Battle of the Sun Read Online Free PDF

her clothes. On the wall was a painting of a green lion, but the painting had been roughly broken in two, and the jagged edges of the canvas pointed at each other. Jack looked down at the floorboards underneath the painting. It was a strange thing – it was as if the painting had just been painted and the halved lion was leaking gold. There were little gold spatters, like candle wax, all over the floor.
    Jack was hypnotised by the room. The breathing of the Creature(s) was like a spell. He felt himself being drawn in, closer and closer to the bed, to the half-body, to the half-face. He put out his hand.
    Suddenly he seemed to hear a little dog bark, and he came to his senses, and shook himself, like a dog that has fallen into the water and jumps out.
    Boldly, he snatched up the candle from the table nearest to the door, and made his way again down the dark stairs towards the hall, where he was sure he could unlock the front door and find his way home.
    But as he reached the hallway, he heard an unmistakable sound of groaning and a voice, wavering and thin, that cried, ‘Help me! Help me!’
    Jack hesitated. The door to the courtyard was right in front of him. He had his iron tool. He could escape. Now, now, now. And the voice came again, ‘Help me! Help me!’
    Jack turned. He moved quickly towards the back of the hallway, and saw steps going down, down. It was pitch black, so black that his candle only lit the tiny square around his feet. Cautiously he took the steps one by one, as they became damper, danker, and he wondered if this was the way into the well.
    There was no sound. ‘Who’s there?’ called Jack.
    The groaning began again. It was behind him. Jack turned and saw a tiny opening in the wall, very low, so that he had to stoop to get in. As he bent under the mossy lintel, and straightened himself up again, he saw an unlit torch on the wall, and he lit it with his candle. The torch flared up, making Jack blink with the sudden light, and cough with the acrid smell of resin and turpentine.
    ‘Help me,’ said the voice.
    Now in the light of the flare Jack saw the keeper of the voice.
    In front of him was a big glass tank, made of thick wavy glass filled with an amber-coloured water, and inside the tank, on a throne covered in barnacles, sat a sunken king.
    The King’s crown was sunk deep on to his head, and his head was sunk low on to his chest, and his chest was drooped towards his stomach and his stomach was low on his legs and his legs were deep in the water, and his feet were mired in weed.
    His eyes, so set back in his head that they might have looked rearwards, regarded Jack. Such blue eyes, each like a grotto. Underwater caves of eyes that held in them deep secrets, of treasures and gold and lost ships.
    The King raised his hand. The fingers were long, like stems of coral, and covered in small scales like a fish. Jack suddenly remembered how his skin had been scaly when he was reeled out of the well. He shuddered. Would he become like this sunken king?
    ‘Come near,’ said the King.
    Trembling, Jack approached, determined to show no fear even though, at this moment, he was made of fear.
    ‘You are Adam Kadmon,’ said the King.
    ‘I am Jack Snap,’ said Jack.
    ‘It hardly matters what you call yourself,’ said the King. ‘If you were not Adam Kadmon, you would not be here.’
    ‘I don’t want to be here,’ replied Jack. ‘I have been kidnapped by the Magus.’
    ‘And it is the Magus who has imprisoned me in this tank,’ said the King. ‘I was his master once, and I have tried to prevent him working his evil, but I have failed. Where I have failed, you must succeed.’
    ‘He wants to turn lead into gold,’ said Jack. ‘That is what the alchemists strive to do, is it not?’
    ‘He would turn all things into gold – do you understand me, Adam, all things into gold.’
    ‘All things into gold . . .’ repeated Jack. ‘He hasn’t managed any of it yet – the other boys told me