The Conjurers

by David Waid

  Corc licked his lips. “Stick ‘im, Aiden.”

  The old man’s chin dropped onto his chest and his one good hand fell into the snow. He mumbled something and seemed close to a swoon.

  “What?” Aiden said. “What did ye say?” He stepped closer, head bent to catch the priest’s words. He looked at his fellows and winked. “Not too proud to beg, I see. Well, then, speak up.”

  With his mouth by Aiden’s ear, but his eyes on Cahill, the priest spoke clearly. “I said, ‘I’ll see you in Hell.’”

  He brought his hand up from the snow clutching the misericorde he’d slipped from his boot. Aiden understood too late. He tried to pull away, but the old man grabbed his neck slamming the stiletto spike into the soft flesh under his jaw. It pierced tongue, palette and brain, jamming so hard, Aiden’s mouth clacked tight and the blade tip punched a hole through the top of his head. The bandit’s eyes rolled up and blood erupted from his nose.

  “One more for Ballylow,” said the old man. “And may God have mercy.”

  The body sagged away. As it did, the stiletto, still clutched in the priest’s hand, came out with a wet, sucking sound.

  Corc’s face flushed scarlet and something half squeak, half yell erupted from his throat. The three remaining brigands rushed in, swords high. Deflecting the giant’s first powerful stroke with his thin blade, the priest threw himself at Cahill, inside the arc of the man’s cut. He twirled the stiletto in his palm as he lunged, bringing it down in a brutal backhand stab that buried hilt-deep in the man’s thigh. Cahill screamed, tumbling back in the snow.

  The lunge exposed the priest. Even as their leader fell back, Corc stabbed the man’s belly and Mabon, with a grunt, landed such a blow below the hauberk, the old man’s leg nearly severed. Blood drenched the snow, transforming the ground to dark slush while Corc and Mabon hacked the body until even the spasms stopped.

  The bandit chief struggled to his feet, cursing when Mabon tried to lend a hand. He leaned heavily on his sword, using it as a crutch, lurching to where he could stand above the priest. The old man was well and truly dead. Shite. That pleasure, too, had been stolen. Looking into the growing darkness on the road that led down the mountain, he knew he had only one chance with Sairshee.

  He must catch the boy.

  When Sairshee opened her eyes again, she was in her room at the Shrikes, freezing cold though she lay wrapped in a tangle of blankets. Some invisible presence had been in the dream with her, watching events unfold, just as she did. Her mind whirled with the implications. Maestro Lodovicetti?

  Time in her visions did not necessarily correspond to its passage in the waking world. Each use of the ritual produced a different result. She’d been delayed, but for how long? Groping to a window, Sairshee tore out the old blankets and boarding that provided insulation. She threw open shutters to look out on a clear night sky, where stars shone cold like ice crystals. With a cry of rage, she hurled the empty basin by her bed to the floor, shattering it.

  Before Cahill bungled things again, she must get to the boy. Even as she tarried, her master’s ship sped for the port of Dublin across brine seas and the dark green swells that run before a storm.

  A short time later Sairshee mounted her vicious black stallion in the courtyard of the Shrikes. Seventeen hands the great monster stood. He’d spent the day kicking his stall and biting the innkeeper’s son when he was foolish enough to turn his back. The animal spun even as she swung her leg over the saddle. The boy leaped out of the way and she took off through the open gate like a thunderbolt, a clatter of hooves on rush-swept cobblestones, her hair and cape flying out behind like battle pennants. She raced to meet Eamon, riding from the east while Cahill and the tattered remains of his war band descended from the west. No matter the cost, this hunt would end today.

  10. Ignacio’s Journal

  Genoa

  Today I met Maestro Salvezzo Lodovicetti. Although he is familiar to the Nobile as an accomplished physician and astrologer, for many years I knew nothing of this. I was a boy, with a boy’s sense of wonder and I heard of him among the blacksmiths and herbmongers I visited in search of secret knowledge. With time, the rumors led me to people who counted themselves mystics and alchemists, though I found nothing but derelict pretenders among them. Over the years I heard the name. Lodovicetti. Lodovicetti. It was spoken in my ear as though the name were a blasphemy, yet it kindled my imagination.

