by James Gunn
In back of me, Ariel shattered my illusion. She gasped. I swung around, my gun ready.
We faced Solomon. He leaned, dark-faced and smiling, against the stainless-steel sink. The cat rubbed against his dark leg, her crossed eyes fixed on us malevolently.
“So,” he said urbanely, “the beautiful witch and the intrepid detective.” Cream-colored fur lifted on the cat’s back; she growled deep in her throat. “Baal!” Solomon said. “You mustn’t be inhospitable to our guests, even if they did get here a little early.” He looked back at us. “So nice of you to come to see me. You saved me endless trouble in searching you out. I did want to invite you to my little party this evening. Especially you, my dear” — he bowed mockingly to Ariel. “There is a special place in the ceremony for a virgin, and virgins are so hard to find these days.”
“Don’t move!” I said, shoving the automatic toward him, my finger tightening on the trigger. “Don’t lift a finger! I won’t have any remorse about shooting you.”
He frowned. “I don’t think you would. That isn’t very friendly of you.” His face cleared. “But you must realize that, if Ariel’s spells are useless, that thing you’re holding is a mere toy.” He looked at Ariel. “You can stop muttering now. Nothing will work here. I put in too many hours of preparation.” He smiled broadly.
Anger was a red tide rising in my throat. My finger got white. The hammer clicked futilely against the cartridge. It clicked again and again. I stared down at the automatic in dazed disbelief.
“There, now,” Solomon said gently. “You can relax. In fact, you can’t move at all.”
It was true. As I looked up, I froze into place, unable even to twitch an eyelash. Only my chest expanded shallowly, automatically, to draw in air, and my eyes could move from side to side. I looked at Ariel out of the corners. She was rigid, too.
“Now,” he said, “I’ll have to put you away until tonight. I must get back to the meeting” — he turned to me — “but thank you for calling and letting me know you were on your way up.”
I cursed my eternal stupidity. When would I learn? Never. It was too late to learn. But why, I groaned inwardly, did I have to involve Ariel as well?
Night came like blindness. I had a moment to wonder if it was permanent before the light came back. I was in a bedroom. Ariel was nowhere in sight. She could have been behind me. I would never have known, since I could not move my head, but I had a feeling that she wasn’t in the room.
The room was large and well furnished. I remembered that the penthouse had two of them.
Somewhere a door opened and closed. I could still hear. But after that there was silence.
I stood it as long as I could. It wasn’t very long. I struggled against the invisible bonds that held me so tightly, but it was useless. I sagged, worn out.
Ariel, Ariel! I moaned silently. Where are you?
Here. It was a cool, quiet voice inside my head. And it was Ariel.
Telepathy! Have you always had it?
Not until just now, when you called.
Where are you? I’m in a bedroom.
In the other bedroom.
Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you?
Oh, no.
Can he hear us?
No. He’s gone.
The calmness of her voice surprised me. She wasn’t frightened anymore. The worst had happened, and now she wasn’t afraid. I was the one who was scared.
Can you do anything? I asked.
No. I’ve been trying.
We’re trapped then.
Yes, she said. But she didn’t sound hopeless.
Uriel! I said.
Yes.
But Solomon will be watching for him.
Uriel knows it. In spite of his appearance, he’s very clever.
Let him be clever now, I prayed. Ariel.
Yes.
What is your real name? I want to know. You said that Solomon knew it, but he didn’t know that he knew.
It’s Ariel, she said. Father said they’d never suspect the completely obvious. They’d keep looking for something hidden.
My name’s Kirk, I said. Kirk Cullen. K.C. Casey. I love you, Ariel.
I love you, Casey. The sweetness of it poured through me like wine. I longed to take her in my arms and hold her there forever, but I could only stand stiffly like a statue — a statue of ice with a melting heart.
Ariel, I thought wildly, we’ve got to get out of here.
Yes! she said, and I knew that she had felt the wonder of it, too. Now that we had found it, it would be the wildest waste to let it be taken away.
