Obviously there’s this massive contradiction. If the Church really believes that demons are fallen angels who rebelled against God and were cast out of heaven, what’s it doing letting teenage boys summon them up from hell? The answer was a papal bull of 1601, Deo ipso annuente: on God’s nod, sorcerers can legitimately use the power of divine language to compel the obedience of demons.
Are you convinced?
Anyway, with the pope’s blessing the Society organizes itself and sets up national branches all over Europe. In England, they start out in Oxford, in the basement of All Souls College where nobody can hear the screaming. That works fine for over three hundred years, until the College Wars kick off and the Society declares itself neutral and ships itself seven miles downstream to Abingdon, where it knocks down the ruins of the old abbey and builds itself this swanky Gothic heap with offices in one wing and Saint Cyprian’s, where I learned how to be so clever, in the other.
Let’s jump ahead another seventy years. I’m six years old and I’m standing in the kitchen watching my dad open an envelope and pull out a fistful of banknotes. I stare up at the light shining through the paper: yellow like cowslips, blue like the sky.
I say, “Dad, it’s my money.”
I stretch out my hand, but he laughs and dangles a couple of banknotes just out of my reach. I’m part of the deal, not one of the dealers. And next day I’m sitting on my own in the back of a Ghost, staring at the back of the driver’s neck and wondering what I’ve done wrong and what’s going to happen to me.
As we swish through the town, people actually cross themselves and dash indoors. We turn into the driveway of Saint Cyprian’s and I stare up at this massive pile of mad brickwork—all spikes and gargoyles, with thousands of tiny pointed windows.
There’s this older kid waiting for me on the gravel: Charlie Burgess, dressed all in white, like an angel from a nativity play. It isn’t raining, but as I step out of the Ghost, shaking like a leaf, he opens this huge white umbrella and holds it over me as we walk between two lines of black ash, up to the main door.
Inside, it’s all black and white. Chessboard tiles. White walls and ceiling covered with black symbols. There’s an arched double door opposite us: one half black, the other white. Two men waiting for me, one wearing black robes, the other white.
They lead me up a flight of stone stairs, across a tiled landing, and through another door into the library. Stacks of books. Reading desks. The hiss of gas and the dark, heavy smell of magic. At the far end, a man in black robes, his hair tonsured, reading.
The door clicks shut behind me. I stand there waiting for someone to tell me what to do. When no one does, I walk nervously toward him. Despite my best efforts, a floorboard creaks, but he doesn’t look up until I’m just a couple of yards away.
“Sit down, Sampson.”
I’ve seen demons of all shapes and sizes. I’ve seen things appear and disappear and explode into a thousand fragments. But this was the biggest shock of my life: to be addressed for the first time ever by my surname, by this tall, thin-faced man with his beard and his ice-gray eyes.
For years I was terrified of Matthew.
Today I’m counting on him.
The reception committee is different, for a start. Instead of Charlie, a platoon of Knights of Saint Cyprian carrying swords and dressed in full protective livery: white shoes with magical symbols tattooed into the leather, white linen coats and trousers with symbols embroidered in red silk thread, bronze helmets.
I know what you’re going to say: this is all symbolic. But even if the Society of Sorcerers isn’t a private army, it sure acts like one. The Knights of Saint Cyprian are its disciplinary branch, recruited from its most antisocial dropouts: thugs with a pathetically weak Gift and no table manners who feel flattered at being allowed to hang around and do the Society’s dirty work. They’re crap with rabbits, but they can make a disobedient sorcerer disappear at the drop of a hat.
I’m expecting them. I manage not to faint.
I’m also expecting a windowless, candlelit room with a gang of middle-aged men in fancy dress and silly haircuts sitting around a long table. And that’s what I get. No sign of Matthew, and everybody looking at me like I’m something that crawled out from under a stone.
I’m expecting them to give me a hard time for waltzing off with human body parts. And that’s what I get. I point out that most of them must’ve done much the same in their time, which doesn’t go down very well.