  At last, I met among the whisperers a man named Guillio Sclavo, a madman who claimed to traffic with devils, yet lived in squalor, disdained by even the lowest of his neighbors. He pronounced the Maestro un stregone di Inferno. It was he who told me how to find the man. He made a sign, spat in the dirt and would say no more.

  I discovered then that Father’s friends knew the Maestro from their own circles. They held a more favorable view of the man, and one closer to the truth, no doubt. These friends gained me admittance to the scholar’s presence and even the possibility of apprenticeship.

  I admit to being frightened of the Maestro at first, but the experience was more than my wildest hope. Entering his apartments, I stepped past the Maestro’s attendant, Bezio, and became immediately submerged in a world of precious, cluttered arcana. Artifacts were displayed from floor to ceiling, in any niche with space.

  The chambers lacked proper illumination, the curtains drawn against a beautiful summer’s day. Instead, the rooms were tinted with thin yellow light from casually placed candles. Shoved between teetering shelves were dark wood furnishings and plush, velvet-covered cushions.

  I was made to wait a long time, yet given free rein to investigate the ground floor of the place. Among his things were the assembled skeletons of fantastic beasts whose shapes, when clothed in flesh and blood, can only have been imagined in the pages of old bestiaries. Everything smelled as if it had been saturated in smoke and I imagined the Maestro walking from room to room, carrying braziers fueled with strange alchemical distillations.

  At first I kept my hands to myself, but as time passed, I became curious and fidgety. I thought, if I must wait then at least I should get some satisfaction of the place. Wandering through one particularly disordered room, I examined whatever caught my attention. I found a cunning wooden puzzle, but it was similar to ones I had played with in the past and I made short work of it.

  Opening a small wooden cabinet, I found something that astounded me: a lodestone and a copper tray with iron shavings. Bianchi, the blacksmith in Torino, had told me about the powers of the lodestone and I desired to see them for myself.

  The stone was an angular piece of black rock with bits of iron held to it through some invisible power. I took the stone and the tray of shavings from the cabinet, setting them on the edge of the same table where the cabinet stood. Bending close, I observed the metal pieces rustling as I moved the stone above them, coming closer with each pass. Their ends lifted to follow the loadstone like the beaks of hungry chicks.

  As I leaned forward to watch the mineral’s power, I realized someone stood in the door to my left. An old man. Older than Bezio. I had no doubt it was the Maestro. He wore a black robe and, though the air was warm, a collar of black sable. There were no other adornments and his fingertips were stained with what looked like ink while one streak of it lay across his cheek.

  I flushed under his scrutiny. I had no idea how long he’d been standing there observing me as I perused and handled his things. My first instinct was to apologize, but it was I who had been abandoned in these apartments after arriving promptly. I, in fact, who had been left alone without prohibition. Squaring my shoulders, I met the old man’s gaze steadily and without saying a word.

  His lips quirked. “Very good. The mind that inquires offers no excuse and no apology. And none is needed. What is your name, boy?”

  “Ignacio Santos de Borja, Maestro.”

  “Related to Don Abozam de Borja I am told?”

  “His son.”

  “I see. Very well, Ignacio Santos de Borja, what is th
e Trivium?”

  “The foundation of all knowledge, sir. Grammar, logic and rhetoric. Father Hugh has schooled me in these arts.”

  “What is the Quadrivium?”

  “The next pillars: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.”

  “And has this Father Hugh schooled you in these subjects as well?”

  “Some, Maestro.”

  The Maestro studied me for a time, a doubtful scowl stamped on his face.

  “The Liber Abaci.”

  “Yes?”

  “What is it?”

  “A book of calculations. It contains the nine digits of the Hindus and the sign of zero. With them any number in the world can be written.”

