The Conjurers

by David Waid

  Fists clenched, she stared down at Lady Tummia. “I am going to do what Ignacio asked.” She watched the woman’s face for a sign of recognition, but none came. At last she snatched up her cloak and stepped to the door. Peeking her head into the corridor, she searched for Mina, but the gangway and bunks remained still. Teresa ran down the aisle, making for the stairs below the hatch, skin crawling, expecting Mina’s hand to jab from the shadows.

  At the base of the stairs, she paused, looking up. Five steps from hatch to rail. Perhaps as many more to the rope ladder on the ship’s side. She could do that. With any luck, Mina would have no idea her mistress lay below, caught in the teeth of her own trap.

  Teresa ascended, poking her head high enough to look out. It was near impossible to see in the gloom. Ropes creaked, but no voices came from fore or aft. The two sailors guarding the skiff had collapsed, bewitched in the same way as the others. No waking soul stirred amidships and again she wondered where the lady’s servant might be.

  Sliding like a ghost over the lip of the hatch, Teresa crouched behind a massive coil of rope, glancing right and left. No one.

  Darting toward the port side, she stopped, a shiver of gooseflesh running across her shoulders. Mina sat with her back to the wood of the ship’s rail. Something glinted on the ground by her hip. Squinting, Teresa saw it was a caulking chisel, heavy and sharp.

  She expected Mina to make a snatch for her, but the servant simply sat, hands covering her face. Her shoulders shook. For a moment, Teresa could make no sense of it. Madonna! the woman was crying. At Teresa’s approach, Mina looked up, cheeks wet. Her head no longer shook or jerked.

  “I am getting into the boat,” Teresa told her. “Do not try to stop me. I will die rather than be Tummia’s captive.”

  Mina stared at her, then spoke in a low, dull voice. “That is wise.”

  Teresa gaped. The lady’s servant had been mute in all their weeks of travel. But Mina was not finished. “Kill yourself,” she said. “Before the witch can do worse.”

  “I’m not going to kill myself. I’m going to escape. Let me pass or I’ll burn you. You’ve seen I can do it.”

  “You can take my life. Here.” She grabbed up the chisel, offered it to Teresa. “Take this and do it. Please. I have been trying to do it myself, but I am afraid.”

  Teresa glared. “What trick is this?”

  “None. Take the chisel.” Mina leaned forward. She shoved it at Teresa and the girl stepped back.

  “I’m not going to kill you. I only want to get in the boat.” Teresa watched Mina slowly crawl away from the rail, making room for her to get past. Even after the way was clear, Teresa didn’t take it. She stood and stared. “Why aren’t you trying to capture me?” she said.

  “Once I was the lady’s apprentice. She deceived me, seized my will. She moves me now like a stringed puppet. I am a hollow, diseased thing, filled with the stink of her crimes.”

  “You are not acting like her puppet.”

  “You have broken her control. For now.” Mina pressed her forehead to her knees, clutched fistfuls of hair. “Yet she stirs. Like worms turning in my mind. Soon she will be free.”

  Those last words sent a chill through Teresa. “Then we must kill her,” she said. “We’ll use your chisel. Or tie her up and throw her into the sea.”

  “There is no use in fighting her. The Maleficarum do not die so easily.”

  Teresa pictured the scene below deck: the blue light, faint as fever, shining from the little cabin at the end of the gangway. There was no chance she could go down there by herself and murder the witch with eyes lolling up in her head.

  That left only flight. She needed to get into the skiff, yet Teresa stood in front of Mina, caught by pity. Her weight shifted, first to one foot, then the other. She stopped. “Come with me. If you get far enough away, you might be free.”

  “It is impossible to defeat Lady Tummia. Already she nears the surface.”

  “Per Dio! We have to leave.”

  Mina didn’t stand. On hands and knees, she crawled to where she had been sitting, lifted something that rested there in the dark. “I brought this for you from where the lady hid it. It is the book you carried in the orchard.”

  Excitement surged in Teresa as she received the grimoire. She ran her fingers across the dark leather binding and the brass clasps. She wanted to dance and shout, but set her excitement aside. More time was twisting off into the night as they talked, and her head had filled with the image of Tummia rising up through the hatch.

