“No, Marius, not just a story. Stories can have great meaning, and thus great power as well. And the story of alchemy is one of the greatest stories of all.”

A strange feeling filled me: excitement, wonder, and an ache of longing. “But what does it mean, Master?”

He shut the book. “That is enough for today, Marius. We will continue this lesson tomorrow.”

However, the next morning Pietro told me the master was ill, and that I should go riding if I wished, for the late-winter day was fine and bright. I did go, but I hardly noticed the landscape as it blurred past, or the feeling of Hermes’ strong back rising and falling beneath me.

I did not see the master the next day, or the next, but on the fourth day Pietro brought him from his chamber to a chair in the hall, where he might sit and receive some sun. He looked gray and brittle, like a tall tree withered by blight. All the same I went to him gladly, kneeling and laying my head on his lap, and though I craved to ask him more questions about the art of alchemy, a stern look from Pietro silenced me.

Nor were my questions answered as the weeks passed. Spring brought life back to the land, but not to the master of Madstone Hall. He spent more and more time in his chamber, allowing only Pietro to see to him, and when he did emerge his tall form was stooped. His dark hair had gone silver, and it occurred to me that perhaps the master was not ill, but rather was simply growing old. Yet how could age have come upon him so suddenly? When he took me in, he had been a man in his prime. Now he looked older than Pietro. His eyes, though, remained brilliant gold.

Then, one fine day in June, Pietro came to me in the drawing room. I was gazing at the book of the occult, which the master had left there after our last session together. I flipped through the pages, but my mind was dull, and mysteries that had seemed so clear when he explained them now confounded me as if I were the simplest child.

I looked up at the sound of Pietro’s limping gait. An anguished light shone in his brown eyes. I shut the book and stood.

“You must go to him, Master Marius. He is waiting for you.” When I entered his chamber, I did not see him at once. So small he had become, so shrunken, that it took my eyes a moment to pick him out amid the tangled bedclothes. I sat beside the bed, taking his hand in mine. It felt as if I held a bundle of sticks.

“Master,” I murmured, not knowing what else to say.

“It is your birthday, Marius,” he said, and his voice was still deep and clear. “Yet I fear I will not be able to walk to the standing stone with you today.”

My birthday? I had forgotten. I was nineteen. A man, I suppose, though at that moment I felt like a boy again, lost and frightened, crawling through the tunnels beneath Edinburgh.

“Why did you not go to Crete, Master?”

His gold eyes pierced me. “Why do you say such a thing, Marius?”

“I listened to you and Pietro speaking.” The words poured out of me in guilt and misery. “He said you would be healed if you went to Knossos. I read about it in a book. It was the palace of King Minos, where the minotaur was imprisoned in the labyrinth.”

His thin chest heaved in a sigh. “No, I cannot go there, Marius. Never again. It is ending for me at last. That is my choice.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks; I felt no shame. “But why, Master? What lies there? Could I not go and fetch it for you?”

“No, Marius, do not seek it!” His voice was sharp, and his eyes flashed. “I thought, when I first found you in the city, that perhaps . . .” He shook his head. “But I was wrong. I want you to live your life, Marius. I’ve adopted you—the papers are complete. Madstone Hall is yours now. You must marry, and have children, and live your days to their fullest.” A spasm passed through him. “And you must beware, Marius. Once I am gone, they will come. You must not trust them. I am sorry. There is so much I should have told you, and now there is no time.”

“No, Master,” I said, clutching his hand to me, kissing it, too full of despair to truly hear what he was saying. “No, you must not leave me. I still need you.”

He smiled, and it was like sunlight upon my face. “My dear Marius. Everything you need is right here.”

His hand touched my chest, lightly, then fell to the bedcovers. A soft breath escaped him, and I watched as his eyes changed from gold to lead gray, as if the alchemy of life had been worked in reverse. I sat with him for a time, my hand upon his brow. Then, as the evening sky caught fire outside the window, I went to tell Pietro he was dead.

The weeks that followed remain dim to me. Pietro brought me food, but I do not remember eating it. I rose before dawn each morning, but I do not recall sleeping. Every day I walked to the grave on the hill behind the manor, but I have no recollection of when it was dug. There was no marker, save for the ancient standing stone we used to visit together, its pitted surface without writing, worn of memory long ago by wind and rain.

I spent much of my time wandering the manor, as if I were the ghost. It seemed I was searching for something. However, what it was I could not name, and I did not find it, though I looked everywhere for it. Everywhere, that was, except for one room. I would drift toward the library, as if compelled by an unseen force, but at the last moment I would pull my hand from the knob and turn away.

Somewhere in the mists I remember men coming to the manor, dressed in the black frock coats of lawyers. They brought me papers and told me to sign them, which I did without reading, and when I was done they said I was now the lord of Madstone Hall. I asked Pietro what that meant, and he said not to worry, that the master had hired men in Edinburgh who would see to the legal and business affairs of the manor.

“Your only goal is to continue your studies, Master.”

“You should not call me that,” I said, and went to saddle Hermes.

But riding my horse could not calm my mind, and I would go back to wandering the manor. However, as time honed the moon of October to a thin sickle, I realized I was not searching after all. Rather, I was waiting. Waiting for something to come. For someone.

Then, on All Hallows Eve, which the folk of the villages still called the Feast of the Slaughter, they came. I stood at the window in the master’s chamber—I had taken to sleeping there, at Pietro’s request, though in my mind it was still his room— watching as the village folk set torches to great wooden wheels and rolled them down the sides of hills. The common folk believed that the borders between the world of the living and the world of the spirits grew thin on this night, and that demons and ghosts might slip through cracks from one realm to the next. Thus they lit great blazes to scare the spirits away.

“Master,” Pietro said behind me. I had not heard him enter. “Master, they have . . . you have visitors. Shall I send them away?”

I did not need to look at him to know he was trembling. Outside, the fiery wheels blazed down the hills. They looked like golden eyes, gazing at me from the night.

“No, Pietro. I will meet them in the drawing room.”

The old servant started to protest, but I turned and gave him a sharp look, and I could see the sparks of green reflected in his own startled eyes. He bobbed his head and hurried from the chamber.

Standing before a mirror, I donned a coat of brown velvet, then bound my hair with a ribbon. My gold beard, thick and full, lent me years beyond the nineteen I possessed, as did the grim expression I wore, which to my amazement reminded me of his own. I looked lordly enough, and only hoped I could feel the same, that I might hold my own against them.

When I stepped into the drawing room, a man and a woman rose from two chairs by the fire. They were not dressed in black, and the pair gazed at me with curious eyes of blue and brown, not gold. Such was my shock that I staggered, gripping the newel post at the foot of the stairs for support.