Black Easter

by James Blish

  ‘What now?’ this creature said in an astonishingly pleasant voice. The words, however, were blurred. ‘I have not seen my son in many moons.’ Unexpectedly, it giggled, as though pleased by the pun.

  ‘I adjure thee, speak more clearly,’ Ware said. ‘And what I wish, thou knowst full well.’

  ‘Nothing may be known until it is spoken.’ The voice seemed no less blurred to Baines, but Ware nodded.

  ‘I desire then to release, as did the Babylonian from under the seal of the King of Israel, blessed be he, from Hell-mouth into the mortal world all those demons of the False Monarchy whose names I shall subsequently call, and whose characters and signs I shall exhibit in my book, providing only that they harm not me and mine, and that they shall return whence they came at dawn, as it is always decreed.’

  ‘Providing no more than that?’ the figure said. ‘No prescriptions? No desires? You were not always so easily satisfied.’

  ‘None,’ Ware said firmly. ‘They shall do as they will for this their period of freedom, except that they harm none here in my circles, and obey me when recalled, by rod and pact.’

  The demon glanced over its transparent shoulder. ‘I see that you have the appropriate fumigant to cense so many great lords, and my servants and satraps will have their several rewards in their deeds. So interesting a commission is new to me. Well. What have you for my hostage, to fulfil the forms?’

  Ware reached into his vestments. Baines half expected to see produced another tear vase, but instead Ware brought out by the tail a live mouse, which he threw over the brazier as he had the vase, except not so far. The mouse ran directly towards the demon, circled it frantically three times outside the markings, and disappeared in the direction of the rear door, cheeping like a sparrow. Baines looked towards Ahktoi, but the cat did not even lick its chops.

  ‘You are skilled and punctilious, my son. Call then when I have left, and I will send my ministers. Let nothing remain undone, and much will be done before the black cock crows.’

  ‘It is well. By and under this promise I discharge thee OMGROMA, EPYN, SEYOK, SATANY, DEGONY, EPARYGON, GALLIGANON, ZOGOGEN, FERSTIGON, LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE, begone, begone, begone!’

  ‘I shall see you at dawn.’ The prime minister of LUCIFER wavered like a flame, and, like a flame, went out.

  Hess promptly cast camphor into the brazier. Recovering with a start from a near paralysis of fascination, Baines sprinkled brandy after it. The fire puffed. Without looking around Ware brought out his lodestone, which he held in his left hand; with his right, he dipped the iron-headed point of his wand into the coals. Little licking points of blue light ran up it almost to his hand, as though the rod, too, had been coated with brandy.

  Holding the tonguing wand out before him like a dowsing rod, Ware strode ceremoniously out of the Grand Circle towards the altar. As he walked, the air around him began to grumble as though a storm were gathering about his shaven head, but he paid the noise no attention. He marched on directly to the locus spiritus, and into it.

  Silence fell at once. Ware said clearly:

  ‘I, Theron Ware, master of masters, Karcist of Karcists, hereby undertake to open the book, and the seals thereof, which were forbidden to be broken until the breaking of the Seven Seals before the Seventh Throne. I have beheld SATAN as a bolt falling from heaven. I have crushed the dragons of the pit beneath my heel. I have commanded angels and devils. I undertake and command that all shall be accomplished as I bid, and that from beginning to end, alpha to omega, world without end, none shall harm us who abide here in this temple of the Art of Arts. Aglan, TETRAGRAM, vaycheon stimulamaton ezphares retragrammaton olyaram irion esytion existion eryona onera orasym mozm messias soter EMANUEL SABAOTH ADONAY, te adoro, et te invoco. Amen.’

  He took another step forward, and touched the flaming tip of the rod to the veil of silk on the belly of the still girl. A little curl of blue-grey smoke began to arise from it, like ignited incense.

  Ware now retreated, walking backward, towards the Grand Circle. As he did so, the fire on the wand died; but in the mortuary silence there now intruded a faint hissing, much like the first ignition of a squib. And there were indeed fireworks in inception. As Baines stared in gluttonous hypnosis, a small fountain of many-coloured sparks began to rise from the fuselike tissue on the abdomen of the body on the altar. More smoke poured forth. The air was becoming distinctly hazy.

