Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Which brought matters around to Toller Hasloch.

  The first thing that Colin had done was to take advantage of his position to gain a look at the boy’s file in the Registrar’s office. Hasloch would be twenty-three in a few days; next year he’d have his Bachelor’s degree, and according to his admission papers, planned on a legal career. From other papers in the file, it had not been difficult to ascertain his culpability in the matter of the drugged punch. A number of professors in Colin’s department were experimenting with LSD. One of them had praised its effects to Colin highly, and further discreet questioning had elicited the information that he’d given Toller Hasloch samples of the drug to try at home only a few weeks ago. Horrifying as such irresponsibility was, the man had done nothing criminal—as Alison had said, LSD was as unregulated as aspirin.

  Hasloch had means and opportunity—and, from all that Jonathan and others had said about him, motive.

  Colin didn’t want to spoil a promising future over what might only be juvenile high spirits, but neither did he want to see a repetition of what had happened at the Halloween party. The best thing, Colin felt, would be to speak informally with young Hasloch, and warn him that there must be no further pranks.

  He spotted Hasloch as the boy entered Sproul Hall in the midst of a cluster of fellow students. The pale hair, worn neatly short and brushed straight back, stood out like a bright flag in the pale November sunlight. The boy was tidily and conservatively dressed—wearing a wheat-colored sweater with a white shirt and dark tie.

  “Mr. Hasloch?”

  The young man turned at the sound of his name, and Colin found himself staring into pale eyes on a level with his own.

  “Professor MacLaren,” Hasloch said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

  There was a faint note of amusement in his voice, a disturbingly discordant note that raised warning hackles along Colin’s spine. It was as if Hasloch had been looking for him, and not the reverse. He’s only a boy, Colin told himself.

  “I’d like to speak to you for a moment, if I might,” Colin said steadily.

  “Of course,” Hasloch said easily. “But I am forgetting my manners.” He laid his right hand over his breast and then slowly raised it to forehead level.

  Colin stood rooted to the spot in shock. What Hasloch had just done was to acknowledge Colin in his grade as Adept of the Right-Hand Path—something that was hardly common knowledge on the Berkeley campus. And even if it were, it was amazingly unlikely that a boy in his twenties would have the information and training necessary to greet him as one Initiate to another.

  By reflex Colin returned the Sign—higher to lower—and Hasloch smiled a cold, wolfish smile and turned away.

  Colin followed him, feeling that he’d somehow conceded victory to an opponent before battle had been joined. Hasloch seated himself at one of the tables in the corner of the Student Union, and Colin followed suit.

  “So, Professor, what did you wish to see me about?” Hasloch asked. “Surely you have not come as an emissary of your Order?”

  For the moment, Colin let the remark pass; Hasloch was transparently baiting him. “It’s regarding the refreshments you served at your Halloween party,” he said, and Hasloch pursed his lips in an exaggerated moue of understanding. He did not appear in the least disturbed by the implication.

  “You do realize that you could be expelled from school for what you did?” Colin pursued.

  “A schoolboy prank,” Hasloch murmured. “Something I have the impression you don’t intend to censure … at least not through public channels.”

  “I will if you force me to,” Colin said. “Don’t underestimate the seriousness with which I view your actions, Mr. Hasloch.”

  “Oh, I don’t,” the boy said easily. “But I think that you—or at least your Masters—don’t take them as seriously as I do. Let us be frank, Professor. I know your beliefs, but you seem to be unaware of mine. I’d be more than happy to remedy your lapse. Who knows? We may be natural allies. Surely you don’t identify your purpose with those of the slave races that surround you.”

  Colin recoiled in shock at hearing idiom he’d thought buried in the ruins of Berlin. Suddenly the past was not buried, the Dragon not slain. It was here before him, recalled to life in the person of this slender, pale, boy.

