Glad no one was there to see or hear him, John held the book as he had seen choristers do, and sang a note in his uncertain baritone. He traced a finger along the symbols, guessing at note lengths, following the rise and fall in pitch suggested by the position of the symbols. At the first break in a line, he paused and took a breath. Nothing had changed. He continued, then stopped. His gut told him to go back, try the first line again. He was learning to trust his gut.
This time, after singing four notes, there was a change. Almost imperceptible, but he knew it was happening. He had got closer, sung something that made a little sense. He started again. Now he was sure. The third attempt was accompanied by a sensation unlike any other John had ever experienced. As the melody played in his head and through his voice, an area of his brain blossomed, bursting joyously into life.
John and Sarah had once visited Hayward's Heath to see a hundred-year-old Chinese tree. Its flowers were blooming for only the third time ever.
"It's sad, don't you think?" John had said, staring up at the shock of tiny white flowers. "That it blooms so rarely."
"Don't be a curmudgeonly old fart. I think the opposite. It's wonderful. This tree is a long way from home, it's alone, and just look what it's capable of. It's inspiring."
Remembering that moment, John, a fifty-one-year-old widow who had just become a real magician, dropped his customary cynicism and embraced Sarah's joy at the unexpected.
"I can do magic, Sarah," he whispered, book in hand, standing in front of an open fire in a place that doesn't exist.
Once he had found the secret, the text came alive, working with him as he not so much learned the spell as co-created it. The more he sang, the more he understood what the symbols required of him. He didn't need to turn the page, as the process deepened and evolved into a conversation, a dance, or, more accurately perhaps, an improvised piece of music based on a common theme.
When his last note faded and John looked back at the book, the letters had gone, the pages blank.
He knew where he needed to be. He walked back to the corridor and headed for the dojo. The new sense that was still opening its petals in his mind told him to go there.
Someone was waiting for him.
Thirty-Seven
He knew she was in the dojo before he opened the door and stepped onto the matting. Even so, he swallowed nervously when he saw her. John had to remind himself that the real Ash was still in the cottage. This version of her was straight out of his subconscious, but that knowledge made her no less disconcerting.
Ash wasn't naked this time, she was wearing a long, green dress with hanging sleeves. Her copper hair framed her perfect face, and the way the dress clung to her form did nothing to diminish her innate sexuality. Ash exuded sex, passion, wantonness, and availability. That was powerful enough, but when she added the suggestion that the person she was looking at was the sole focus of her desire, she was impossible to resist. Almost. Almost impossible.
John knew the truth behind that seductive sheen. He had seen the real Ash the night she cursed him. And yet, he had come back to the cottage three decades later. Partly because Helen's professional opinion had suggested confronting his fears, but that wasn't all of it. He had lied when he told Ash he had never thought about her. It had happened rarely, but it had happened. Perhaps a dozen times during his marriage, he had woken in the middle of the night, aroused and confused, only to find his sleeping mind had betrayed him, led him back to that iron bed.
Guilt had inevitably followed the dreams, despite the fact that his betrayal had been unconscious. Sarah would have understood if he had told her, but he found that he couldn't. On the few occasions it happened, he had buried the memory and re-focused his attention on the woman he loved.
Now, though, that blossoming part of his mind, which was unfurling its petals and sending its perfume to every corner of his consciousness, gave him the capacity to understand his past afresh. Sex with Ash had never just been sex. For her, each act of copulation had been the gradual weaving of a series of charms. Sex charms were powerful indeed, and Ash had used all her experience to loop bonds around John Aviemore, tying him to her, making it impossible for him ever to be fully free. Only her death or—far more likely—his, would cut the invisible cords that bound him.
If John had been from any other family, he would never have been able to leave Bristol the first time. As it was, when Ash had been thwarted by his natural defences, she had resorted to the unravelling curse. But the bonds with which she had ensnared him during sex had only been weakened by John's escape, not severed.
John saw it clearly now. The news of Ash's death had convinced him the cottage was safe. Helen's intervention had allayed his mental health fears. But the strongest reason for his decision to return had been the work of the charms woven decades ago by a trapped god.
Well, maybe she would get more than she bargained for.
He kicked off his slippers, removed his dressing gown and walked across the hemp floor to face the avatar. Although it wasn't Ash, it was imbued with all the power his subconscious feared.
She licked her lips. "Hello, John. You can't stay away from me, can you?"
He cleared his throat nervously and raised his right hand. She chuckled at that.
"Oh, I see. A male magician, how fascinating. Come on, then. Show me what you've got."
The spell he had absorbed was ancient, powerful, and complex. Gai had assured John he was capable of casting it, but before John had travelled to the Between, the noone had put a hand on John's shoulder, all his mischief gone.
"What you're about to learn is beyond all but the most gifted magicians. You have to believe, deep down, that you can do it. If not, you will never be free of Astarte."
John had nodded in response, but Gai had shaken him until he met his eyes. "Swear to me."
"What?"
"Swear to me on the memory of your wife that you will not return until you have mastered the spell. However long it takes."
"But I thought I wasn't supposed to stay there long. You said I shouldn't get too comfortable."
