by James Moore
Astrid left, leaving her only with Merrill. He took another cigarette out of his case, considered it, then flipped it towards
her so it landed in her lap. “Enjoy, Use,” he said, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was with cruelty or kindness. “You look like you could use one."
He left then, and Ilse searched about, seeing if he’d bothered to leave her a match.
Ilse had at last cleaned herself, using the servants’ shower and the harshest soaps she could find. Her skin felt red and raw, but the pain helped, even if it did little to wash away the stench of sulfur and lavender.
Cassandra, kindly, briefed her on the rest of what had been discovered as she led her to the chantry’s arcane library. Not only was Carl missing, but Jing Wei — who had arrived half an hour before them the previous night — was also unaccounted for. There were hopes that the mage and the Chinese girl had simply stepped out for an hour or so on the town, but in her heart, Use knew this to be untrue.
Once they stepped through the doors, candles about the room flickered to life, levitating to helpful heights and illuminating the pages of open books. The library was a shambles, the long research tables piled with tomes and scrolls, books laid open haphazardly and stacked on the floors, paperweights glittering as the candles hovered about them.
“Ulugh Beg!” Cassandra growled. “That man... I scarcely have the room in order before he has it all looking like a Scheibhaus! And bloodstains on the pages!”
She pointed at one ancient tome, red spots scabbing to brown at the bottom of the page, which then changed back to red, rolling off the book like beads of chromic mercury as the volume floated up and put itself back on the shelf.
Cassandra suddenly seemed not so much the Magus Prime of Vienna as she did the proper Austrian Hausfrau, ordering the books about like servants with a stern look here or a finger pointed there, each tome snapping shut with military precision and levitating swiftly to its appointed spot on the shelves. Scrolls furled themselves like war banners and placed themselves back in the racks, paperweights leapfrogged one over the other to be the first to sit on the ledge at the end of each stack, and books evened themselves up in all the bookcases until all that was left was a pool of blood in the middle of the central research table, quivering like jelly at Cassandra’s approach. With a severe look, she pointed to the nearest candle, and the jelly formed into a stream, leaping up and immolating itself in the flame.
All the candles glowed a shade brighter, and Cassandra kindly pulled out a chair for Use. “We do not allow drinking in the library, but if there is any book you wish to see, I will fetch it for you.”
“Please, I would like to know more about that demon, Charnas.”
Cassandra made the same gesture against evil as had Etrius, but refrained from swearing. “Will there be anything else?"
“No, thank you.”
Cassandra nodded. “I will send Kleist in to assist you if
need be. I am certain you have questions about Etrius, and
he...has the best source, at present. But as to the wicked one...
The Magus reached into her belt for a large brass keyring she brought up before her. Muttering softly in a language Ilse didn't know, Cassandra sorted through her keys, turning then back and forth around the ring, as if she were doing a puzzle or combination.
At last she stopped, holding a large, white key that looked to be carved from ivory or bone or grown into that shape like some tropical seashell. It had not been there before among all the brass, iron, silver and gold keys Ilse had seen on the ring, and Cassandra held it carefully by the head, as if it were something poisonous that might harm her if she touched the end.
Still muttering in the same strange language, Cassandra went to the wall, where there was a bookcase ilse had not noticed before, ebony and black lacquer, with charms and protective seals etched into the glass front. The Magus took the bone key and placed it in a crack in one of the ebony doors, turning, and the door came open. Her left hand made the Cornu again, then she reached in, counting volumes until she found the one she wanted. There was a sound like the cry of a newborn kitten as she slid it out from the others
Cassandra took it out through the half-open door, slamming the right side of the case shut, and Ilse would have sworn that the Magus pushed back some volumes that had not been pulled forward before, books on shelves that Cassandra had not even touched. She locked the door with the bone key, dropping it onto the ring and spinning its mates with a jangle and chime, coming around to a smaller key, this one of gold, the type you would use for a jewelry box, or a book.