  “You see?” Hasloch said, spreading his hands and smiling engagingly. “I’m being completely open with you. Those with whom I am, from time to time, in communication, have told me who you are—a great force for the Light.” He kept his voice low, his expression neutral. None of the dozens of students who walked past their table would give the two of them a second glance.

  “But there is more than one source of Light, Professor MacLaren. The illumination spread by the Thousand-Year Reich is not so easily eclipsed—but the flame of the candle is forgotten in the greater flame of the sun.”

  Colin struggled to conceal both his shock and his horror as he stared at the youth opposite him. Bright and deadly as a new-honed sword blade and cold as Alpine snow, Hasloch sat before him beneath the light of a California sun and claimed allegiance to a cult that Colin had believed safely defeated; its adherents dead or scattered, its unholy places sanctified. The Allied nations had mortgaged their futures and spent their strength to break the spine of the great serpent of National Socialism and the will of its black messiah, Adolf Hitler.

  And this child’s very existence told Colin beyond all doubt that they had failed.

  “If that’s your sun, I’d say it’s already set,” Colin said dismissively. “If you’re claiming to be a Nazi, I’ll remind you that your side lost—and as for your Secret Chiefs in exile, they’re being run to earth one by one, or were you so busy studying that you missed the coverage of the Eichmann trial?”

  “Professor MacLaren,” Hasloch said chidingly. “What you see as destruction the Armanenschaft sees merely as a purification; a refinement of our doctrine of spiritual evolution to a higher level. The body of the Reich may lie in the ground, but the spirit survives, and Germania’s eagle has become a phoenix. Where once we fought with tanks and machine guns, now we wage a battle of the spirit, allowing our work on the Outer Planes to shape the aspect of the Inner. Your American Eagle is dying, Professor, and its successor will be the White Eagle of Thule, which will spread its wings over a Fourth Reich hewn from the never-ending ice. My allies are all the more powerful for that they work in secret—the nations of the world will not see the peace your countrymen sought in your lifetime or mine, Professor. If we must talk of current events, let me match your Eichmann with Secretary-General Hammarskjöld, and his so-mysterious death in Africa. So much for this reborn League of Nations and its limp-wristed hopes for peace.”

  Hasloch’s face glowed with a far from innocent enthusiasm; a fervor that Colin had hoped was eradicated from the Earth forever. In his secret heart he had always known that it was a wistful, a forlorn hope; the war of Light with Shadow was an eternal one. But this attempt—in this form—must be ended now, for the weapons mankind was now capable of wielding could unleash destruction on a scale heretofore only dreamed of by madmen and saints.

  “Isn’t it a bit grandiose of a college student to be claiming spiritual credit for international political assassinations?” Colin asked blightingly.

  “Do I wander too far afield from receiving my slap on the wrist, Professor?” Hasloch asked silkily. “Let me tell you plainly then, that if you bring forward your accusations publicly, I shall be shocked and horrified, highly indignant—and some other fool will be made a scapegoat, will be found to take the blame—perhaps your precious Johnny Ashwell? I have powerful friends, Professor MacLaren; why spend your strength in tilting at windmills? A nation is an easy thing to destroy, if one approaches the matter properly. Nations have souls, just as men do, and both become husks when that soul dies within them. Your sun is on the wane, Herr Doktor Professor, while mine is rising. Why render the rest of your life a useless thing?”

>   No victory for the Light, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is wasted, Colin reminded himself. If he could do nothing else in all the years remaining to him, by simply failing to surrender to despair he would strengthen his brothers in arms.

  “Surely,” Colin said, keeping his voice even with an effort, “you are not suggesting that I join you?”

  “Why not?” Hasloch said airily. “I am not so foolish as to deny that you have practical experience that I lack, in both the magickal and mundane senses. You have moved your playing pieces about the chessboard of Europe; there is something you can teach me about Realpolitik, I expect.”

  “If you know as much about me and my Order as you claim to,” Colin retorted with asperity, “you’ll know that such an offer isn’t even a joke.”

