Item: one copper wand, nineteen and a half inches long.
Item: one sachet of copper filings.
I feel sick, which is actually encouraging. I sit down in the chair behind the desk, where the body was found. I close my eyes. I listen. I smell. I feel. My chest rises and falls. My heart beats. I open my eyes.
Nothing.
I’m not psychic. I can’t read minds or pick things up and tell you who they belong to. I don’t even get insights, like Marvo; just wild guesses—usually wrong. I stare up again at the cherubs on the ceiling. They stare down at me, like they know a fool when they see one.
I get up from the chair, lift the rug, and find nothing more sinister than floorboards. I walk the perimeter of the room. This is a waste of time. I’m too tired to think. My head hurts. My legs are shaking. A healer would say I was coming down with the flu, but I recognize the symptoms of psychic resistance. I know there’s something here. It knows I know and the spell that protects it is doing everything in its power to knock me over.
It’s a battle of wills. My powers against those of sorcerer or sorcerers unknown.
The compass finds magnetic north for me. I close my eyes and spread my arms and shuffle around—I practiced this over and over at Saint Cyprian’s—to face true north. Wallace stares disdainfully down at me from the portrait above the mantelpiece. The hell with him; he’s dead anyway and he probably asked for it.
I bow. I manage not to spill any copper filings as I sprinkle them into the palm of my hand. I mutter the incantation and blow them across the room.
I turn around to face south. Bow. Mutter. Blow.
West.
East.
I stumble across to the fireplace and an infinite weariness descends upon me. I have to lean against the mantelpiece and beg my legs not to give way on me. My mind has gone blank. What am I doing here? It’s a couple of seconds before I can remember what I’m supposed to say—
“Nitrae, Radou, Sunandam.”
I pull myself upright and put the tip of the wand against the wall, immediately below the portrait, and start tracing a wavering line along the wall, counterclockwise—widdershins, if you want to be a smart aleck. I scrape along the backs of a shelf of books and turn the first corner.
One of the French windows bangs open. The curtains billow in the draft and wrap themselves around me. I try to twist my way out of them and succeed only in tangling myself even more tightly.
I panic. The drapery feels alive. It has forced my left arm down to my side and is grasping and pulling, trying to wrestle the wand out of my fingers. It has pulled the pentacle tight and wound the chain around my throat. It covers my nose, and is forcing itself into my mouth and tightening around my chest, squeezing the breath out of me.
My instinct is to fight it, but I know there’s nothing to fight. I stop struggling. I make no effort to breathe. I let go and fall back into the drapery’s hold. It clutches me, like a mother rocking a child. The world is dark and warm . . .
The floorboards are cold against my cheek. The curtains hang motionless.
“Looking for something?” Wallace is grinning down at me from the wall.
“Yeah, your murderer.” I realize I’m hallucinating, but I can’t stop myself. “Are you going to help me?”
“Help you do what? Make a fool of yourself? You don’t need my help for that. Skinny little freak!”
“Arsehole!”
Sorry, I keep saying that. I roll away from the curtains and struggle to my feet. Where was I? Oh yes:
“Nitrae, Radou, Sunandam.”
More bookshelves. Another corner. The wall behind the desk. My legs are like rubber. The wand shakes uncontrollably in my hand.
I stop to catch my breath. The rows of books are writhing before my eyes, stretching and contracting like giant accordions. I can feel Wallace staring down at my back like a father watching a toddler mess about in a playpen.
I struggle on, supporting myself with my free hand, as far as the door. I’m close to throwing up. There’s a noise like a steam hammer in my ears. I close my eyes to stop the room spinning. I can’t breathe . . .
It takes an enormous effort of will to carry on. I realize that I’m wrong. I should be out looking for the girl I love. Instead I’ve made a complete fool of myself and narked everybody off. Marvo’s bound to spill the beans about Groce and then I’m sunk.
One of the necessary attributes of a good sorcerer is that you keep going when any normal, responsible person would stop. The downside is that ninety-nine times out of a hundred you make a complete arse of yourself.
