by Tim Pratt
I took down the book and put it on the table between us. “Keep in mind I’m a mundane muggle type, guys. What’s the book good for, exactly?”
“Our father used the book to travel, and to locate people, places, and things he needed to find. You need only turn to the proper page, and you will be transported instantly to the thing you seek.”
“I’ve turned plenty of pages, and it’s never taken me anywhere.”
“In all things magical, intent matters, sister. Otherwise, to flip through the book would be to send yourself skipping through the universe at random. We do not believe each page is assigned to a particular location—the magic seems more dynamic, shifting, and contingent, as we recall, though we were very young.” A pause. “We do have very good memories.”
“I bet,” I mumbled. “So how do I do it? Straight-up bibliomancy? Think of what I want, and let the book fall open?”
“This is not divination, or at least, not just divination. We suggest you use the index.”
I flipped to the very back of the book…or tried to. There always seemed to be twenty or thirty more pages before the end, no matter how fast I tried to flip them, and even just lifting the back cover failed, as pages flopped open with it. “There’s a short story, isn’t there, about an infinite, incomprehensible book? I’m sure I read something in an English class…”
“The Book of Sand,” the Trips—or the Duos? the Dips?—said. “By Borges. Father was a great admirer of Borges, and he devised this book as an homage—he called it The Book of Grace. Father said he met Borges, once, while posing as the writer’s doppelganger. He wanted to give Borges a taste of magic, he said, as the author’s stories captured the ineffable vastness of true magic as no one else’s ever had.” They shrugged. “But unlike The Book of Sand, The Book of Grace has an index.”
“Guys, it doesn’t, I wish it did have one—”
Just like that, the book did have an index. The next page I turned revealed a neat double column of words, each entry followed by a page number. Some of those page numbers ran into the billions, and some were marked with exponential notation. The As alone went on for…well, for as far as I could flip. The index included things like “Aaron’s aardvark” and “Anaheim Convention Center” and “Anne’s key chain” and “Ashes of Ambrose Bierce.”
The key thing, though, was that the index was in English.
“So, I should look up…what?”
“The Trips.” They leaned forward eagerly.
“Ts, Ts,” I muttered, and when I turned a page, there I was, in the Ts. Sometimes magic is a handy thing. I found the listing, or rather, three listings: Trips, Trips, Trips, one after another. The first two had the same page number—11,879, if you’re curious—but the last had no number. Just a blank where the number should have been. I showed them, and they sighed, almost seeming to deflate.
“I’ll look up the Firstborn.” I flipped to the Fs, which obligingly appeared. I could get almost anything I asked for in this house, it seemed. I just had to know what to ask for. There it was, “Firstborn,” and…blank. No number. “So what does that mean? They’re not on Earth?”
“The book is not limited to earthly places.” (And wasn’t that an intriguing sentence.) “We do not understand…”
“Huh. You said this thing could be used to find objects, right? So I could use it to transport me to the vessel, and take on Grace’s power, and…maybe then I’d be able to find the Eldest Daughter?” Or I’d be like a kid given the keys to a Sherman tank, with access to destructive power I had no knowledge of or right to wield. Maybe the power I stood to inherit came with a dose of wisdom. Not that much of dear old Dad’s behavior seemed all that wise from where I was sitting.
“Yes. Take on the power, and the world will open up for you.”
I wondered for the millionth time what it would be like, inheriting Grace’s magic. Would it change me? Was I Dr. Jekyll, about to quaff down the potion that would turn me into Mr. Hyde? Would my face melt like that guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, overpowered by things woman was not meant to know? Would I fly into a magical steroid rage? Or would I just start to glow faintly and levitate a little?
Time to find out. I flipped to the Gs. “Grace’s Vessel.” There you go. Page 616. I turned back through the book, near the beginning, and hit the 600s immediately, paging through carefully to the right one.
Incomprehensible words surrounded a drawing on the page: an ornate cup with two handles, studded with jewels. The kind of cup with pretensions to grailhood. “So what now? Do I just stare at it hard?”
