The Fatal Tree Read online

  Other Books by Stephen R. Lawhead

  THE BRIGHT EMPIRES SERIES:

  THE SKIN MAP

  THE BONE HOUSE

  THE SPIRIT WELL

  THE SHADOW LAMP

  THE KING RAVEN TRILOGY:

  HOOD

  SCARLET

  TUCK

  PATRICK, SON OF IRELAND

  THE CELTIC CRUSADES:

  THE IRON LANCE

  THE BLACK ROOD

  THE MYSTIC ROSE

  BYZANTIUM

  THE SONG OF ALBION TRILOGY:

  THE PARADISE WAR

  THE SILVER HAND

  THE ENDLESS KNOT

  THE PENDRAGON CYCLE:

  TALIESIN

  MERLIN

  ARTHUR

  PENDRAGON

  GRAIL

  AVALON

  EMPYRION I: THE SEARCH FOR FIERRA

  EMPYRION II: THE SIEGE OF DOME

  DREAM THIEF

  THE DRAGON KING TRILOGY:

  IN THE HALL OF THE DRAGON KING

  THE WARLORDS OF NIN

  THE SWORD AND THE FLAME

  © 2014 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 HarperCollins Christian Publishing, 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].

  Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  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.

  ISBN 978-1-40169-139-4 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lawhead, Steve.

  The fatal tree / Stephen R. Lawhead.

  pages cm -- (Bright empires series ; 5)

  ISBN 978-1-59554-808-5 (hardback)

  I. Title.

  PS3562.A865F38 2014

  813’.54--dc23

  2014020114

  14 15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my mother, Lois

  It all started with those Little Golden Books

  Contents

  Important People In the Bright Empires Series

  Previously In the Bright Empires Series

  Part One: The Dissolution

  Chapter 1: In Which the World Takes a Turn for the Weird

  Chapter 2: In Which a Lesson Is Learned the Hard Way

  Chapter 3: In Which Rage Leads to Reverie

  Chapter 4: In Which a Problem Is Laid to Rest

  Chapter 5: In Which a Final Destination Is Reached

  Chapter 6: In Which the Wheels of Justice Grind

  Chapter 7: In Which the Tump Is Not to Be Trusted

  Part Two: Of Crime and Punishment

  Chapter 8: In Which Sleep Is Overrated

  Chapter 9: In Which Contempt Breeds Confrontation

  Chapter 10: In Which Panic Is Postponed

  Chapter 11: In Which Wilhelmina Closes a Cosmic Loop

  Chapter 12: In Which a Match Is Made

  Chapter 13: In Which Persimmons Are the Bitterest Fruit

  Chapter 14: In Which Justice Must Be Seen to Be Served

  Part Three: The Fatal Tree

  Chapter 15: In Which a Matter of Life and Death Is Raised

  Chapter 16: In Which Hate Seeks Its True Source

  Chapter 17: In Which the Peace Exacts a Price

  Chapter 18: In Which an Oversight Is Corrected

  Chapter 19: In Which Genesis Is Invoked

  Chapter 20: In Which the Cosmic Cliff Is Contemplated

  Part Four: The Point of No Return

  Chapter 21: In Which a Shallow Grave Must Suffice

  Chapter 22: In Which the Wheels of Justice Grind On

  Chapter 23: In Which the River Is the Only Way

  Chapter 24: In Which a Pertinent Question Is Posed

  Chapter 25: In Which the Fat Hits the Fan

  Chapter 26: In Which the Past Continues to Haunt

  Chapter 27: In Which the Gaolbird Sings

  Part Five: Bright Empires

  Chapter 28: In Which Our Questors Debate the Efficacy of Conversion

  Chapter 29: In Which Wilhelmina Calls In a Debt

  Chapter 30: In Which a Few Things Begin to Make Sense

  Chapter 31: In Which the Past Is Prelude

  Chapter 32: In Which the Bone House Yields a Secret

  Chapter 33: In Which There Is No Going Back

  Chapter 34: In Which the Numbers Do Not Lie

  Chapter 35: In Which Footsteps Are Traced

  Epilogue

  On What Happens Next: An Essay by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Acknowledgments

  An Excerpt from Hood

  Prologue

  Part One: Day of the Wolf

  Chapter 1

  Oh, Thou! That dwellest wide diffus’d around,

  Where all creative energies abound;

  Omniscient Power! Eternal, Undefin’d,

  Productive Essence, and Mysterious Mind:

  What shall we call Thee?

  How Thy powers express?

  Or, how Thine awful majesty address?

  O’er earth we see Thee, and Thy footsteps trace

  Through the Bright Empires of unbounded space . . .