  Grabbing Mina’s arm with her free hand, Teresa looked into her eyes. “You wouldn’t have given me this book if you believed there was no hope. You have to get up.” She pulled the woman to her feet, turned her toward the rail. “Climb,” she said.

  Over the side they went, and Mina did climb, slowly. Down the quivering rope ladder they progressed until they reached the rocking skiff. Mina untied the boat as Teresa stepped over two of the thwarts to the single set of oars.

  “It is happening,” the woman said.

  “Mina, let go of the rope.”

  The line dropped in the water, but Mina just stood there. The boat rubbed against the ship’s timbers like calf to cow, then it was free, swinging away. Mina remained standing. “It’s too late.” She lifted her hand and in it was the chisel.

  “What are you doing?” Teresa cried.

  “I will never be free of her.” Mina held the chisel’s edge to her eye as Teresa looked on in horror. Then a completely separate fear slithered between Teresa’s shoulders. The woman’s head had begun to twitch.

  “The lady is coming. Go as fast as you can. Oh, God protect me, she’s fr—”

  With a violent wrench of her arms, Mina jammed the iron into her eye. Her mouth formed a perfect circle of pain, but she didn’t make a sound. She crashed forward in silence, full length, and her face struck the boat’s edge. The chisel scraped against wood and Mina slumped part way over the side, head in the water, skiff tipping precariously.

  Teresa felt sick, but she darted a glance at the ship’s rail. At any moment, Tummia’s face would appear above its side. She scrambled to grab Mina’s shoulder, tried to lift, but the woman was waterlogged and heavy. The boat rocked violently and Teresa, struggling for balance, almost pitched into the sea. Her breath came in gulps, blood pounding in her ears. She managed a second grip and pulled. Mina’s head came up dripping water and ropes of hair, but Teresa saw the chisel. It had spiked deep, the metal head nearly flush with the socket of her skull. With a cry, Teresa let go. The boat lurched and rocked as Teresa sat down hard against the other side.

  She couldn’t row the skiff with Mina hanging over its edge. Crossing herself, Teresa said, “Forgive me.” She planted her back against the dead woman’s hip, pushed with both legs and Mina slid out and into the sea. Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes, but Teresa found her seat at the oars and began to row. For a long time she kept her head down, pulling for shore with all her strength, afraid to look up and see Mina’s floating corpse. When at last she did look, the Beornsdæd was already a great black blot and she could see nothing on or around it.

  The sounds of the surf grew louder. Darting glances over each shoulder, Teresa could make no details of the land, either. Rocks, cove, beach; it all looked the same in the dark.

  The skiff’s hull ground unexpectedly on beach sand and Teresa yelped with surprise. Getting out, she stood in icy water to mid-calf, clutching the grimoire. She staggered onto the beach and collapsed, heedless of the boat being taken by the tide.

  Out in the darkness, the ship’s bell began to ring.

  A few yards inland, sand gave way to stones the size of her hand and beyond that grass sloped up to a black line that must be trees. As she studied the darkness, a patch of it detached from the gloom and walked toward her.

  “Non est Tummia,” it said.

  Even as she realized the man wasn’t talking to her, something whispered across the sand to her right. Teresa star
ted to turn as something struck the side of her head. Light and pain exploded and oblivion swallowed her up.

  34. Precipice

  Inn of the Three Shrikes

  Eamon ran off the staircase into the common room, but what he saw brought him to a halt. Both doors leading into the Shrikes were open, the front door to his left, the rear door on his right. A man stood framed in each, with the dark day at his back and the orange glow of the hearth fire on his face. An old man and a plump woman of middle years stared at Eamon from the center of the room.

  Even as Eamon gaped, another man emerged from the short corridor that led to their little bedchamber.

  “Abalienati sunt,” he said to the old man at the room’s center. “Sed possessiones suas manere.”

  “In English, please,” the old man replied without shifting his eyes from Eamon. “And not to worry, I believe our prize has wandered in.”

  Finding his voice, Eamon addressed the old man. “Who are you?”

  “Maestro Salvezzo Lodovicetti.”