The Trips closed their eyes and hummed together, dull and tuneless, then returned their gaze to me. “Father used to tap the page, with his index finger.”
“Like this?” I tapped—
—and teleported. It was a bit like stepping through the mirror to the sanctum: a weird chill and then, boom, I was someplace else—specifically, the office I’d seen in my vision of Grace in the past, bossing Trey around. The desk was there, complete with the spiderweb crack in the glass top, and the jacket from the sanctum was there, too, hanging on the back of the chair. A small white candle burned in the center of the desk, casting flickering shadows on…yes, a grail, though it was way lumpier and more misshapen than the picture in the book, crudely made of clay and festooned with costume jewelry pressed haphazardly into the sides of the cup while it was still soft. I could easily imagine Grace, in his dotage, working on this thing, his skill level approximately that of a six-year-old in the crafts cabin at summer camp. There was even a note folded up on top of the cup, covering whatever it contained, with the word “daughter” written in a jagged hand.
I didn’t get to read the letter, or touch the cup, or blow out the (presumably magical) candle, because after maybe three seconds something jerked me backward, like I had a giant rubber band around my waist, and I thumped down hard on the couch again, book in my lap. My neck hurt and my abdominal muscles ached. I groaned. “I think I did it wrong.”
“No—something repelled you,” the Trips said. “We have some small sensitivity to magic—not on the level of our departed brother, the Belly, but similar in nature, if not degree—and a great magic worked to force you back from wherever you went. Some sort of security, a force field, almost impassable. The book’s magic was profound enough to get you past it briefly, but not for long.”
“Why does our father want to keep me away from the vessel, though? It’s supposed to be for me, right?”
“Some magical traps can be configured to let certain people pass unharmed,” the Trips said. “But, in his final days, we understand Father was…sloppy. Undisciplined. He may have sought to protect the vessel for you, and accidentally protected it from you in the process.”
“Great. The vessel is seriously just in another room of the house, guys, and I can’t reach it.” I thought of the vision I’d had of the devastated house, and suddenly it made more sense—if the Firstborn found out she couldn’t get to the vessel because the house was protecting it, maybe she’d contrive a way to destroy the house in the future, and the magical protections with it.
I was feeling pretty sorry for myself when I said, “You backed the wrong sister. I’m a lot better at losing magic than I am at finding it. I lost the broom, the watch, the mirror—”
“The mirror?”
“Yeah. The door to the sanctum. I let the Firstborn take it—I didn’t know what I was letting her take at the time, exactly, but anyway.” I shrugged. “There you go. At least I got the book and the spoon and stuff out of there first.”
“She must be hiding in the sanctum,” they said, so matter-of-factly that for a moment, I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. The Trips rose up from the couch, levitating a little and even fluorescing a bit, and explained further: “Father made the sanctum a place of perfect security, where no magic could penetrate. Indeed, within the sanctum, no magic can be worked at all, apart from the portal spell that allows passage inside and out. It is a magical dead
zone. If the Eldest Daughter is hiding inside, with our missing part, that is why we cannot find us, and why The Book of Grace cannot reveal their location. They are entirely shielded.”
“But she’s got the mirror,” I said. “And if we can find the mirror…” I hurriedly opened up the index. “Mirror,” page 1021. I flipped to the pages near the back of the book, and it obligingly opened close to the right page, which was good, because my math wasn’t quite up to figuring out exactly what number that represented. “There we go.” The page included a passable drawing of the lion-headed mirror, missing ear and all.
“We can travel there,” the Trips said. “We can save ourself.”
“Wait, wait. We will, definitely, but…we’re going to face the Firstborn, so we need to be prepared, you know?”
They didn’t look happy, but they nodded.
“We’re going through the mirror. Surprise attack. Snatch and grab, get your missing piece, and get out. That’s the idea?”
“Yes. We could incapacitate the Firstborn under most circumstances, strike at her mind, we have that power, but inside the sanctum…our magic will be useless.”