  The Maestro’s eyebrow raised. “Indeed. I think I should meet this Father Hugh of yours. He seems quite a learned man for a teacher of boys. Even for one so quick and cocky as you appear.”

  The Maestro continued. “What can you tell me about zero?”

  “I…don’t know what you mean, Maestro. Father Hugh has said nothing more.”

  “Aha. So, there is knowledge in this world you do not yet possess. I will tell you this: the word, zero, is derived from its name among the Saracens — sifr or cipher. There are a great many mysteries that can be penetrated through the power of its sign. And yet others that can be obscured.”

  The Maestro smoothed his robes and the scowl returned to his face. “I am told you wish to be my apprentice. Is this true?”

  “Yes, Maestro.”

  “You look old to be starting as an apprentice. Seventeen, I think?”

  “Sixteen, sir. My years have prepared me well. If you will forgive me saying so, a younger apprentice would not know enough to assist you. An older one would be fixed in his ways, un-trainable to yours.”

  “That, I believe, is your schooling in rhetoric.”

  I said nothing.

  “I am surprised that none of your father’s friends told you I do not take apprentices.”

  “They did. I beg your pardon, but this is what I wish for beyond anything.”

  “Why?”

  “It is said you have more knowledge and lore than any man save the Papal physician, himself.”

  “Hmmf. Bartolomeo Friesch comes to me for counsel, not I to him.” The Maestro stared intently, as if he could see right through me and out the other side. The drapery of the man’s robe quivered as his fingers drummed against his thigh. The fingers stopped.

  “You have spoken the one word — knowledge — whose dictates I have followed in all things since before I was your age.” Straightening, he regarded me. “Come again tomorrow at noon, boy, and we shall see what you are capable of. Perhaps I will let you peruse the Epistola de Magnete, which treats on the properties of the very stone you hold in your hand.”

  I had forgotten that I held the lodestone. A flush of heat rose into my face and I quickly turned to place it on the table. “Thank you, Maestro. I swear I will—.” When I turned back, I saw only the black whip of his trailing robe in the doorway and heard the sound of his retreating footsteps.

  Letting out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding, I felt certain I’d won a position as the Maestro’s apprentice. The satisfaction of having gained something on the strength of my own doggedness and wit was new. A short time later, I stepped into the blinding daylight of the street. Bezio slapped my shoulder and winked. “How did it go, boy?”

  I did not like the look he gave me, nor the familiarity of his tone. “Boy” was a name I could accept from the Maestro, but not from him. Besides, I felt strong, like a man whose future is fixed in heaven. “My name is Ignacio, not ‘boy,’” I said. “And I am now the Maestro’s apprentice.”

  Bezio’s face dropped, his smile changing to a sour grimace. Perhaps I will regret the impulse one day, but not this one. Today, I parted the curtains through which tomorrow I step.

  Shivering with the morning chill, Teresa peered from behind a street corner, studying the house described in Ignacio’s journal. It stood two stories, connected on either side to buildings of the same height in a block that included the Maestro’s home. Because of the steep pitch of the street, the building was lower than the Maestro’s. The only windows were on the second floor and these were shuttered. The shutters looked rotten, several slats hanging loose as if the place had been abandoned.

  For what seemed the hundredth time she looked at the keys in her hand, the ones she’d pulled from the chest in Ignacio’s room. Part of her wondered if they would fit. Another part knew without question they would.

  The entrance was a sturdy gate of iron bars set above a single slab step in a dirt-gray, pockmarked wall. Several feet behind the gate, Teresa could make out a plain wooden door with green, flaking paint. The entryway smelled so sharply of old urine, her eyes watered when she walked past it.

  And she had done so three times now.

  Teresa hadn’t slept. After the revelations of the night, she’d read through the pages of her brother’s journal. She was both excited and repelled by the odd drawings and notations, reading as fast as she could, knowing it could mean Ignacio’s life or death. His notes described things she could hardly believe: magical practices, cabals; a group, the Maleficarum, whose members flourished among the wealthy and powerful, recognizable only by the intricate mark each bore on the inside of one wrist.