  The body itself seemed to be burning now, the skin peeling back like segments of an orange. Baines heard behind him an aborted retching noise in Jack Ginsberg’s voice, but could not himself understand what the occasion for nausea could be. The body – whatever it had once been – was now only like a simulacrum made of pith or papier-mâché, and charged with some equivalent of Greek fire. Indeed, there was already a strong taint of gunpowder overriding the previous odours of incense and camphor. Baines rather welcomed it – not that it was familiar, for it had been centuries since black powder had been used in his trade, but because he had begun to find the accumulation of less business-like perfumes a little cloying.

  Gradually, everything melted away into the smoke except an underlay of architectural outline, against which stood a few statues lit more along one side than the other by one of the two sources of fire. Hess coughed briefly; otherwise there was silence except for the hissing of the pyre. Sparks continued to fly upward, and sometimes, for an instant, they seemed to form scribbled, incomprehensible words in the frame of the unreal wall.

  Ware’s voice sounded remotely from one of the statues:

  ‘BAAL, great king and commander in the East, of the Order of the Fly, obey me!’

  Something began to form in the distance. Baines had the clear impression that it was behind the altar, behind the curtained door, indeed outside the palazzo altogether, but he could see it nevertheless. It came forward, growing, until he could also see that it was a thing like a man, in a neat surcoat and snow-white linen, but with two super-numerary heads, the one on the left like a toad’s, the other like a cat’s. It swelled soundlessly until at some moment it was inarguably in the refectory; and then, still silently, had grown past them and was gone.

  ‘AGARES, duke in the East, of the Order of the Virtues, obey me!’

  Again, a distant transparency, and silent. It came on very slowly, manifesting like a comely old man carrying a goshawk upon his wrist. Its slowness was necessitous, for it was riding astride an ambling crocodile. Its eyes were closed and its lips moved incessantly. Gradually, it too swelled past.

  ‘GAMYGYN, marquis and president in Cartagra, obey me!’

  This grew to be something like a small horse, or perhaps an ass, modest and unassuming. It dragged behind it ten naked men in chains.

  ‘VALEFOR, powerful duke, obey me!’

  A black-maned lion, again with three heads, the other two human, one wearing the cap of a hunter, the other the wary smile of a thief. It passed in a rush, without even a wind to mark its going.

  ‘BARBATOS, great count and minister of SATANACHIA, obey me!’

  But this was not one figure; it was four, like four crowned kings. With it and past it poured three companies of soldiers their heads bowed and their expressions shuttered and still under steel caps. When all this troop had vanished, it was impossible to guess which among them had been the demon, or if the demon had ever appeared.

  ‘PAIMON, great king, of the Order of the Dominions, obey me!’

  Suddenly after all the hissing silence there was a blast of sound, and the room was full of capering things carrying contorted tubes and bladders, which might have been intended as musical instruments. The noise, however, resembled most closely a drove of pigs being driven down the chute of a slaughterhouse. Among the bawling, squealing dancers a crowned man rode upon a dromedary, bawling wordlessly in a great hoarse voice. The beast it rode on chewed grimly on some bitter cud, its eyes squeezed shut as if in pain.

  ‘SYTRY!’ Ware shouted. Instantly there was darkness and quiet, except for the hissin
g, which now had a faint overtone as of children’s voices. ‘Jussus secreta libenter detegit feminarum, eas ridens ludificansque ut se luxorise nudent, great prince, obey me!’

  This sweet and lissome thing was no less monstrous than the rest; it had a glowing human body, but was winged, and had the ridiculously small, smirking head of a leopard. At the same time, it was beautiful, in some way that made Baines feel both sick and eager. As it passed, Ware seemed to be pressing a ring against his lips.

  ‘LERAJIE, powerful marquis, ELIGOR, ZEPAR, great dukes, obey me!’

  As they were called together, so these three appeared together: the first an archer clad in green, with quiver and a nocked bow whose arrow dripped venom; the second, a knight with a sceptre and a pennon-bearing lance; the third, an armed soldier clad in red. In contrast to their predecessor, there was nothing in the least monstrous about their appearance, nor any clue as to their spheres and offices, but Baines found them no less alarming for all that.