After that it’s all downhill. The name Cimerez comes up. There’s no point pretending that I didn’t know what I was doing: demons don’t just turn up by accident. I explain that I was under a lot of pressure and struggling to get my head around the fact that I didn’t find contiguity and then Ferdia did.
“Look, I panicked,” I say at last, wondering where Matthew’s got to.
The committee just sit there like mangy, stuffed parrots. These guys, they’re all has-beens and I despise them. None of them are under fifty so they haven’t done a spark of magic for thirty years. What right have they got to sit in judgment on me? I could take them all out with one flick of my wrist . . .
If it wasn’t for the four magic circles, one in each corner of the room, and the four kids in full regalia, wands at the ready. I suppose I should feel flattered that they think I could be that dangerous.
I decide to play for sympathy. “I thought my Gift was being taken away,” I whisper.
My heart skips a beat at the sound of the door creaking open behind me. I look around, expecting Matthew. I shiver as a silky voice says:
“And has it?”
Ignacio Gresh, the Grand Inquisitor, wears a black suit over a gray shirt and a black tie with the Society crest embroidered on it. He has a fringe of tonsured silver hair over a dark, heavily scarred face. It looks like he was in a fire, or something, but nobody ever seemed to know for sure.
“Has the Lord taken back your Gift?”
“No,” I stammer. “At least, I don’t think so. I mean—”
“Which makes you the luckiest person in this room.”
“Not luck, just—”
“Tell me one thing, Sampson: what makes you so special? Every member of this board has had to face up to going post-peak, and we’ve managed it without resorting to cannibalism or unauthorized summonings—”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you say.”
Not very clever. Gresh steps forward to pick up a small silver handbell from the center of the table. “I think we can proceed to the vote now.”
He rings the bell.
Chairs scrape back. Where’s Matthew? He promised he’d be here . . .
There’s a small altar at one end of the room. Just a metal box on legs with enamel images of Saint Cyprian summoning demons and being cooked in a cauldron of boiling water. One after another the committee walk across to take a small ivory marble from a dish on top of the altar.
Along the wall at the other end of the room is an oak shelf supporting five wooden boxes, each about a foot square and six inches tall, and with a round hole in the top. The committee votes by dropping a marble into one of the boxes. It’s a simple count: the box with the most marbles wins.
Innocent: I walk away without a stain on my character.
Reprimand: I get torn off a strip in front of as many members of the Society as feel the need for a laugh.
Suspend: I lose my license for up to a year.
Revoke: I look for a new line of work altogether.
Death.
The vote is in no particular order; they just stand around waiting for the mood to take them. Three of them are whispering to each other. One is kneeling at the altar, eyes closed and hands clasped, praying for divine guidance . . . or waiting for someone to slip him fifty quid and tell him which way to vote.
There is still a single marble left in the dish on the altar. Gresh hasn’t moved.
His eyes follow the first member of the committee to step up to the shelf and cast his vot
e. The marble rattles in one of the middle boxes—I can’t see which. Not innocent, anyway. Not dead.
The bloke kneeling at the altar clambers to his feet. “As God is my judge,” he says, and walks across to vote to suspend me.
Three more of them are on the move, but they stop dead as the table creaks and Gresh takes his marble from the dish. He looks at me. Dead eyes, like a shark.
Nobody moves as he walks across to the shelf. He turns, with his arm extended, to make sure that everyone can see what he’s doing. His marble rattles in the box. Death.
I feel sick.
Yeah, something wrong with me—something missing. Every time the shit hits the fan I think, oh right, that’s how it feels. Then more shit flies and I feel even worse and I think this is it, this is as bad as it gets . . .
But this time it’s different.
I could say it’s like the rug being pulled out from under my feet. I could say it’s like falling into the abyss. I could say it’s like someone’s reached in and grabbed my guts and pulled them out.
