by Alan Baxter
END
MageSign
Book Two of The Balance
By Alan Baxter
Prologue
Screams. Echoing through wood panelled corridors, centuries old, bouncing back and forth through night darkened rooms. Cracked eyes in ancient portraits stare wordlessly through the sounds. Scuffed floorboards, worn and polished, lead to more rooms, more corridors. The screams penetrate them all. Darkened windows reflect candlelight and stillness, black mirrors keeping back the night.
History manifests in the smells of wood and incense, camphor and sandalwood. The silent echoes of generations come and gone, the faded stains of blood spilled in halls and hints of joy known in secret places, the rise and fall of the powerful and the weak. History written, revised, written again.
In a large room on the second floor where the screams are loudest, two nuns bustle around a sweating, panting woman on a small cot. The only light from candles and a roaring fire in a huge marble fireplace, dancing, flickering orange glow.
The Bishop stood behind his heavy mahogany desk, his face fixed in an uncomfortable frown, staring at the nuns and the woman on the cot. A moment of silence as the woman paused, gulping down deep breaths, her hands curled like claws on her swollen abdomen. Between each hitched breath she sobbed, tears streaming down her cheeks. One of the nuns gently wiped her face with a damp cloth, the other leaning in between her raised knees.
‘Try again, dear,’ the nun said. ‘It’s coming.’
‘It hurts! It hurts so much!’
The nun looked up, her face twisted in sorrow and pity. ‘Please, try again. Push!’
The woman clenched her teeth and grimaced. With a strained grunt she pushed again, her breath exploding out in another piercing scream. Again and again she pushed and screamed, pushed, screamed, gasping for breath.
‘Why is it so difficult?’ the Bishop burst out, his voice angry and fearful at the same time.
The nun with the damp cloth looked up, her eyes hard. ‘It is not by choice, I’m sure!’
The Bishop strode out from behind his desk, pacing back and forth as though he was the expectant father. ‘I’ve attended a hundred births or more, but this is different. Is the child breach? Is it dead?’
The other nun spoke loudly over the woman’s screams. ‘The child is not breach and there is no indication that it is dead. This poor woman came to us in her darkest hour and the last thing she needs is criticism. Now be patient and be quiet or begone!’
The Bishop’s face twisted in anger at the nun’s words, but he held his tongue. As he stared in frustration at the scene before him the heavy wooden door of the room swung open and three men walked in. Two were priests, but the third wore the official gown of a Cardinal. He approached the Bishop and spoke quickly in Italian. The Bishop’s eyebrows raised and he put up a hand. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand! Please, can you speak English?’
The Cardinal made a wry face. ‘Very well.’ His voice was heavily accented. ‘His Holiness has sent me to see what is occurring here. I see the child has not yet been born.’
The Bishop shook his head, wringing his hands. ‘No, your Eminence, not yet. The birth is proving to be difficult.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, the woman has been in labour for many hours and the child, well, it just refuses to come.’
The Cardinal looked at his watch and nodded shortly. He walked to the cot and looked down on the woman as she screamed and pushed, her voice broken and hoarse. He laid a palm across her forehead before returning to the Bishop. ‘No one is aware of her presence here or her circumstances?’
‘No.’
‘And it has been confirmed that she has never had sexual intercourse?’
The Bishop nodded. ‘When she came to us several weeks ago she was very scared and at a loss. She begged us to help her as she had been ostracised by her family and had nowhere to go. She assured us that she had never been with a man. The nuns inspected her and, to their minds, she is telling the truth.’
The Cardinal pursed his lips. ‘Does she have any explanation for her condition?’
‘No. She claims to have had terrifying dreams, of being raped by demons and of being led into flaming caverns, but her words are the ramblings of a lunatic. She seems otherwise quite sane, but complains of repeated terrifying dreams. She has been complaining lately of a man in her dreams gloating about the imminent birth of her child, but her accounts make no sense.’
As one of the priests scribbled down every word spoken in a small notebook, the Cardinal took the Bishop’s elbow and led him to the window. Looking out into the night he said quietly, ‘Have you investigated her family? Is it possible that she is suffering delusions due to abuse, perhaps from her father? An uncle?’
‘We have considered the possibility but our investigations do not back up the assumption. And the nun’s findings regarding her physically...’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Well, we had better wait until the child is born. Is there anything that can be done to ease her pain or speed up the process?’
The Bishop shook his head. ‘Not really. The nuns are quite capable, they’ve delivered hundreds of children over the years. It makes no sense.’
The Cardinal smiled softly. ‘Well, perhaps the time is not quite right. Let us be patient.’
It was several hours before much changed for the woman on the cot. The nuns looked pale and drawn, the woman herself debilitated, her hair soaked and lank about her face, as dawn smudged the horizon with a pale yellow glow through the grey.
One of the nuns looked up to the four men seated about the large mahogany desk. ‘It’s coming.’
The woman howled, her voice cracking, almost gone, as she pushed again. The nun was crouched between her legs. ‘That’s it, I can see the head now. Good girl, keep pushing. It’s coming.’