“If magic doesn’t work in the sanctum at all…that means her magic doesn’t work either, right?”
The Trips nodded.
I smiled. I’d never felt so nastily anticipatory. “Oh, wow. This is going to be great. Let me call my friend Trey.”
#
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Bekah?” Trey put the rattling duffel bag down on the kitchen counter and looked at the Trips uneasily. They were levitating again, eyes closed, humming, thinking about whatever two-thirds of a psychic gestalt being thinks about before wading into battle.
“Of course not. But you go to war with the idea you have. Are you in? I’m emphatically not commanding you to go with me, but if you want to, you’re welcome.”
“The Firstborn made a pretty decent effort to murder me, so I’ve got some personal animosity toward her. I’ll go.”
“What did you bring me?”
Trey unzipped the duffel, revealing an aluminum baseball bat with a tape-wrapped handle, an old but well-cared-for shotgun, and a weird wooden implement about three feet long, shaped sort of like a giant spoon. “What’s that?”
“A hurley. You use it in hurling. Irish sport. Ostensibly about smacking around a leather ball, more accurately about smacking around the opposing players.” He shrugged. “I’ve still got family in the old country.”
“Howard’s an Irish name?”
“We were O’Hures, once. Blame Ellis Island.” He ran his finger down the hurley’s handle. “This is an heirloom. There’s even a story about how many skulls it’s cracked—one for every notch here on the handle.”
There were at least a score of scratches on the handle. The O’Hures were a brutal bunch. “Yeah, all right. That’ll do. But let’s be clear: I’m not going into this with murder on my mind. You shot the Belly, and I don’t blame you—he was actively attempting to murder me, after all. But unless the Firstborn gives us no choice…I’m not ready to get into the execution business. Scaring her off is more what I’ve got in mind. It might backfire, but it’s worth a try.”
Trey nodded. “I’m just as happy to keep her blood off my hands, too, thanks. Her blood is probably acid anyway, like the queen in Aliens. But what’s your stance on, say, smashing a kneecap?”
“Use your discretion.”
#
I held Trey’s hand, and he held hands with of one of the Trips, who held on to the other’s. I opened the book to the page with the mirror, then gave it a tap—
—and we all landed gently in a damp cavern, lit by floating globes of witch light. I’d expected a grim castle, or a soulless apartment full of chrome-and-leather furniture, but not a literal hole in the ground. Someone clearly lived here, though. There was a camp stove, and milk crates stuffed with canned goods, and patio furniture that looked like it had been scrounged from street corners one step ahead of the garbage truck. The whole place smelled of earth and minerals and burned beans and old farts.
My nemesis—the Eldest Daughter, baddest witch around—and this was how she lived? Was she down on her luck, or was this just a monastic/Spartan disregard for worldly pleasures? Maybe her brain simply didn’t work the way the average human’s did.
The Trips floated around the cave in a vague and directionless sort of way, one holding the baseball bat and the other holding the hurley. Neither one of them looked like the sporty type, and I had my doubts they could successfully connect with anything—the physical world didn’t seem to matter to them much—but at least they had the option. Trey stuck close beside me, shotgun in his hands, barrel pointed safely down and away.
I put the book away in my backpack—we’d need it to get back home, but in the meantime, I wanted my hands free. “The mirror.” I pointed with the sword cane. The mirror was leaning against a rough stone wall, its placid surface reflecting the cave and the bobbing lights. I wished for a flash bang, something nonlethal but confusing I could toss into the mirror ahead of us. But I didn’t have any of that special forces stuff, and anyway, we didn’t want to risk driving the Firstborn out of the sanctum: far better to face her in there, where we could better control the situation, and she couldn’t unleash horrible magics on us.
“I’ll go in first and cover her with the gun,” Trey said. “Then you, Bekah, then the Trips. Okay?”
