His Ragged Company

by Rance Denton

  “’Cause I’m alive?”

  “Because the murderer of my sons deserves special treatment. Revenge may be primitive, but it’s also satisfying. Not to mention, making you one of my disciples waylays the only opposition in Blackpeak that might have been a worthy adversary. You haven’t been easy to overcome, Faust. I’d like to use that to my advantage.”

  The Magnate grabbed me by my hair and wrenched my head down above the little triangle he’d drawn with my blood.

  “The triangle,” the Magnate said. “Illmone introduced me to them. For her, for her, it was all so natural and effortless, but I needed a harness, a gate deliberate enough to serve its purpose. Put too much power into something unsure, think of it like a cracked gun barrel: it can backfire, explode in your face. Control is essential. Humans like you and me, we weren’t made to dabble in this kind of power.

  “I’ve perfected my use of magic in the ways even Illemone hadn’t. I’ve turned something unpredictable into a science.”

  He pulled my head away from the triangle. Just as he did so, the edges of the bloody drawing started to smolder. Smoke curled up from its curves. I turned my cheek. It was searing, almost unbearable.

  “Heat. Cold. Impenetrable barriers. Illusions. Vast possibilities,” whispered the Magnate as he grabbed my blood-covered, four-fingered hand, “all from just a tiny little triangle.”

  He jammed the stub of my knuckle down into the middle of the triangle. The drawing glowed with hot, orange fury, like dying fire. I tried to pull my hand away, but the bastard’s grip was iron. The skin seared, bubbled, even started squealing like moist beef on a griddle.

  Ivanmore, Red, and the Magnate were all on me, holding me still. The two or three seconds he held my hand above the triangle turned into torturous years. Finally, when he pulled it off, they stepped away. I cradled the blackened place where my index finger had been.

  What a way to burn a wound closed.

  “We’re not quite through yet, Elias,” said the Magnate from above me. The Magnate manhandled me again, but this time sat on my back and peeled my other hand from behind me. He plucked up my right index finger and pressed it flat next to the still-smoldering triangle.

  “I want you to learn,” he said in my ear, “so you remember my sons. Carry Billy with you always on that scarred left hand. On your right, carry my Curtis. My children.”

  There was anger inside of him that he had subdued, but only now – with the excitement of the blade, the wretched scent of blood – the father in him came out, overwhelming the magic-addled zealot, the whack-job, the Magnate.

  “Gregdon,” I said. “Don’t do this. Please.”

  “My sons didn’t have a choice.”

  “They did.”

  “You made it for them, Faust.”

  “For Billy,” I said. “But I was just quicker. Nothing more than that.”

  “That was more than enough.”

  Like a butcher cleaving off a hunk of loin, down came the blade. I tried to jerk away, but no hope – too sluggish from the formaldehyde, too weak.

  Blinded by pain, I twisted and screamed. Hot blood ran through my palms.

  I could still feel my fingertip. God, I could still feel it…

  I twitched it, thrust it out—

  Saw it there, disembodied, my second lost finger unwilling to move.

  He crouched down on the floor again. Grabbed the finger. He started painting another triangle with it. Darkness knocked at my mental back door, asking to come in, to take over…

  “You’re a...fucking lunatic,” I said.

  When he leaned down and grabbed me by the hair on my scalp, he pulled me over and all but pressed my face down into the middle of the triangle. “You’re angry, Elias. You’re not absorbing what I’m trying to tell you. And if you don’t understand it enough when you become one of my disciples, that lack of confidence in the powers I possess could put the whole ritual at risk. How could I expect to create a being out of magic,” he asked, “that doesn’t believe in it?

  “If I’m going to pull power into our reality from another where such forces exist, we need a battering ram. Something strong enough to make us want.”

  The Magnate went for my right hand again. He grabbed it by the wrist and pressed the very tip of the talon-blade’s edge into my finger-stump.

  “Pain, Elias. One of the simplest, most powerful emotions.”

  The knife gouged my finger-stump. I bit my tongue so hard my mouth filled with blood.

