by D. J. Butler
“Why don’t you just hex it? Or as they might say in Philadelphia, why don’t you use a little gramarye?” Thalanes’s eyes twinkled; Sarah felt like she was in on the joke this time, so she laughed along. “Ordinarily, I’d say it probably wasn’t worth the effort to do something by gramarye that you could as easily do by hand, but I’d like to see you practice.”
“I don’t know a fire hex.” She furrowed her brow and thought a moment. “I guess I could try something with ‘ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.’”
Thalanes squatted beside the stacked firewood. “I want you to try three things, Sarah.”
The little monk was teaching Sarah to do gramarye the way he did it, and she hadn’t even had to ask. “Sure.”
“First, I want you to try to form the spell with Latin. Just basic words, no need for a song or a rhyme. Just think of a simple sentence that tells what you want to happen, and use those words to vocalize your magic.”
Sarah nodded. “I think I can do that. I suppose that’s the difference between hexing and gramarye, then—hexing is nursery rhymes in the hills, and gramarye is dead languages in the city? I guess that kind of thing must make a good impression on the fancy folk.”
“Well, yes.” Thalanes smiled. “And some magicians go in for big dramatic gestures and trappings. You know what I mean: candles, colored powders, and smokes. But my purpose isn’t to impress the fancy folk. Being able to cast spells using Latin—or some other dead tongue, if you know another one—frees you from the necessity of having to know a nursery rhyme for every piece of magic you want to do. It gives you flexibility and power.”
“I see that.” Sarah had always protested against the Latin, telling the Elector she didn’t plan to become a barrister or a land conveyancer or a priest. Now she was grateful for it. She sat down beside the fireplace. “Latin it is. What’s the second thing?”
Thalanes dug into Calvin’s pack and pulled out his powderhorn. He shook a pinch of the gunpowder into the palm of one hand. “I want you to use this gunpowder as a material component of the gramarye. I doubt you’d find it necessary—will and word suffice for many purposes—but a material component helps. Just like you used three drops of blood back in Nashville, in your love-charm in Father Angleton’s tent.”
Sarah blushed, thinking of poor Calvin, still smitten. “I think I can do that.”
“The gunpowder serves the same function as the words,” Thalanes explained. “They both build a bridge, to get power from you into the fire.”
“Of course.” Sarah felt slightly offended. “Like the blood in my love-charm.”
“Forgive my lecturing,” Thalanes said. “I am, after all, a priest. Sir Isaac Newton, you probably know, was a great wizard.”
“Everyone knows that.”
“He was a great practicing magician and an even greater theoretical one.”
“What’s a theoretical magician?”
“I mean a scholar of magic, and how magic works.”
“You mean that Sir Isaac wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Magica just the year before he joined John Churchill’s Glorious Revolution against the Necromancer’s Eternal Commonwealth. Everyone knows that, too.”
Thalanes smiled. “Perhaps not everyone.”
“Fine, but I know it.”
“Have you read the book?”
Sarah shook her head. “The Elector’s got a library, but it isn’t that good.”
“Read it when you can. Newton formulated two laws to explain the efficacy of a material component in any work of gramarye.”
“This I don’t know.”
“I’m glad to hear I am finally able to teach you something.” Thalanes laughed. “Newton’s Law of Sympathy states that things that appear to be connected, are in fact connected. And his Law of Contagion states that things that have once been together, are always together.”
Sarah tried to apply Newton’s laws to the lighting of the fire and the little pile of gunpowder in Thalanes’s palm. “So Sir Isaac would say that the gunpowder is an efficacious material component,” she said slowly, “because gunpowder and fire appear to be connected, so they really are.”
“Very good.”
She considered further. “I suppose if I hold the gunpowder in my hand and then throw it into the fire when I cast, then I also catch up the Law of Contagion. Me, the gunpowder, and the fire will always be together, because we were once together.”
“Excellent,” Thalanes said. “You would have run circles even around old Palindres.” He poured the gunpowder into her hand, carefully dusting all of the grains off his fingers into the neat little pile.