But it’s not “like” anything. I mean, I’m trying to think. I feel cold. But it’s no good—this isn’t happening to me. I’m not dreaming, so they must’ve got the wrong bloke.
Yeah, this is about somebody else.
Whispering. Shuffling. The rattle of the marbles in the boxes. I’m trying to keep count. I see a couple of suspensions, maybe one revocation. But nobody’s said I’m innocent, or thinks a reprimand will do it.
And I’ve counted at least five votes for death.
Oh dear God.
The last marble rattles. Gresh and a couple of the committee members huddle around the shelf. The door creaks. Everyone looks around—
“Sorry I’m late.”
Matthew steps into the candlelight. He’s wearing the formal costume of the Superior General: a plain, black cassock. My head’s spinning. My heart is banging away. Saved! I grab the back of a chair to stop myself falling over.
“We have finished the vote,” says Gresh. He walks over to the table, holding one of the boxes. He slides it open. The marbles clatter out.
He smiles. “Death.”
Maybe not saved.
I’ve got this picture in my head: Matthew’s study, the day I got my final results at Saint Cyprian’s. He’s standing at the window, a black silhouette against the blazing sunshine. He turns with a sad smile and tells me that even though he is Superior General, there is nothing he can do.
I blink. I’m back in a room lit only by candles with everyone staring at me solemn-faced—except Gresh. You know that expression: “unholy glee”? Well, that’s what’s plastered all over his face. I’ve really made his day.
Nobody speaks. Nobody moves. That feeling again: this is nothing to do with me—they’re talking about somebody else.
I feel like I’m going to crap myself.
Matthew says, “As Superior General, I am exercising my veto.”
This seems like a good moment to pass out.
I’m sitting on a stone bench in a windowless cell, with my feet fettered to the wall. The key scrapes in the lock. The door opens.
“Take those off.” Matthew stands aside so that the warder can kneel to remove the leg cuffs.
“Thank you,” I say.
He holds up his hand and says to the warder, “That’s all.”
I hear the door close. I’m staring at the tiny stump where Matthew’s missing the finger. I was twelve when he fed it to a Presence to get me out of a hole.
“You’re a fool, Frank.”
“So why did you stop them?”
He takes a minute to think about that. “In the first place, because you were my pupil and I’m supposed to look after you. But mainly because it’s nothing to do with you: Gresh is just trying to use your stupidity to undermine my position as Superior General.”
I can’t think of anything better to do than hang my head.
Matthew explains the deal. My license is suspended for a year, and I have to do penance and go on pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Cyprian in Rome. On foot! If I get back in one piece, I have to perform an act of penance in front of as many members of the Society as can be bothered to turn up and help beat the crap out of me.
And if I don’t do what I’m told, Gresh, as Grand Inquisitor, has a personal supply of dry timber and a box of matches, and Matthew won’t be able to stop him.
“Do I really have to walk?”
Matthew actually laughs. “I think the Society will just be pleased to see you go. Seriously, Frank, this could be good for you—no, don’t pull faces—you need a little humility.” He sits down beside me. “Do you even know what that means?”
“Humility consists in keeping myself within my own bounds, not reaching out to things above me, but submitting to my superior.” I learned that by heart when I was eight.
“Being a sorcerer, it isn’t a license to run amok, it’s a huge responsibility. The Society could rule the world, but instead we choose to serve . . .”
And he goes off into this long sermon about my duty to God and to the Society and all that stuff. We all know this isn’t the first time Matthew’s saved my bacon. And I can see that by using his veto to get me off the bonfire, he’s given Gresh something to use against him. But to be honest, I sort of drift off a bit. I’m thinking about Cimerez: what did he mean? James Groce: did he really commit suicide? Marvo: have I totally narked her off? Kazia: will I ever see her again?
“. . . And I’ll smooth things over while you’re away.” Matthew doesn’t seem to have noticed that I’m not listening. He probably knows he’s wasting his breath anyway. “The Society needs you—but don’t forget that you need the Society, too.”