  “Join us or die,” Hasloch said simply, stretching out his hand as if in entreaty. He studied his own long elegant fingers for a moment and then withdrew his hand. “But if you will not, out of respect for your discipline and attainments—however misguided—I shall leave you in peace to become a footnote to history.”

  “Providing I extend to you the same courtesy?” Colin shot back. For all his formidable self-possession, Toller Hasloch was still a young man—hardly more than a boy—with all of youth’s overconfidence. His dark soul was a creation of this century, without knowledge of previous lifetimes to bulwark it. No experienced member of the Black Order would have wasted his time in telling Colin so much of his plans.

  “Give it up now, Mr. Hasloch. The Shadow doesn’t reward its servants—it uses them up. If you know anything of what you claim, you know that as well. The same history that you say is on your side will bury you as it has so many others.”

  “I really believe we have nothing more to say to each other,” Hasloch said, but this time the light tone in his voice was an audible effort. “But my offer of a truce still stands. I give you good day, Professor.”

  He got to his feet and walked away quickly. Colin watched him go, his whole being torn between horror … and pity.

  A week passed. Colin sent a full report of the conversation to the Mother Lodge in Britain, for no hint of a Thulist renaissance was too slim to take lightly, and even a veneration of Nazi “ideals” was a symptom that must be watched carefully. But though his talk with Hasloch had chilled him to the bone, Colin needed proof of something more than youthful dabbling before he was willing to act. Arrogance and posturing were not enough to indict a man for, and beyond those, he had seen no hard evidence to support Hasloch’s claims of being a member of an occult entity that had declared spiritual war upon the United States of America.

  So matters had stood, until Jonathan Ashwell had come into his office late this afternoon.

  “Jonathan, come in. Sit down. How are you doing?”

  The lanky young student sidled into Colin’s office, oddly ill at ease. Since the night of his unorthodox introduction to the Unseen World, Colin had been guiding his fledgling steps toward the Light. Jonathan was a voracious pupil, reading all that Colin gave him and pushing for more. Colin had already introduced him to the first of the simple exercises to ground and center, and to focus, that would begin to teach Jonathan to perceive and to control the Subtle Body. From this point, Jonathan’s own Will would set the speed of his advancement. But surely there was nothing in all Colin had taught him to occasion this level of unease?

  “He’s doing it again,” Jonathan said. He held out a sheet of paper to Colin, as if offering him a poisonous snake.

  Colin took the paper and spread it flat on his desk. It was professionally printed in red and black, typeset in ornate Gothic letters.

  Toller Hasloch was throwing a birthday party for himself this evening—November 10th. A very special party, the invitation said, but that was only the part of the flyer that was printed in English. Sigils and talismans were scattered across the page—nasty ones, each the special summons of a prince or duke of Hell.

  And twined among the sigils and the mundane wording, as if it were only decoration, was line upon line of blood-red runes. They were being used alphabetically, and Colin translated them with ease.

  Hasloch invited his particular friends to come together on the anniversary of his birth to attend the Black Mass which Hasloch would be enacting in his own honor.

  “I know it says it’s just a birthday party, Professor—but it isn’t. There’s going to be a Black Mass. I’ve been asking around, seeing what I could find out for you, and Hasloch’s got …” Jonathan’s voice faltered as his imagination failed him. “He—They say he’s a magician—that he does magìckal rituals. People don’t really do things like that any more, do they, Professor?”

  “Far more than anyone believes, Jonathan. Which is unfortunate, in some cases.” Automatically, Colin felt in his pockets for his pipe and began to fiddle with it.

  To most of the twentieth century, the Black Mass was the stuff of cheap sensational novels, well larded with sex and blood. To the occult historian, it was something rather different—a rare, complex form of anticlerical protest, a ritual designed not to serve any worldly goal of enlightenment or enrichment, but to attack the Catholic Church while snatching some of the power of the great Adversary for itself.