  The prodding sent lightning-bolts of pain through my body. I wailed like a child.

  “Focus it all on that triangle, Elias. It doesn’t matter who made it, doesn’t matter why it was there. Make it yours. Make it do what you want.”

  I could barely see the smudged drawing through my tears. My blood. It was my blood.

  “Chaos and order, Elias. Symmetry.” He whispered in my ear, proclaiming all the virtues of the stupid little triangle. “A portal to the extraordinary. Pour your pain into it, Elias. Make it burn.” Another twist of the knife. “Do anything you can with that pain except feel it.”

  That was part of me there on the ground, that triangle. Something from inside of me. Every time he gouged me, it felt like my eyes were bulging out their sockets. I wanted to get rid of the pain. I wanted it to go away.

  Is this how it was like for him, losing his sons? But deeper, sweeping into trenches I couldn’t really fathom? Wasn’t that what he needed, what he wanted?

  To find the Well.

  Find his way back to Illemone.

  I’d never stared that hard. Never screamed so loud. Never asked for God to take pain away that much before. I searched for Him in that bloody scrawl, and just when I thought I could almost feel the blood with my eyes, the strangest thing happened.

  I thought of burning coals and sweltering breaths of wind. I asked for Hell, because that’s what the Magnate deserved.

  Underneath me, the smooth stone within the boundaries of the triangle ran through with a spidery crack. A spark or two belched up from the tiny rift. A little tendril of blue fire leaped into the air, bit my nose, and then vanished. The blood dried instantly. I was left staring at a mottled, ashy triangle.

  And just like that, the pain inside of me was gone. Poured somewhere else. At least for a moment.

  The Magnate stood. “Boys, pick him up. Cauterize that other finger and bring me a barrel of sand. Throw him on the altar and let’s get the last step of this task underway.”

  37

  Red heated a blade over one of the torches, then came to me and seared the stub where my right finger used to be. The pain fell away into the damp, oily haze of the formaldehyde. That had been my blue fire, and while it had been a limp dick next to what the Magnate could do, I’d called it. Me.

  He said he couldn’t create a being out of magic that didn’t believe in it.

  My life was his to forfeit.

  The Well would be his.

  They dragged over a keg of something and set it by me. Blood was in my palms. Place reeked of the rubbery, hot mist of burnt skin.

  Red pushed me over on my side. He bundled my wounded hands behind me. He clamped the shackles and rolled me so my palms and wrists were between the small of my back and the stone under me.

  “This is so you don’t cause trouble,” he said.

  While they prepared me for…whatever it was, the Magnate, Red, and Ivanmore bustled all around, their words an indistinct cloud sparking across the air. The sandshades up on the balcony above observed silently. Me, I conserved my energy and tried my best to hold fast to consciousness – and the liquidy, seeping froth of reality.

  “Ivanmore,” said the Magnate as he lifted the wooden cap off the barrel, “Prepare the triangle. Can I trust you to measure it perfectly?”

  “Twelve feet on each side.”

  “And the placement?”

  “The altar and Faust directly in the middle.”

  “You’re learning quickly.”

  “
It’s not that difficult, Father.”

  “Not too difficult to do adequately,” said the Magnate, lifting his hand from the barrel and letting sand spill from between his fingers, “but almost impossible to do perfectly.”

  “Then let it be your hand that draws it if you don’t trust my judgment. I’m just here because you needed bodies.”

  He unsheathed his talon-blade and held it out to Ivanmore. “Let’s do this quickly. I want a celebratory drink.”

  “As you wish.”

  I watched as Ivanmore drew back the length of his red sleeve, raised his gnarled hand, and gouged the tip of the talon-blade between the bones in his wrist. The skin split open. He walked over to a clay vessel on the ground and squeezed the red stuff out of himself like he was wringing a rag.

  When he was done, he stood and brought the bowl with him. I could see him staggering weakly. He looked ready to keel over. Then, with a bone-handled brush, he walked in a wide berth around the altar, drawing a triangle on the floor. He measured feet and distance under his breath. At each tip of the triangle, he swept a broad circle around his feet.