  “Are you bandits?”

  “Far from it. We are the Maleficarum.”

  “What do you want?”

  The woman is the one who replied. “Come now,” she said. “Does flame suffer the moth to know its intent?”

  Eamon’s neck stiffened. “Leave us alone or I will kill you,” he said.

  “We also can kill,” said the Maestro. He nudged something in the shadow beneath the tables. A body rolled onto its back, one arm slapping the floor. With a shock, Eamon recognized the bearded innkeeper. Someone cried out and next to the body, under the table, he saw the alewife laying on her side with wrists and ankles tied.

  “We do as we please,” said the old man. “Now, where is your sister and the feeble witch? Up those stairs, perhaps?”

  “Leave my sister alone.” Eamon snarled the words, reaching for the magic that had twice saved him.

  “Ah. Here it comes now,” said the Maestro. “The very thing we wish to possess.” His eyes flicked over Eamon’s shoulder and Eamon remembered the stranger standing behind him in the doorway. He whirled and the stranger was there, palm held open and flat in front of his mouth. He blew, and a cloud of fine powder exploded in Eamon’s face. It burned the eyes, doubling Eamon over in a hacking, coughing fit.

  His fingers scrabbled at lips already numb, came away tipped in yellow dust. Darkness edged his blurring vision. Two of the men headed for the stairs, for Nairne and his sister. He saw it and tried to scream a warning, but by then he was falling.

  Murmuring voices. Red light and shadow played against the backs of Eamon’s eyelids. It felt as if he stood upright, but the floor’s hardness pressed the back of his scalp.

  Upright?

  He opened his eyes and lifted his head. The entire room tipped in stomach-churning realignment and he realized that he actually lay flat out on the ground. His head continued to spin for long, nauseating heartbeats. Carefully, he tried lifting again. The world remained stable. His skull, however, throbbed in painful waves. Vision slid in and out of focus.

  Both of Eamon’s arms were stretched overhead and he couldn’t move them. Craning around, he found his hands tied to a stake driven in the hard packed dirt of the common room. Likewise, his feet. All the tables and chairs had been shoved and stacked to the sides, the floor cleared of rushes.

  The magi sat in a circle, a thick candle stubbed in the ground before each. Eamon’s wrists were near the circle’s outer edge, feet fixed at its center. Caitlin and another boy he didn’t recognize were arranged like him, spokes in a wheel, feet touching in the middle.

  Intricate designs he couldn’t make out had been scratched into the earth, and each of their captors seemed absorbed in their own preparations for some ritual, one with his eyes closed, muttering under his breath, another frowning in concentration as he leaned forward, adding to the design with a piece of chalkstone.

  In shadows by the inn’s back door Eamon made out Nairne and the alewife, tied with wrists and ankles behind their backs. A man cleared his throat. Eamon twisted, saw the mage who had blown poison in his face sitting by his bound hands.

  “Your friends over there are a conceit of the Maestro’s. They are the ones who will bear witness to his apotheosis. Left alive so the world will know.” His thick lips parted in a smile. “I am not sure there is much value in a blind witness. Still, she has some knowledge of our craft and the Maestro must have his way.”

  “Please let me go.”

  “That I cannot do. Tonight will be filled with necessary injustices. You may as well resign yourself to it. Do you see the way your innkeeper’s wife looks at the Lady Tummia? It is because the Florentine murdered her husband and young son. All of it is unjust. And all of it necessary.”

  “Let me go,” Eamon said. “I won’t kill you.”

  “Well. Even misplaced bravado can be admirable.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “To become a god alongside the Maestro.”

  “You will only become a monster.”

  “Do you imagine there is a difference?”

  Eamon thrashed in answer, pulling at the ropes, trying to loosen the stake, but it went deep. Reaching for the place Nairne had shown him, the place where his power lay, he found only an endless blank wall.

  “We are not fools,” said the man. “Your gift was bound and sealed by the power of ritual while you slept. Now you must be quiet. We need you alive, but no more is required. It is not necessary, for instance, that you have a tongue.” Lifting his chin, the man spoke to the Maestro. “This is your feast. On which shall we sup first?”

