The demon turned him again. It stopped when it came to Magdalena. Dee realized with shock that the demon saw Magdalena as she really was, a young healthy woman.
As Dee continued to look at Magdalena, unable to turn away, he felt himself growing aroused. Horrible pictures filled his mind. He saw himself forcing her to the ground and tearing off her clothes, saw her scream and try to push him away. In his vision her cries only served to madden him further and he fell on her and thrust himself into her, a lecherous old goat defiling a beautiful maiden.
It’s the demon, he thought. The demon is putting these dreadful pictures in my mind. It’s jealous of us, of our flesh, of the things we feel with our bodies.
The demon laughed again. It had read Dee’s thoughts, insinuating itself into all the secret places of his mind, ferreting out all those things he kept hidden from the world.
Someone was speaking. He strained to hear it over the pounding of his heart, the song of blood in his ears. Hebrew, he thought. Someone saying something in Hebrew. Loew, chanting the psalm against demons.
He had forgotten Loew in his terror. “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust,” Loew recited. “His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”
Nothing happened. The demon continued to stare at Magdalena. Dee’s tongue protruded and licked at his lips, sinuous as a snake. “Yes, I like that one,” the demon said. “I think I’ll have her.”
Magdalena stared back at the demon, her head high. She looked proud, unafraid, but Dee wondered if she was remembering the man who had used her and then given her to others, the last time someone had taken control over her body. And then another thought came, one that Dee would have banished immediately if he had been in his right mind. Take it away, he thought. Let it possess someone else, even Magdalena if it has to. Just get it out of me, give me my body again.
“I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him,” Loew said. He sounded frantic. He had come nearly to the end of the psalm and the demon had not left Dee’s body.
Magdalena continued to gaze steadily at the demon, showing it herself, her unswerving truth. Dee waited, not daring to hope for anything. Suddenly he understood what she was doing. Fear drew the demon—and she had gone through fear and come out on the other side. There was nothing more anyone could do to hurt her.
He willed himself to be calm, to follow her example. His heart still pounded horribly, but he was able to make a clear space in his mind. At that moment he was able to understand something. Fear drew the demon, yes, but so did lies.
And he had lied, to the demon and to himself. The pictures in his head had not been put there by anyone; they had been there all along. He had admired Magdalena, had thought her young body beautiful, had entertained, though never for more than a second at a time, thoughts of taking her to his bed and having her for himself.
He collapsed to the ground. The demon was gone. He drew a shaky breath, barely in control of his own body.
Then he remembered the demon’s last words. No, he thought, horror filling him. I’ve failed her like everyone else. He twisted to look at Magdalena.
One of Kelley’s men laughed; Dee realized with relief that the demon had taken over him instead. Kelley’s other men scattered, understanding finally that it could come for any one of them. Mordechai was free now, but he made no move to leave.
Dee sat up. There was a sharp pain in his forehead. He put a hand up and it came away covered with blood. He must have hit the cobblestones when he fell.
More people were joining the crowd, taking the place of Kelley’s men. Some he recognized from the alchemists’ tavern, Sendivogius and László and others. Mamugna’s dogs whined at the edges of the crowd, their tails down. Erzsébet stood at a distance, biting her fingernails.
He remembered the movement he had seen in the tower. He glanced up and flinched in pain, but not before he had recognized the man. King Rudolf stood there, staring down at the street. The magic had drawn him too.
“This one is not very interesting either,” the demon said, its deep voice coming from the mouth of Kelley’s man. “Who else is there? Who wants to be next?”
Another man jerked an arm. His eyes grew wide with terror. Then the woman next to him did a horrible wrenching dance. A man began to pull out his hair. One of the dogs growled and snapped at Mamugna, its lips drawn back in a snarl.
The demon was working its way around the circle, taking over each person or animal in turn. Three people stood between Mordechai and the demon, then two. The man next to Mordechai thrust a finger in his eye and screamed in pain.
