Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Melissa Scott

  Henry drew the curtains, letting in the sun, and Jerry realized they were overlooking the pool again. Which meant Henry probably used this space for his workings as well, which might explain the odd sensation teasing at the back of his mind….

  “Have a seat,” Henry said, and reluctantly Jerry lowered himself into the chair that stood waiting at the edge of Henry’s massive desk. Henry turned toward the bookcases — oh, not a secret compartment, Jerry thought, and then saw the locked cabinet set in among the shelves. The doors were glass and the key was in the lock: apparently it was just to keep idle hands away from the old books, or at least that was what one was meant to think. Henry murmured something, and turned the key. The door swung open, and he produced a small package wrapped in burlap, and set it on the desk in front of Jerry.

  “Go ahead, open it,” he said, and turned to re-lock the cabinet.

  The wrappings were tied with string, none too clean. Jerry plucked it free, and unwrapped the coarse fabric to reveal a bright silk scarf.

  “It was what I had,” Henry said, and leaned his hip against the desktop.

  Jerry lifted an eyebrow, but folded back the first layer of silk. Power warmed his fingertips, trembled in his hands, old and strong and not unfriendly. He took a sharp breath, peeling back the rest of the layers. The tablet lay revealed in the sunlight, the dull lead stamped with seals that he knew he should recognize. Letters had been dug deep into the surface, familiar Latin ritual phrases mixed with ones he didn’t know, and words, whole lines, in an alphabet he recognized all too well. No, Henry wouldn’t recognize Etruscan, and probably neither would anyone else in his lodge, unless Davenport was still a member. He touched the first seal gently, and the power nipped his finger like a spark.

  “What the hell have you got here?” he said, half to himself, and Henry sighed.

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  Jerry lifted the tablet, careful to keep the silk between his fingers and the metal surface, and turned it over to check the reverse. As he had more than half expected, there were symbols there as well, and another ritual phrase calling down punishment on anyone who disturbed the work — no, on anyone who disturbed the binding. And that was not what he had expected at all. He turned the tablet upright again, frowning, and Henry said, “Well?”

  “Where was this found?” Jerry tilted the tablet. The surface was blurred, worn, almost as though it had been exposed to wind or water. Or to something that rubbed constantly against it, trying slowly and without patience but with infinite time to wear away its bonds. The image made him shiver, and he scowled at Henry. “You’re going to have to tell me sometime, you know. If you want me to make a decent job of it.”

  Henry made a face. “What I know is what I was told.”

  “Yes, all right.” Jerry tilted the tablet again, the power in it strong and cold even through the protecting silk. Its weight seemed to shift with the movement, as though there were a blob of mercury trapped within it, pouring along hidden channels. There were no signs of a plug, or seams; the corner seals were discolored at the center, as though — maybe — something had been pressed into or through the lead, but that would be a visible symbol of the binding, defixio made literal. He checked the back again, but the discoloration didn’t go all the way through. Perhaps not, then, he thought, and became aware that Henry was still silent.

  “So what did — he? she? this person — tell you?”

  “I was told,” Henry said, carefully, “that it was found in conjunction with the excavations at Lake Nemi.”

  Nemi. The Sanctuary of Diana at Aricia, by the lake that had been known to the Romans as Diana’s Mirror. Where fisherman had for centuries dredged up fragments of mysterious ships from the bottom of the lake. Where just last year the Italian government had opened an extremely well-financed and internationally staffed expedition that was not only excavating the sanctuary and sections of the surrounding grove, but actually draining the lake itself. The last report he had seen said that the superstructure of the first ship was now above water, and that it was far larger than any Roman ship previously discovered, and would rewrite half a dozen well-worn assumptions….

  “Why aren’t you asking Davenport?” he said aloud. “Or isn’t he part of your lodge anymore?”

  Henry’s eyes flickered, and for a second Jerry thought he was going to agree, but then he made another face. “Bill is — he’s not interested in this piece.”