The woman pushed and panted as the men came to stand nearer. She screamed again. ‘Oh my God, it hurts! It’s burning like fire!’
The second nun wiped the woman’s face again and again, letting water run down her cheeks and neck.
‘Here it comes. It’s coming quickly now. You’re nearly there!’
The woman sat half upright, her eyes bulging, her face grey and sweatsoaked. Her mouth fell open as she released a long, piercing scream, staring in seeming disbelief between her legs. The men and the nuns all involuntarily staggered back from the force of the scream, their faces shocked, fearful. The nun delivering the child rallied, crouched back down. ‘It’s here!’ she cried. She moved the child into view, cutting and clipping the umbilical. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said, looking up to the mother. The woman was frozen in place, still half sitting up, her mouth still open. The scream had ended but her breath still hissed as she stared. The nun looked at her, staring into her eyes. ‘Are you..?’ she began, then looked down. ‘Oh Lord! Quickly, she’s bleeding heavily! Get towels and... oh my God, so much blood!’
The woman’s blood washed out of her, flooding across the child and the nun’s lap as the woman’s eyes rolled up, her head tipping back limply. Without a sound she collapsed onto the cot. The Cardinal rushed forward, grimacing at the blood, laying his hand on her forehead. ‘Is she dead? What about the child?’
The nun stood with the blood soaked child, her face ashen. ‘I think the child is dying! It’s yet to breathe!’ As she spoke the baby hitched a large breath and wailed, it’s cry unseemingly loud, bouncing off the wooden walls of the room, echoing like a howl in a canyon. The gathered people stared in amazement. At that moment the huge lead light window behind the desk burst inward, sending shards of glass flying through the air, glittering in the firelight.
Two men clad in black leapt through the shattered pane and jumped across the desk. The two priests turned to face them, their eyes wide in surprise and fear, and were met with silver flashes of steel. Both fell to the ground, blood spraying from gaping slits in their throats. The black clad men stepped over them and made straight for the nun holding the newb
orn child. The Cardinal stepped between them, his face ashen, one hand raised as he began to speak. No words came and he stared without a sound at the large blade that sank deep into his abdomen. There was a short, sharp sucking sound as the assailant yanked the blade free and reached for the nun with his other hand as the Cardinal fell. Both nuns were screaming as the Bishop ran for the door.
The man holding the nun took the child from her arms, pushing her away, took a blanket from the cot as the other man turned to face the retreating Bishop. Without taking his eyes from the fleeing figure, he reached out and grabbed hold of the nun standing behind the dead mother. He dragged her to him, gripping her hard against his chest. Still staring at the Bishop he uttered harsh and horrible words and plunged his blade deep into the nun’s body. As he hauled the blade out again, blood fountained and the man continued his guttural chanting. The Bishop froze in mid-step, tumbling to the floor, moans of pain escaping his spittle-flecked lips. The man dropped the corpse of the nun to the floor and strode purposefully to the paralysed Bishop. He bent down as the Bishop stared into his face, eyes wide and desperate. He made short, sharp noises as he tried to speak, but his body was not his to command. The assailants blade flashed once more through the firelight.
The man with the child advanced on the nun that had delivered the baby. She backed away, her mouth working silently, eyes wide and wild. The man kicked her legs from under her, leaning down as she fell, one arm sweeping through a broad arc. There was a gurgling hiss as the nun clasped at her riven throat, then fell still.
Without pause the men were moving again, back over the desk and out through the shattered window. With the child wrapped and held tightly under the arm of one, both assailants dropped down from the granite ledge to the grounds below and disappeared into the dark.
1
Isiah crouched among charred ruins, elbows on his knees. His face was concerned, a wry twist to his lips. The shining object that had caught his eye was just glass, glinting in the sun. Scorched and blackened by fire it looked like it was once a heavy vase or jug. He stood up again, looking around, his brows creased. Why would his place be torched? Did he upset other people too?
The remains of the house still bore some shape and some items were not completely destroyed, but the fire had done a pretty good job. The ash and charcoal was dark and sticky, still damp from the rain that must have put the fire out, all that had prevented the dwelling from being totally razed. The trees all around glistened and dripped from the downpour of the previous night.
The house had been constructed mostly of wood and the fire had had plenty of fuel. Isiah was standing in what appeared to be the main hallway, a few feet inside the remains of the front door. The porch at the front was scorched, but otherwise untouched. It would seem certain that the fire had started inside the house, nearer the back than the front. The hallway lead straight through the building, two rooms off each side, ending in a doorway, or the hint of one at least, that gave into a single large room at the back. The house was raised on stilts about half a metre high, lifting the whole premises off the forest floor. In several places the fire had burned through the floorboards, leaving piles of charcoal mixed in with the detritus and mulch below.