Cassandra paused at the end of one of the stacks to select a paperweight, dropping it into the pocket of her purple dressing gown, then went to ilse and placed the book on the table before her.
It was bound in human skin. ilse could smell the scent of it and recognize the blood it had been boiled in, the whole tooled and tattooed in disturbing patterns with the corners fitted with tarnished silver. Two heavy, red-embroidered straps about it, joined in the center by a gold lock engraved with the names of God. Next to it, Cassandra placed the paperweight, which was not only a beautiful thing of glass, but also held a perfectly formed Star of David in the center, marked with the Hebrew characters that made it the Seal of Solomon.
“You may read the book, ilse, but speak none of the words aloud, and do not let any of them be copied down, even by Kleist. Especially by Kleist, because he does not yet understand that there is some knowledge that should not be recorded, and he does not know our ways.” She examined the golden key, as if considering whether she should allow this thing to occur, then at last leaned down and inserted it in the lock. The seal rotated, coining undone, and each of the straps fell away, taking with them one of the names of God. “When you have finished, close the book and place the weight atop it. I will come and see that it is properly put away.”
ilse nodded, and Cassandra left, the candles following after her like a swarm of fireflies.
ilse was left in the dark, but for six candles which stationed themselves in the air about her, forming a ward. Carefully she set aside the lock, then moved the straps away, reverent of each of the names of God tooled in gold leaf into the leather of each.
She then opened the book, smelling the unholy scent of murder.
The book was written on vellum, but the skin of newborn lambs was not of the standard variety, and written across the page, in the brown ink of blood, were the words:
Liber
Verborum
lnfandum
Literally, The Book of Unspeakable Words, or, more accurately, nefarious, unholy words.
Ilse turned the page, reading the first section. The text was in black here, with words of particular emphasis in faded brown, but the whole thing smelled of human flesh, charred bones and blood.
The Latin was something she had read before, a variant on the first section of Genesis: In the beginning, the world was without form and void, and Darkness moved upon the face of the Deep. Then there came the Word, and the Word was God.
It was not quite the same as the Bible, growing more divergent the further she read, though much of the story was familiar.
God had spoken the world into being, and each word he spoke was a new thing.
Then — and here was where it diverged from texts she had read before — God became displeased with words he had spoken, and they were cast out and forbidden, stricken from the book of creation. Yet each word was a thought, and each thought was a soul, and each of those forbidden words, those sounds which must not be spoken, was a separate angel, a fallen one cast into the reaches of darkness and obscurity. Each of these thoughts, these evil sounds, these wicked words, formed a dissonance around the symphony of creation, attempting to work their way back into the pages of the Book of Life. Mispronunciations and half notes, they were very close to the words which God had approved. So much so that one could guess their powers if one knew the words of the True Tongue, that language which God ha
d used, which was very close to Latin.
Chamas. Use thought the word over in her head, but did not voice it, thinking on what Master Harry and Dr. Dee had said. Charnas, close to Carnas — Flesh, Cearas —Blood, and Chara — Delight. Then there was Charon, the ferryman of Death. Flesh, Blood, Delight, Death — it was a powerful charm that went between them, all things often forbidden in and of themselves, but for an unspoken word between the lines.
The book strained under her finger, the pages wanting to flip. Ilse could feel it, but she then chose to allow it and removed her hand, ready to slam the Solomon’s Seal paperweight down atop it all if it did anything more.
The pages flew by, one after the other, the book opening more than two-thirds of the way, until at last it stopped at a set of pages held together by a band of human skin, etched with pentacles and other protective seals. Across the page was writ: Beyond here lie Damned words which must not be spoken, or else Evil will be loosed upon the World.
One hand on the paperweight, Use carefully slipped the band aside, freeing the last of the pages. The top five flipped past, then Use was looking straight at the grinning face of Charnas.
He was dressed in the clothes of a matador clown, a jester from a medieval bullfight, but there was no mistaking the dusky purple face or the delighted leer. Around him lay carnage and gore, bits and pieces of human bodies, some of them still recognizable and most of them sexual.
