The Forgotten

by R. L. King

  “In name only. This one caters to a—slightly more nefarious clientele.”

  Jason stared at him. “It’s a black magic shop?”

  Stone nodded. “Right in one.”

  “And you went there, and they let you get away?” He looked around again as if expecting to find someone following them.

  “Not all black mages are evil,” Stone told him. “Some of them simply prefer—more expedient methods of getting things done, and have a somewhat more malleable moral core. The proprietor of that shop and I go back a long way. I wouldn’t call us old chums, exactly, but we’re not enemies. Occasionally we compare notes on research problems.”

  “Did you have to tell him what we were doing?” In Jason’s mind, the fewer unnecessary people who knew about their search for Verity, the better.

  Stone shook his head. “No. The items I purchased were fairly generic.” He chuckled a little. “If old Stefan knew about what I was preparing to do and how I’d learned to do it, he’d have been practically salivating to get his hands on my book. I can’t let that happen. I have a lot of respect for his abilities, but I would never trust him with that sort of thing.”

  “Wait a sec,” Jason said, twisting in his seat to face Stone. “You’re going to do black magic? I thought you said that was a bad idea. That it—what did you say? Corrupts your soul or something?”

  “Not corrupts. Not something this small and simple. Blots a bit, yes. But it has to be done, and it’s not like this is the first time I’ve done magic that’s not strictly white.” He smiled a little, but his eyes were still serious. “I guess you could say I’m a white mage with a few streaks of gray here and there.”

  They continued driving, and Jason soon realized they weren’t heading back to the cottage near Stanford. “We’re not going home?” he asked, surprised.

  Stone shook his head. “I’d like to get moving on this as soon as possible so we can find Verity. It will be dark soon—no helping that—but if we succeed, I’d rather not be out tracking her down at midnight.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “Madame Huan has a friend who lives in the Los Gatos hills. He’s got an outbuilding he’s willing to let us use.”

  “How far is that?”

  “We should be there in half an hour or so.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jason could tell right away that the place they were going was a much more upscale end of the Bay Area than most of those they’d been visiting—even nicer than the part of Palo Alto where Stone’s place had been. “Madame Huan’s friend must have money.”

  “No doubt,” Stone agreed as they left the main drag and turned right onto a tree-lined, two-lane road. It meandered past some expensive homes for a couple miles, then began to gain elevation and grew more twisty. The streetlights were infrequent, but they all worked up here, and Jason could see the closed gates along the road and the twinkling lights far back from them indicating homes at the ends of long driveways.

  Their destination was a small building behind an impressive-looking house at the end of another long, sweeping driveway.

  Stone got out of the car, gathered up the items in the backseat, and motioned for Jason to follow him.

  Jason wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but if he’d been given twenty guesses he wouldn’t have come close. Looking over Stone’s shoulder, he saw a large empty room with a smooth wooden floor, track ceiling lighting, and a full-length mirror along the entire opposite wall. At about waist height along the mirror was a wooden bar attached to the wall and running its full length. There was nothing else in the room except for a couple of small tables, three folding chairs, and a stack of cardboard boxes labeled XMAS STUFF piled against the far right wall. The room had no windows, and the musty smell of a disused space hung in the air.

  “What—is this?” Jason asked again, stepping inside. His footsteps echoed ominously.

  Stone closed the door and put his various bags and cases down on the smaller of the tables. “Madame Huan’s friend’s daughter was quite serious about the ballet, so he built her this studio so she would have a place to practice. She’s at university back East now, though, and he hasn’t gotten around to repurposing the room for other uses.”

  “So—we’re gonna do magic in a ballet studio.” Jason sounded dubious. “I guess it’s better than a barn. Or a basement.”

  “Much better than a barn, since one of my main requirements was a large mirror.” Stone grabbed the larger table and began dragging it across the room. “Give me a hand, will you?”

  Jason picked up the other end of the table and, under Stone’s direction, helped him place it directly in front of the mirror halfway along the wall. Stone retrieved the items from the other table and brought them over. Opening the leather satchel first, he pulled out a wooden bookstand with a small, flexible attached light and put it in the center of the table. Then he removed two red candles (Jason was starting to surmise that it was impossible to do magical rituals without at least one candle) and placed them on either side of the bookstand. Finally, he took out a purple silk cloth and laid it out lengthwise in front of the stand, and a black leather sheath from which he drew a black-bladed knife. He placed that on top of the cloth.

  Stone put the satchel aside and took up the bag. From it he took a shallow copper chalice and put it down behind the bookstand, between the two candles. Then he removed a smaller bag. Crouching down near the wall, he carefully poured reddish sand in a thin line, making a semicircle that surrounded the table and about three feet of space around it. It looked like he was using icing to decorate some kind of weird cake; when he finished, the two ends of the semicircle met the mirror, making the real half and its reflection appear like a full circle. Then he stepped back and examined the scene. Nodding, he picked up the briefcase, withdrew the book, opened it to a particular page and placed it on the stand, taking care not to smudge the sand.