I didn’t like the idea of not leading the charge, but I also didn’t want to be the one carrying the double-barreled persuasion machine, so I nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.” The Trips floated down and nodded their agreement. They seemed weirdly serene, all things considered, but it wasn’t like their body language was supereasy to read. For all I knew, this was how they looked when they were all keyed up.
“It’s a shame there’s not a door to kick down,” I said. “This seems like a door-kicking occasion. Oh well.” I rolled my neck like a boxer before a fight. “Okay, Trey. If we’re doing this, let’s do it.”
He shifted his grip on the gun, walked up to the mirror, and jumped through, like he was leaping out the door of a plane to go skydiving. I went after him, fully prepared for a scene of chaos, but it was really quite peaceful in the sanctum.
Trey stood to one side of the mirror-exit, pointing the shotgun firmly at the Firstborn, who stared wide-eyed and wild-haired from her place perched on a stool beside a cot. One of the Trips was on the cot, tied up haphazardly with lengths of cotton clothesline, blindfolded with a scarf. I didn’t know a lot about how the triplets worked, but I had to think that being blindfolded in a place where magic doesn’t work must be terrifying for a psychic, who can usually see with more than just their eyes.
“Trips, you want to save your missing piece there?”
They’d followed after me, and now they dropped their weapons—we had quite the crack commando squad here—and rushed to their comrade’s side. The Firstborn turned her head toward them and opened her mouth, presumably to hiss something nasty, so I drew the sword cane, putting a lot of rasp and scrape into the process, and tossed the scabbard to the floor with a clatter. “Eyes on me, sister.” The Eldest Daughter whipped her head back in my direction. “What you see me doing now is helping my family, which is what family is supposed to do. You’re going to want to sit nice and still, or the gun that killed our brother is going to get a chance at killing you.” I was suddenly weirdly hungry—like, starving—and when I’m hungry I get cranky.
The Trips tore the blindfold off their third party, then one produced a knife from someplace—okay, maybe I’d misjudged their commando-ness—and sliced through the bonds. They all embraced, which should have been awkward, but somehow they made it graceful. “We would like to go now,” they said, and all three voices speaking in unison was unbelievably mellifluous, a perfect harmonious blending of sound. They did belong together. They were right together. Tearing one of them away from the other two was more than a crime—it was a sacrilege.<
br />
“In a minute, guys. First I need the Eldest here to promise she won’t bother you again.”
The Firstborn smirked. “Oh, of course, I promise.”
The bell didn’t ring, of course—there was no magic in the sanctum, which meant I had to rely on my judgment—but at least that lie was totally obvious. “Want to try that again with a little more sincerity?” I took a step toward her, the point of the sword aimed straight at her face. I didn’t know much about swordplay, but I’d read once that it was especially disconcerting to have the end of a blade or even a staff pointed at your face straight on, because from that angle it’s hard to see how far away the implement of murder and pain is from touching you. The Firstborn hissed, reached out, and slapped at the blade—then howled and drew her hand back, her palm bleeding.
I returned the point to its position aimed straight at her nose. “No magic healing sword in this place, sis. Right now the sword is just three feet of sharp and pointy. So let’s try that promise again, only this time, I suggest you mean it. You’d better make me believe it, too.”
“I do not take commands from you—”
“Trey, go ahead and blow off her foot.” I stepped out of the way. The Trips mewled, presumably vocalizing their aversion to violence, but I ignored them.
Trey came closer, the shotgun’s barrel still aimed low, but creeping inexorably closer to my elder sister’s ankle—
“Stop!” she shouted. “I promise!”
I didn’t know that her promises were worth all that much. I could take her outside and make her repeat it, and see if the bell rang to reveal it as a lie, but that would mean giving her access to her own powers, so that was a pretty lousy trade. This wasn’t really about compelling her to behave anyway, though—it was about proving a point: That I couldn’t be pushed around. That she was outnumbered and outgunned. I had an inspiration. “Swear on our father’s grave,” I said. Not exactly magic words, but she was so hung up on our dad, maybe the phrase would carry some weight with her.