The whole plan of the place was apparent from where Isiah stood, the internal frames of the walls and doors poking up like dead trees, demarking the borders of each room. The roof had mostly burned away, the roof supports collapsed and littered around, furniture and fittings burned and crushed beneath. Isiah sighed. It was going to take hours to sort through all this looking for clues. At least the rain had left him something to sort through. That in itself was a clue. The place had burned furiously the night before, then the rains had quenched it. So was the fire deliberate or was it accidental? Did this Sorcerer guy get away, or were his bones somewhere among the ruin his house had become, grotesque and blackened themselves? If it was deliberate, was it an attack on the Sorcerer or an act of arson? So many questions.
It had been a long time since Isiah’s escapade with Samuel Harrigan. Nearly three years overall, one thing and another delaying his plans. But he had finally got around to tracking down this place, the location plucked from Samuel’s mind several years before. Even with that information it had taken him a while to finally locate this dwelling, deep in the heavy forest, miles from any other habitation.
The Sorcerer had taught Samuel the old blood magic, taught him to kill for his power, when it was the killing that was controlling him. Samuel had had enormous innate power and a remarkable ability to learn. This Sorcerer, as Samuel had seemed to call him, had used the blood magic to help Samuel realise his potential. Isiah had vowed to track this mentor down and, by whatever means necessary, prevent him from creating another like Samuel Harrigan.
So, had someone beaten him to it? Or had the Sorcerer run away, destroying all evidence of himself before he left? If so, who was he running from? There was no way that he could have known Isiah was coming for him. Too many questions.
Isiah took a deep breath and began slowly walking through the burnt shell of the house, testing the floorboards as he went, looking for something, anything, that might prevent his search ending here in the damp ashes.
The front room to the right of the hallway was apparently a bedroom, the twisted remains of burned coils and springs half melted in one corner. There had been other furniture, the frame of a chest of drawers, a collapsed wardrobe. The other front room across the hall seemed pretty much the same, except it appeared that the only furniture in there had been a small single bed. A guest room presumably, with no thought of catering for comforts other than a place to lie down.
The next room on the left was obviously the kitchen, though it didn’t appear to be a particularly well equipped one. This house was in the middle of nowhere after all, with no power or water. The kitchen contained shards and slivers of glass and crockery shattered by the heat, what appeared to be the remnants of a table and four chairs, various twisted and molten metal objects and, in the far corner, a huge old iron stove. The stove was virtually untouched by the blaze apart from the covering of ash, soot and pieces of charcoaled wood from the walls and ceiling. It was the type of stove that was powered by the large wood burning furnace in its centre that would also heat water from a reservoir outside or on the roof. The collapsed and skewed shell of a large metal rainwater tank sat on the scorched grass outside, pipes and tubes about it like evisceration in freeze-frame.
The next room to the right appeared to be a store room. It was the smallest of the rooms and blackened among the ashes were metal buckets and mop heads. There was also a large, old copper bathtub, no doubt filled from numerous kettles heated on the big stove. Old style country living. The price for secluded privacy and anonymity. Isiah could remember the days when this sort of house was the norm and all his baths had been in tubs of water heated on the stove, or freezing dips in rivers or lakes. He remembered the pleasure of summertime, when waters outside would be warm enough to enjoy. The world marched on and times changed. Isiah grinned crookedly. Nostalgia for past decades, past centuries, that’s all it was. He decided to start searching in more detail in the large room at the back of the house. No doubt it was the main living area and would most likely contain more clues.
The back end of the house was completely gone, the floorboards disappearing in a ragged edge like torn canvas, damp forest beyond. The level of damage in this room was far worse than the rest of the house. There was no doubt that the fire started, or was lit, here. Probably against the back wall. If the fire had been deliberately lit here, then no doubt this was where its consuming heat was most required.
Isiah walked into the room and turned slowly in a circle, scanning the blackened remains with his eyes and mind. He let his will spread gently through the room, searching for the psychic echoes of activities that might help him pinpoint what had happened here. When magic was performed, when matter and energy were manipulated, a kind of residue was left behind, like the invisible gr
ease that even the cleanest of fingers can leave on a surface. As a crime investigator might dust for fingerprints, Isiah mentally scanned for magicprints. In the old days they had called it MageSign.
The whole place reeked of bad MageSign. The residue of manipulation was rife and at the same time blurred and indistinct. So much magic in one place had smudged the fingerprints, and the fire had burned so much of the material things to nothing that the echoes had further reduced. There was no detail other than the overriding knowledge that just about all the magical activity in here had been bad. It had involved pain and suffering, sacrifice and debauchery. This Sorcerer was certainly an evil soul.
Then Isiah’s roving eyes caught something, his sight catching a detail like a piece of clothing snagged on a thorny branch. Almost invisible in the monochrome blackness of the charred remains, it looked like a small metal cabinet half buried by the blackened, fallen roof. Two drawers, one above the other. The cabinet was bowed by the heat and the sides and front were rippled and blackened.
He approached the cabinet and crouched before it. He tentatively tugged at the handle of the top drawer, then smiled wryly as the handle came away in his fingers with a metallic pop. He looked around the cabinet, trying to estimate just how jammed the drawers might be. Brushing aside some of the larger lumps of charcoaled wood, he put his hands to either side of the cabinet, near the top, and squeezed.