  Jason moved in closer and looked at the open book. The pages themselves seemed to be made of some sort of heavy parchment, or possibly thin, cured leather. The text written on them was in rust-colored ink, and didn’t look even close to any written language he’d ever seen. There were several diagrams on the two pages, including a small depiction of a chalice like the one Stone had placed, and another that looked similar to the knife currently resting on the purple cloth.

  “Okay,” he said. “Looks like you’re all set up here. You mind filling me in on what we’re doing?”

  Stone nodded. Before he spoke, though, he lit the two red candles, flicked on the bookstand’s light, and then moved over to switch off the overhead lights. The result was an eerie flickering glow around the table, illuminating the items and about three feet of mirror on either side of the table. The bookstand’s light was not harsh, but it was bright enough that they could see the open pages. “First of all,” he said at last, “I have to tell you that I’ve lied to you about something.”

  Jason stared at him, startled and a little nervous. “You—did?”

  “Yes. I told you that it’s not possible to do summoning spells with only one mage.”

  “Uh…okay. Yeah, I do remember you saying something like that.”

  “I also told you it wasn’t possible to use magic to locate someone without a tether object, which was why we couldn’t try again after your sister’s stuffed bear was destroyed in the explosion.”

  “So—it is possible, then?”

  Stone nodded. “It is. The things I told you before assumed that the only magical techniques available were of the white variety.”

  Jason eyed the items arrayed on the table. “You’re going to use black magic to summon something?”

  “Exactly.” Stone’s eyes picked up the flickering flames of the two candles, giving him an uncomfortably demonic look. “We are going to summon a spirit and, using you as our tether object, send it off to search for your
sister. If all goes well, it will find her and return to us with her location.”

  “Using me? What do you mean?”

  Stone looked him up and down. “This is the part where you get to back out if you want to. I will tell you that this particular technique does involve a certain amount of danger—to me more than to you, but there is still a chance that something could go terribly awry and you could sustain serious injury—or worse. Consider that a disclaimer.”

  “What do I have to do?” Jason was trying to keep his fear under control, reminding himself that he was doing this—all of it—for Verity. “And how big a chance is there that something will go wrong?”

  “In order for a living person to serve as a tether for a location spell, two things must occur. First, he or she must have some strong connection to the person sought. The stronger, the better. Blood ties work best, though strong feelings will do in a pinch, especially if there’s a sexual connection. You, as her sibling, are nearly ideal. The only better choice would be a parent or child.”

  “That makes sense,” Jason said, nodding. “And since both our parents are dead and she doesn’t have any kids, that pretty much makes me the best you got. But what do I have to do? What’s the second thing?”

  “The second thing,” Stone told him, “is that the tether must provide his or her life essence to fuel the casting.”

  “Life essence?”

  “Blood.”

  “Blood,” Jason repeated. He had the wild urge to laugh along with his inner twelve-year-old: Oh, that’s a relief. I thought you meant the other life essence. I’m not really feeling up to providing any of that right about now. But still— “Uh—how much blood?”

  “Not much. A few drops, into the chalice there. That’s what the knife is for. I’ll have to provide some as well, since I’ll be doing the actual summoning.”

  Jason was still confused. “Okay, I have to cut my finger and bleed into a cup. That doesn’t really sound that hard, or that dangerous. I don’t get it.”

  Stone’s expression was sober. “Jason, first of all, the sacrifice of life essence to fuel a spell is extraordinarily powerful, even in such a symbolic fashion as just a few drops of blood. I’ve never done anything like this before. This summoning is fairly minor—I’d never attempt it if it weren’t—but nonetheless, this is uncharted territory for me. I think I know what I’m doing, but if I’m wrong—” He shook his head. “If the spirit breaks free from my control, I have no way of knowing what it will do. Spirits don’t like to be controlled or ordered about. That’s why it normally takes so many mages to do a summoning—it requires that level of willpower to keep the summoned spirit confined and to ensure that someone doesn’t become tempted to use it for his or her own purposes. By doing this ritual—” He pointed at the open book. “—we’re circumventing those safeguards. The only thing keeping us safe is my ability to keep the spirit under control, and to not allow it to tempt me.”

  “And if it breaks your control…” Jason started.

  “If it breaks my control, that likely means it’s killed me. And since you’re the only other living being in the area, you’ll probably be its next target, for having the audacity to participate in its summoning. After that, it will almost certainly return to its home plane. But there’s always the chance it will decide that it likes it here, and run wild for a while before returning.”

  “But we won’t care at that point, since we’ll both be dead,” Jason pointed out, only half-sarcastically.

  “True,” Stone admitted. “But it’s also possible that it might go after Verity, since she’s the one it was meant to go find in the first place. And if it does find her, I can guarantee it will do more than simply point, shout ‘Found her!’ and nip off for home.”

  Jason pondered that. “So that’s the choice, then. You don’t have any other way of finding her.”

  Stone shrugged. “We can always continue looking by more conventional means. But you can see how well that’s worked out so far. It’s up to you, Jason. I won’t think any less of you if you decide you don’t want to do it. This is dangerous stuff. To be honest, a small part of me will be relieved if you decide not to do it. But even in this short time we’ve known each other, I think I know you well enough to guess that’s not going to happen, is it?”