Dee held his breath. What would happen when the demon took control of Mordechai? It had promised to kill the thirty-sixth man and remake the world according to its desires.
But Mordechai stood unmoving. A woman on his other side chewed on her fingers, drawing blood. Some people were impervious, then. Mordechai and Magdalena, and who else? Rabbi Loew was next in the circle.
As Dee watched, horrified, Loew threw back his head and laughed a deep gravelly laugh.
LOEW BRACED HIMSELF, WAITING FOR THE DEMON TO TAKE over his body completely. Nightmarish pictures filled his mind, the man destroying his eye, the woman biting her fingers. Then these were replaced by worse things, horrors drawn from his own imagination.
But to his surprise nothing more happened, though he felt the demon’s presence in his mind. He wondered why. Could it be because he was a good man, even a righteous man? Could that make him somehow safe, able to withstand possession? Because he was a good man, he knew that—better than almost everyone in the Quarter, better even than the chief rabbi.
Then why wasn’t he chief rabbi? Why did the folks of the Quarter withhold that honor from him? He could do so much good for the townspeople. He could—if Mordechai were gone he could remake the town the way he wanted, could finally put his ideas into practice, could see to it that all the laws were obeyed the way they should be.
The demon looked at Izak with Loew’s eyes. Izak, for example, he thought. If he had control of the Quarter and everyone in it he would see to it that Izak never left, that he stayed in the town and lived his life out unmarried and repentant, content with his lot. He saw that Izak and Magdalena were standing near each other. He would put an end to that immediately; Izak must not be allowed to become familiar with such a woman, someone who, according to her own words, had lived on the streets, a plaything for any man to come along.
Mastery, he thought. That was what he wanted, what he needed. Now he saw other pictures: Rivka looking downcast, as a woman should, her usual bold expression gone; Baruch the butcher confessing his sins; the golem docile and following his every command. He saw everyone in the Quarter filing into the streets and crowding the synagogue, saw himself preaching, telling them what they were and were not permitted to do. And if everyone listened to him, if they followed all of God’s commands, perhaps the Messiah would even come … .
All this could be his, the control, the mastery he had always wanted. He had only to get rid of Mordechai, to—to kill—He came to himself with a start. What had he been thinking? How could he even contemplate killing a man, especially this man? The demon had tempted him, had put these dreadful ideas into his mind.
Though it had been a pleasant picture. If anyone were to be given control over the Quarter it should be him; he had always known that. He had had a vision of how things ought to be done for a long time.
A long time, he thought. The demon had not given him these ideas, then; they had always been there, at the edges of his mind, growing stronger as time passed. He was no better than Rudolf, really; he too wanted to remake the world in his own image. Perhaps that was what had prompted him to create the golem in the first place.
He shuddered. The action seemed to push the demon from him. He fell back against a wall, unable to move, chastened by what he had discovered about himself.
DEE WATCHED AS THE DEMON LEFT LOEW’S BODY. THE CROWD had thinne
d, leaving only Mordechai, Izak, Magdalena, Erzsébet, and a few others. And Rudolf, Dee saw with a start. The king had come down from his tower.
The demon circled the crowd again, taking over one person after another. A strange green fire began to spiral upward, crackling loudly, lifting hair and loose clothing into its vortex. Kelley was speaking something, and so was Magdalena, praying to her pagan goddess, Dee supposed. Loew recited the psalm against demons again. Dee felt the crosscurrents of magic grow thicker as other powers made themselves felt within the circle.
Suddenly Rudolf giggled. Everyone turned to look in his direction; shock came into their eyes, one by one, as they recognized him. A silence fell over the crowd as they slowly stopped reciting their spells.
“Oh, I like this body,” the demon said with Rudolfs mouth. “I liked it the last time I had it, and I like it even more now. I would certainly enjoy being one of the most powerful men in the world. And my first command as king—kill that man. The thirty-sixth, the one who claimed to be Loew.”
