Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Tonight, the subject was Black Witchcraft. John Cannon claimed to have firsthand knowledge of an operating black coven.

  Colin knew that most self-styled witches—or, as they preferred to be known these days, Wiccans—practiced a harmless form of Nature-worship established by the Englishman Gerald B. Gardner. Even though their practices had more ties to the Hashbury than to Hell, their attempts to “reclaim” their traditional designations of “witch” and “coven” only led to them becoming confused by the public with LaVey-style Satanism (which also used these terms for its practices).

  Fortunately, most of the modern “White” Witches that Colin had met were quiet, reserved, and decidedly publicity-shy, so that public conflicts rarely arose. Still, it was important to draw the distinction between White and Black Witchcraft in the public mind, lest innocent people be harmed.

  As Colin entered the shop, the usual reek assaulted his nose, the mingled scents of frankincense and dust and pot that made up the place’s distinctive fragrance. He stopped at the register and bought a ticket to the lecture. There was a large bulletin board beside the cash register; Colin stopped to glance over the postings. Most of them, as usual, were the typical farrago of ads by astrologers and self-proclaimed descendants of recently founded ancient priesthoods, but one or two items were of interest

  In addition to the large color poster advertising tonight’s speaker—a glossy full-color 11 x 17 poster with a studio portrait of the speaker, who looked more like an insurance agent than an intrepid explorer of the dark underbelly of magick—there were two that caught his interest. One was silkscreened in shades of green and purple, with stars and unicorns and a Moon-crowned Goddess of suspiciously Art Nouveau aspect. Its design owed more than a little to the acid art he was familiar with from the Bay Area, and seemed to be proclaiming the formation of the Earthrite Temple of Pagan Witchcraft, sponsored by Coven Tree.

  Colin smiled at the gentle play on words. He knew some of the members of Coven Tree; they were harmless dilettantes, interested in feminism and spiritual self-expression, though some of those attracted to them might not be. He made a note to keep a weather eye on them and turned to the other.

  In comparison to the first, it was crude; a black-and-white Xerox of a press-typed original. It announced that applications were being taken for a study group on the Blackburn Work. Serious inquiries only, and a familiarity with the Work was essential, the notice said. The contact address was a post office box in Queens.

  Colin gazed at it, frowning, his mind thousands of miles away as he tucked his ticket into his vest pocket.

  There’d been a flurry of interest in Thorne Blackburn, just after the Shadow’s Gate mess; Time had done a cover story on his disappearance and Katherine Jourdemayne’s death. Though no trace of his body had been found in three years of searching, Colin had no doubt that Thorne was dead. Apparently death had catapulted him into some strange American immortality usually reserved for dead rock stars, at least judging by this advertisement.

  Colin shrugged, turning away and heading for the lecture room in the back of the store. The Sorcery Shoppe’s lectures were notorious for their late starts, and in fact, when he arrived in the lecture room, Colin was the first one there.

  He glanced around. The Shoppe’s back room was also used by a Magickal Lodge active in the New York area; the equipment from their last ritual were stacked carefully in the corner, looking like nothing more fantastic than worn and dusty theatrical props.

  Was this all that magick was? It was easy to think so; to doubt, to give in and accept what everyone said—that magick was no more than self-hypnosis in fancy dress.

  But Colin’s entire life had been dedicated to the belief that the sum of humanity was so much more than a simple empirical assessment of quantity and duration. To deny the realm of the spirit was to deny half of all Creation: even if magick were reduced to nothing more than passionate belief, such passion was a force that could build cathedrals out of nothing and carve empires out of wilderness. Yet Cannon’s books were the only glimpse some people ever got of a world outside their own, and the viewpoint he presented made it easy to dismiss magick as a Faustian exercise in self-delusive smoke and mirrors: self-important, foolish … and harmless, in the long run.

  The nineteenth century had been like one long chess game between Spirit and Substance, played out in the echoing aftermath of the French Revolution and the defeat of Napoleon’s imperial ambitions, and the scars of the Rationalists’ misguided reforms still shaped the modern world. If the Age of Reason that had swept through the West at the end of the eighteenth century had committed any great crime, it was this: that in shutting out superstition and fanaticism, the Rationalists had attempted to reduce the whole of God’s creation to something that could be measured in a balance.