Like I have now. Big time.
Only I haven’t. My spell bites, and I realize that although I looked all around the library the morning after Wallace was killed, there is one spot that I never actually managed to see. It’s the corner to the right of the fireplace, left of the door. And I’ve found what I was looking for: a second door, invisible until this moment. It’s narrow and comes to a pointed arch at the top, and it’s covered with magical symbols. Some of them look centuries old, carved and scratched into the surface. Some are recent, drawn in what looks like blood. The tip of my wand scrapes a shower of dust from the dry, gray wood.
“Hey!” it growls. “Do you mind?”
I can breathe now. The room has stopped spinning and I’ve wiped that smug grin off Wallace’s face. The copper disc has done its work: I take it off and stick it in my pocket. I turn the ring handle slowly and silently, and feel the latch lift on the other side of the door. There’s a flight of stone steps leading down through the darkness toward a hint of light.
I listen. Nothing.
I take my boots off and carry them as I creep silently down the steps. The tingle of magic through my socks gets steadily stronger until I find myself standing in an arched colonnade that runs all the way around a candlelit circular space at least twenty yards across. The outer wall has shelves, cupboards, and several doors, all closed.
I put my boots down on the bottom step. The cellar floor is made of black tiles and although it’s been washed I can still make out the remains of five concentric circles, the outermost about seven yards across, and of various letters and symbols scattered around them. At the center is a triangle containing a circle large enough for one person to stand in.
Just beyond the outer circles—to the east, I guess—a dozen or so scattered strips of what looks like goatskin. Before they were kicked loose, I figure they were pinned together to form a triangle. I can see a couple of the fastenings: bent iron nails traditionally taken from the coffin of a dead child.
There are a few unorthodox touches, but what we’re looking at here are the remains of a Grand Honorian Circle. It’s not something I use myself. It’s mainly associated with a ritual described in the Roman Grimoire and used to summon up Lucifuge Rofocale, but it will stretch to any demon. It’s simple and powerful, but hard to control, so the Society deprecates it. A lot of unlicensed sorcerers like it for its rapid response time: the quicker you get an illegal summoning over, the better!
Four silver candlesticks have been pushed to one side. Three still hold red candles, as thick as my wrist and burning steadily. Shattered fragments of the fourth have been swept into a pile with chalk dust, herbs, lumps of charcoal, several gold coins, and more nails from the goatskin triangle.
I peer up into the dome, where gold stars twinkle in the candlelight. My God, I’d kill for a place like this! They should open it up to the public: a perfect example of a medieval sorcerer’s lair.
I find a mop sticking out of a bucket of dirty brown water, an overturned brazier, a linen coat and paper crown thrown over a chair. I crouch beside a bundle on the floor and open the silk wrapping to reveal several knives and a ceremonial sword. One of the knives still has dark smears along the blade. I examine the sword: the blade is short—probably less than two feet—but razor sharp. Some attempt has been made to wipe it clean, but I can see the traces of written characters and more dark brown smears.
Moving around in my socks, trying to avoid spatters of dried blood, I step on something sharp. I stoop and pick up a big, ugly, square ring. Gold, with a whopping great amethyst. I slip Henry Wallace’s episcopal ring into my pocket.
Let me conjure you up a dirty old man who fancies one of the housemaids; only she doesn’t fancy him. But he’s got a card up his sleeve: a young secretary who can do a bit of illegal magic and summons up a demon to go and compel her to come to him.
The trouble with unlicensed sorcerers is, they don’t get the training or the practice. So mistakes get made. The spell is supposed to put the maid’s boyfriend into a deep sleep. But it doesn’t. He follows her and the demon . . .
That’s what Amber Trickle said she saw. Not a dog, a demon leading Alice Constant through the gate from the riverbank, past an elemental who just falls over, and into the palace where James Groce catches up with them and finds . . .
Well, all this stuff I can see lying around the place. And a naked bishop.
