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“Intruder! Spy!”
She had not spoken aloud. Her voice was now inside hisskull.
The host twitched and choked as the ectoplasm continued to flowfrom his mouth. The two men whose astral bodies had departed satblank-eyed and motionless. The three other men turned their headsand regarded Burton. One of them said something but no soundemerged. There was no sound in the room at all; a profound,u
Everything slowed and became motionless. Only the ghostly womanmoved.
Something wormed its way into Burton's mind.
“Who are you?” she hissed.
He flinched and fought against her intrusive probing. Get out ofmy head!
“My! How resistant! I am impressed! You have willpower! Nomatter, your defences are nothing to me. Your name is RichardBurton. Ah. I see you have a reputation. A scholar, an explorer,and-an irritant!”
Withdrawing into himself, the king's agent visualised the mentalchambers and structures he'd established through self-mesmerism.His knowledge of Edward Oxford-and of a future that had beendestined but which was now cut loose and replaced-he set aside. Hedevalued all the routes to it and made them seem so entirelyinsignificant that they would, he hoped, be overlooked. At the sametime, he strengthened the mental walls surrounding his morepersonal and sensitive memories and tried to make themimpenetrable.
He was using his own insecurities to entice her away from theinformation he needed to protect.
It worked.
“No, no, malchik moi! There is no hiding!”
The words were like a blade, ru
Who the hell are you? Don't try to fool me with that LadyMabella nonsense!
A cruel chuckle echoed in his skull.
“Ah yes, the unfortunate Tichborne clan and their silly curse!How convenient that was!”
His walls were breached.
Stop!
“My, a complicated little thing, aren't you? What is this? Youare in the employ of the king himself! So I was right! You are aspy!”
The beady black eyes bored into his. He struggled and failed tolook away.
He tried to distract her: For all your hokum, you're nothing buta murderer and thief. You killed Jean Pelletier, didn't you?
“ Pah! I simply appeared before him and he dropped dead fromfright, the weak fool. ”
You took his diamonds. And then the Francois Garnier ChoirStones.
“ Yes, yes. I lifted them through the solid metal of a safe justas I could pull your brain from your skull without breaking theskin of your scalp. ”
And replaced them with onyx crystals. Why? Did you think todelay investigations into the matter?
“Yes. I see that it didn't work. How did you discover my littledeception? Let us find out.”
He felt her burrowing deeper and deeper, and he allowed theintrusion, for as she penetrated his mind, he found that he wasable to stealthily enter hers.
“Bozhe moi! Brunel and Babbage! So, the detestable Technologistshave an interest in the diamonds, too!”
Babbage had plans for the stones. Your intentions, though, seemrather more nefarious, and to achieve those ends, you've madeunwitting pawns of the Rakes, have you not?
“Unwitting? More like witless. The vacant-headed fools! Becomingthe leader of their pathetic clique was child's play to one suchas
I.”
The woman's weakness was obvious: she possessed overweeningvanity. She was supremely confident in her abilities and, having noknowledge of his Sufi training, vastly underestimated him. However,in order to inveigle information from her, he had to keep heroccupied, and the only way to do that was to sacrifice the deeperreaches of his own mind-to give her access to his insecurities,sorrows, and regrets.
It was agony.
Burton felt his heart tighten as she infiltrated the grief heassociated with the Berbera expedition-but he pushed through thepain and surprised her with a question: Who is Arthur Orton?
His unexpected probe was so forceful that the answer flared inher mind before she could stop it. Burton saw confirmation that theTichborne creature and Orton the butcher were one and the same. Theman had been chosen for her scheme because he possessed apeculiarly well-developed ability to project coercive mentalenergy, though he was oblivious to this talent. He'd been using itunknowingly in Wagga Wagga to attract customers to his shop, andthey had come, despite fearing and loathing him due to hisdisgusting appetite for raw meat. Implanting the Choir Stonesbeneath his scalp had greatly enhanced the ability.
The woman's invasive presence assaulted Burton with greaterintensity.
“Very clever, Gaspadin Burton! But I shall get far more from youthan you can get from me! Already I am deep inside your memories. Isee poor Lieutenant Stroyan there. You killed him. How careless ofyou!”
Still she misjudged him, and while she dug her claws into hispainful memories, she also exposed much more of herself than sherealised. He felt a sense of triumph blazing through the woman. Shegloried in the fact that Britain's labourers were falling under thespell of her great deception, eagerly swallowing the story of alost aristocrat who'd returned home to find himself snubbed by thesociety that produced him simply because he'd worked as a commoner.It was the perfect means to rouse their sleeping passions.
How valuable the Tichbornes had been! Her faux prodigal not onlygave her the means to disseminate her evil influence among theworking classes, but had also secured for her the South Americandiamond.
Burton, gathering information, struggled to resist her taunts.He remembered his friend's courage, and told her: Stroyan died ashe would have wished-a brave man performing his duty.
“Nonsense! You killed him! The guilt eats away at you!”
Again, he tried to surprise her into revealing more: Tell me,madam, where did you find out about the Eyes of Naga?
He felt her reel at the question.
“Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You know too much!”
This time, however, an answer did not inadvertently enter herthoughts. Instead, Burton detected the presence of an impassablebarrier, as if part of the woman was-was-
He couldn't define what he sensed.
“How I learned of the Eyes is of no consequence. All thatmatters is that I employ them to open the minds of the poor and thedowntrodden. You see how I clear the blinkers from their eyes?”
You speak as if you are performing some ma
“Revolution.”
You want to overthrow the British Empire?
“I want to demolish it.”
Why?
“Because I am a seer, malchik moi. I have cast my mind into thefuture and I know the destiny of my beloved country. I have watchedMother Russia brought to her knees. I have watched her wither anddie! ”
What the hell has this to do with Britain?
“Everything! See what I have seen!”
White-hot pain seared into Burton's head. He screamed hisanguish as the woman's clairvoyant vision flooded into hisbrain-too much information, too fast, blasting down the cha
Paralysed in thought as well as body, he watched helplessly asher prophecy slowly unfolded in his mind's eye.
Blood.
Light.
A first taste of air.
A child is born in Russia, the son of peasants.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.
He is blessed-or perhaps cursed-with clairvoyant powers.
His childhood is unhappy. Everyone knows there is somethingdifferent-strange-about him. He is shu
Rasputin knows that one day he will also die in water. Theknowledge terrifies him-unhinges him. He becomes erratic andviolent. His parents banish him to a monastery deep in the UralMountains, unaware that the establishment has been overrun by theba