For months Edmond de Luna worked on the plans for the great labyrinth of books. He reworked and redid the project without being satisfied. He had then realized that he no longer cared about the payment, since his immortality would be the result of the creation of that prodigious library and not of some supposed magic potion of legend. The emperor, patient but worried, reminded him that the final siege of the Ottomans was near and that there was no time to lose. Finally, when Edmond de Luna found the solution to the great puzzle, it was too late. The troops of Mehmed II the Conqueror had surrounded Constantinople. The end of the city, and of the empire, was imminent. The emperor received Edmond’s plans with wonder, but understood that he would never be able to build the labyrinth under the city that bore his name. He then asked Edmond to try to evade the siege along with so many other artists and thinkers who would have to leave for Italy. “I know that you will find the ideal place to build the labyrinth, my friend.” In gratitude, the Emperor handed him the vial of the last dragon’s blood, but a shadow of uneasiness clouded his face as he did so. “When I offered you this gift, I appealed to the greed of the mind to tempt you, my friend. I want you to accept this humble amulet as well, which perhaps one day will appeal to the wisdom of your soul if the price of ambition is too high…” The Emperor removed a medal from his neck and handed it to him. The pendant contained no gold or jewels, just a small stone that looked like a simple grain of sand. “The man who gave it to me told me it was a tear of Christ.” Edmond frowned. “I know you are not a man of faith, Edmond, but faith is found when it is not sought, and the day will come when it is your heart, not your mind, that yearns for the purification of the soul.” Edmond did not want to upset the Emperor and placed the insignificant medal around his neck. With no more luggage than the plan of his labyrinth and the scarlet vial, he set out that same night. Constantinople and the empire would fall shortly after a bloody siege while Edmond sailed the Mediterranean in search of the city he had left in his youth. He sailed with some mercenaries who had

He had been offered passage, taking him for a rich merchant, who could be relieved of his purse once he was out at sea. When they discovered that he had no riches, they wanted to throw him overboard, but he persuaded them to allow him to stay on board by telling them some of his adventures in Scheherazade style. The trick was to always leave them hanging, a wise storyteller in Damascus had taught him. “They will hate you for it, but they will want you even more.” In his spare time he began to write down his experiences in a notebook. To hide it from the prying eyes of those pirates, he wrote it in Persian, a prodigious language he had learned during his years in ancient Babylon. Halfway through the voyage they came across a ship adrift without passengers or crew. It carried large amphorae of wine that they took on board and with which the pirates got drunk every night while listening to the stories told by Edmond, who was not allowed to taste a drop. Within a few days the crew began to fall ill and soon the mercenaries were dying one after another, victims of the poison they had ingested in the stolen wine. Edmond, the only one safe from that fate, was putting them in the sarcophagi that the pirates carried in the hold, the fruit of the loot from some of their pillages. Only when he was the only one left alive on board and feared dying lost adrift on the high seas in the most terrible of solitudes did he dare to open the scarlet flask and sniff the contents for a second. An instant was enough for him to glimpse the abyss that wanted to take over him. He felt the steam that crawled from the flask on his skin and for a second he saw his hands covered with scales and his nails turn into claws sharper and more deadly than the most fearsome of steels. Then he grabbed that humble grain of sand that hung from his neck and begged a Christ in whom he did not believe for his salvation. The black abyss of his soul vanished and Edmond breathed again as he saw that his hands were once again those of a mortal. He sealed the flask again and cursed himself for his naivety. He knew then that the Emperor had not lied to him, but that this was no payment or blessing. It was the key to hell.