People start forgetting that they’re grown-ups. Groce grabs a knife. Wallace’s chest looks like a good place to park it. Alice, I assume, snaps out of the spell and runs for it, leaving Groce and Akinbiyi standing over a dead bishop. I bet it was Akinbiyi who had the bright idea of covering up the use of black magic and preserving his employer’s reputation by making it look like a political assassination. They cut off Wallace’s head and stick it in the reliquary. Totally barmy, but it works. It looks like the nutty wing of the Anti-Sorcery Brotherhood has dreamed up this grotesque gesture . . .
Until I come along and find no affinity between the head and body. OK, Ferdia comes along behind me and does find contiguity; but like I said he’s post-peak and not very clever, so he’s just getting the result he expected.
The guy who hits the nail right on the head is Cimerez. “Fact is, Frank, this guy has no head.”
I get the joke now.
Conjuring a demon is a risky business. If you don’t dismiss it properly and put it back where you got it from, it’s like it’s got this hook into your soul and it can just reel you in. Might take years, but it’ll land you eventually. So you’ve got to cut the line . . .
This ceremonial sword I’m clutching, it’s been consecrated. I’ve got a dozen just like it: I use them at the end of a ritual to sever the affinity with any Presence I’ve summoned—like I did with Cimerez. And I figure that if I hacked off a human head with it . . . well, despite Einstein’s second law, the natural affinity between the head and body would be destroyed. They would be magically traumatized into forgetting each other. No contiguity. A body with no head.
I’m feeling good. Like I’m on top of this. Like it all makes sense.
Like my Gift is still holding.
Except I’m juggling my flashlight, my wand, several knives, and a sword . . . and something’s got to give. The sword rattles on the tiles. And as the echoes die away I hear something move.
I do magic, OK? Not tough guy stuff. I leave the sword lying where it fell and duck behind one of the columns. A door creaks open. I peer around the back of the column and wait for Akinbiyi to step out.
It’s all so obvious, once you’ve worked it out. I’m remembering the first day: how he came running after me and Marvo on our way down to the riverside gate; the look on his face when Charlie suggested sorcery. He’s around the palace, doing stuff for Wallace all the time. OK, Kazia said he was twenty-one or something, so it’s a bit of a stretch, but he’s not too old to do a bit of informal sorcery for his boss . . .
But of course I’m wrong. It isn’t Akinbiyi, is it? He’s no more a sorcerer than Caxton is. The only person I’m fooling is myself—and I’m not making a very good job of that.
A silhouette appears. My heart stops dead as Kazia stumbles out into the chamber.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Visibility
She looks like she’s been to hell and back. Hollow cheeks, red-rimmed eyes. Her hair is greasy, standing up in peaks where she’s slept on it. She’s barefoot, shaking hands fumbling with the buttons of a frayed cardigan, which looks kind of vulnerable and cute over a crumpled blouse. She starts to yawn—
Then freezes with her mouth wide open, staring at the fallen sword.
She stoops to pick it up, glancing around nervously. As she catches sight of my boots at the bottom of the stairs, I step out behind her and say, “What the hell are you doing down here?”
Nice work, Frank. She jumps a clear three feet in the air and lashes out with the sword. I jump back to avoid being decapitated like Wallace, fall over a candlestick, and go flying. My head hits the floor . . .
And my headache’s back. Also, my neck is hurting, just below the Adam’s apple where the tip of the sword is pricking my skin. When I try to crawl away, it bites deeper. I feel a trickle of blood running down my throat.
“But it can’t be you,” I stammer. “You’re a girl!”
She steps away. I put my fingers to my throat. Yep, I’m bleeding.
She’s waiting to see what I do, knees slightly bent, the sword held in both hands, like a startlingly attractive Roman gladiator.
I’m not doing anything. I’m still fighting to get my head around this, because it’s all wrong. We did it in first year: girls never receive the Gift.
Is there anyone I can believe?
“How long have you been down here?”
She has to think for a moment. “Nearly four days.”
“Hiding from your father? I bumped into him.”