  Alison said she had attended one in Paris during the 1920s, and Colin was willing to bet that an actual Black Mass hadn’t been performed since.

  “But a Black Mass, Professor? Satanism?” Jonathan said incredulously.

  “Probably not—at least I hope not,” Colin said, puffing his pipe alight. “Most of what the popular press has labeled ‘Black Masses’ in this century have been the workings of one of the more scandalous and public of the Magickal Lodges, like Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, or one of the numerous offshoots of the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn.”

  Or the Thule Gesellschaft.

  “Scandalous, but not quite Satanic,” Colin said, soothing Jonathan’s fears if not his own. “On the other hand, ritual magic, like prescription drugs, is much better left in the hands of trained professionals.”

  “But what are we going to do, Professor? He’s invited me to the party—and I’d like to make sure he gets a taste of his own medicine, for what he did to Claire … .”

  All at once Colin remembered Hasloch’s lazy threat to make Jonathan the scapegoat if Colin attempted to have Hasloch’s misdeeds punished.

  “And that’s why you’re not going to go,” Colin said firmly. “I want you to stay home tonight, safe inside your own dorm room. Don’t go out for anything, no matter how tempting the excuse.”

  “But Professor—if I go, I could stop him.” Jonathan looked confused.

  “Believe me, Jonathan. If you want to ruin Hasloch’s plans, there’s nothing more damaging you can do than stay away”

  It had taken him the better part of an hour to convince Jonathan that what he’d said was true—so much of magick was logical, but not plausible, operating with the same rigorous unreason usually found in fairy tales—but when Jonathan left, Colin was certain the boy would heed him and not go off half-cocked, his head full of cheap heroics, to offer himself up to Hasloch’s plans.

  Not that Colin thought that tonight’s ceremony was being den-acted for Jonathan’s sole benefit. One’s own birthday had a particular occult power, the moment of one’s birth being also the moment in which all celestial influences were momentarily withdrawn, to be resummoned or barred at the will of the magician for the unfolding of another year.

  And Hasloch’s birthday was a particular unholy day in the German calendar … the date of Germany’s capitulation in the First World War; the birthdate of Baron von Sebottendorf, founder of the Thule Gesellschaft. In 1939—the year Hasloch had been born—November 9 became the Night of Broken Glass … Krystallnacht.

  In the tiny second bedroom of his bungalow that he used as his workroom, Colin MacLaren robed himself for battle. The winter rains had started right on schedule; and the dampness seeped through the walls, making everything in the r
oom smell faintly musty. Rising above the smell of the wet were the biting scents of cedar and frankincense—cedar from the chest he had opened, frankincense from the folds of fabric packed inside.

  The gold of the breastplate—a heavy plaque eight inches square set with twelve precious stones and inscribed with the Great Names—gleamed up at him from within the white folds of an embroidered linen shift.

  It had been many years since he had donned the full vestments of his Order, but they had been packed carefully away against future need, and now, with slow reverence, he donned each element of the ritual robes.

  What he must do was laid out clearly in his mind: locate Hasloch’s magickal presence in the Astral Realm and banish it from that place. What did not exist in the Overworld had no force on the Plane of Being—once Colin had moved against Hasloch’s Astral Temple, the boy’s Black Mass would become a nasty piece of play-acting, nothing more. Its poisonous force would be gone.

  An Adept could expect to wear his vestments only a handful of times in his life, only when he took part in one of the rare convocations of fellow Adepts that his Order called in time of greatest need. Certainly Colin ought not to need them simply to call the Light to mindfulness in the matter of Toller Hasloch’s callow profanity.

  But as a man might contemplate ascending a mountain which he lacked the power to master in reality, so Colin MacLaren contemplated his night’s plans and felt only cold ashes where the flame of his Magician’s Will had once burned. It was almost as if what Hasloch did tonight did not matter.