Uriel, I said. Uriel will rescue us.
We stood there sharing our thoughts and watched the shadows creep across the floor. And finally we heard a door open.
Uriel! It was an explosion of relief, and I thought I heard Ariel echo, Uriel!
And then we heard the bland voice we hated.
“Put him down here,” Solomon said.
Our hopes plummeted together. The door closed.
“Still silent, old man?” Solomon said. “Well, we’ll put you away now, and put you away for good a little later. You’ve caused me more trouble than all the rest put together.”
A moment later, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something flicker into being. It was Uriel, small and pale and stiff. The door opened and closed again. Uriel didn’t stir. Even his eyes were motionless.
Is he there with you? Ariel asked.
Yes, I answered hopelessly.
I can’t reach him, Ariel said, and there was panic in the thought. What has Solomon done to him?
What did Solomon mean, I asked suddenly, when he was talking about virgins?
I don’t know. But she knew. She didn’t want to tell me, and I knew now that I didn’t want to know.
We stood and watched the shadows creep across the floor and waited for the night.
The darkness was almost complete. Clouds must have covered the sky as the night came, because not even starlight entered the room. I could just barely make out the faint glimmer of Uriel’s face.
We had been listening to voices in the living room for some time now. We had heard furniture being moved around. But the bedroom doors were closed, and we couldn’t see what was happening.
A brilliant stroke of lightning lit up the room for a moment with awful clarity. I saw Uriel standing as stiffly as before. He hadn’t moved. He might be dead. The thunder rolled. If I could have moved, I would have shuddered.
Ariel! What’s going to happen?
Something bad. Something evil. Solomon’s been building up to it for a long time. With the covens and the black magic. And now it’s November eve. We should have suspected why he picked this date.
Why! Why November eve?
It’s Allhallow Eve. Oh, Casey! The door is opening. They’re coming for me.
A scream rang through my mind, and I struggled desperately against the terrible paralysis. Futilely. I couldn’t stir a finger. I listened helplessly as Ariel’s broken thoughts transmitted to me a scene of horror made vivid.
The living room was changed. Ariel scarcely recognized it as two men carried her into the dark room, lit only by tall tapers and the intermittent flickering of lightning. The penthouse was a new Brocken, a modern “exceeding high mountain” from which to see the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.
They carried her through the room toward a black altar at the other end, where Solomon waited. There were others in the room. Their dark faces slipped past Ariel on either side. She recognized only one, the magnificent Catherine La Voisin, who smiled at Ariel and winked.
Ariel’s overwrought senses felt other things in the room. She could not see them, but they crowded around. They pressed in close.
On a tripod in front of the altar was a copper dish. In it charcoal burned fitfully. Solomon stood behind the altar. He was dressed in a long, white tunic.
The men ripped off Ariel’s clothes. They placed her face-up on the altar.
> Casey! she moaned. Her voice was terror.
The room was silent except for the thunder that came at intervals like a roll of giant drums. Solomon began to speak in a low voice. Ariel could not make out the words at first, and then his voice grew louder.
“ … gathered here in the required numbers, we summon Thee, Prince, Ruler of Darkness, Lord of Evil; your worshippers summon Thee to receive our sacrifice. We summon Thee by our allegiance. We summon Thee by the great Names of the God of gods and Lord of lords, ADONAY, TETRAGRAMMATON, JEHOVA, TETRAGRAMMATON, ADONAY, JEHOVA, OTHEOS, ATHANATOS, ISCHYROS, AGLA, PENTAGRAMMATON, SADAY, SADAY, SADAY, JEHOVA, OTHEOS, ATHANATOS, a Liciat TETRAGRAMMATON, ADONAY, ISCHYROS, ATHANATOS, SADY, SADY, SADY, CADOS, CADOS, CADOS, ELOY, AGLA, AGLA, ADONAY, ADONAY … “
Casey! He’s got a sword! And there’s something coming. I can feel it. It’s getting closer!