She lowers the sword. “Did he hurt you?”
“I’m OK. You?”
She’s as pale as death, with lines etched into her face like the design engraved in the silver pentacle hanging around her neck. As she moves, it dances on a thin chain, glinting in the candlelight.
Marvo was right all along. Damn her and her insights.
Let me conjure you up another picture—like the first one, but different in one very important respect. We’re in this cellar, ten days ago. The Grand Honorian Circle is complete, with four red candles burning at the north, south, east, and west. It isn’t Akinbiyi, though; it’s Kazia standing at the center, facing east toward the goatskin triangle. She’s wearing the usual paper crown, linen coat, and slippers. She’s got her wand in her hand, the knives tucked into her belt, and the sword balanced across her toes.
She’s not alone. In the flickering candlelight she can see Henry Wallace sitting beneath the colonnade, inside another circle. He is wearing his blue silk dressing gown and tapping his fingers impatiently on the arms of his chair. Behind him, a door leads through to a small chamber with a freshly made bed.
Her voice rises and falls. The candles flicker and almost go out. She holds out the tip of her wand to the coals glowing in the brazier—
“I invoke and conjure thee, by Baralamensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachie, Apoloresedes, and the most potent princes Genio and Liachide; I exorcise and command thee—”
It goes on for a long time. The downside of being an unlicensed sorcerer is that without formal training you can’t get a fix on which bits are padding and can be safely skipped. I can cut out pages of this stuff and get through it in less than half the time it takes her.
Still, she gets there eventually.
“Do thou forthwith appear and show thyself unto me in a fair and human shape, without any deformity or horror. Come presently, come visibly, manifest that which I desire—”
And he does. In the goatskin triangle, as a black dog who apparently understands English.
“Go to the house of James Groce, rector of the parish of Saint Ebbe’s, and cast a deep sleep upon him. Then bring to this place Alice Constant . . .”
The dog turns and pads off up the stairs and out of sight. Wallace sighs and stretches in his chair. One hand slips inside his dressing gown. Kazia stands immobile in the circle. The candles flutter in the draft filtering down the stairs.
An hour passes.
Wallace has dozed off. Kazia is the first to sens
e a change, a thickening of the atmosphere in the chamber. There is the sound of claws scratching on stone. Wallace’s eyes flicker open. He gets to his feet, securing the knot of his dressing gown. He smooths back his hair as if there’s some sort of consent involved here.
The dog is back. It stops and looks at Kazia, mouth open like it’s grinning, its long forked tongue darting out of its mouth. It brays like a donkey.
And Alice Constant steps down from the staircase into the chamber. Her eyes are fixed. Her mouth hangs slightly open. Her hands are at her neck, holding her nightdress closed. She doesn’t react when Wallace pulls them away. She’s like a mechanical doll.
The dog pads back into the triangle. As Kazia shuffles around to face it, the sword still balanced across her toes, Wallace’s dressing gown falls to the floor.
Does he think he looks sexy?
Rushing feet on the steps. James Groce flies into the room. He stops dead, staring at Alice and Wallace. He darts into the circle and grabs one of the knives from Kazia’s belt.
Wallace is holding Alice by the shoulders and swings her around to shield himself. The candlelight glints along the blade. Wallace squeals and dodges, trying to keep Alice between him and trouble.
With his free hand, Groce pulls her out of the way. Wallace yelps as the blade slashes across his palm and suddenly the knife is in his chest. Groce stumbles back. Wallace is just standing there, staring down at the handle protruding from his rib cage. He tries to grasp it, but his hand won’t obey him.
He looks at Kazia, but she’s busy re-establishing the integrity of the circle. He manages one step toward her, then drops to his knees and crashes down on his side.
Kazia has a lot of balls in the air. A dead bishop. An angry rector. A housemaid in a trance. And an increasingly restless demon who needs getting rid of. She raises her wand—
Of course, once you look at it from the right angle, it all makes sense. The cropped hair, everything. I’ve got a lot to kick myself for.
A Dangerous Magic Page 23