  “The Lady Tummia tells me this girl burned my home in Genoa and murdered my servant.” He indicated the stranger Eamon had thought was a boy. A girl?

  “Then let us start there,” said the man by his hands. “Stripping the girl of her nature may provide you with some satisfaction.”

  “Agreed.”

  The girl must have understood some of what was said because she pulled and twisted in the restraints, spitting out words in another language. The Maestro lifted a packet of small paper sheets. Each crackling, yellowed square was inscribed with a single letter or sign. Taking the bottom edge of one sheet in both hands, he held it up, bowed his head. “Ut placatus accipias, quæsumus.”

  Lighting the paper over his candle, he held the curling sheet so flames spread rapidly and then dropped it in a censer. He repeated this with each additional sheet before replacing the perforated lid and lifting the vessel. The censer’s delicate chain swung in gentle arcs over the edge of the pentacle, wisps of sweet smoke trailing behind.

  The five magi chanted in unison and the designs on the floor seemed to ripple and glow. At first Eamon thought it was a trick of his eyes, yet the intensity grew, pulsing so that he felt as much as saw the change. The space within the pentacle shimmered like hot air, though the room grew no warmer.

  Desperate, Eamon thrashed against his bonds. He tried to open the door to his gift again and an immediate, overwhelming flood of sensations ripped through him. He was stupefied, paralyzed, and then it was gone. Just the same as when he experienced visions by Nairne’s hearth.

  No, please no.

  His muscles seized and his body jerked. A stab of light obliterated thought. The whole world was brightness and a hum so loud his skull shook. Then it released. His breath came fast and loud through clenched teeth.

  All in my head. All in my head.

  He opened his eyes. The man who’d been seated by Eamon’s hands was gone, replaced with the Maestro. That sent him into a frenzy, head snapping from side to side. With shock and horror he saw himself — his own body — pegged to the ground across the floor, a different spoke in the circle. A chill moved through him. This was not his body. He was looking through the eyes of the girl, of…Teresa. Just like that he knew her name.

  Within the circle it felt as though a thundercloud had piled high and thick. The hairs on his arms — her arms — lifted. Sound and light sur
ged, so fast he couldn’t even form a plea before he was taken.

  No, pl—.

  The fear must be driving her mad, Teresa thought. For a moment, she’d looked through someone else’s eyes. The boy’s, maybe, but no, she was back, still herself. It was impossible to think with the designs of the floor squirming beneath her. The drone of the Maleficarum went on. Through the shimmering air, she saw the boy. He had been thrashing, but now lay still as death. She tried again to repeat the chant Father Hugh had taught her, to fall into a calm, protected space where she could use her magic, but nothing came.

  Yet still she felt it when the magic of the ritual touched her. Not around her, like the designs, but inside. That touch stirred like a live thing, burrowing. Through a fresh wash of tears she saw the magi lean forward, faces set, staring through slitted eyes. The Maestro. Lady Tummia.

  Teresa had never asked for this magic, but she didn’t want a piece of herself taken away. No. It was even more than that. She wanted to keep this thing because it made her strong. It was her power they were taking.

  What the maleficarum had created moved inside her again. Teresa flung herself against the ropes, jerking and spitting, heels and head slamming against the hard earth. The pain was nothing, lost as the magic in her twisted and tugged. In some place she’d never known or acknowledged, it pulled and something tore. She screamed and went on screaming.

  By the time the chanting stopped, Teresa had quieted, staring off into space. Wisps of hair lay plastered to her forehead in beaded sweat. The lids of her eyes were red and her face cold and wet with tears and vomit. Her body shook in small, fierce tremors, her lips moving slightly, whispering. “Perdioperdioperdioperdio . . .”

  Seated by her hands, the Maestro spoke one word to his brethren across the circle.

  “Success.”

  Eamon opened his eyes and…they were his eyes. Lifting his head, he saw Teresa on one side, her feet touching his as she stared at the ceiling. Other than her panting breath, she made no sound or movement. On the other side, his sister’s head lay so that she faced him, her skin so pale it looked as though she were already dead. She stared at Eamon and mouthed his name. Overhead, their captors laughed and congratulated each other.