“Colored powder and smoke. What’s the third thing?” Sarah tried not to show her pride.
“The third thing I want you do,” he said, “is the trickiest of all, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to do it.”
“I reckon I’ll be able.” Sarah lapsed into her Calhoun Mountain accent.
“Instead of using the words to bring magic power out from inside you to light the fire, I want you to use the ley line.”
She felt daunted, but tried not to show it. “Wouldn’t it work better if there was a bridge between me and the ley line, something like the Latin words and the gunpowder? Or maybe if I went and stood in the ley line directly.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling, “proximity matters. You can’t just stand anywhere in the world and tap into a ley line anywhere else. But I think we’re close enough that you’ll be able to do it, using the same words you use to the light the fire. Will you try?”
“How do I go about it?”
“Close your eyes,” he instructed her. “Can you feel your own energy?”
“Inside me,” she told him. “Like burning. Not like a fire, like a tiny sun.”
“Very good. Now, keep your eyes closed and feel around you. With your heart, if that makes sense. Try to find my energy.”
Sarah concentrated. It was like sitting in the darkness by a bright flame, turning away to look beyond the comforting radius of her own light to see if there were others.
And there were. She could feel him, suddenly, in the same room. “There you are!”
“Here I am,” he agreed. “That’s very good. Most people aren’t able to detect the mana of others, at least not so easily, not without a spell. If you can sense me, you’re probably able to perceive and use ley lines. Keep your eyes closed. Try to find the ley line. It’s close.”
She let her feelings drift further out into the darkness. She sensed a pool of magical energy nearby that wasn’t human, but was warm and friendly to her. It was also uneasy.
“I think I found the dog,” she told Thalanes. “He’s nervous.”
“That’s what makes him a good guard dog,” the monk said. He was quiet for a moment. “It’s interesting that you can sense his feelings. I can’t do that much. Now search out beyond the dog.”
And there it was. Like a huge river of flame, not far from where she sat, like a roaring bonfire that she had been unable to see before because she had been blinded by the candle in her own hand.
“I have it,” she informed him.
“Use your words to make yourself a bridge between the line and the fireplace. The bridge will have to come through you. Light the fire.”
Sarah took a deep breath and opened her soul to the shining light of the ley line. “Ignem facio,” she uttered, and she tossed the gunpowder into the fire.
Light and heat poured through her. It was what she thought it must feel like to be hit by lightning, her whole body crackled and hurt and then she felt drained…and fire sprang from the wood.
“It turns out that you’re able to use ley lines,” Thalanes said as she opened her eyes. His face looked gentle and proud in the flickering yellow light of the fire, and on impulse, Sarah leaped forward and hugged him. He patted her back awkwardly at first, but then wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back.
The hug hurt a little; her skin felt strangely tender.
The dog barked outside and the door opened. Calvin stood in the doorway, his lanky body framed and his features hidden by the cold sunlight behind him.
“Cal!” she called, disentangling herself from the monk and scooting aside to give Calvin a clear view of the flames. “Look, I lit the fire! I mean, using hexing…gramarye…Latin and a bit of your gunpowder and the ley line!”
“Very good.” Cal sounded distracted, but he came and crouched down beside her and looked close at the flames. He needed a bath, too—he smelled like wet riverbank.
Cal reached into the fireplace and grabbed one end of a burning log. He shifted it around, adjusting the pile of wood.
“I thought you were going to get food,” Sarah pressed him, seeing he had returned empty-handed.
“Careful,” Thalanes said to him. “You don’t want to put the fire out.”
“No,” Cal answered, “I don’t.” He swung the blazing log out of the fire and cracked it against the monk’s head, striking him to the floor in a shower of sparks.
* * *
Calvin felt himself starting to swoon and he figured he had just one chance left.
Not-Sarah’s head was still bent back to touch its own shoulderblades as it squeezed Cal. He staggered back, gasping from the pain, until he could feel a tree behind him, and dug his heels into its lower trunk. His ribs ached and breath barely squeaked in and out of him as the thing crushed his chest. It was now or never; he covered both of not-Sarah’s eyes with his hands, ignoring the muddy stench that rose from its face—
and kicked himself forward with both legs.