  While Ivanmore worked, the Magnate approached me. He hummed under his breath. Red stood on my other side. I still couldn’t see the bastard’s face, but I could see the Magnate grinning, showing me his teeth.

  “Blood and pain go hand-in-hand,” he said to me, before telling the others: “Open his vest and shirt. I need his flesh.”

  Out came Red’s talon-blade. He hooked it under a button and just yanked my clothes apart. Meanwhile, the Magnate pinched my bloody hand in his fingers and examined the Mark crawling like a stain from my palm toward my wrist. “I need his head lifted for the ritual. When the spell hits him, I imagine he’ll seize. Granted, I’ve never done it on the living before. I’d rather him not clobber his brains out on the stone if something goes awry.”

  I said, “That’d be unfortunate.”

  “And messy,” he said.

  Red removed a thick volume from his pocket and fanned the pages. It was my Collected Works of Shakespeare. He grabbed me by the hair with his gloved hand and slid it under me.

  “Good?” said Red.

  “Good,” said the Magnate.

  “What, no pillows,” I said.

  The Magnate watched me. I saw little shadow-dancers in his eyes. “I’m looking forward to the time when you’re able to speak only because I allow you.” He smiled. “You’re going to live anew today, Elias. Are you paid up with God?”

  “I still owe him a bit of attention,” I said.

  “You’re a man of conviction. Don’t tell me those morals of yours have been arbitrary.”

  “Faith never really mattered much to me until I was staring death in the face.”

  “Fair-weather Christian, then.”

  “Still alive,” I said. “I never took you as a religious sort.”

  “I’m not.” The teensy grin kept growing. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God. It’s just that maybe the one I know isn’t the same one you’re familiar with.” The Magnate’s cheek twitched, like his eye was trying not to spasm. He scooped out a bunch of sand with the wooden trowel. “Open his mouth,” the Magnate said to Red.

  Gloved fingers pressed into my cheeks and forced my jaw open.

  “This works out for both of us,” the Magnate whispered next to my ear, “I gain a new son, and you, a whole family. And when the time comes, I will stare into the heart of the Shattered Well and take back what’s mine.”

  Red yanked my mouth further open. The Magnate nudged the trowel against my bottom teeth and poured the sand down into my throat.

  “You think this will work?” Red asked over me.

  “It had better,” the Magnate said.

  “The spirit broker won’t wait much longer for us.”

  “He won’t need to.”

  “I dislike risks,” Red admitted.

  “You let me worry about the chances,” snapped the Magnate. “The spirit broker knows what I’ve brought him; he knows I need this one to live. Do you doubt me?”

  “No. But—”

  “You cannot doubt me. Not now. Do you? Does doubt linger in your heart for what I plan to do, and what we plan to accomplish?”

  “I trust you,” Red said. “It’s the ritual I question.”

  “I’ve come too far to harbor weaklings and simpering fools. Be silent, do your task, or step aside.”

  But Red remained. Loyalty’s loyalty, I guessed.

  The sand filled me up. It clogged in my throat and turned into moist lumps under my tongue. It had a taste like salt and sulfur. My throat and nose burned in the back. Every time I tried to spit some out, more slid off the little scoop.

  “My own mixture,” said the Magnate. “Various minerals found here in the mines. Do you like it, Faust? It took me years to perfect it. Very volatile, but very potent when ground up and mixed in the right amounts. An efficient conductor and insulator of magic and power. Might not taste fantastic, but it’ll do the trick.”

  I couldn’t help but swallow some of it. It laid on my stomach like bricks and granite. The Magnate shook several scoopfuls of sand across my body and onto my chest. He crouched down on the floor, picked up the triangular coin that I’d gotten from Partridge’s body – I couldn’t remember when it had fallen – and placed it right in the middle of my chest.

  “This tells the world you belong to me,” he said.

  After he was done distributing the sand, Red drew two tapers from his robe and gave them to the Magnate. He lit them with a snap of his fingers. He placed one above my head and one near my feet.

