The Conjurers

by David Waid

  “Sairshee, you must speak the words,” she said.

  The sound of her voice was eaten in the dead air. The noise of her breath grew louder as frustration tightened her chest. Knowing that the most exalted hierophants of her order sent forth forgeries of the Harenin rituals — each substantially accurate, each hiding some flaw — would make any aspirant think twice, but she had thought this through. A storm of change was certainly coming, the stars had spoken of it. She had to succeed. Through gritted teeth, she spoke again.

  “Say the words.”

  If she could work the noise forth, it would begin, the first sound in the chanting stream that could raise her to a coveted place among the Maleficarum and bring her all she ever wanted. But once started, there was no turning back. She would succeed or end worse than the tinker. She had read the scrolls so many times she knew them by heart. The intricate sigils and numbers had been scribed at each point of the pentagram. Now she need only speak. Yet fear thudded in her heart, pumping its taint to every corner of her body. She imagined whispers in the air, hiding beneath the rasp of her breath, the colloquy of things she couldn’t see, things gathered to watch for her to slip and them to seize.

  The tightness in her throat loosened, but all that emerged was a whimper. Her face flushed at that weak noise. The tension holding her body rigid became rage, sweeping her away. The concentration she needed was gone, irretrievable, the ritual destroyed before it began. Stalking across the lines of the pentacle, Sairshee fell on the tinker and tore his body with the knife. Fury carried her. Fury at the Maleficarum. At herself. Even at the dead man. Indeed, she felt as if she floated in a cocoon of it, the distorted sound of her angry screams pressing the space between her eyes. Tears leaked down along the side of her nose. She stabbed and tore until exhaustion stopped her.

  On her knees, weight forward, she panted. Her hands and wrists were planted in meat and slippery black clots. The man’s bowels had ruptured and the stench of it was in her mouth and nose. That smell could just as well be the reek of her essence. She was disgusting, earning every disdain she had ever received from the Maleficarum. Always she would balk, always fail.

  Standing, Sairshee grabbed the man’s collar. He had been easy to move when she vibrated with reckless energy. Now, he dragged like a sack of stones, catching on every little protrusion of the floor. Out of the room she pulled him in a series of straining stages, placing and re-placing her candle, leaving behind a fresh, smudgy trail atop the old one.

  At the first side tunnel, she turned in, huffing. The next bend brought her to an alcove and her most humiliating of secrets, the proof of failure. The oldest of the bodies resembled leather stretched over a bone frame, with long hair that lay across the tunnel floor, rough and stiff as a reed mat. The most recent, laid in no more than a week ago, supine, with hands still tied and crossed on his chest, skin black and red and orange, taut and shining like an apple. And in the far corner, an assortment of bags, lumpy with possessions of the wandering poor. As she pulled the tinker onto the pile, the fetid stink nearly overcame her, but she bore it like a punishment, deserving no less.

  26. Possession

  Leinster

  Caitlin’s wasted body lay in the room’s one bed, head turned his way, dead eyes pointing at Eamon with dark, bruised lids. Her lips moved and she repeated the words she’d spoken just a moment before.

  “Open the door.”

  The words came from her lips, but it wasn’t Caitlin. A surge of heat rushed his head. Nairne remained on the floor in unshakeable sleep, yet he remembered the old woman’s words: Open the door before morning and Caitlin will die. For a crazy moment, he pictured everyone else beneath the inn’s roof lying perfectly still, like Nairne, eyes closed, orbs twitching beneath their lids. He imagined lamp flames and hearth fires caught between flutters in frozen time.

  He was alone.

  The candlelight dimmed when the thing inside Caitlin started to speak again. “Eamon,” she said.

  “No.” His voice cracked. “You’re not Caitlin.”

  “Your sister is dying. I can help her if you will open the door.”

  “You want to kill her.”

  “Will you condemn your sister with baseless fear? Must everyone in your life die because you refuse to take action?”

  Pressing palms against his ears, he could still hear the thing.

  “She will end up in Hell and burn with your mother.”