Gai's expression had been hard to read. "Don't worry. You won't get comfortable this time. Now swear it."
Looking at Ash's avatar, waiting for him to cast the spell, the look on Gai's face rose unbidden in his mind, and he recognised it. It was pity.
John focused his attention inwards, summoning the power that would cast the spell. The sensation was not cerebral, but physical. It started in his solar plexus, with an uncomfortable warmth and tightness. The warmth, which he visualised as a blue light, pulsed in his gut, and expanded, sending connections outward. Blue lines linked his solar plexus to his heart and groin, then a thread stretched up, wrapping itself around his spine. His brain glowed with the light, and the world around him came alive in a way he had never experienced. Under the soles of his feet and between his toes, every individual fibre of the matting was present to him, as was the material of the cotton pyjamas against his skin. His own body was laid bare to his heightened awareness; every organ, muscle, ligament, and nerve, every cell, even down to those on the outer layer of his skin as they died, detached and floated away, was intimately observed and understood.
The sensation was so unlike anything that John had ever experienced that he felt adrift, as if he might forget what it was like to be himself. He wasn't just John Aviemore anymore. He was all men, all women, all life. The force that animated patterns of matter and gave them the semblance of individuality was now his to command. This was what it meant to be a god.
Five yards away, Ash yawned. "Getting bored now," she said, her voice honeyed poison.
John had sung the spell of holding in the study. It was time to use it. The chain of light in John's body flared, and he raised his palm towards Ash, opening his mouth to release the spell.
He exulted in the power as it flowed through and out of him.
He was unstoppable.
The lights went out, and the dojo flipped upside-d
own. The blue glow vanished. There was pain. A great deal of pain.
John opened his eyes. Unfocused browns and reds. His eyes were stinging. His nose... something bad had happened to his nose. He was breathing through his mouth. He tried taking a breath through his nostrils. As far as bad ideas went, it was an award-winner. Much of the cartilage had been broken when he had hit the floor face-first. Now the shattered fragments of bone floating untethered in the blood and gristle where his nose used to be were sucked up and into his nasal passages, causing white-hot needles of pain to lance behind his eyes.
He screamed and passed out.
When he regained consciousness, the pain was no less tolerable.
I can control this. This is my sanctum. The pain isn't real. It's not real.
Mentally repeating this mantra, he rolled onto his side. This was as bad an idea as breathing through his nose. One of his cheekbones had shattered, and there was a fifty-fifty chance he'd roll onto the wrong side of his face. Luck wasn't with him.
He passed out again.
When he came to a second time, he opened his eyes and saw white and red objects scattered on the floor. He couldn't imagine what they were. Then he ran his tongue around the inside of his bleeding mouth, and found the gaps. They were his teeth.
"Are you going to be long? Only I'm having my nails done later."
The voice came closer until Ash was standing over him. "Oh dear, oh dear. This doesn't look good for you, does it? I'm just an avatar pulled from your mind, John. The real me will be much tougher. Perhaps you're not cut out for this. No one would blame you if you gave up."
John lifted his head, slowly. The pain flared immediately, but it was bearable. There was a sound like parting velcro as John's bloodied hair peeled away from the matting.
"The world won't end if I escape the time cage." Ash's tone was quiet and reasonable. "I won't lie to you, John. People will die when I reveal myself as their god. Others will accept me. More than you might think. With all their talk of freedom, many humans secretly yearn for a life where someone else is in charge and tells them what to do. Your realm is too fertile, too rich in magic to be wasted on a backward species which is barely aware of its wonders. In their own small way, every woman in your realm can use magic. I will allow some of my followers to enjoy their birthright. Is that your problem, John? Scared of women having the power?"
John was on his knees now, his ruined face sending messages of agony back to his brain. He understood that what Ash said was also part of his training in the dojo. He couldn't hope to stop her if she could persuade him that her cause had merit.
"You're no friend of women," he managed to say, his voice thick. "You don't care about anyone except yourself."
"You're wrong, John," she said as he stood up and faced her.
The blue light flickered in his solar plexus, and all his pain disappeared. John looked at the floor. His teeth were gone. He brought his fingers to his mouth and touched his cheekbone. His teeth were back in place, and there was no swelling on his face. When he spoke, his voice shook.
"You destroyed my mother's mind. You killed her."
He raised his hand again. Ash smiled. "Are you sure about that, John? I cursed you, I admit it. But I didn't curse her. If you hadn't fought me, your mother would never have had to take the curse from you. Only an Adept could do that, and I didn't know she was an Adept. How could I? It was your power that drew me, not hers. I'd say you cursed her, really. Wouldn't you?"
"No," said John. The power was back, the pain of moments earlier wiped out by the blue light coursing through his body. "No, I wouldn't."
He cast the spell. He was quicker this time, exulting in his heightened awareness.
Ash swatted his spell away like an insect. John's head snapped to the side, and he both heard and felt something stretch too far and break in his neck. As he fell, his arms dropped uselessly to his sides, and his legs crumpled.
When consciousness returned, he waited in agony until the blue light did its work and his injuries healed.
