Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,62
from the master of the staging post at Dammartin.
They exchanged a long embrace.
'At last!' said the painter. 'You did it!'
'Not yet.'
'What? You're free, aren't you?'
'I shall never be entirely free as long as that sorcerer lives.'
'Don't tell me you intend to—'
'Don't worry, just return home. The cardinal's men will soon be asking you numerous, pressing questions.'
'No. I'll come with you.'
'Don't. You've done enough already. We'll meet again soon, my friend.'
And hitching up her skirt to reveal the breeches and boots she had donned before leaving her apartments at La Renar-diere, she mounted a horse and dug her heels into its flanks.
'Captain! Captain!'
La Fargue slowly regained consciousness. The last thing he remembered was the sound of the drac's ribs cracking as they hit the ground.
Moaning, the old gentleman discovered innumerable pains as he sat up to see Leprat descending into the moat.
'Captain! Are you all right?'
'I'll live. And him?'
He leaned on one elbow and pointed to the drac stretched out beside him.
'Dead,' replied the musketeer.
'Good. And the others?'
'Also dead. But there were only five of them. Six, with this one.'
'So there's one still missing. That's too bad . . . And La Donna?' La Fargue asked as Leprat helped him to his feet.
'She's nowhere to be found.'
At the home of the cardinal's master of magic, Agnes and Laincourt were drowsily waiting in an antechamber, one on a bench and the other in a chair, when the sound of a door being flung open roused them.
It was Teyssier, coming in search of them.
His face looked drawn, there were rings under his eyes and his hair was dishevelled. His fingers were ink-stained and in his hand he held dog-eared sheets of paper, covered with cramped writing and many crossings-out. Unshaven, he had spent the entire night studying the documents La Donna had stolen from the Black Claw.
'I need you to escort me to the Palais-Cardinal,' he said in an urgent voice. 'I must see the cardinal as soon as he wakes.'
Laincourt turned to the window.
The night was just starting to grow pale.
Dawn was breaking over Paris and the He Notre-Dame-des-Ecailles.
Down in the cellar that stank of rotting remains, his ritual staff across his thighs, the old drac was crouched in a meditative posture. He did not make the slightest gesture and kept his eyes closed when he heard steps behind him.
'I've been waiting for you,' he said in the drakish tongue.
'Pray to your gods one last time,' replied La Donna, unsheathing a dagger.
The sorcerer stood up and faced her.
Dressed in a sturdy leather hunting outfit, she was alone. She had preferred not to bring her two small companions out of fear of being recognised at the gates of Paris. A pretty young red-headed woman with two dragonnets would not go unnoticed, and she had excellent reasons to believe that all of the cardinal's informers — although they might not know why had received instructions to keep a lookout for her. Besides, even without Scylla and Charybdis, returning to Paris was imprudent on her part.
But Alessandra di Santi knew there was still an act to be played out in this story, before she disappeared for good.
The old drac gave her his toothless smile.
'What is it, sorcerer? Do you think I will hesitate to stab you if you stare at me? Then you do not know me . . .'
La Donna, however, was about to fall victim to her pride.
Too sure of herself, she did not see the danger coiled in the shadowy corners of the cellar, which was already creeping out to surround her. Silent and deadly, tendrils of black mist snaked towards her, licking her boots, winding around her ankles.
'Your little dragonnets, they would have sensed it—' said the drac.
'Sensed it? Sensed what?'
'This—'
The sorcerer's eyes sparkled. His fists clenched around his staff and he suddenly brandished it in the air. Instantly, the tongues of black mist rushed to attack the young woman, like a vine suddenly wrapping itself around a column. They seized her and pinned her arms against her body. Incapable of making the slightest movement, she felt herself lifted from the floor.
'I understood too late,' said the old drac. 'I realised too late that you had stopped running. I saw, too late, that you were only hiding for long enough to discover my lair . . . Indeed, how did you manage that? Your cursed little dragonnets, no doubt . . .'
He shook his staff and rattled the talismans — little bones, scales, beads, claws — that hung from it.