  “That makes no sense at all,” Jerry said. Even at first glance, he could tell this tablet was something special, especially to anyone who knew anything at all about occult history. “Doesn’t he know you have it?”

  “He knows,” Henry said. “He — well, that’s not important. He’s got other things he’s handling right now, including a donation of bronzes to the University —”

  He stopped, and Jerry looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “Davenport is here? In Los Angeles?”

  “He arrived on Tuesday,” Henry said, after a moment. “Leave it, will you?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Jerry said again. “He must see — feel, anyway — he must know what he has here —”

  “There’s a story that goes with it,” Henry said. “Not a very nice one.”

  “They usually aren’t,” Jerry began, stopped as the expression on Henry’s face really registered. “Go on.”

  “One of the Italian archeologists working on the dig had a brainstorm and disappeared for a month. Just up and vanished one night, and a week later some guy hunting mushrooms spotted him up in the hills above the lake. It took the cops a good month to track him down, but they finally managed to catch him. He was stark staring crazy by then. Couldn’t talk, didn’t recognize anybody, not even his own wife. They took him to a hospital in Rome, but he was in pretty bad shape from being on the run so long — malnourished, feet cut to hell, you get the picture.”

  Jerry nodded.

  “There wasn’t much they could do for him,” Henry said. “Bill said the doctors thought he might have had some kind of stroke, maybe. The sad part is, he was starting to get better — he’d calmed down some, actually seemed to know his wife — and then he had another stroke, and that one killed him.”

  “Not nice,” Jerry said, after a moment. “But what does that have to do with the tablet?”

  “I think Bill got the tablet from Gadda,” Henry said. “The Italian guy. And I think he can’t figure out how to explain having it, so he’s trying to pretend it doesn’t exist, at least until he can think of a way to bring it back to light. But I want to know what it says.”

  Jerry nodded again, thoughtfully this time. It mostly made sense. Oh, there were plenty of things that Henry wasn’t saying, but he was willing to bet most of those had to do with lodge politics. Davenport had been pretty scathing about Henry’s talents, or lack of them, back in Italy; he’d been willing to use Henry, and Henry’s money, when the lodge split, but he probably hadn’t had any reason to change his opinion since then. And, knowing Davenport, he wasn’t going to go out of his way to be polite about it.

  “All right,” he said. “Fine. Not Davenport. What about Geoffrey Bullfinch? This is right up his alley, and he’s just down in San Valencez, which is a hell of a lot closer than me. Not to mention that he’ll work for free if it interests him.”

  Henry looked away again. “There’s been some — call it tension — between the lodge and Bullfinch lately.”

  “He and Davenport fought about — what?” Jerry asked.

  “You name it,” Henry said, his expression sour. “Archeology. Provenance of certain relics. Proper procedures.”

  “And you went along with it.”

  “Our Magister took Bill’s part, yes,” Henry said. “As he should.”

  “Right,” Jerry said. He’d never thought it was the Magister’s place to support his people unreservedly, but this wasn’t his kind of lodge. “So not Bullfinch, either. Fine, I’ll see what I can do. Do you know anything more about where t
his was found? Or if there were any more of them?”

  Henry shook his head. “You know everything I know. Why?”

  I doubt that, Jerry thought, but looked back at the tablet. “This —” He pointed to the concluding lines, careful not to touch the surface. “This implies that there are more tablets. See? It’s all plurals here.”

  Henry nodded. “Can you read it? I recognized the Latin, but that….” He pointed in turn. “It looks like runes.”

  “It’s visually similar,” Jerry said. “It’s Etruscan, actually, and that’s unusual. The Romans used it as a ritual language, of course, very much the way we use Greek and Latin, but you don’t often see it written out. It’s mostly found on tombstones. And of course the real problem is that Etruscan is a lost language.”

  “Which means?”

  “Nobody knows how to read it,” Jerry said. “There’s been some progress recently, a few people who’ve managed to pick out — they think — Indo-European roots to some words, but it’s not at the point where you can know what it says.”

