He took a heavy flax mop and scrubbed the floor, eliminating every trace of the complex chalk pattern that had decorated it like an elaborate Southern rug. Then, despite his age and his heavy robes, he was down on his knees with a square of white linen, scrubbing even the cracks between the slate slabs until there was not a trace of pale blue chalk. However eager he was, he was also fastidious about this – that no trace of one phantasm should linger while he performed another. Experience had taught him that lesson well.
Then he went to a side table and opened the drawer, wherein was laid a box of ebony bound in silver. The Magus loved beautiful things – and when the consequences of bad conjuring were soul-destruction and death, the presence of beautiful things help reassure and steady him.
Inside the box lay a nested set of instruments made of bronze – a compass, a pair of calipers, a ruler with no markings; a pencil which held silver suspended in alum and clay and wax, blessed by a priest.
He wrapped a string around the pencil, measuring the length against the ruler, and began to pray. ‘O, Hermes Trismegistus,’ he began, and continued in High Archaic, purifying himself, clearing his thoughts, invoking God and his son and the prophet of the magi while another part of his mind calculated the precise length of string he would need.
‘I should not do this today,’ he told the fattest cat. The big feline didn’t seem to care.
He knelt on the floor, not to pray, but to draw. Putting a sliver of wood into a slot in the slate, he used the string, shaking with the tension in his hands, to guide his hand through a perfect circle, and into the circle, with the help of the ruler and a sword, he inscribed a pentagram. He wrote his invocation to God and to Hermes Trismegistus in High Archaic around the outside, and only the clamour of the cats for their noonday feast kept him from attempting his work right there and then.
‘All three of you are man’s best practice for dealing with demons,’ he said as he fed them fresh salmon, new caught in the River Albin and sold in the market.
They ignored him and ate, and then rubbed against him with loud protests of eternal love.
But his words gave him pause, and he unlocked the heavy oak door to the tower chamber and walked down one hundred and twenty-two steps to his sitting room where Mastiff, the Queen’s man, sat reading in an armchair. The man leapt to his feet when the Magus appeared.
The Magus raised an eyebrow and the man bowed. But Harmodius was in a hurry – a hurry of passion – and little incivilities would have to wait. ‘Be so kind as to hurry and beg the Queen’s indulgence: would she do me the kindness to pay me a visit?’ he asked, and handed the man a plain copper coin – a sign between them. ‘And ask my laundress to pay me a visit?.’ He handed over a handful of small silver change. Some of the coins were as small as sequins.
Mastiff took the coins and bowed. He was used to the Magus and his odd ways, so he hurried off as if his life depended on the journey.
The Magus poured himself a cup of wine and drank it off, stared out the window, and tried to convince himself to let it go for a day. Who would care?
But he felt ten years younger, and when he thought of what he was about to prove he shook his head, and his hand trembled on the cup.
He heard her light step in the hall, and he rose and bowed deeply when she entered.
‘La,’ she said, and her presence seemed to fill the room. ‘I was just saying to my Mary – I’m bored!’ She laughed, and her laugh rose to the high rafters.
‘I need you, your Grace,’ he said with a deep bow.
She smiled at him, and the warmth of it left him more light headed still. Afterwards, he could never decide whether lust played a part in what he felt for her; the feeling was strong, possessive, awesome, and dangerous.
‘I am determined to work a summoning, your Grace, and would have you by me to steady my hand. I hope it will be wonderful.’ He bowed over hers.
‘My dear old man, she looked at him tenderly. He felt in her regard a flaw – she pitied him. ‘I honour your efforts, but don’t tax yourself to impress me!’
He refused to be annoyed. ‘Your Grace, I have made such summonings many times. They are always fraught with peril, and like swimming, only a fool does such a thing alone.’ In his mind’s eye, he imagined swimming with her, and he swallowed heavily.
‘I doubt that I can do anything to support a mighty practitioner such as you – I, who only feel the sun’s rays on my skin, and you, who feel his power in your very soul.’ But she went to the base of the long staircase eagerly and led him to the top, her feet lighter on the treads than his by half a century. And yet he was not breathing hard when they reached the top.