  “My mother is not in Hell. You’re lying.”

  “Your stepfather is there, too.”

  “No. No. He’s still alive.”

  “Now who is lying? Your stepfather is dead, you know it in your heart. He died when you abandoned him. He suffers God’s wrath now.”

  Eamon’s body shook. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “They nurtured you — an abomination. What mercy do you think your implacable god harbors?”

  Lies. It had to be.

  Eamon started to recite the Lord’s Prayer, hoping to drown out this devil. At first the words came quiet, growing louder as the thing talked on.

  “I am the only one who can save her,” the thing in his sister said. “Who else will do it? Your old witch? She is sleeping through your time of —.” It stopped as the rising sound of Eamon’s prayer finally penetrated.

  “…deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory…”

  “Oh-ho,” Caitlin said. “After all this, still so pious?” A rattle came from her throat and he thought it was laughter. The prayer shriveled on his lips as the evil inside Caitlin continued. “This is a fine thing from one who has dipped his hands in Satan’s wellspring.”

  “No. No. No.” He shook his head.

  “You drank deep of it. The red juice stains your chin, even as you beg salvation. Have you no shame? Do you not know that yours is a jealous god?”

  The words seemed monstrous, spilling in his sister’s voice from those chapped and peeling lips.

  “God will forgive me,” he said. And he wanted so much to believe it.

  “He will not,” came the response. “When he bothers to pay heed at all, your god forgives only those who confess. That is something you will never do. If you confess, the Church will tie you to a stake and burn you alive.”

  Silence fell for a space. Eamon said nothing. Then the thing spoke on, saying the words he feared most.

  “You won’t confess because you enjoyed it.”

  The wall of the room was suddenly at his back. He slid to the floor, shoulders sagging forward.

  “You know the truth of what I say,” the thing continued. “I am the one in whom you should put your faith. Caitlin dies even as your god sleeps more soundly than the witch. Open the door.”

  “Please stop.”

  “Come, Eamon, there are worse things than me. I can tell you about them. You should want to know. They’re searching for you and even now draw near. Do you know why? Let me in and I will tell you. I can show you how to defeat them.”

  He hugged himself, leaned forward over his knees and groaned. Closing his eyes, Eamon concentrated on Nairne’s words.

  Do not open the door.

  “You are an obstinate boy. Perhaps you do not understand how much your sister suffers. This, too, I can show you.”

  A gurgling sound came from Caitlin. She began to shake and spasm so hard the entire bed shook. Every muscle in her slight frame went rigid. Her spine arched back and back until it looked like it would snap.

  “No!” Eamon leapt to his feet, crossing the room and throwing his weight on her. His mouth fell open in horror when his sister’s voice, small and pitiful, spoke from just inches away.

  “Eamon, make it stop.” This close, he could smell her breath, rank and fever hot. “Please, it hurts too much.” She shook so hard, he lifted off the bed with her. Her lips twisted out the words, but, oh, God, it couldn’t be her talking. Grabbing her shoulders, he tried to keep her still.

  “It’s not her!” he screamed.
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  Caitlin thrashed and he couldn’t tear his gaze away. Her lips contorted in screams, but her eyes were utterly dead.

  “Stop doing this to her. Please stop.”

  “Open the door, Eamon! Please. It’s hurting me!”

  Caitlin hovered near death. He could see that. She might already be dead, animated only by whatever gripped her. In the horror, anguish, fear — the God damned uncertainty of that instant — he knew that if she weren’t dead, she would be soon.

  He closed his eyes. “Stop!” he shouted. “I’ll do it.”

  The shaking stopped. The absence of noise came so abruptly, it seemed he’d gone deaf, as if the entire inn held its breath, waiting for whatever came next. He couldn’t let Caitlin die, not after what had happened to his mother and Duff. Not another death. Better to die himself than be alone forever.

  “I will open the door.”