  “Damn,” Henry said, half under his breath. “So you’re saying this is pointless?”

  “Not entirely,” Jerry answered. “I can give you the Latin, of course, and I think I can figure out some of the Etruscan by context. We’ve got a date here, consuls’ names, and I’m guessing this is going to be the reign of Claudius. You’ve got something I can look that up in?”

  “Maybe,” Henry said.

  Jerry went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “So it’s not like this is going to be Etruscan as it was spoken by the Etruscans, it’s going to be more like ritual Latin, and that means I ought to be able to guess at some of it. Especially since there’s a fair amount of information in the other sections.”

  “All right,” Henry said. He pushed himself up off the desk. “Let me ring for some sandwiches, and we can get on with it.”

  Jerry nodded absently, not really listening. The tablet began with a fairly standard invocation to Diana, a recitation of her titles and attributes as Diana Nemorensis, and then the usual language apologizing for any imperfection in the rites — no, it was a more particular apology, for some ritual fault well known to everyone, apparently. And then the first Etruscan section, and a more specific confession of fault, this one having to do with the profanation of the priesthood of the shrine, and then…. He stopped abruptly, pushing his glasses up onto his nose as though that would clarify the translation.

  Diana in all your aspects, heal the wounds and strengthen the bonds that here imprison this spirit of the underworld.

  Oh, Henry, he thought. What have you gotten yourself into?

  Alma put her hands on her hips. “You told Henry what?”

  “I told Henry I needed more time with it.” Jerry carefully sat down on the edge of the neatly made bed. He’d returned to the hotel at mid-afternoon, just before Mitch and Alma had decided to go look for him. They’d given it until three for him to show up or call, and Jerry had showed at ten of. “It’s Latin and Etruscan both, some of it quite intriguing. From what I can determine based on context….”

  Mitch interrupted him in a calm, strong voice, not bothering to get up from the chair by the window. “Jerry, you can translate Latin in your sleep. Hell, I could probably have read the damn thing in three hours. And nobody can read Etruscan, so it doesn’t matter how much time you have with it. What gives?”

  Lewis thought that Jerry looked a little embarrassed. “There’s a lot that can be worked out by context. The Etruscan sections aren’t that long, actually. They seem to be the form of the actual invocations, which all follows since Etruscan was an ancient and obscure language when the tablet was made.”

  “Which was when?” Alma asked, her hands still on her hips, though her voice held more interest than irritation.

  “The first year of the reign of the Emperor Claudius, or 794 Ab Urbe Condita.” He glanced at Lewis apologetically. “That’s 41 AD to you.”

  Lewis shrugged as if to say he didn’t have a horse in this race.

  “So you’re fascinated by it, and you told Henry you needed another day.” Alma shook her head. “Ok, Jerry. What’s so interesting?”

  “It starts off in a very conventional invocational form, asking the goddess Diana to attend upon the speaker and to grant him her good will. Then it apologizes for any displeasure he might have incurred. It takes up pretty standard expiationary language – expiare, to atone or make reparations – though it doesn’t indicate exactly what crimes the speaker is making amends for. Then there’s a section of Etruscan, and another round of apologies. Then the speaker states that he is presenting appropriate sacrifices to Diana and asks for her help. This is where it really gets interesting.” Jerry’s long face was animated, and Lewis couldn’t help feeling a stir of curiosity. “He asks for her help in imprisoning animus infernus – a spirit of the lower regions.”

  Mitch uncrossed his arms. “So this is a very early form of a banishing ritual? That’s interesting in a historical sense. There’s always been a gap, hasn’t there? Between the pure Hermetic models and the Early Byzantine.”

  “It is fascinating for that reason,” Jerry said, twisting around to look at him, his tie akimbo. “And I can’t stress enough that this tablet is an important find for that reason alone. But there’s more. Not only is this a complete invocation dating from the Early Empire, but it was also found in situ at the Temple of Diana at Lake Nemi.”

  Alma’s eyebrows rose. “Ok, that is interesting. I know you said they started excavating there last year.”