  On one side, Darwin and Freud, proclaiming mankind nothing more than a computer made out of meat, assembled by random chance and a blind watchmaker.

  And on the other side, Mathers, Case, Waite, Fortune, Crowley … the magnificent irrationality of Helena Blavatsky, fighting against the Rationalist’s cold equations, working desperately in a world that thought them ludicrous eccentrics or even criminal lunatics to keep the glorious medieval panoply of High Sorcery from being swept away, so that the tools of that alchemy by which animals become angels would not be lost.

  It was a battle without malice, without enemies, as oblivious as that of the seed to take root and flower, a battle that continued to this very day.

  That would be fought here, again, tonight.

  The room had started to fill as Colin stood lost in his own thoughts. As he’d suspected, the audience was substantially the same as that for his own lectures: young and upwardly mobile gypsies of the spirit, with a small scattering of veteran dilettantes and seasoned seekers.

  There was a good turnout; John Cannon was apparently a popular speaker. Colin took his place on an uncomfortable metal chair in the front row and turned his attention to the podium. It was decorated with a poster similar to the one out in front, proclaiming John Cannon as the author of The Devil in America, The True Story of Witchcraft, and Voodoo in the Modern World, as well as of several other equally sensational titles.

  When the room was fairly full, a man wearing dark slacks, sportcoat, and a black turtleneck—gaunt, and much taller than Colin had suspected from the photograph—entered the room. John Cannon had the stooped carriage of a file clerk. Except for his imposing height, he would blend easily into any crowd; a good attribute for an investigative reporter to have. He was carrying a sheaf of papers as he ascended to the podium, and spent a few minutes arranging them as he stood there, waiting for the audience to settle.

  “Good evening, folks. I’m John Cannon—my friends call me Jock. In the past few years I’ve poked my nose into quite a few dark corners of the world, and seen a few things that would make your hair stand on end.” He ran a hand through his sandy brown hair and smiled self-deprecatingly. Cannon had a confident resonant voice—he was obviously a practiced public speaker.

  “I’ve chased ghosts in England, devils in Haiti, and demons in New Orleans. I thought I’d seen just about everything, but I was wrong. Tonight I’m here to talk to you about Black Magick—not as something safely tucked away in a history book, but right here, right now. In New York City, today, right this minute, there are people forming covens and worshiping the Devil. It’s no joke. These people are deadly serious—and I do mean deadly.”

  For the next hour John Cannon spun his audience tales of his experiences in his practiced raconteur fashion, telling of how he’d penetrated a dark occult underworld that existed right beneath their very noses—a world of orgiastic sex, dangerous drugs, and deliberate blasphemy.

  “These people have absolutely no scruples whatsoever. They will use any method to achieve their sensual self-gratification, whether it be old-fashioned strong-arm techniques, or … Black Magick.”

  He spoke of the occult powers that the black covens cou
ld wield to steal a man’s mind, to bend the will, to hurt or even kill. It was pure Rosemary’s Baby stuff, but as far as Colin could tell, Cannon never quite stooped to out-and-out fabrication. There was always a grain of truth in even his most lurid writings, and so there must be something to this.

  But your viewpoint depended on your perspective. By Cannon’s wide-ranging definition of Black Magick, Colin MacLaren’s own Lodge and its ancient sacred trust was a part of that same recondite occult conspiracy that seemed—from Cannon’s description—to be on the verge of taking over Manhattan at this very moment. Left to Cannon to describe, the activities of even the whitest Witchcraft would take on an unholy tinge.

  When Cannon finished, there was a scatter of pleased applause, and a few people came to the podium to get autographs or to ask questions. Colin dawdled until the traffic jam in front of the door had eased, then got up to go. He had no particular desire to meet John Cannon.

  “Colin MacLaren!” Someone behind him had called out his name, and Colin stopped, turning to see who it was.

  Cannon hurried up to him. “It is—You are Colin MacLaren, aren’t you? The ghosthunter?”