She kicked off her red shoes on the landing and entered his chamber carefully, barefoot, avoiding the precise markings on the floor. She paused to look at them. ‘Master, I have never seen you work something so – daring!’ she said, and this time her admiration was unfeigned.
She went to stand in the sun which now covered the east wall instead of the west. She stood there studying the equations and lines of poetry, and then she began to scratch the ears of the old fat cat.
He purred a moment, sank his fangs into her palm, and mewed when she swatted him with her other hand.
Harmodius shook his head and poured honey on the punctures the cat had left. ‘I’ve never known him to bite before,’ he said.
She shrugged with an impish smile and licked the honey.
He, too, removed his shoes.
He went to his wall of writing and pushed his nose close, reading two lines written in silver pencil. Then, taking up a small ebony wand, he wrote the two lines in the air, and left letters of bright fire behind – thinner than the thinnest hair, and yet perfectly visible from where either of them stood.
‘Oh!’ said the Queen.
He smiled at her. He had the briefest temptation to kiss her and another desire, equal but virtually opposite, to back out of the whole thing.
She reminded him of—
‘Bah,’ he said. ‘Are you ready, your Grace?’
She smiled and nodded.
‘Kaleo se, CHARUN,’ the Magus said, and the light over the pentagram paled.
The Queen took a step to the right, and stood in the full beam of the sun from the high windows, and the old cat rubbed against her bare leg.
Shadow began to fill the pentagram. The Magus took up his staff, and held the hollow golden end like a spear point between himself and the inscribed sign on the floor.
‘Who calls me?’ came a whisper from the fissure in light that flickered like a butterfly above the pentagram.
‘KALEO,’ Harmodius insisted.
Charun manifested beneath the shadow. The Magus felt his ears pop, and the sun seemed dimmed.
‘Ahhh,’ he hissed.
‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said.
The shadows were drawn into a creature that was like a man, except he was taller than the highest bookcase, naked, a deep white veined in blue like old marble, with tough, leathery wings that swept majestically from well above his head to the floor in a perfect arc that any artist would have admired.
The smell he brought with him was alien – like the smell of lye soap being burned. Neither clean nor foul. And his eyes were a perfect, black blank. He carried a sword as tall as a man and wickedly barbed, and his head held both alien horror and angelic beauty in one – an ebony-black beak inlaid with gold; huge, almond shaped eyes, deep and endless blue like twin sapphires, and a bony crest filled with hair, like the decoration on an Archaic helmet.
‘Power for knowledge,’ Harmodius said again.
The demon’s blank eyes regarded him. Who knew what they thought? They seldom spoke, and they didn’t often understand what a magus asked.
And then, as swiftly as an eagle seizes a rabbit, the sword shot out and cut the circle.
Harmodius’s eyes narrowed, but he had not lived as long as he had by giving in to panic. ‘Sol et scutum Dominus Deus,’ he said.
T
he second strike of the sword licked out through the circle but rang off the shield that had formed over the demon. The creature looked at the shield, glowing a bubbly purple shot with white, and began to prod it with the sword. Sparks began to cascade down the sides of the shield, shaped like a bright bell of colour suspended over the daemon. Smoke began to rise from the floor.
Harmodius struck his staff against the edge of the circle where the sword had cut his pattern. ‘Sol et scutum Dominus Deus!’ he roared.
The rift in the circle closed, and the creature reared back and hissed.
The Queen leaned in towards it, and Harmodius felt a pang of pure terror that she would unwittingly cross the circle. But he could not say anything to her. To do so would be to betray the energy of his summoning – his entire will was bent on the creature that had manifested, and the circle, the pentagram, and the shield.
He was, he realised, juggling too many balls.
He considered letting the shield go – right up until the demon breathed fire.