  “Oh, they’ve started excavating, all right,” Jerry said regretfully, and Lewis couldn’t help but wonder if Jerry wished he were on the dig. “They’ve been excavating at the sanctuary, and now they’ve started draining the lake to raise the Nemi ships, the Roman barges that were sunk at some point. It’s a colossal archaeological expedition, well funded by the government, with all the latest equipment and the best experts. They’ve exposed the beams of the first ship, last I heard. It’s going extremely well and it’s certainly a notable find.”

  “Let me guess,” Alma said. “William Davenport.”

  “Yes.” Jerry smiled grimly. “Of course.”

  Lewis felt he was missing something important somewhere. “Wait,” he said. “Who’s William Davenport?”

  Jerry didn’t answer, just looked at Alma, who shrugged. “Dr. William Davenport is a well known archaeologist and excavator. He and Jerry don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. Well, on a lot of things that wouldn’t make a bit of difference to you or me.”

  “The interpretation of syncreticism in Hellenistic material is of vital importance,” Jerry said. “Whether you want to interpret the Lochias Kouros as indicative of Indian iconography of Krishna or not….”

  “We get it,” Mitch said, sitting up on the edge of his chair. “So the bottom line is that Davenport filched this thing from his own dig and sold it to Henry under the table.”

  “Henry didn’t say that in so many words,” Jerry replied.

  “Yes, but he’s got it. And Henry doesn’t look like the Italian government to me,” Alma said. “Surely they expect to keep the finds for their museums if they’re paying for the dig, not have the pieces sold off to private collectors.”

  “I expect so.” Jerry had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I think there’s some kind of issue about Davenport, from everything Henry wasn’t saying.”

  Mitch shrugged and reached for the glass of ice that was slowly melting on the side table. “You know Henry. He’s all poise and charm, but he wouldn’t know genuinely occult if it bit him in the ass. And Davenport’s the real deal. Henry may be satisfied with putting on a good show to Hollywood types, but Davenport wouldn’t be. He never was. So there’s some tension in their lodge. Not our problem.”

  “I think you’re underestimating Henry,” Jerry said, and there was a spark in his eye. “Gil thought….”

  “Gil thought Henry was all wind and you know it,”
Mitch said. “A nice guy, but full of wind.”

  “It doesn’t matter what Gil thought,” Alma said steadily. “And it doesn’t matter what’s going on between Henry and Davenport. Jerry will finish up the translation Henry’s paying him for, and then we’ll all go home. We’re not in any position to get into a bunch of infighting in somebody else’s lodge.” She gave Jerry a stern look, and to Lewis’ surprise he didn’t argue.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “We can’t get into that. And there’s something wrong, no question about it.” He looked up at Alma, pushing his gold glasses up on his nose. “Because not only could Henry have called in Geoffrey Bullfinch if he’d been willing to eat a little humble pie, but Davenport is here, in LA. There’s no reason to get me to translate this. Why doesn’t he just ask Davenport?”

  Mitch’s brow furrowed. “Davenport is here? And Henry’s paying you $250 to do this? What the hell?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Jerry said mildly. “That’s why I told Henry we’d be back tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Alma said incredulously.

  “Henry invited us to come back tonight. They’re celebrating the Ploiaphesia.”

  “The hell they are,” Mitch said. “That was back in March.”

  “You know Henry,” Alma said, throwing up her hands. “Why keep to the ancient calendar if it suits everybody’s schedules better to do it any old time they want?”

  “What’s the….whatever?” Lewis asked. If it was something dangerous he was hardly going to let Alma just walk into it, but he could bet she’d insist on going if Jerry and Mitch were.

  “It’s a navigation festival,” Alma said. “It’s supposed to be around March 5th. It marked the beginning of the sailing season in the ancient world, when ships were blessed by Isis.” She looked at Mitch. “Don’t ask me. I have no idea how Henry intends to bless ships twenty miles inland at his house. It is at his house, right, Jerry? Not at a marina somewhere?”