  “Let us take our places,” the Magnate said. “I’m through dragging out this process. Elias Faust, it’s a shame we need to finish things this way.”

  By some magical influence, the ambient light of the cavern faded. We were left with the wall torches and the candles to light the way. Red approached the triangle – the point at my right shoulder – and stood facing me. Ivanmore did the same at the left. The Magnate took his place at the point of the triangle facing my feet. In their red robes and darkness, they looked like spirits waiting to devour me. The tension in the cavern started bubbling. The sandshades leaned over the balcony, all staring at me. The Magnate never looked away.

  “When we open the gate, gentlemen, remember: There will be more power than any single one of us can handle. Manage what you can and diffuse the rest across the triangle. Nobody alone can manage this much force.”

  “Just like all the other times,” said Red.

  “Only this one’s still alive,” said Ivanmore.

  “Silence,” said the Magnate.

  And there was.

  A gentle gust whisked through the cavern as the Magnate raised one of his hands up in the air. The candles flickered. A few grains of sand blew away. He opened his mouth. A sound started rolling out of him: a hum, a deep chant. The rest of the place went dead silent. If only I had a gun, something to aim at him and pull the trigger.

  Christ, if only I had fingers to pull a trigger.

  The temperature, like a tide, began to rise. Sweat trickled down the sides of my face. The blood on the floor steamed. I couldn’t tell you what it was, couldn’t really find words to do so, but there was something in the air. A presence, an interloper, a weight like iron. It was invisible.

  If you ever stand still and let a train pass you, there’s this split-second after it passes where the wind cracks, the world bends, and everything’s quiet. Like it’s sucked the life out of everything, and you realize a true power – a thing that could kill you without flinching or caring – just passed by and let you live.

  This feeling wasn’t passing. It was hanging in the air over me.

  Watching.

  The bloody triangle began to boil. I heard wet pops from the bubbles. The coin on my chest seared against my skin.

  Inside my mind, the Magnate appeared one last time.

  And so it comes to this.

  Like he was thro
wing a ball, the Magnate tossed air in Red’s direction. Red caught it in his gloved hands and spread his arms. He started moaning out the same kind of noise. The blood of the triangle steamed, glowed, like metal heated up over a fire.

  Red started to shudder. He made a throwing motion toward Ivanmore, who caught what I couldn’t see. He too spread his arms and began to howl.

  An invisible weight pushed down into my chest. Unrelenting power.

  Death.

  The three of them stood at the points of the glowing triangle of blood, their arms outstretched as if they were holding hands from long distance. They completed the triangle. They all hummed, each at a different pitch but all together in a perfect harmony. Their song was a single sound made of smaller, uglier sounds. A chorus. Three things as one. Chaos becoming order.

  “Well, shit,” I said, right before the spell crashed into me and broke the world in half.

  Blink.

  A landscape of white. Pure emptiness. No color. Horizon to horizon, just nothing, and in the center of it, where everything congealed together as one – reality, consciousness, laws both physical and not – was me.

  I gasped for breath, but it was all poison. My lungs sputtered, shrank, refused to cooperate.

  Where was I?

  The air in this place was a miner’s sulfur nightmare. I felt like a goddamn canary with its wings clipped and its beak viced shut. Couldn’t scream to warn the world, couldn’t thrash.

  A pressure filled the air in front of me. A presence. A thousand-million screaming voices, clapped together like a lone railroad-spike, drove through the space where my brain should have been.

  Blink.

  They dragged an invisible mountain-range down on my chest. The triangular coin started to jitter. My skin smoked and smoldered. Like hot little cinders, the sand began to dig into my pores. Trying to get inside.

  The Magnate broke the chorus, saying something new. He said it over and over. It sounded like gibberish to me, a bunch of syllables thrown together in a mish-mash, but he spouted it like Cicero would a Shakespeare soliloquy.

  “Xa’anshangerrad.” He kept screaming the word over and over until he had his hands in the air. San-shanger-rod. “Xa’anshangerrad.” His sleeves fell to show his veins almost bursting out of his arms.