Use glanced down to what was written below. Beyond the standard seals and bindings and Beware this evil one was more information, confirming what she already knew and had experienced: ... for he is sometimes known as Bloodlust, or Delight-in-Death, but he is all these things and more. He is one of the first Evils to work his way back onto the Page of Creation, for when Eve tasted the Apple, it was this one who took Pleasure in the Fruit. When Caine slew his brother, Abel, it was this one who Delighted in the Murderer's Heart. When the Sabine women were Raped and the city Burned, this one was there.
Know him by these Signs: his scent is Lavender, the herb of Killers and Harbts; his color is the same, the shade of Perversity and Perversion; his voice is that of the Kitten, the Pup, and the Spoiled Child, the note of Gleeful Cruelty. See him in the Smile of the Predator. Hear him in the Murderer's Laugh. Know that he is inside you when you sate Forbidden Lusts, or take Pleasure in that which you know is Wrong. He is the Joy of Evil Flesh, the Delight in Wrongdoing, the Satisfaction of Wickedness. Innocence is scant protection, and Ignorance is none. Beware this Fiend and Listen Not to his Temptations, for young or old, all Fall Prey!
“It’s not a very good likeness," said a voice, and Use jumped and looked around, her dead heart almost leaping from her mouth.
But instead of Charnas, whom she’d half-expected to appear, there stood Dieter Kleist — in aura as well as form.
Hastily, she shut the book, then she heard the pages mewling under her fingers. She reopened it and fit the protective band around the pages of the last section, slamming the cover shut and placing the weight on top. The book lay there without a sound, looking like any other ancient tome underneath the glass sphere.
Kleist set his own book on the table, the large, black journal which he held tight to his chest when he did not have it open to work on. Now he had it out for display, and ilse realized she was being given a singular honor. With a banker’s precision, the artist measured back a number of pages from his latest piece, flipping them back to reveal a composite portrait of Charnas.
Blue ink and Kleist’s blood mixed to match the dusky purple of the fiend, the sketches showing the imp leaping, jumping, changing form and frolicking with delight in a chronicle of his nefarious deeds throughout the chantry. He slipped inside in a deliveryman's pocket in the form of a peepshow keychain, capering with joy at his own cleverness... then took the form of Carl and gave instructions to Ulugh Beg’s mistress outside the door to the Turkish baths.
ilse did not want to turn the next page, knowing what she would see there, and it was not something she wished to relive, especially through the artist’s eye. She feared that the imp himself would leap off the page, yet at the corners of each sheet, Kleist had inscribed potent charms, the Seal of Solomon set over an evil-looking design, which she could only assume to be the sigil of the demon Charnas.
She touched the page hesitantly, studying the artist’s work. “How did you come by these?”
“The Spirit’s Touch,” Kleist said, and she looked up to see him placing his fingers beside his eye. “With it, I can see anything that was. What I see, I can record. This house has many memories.”
Use turned back to the page. “I — I meant the seals." She flattened the page under her hand, the candles illuminating them plainly. “This is the sigil of Cha — of the imp, isn’t it?” “It is the sigil of the demon, but they are one and the same.” Kleist sat down next to her, tracing the strange curves and circles of the mark with his finger. “With the discipline of Auspex, one can see the soul, and if one has an eye for beauty, as do those of my clan, then one also has an eye for ugliness — if the seer can stand to look. Good is light, and light is beauty, and beauty is truth. But where darkness is their absence, evil is their inverse." He paused, his hand stiffening, then relaxed and traced the form of the imp. “Evil too has colors, if you have the eyes to see.”
ilse remembered her first glimpse of Charnas, in Crowley’s chamber of horrors, a silhouette of evil, fulgent against the darkness. She shivered and looked away from the page, turning to the strange artist.