  Any residual sympathy Colin might have felt for the writer evaporated with his easy use of the dated, pejorative term. But he answered, cordially enough:

  “I’m Colin MacLaren. That was an interesting talk you gave back there.”

  “Years of practice,” Cannon said candidly. “But I think I’ve really struck gold this time. This stuff is real—these people are actually out there, and they’re as serious about this hoodoo as you or I about the pennant race.”

  “I don’t follow sports, Mr. Cannon,” Colin said, hoping he didn’t sound too disparaging. “But what can I do for you?”

  “Well, you know a writer’s always looking for his next book,” Cannon said. “And I think I’ve got a doozy. So I was wondering if I could interview you. Let me give you my card—”

  “Me?” Colin was horrified, and thought, absurdly, about how Claire would laugh to see his expression. “I’m sure I’d be of very little interest to you.” Automatically he took the proffered card and tucked it into his jacket pocket without looking.

  Cannon finally seemed to notice Colin’s coolness.

  “Well, that is … Naturally I’m familiar with your work, Dr. MacLaren, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of doing anything to, ah, sensationalize the work you’re doing—”

  “As a ghosthunter?” Colin asked, and Cannon had the grace to wince.

  “Sorry if I put your back up. I’m afraid I’ve fallen into the habits of my profession, Prof—”

  Colin held up a minatory hand. “Please, Mr. Cannon. My doctorate in psychology was a long time ago, and I no longer teach. Just plain ‘Mister’ is good enough for me.”

  “Mr. MacLaren, then. But I was serious when I said I admired you. That article you did for Police Journal about ten years back on the commonest sorts of psychic frauds—I freely admit that it was a great inspiration to me. Sort of got me into the field, so to speak.”

  Colin remembered that John Cannon’s first book had been an overview—and debunking—of fraud mediums. There were several, Colin knew, whom Cannon had researched but not included, because he could find no way of exposing them.

  “I’m glad my life has not been wasted,” Colin said dryly. “But you’ll understand my confusion, Mr. Cannon. Why would you want to interview me?”

  “Thorne Blackburn,” Cannon said quickly. “You knew him, didn’t you? I’ve talked to some people, and your name came up a few times. After I’m done with the current book, I’d like to do one on him, you see, and—”

  “Thorne Blackburn?” Colin said blankly. “Forgive me, Mr. Cannon, but unless you’re planning to solve his mysterious disappearance—and, frankly, it’s pretty clear to me that the man’s dead—I can’t see what appeal your book will have. Nobody outside of a rather specialized field even remembers him.”

  “Now there you’re wrong,” Cannon said, warming to his subject. “Everybody’s interested in Blackburn—look over here.”

  He led Colin to a section of bookshelf in the center aisle of the store. Neatly typed labels on the front of each shelf said “Golden Dawn,” “Crowley,” “Kabbalah,” “Regardie,” “Blackburn.” There were four or five different titles in the Blackburn section and several copies of each, ranging from crude pamphlets to a gaudily produced small-press volume bound in black leather and stamped in red and gold foil. The spine of the book said The Opening of the Way.

  Colin reached to take the book down and hesitated, letting his hand fall to his side once more. He’d looked at some of Thorne’s writing just after the accident, and had found it an amalgam of blasphemy and wishful thinking more suitable to a pulp novel.

  “Even if there is the interest that you say, Mr. Cannon, I’m not so sure that a popular book on Thorne Blackburn is such a good idea. What he was trying to do—whatever it was—got two people killed. Putting that material into the hands of the general public might be considered a bit irresponsible.”

  “Oh, pish,” Cannon said, lightly dismissing Colin’s objection. “You don’t really believe in all this hoodoo, do you?” He smiled briefly at his own joke. “We aren’t talking poltergeists here; this is a bunch of people who think that if they click their heels together three times and say, ‘There’s no place like home,’ something’s going to happen. Besides, Blackburn’s stuff is already in print, as you see. I just want to humanize it a little, that’s all. Make it accessible. Give people an idea of the man behind the myth.”

