Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy Read Free Page A

brother Edward once he was grown and yet it was to Will that it truly mattered.
    Will looked at Eloise and said, “Shall we?”
    He took the steps first and she followed close behind. But as he neared the bottom and the sense of space and air stretching away from them became greater, he regretted that he’d come here without any form of weapon. For all he knew there could be another like Asmund down here, or demons the like of which he hadn’t yet encountered.
    As he’d expected, at the bottom the passageway turned to the left and went on in a straight line for some way. By the time they reached the first junction with a choice of turning left or right, Will reckoned they were under the ruins of the abbey itself.
    But they immediately noticed a change here. The first tunnel they’d walked along was perhaps a newer construction, built specifically by Thomas Heston-Dangrave to connect the house with this subterraneancomplex, for they were on the threshold now of something much older, and much more disturbing.
    The walls here were covered with runic writing and other symbols, and a strange menagerie of monsters and demons, all engraved into the stone and painted in garish colours which had hardly faded over the centuries.
    Eloise said, “Oh my God, this is incredible.” She stepped forward, poring over the images and scripts on the wall in front of her, looking away only to check what Will had already spotted, that every part of the walls in every direction was similarly decorated. “This must’ve taken years.” She continued to stare intently at the paintings in front of her.
    Will couldn’t quite share in her excitement. The lights also extended in both directions, so these tunnels had been navigated by workmen in the last hundred years, presumably in safety. But there was no disguising the fact that this was a strange and sinister place. Even if nothing had happened to them, he had little doubt that those workmen would have been keen to leave at the end of each day.
    There was something untamed and primal here. The very stones seemed to breathe and murmur as if possessed of some form of life, and though there was nothing living close by, Will had an acute sense that they were not entirely alone either.
    He saw Eloise shudder and she turned and gave him a relieved smile, as if she’d feared for a moment that he’d left her there.
    He smiled back and said, “Do you sense anything strange in the atmosphere down here?”
    She still found it hard to take her eyes off the sinister richness of the walls but said, “Do you mean like, is my spine ice-cold, or are the hairs on the back of my neck standing up, or do I have a constant sense that someone’s standing behind me? Because the answer is yes to all of the above.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. I mean, this is amazing, but there’s something unbelievably creepy about the place.”
    He nodded, looking along the tunnel in both directions, then turned to her again and said, “You know I won’t let anything happen to you.”
    She looked bemused and said, “Put it this way, I wouldn’t be here without you.”
    “Good. Then let’s explore.”
    He gestured to the right and they walked along the tunnel for some way before turning left, through a short connecting passage to a parallel tunnel. It became clear soon enough that even though it doubled back on itself in places and led to dead ends, it was a massive circular network, drawing them slowly towards the centre.
    And the closer they got to that centre, the feeling of some malevolent presence became all the more intense. Even the air was oppressive, the walls themselves possessed, as if a constant murmuring of ancient incantations was emerging from them just below the level of their hearing.
    They walked passage after passage, turning corners, working inwards, and each time they turned, Will expected to be met by some creature or apparition. Yet there was only the empty tunnel with its subdued lights, receding