Her silent screams echoed and reechoed through my mind. I made one last, convulsive effort that broke my unseen bonds like rotten ropes and sent me hurtling to the door. I tore it open.
Far across the room was the altar with Ariel’s white body outlined against its blackness. Behind her was Solomon, white-robed, his face lit redly by the fire in front of the altar. But the face glowed from within, with a darker light. Behind him, cast like a shadow against the wall, was a towering shape of darkness that appeared to draw in upon him as I watched. His hands lifted the sword high.
“Stop!”
The shout froze the room into a fantastic tableau. But it hadn’t been my shout.
Someone else was moving in the room. Someone came close to the altar, into the flickering light. It was Catherine La Voisin, her hair gleaming brighter than the fire. And then it was no longer the red witch. Uriel stood there, where she had been. Small, old, shabby, he defied the room.
“Begone, shadows!” he said, pointing one long finger toward Solomon and the altar. A spear of light shot out from his finger. “Flee, shadows! As you must always flee before the light.” His body seemed to glow in the darkness. “Twisted projections of a twisted mind, vanish into the nothingness you came from!”
He rattled off a series of equations, filled with functions and derivatives, faster than I could follow. I felt a fresh, clean wind blow through the room, sweeping cobwebs away before it. Ariel stirred.
The shadow behind Solomon had shrunk when Uriel’s finger of light struck it. Now it dwindled further. It crouched behind Solomon.
“Go!” Uriel commanded sternly.
Solomon woke from a daze. “Night conquers the day,” he thundered. “Darkness conquers the light. Power makes all men bow before it. Bow, then!”
The sword over Ariel trembled in Solomon’s hands as he fought to bring it down. His Satanic face and white robe towered over Uriel’s white-haired, shabby insignificance. They battled for the sword, the two of them, straining against invisible forces.
Slowly the sword started down.
“Senator!” I shouted.
Solomon looked up. He peered across the room at me, his face contorted and beaded with sweat.
“This time the gun will not fail. Senator!” I yelled. “The bullets are silver, and your name is written on them!”
I pulled the trigger of the gun that had rested in my hand for over twelve hours. My hand recoiled again and again. I saw his robe twitch. He staggered. The sword drooped in his hands. And then it lifted again.
The hammer clicked emptily.
“Lights!” Uriel shouted. “Let the light chase away the darkness!”
Blindingly the lights came on. The young man who had been doorkeeper of the Crystal Room was blinking dazedly beside the switch. The others in the room seemed just as dazed.
Uriel’s finger was outstretched toward Solomon, his lips moving rapidly. Energy flashed through the room, brilliantly, electrically. Thunder crashed.
The lightning seemed to pour down the blade of the uprighted sword. The sword fell. There were no hands to hold it. The white robe crumpled emptily to the floor. There was no one inside them.
Solomon was gone.
I heard a door opened and the sound of running feet, but I didn’t look to see what was happening. I was racing toward the altar. I gathered Ariel into my arms and kissed her and held her tight. She was crying shakily, but in a moment her arms went around me. She stopped shaking.
“Casey!” she said softly. “I knew you would save me.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Uriel.”
I half-turned. Uriel was standing beside us, smiling mildly, looking pleased. Otherwise, the room was empty; the others had fled.
“It was mainly trickery,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “To confuse Solomon.” He opened his hand. There was a pencil flashlight in it. “That was the beam of light. I used a phosphorescent dye on the clothes, and by hypnosis induced the young man by the light switch to smuggle in an ultraviolet projector. The most difficult job was immobilizing La Voisin.” He shuddered. “A most violent woman.”
“What about Solomon?” Ariel asked, shivering as she turned to the crumpled white robe.
“Oh, he’s gone,” Uriel said cheerfully. “Where, I haven’t the slightest idea. But he won’t be back. I hated to do it, but he would insist on forcing his warped ideas onto formless energy. Now that he’s gone, his simulacrum in Washington will die in a few days. A very neat ending for public consumption, although something of a puzzle to the doctors, I’m afraid.” He looked at me approvingly. “Those bullets were very helpful. They distracted him at a crucial moment.”