  Folding Caitlin’s hands on her chest he stepped back. For the second time that night, he crossed to the door and rested his hand on the latch. Turning for one last look at Caitlin’s face, Eamon found that her eyes had followed his movement. The latch rattled beneath his thumb. Something shifted on the other side of the door. He sensed it only in his mind, but it was real. That something pressed against the entry, its attention needle-focused on the door, awaiting only release of the latch to hurl the door back and invade. He took a shuddering breath, put his ear to the wood and listened.

  With a rustle of blankets, Caitlin’s hand slipped from her chest to her side. When Eamon glanced at her, she stared back the way she had all night, yet something was different. And that difference lay in her eyes. They were alive. She blinked. Her lips moved. In a soft, hoarse voice she said one word, “Don’t.”

  The room dropped back into its hush, but only for a heartbeat. Eamon’s hand fell away from the latch. At that, what felt like an angry tide flowed from all around the room, toward and through the crack at the door’s bottom. Something invisible, almost tangible, rushed past Eamon, picking up speed, tugging, coalescing into a swell of fury that took shape in the corridor beyond. Caitlin was trying to sit up, unable. He even saw Nairne stir where she lay.

  A roar of soundless fury engulfed the inn. The walls trembled with it, the door rattling in its frame. Even through the wooden portal, the hatred of it beat on Eamon in waves. Its rage blotted all fear, all thought. He collapsed to his knees, vision swimming as pressure hammered his temples. In a moment of focus, he saw drops of red between his knees. His nose was bleeding. Darkness crept in, his eyes sagged closed.

  And then the pressure disappeared.

  Eamon was surprised to find himself lying on the ground facing a door that remained sealed. Cheek still resting on the floor, he looked to see if shadow darkened that crack at the bottom of the door. It didn’t. There was only the faint red play of light from the common room. Slowly, struggling against fatigue, he rose on all fours. Nairne shifted in her place. When he looked her way, the old woman stared blindly in his direction.

  “Don’t sit there gawping, boy,” she said. “Help me to yer sister’s side.”

  27. The Devil’s Own Luck

  Off the Coast of France

  The Maestro stood in the frigid moisture that misted over the ship’s rail of La Sientespirit, watching the water break beneath her bow, occasionally leaning his head back to track the gulls and terns chasing sunlight over the water. The smell of the sea was in the air, on his skin, in the very wood of the ship.

  He had failed in his attempt to possess the girl and get at Eamon in his squalid little inn, but only because of astonishment. How could he not be surprised? The girl was a geistmage, too. Even now, the thought sent his mind reeling. Brother and sister both. Unheard of. He yearned for the books of his library, but they were in Genoa with Bezio.

  The storm clouds that threatened on the horizon in the morning had given way to sunlight and fair sailing. Their cog hugged close enough to the coast that he saw fishermen drawing their coracles up on white strands and sheep grazing the distant hills. Soon, spring would be upon the world and that seemed reason enough to feel invigorated.

  The Maestro stood at the fulcrum of something great. Bigger, he now knew, than he could possibly have imagined when setting forth from Genoa. His trip, this entire sojourn, had become the pursuit of a rebirth the like of which had not been seen since the Nazarene had sundered the doors of his tomb and emerged a god.

  Sairshee — the adept who did his bidding in Ireland — had flushed the prey, but was clearly incapable of completing the task. Her weak, flailing attempts had earned nothing. If she learned of his presence in Ireland at all, it would be after the ritual was complete and he had been invested with the power he sought. Perhaps he would kill her then. Perhaps not.

  After the chanting and clouds of incense required by last night’s ritual, none of the crew would come near the Maestro or even meet his eye. This was a fine thing, just so long as they served their purpose. And they did. The ship’s sail drank deep of the day’s strong wind and she ran along the western coast of France like some lean greyhound.

  Captain and crew eyed each other as often as they eyed the Maestro; he felt their superstitious glares. The canvas of the sail cracked overhead, speeding the vessel on to the port of Dublin. He found the sailors’ faces comical, as if, for once, they found themselves benefiting from a run of the Devil’s own luck and wished fervently it were otherwise.