  ‘AYPOROS, mighty earl and prince, obey me!’

  Baines felt himself turning sick even before this creature appeared, and from the sounds around him, so did the others, even including Ware. There was no special reason for this apparent in its aspect, which was so grotesque as to have been comic under other circumstances; it had the body of an angel, with a lion’s head, the webbed feet of a goose and the scut of a deer. Transform, transform!’ Ware cried, thrusting his wand into the brazier. The visitant promptly took on the total appearance of an angel, crown to toe, but the effect of the presence of something filthy and obscene remained.

  HABORYM, strong duke, obey me!’

  This was another man-thing of the three-headed race – though the apparent relationship, Baines realized, must be pure accident – the human one bearing two stars on its forehead; the others were of a serpent and a cat. In its right hand it carried a blazing firebrand, which it shook at them as it passed.

  ‘NABERIUS, valiant marquis, obey me!’

  At first it seemed to Baines that there had been no response to this call. Then he saw movement near the floor. A black cock with bleeding, empty eye sockets was fluttering around the outside of the Grand Circle. Ware menaced it with the wand, and it crowed hoarsely and was gone.

  ‘GLASYALABOLAS, mighty president, obey me!’

  This appeared to be simply a winged man until it smiled, when it could be seen to have the teeth of a dog. There were flecks of foam at the corners of its mouth. It passed soundlessly.

  In the silence, Baines could hear Ware turning a page in his book of pacts, and remembered to cast more brandy into the brazier. The body on the altar had apparently long since been consumed; Baines could not remember how long it had been since he had seen the last of the word-forming sparks. The thick grey haze persisted, however.

  ‘BUNE, thou strong duke, obey me!’

  This apparition was the most marvellous yet, for it approached them borne on a galleon, which sank into the floor as it came nearer until they were able to look down through the floor on to its deck. Coiled there was a dragon with the familiar three heads, these being of dog, griffin and man. Shadowy figures, vaguely human, toiled around it. It continued to sink until it was behind them, and presumably thereafter.

  Its passage left Baines aware that he was trembling – not from fright, exactly, for he seemed to have passed beyond that, but from the very exhaustion of this and other emotions, and possibly also from the sheer weariness of having stood in one spot for so long. Inadvertently, he sighed.

  ‘Silence,’ Ware said in a low voice. ‘And let nobody weaken or falter at this point. We are but half done with our calling – and of those remaining to be invoked, many are far more powerful than any we’ve yet seen. I warned you before, this Art takes physical strength as well as courage.’

  He turned another page. ‘ASTAROTH, grand treasurer, great and powerful duke, obey me!’

  Even Baines had heard of this demon, though he could not remember where, and he watched it materialize with a stirring of curiosity. Yet it was nothing remarkable in the light of what he had seen already: an angelic figure, at once beautiful and foul, seated astride a dragon; it carried a viper in its right hand. He remembered belatedly that these spirits, never having been matter in the first place, had to borrow a body to make appearances like this, and would not necessarily pick the same one each time; the previous description of ASTAROTH that he had read, he now recalled, had been that of a piebald Negro woman riding on an ass. As the creature passed him, it smiled into his face, and the stench of its breath nearly knocked him down.

  ‘ASMODAY, strong and powerful king, chief of the power of Amaymon, angel of chance, obey me!’ As he called, Ware swept off his hat with his left hand, taking care, Baines noted, not to drop the lodestone as he did so.

  This king also rode a dragon, and also had three heads – bull, man and ram. All three heads breathed fire. The creature’s feet were webbed, as were its hands, in which it carried a lance and pennon; and it had a serpent’s tail. Fearsome enough; but Baines was beginning to note a certain narrowness of invention among these infernal artisans. It also occurred to him to wonder, fortunately, whether this very repetitiveness was not deliberate, intended to tire him into inattentiveness, or lure him into the carelessness of contempt. This thing might kill me if I even closed my eyes, he reminded himself.

  ‘FURFUR, great earl, obey me!’