  Not for an instant had she thought of waking her mother or Philippa and sharing what she’d found. They wouldn’t have believed her or the journal. Even if they had, they were no allies. They’d wait days for her father and brother to be released before acting and would, more than likely, lock her in a broom closet.

  Reading the journal, Teresa brimmed with impatience and anxiety. Rainclouds passed and the moon slipped away. Standing now on the street corner, she heard the mindless nattering of birds from a nearby tree. The first traces of dawn stained the sky. Nothing could be gained by further delay. Stepping into the street, she crossed to the door.

  After four months as his apprentice, I can say the Maestro is a man of moods. When he is ill tempered, I have found it best to avoid him. This I learned by observing Bezio, and it is proof there will always be a place for low cunning in the world. When the Maestro is like this, the usually idle Bezio is changed. He becomes energetic and sets forth on tasks that require him to be gone from the house. I have learned the trick now, too.

  However, when the Maestro’s spirits are high, he will take time to share knowledge or explain a difficult passage from one of his codices or parchment scrolls. When an especially happy mood is on him, the man becomes almost giddy and shares information so suggestive that, afterwards, it sends me running to his collection of writings for more.

  Yesterday was one such day. He made a rare trip outside the house, returning with an armful of scrolls. He stepped loudly through the door wearing a smile and his eyes were almost buzzing about in their sockets. As he walked past me to the stairs, I sensed an opportunity and asked if he might teach me something. It was a wild, fey mood I had caught him in, for he placed the scrolls carefully on a chair, turned, grabbed me by both arms and swung me around, pushing me into yet another chair.

  “Is there such a thing as the number seven?” he said.

  For a moment, I thought he had gone mad. “Yes, Maestro.”

  “Can you see it? Can you touch it?”

  “I suppose, if I had seven eggs.”

  “What if I smashed three of them?” He pounded the table beside me, one, two, three times. It was loud enough to make me jump and Bezio stuck his head in the room.

  “Well, boy? Look at me. What then? Would the number seven have ceased to exist?”

  “I…”

  “There are many things you cannot see, and yet they exist. You yourself witnessed the invisible power of the lodestone the day you first came seeking me out, did you not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Everything in this world has its matter, its flesh. And every living thing has an animating spirit, what
you would call a soul and the Greeks called a psyche. Are there souls in people? Certainly. But they exist in animals and trees, as well. There is a spirit in every living thing, from the moon-eyed boy who sits before me, right down to the meanest blade of grass and the insect which fats upon it.”

  He paused as if to hear my response, but I remained mute; I knew better than to distract the Maestro from his speech. Seeing this, he nodded and continued.

  “I have met men who have lost limbs in battle, yet who could still feel them years later. What they feel is the psyche. It remains whole even when the limb is no more, because no sword or axe can harm it. It is impervious to assaults of the flesh and remains invisible.

  “Denying things exist which we cannot see is idiocy. Seeking them out, manipulating their power for our own gain is wisdom. Whether we search the texts of the magi or the entrails of a dead dog, this pursuit of knowledge is a consecrated act.”

  Straightening, he stood back. “I have dedicated my life to the pursuit of knowledge, boy, forgoing all other pleasures. I can create an infusion of meadowsweet or nightshade to manipulate a man’s physical health for good or ill. In my hands, at my direction, the bodies of the plants work upon the body of the subject, flesh to flesh. Nothing could be simpler. And with the proper focus and preparation, I can use the force of my spirit to manipulate the psyche.

  “Yet once in hundreds of years will come an individual who can use his will and spirit not simply upon other spirits, but to manipulate the world’s flesh and that of everything in it. They can do so almost instinctively, without ritual, preparation, or any course of learning. Their power comes from their inner spirit or ghost and for this reason, they are named geistmagen.

  “They are most often ignorant and their power is always unearned. The slippery ease of their gift is an accident of creation or else a cruel joke. They may never, in all their lives, strive for knowledge and, left to their own devices, will fritter their miserable, ignorant years away without ever realizing the value of what they hold.