No one moved, not even Mordechai. Why doesn’t he run, Dee thought. Is he staying here to—to somehow help us? Is that what being righteous means?
Loew began to recite again. His voice sounded hopeless, as if he knew what he did was futile. The psalm had once caused the demon to leave Rudolfs body, Dee remembered, but he knew it would not be effective a second time. The demon had grown too strong.
“For my second command—bring me all the gold in the world. Bring me everything. I want to collect everything, to own it all, to contain the world within my castle. I want all the women in the world as well. A different woman each night, for as long as I live. And I want to live forever.”
Suddenly Dee understood, horrified, what would happen next. The demon would feed Rudolf’s appetites while it continued to give its own orders. No one in the crowd would obey it, but sooner or later it would make its way back to the castle, and everyone there would simply assume it was Rudolf. None of them would be convinced of the demon’s real nature; the story sounded fantastic, even to Dee. And it would have at its beck and call the entire might of the Holy Roman Empire.
Rudolf fell to the ground, writhing. His arms and legs shot out at strange angles; his head knocked against the ground several times, drawing blood. The green flame circled him and then jumped the gap between them to sizzle along his skin. Rudolf jerked and gasped.
Dee could not allow the demon to keep Rudolf’s body. He had once drawn the demon to himself, in Rudolf’s castle. He closed his eyes to brace himself and reached out.
The familiar blackness engulfed him, and the familiar loathsome feeling as the demon took control over his movements. “I want Rudolf back,” it said petulantly. It stared with Dee’s eyes as the king continued to twist in spasms on the ground. “Give me Rudolf!”
Rudolf began to mutter. Drool flecked his lips. “I want all the flowers,” the king said. “All the trees, all the stones, all the lakes and rivers and oceans. Everyone and everything in the world must swear fealty to me. All the angels, all the demons. God himself.”
He’s no longer frightened, Dee thought. His mind has gone, has fled from the horrible thing happening to him. The demon’s lost its hold. That’s why it was so easy to call it to me.
He quickly hid the thought from the demon, sending it to the clear space he had made in his mind. The demon must not know why it could no longer take over Rudolf; it might think of a way around his madness, a way back in.
The demon raged within Dee, desperately trying to return to Rudolf. The green fire arced toward him, striking him unpredictably and then jumping back, scorching his already raw hands and arms and face. The sparks maddened him but he could not move to protect himself.
Other powers flew within the circle as well: a thin silver stream that strengthened as Rabbi Loew spoke, a gold shimmer that came from Magdalena. Mamugna was saying something, and Sendivogius and even Kelley; the babel confused him, made it hard to concentrate.
Pictures came into his mind, and this time Dee knew that they came from the demon, because he could never conjure up anything so terrible. He saw his daughter Katherine taken by the demon; saw her grow up within his house, an obscene parody of his beloved child; saw the demon relinquish control just enough for Katherine to understand what was happening to her before it finally quenched her immortal soul. He saw it move from Jane to Arthur to Michael, mimicking their behavior perfectly, then saw it reveal itself to him, leaving him shocked and despairing to realize that he had, all unknowing, spoken to it, eaten with it, made love to it.
“Give me back Rudolf!” the demon said. “Give him back or I will torment you like this forever, I swear it!”
Why did the demon think he could return it to Rudolf? He could only summon it to him, nothing else.
Or was there more? Could he have more power over the demon than he thought? Why didn’t Kelley control it? Kelley had been the one to summon it, after all.
Had he, though? There must be no more lies, Dee had learned that much. Kelley had summoned it, but then, as Kelley had just reminded him, Dee himself had said that knowledge was worth any price paid for it. And in offering to pay the price Dee had invited the demon in, had allowed it to bridge the gap between the worlds. Suddenly he knew what he had to do next.