  —FROM THE ACHILLEAD BY WILLIAM JOHN THOMAS, 1830

  Important People

  Anen—Friend of Arthur Flinders-Petrie, high priest of the temple of Amun in Egypt, Eighteenth 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.

  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.

  Brendan Hanno—Attached to the Zetetic Society in Damascus, an advisor to ley travellers.

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

  Cassandra Clarke—A post-graduate paleontologist who accidently gets caught up in the quest for the Skin Map.

  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 and founding member of the Zetetic Society, which seeks to reunite the Skin Map and learn its secrets.

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

  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—Elder statesman of River City Clan.

  Giambattista Becarria, Fra Becarria, aka Brother Lazarus—A priest astronomer at
the abbey observatory on Montserrat, and Mina’s mentor.

  Gianni—See Giambattista Becarria, above.

  Giles Standfast—Sir Henry Fayth’s coachman, Kit’s ally, and erstwhile servant of Lady Fayth.

  Gustavus Rosenkreuz—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, and Haven’s uncle.

  Jakub Arnostovi—Wilhelmina’s wealthy and influential landlord and business partner.

  J. Anthony Clarke III, aka Tony—Renowned astrophysicist and Nobel nominee, he is Cassandra’s concerned and protective father.

  Rosemary Peelstick—Zetetic Society host, colleague of Brendan Hanno.

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

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

  Wilhelmina Klug, aka Mina—Formerly a London baker and Kit’s girlfriend, she owns Prague’s Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus with Etzel.

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

  Dr. Thomas Young—Physician, scientist, and certified polymath with a keen interest in ancient Egypt, he is also referred to as The Last Man in the World to Know Everything.

  Previously

  It appears that we left our questors in a bit of a cliff-hanger in Damascus, circa 1930, where they were gathered at the Zetetic Society headquarters on Hanania Street in the Old City. It should be recalled that the society and its offices function as the nexus point for all those of goodwill who seek to understand the phenomenon of ley travel and what can be learned from it. For example, we learned that certain cosmic events have been set in motion that now threaten to bring about the apocalypse of annihilation known as the End of Everything. This discovery impelled a conclave of questors to discuss the impending cataclysm—discussions that went precisely nowhere . . . until several small but significant events occurred in quick succession and changed everything.

  It began when Kit Livingstone innocently and inadvertently revealed that he had once, whilst “dreaming time” with the venerable En-Ul in the prehistoric Bone House, encountered the late, great Arthur Flinders-Petrie at the mythical location known as the Spirit Well. How did he know it was Flinders-Petrie? There could be no mistaking the man’s identity, because his torso was tattooed with the symbols representing his many and various journeys throughout time and space. When Kit saw him, Arthur was wading into the Well of Souls—another name for the Spirit Well—carrying the lifeless body of his beloved wife, Xian-Li. When he emerged from the well, Xian-Li had been miraculously restored to the land of the living.

  This disclosure was overheard by Mrs. Rosemary Peelstick, formerly a ley traveller herself but latterly hostess-in-residence at the Zetetic Society headquarters. The venerable Mrs. P immediately grasped the significance of Arthur’s action, and, indeed, the shock of hearing it was such that she lost control of her tea tray and sent the entire assemblage crashing to the flagstone floor. No great catastrophe in itself, you might think; such messes are easily dealt with. Cassandra Clarke was present at the scene and, in an effort to be helpful, reached into her pocket and drew out her handkerchief with the aim of mopping up the spilt tea.

  Careful readers will remember that, whilst this particular handkerchief was nothing more than an ordinary square of white cotton cloth and one that Cass used in all sorts of ways, it had most recently been employed as a work surface in her attempt to reverse-engineer one of the Shadow Lamps. Those clever devices had been helping guide our questors through the maze of portals and pathways constituting the illimitable network of ley lines.

  During her investigations, some of the rare earth contained within the Shadow Lamp spilled onto the surface of the handkerchief and caught in the fibres. Before Cass could deploy the handkerchief as a mop, Kit perceived a faint yet unmistakeable image on the cloth: a spiral whorl with a straight line directly through the centre and three separate circular dots spaced evenly along the outer edge of the spiral curve. Kit intervened and, upon closer examination of the cloth, both he and Cass realised that all things are interconnected and there is neither chance nor coincidence: the cloth bore one of the designs that Kit had seen on Arthur Flinders-Petrie’s chest in the form of a blue tattoo.