He gets to his feet. I want to ask him what really happened in Kernave and about how he adopted Kazia and whether that’s all there is to it . . . but this doesn’t seem like a good time.
“Right,” he says, “let’s get you out of here. And one last thing, Frank—please don’t do anything else stupid.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Digging
I know I just said it, but I’ll keep on saying it till we all get bored. There’s something wrong with me.
The clock in the cathedral tower is striking three. Maybe somebody up there likes me after all, because it’s a dry night, with clouds covering the moon. The cart is parked behind bushes on waste ground. I should be packing a rucksack for my hike to Rome, but here I am, underdressed and shivering as usual, following Charlie’s resurrection men over the wall into the suicide plot, with two spades, a covered lantern, and a crate of beer.
There are no markers—the whole point of a suicide plot is that the residents should be wiped from public memory—but there’s just enough light from a narrow chink in the lantern to locate Groce: he’s the freshly dug mound in the corner, under an ancient, grotesquely deformed yew tree. The lads seem to think it’s a major find and worth a beer apiece.
Leo is this old bloke with a face that’s sort of crumpled in on itself and long, gray hair combed flat across his bald crown and glued into place. Martin’s the masher: younger, red-faced, about five foot six and six feet wide. If you want a couple of rooms in your house knocked through, Martin’s your man. Just make sure you’ve got someone standing on the other side to stop him carrying on through the back wall and out into the garden.
They toss the empty bottles into the bushes and get stuck in with the spades while I pull five dead twigs off the yew tree and arrange them in a pentagram on the grass. It hasn’t rained since Groce was planted, so the earth is loose and dry. Every time I look back, it’s flying out.
“How much farther?” I hiss, an hour and a couple more beers later.
“No more,” says a soft voice right behind me.
Even in the middle of the night, he’s wearing his sunglasses. His flat-headed friend is beside him, looking mean.
“I am Vitas Siménas.”
This is interesting, in an alarming sort of way. He holds out his h
and. It’s huge, with dry, hard skin.
I manage some sort of smile. “I think I know your daughter.”
Leo and Martin are still digging away with their backs to us. There’s a hollow thud as a spade hits wood. “Frank!” Leo calls. He looks around and sees Flathead standing over the grave, holding a pistol.
“Keep digging, Leo.” I turn back to Siménas. “You don’t mind.”
He shrugs.
“I was reading about you and your wife.”
“He steal my daughter, your chief . . .”
“It was a legal adoption. I saw the papers.”
“I think Church take her, or she is dead.” Siménas sounds genuinely upset. “Ten years I look for her . . .”
Leo lays his spade on the ground beside the grave. Flathead steps back and lets him climb out slowly.
“What’s going on?” Leo asks, squinting as he opens a couple of beers.
“Dunno yet.” I uncover the lantern. Siménas follows me over to the graveside, where we peer down together.
The coffin is a crude affair. A rough wooden box built to hold together just long enough to get James Groce into the ground. Martin levers the lid off and clambers out after it.
The body lies there in a coarse shroud, smelling of quicklime and decay. There is a thin wooden stake protruding about six inches from the chest, to prevent him from coming back as a vampire or something.
“I don’t really get this suicide malarkey,” says Leo, passing Martin his beer. “Dead’s dead, far as I can see.”
“There are spells to make the dead rise again and foretell the future,” I say.
“But what does dead person know?” sighs Siménas.
We can’t stand around all night getting morbid. I hop down into the grave. Standing with one foot on each side of the coffin, I pull out the stake, which is just going to be a nuisance, and toss it onto the grass. Flathead jumps back, crossing himself frantically and kicking my protective twigs away.
Trying to ignore the smell, I balance the lantern on one corner of the coffin and pull out a penknife. I sense Siménas still standing over me as I start cutting away the shroud from the face.
A Dangerous Magic Page 20