The Forbidden

by Leo Brett, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Cobwebs hung in weird, grotesque festoons from the vaulted roof. There was a strange odour in the ancient cellar. A bent figure crouches over forbidden books and mixes indescribably strange ingredients in a cauldron. The cauldron bubbles and foul fumes arise. The alchemist transfers the secret formula to a flask. It travels carefully and ceremoniously from flash to retort and back again. Unnatural things happen in the flask... terrifying things. Suddenly a human figure appears, yet it is not human in all respects. Has the alchemist made this strange, frightening thing, or has it come from realms beyond? The alchemist finds himself involved in a series of breathtaking psychic adventures such as he had never imagined possible even in his wildest dreams.

Release date: December 30, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

COBWEBS hung in weird, grotesque festoons from the vaulted roof. There was a strange odour in the ancient cellar. A bent figure crouched over forbidden books. The bent figure was John de Wintle. He was a peculiar looking old man to put it mildly. His face might have achieved some kind of distinction as a granite cliff. It might even have been passable if it had been a leather bottle, a leather wine skin, old, cracked, wrinkled with age, but as a human face it was not a success, nor did it possess any kind of aesthetic appeal; de Wintle had eyes that were set so deep in his head that at first glance he looked like a mole. When you did manage to look into those eyes they were very deep in colour too. They could have been a kind of midnight blue, they could have been black—they might even have been a very, very dark brown. It was difficult to tell. The nose between the eyes was big and craggy; it was an inquisitive sort of nose, yet it had Roman arrogance about it, for de Wintle came of a very, very long line indeed.

The rest of him, apart from the fact that it was bent with much scholarship, could have been quite presentable. He was a man whose incredible mind had made him neglect his body. Once he got an idea he held on to it as a bulldog holds on to a rat. About the only redeeming feature that he had as far as his physiognomy was concerned was his great steep trap of a bulldog jaw. Even that was hard put to it to look good on old John de Wintle …

He suddenly gave a little start and moved the candle closer to the worn yellow page of the ancient, forbidden book; de Wintle’s cellar was lined with forbidden books, enormous old tomes, going back, some of them, to the first or second century. There were scrolls of papyrus in copper containers that had been old when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth.

John de Wintle moved the candle nearer still, and strained those dark, deep-set eyes behind their metal-rimmed spectacles. He had just put those spectacles on, rather reluctantly, for de Wintle didn’t really like to admit that the years were marching. There had been a time when he had been able to abuse his body over and over again without any apparent ill-effect, but now, this constant poring over small script, this constant neglect of regular meals, this constant over-driving of his physical self, had begun to pay slow but deathly dividends. They were not the kind of dividends that de Wintle wanted to collect.…

The passage that had caught his eye was a key, a key that he had been looking for, for a very, very long time; yet here, in an apparently innocuous love potion, lay the truth. The love potion was merely a cypher. It was not until tonight that he had realised what that cypher was. It was ingenious, almost diabolically ingenious, and books of the kind in which that cypher was hidden owed more than their ingenuity to diabolical inspiration!

Old de Wintle reached for a sheet of parchment and his quill. He bent over the book once more and began copying out the cypher, a list of ingredients; he decoded them one by one. The candle was burning low, its light guttering, but de Wintle didn’t care … he worked like a man possessed. One by one he moved around the jars and containers in his cellar. Some of the ingredients were as bizarre as anything which Shakespeare’s witches had used in “Macbeth.” One by one the old alchemist assembled them, checked them carefully against his list, the bat’s wing was there, the toad’s bone was there, the mistletoe sprig, the rabbit’s foot, the weasel’s tooth, and a score of far worse, unsavoury ingredients. He counted through the items. Had he lived two hundred years later he would have been able to understand the feelings of bingo enthusiasts, checking their cards to see whether they had a full house! Only one ingredient that he had yet to gather—powdered rhinoceros horn. Had he any powdered rhinoceros horn? He must look, he must look! Where was it? He hunted; it should have been in the container next to the toad bones; it wasn’t there! That container was empty! Hell’s curses! Had he used all the powdered rhinoceros horn? Must he send to Cathay for more? No, surely not! Impossible! Was he looking in the wrong container? Yes, that must be it. There were so many things in his cellar. He reached on to a higher shelf. There was a bottle labelled “oil of smoke.” He looked at the bottle, and laughed, as he put it back … Had the rhinoceros horn been near the oil of smoke? He wouldn’t have kept it on this top shelf would he? Damn the encroaching years! The mind seemed less agile, less alert. He must do better. He must think. He was too excited. That was what was wrong. He spoke out loud to himself.