He stood up and faced her, but the memory of the pain made him hesitate. Ash saw this, and her smile broadened.
"Come on, lover." Her lips parted, her eyes glazed with the same frank desire that had drawn him to her all those years ago. "It doesn't have to be this way. Time doesn't exist here. Nobody's watching. We can do whatever we like, however many times we want to. What's your fantasy, John? Do you want me to submit to you? I can do that. Do you want me to dominate you? I can do that, too. Do you want me to look like someone else? Do you want to make love to two, three women at once? Do you want to try a man? We have eternity. What do you want?"
If she wasn't genuinely aroused by her own words, the avatar was so convincing that John didn't doubt it for a second. Her pupils were dilated, and she was breathing heavily.
"I want you to fight me," he said, raising his hand.
Her face changed instantly, hard rage etched on her features. In this avatar, John saw clearly what Ash tried to hide from him in the real world. By any definition of the word, she was no longer sane. "I can do that," she said, and before he had time to sing, she grunted something that blasted into him like a wrecking ball, crushing every rib, causing immediate and massive internal bleeding. He dropped to the matting.
Seconds, minutes, or hours later, he opened his eyes and tried to breathe. Every inhalation, however shallow he tried to make it, caused such a wave of agony in his chest and across his back that he wanted to die.
John understood now why Gai had made him swear, on Sarah's memory, that he would stay in the sanctum until he had mastered the holding spell.
This was going to be a long day.
Thirty-Eight
As each attack he mounted was deflected, Ash became creative with her counter-attacks. She made his bones weak and brittle so that his feet gave way, followed by his knees breaking when he landed on them, and his pelvis, ribs, and skull joining in as they hit the floor.
She caused the blood to warm in his veins, then boil.
She flayed him from his neck to his testicles.
She punched a hole through his chest as wide as a cantaloupe.
She paralysed him and punctured his body with a hundred long, thin needles.
She induced a seizure. He swallowed his tongue.
Every time, as his body healed and he forced himself to stand, she spoke her poison and told him it didn't have to be this way.
If hell existed, this was surely it. Or, at least, it would be if it wasn't for the memory of Sarah. And Harry. And Evie, the granddaughter he had spent so little time with. That would change if he defeated Ashtoreth. This was something Ash couldn't touch. Something she didn't understand. Ironic, really, that the god of love should know nothing about it.
Every time John opened his eyes to find himself back on the hemp floor, his body screaming in pain, he turned his mind to his family. It wasn't as if he and Sarah were the perfect couple, however tempting it was to airbrush the bad times out of the picture. They had disagreed regularly, and there had been the occasional row. There had been one terrible period when they had almost allowed themselves to become strangers, not noticing their paths were diverging until it was nearly too late. When they did notice, they had talked through the night, ending up having sex like teenagers, half on and half off the sofa, clinging desperately to each other.
When John thought of Harry, the beautiful boy they had created together, and to whom he had never been a good enough father, he swore he would make amends. If it meant moving to Los Angeles, he would do it. And he would see more of Evie, his quiet, solemn granddaughter who loved to draw, and whose smile reminded him so much of Sarah.
If he wanted to do any of those things, he had to work out how to defeat this avatar, because the real Ash would be worse.
Which attempt was this? The hundredth? The thousandth? Something had changed this time. He wasn't afraid of the pain. No, that wasn't quite it. He was afraid, how could he not be after the tortur
e he had suffered over and over again? It was more that he was able to separate his decision-making process from the fear, not allow his judgement to be clouded by the anticipation of agony. The other emotions that coloured his thoughts were more manageable too. Anger, shame, guilt, regret, sadness, along with hope, courage, excitement, and love; they were all present, but he was able to observe them, acknowledge them, remain separate from them.
He looked at his emotions, his thoughts, and his memories. His mind relaxed its grip, made space, cleared the way. And, once the route was clear, an idea so direct, so simple, and so right made itself known.
It popped into his mind as a picture, brightly coloured. Playdough extruders. Harry had loved them when he was a toddler. The concept was simple. The extruder looked a little like a wide syringe which you filled with coloured dough. Instead of a needle, the end opposite the plunger pushed the dough into a variety of shapes: spaghetti, hearts, cylinders, stars.
John smiled. A true magician didn't wield power, didn't cast spells. True magic was channelled. Earth provided the raw magic, stronger than anything he could summon from his own body. The spell would shape the flow of magic.
Ash saw the change in him.
"Time to give up? No more tricks left in the old dog?"
"One more, Ash," he said, raising his hand. "One more. Ever heard of playdough?"
This time, instead of attacking as he might with a physical weapon, directing it physically and mentally, John stood aside, allowing the raw magic to pour through the opening he had cleared and be shaped by the spell he had absorbed.
The change in his own perception was instant. No longer powerful, John was weak, empty. The more that he had imposed his small sense of self onto the process, the less power had been available to him. What he had suffered in the dojo since confronting Ash would have led to his death if it had been the real world. He had died, over and over again. And, in dying, he had finally embraced the paradox at the heart of the most powerful magic. To wield true power, he had to become powerless.
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