  “Mr. Cannon,” Colin said. “A moment ago you called this hoodoo, and from your lecture tonight you seem to be hell-bent—and I use the term advisedly—on involving yourself with a lot of pretty unsavory people. I’m not interested in arguing the legitimacy of any of this with you, but without even entering into the realm of the supernatural, let me remind you how fiercely people will defend their beliefs when they feel them threatened … no matter how outré you feel their beliefs to be.”

  “I can defend myself,” Cannon said, patting a pocket as if he held some sort of weapon there.

  Colin shook his head. “I’m certain that you believe that, Mr. Cannon, just as I’m certain that the forces that you are trifling with—if you’re so unlucky as to run into the genuine article—are dangerous beyond your wildest dreams. And completely without a sense of humor, when it comes to investigative journalism.”

  “You talk a pretty good line, Professor,” Cannon said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to back it up with some names, places, dates? Something I can check out?”

  Colin sighed, feeling suddenly tired. “No, Mr. Cannon, I wouldn’t.” He felt in his pocket for his wallet and withdrew one of his cards, holding it out to the younger man. “But I strongly advise you to give up this project of yours, and forget about Blackburn as well. You haven’t the right attitude for it. But there’s no way I can force you, son … please. Here’s my card. If you ever feel that you’re in over your head, call me, at any hour of the day or night. I’ll do my best to help you.”

  Cannon took the card, inspecting it closely. All it contained was Colin’s name, address, and phone number. The writer shrugged and thrust the card into a jacket pocket.

  “Sure, Mr. MacLaren, thanks,” he said in a tone that made Colin certain he would throw out the card as soon as he got home. “Thanks for the tip. And maybe I’ll give you a call in a few months, and we can work on that Blackburn thing together. Call it something like King of the Witches, eh?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he strode jauntily off.

  It was hard to imagine who’d be more offended by such a title, Thorne or the witches, Colin mused as he gazed after the departing writer. He’d say a prayer for John Cannon tonight. The man was playing with fire.

  Hellfire.

  The lecture had started at six, so it was dark by the time Colin left the shop. Wan streetlights at the end of each block did little to illuminate its middle,
but Colin was not worried. The evening was mild, and the hour was still early. Possibly he’d arrive home ready to tackle the galley proofs for a few hours more before bed.

  As he rounded the corner, a man in a dark blue trench coat brushed past him, hurrying up the street. He wore no hat, and as he passed beneath the streetlight, it flashed brightly off his flaxen hair.

  Colin stopped and stared after him before continuing on his way, somehow suddenly uneasy. When he was within a block or so of home, he finally traced the source of his disquiet. The chance-met pedestrian had reminded him, somehow, of Toller Hasloch.

  He had not thought of the boy in years, and so Colin took the connection advanced by his unconscious mind seriously. Instead of returning to the manuscript when he reached his apartment, he went to his bedroom and opened the closet door. In the back of the closet hung a long tunic of heavy cream linen and a pair of loose-fitting pants of the same material. He changed into them, then reached for the items piled atop the chest in which his robes were stored—a large flat pillow, a low wooden stool, and a small oil lamp.

  He set the pillow on the floor, and, using the stool as a low table, set out the lamp and a packet of matches beside it. He checked to be sure the lamp—a simple clay shape, purchased on one of his passes through the Near East—was filled, and then sank down to the floor in a lotus position with an ease that belied his years.

  Lighting the lamp, Colin let his eyes fix on its brilliant light. His Lodge did not invoke the elements to aid them, as Alison Margrave’s did; rather, Colin had been taught to make his appeal directly to the Light itself, the Light which held the elements and all Creation within itself. Colin gazed into the Light, allowing the Light to gaze into him as he breathed slowly in and out in the Yogic discipline of “no mind.”

  He did not permit his mind to drift; rather, he emptied it completely, so that it could become a more perfect reflection of the One Mind upon which was built the foundations of the world. It was one of the first disciplines that the Adept was taught, the one upon which all of the others were based, and it was both a tool and an end in itself. He released all Self and all desire, and waited, like a blank page, for the touch of the scrivener.