  Meanwhile, others who had been somewhat sidelined in the pursuit of the Skin Map were advancing their own quests. Lady Haven Fayth and her faithful retainer, Giles Standfast, had made an unfortunate ley leap that landed them on the empty, windswept steppes in the time of Emperor Leo the Wise. Their attempts to locate a ley or portal that might take them out of their circumstances failed and, unable to orient or protect themselves, they were taken into the custody of the Bulgars, who were making their way through what we might now call Central Asia on their way to the great city of Constantinople. It began very much to look as if Lady Fayth and Giles’ ley-travelling days were over.

  And so we pick up the story of Wilhelmina Klug, Kit’s former girlfriend and now co-owner of the Grand Imperial Kaffeehaus in Old Prague—and also of Fra Gianni Becarria and his new friend, the renowned astrophysicist Dr. Tony Clarke, aka Cass’ father, who tends to take a scientific view of all these events. And, last but not least, of the degenerate criminal Archelaeus Burleigh and his nefarious Burley Men who are, at present, languishing in gaol below the Rathaus in Prague owing to their assault on the baker Engelbert Stiffelbeam, Wilhelmina’s business partner.

  As we proceed, the certainties on which our questors have come to rely seem to be very much in flux and, with them, we now enter a world in which everything we know is wrong.

  PART ONE

  The Dissolution

  CHAPTER 1

  In Which the World Takes a Turn for the Weird

  Gordon Seiferts looked out the window of the operations module of Skybase Alpha. He blinked and looked again because he saw something that should not have been there: the moon.

  Captain Seiferts was undertaking his daily background radiation reading and thermal image of Earth, but the blue planet was nowhere to be seen in his field of vision. He swivelled the camera 230 degrees and was able to bring Earth into view, but the metrics were all skewed. Fearing that the space station had somehow drifted out of orbit, he hurried down to the command module, where the mystery was compounded.

  Instead of his colleagues and fellow scientists—men who had been working and sharing living space for the last three months—he found a crew of extremely astonished Russian cosmonauts. Seiferts did not speak Russian, and the cosmonauts did not speak English, so it took some time to work out that Seiferts was not aboard Skybase Alpha as he supposed, but on Mir 2, which was on a survey expedition to map the moon. Following this revelation, Seiferts grew so agitated and incoherent he had to be sedated and bound to a hammock for the duration of the mission.

  Near Tacoma, Washington, fourteen vehicles plunged into Puget Sound when the highway bridge on which they were travelling disappeared beneath them. In all, thirty-two people were killed. However, local fishermen passing through the sound on their way out to sea were able to pull three extremely confused survivors from the water—none of whom could give a credible account of what had happened.

  Able Seaman Mike Taylor of the Orca IV expressed utter incomprehension of the event. He was quoted in the Tacoma Times: “It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, those cars came from nowhere—it was like they just fell out of the sky. I still can’t figure what happened. Those poor people . . .” The accident occurred in the area of the newly proposed Tacoma Narrows Bridge—a fact that was not lost on the Puget Port Authority, whose public relations office commented, “Obviously, a disaster like this is tragic for those involved. But whatever the explanation turns out to be, it do
es raise serious questions about whether that is the best place for a bridge at all.”

  The incident was put down to a severe weather inversion resulting in a freak tornado. Such extreme weather conditions, although rare, are not unknown. In the Midwest, tornados have been known to pluck objects from the ground and transport them over many miles before depositing them in unlikely places.

  Howard Smith went to sleep in his bed in Carol Stream, Illinois, and woke up on a floating agricultural island on the edge of Lake Texacoco in Mexico.

  After kissing Julie—his wife of thirty-five years—good night, he closed his eyes in the bedroom of his suburban Chicago home, slept soundly, and awoke the next morning to find himself surrounded by wary Aztec farmers discussing the baffling presence of this pale-skinned alien who had appeared in their midst. They decided he was a sky god and, despite his strong protests—uttered in a language they could not understand—the farmers took him to the priest, who gave him a collar of gold and established him in the temple at Tenochtitlan.

  In the Laxmi Nagar district of Mumbai, India, Sireena Shah prepared breakfast for her three children who were getting ready for school. She fed them and sent them out the door with their lunch pails—only to return to the kitchen to find them still dawdling over their food. She assumed they were playing a trick on her and was giving them a good scolding when her husband appeared on the scene, wanting his breakfast. She would have gladly given him something to eat, except for the fact that he had eaten and departed for the office forty minutes previously; his dirty dishes were still in the sink.

  The entire R&D team of Arcosoft Games of Cupertino, California, disappeared while on a conference call with executives at Gyrotek, a marketing firm in San Francisco. When repeated attempts to reestablish contact failed, a secretary sent to the boardroom reported that the team had apparently staged a walkout as some kind of protest and left the building.