  This angel appeared as a hart and was past them in a single bound, its tail streaming fire like a comet.

  ‘HALPAS, great earl, obey me!’

  There was nothing to this apparition but a stock dove, also quickly gone. Ware was calling the names now as rapidly as he could manage to turn the pages, perhaps in recognition of the growing weariness of his Tanists, perhaps even of his own. The demons flashed in a nightmare parade: RAYM, earl of the Order of the Thrones, a man with a crow’s head; SEPAR, a mermaid wearing a ducal crown; SABURAC, a lion-headed soldier upon a pale horse; BIFRONS, a great earl in the shape of a gigantic flea; ZAGAN, a griffin-winged bull; ANDRAS. a raven-headed angel with a bright sword, astride a black wolf; ANDREALPHUS, a peacock appearing amid the noise of many unseen birds; AMDUSCIAS, a unicorn among many musicians; DANTALIAN, a mighty duke in the form of a man but showing many faces both of men and women, with a book in his right hand; and at long last, that mighty king created next after LUCIFER and the first to fall in battle before MICHAEL, formerly of the Order of the Virtues, BELIAL himself, beautiful and deadly in a chariot of fire as he had been worshipped in Babylon.

  ‘Now, great spirits,’ Ware said, ‘because ye have diligently answered me and shown yourselves to my demands, I do hereby licence ye to depart, without injury to any here. Depart, I say, yet be ye willing and ready to come at the appointed hour, when I shall duly exorcise and conjure you by your rites and seals. Until then, ye abide free. Amen.’

  He snuffed out the fire in the brazier with a closely fitting lid on which was graven the Third or Secret Seal of Solomon. The murk in the refectory began to lift.

  ‘All right,’ Ware said in a matter-of-fact voice. Strangely, he seemed much less tired than he had after the conjuration of MARCHOSIAS. ‘It’s over – or rather, it’s begun. Mr Ginsberg, you can safely leave your circle now, and turn on the lights.’

  When Ginsberg had done so, Ware also snuffed the candles. In the light of the shaded electrics the hall seemed in the throes of a cheerless dawn, although in fact the time was not much past midnight. There was nothing on the altar now but a small heap of fine grey ash.

  ‘Do we really have to wait it out in here?’ Baines said, feeling himself sagging. ‘I should think we’d be a lot more comfortable in your office – and in a better position to find out what’s going on, too.’

  ‘We must remain here,’ Ware said firmly. ‘That, Mr Baines, is why I asked you to bring in your transistor radio – to keep track of both the world and the time. For approximately the next eight hours, the area inside these immediate walls will be the only
safe place on all the Earth.’

  Trappings, litter and all, the refectory now reminded Baines incongruously of an initiation room in a college fraternity house just after the last night of Hell Week. Hess was asleep on the long table that earlier had borne Ware’s consecrated instruments. Jack Ginsberg lay on the floor near the main door, napping fitfully, mumbling and sweating. Theron Ware, after again warning everyone not to touch anything, had dusted off the altar and gone to sleep – apparently quite soundly – upon it, still robed and gowned.

  Only Baines and Father Domenico remained awake. The monk, having prowled once around the margins of the room, had found an unsuspected low window behind a curtain, and now stood, with his back to them all, looking out at the black world, hands locked behind his back.

  Baines sat on the floor with his own back propped against the wall next to the electric furnace, the transistor radio pressed to his ear. He was brutally uncomfortable, but he had found by experiment that this was the best place in the hall for radio reception – barring, of course, his actually entering one of the circles.

  Even here, the reception was not very good. It wavered in and out maddeningly, even on powerful stations like Radio Luxembourg, and was liable to tearing blasts of static. These were usually followed, at intervals of a few seconds to several minutes, by bursts or rolls of thunder in the sky outside. Much of the time, too, as was usual, the clear spaces were occupied by nothing except music and commercials.

  And thus far, what little news he had been able to pick up had been vaguely disappointing. There had been a major train wreck in Colorado; a freighter was foundering in a blizzard in the North Sea; in Guatemala, a small dam had burst, burying a town in an enormous mud slide; an earthquake was reported in Corinth – the usual budget of natural or near-natural disasters for any day.