He wrested control from the demon—his demon—and began to chant. He spoke psalms in Hebrew, prayers in Latin, hymns in English. If Magdalena was right and all beliefs were equally true—and judging from the jangle of light and noise coming from all parts of the circle it seemed that she was—then it didn’t matter what he said. He could recite nonsense syllables if he wanted to. It was important only that he concentrate, keep his goal firmly in mind, and pray sincerely to his god.
Someone spoke loudly over him and he faltered, forgetting what he had been about to say. It was Kelley, chanting to the demon, working to strengthen it so that it could possess him fully again. He felt the demon well up within him like a contaminated tide, pulling him under, drowning him.
No. Concentrate. Nonsense syllables. Suddenly he remembered his son Arthur, playing at his feet. “I can speak Czech,” Arthur had said. “Listen.”
“Str prst skrz krk!” he shouted triumphantly.
To his amazement the demon’s hold weakened. He took control of it quickly and sent it into the body of the golem.
Yossel opened his eyes very wide. “I like this body,” the demon said with Yossel’s mouth. “It’s very strong, stronger than any of these others.”
The green fire hovered over Yossel. Everyone had gone quiet; all the prayers to all the various gods were silenced.
Yossel’s arms flexed. His legs moved. “I don’t need Rudolf after all,” he said. He scowled, the anger clear on his face for anyone to read. “This body is strong enough to take care of the thirty-sixth with no help from anyone. This is the one I want.”
The golem stood still. Dee watched it closely. He hoped that the demon was spreading itself throughout the body, taking on substance, melding itself with the clay man. It had wanted the world of the senses, of feeling, and what better way to explore the world than with a body more powerful than any other?
Yossel began to change; he seemed stronger, more confident. His malevolent expression deepened. “I’ll be able to study now, and to pray. To marry Rivka. To do anything I like, really, marry anyone I like. I’ll keep Loew locked in a room, just as he kept me, and I’ll visit him whenever I have a question about my studies.”
The golem looked around the circle. “No, what am I saying? I won’t need to pray. I’ll be king, god. Everyone will pray to me. I’ll make others like me—no one will ever treat me harshly or laugh at me again. I’ll never be alone. All I have to do is kill this man here. A fair bargain, eh, peddler?”
He took a step toward Mordechai. Mordechai stood still, his gaze steady.
“No!” Loew said. “No, don’t! I command you!”
The golem stopped. Emotions passed quickly over his face: hatred, de
sire, fear, longing, uncertainty. Finally he looked at Loew with something like love. His uncertainty returned. He moved toward his creator, went back to Mordechai. He shuffled to a spot midway between the two, in front of Dee, then bowed his head to Loew, his mouth open, his expression unreadable.
Dee reached up quickly into his mouth and took out the shem.
The golem fell inert to the ground. Dee looked around the circle, not daring to breathe. Would the demon leave its new body and possess another one? Or had it put too much of its essence into the golem, had it died along with the golem’s body?
The green flame guttered out. No one screamed or cried out or hurt themselves. No one moved. Rabbi Loew bent to the day body sprawled out on the cobblestones and rubbed at the first letter on its forehead. The aleph disappeared; now the word spelled met, or “dead.”
Loew stood up carefully. “It’s over,” he said.
“Not yet,” Dee said. “We have to close the door. We need to make certain that nothing like this comes through to our world ever again.”
“Do you?” Erzsébet said. He had nearly forgotten she was there. “You know what will happen then. No more magic. No more wonders, no more alchemy. Are you ready to sacrifice all that?”
He ignored her. “Quickly!” he said. “The demon was one of the things holding the door open. We must do it now, before something else comes through.”
“I’ve learned a bit about you, Doctor Dee,” Erzsébet said. “You desire knowledge more than anything in the world. What will happen when you can no longer look into your scrying glass and converse with angels, when you cannot understand the mind of God? How much will you be able to learn on your own, with no one and nothing to help you?”
“The scrying glass?” Dee laughed harshly. “I learned nothing from the glass. And at least my intentions were good—as you said, I wanted knowledge of God. You only wanted to bathe in blood and stay young forever.”
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