  “No,” Jason said. He sounded resigned, and he didn’t look at Stone when he said it. “If you’re willing to do it, I’m willing to do whatever I can to help. I owe V that much.”

  “All right, then.” He pointed to a spot to the left side of the table. “Stand there, inside the circle, but be careful not to touch it or smudge it. Remember before how I told you not to do that because it would give me a nasty headache if you broke it while I was inside? Well, this time it’s a bit more serious. Once we’ve got the spirit here, breaking the circle will almost certainly mean both our deaths. No pressure,” he added with a quirky smile.

  Jason did as instructed, fearful that for the one time in his life his natural dexterity would desert him, and he’d stumble right onto the sand line. But that didn’t happen, and after a moment he stood in front of the table. He felt his heart beating a little faster than normal, but he wasn’t as nervous now as he had been prior to stepping through the teleportation gateway. Either he was beginning to trust Stone more, or black-magic blood rituals bothered him less than traveling through other dimensions.

  Stone nodded and stepped in next to him, standing to the right side. He took a couple of deep breaths, squared his shoulders, and picked up the knife. “Ready? Last chance to back out.”

  “Let’s do it,” Jason said. He held out his hand.

  Stone took his wrist and guided his hand over the chalice. Jason glanced at him—his face was utterly expressionless, his eyes focused fully on what he was doing. He raised the knife and quickly sliced Jason’s finger. Jason winced a little, but held steady, allowing Stone to turn his hand over so the drops of blood fell into the copper chalice.

  The mage reached out and turned the page of the book. Jason, now sucking on his sliced finger, examined it, but could make no sense out of it. These pages didn’t even have illustrations, just densely packed text in the same weird language.

  Stone began to recite something in low tones. He waved a hand over the chalice and a faint glow began emanating from it. “That’s you,” he murmured. “Now we’ll add a bit of me and see what happens.”

  He held out his own hand over the chalice and made another slice, allowing his blood to drip down and mingle with Jason’s. The glow got brighter, taking on a reddish hue. Stone set the knife down on the cloth, all the while reciting words in the odd language that sounded to Jason a little like Latin but not quite. Not that he knew any Latin, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t it.

  “All right,” Stone said in a low, murmuring tone, barely moving his lips. “Now comes the fun part, where we get to find out if we succeeded. Remember, whatever you do, whatever you see, don’t step out of the circle or break it.”

  The mage’s jaw was tight, his forehead dotted with beads of sweat. Jason alternated between watching Stone’s face and his hands moving hypnotically over the chalice. There was no doubt about it: the glow was brighter now. Something—it looked like a wisp of fog—was forming under his hands. He continued reciting the incantation, his voice growing louder, his hands moving as if he were a sculptor bringing form to the shapeless mass of fog.

  After a few moments, Jason realized that was exactly what he was doing. The little reddish mass was taking on a humanoid shape, and growing larger. It rose out of the chalice like a genie emerging from a lamp. Stone watched it without blinking, his hands never still. A couple of times Jason thought he saw a jerky motion as he appeared to lose control for a split-second, but then he got it back, and the little figure continued to roil and grow.

  This went on for a while—Jason had no idea how long, and he wasn’t about to take
his eyes off the proceedings to check his watch. The figure was about half human-size now, and Stone seemed to be having a harder time controlling it. His incantation picked up in speed, and Jason could hear his voice shaking a bit, but he was afraid to say anything and disrupt the mage’s concentration.

  Expecting that the figure would continue to grow larger until it reached man-size and then step out of the chalice, Jason was startled when it suddenly disappeared. “What—?” he demanded, sure something had gone wrong.

  Stone’s shoulders slumped a little, but he didn’t look disturbed. “Watch the mirror,” he said softly, raising his head to do the same. “Any minute now—”

  And then a—form—was shimmering in the mirror. It started out insubstantial, but slowly solidified into a bare-chested, reddish-skinned humanoid a little taller than Stone. It appeared to be standing directly behind the two of them, its head rising in the space between them. Jason whipped his head around—he couldn’t help it—but there was nothing there. The room behind them was empty.

  He turned back and there it was in the mirror, solid as the two of them. Its body writhed as if it were fighting invisible bonds. Its expression was cold, malevolent—and it was glaring at Stone. It said something, its voice the sound of old bones rubbing against ancient parchment. Jason couldn’t make out a word of it—or even that there were words. All he could tell was that the thing looked pissed.

  Without warning it lunged at Stone, its muscular arm actually reaching out through the mirror and going for his real-world throat. It took all of Jason’s willpower not to leap backward, but Stone stood firm. He raised his hand and barked a command in a booming voice. The figure recoiled as if it had touched a hot stove. Its hand and arm receded back into the mirror, and it was left glaring at the mage from the other side. If looks could kill, Jason thought, Al would be a fine red mist right about now.

  “I think I’ve got it now,” Stone said under his breath. His voice was still shaking, more than a little now. “I’m going to send it out.”