It blossomed like a flower, flowing to cover the entire surface of the shield, and the room was suddenly hot. The fire could not pass the shield – but the heat from it could, and the deamon’s heat changed the contest of wills utterly. Even as he began to consider the possibility that he might be defeated, Harmodius’ mind viewed this fact with fascination. Despite the shield, he could smell the creature, and he could feel the heat.
As suddenly as they had appeared, the flames retreated from the edges of the circle and fled back into the creature’s mouth. The heat dropped perceptibly.
Desiderata leaned in until her nose touched the unsolid surface of the shield. And she laughed.
The demon turned to her, head cocked, for all the world like a puppy. And then he laughed back.
She curtsied, and then began to dance.
The demon watched her, rapt, and so did the Magus.
She expressed herself in her hips, and in the rise of her hands above her head as she danced a mere dozen steps – a dance of spring, naïve and unflawed by practice.
The creature inside the bubble of power shook his head. ‘Eyah!’
He took a step towards her, and his head touched the edge of the pentagram, and he howled with rage and swept his sword across the sigil, cutting a gouge in the slate floor that broke the circle.
She extended a foot and crossed her toes over the break, and it was healed.
Harmodius breathed again. Quick as a terrier after a rat, he struck his staff through the shield and poured the power he had collected from his phantasm into the demon.
It whirled from the Queen to face the Magus, sword poised – but took no action. Its mighty chest rose and fell. Its aspect changed, suddenly – it rose into the air, glowing white, an angel with wings of a swan, and then it fell to the slate floor and its writhing changed to the hideous controlled motion of a millipede larger than a horse, cramped in the confines of the shield. Harmodius raised his wand, joy surging though his heart – the pure joy of having truly tested a theory and found it to contain more gold than dross.
Harmodius’ took his staff from the circle and spat ‘Ithi!’
The pentagram was empty.
Harmodius was too proud to slump. But he went to the Queen’s side and threw his arms around her with a familiarity he never knew he dared.
She kissed him tenderly.
‘You are an old fool,’ she said. ‘But a brilliant, brave old fool, Harmodius.’ Her smile was warm and congratulatory. ‘I had no idea – I’ve never seen you do anything like it.’
‘Oh,’ he said, into the smell of her neck – and a galaxy of new learning occurred to him in that moment. But he backed away and bowed. ‘I owe you my life,’ he said. ‘What are you?’
She laughed, and her laugh threatened to mock all evil straight out of fashion. ‘What am I?’ she asked. She shook her head. ‘You dearest old fool.’
‘Still wise enough to worship at your feet, your Grace.’ He bowed very low.
‘You are like a boy who attacks a hornet’s nest to see what will come out. And yet I smell the triumph of the small boy on you, Harmodius. What have we learned today?’ She subsided suddenly into a chair, ignoring the scrolls that covered it. ‘And where did this sudden burst of daring come from? You are a byword for caution in this court.’ She smiled, and for a moment, she was not a naïve young girl, but an ancient and very knowing queen. ‘Some say you have no power, and are a sort of Royal Mountebank.’ Her eyes flicked to the pentagram. ‘Apparently, they are wrong.’
He followed the wave of her hand and hurried to pour her wine. ‘I cannot say for certain sure what we learned today,’ he said carefully. Already his careful manner was reasserting itself. But he knew he was right.
‘Talk to me as if I was a student – a stupid squire bent on acquiring the rudiments of hermeticism,’ she said. She sipped his wine and her look of contentment and the flinging back of her head told him that she, too had known a moment of terror. She was mortal. He was not always sure of that. ‘Because I can use power, I think you assume that I know how it functions. That we have the same knowledge. But nothing can be further from the truth. The sun touches me, and I feel God’s touch, and sometimes, with his help, I can work a miracle.’ She smiled.
He thought that her self-assurance could, if unchecked, make her more terrifying than any monster.
‘Very well, your Grace. You know there are two schools of power – two sources for the working of any phantasm.’ He laid his staff carefully in a corner and then knelt to wipe the pentagram from the floor.
‘White and black,’ she said.
He glared at her.