“They didn’t seem to do much damage,” I said puzzledly. “Of course, they weren’t silver, and they didn’t have his name on them.”
“Wouldn’t have helped if they were,” Uriel said. “In those clothes I think you’ll find what was called in my day a bulletproof vest. He always liked to play both sides.”
“You gave us a scare, though,” Ariel said. “We thought you were captured.”
I turned quickly and raced to the bedroom door. “My God, yes!” Uriel was still standing there in the darkness. I looked back and forth between the two. “But, what — ?”
“Solomon wasn’t the only one who could manufacture simulacra. I let him take this one, and he didn’t even wonder why it was so easy. He had a bad habit of underestimating his opposition. But, I’d better get rid of this.”
He muttered something under his breath. The image disappeared.
I sighed. “Now we can forget the whole thing.”
“Forget!” Uriel exclaimed. “Dear me, no. The Art is still valid. It must be given to the world.”
“But — but,” I spluttered, “that would be like telling everybody how to make atom bombs in their basement!”
“Knowledge can never be suppressed, young man,” Uriel said sternly. “Common understanding is the finest safeguard. Of course, there are some finishing touches that are necessary. Oh, dear me, yes.
I must be going. There is so much to be done.”
He nodded happily at us and trotted out of the room.
I turned to Ariel in bewilderment. She had slipped back into her torn clothing. She fumbled behind her back, looking at me over her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Casey,” she said. “He’ll be putting finishing touches on his theory for years. Fasten this, will you?”
I fastened it, and it seemed very commonplace and marital, but it sent shivers running up and down my arms, and this time it wasn’t terror.
“I wonder what my life will be like,” I said, bending down to kiss the soft hollow between her throat and her shoulder, “when I’m married to a witch.”
She took a deep breath and leaned her head against mine. “It’s a good thing you said that. Because you haven’t any choice. From now on you’re going to be a faithful, submissive husband.”
“Why?” I asked uneasily.
“Because,” she said, twisting around to press herself against me, “I know your real name.”
I sighed and resigned myself t
o my fate. After all, every man marries a witch, whether he knows it or not.
And one kind of witchcraft is pretty much like another.
AFTERWORD
I hadn’t noticed until now the similarity between the endings of The Magicians and “The Reluctant Witch,” but maybe it’s understandable: romantic comedies have only one ending.
Only a couple of years ago, Eugene Gold, Horace’s son, published an illustrated edition of “Sine of the Magus.”
Back in 1976 I published a novel-length expansion of the story. It was the third installment of my four-book contract with Scribner’s. My relationship with Scribner’s had begun back in 1972 with The Listeners. A new editor at Scribner’s, Norbert Slepyan, had launched a new science-fiction line there. Slepyan made a good beginning, with a substantial group of novels that included Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, but left after a couple of years, and the science-fiction program died before it got well started.
I was fond of my association with Scribner’s, not only because its old-line tradition but its fine old offices above its Fifth Avenue bookstore, before Scribner’s was sold like so many other traditional firms. In those days (no more) its offices, up an old elevator to the fifth floor into oak-paneled rooms, looked the way book-struck authors always thought editorial offices ought to look. There was even an elderly secretary at a desk just outside the elevator to take the names of guests, and a library in the center of the offices, with easy chairs and shelves lined with books by Scribner’s authors such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. That was good company.
I went back after Slepyan left and met with Burroughs Mitchell, who had been the replacement for the legendary Maxwell Perkins. Mitchell was in his later years then but he listened well, and I persuaded him of my thesis that science fiction was at its best in the shorter lengths. Scribner’s signed me to a four-book contract, which included Some Dreams Are Nightmares (the novelettes and short novels that had begun Station in Space, The Joy Makers, and The Immortals) and The End of the Dreams (the short novels that had concluded those novels). The Magicians was the third novel in the contract. The fourth book, a collection of stories, I canceled. Mitchell had retired and support at Scribner’s for my writing had retired with him.