The Blackthorn Key

It was a warning, scrawled by my master’s shaking hand.

The power is too great. The Archangel’s Fire was never meant for mortal men. The slightest tremor brings the wrath of God upon the bearer. What have I done?

I stood, trembling, the paper in my hand. Next to the message were faint brown smears, the same dried blood that stained the floor near the chamber where we’d found the vial, the room where Tom now stood.

A testing chamber. That’s what that room was.

My head pounded, my headache growing by the second. I looked at the scarring on the stone, the charring on the door, the bucket, the blood.

I pushed back from the workbench. The stool tipped over, clattering on the floor.

“Tom.” My voice shook. I ran to the testing chamber. “Tom!”

He’d placed the beaker on the dented iron table. He was still hunched over, peering at it. He jumped when I called to him, startled.

“What’s wrong?” he said, and his leg bumped the table.

The beaker slid toward one of the dents. It teetered for a moment, then toppled on the slope. It rolled toward the edge, speeding up.

I thought of the blood on the floor. I thought of my master’s shoulder, burnt. And I thought of Hugh’s body, found in a Christian burial in a garden on Oak Apple Day, charred, blackened, and torn apart.

I grabbed Tom by his collar. I pulled, hard. He fell backward with me, outside the testing chamber, and we sprawled together on the ground.

The beaker rolled off the table.

I tried to kick the door shut.

Then came the power of God.





CHAPTER


31


I FELT STONE, ON MY face. It was cold.

I’m on the floor, I thought.

I tried to remember how I got there.

Papers. I’d been reading something. Something bad.

My right arm was twisted under me. It felt numb, more like I was lying on a club than an arm. I shifted, slid it out. Life came back to it, pinpricks jabbing my skin.

I sat up and coughed. I sucked in acrid smoke, worse than what I’d hacked out. My head had a dwarf inside, his hammer ringing on the anvil. I put my hand to my temple. It came away red, warm and wet.

There was another boy lying beside me. He huddled in a ball, whimpering. Seemed like kind of a big kid to be whimpering.

Wait. Tom. It was Tom. I’d pulled him down with me, just before the explosion.

A fire glowed in the corner. A lantern had fallen and shattered, setting the oil alight.

I staggered to my feet. I fell to my knees.

Try again, I thought. It worked this time.

I reached for the handle on the door to the testing chamber, but the handle wasn’t there. Actually, the whole door was gone. It lay beside Tom. A sliver of it remained in the doorway, still swinging from the upper hinge.

My ears were ringing.

I had to put out that fire. There was a bucket of sand in the corner. I dumped it on the burning oil, which seemed smaller than it had when I’d been on the ground. The fire disappeared. Smoke still filled the air.

“Tom,” I said. He’d stopped whimpering. “Are you all right?”

He rolled over. His voice warbled. “Your head is bleeding.”

“I’m fine.” I sat at the bench, pushed the papers aside, and laid my cheek on the wood.

? ? ?

Gunpowder. Oil of vitriol. Madapple.

I’d always said being an apothecary was dangerous. But what Master Benedict had unlocked had, as Oswyn predicted, put our earthly works to shame. The Archangel’s Fire had carved new scars in the walls, tearing off stone chunks as big as my fist. The stain on the floor, the blood; I knew whose it was now. It was Hugh’s. He hadn’t been murdered. He’d fallen to the power of God’s general, torn apart by the same kind of accident that had nearly killed me and Tom.