She shrugged with a smile. ‘You are so easy, my Magus. There is the power of the sun, pure as light, unfettered, un-beholden – the very sign of the pleasure of God in all creation. And there is the power of the Wild – for which, every iota must be exchanged with one of the creatures that possess it, and each bargain sealed in blood.’
Harmodius rolled his eyes. ‘Sealed. Bargained for. Blood does not really enter into it.’ He nodded. ‘But the power is there – it rises from the very ground – from grass, from the trees, from the creatures that live among the trees.’
She smiled. ‘Yes. I can feel it, although it is no friend to me.’
‘Really?’ he asked, cursing himself for a fool. Why had he not asked the Queen earlier? A safer experiment sprang to his mind. But what was done was done. ‘You can feel the power of the Wild?’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Stronger and weaker – even in those poor dead things that decorate the hall.’
He shook his head at his own foolishness – his hubris.
‘Do you sense any power of the Wild in this room?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘The green lamp is an artefact of the Wild, is it not? A faery lamp?’
He nodded. ‘Can you take any of the power it pours forth and use it, your Grace?’
She shuddered. ‘Why would you even ask such a thing? Now I think you dull, Magus.’
Hah, he thought. Not so hubristic as all that.
‘And yet I conjured a powerful demon of the abyss – did I not?’ he asked her.
She smiled. ‘Not one of the greatest, perhaps. But yes.’
‘Allied to the Wild – would you say?’ he asked.
‘God is the sun and the power of the sun – and Satan dwells in the power of the Wild.’ She sang the lines like a schoolgirl. ‘Daemons must use the power of the Wild. When Satan broke with God and led his legions to hell, then was magic broken into two powers, the green and the gold. Gold for the servants of God. Green for the servants of Satan.’
He nodded. Sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But of course, it is more complicated than that.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, showing that glacial self-assurance again. ‘I think men often seek to overcomplicate things. The nuns taught me this. Are you saying that they lied?’
‘I just fed a demon with the power of the sun. I conjured him with the
power of the sun.’ Harmodius laughed.
‘But – no, you banished him!’ Her silver laugh rang out. ‘You tease me, Magus!’
He shook his head. ‘I banished him after feeding him enough power to make him grow,’ the Magus said. ‘Pure Helios, which I drew myself using my instruments – lacking your Grace’s special abilities.’ Whatever they may be.
She gazed at him, eyes level, devoid of artifice or flirtation, mockery or subtle magnetism or even her usual humour.
‘And this means?’ she asked, her voice a whisper.
‘Ask me again, your Grace, after I conjure him back a week hence. Tell me you will stand at my side that day – I’m beholden to you, but with you—’
‘What do you seek, Magus? Is this within the circlet of what the church will countenance?’ She spoke slowly, carefully.
He drew a breath. Released it. Sod the church, he thought. And aloud he said, ‘Yes, your Grace.’ No, your Grace. Perhaps not. But they’re not scientists. They’re interested in preserving the status quo.
The Queen gave him a beautiful smile. ‘I am just a young girl,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t we ask a bishop?’
Harmodius narrowed his eyes. ‘Of course, your Majesty,’ he said.
The North Road – Gerald Random
Random’s convoy moved fast, by the standards of convoys – six to ten leagues a day, stopping each night at the edge of a town and camping in pre-arranged fields, with fodder delivered to their camp along with hot bread and new-butchered meat. Men were happy to work for him because he was a meticulous planner and the food was good.
But they had a hundred leagues to go, just to make Albinkirk, and another forty leagues east after that, to the fair, and he was later than he wanted to be. Albinfleurs – little yellow balls of sweet-scented, fuzzy petals that grew only on the cliff edges of the great river – were blooming in the hayfields that lined the roads; and when they were on his favourite sections of road – the cliff-edge road along the very edge of the Albin which ran sixty feet or more below them in the vale – the Albinfleurs were like stripes of yellow below him and layers of yellow on the cliffs nearly a mile distant on the other side. It was years since he’d left late enough to see the Albinfleurs. They didn’t grow in the north.
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