He rode not-Sarah down with his chest, feeling its wet head and body thumping horribly into the rocks, cushioning his fall as they hit.
Calvin rolled away and scrambled to his feet, sucking cool air into his lungs. He was tempted to turn and run up to Crowder’s and get help, but a blow to the back of his head with a stone would kill him and put paid to any thought that he might rescue—much less marry—Sarah.
Besides, he had a plan.
Not-Sarah sprang to its feet with a limberness that was horrible when matched with the creature’s deformity. It slid partly out of its Sarah-hide like a rabbit halfway skinned for the pot. Its head poked backward and down from its shoulders, and its skull and back were punched up like a ball of kneaded bread dough.
The monster charged.
Cal was ready.
He slipped the lariat off his belt and threw the loop over not-Sarah’s shoulders. Its head, knocked askew as it was, made a perfect hook for the braided leather, and Cal’s long-practiced muscles overcame his exhaustion and pain. He neatly lassoed not-Sarah’s head as it charged him, pulled it hard in his direction and then jumped aside, turning the lariat around a tree trunk behind him as he moved. Not-Sarah fell to its side, lariat tightened around its neck. Cal heaved with all his weight against the heavy dragging clay. He looped the other end of the rope around its leg and then pulled it tight to the tree trunk, finishing it with a quick hitch.
Not-Sarah lay twisted around the trunk of the tree, tied bent head to pelvis like some hideously mutilated calf. It glared at Cal with banked fire in its open eye. It rattled once, and then was still.
“I reckon that’ll hold you.” Cal picked up his tomahawk, wiping greasy clay residue from its sharp head in the leaves and replacing it on his belt.
Not-Sarah grunted, and Cal peered at it again. It was straining, as if by the strength of its broken, boneless neck it could pull the tree down.
“That ain’t gonna work,” Calvin sneered, but he took a closer look.
The lariat was beginning to dig into the clay of the creature’s neck. That would have been an excruciating—and very bloody—wound in a man, but not-Sarah grunted and snuffled and continued to pull, sawing the braided leather of the lariat loop deeper into its neck.
It was going to cut its own head off to escape.
“Dammit!” Cal shouted. “Don’t you ever give up?”
Not-Sarah laughed, deep and hollow.
Cal splashed out into the river, searching among the stones.
Not-Sarah continued to pull. The lariat was halfway through its neck now, and the head hung free at a gruesome angle, like the loose stopper of a wineskin or a tent flap in the wind.
Where was his money pouch? Calvin cursed the stones for being the same brown-leather color as his wallet. He wasn’t sure exactly where in the river the purse had fallen. He splashed to his knees, shivering, and felt his way across the stones.
Plop! Calvin looked over and saw that not-Sarah’s head had fallen completely off. It lay in the leaves on one cheek, staring at him. Not-Sarah kicked and fumbled to dislodge itself from his rope.
He searched more urgently. The water was chilled by the season and his fingers quickly lost all capacity for subtle discernment—they had barely enough sensation in them to check each stone for slime before moving on to the next half-seen, submerged object. Where was that purse? He felt his heart hammer in his chest and the twinge in his ribcage became a spear in his lungs.
Not-Sarah jerked itself free and jumped to its feet.
Waaaaraaagh!
It rushed at him.
Cal’s hand found the leather of his purse and plucked it from the freezing torrent. “Jumpin’ Jerusalem!” He stumbled up and away from the charging monster.
He tugged at the drawstrings and found them swollen and sticking.
Cal nearly tripped over the rocks as he exited the river on the far side and kicked through leaf drifts. The wet clay smell and the squish-splash of the heavy feet warned him that not-Sarah was upon him. He ducked and spun away, cutting upstream at a sharp angle. The creature lunged past him, then turned on his trail.