Kleist gazed at her with his penetrating dark eyes until he seemed satisfied that she understood. “Each color has a note attached to it, a note of fragrance, a note of music, a mathematical number. If you can perceive and remember them, you can graph them and know all there is to know about these things.”
“This is High Magic you’re speaking.”
He shrugged. “Etrius has taught me some. It is little different from what I already knew in my heart and what I had been taught by my clan. Art is art is Art. It is all just a matter of perception." He perused her aura, his eyes scanning the air around her. “I can see where this one has touched you, and his fragrance lingers. Sulfur and lavender. Sulfur is the scent of demons, while lavender is the herb of war and prostitutes.” He nodded to the volume Cassandra had gotten for Ilse. “I do not know what it says in that book, but I would suspect it is little different than what I have told you."
The Toreador was the most strange and chilling young man that Ilse had ever met, and she felt like she was in front of a camera, Kleist’s dark eyes tracking and recording her every nuance and secret. Not judging or theorizing, solely observing.
She nodded. “What it says is similar. How do you know this?”
“Art is art. What you have read in these books here, I have heard in poetry or seen in paintings. The symbols are the same.” He smiled, a bare twitch of the lips. “I may not know art, but I know what I like, and what I like is magic. That is the touchstone of art. A equals B, B equals A.” He closed his book and hugged it to his chest, as if possessive of its secrets. “The Lesser Etrius has confirmed much of what I already know.”
“The Lesser...?”
Dieter smiled, his eyes taking on that strange and abstracted look that Toreadors sometimes got when they were seeing something which others could not appreciate. “Would you like to hear a story? I know one. It's a very pretty story, and few of your clan know it. It is said to be a fragment of the Book of Nod, the tales of Caine, though I cannot say for certain."
“Go — Go ahead," Ilse stammered, staring at the strange expression on Kleist’s face, as if he were seeing something completely different than what was before him, using her sullied aura as a scrying globe.
The Toreador smiled. “My clan likes to tell this tale, though it’s not much of a story. More of an anecdote. You see, God is an artist, as are we. Oh, everyone likes to say that God is like them. The Ventrue say that He is a king, your clan that He is a magician, the Malkavians that He is
mad, and the Nosferatu that He is cruel and ugly. There is truth in all these, I suppose, for beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in beauty, truth. Yet we, who have an eye for beauty, and thus truth, hold that God is an artist. One has only to look at the world to see the truth in this. The world is beautiful, even where it is ugly and grotesque, yet no work of art is ever finished, only abandoned, and this is what God has done with ours. He is not dead; He has merely gone on to his next creation, as any proper artist should, and as for whether our world is finished or just hopelessly flawed, it is a matter of opinion.
“But as I said, God is an artist and was an artist, and all artists, before they set out to create a masterwork, do at least one study. God’s masterwork for this world was Man, with all his folly and beauty, a portrait of the artist as a young God. But before God began His masterwork, he did His study, creating a smaller version of His Man, not out of flesh and blood, but out of wood and sap — the Mandrake. This was God’s study, and this is why the root has the form of Man.”
The Toreador gazed into space as if seeing God in His studio, a wistful smile across the young man's lips. “Like all studies, it was cast aside, becoming a lesser work in the Gallery of the Garden of Eden, a curiosity for scholars and students, forgotten while the greater work went on to achieve fame and prominence. Yet the Mandrake, being made in God’s image, and thus Man’s, was prone to the same desires as Man, and it envied Man, for the poor, forgotten Mandrake had no soul. This was at a time when God was still not finished with His creation and was in every artist’s stage of fussing over and admiring His work, making last-minute corrections and revisions, and at this point, the Mandrake asked God if it too could have a soul, so it could be as Man, to which God replied that if the Mandrake wished to have a Man’s soul, it should find a Man who was done with his and ask him. If the Mandrake could get the Man to agree, then at Judgment Day, when God cast the world anew — if God ever cast the world anew — the Mandrake would be given the Man’s soul and would receive his share of immortality for the next world.