to his home in England to convalesce. What lies in store for Giles remains to be seen, but it is expected that he will make a full recovery.

  Half a world away in Egypt, Dr. Thomas Young and his new and enthusiastic assistant, Khefri, are deeply engrossed in their work. We last saw them beginning the task of cataloguing an astounding trove of treasure recovered from the sealed tomb of Anen, High Priest of Amun and brother-in-law to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. One of the items retrieved from the tomb was a portion of the Skin Map. Our Dr. Young, we may recall, is also in possession of a meticulously rendered copy of the map and, with Khefri’s help, will endeavour to decipher its unique symbology. We wish them well, and hope they continue to occupy themselves to good effect.

  Unbeknownst to the others, a rival questor has been quietly making progress in the search for the ultimate treasure—none other than Douglas Flinders-Petrie. For those who may be sensing difficulty with the expanding Flinders-Petrie line, there is a simple alphabetic mnemonic. The line begins with A for Arthur, followed by B for Benedict, C for Charles, and D for Douglas. The last in line, Douglas, the great-grandson of the intrepid Arthur, possesses a purloined section of the map and is diligently applying his considerable talents in learning how to read it. To this end, he has succeeded in locating and suborning an unsuspecting aide to the cause in the person of Friar Roger Bacon, a thirteenth-century scholar, philosopher, theologian, and scientist. Careful readers may recall the audacious assault on the British Museum by Douglas and his young associate, the surly and taciturn Snipe. The two forced entry into the venerable institution’s Rare Book Room after opening hours and, following a brief search, made off with a prize volume plucked from the collection.

  To allow a slight digression, it can now be reported that the book in question had long been part of a minor southern aristocrat’s family library, which at the disposition of the deceased’s estate had come to the museum along with his collection of Roman glass and Tudor silver. The volume was thought to be from the late 1500s; it was a small, neat, leather-bound tome handwritten by its author and entitled Inconssensus Arcanus, or Forbidden Secrets.

  This particular work was prized not for its historic value, which was minimal, nor for its educational value, which was even less because it was wholly unreadable. The book was kept merely because all that could be deciphered in page after page of dense, cryptic text was the name Roger Bacon, who was none other than the famous professor of Oxford University in the early medieval period. Priest and scientist, the renowned “Doctor Mirabilis” was the author of many learned volumes, including the legendary Opus Minus Alchemaie.

  Every page of the Book of Forbidden Secrets, as it is known, is filled with strange pictograms resembling the letters of an unknown alphabet, an alphabet serving a language no one on earth had ever heard spoken. A secret code? An occult language? Who could say? Douglas Flinders-Petrie had a fairly solid hunch that it was not a language, neither was it a code. Rather, it was, in his considered opinion, a wholly symbolic script devised by Friar Bacon sometime around the year 1250—the same symbology that had inspired his own greatgrandfather, Arthur Flinders-Petrie, in the making of the Skin Map.

  In short, it was Douglas’ belief that the archaic manuscript was a catalogue of experiments and coordinates. The experiments detailed alchemical processes. The coordinates were those of ley line destinations. Ergo Roger Bacon, in additio
n to his other more highly lauded achievements, had also discovered ley travel.

  More could be said about these matters, but one feels this is quite enough for now; in any event it is enough to be getting on with. So, keeping these details firmly in mind, we return to our tale in which Friday takes a holiday.

  PART ONE

  The Ghost Road

  CHAPTER 1

  In Which Friday Takes a Holiday

  Cassandra Clarke dug bones for a living. She spent every summer of her professional life hunkered down in trenches of various depths with a trowel in one hand and a whisk broom in the other, excavating the skeletal remains of creatures long dead, many of which were known only to science and some known to no one at all. Although digging was in her blood—her mother was Alison Brett Clarke, palaeontologist of Turkana Boy renown—Cassandra did not plan to spend her entire life in plexiglas goggles with dust in her hair and a damp handkerchief over her nose. Her ambition was far greater than crating up fossils to be carefully catalogued and then locked away in some musty museum basement.

  Her father—the astrophysicist J. Anthony Clarke III, whose theory on the origin of the universe through quantum fluctuations in a plasma field won him a Nobel Prize nomination—enjoyed telling people that his precocious daughter was born with her feet in the dirt and her head in the stars. Those who heard that quip assumed it was a reference to her parentage and the fact that she spent so much time scrabbling around in holes in the ground. True enough, but it was also a sly allusion to his beloved Cassie’s penchant for fanciful invention.

  As a child Cass ran a neighbourhood theatre company from a tent in the backyard; for two summers running she cajoled kids within a six-block radius of 8th Avenue and 15th Street into performing in a string of dramas she wrote, produced, and directed. Usually the plays involved beautiful princesses being menaced by either dinosaurs or aliens, sometimes both. Later she graduated to writing poetry and short stories for the school newspaper, and won a prize in junior high for a poem about a melancholy wildflower growing in a parking lot.