His hands were as numb as the rest of him was seared and screaming, but Calvin managed to yank open the drawstrings and jam his fingers down inside. His hands closed around a fistful of coins just as not-Sarah plowed into him from behind, knocking him sprawling.
Stunned, reeling, battered, he held on to the money.
Its arms were wrapped around his neck, and he felt the wet, squishy clay of them as they screwed tight, crushing the air out of his body.
With one eye pressed down against a cold, damp river rock, Cal managed to peer into his gnarled claw of a fist with the other. Three silver shillings.
He clamped his open palm down on not-Sarah’s forearm.
Graaaawraagh!
He was rewarded instantly with a howl. Eerily, the howl came not from the body clinging to his back and neck but from the disconnected head, still across the river.
Cal shuddered in disgust.
The thing jerked spastically and tried to disengage. Cal’s head spun with pain and lack of oxygen, but he refused to let not-Sarah go, wrapping his own arms around its bicep, choking through the cloud of yellow sulfur that billowed out from the three coins.
It dragged him and they rolled, thrashing on the rocks.
Grwaaaaaagh! the head cried, like a pint-sized wailing goblin.
Not-Sarah heaved him off and they both scrambled to their feet. Swaying, Calvin gouged for a handful of clay flesh under the yellow fumes and came away with the coins in a gobbet of muck. Not-Sarah whimpered for a moment, and turned as if to run.
Cal tackled it. His body screamed as they went down again onto the rocks together, this time with the headless not-Sarah facing forward and Calvin on top, his fist free and armed. He rose up above his attacker, fist held high, and punched his hand full of vengeful silver down into its chest with a loud wet plop.
Aaaghaaaghaaaaarahghg! not-Sarah wailed. Cal looked across the river, and saw the disembodied head twitching.
“Shut up!” he roared, and swished his hand around inside the muddy mess. The creature’s chest was liquefying as the sulfur jetted out. It quivered and thrashed under him.
Nghaagh! Nghaagh! Nooooo!
Suddenly, sulfur erupted from the bad eye of not-Sarah’s head and its body’s thrashing became a wild bucking, like a horse in
need of being broken.
Cal held on. His body ached, his eyes stung, his tongue tasted of brimstone, but he knew he’d won. He rode out at the last few seconds of flailing, then found himself kneeling in a puddle of wet clay, his clothing soaked, muddy and rimed in yellow, the fingers of his fist closed around his three precious silver coins.
He lurched to his feet, urgently aware that there had been two of these things before, and that the other might at any moment attack him or, worse, might now be attacking Sarah. He hobbled to retrieve his clay-smeared lariat. Looping it, he took the opportunity to spit on the gray and yellow lump where not-Sarah’s head had burned itself out like a firework on the emperor’s birthday.
“You should a stuck to pigs.”
He turned his face uphill and stumbled as fast as he could toward Crowder’s stand. Sarah might need him.
“If I’d a knew it’d be such a blessin’ to you, I’d a beat you years ago.”
CHAPTER TEN
Sarah stumbled away from Calvin, her body crackling with fear.
“Calvin Calhoun!” she snapped. “What are you doin’?”
Calvin said nothing and swung the flaming log at her head. Sarah slipped on a straw pallet and fell as the great arc of fire whooshed over her. She hit the dirt floor hard, landing enough on her hands and backside that she was stung, but didn’t lose her breath.
She rolled away and he swung a second time, overhand, smashing his flaming club into the straw-stuffed pallet. Sparks showered from it, and the pallet, old and dry and oily, promptly began to smolder.
“Calvin, stop it!” she yelled.
He attacked again, she ducked, and he plowed a furrow of sparks out of the timber wall. Many of them fell glittering onto a second pallet, which also took flame.
She had to put the fire out. Cal raised his arm to swat at her again—
Sarah opened herself to the ley line and shouted, “ignem exstinguo!”
Her body tingled painfully as the energy of the ley roared through her. She had no time to direct her will precisely, and all the fires in the room—fireplace, pallets, club—were snuffed out. Calvin hesitated, looking in surprise at the charred wood in his hand.