“John de Wintle, you’re too excited! You’re acting like a mere child. Just because you are on the threshold after all these years, just because you have found something of greater potence than all the spells and charms that were ever worked before, there’s no need to lose your sense of balance. There is no need to act like a man who is out of his humours. You’re past middle age, John de Wintle, you’re not a child any more. Think, think, steady, and think … do not fret or fume; do not stress and fever your brain, be still, be quiet, be peaceful. Be peaceful, be quiet, be still, and above all, think!”

Yes, that was it! The rhinoceros horn was in the oak chest, on the other side of the cellar; the new one, the one that had not yet been powdered.

He took out the rhinoceros horn and a small, sharp-toothed saw. He sawed carefully so that none of the dust cut out by the sharp little teeth of the tiny saw would be lost. Rhinoceros horn was expensive, moreover, it was precious, at the moment it was the most precious ingredient of this whole cellar, and the whole of the alchemist’s shop above the cellar. He was muttering away to himself as he took the tip of the rhinoceros horn he had just cut off, and holding it above a sheet of parchment so that nothing was lost, he began to turn the handle. He ground until the rhinoceros horn in the grater turned to powder, then holding the parchment carefully he tipped the rhinoceros horn into a great marble mortar. In went the weasel’s tooth, in went the bat’s wing. In went the lizard’s scales, the rabbit’s foot, and all the other strange ingredients, which he had collected together. It was an unwholesome looking mixture that quarter-filled the mortar by the time he had finished. He took the pestle and ground the ingredients. Little by little his still surprisingly strong hands produced a kind of homogeneous mess out of the foul objects. He read through the cypher again. The first part of the cypher listed the ingredients; now he came to the second part. They had been mixed; what must be done with them now? There were various ritualistic, ceremonial processes to be observed … Slowly, carefully he transferred the contents from the large mortar into a flask. He read a peculiar incantation over them. From the flask he went to a huge iron cauldron, the cauldron stood on its blemished legs above a brazier full of cold charcoal. There were bellows beside the brazier. The alchemist lit the charcoal with oil and tinder and began to blow with the bellows till the charcoal glowed fiercely, fiendishly. The strange, homogeneous mess he had just tipped into the cauldron began to bubble. Foul fumes rose from it. The alchemist transferred the secret formula to yet another flask, which he carried slowly and carefully to a retort.

Here he distilled it, and then the distillation went back into the flask. He checked the cypher. He had done all, or nearly all. There remained but one last incantation. The cellar seemed to be alive with power. The alchemist was trembling. He had never felt such excitement in the whole of his life. None of his experiments had gone as well as this. Nothing that he had ever done, no charm, no philtre, no portent, had ever seemed so close to that ultimate reality that he was for ever trying to find.

Unnatural things began happening inside the flask. Terrifying things. The deep, dark eyes of the alchemist regarded them with disbelief. The flask almost slipped from his nerveless fingers.…

SOMETHING was happening inside the flask. The alchemist peered in to the movement that was taking place without fully comprehending at first just what had happened. He had sought this formula so long, oh so long! Now that it was actually working before his very eyes, it was almost impossible for him to credit the evidence of his own perception. Long and hard he stared into the flask, then suddenly the flask shattered into a thousand pieces, as though it had been overwhelmed by some colossal power, as though some dark, mysterious power had cast aside all the laws of time and space by which men liked to comfort themselves.

The alchemist began wandering just what strange evil was lurking in his house. There was someone, or something, standing on the bench!

Old John de Wintle held out his hand, his hand seemed entirely devoid of feeling. The someone on the bench was a girl, a woman, perhaps, perfect in every way, and yet, so small, smaller than a child, but adult in every respect. The craggy, wrinkled old face of the alchemist regarded the strange newcomer for long, thoughtful moments. Somehow he found his voice, but when he finally spoke he scarcely recognised the sound which his own vocal chords were producing.

“Who—?” he began. It sounded more like the note of an owl … The tiny figure was actually in his hand now.

“Who?” he began again. She stepped daintily off his palm on to the bench, and her voice when she spoke was as clear as crystal. It tinkled like a Highland stream; it rang like a fairy bell. That voice, and the miniature perfection of her, made old de Wintle think at once of the fairies of folk-lore, the Little People; and yet this was too much like a child’s picture of a fairy.

The tiny creature looked at de Wintle.

“This cellar is very, very dirty,” said the bell-like voice. De Wintle’s sudden indignation enabled him to regain control of himself.

“I’ve no time to waste cleaning and busy-bodying. I work with my mind, not with a broom!”

“Then you should do less thinking and more sweeping,” said the tiny, crystal-clear voice accusingly.

Whatever else de Wintle had expected his strange visitor to say, it certainly wasn’t this …

“There is one thing I must know,” whispered the alchemist.

“There are many things that all of us would like to know,” said the strange little female. “What is yo. . .