  The ship pressed on, cutting through soft waves in the Bay of Biscay. To starboard lay the Vendée coast. Behind them the great port of La Rochelle, ahead, Brittany. Soon — very soon — he would be in Dublin.

  28. With the Hansa

  Northern France

  Teresa tried to burrow down into the darkness, but pain wouldn’t let her. Oblivion dissolved. Discomfort grew. Her first gray, half formed thought was: Stay asleep. Please, stay asleep. But that thought spawned another. And another. She remembered lying on her side in the snow. And she remembered the smell: burning trees, burning skin. A boot stepped by her face, but she couldn’t lift her head to see whose.

  Most of all, she remembered how one of the men had looked at her, his body shaking, skin blackened. And his eyes, so white. Groaning, Teresa tried to shrink from the accusation in those eyes. Then every detail of the night came back in a flood so fast, so hard, her body jerked. Pain seared her shoulder. The last remnants of sleep tore away and she lay on her side in a shadowy room, panting, trying to keep her arm still.

  Her slender pallet rested on a tall base of wood attached to the wall. Across from her was a similar pallet. Its base was a long, flat-topped chest, doubling as a bed and, looking down, she saw hers was the same. A folding table between the two chests held a lamp and the walls were covered in silk fabrics, colors muted in the dim light. The Hansa wagon.

  The boot in the snow had been the lady, then, or her servant. But where were they? Did Father Hugh know she was here? Teresa tried to sit up and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

  Cloth bandages covered her right arm. Rolling onto her back, she discovered another on the side of her neck. A strip of fabric had been wrapped over Teresa’s head and under her jaw to hold a third bandage against her cheek. Whatever wounds lay beneath them caused throbbing pain that was growing worse. These had to be burns from where the fire she’d conjured came back on her. Was her skin charred like the man in the orchard?

  Teresa had seen a survivor of burns once. He’d been begging alms near the Pilgrim’s Gate. His scars seemed old, but healed, if it could be called that. It looked as if his skin had run like hot wax and cooled again. The beggar sat clutching an empty wooden bowl, calling for charity, but people shrank away as if he were a leper, crossing the street to pass him by.

  She touched the bandage on her face, afraid of what she’d find underneath. Looking at the blanket which covered her body and legs, Teresa’s mouth went dry. How far did these burns extend?

  Shutting her eyes, she said a prayer, lifted the blanket. When she o
pened them again, it took a moment for her to realize there were no other bandages. No burns. Relief came so strong, Teresa barely noticed she wore a loose, white shift that wasn’t hers. Yet she felt for the pendant chain at her neck, to make sure Ignacio’s wolf charm still hung there, and she breathed a sigh of relief when it did.

  The door at the back of the wagon opened. Bright daylight burst in and Teresa blinked, holding her good hand up to shield against its glare. The Hansa woman entered. “Ah,” she said, “You are awake. That is good. No, do not sit up.” The servant Teresa had seen on the first day entered, too, shutting the door. Up close, the woman’s shaking head was more pronounced and unnerving.

  “Mina,” the lady said. “Please prepare our guest a bowl of wine.” Puffing, she dragged a stool beside Teresa’s pallet and sat. “Let me see your bandages.” Outside, muffled by the walls and fabric, someone called, “Yah!” The wagon lurched into motion and the lady swayed. She brought the lamp from the folding table closer and peered at Teresa. “Lift your arm.” Holding Teresa’s wrist, she lifted the edge of a bandage, nodded and made an examination of the others.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “The pain means your nerves still live. You are fortunate that I have read the texts of Galen and can treat these wounds. Drink this.” The lady snapped her fingers and Mina handed a bowl forward that smelled awful, wine with herbs floating on the surface like tiny insects. Teresa held it near her lips without drinking.

  “It will help with the pain.”

  Teresa hesitated, but in the end, she frowned, wrinkled her nose and drank. Lips pursed, she almost spit it back, but at last she swallowed and gasped. Retrieving the bowl, the lady handed it back to Mina.

  “I don’t want any more of that,” Teresa said.