“He always seemed to choose a moment when our focus was elsewhere. Crafty character, I have to say.”
They could have confronted him, and had failed to, in other words. The idea of it nagged at me. But I already knew how slippery Saruak could be. I couldn’t claim to have made any better headway with him. And both these guys were trying their level best. There was no point taking my frustration out on them.
So, “Any idea what he was up to?” I inquired calmly.
That might be a help, at least.
I couldn’t even see Raine’s shoulders in the dimness. But his head tilted a little when he shrugged them.
“I’m afraid not.”
I turned my attention back to Willets. He looked equally at a loss.
“How about tomorrow’s ceremony?”
His bitter expression transformed almost – not quite – to a smile.
“Now,” he breathed. “That’s a different story.”
“You wanted proof?” he went on, once he had my full attention. “Well, there’s an expression that you probably don’t even know. ‘I’m from Missouri – show me.’”
I did know it, in point of fact. But this seemed to be important, so I just let him continue on.
“The best way to prove anything, in other words, is to simply demonstrate it.”
Okay, I’d gotten that.
Then Raine held something up into the guttering candlelight. They were like a pair of performers, it struck me, treating me to some kind of rehearsed show. Whatever he was holding caught the tiny flames and threw their glow back a dozen times more fiercely. And they were not yellow anymore, but pure white light, broken to a thousand fragments. I was dazzled by it at first, and I glanced away.
But when I managed to look back, I could see it was a large, transparently white jewel, the size of an egg, a symmetrical oblong in shape, intricately cut. A golden chain dangled from one end of it. It was some kind of big pendant, nothing like the one at home.
“It’s Greek,” Raine informed me. “One of the many artifacts my forebears acquired before they sailed for the New World. It’s called the Eye of Hermaneus.”
And what did it do? I stared at Willets again.
“The wearer of it,” he told me, “can prophesy the future. Which is obviously of little use, since Levin and the others wouldn’t take our word for that. So we tinkered with the thing a bit, and managed to adapt its function.”
Raine let go of the jewel. It did not fall. It simply lifted higher in the air till it was drifting above our heads. Its facets seemed to chew the light up and then spit it out. Both of the magicians took a couple of steps back. I followed suit.
“What did they used to call this when I was at school?” Willets pondered. “Ah, yes. Show and Tell.”
They spread their arms and whispered a few words in time with each other, so softly I could barely make them out. But I could hear they were not English, mostly sibilants and lengthened vowels. Like the sounds a gathering storm would make, if it ever came alive and spoke.
The jewel seemed to draw even more light into its depths, but was not letting go of it anymore. We were standing in absolute darkness. The brightness churned at its core, massively compressed, like it was being distilled somehow.
And then it was released in a wide, shimmering cone that stretched down to the parquet floor.
Within it, a picture coalesced. It was fully colored, fully detailed, but cut hugely down to scale.
I recognized the scene immediately. This, again, was Union Square.
But not as I had ever seen the place. The sun was high in the sky; this was supposed to be tomorrow. It was hours before the ceremony. But the place was already full to bursting. Why was everyone there so early?
They had crammed into the doorways of every last surrounding building, mine included. They were sitting on the roofs of the few cars that were still parked there. There were even people standing on the plinth of Theodore Raine’s statue and clinging to his great bronze bulk. I thought there was some kind of bylaw against that.
More of them were trying to get in. The streets that opened out onto the square were uniformly choked. The banners flapped above them in what seemed a very agitated manner. And the few small clouds were drifting overhead rather too quickly. I stared across at the adepts.
“It seems to be,” the Doctor explained, “a sped-up version of events. We’ve no real idea why that is.”
Raine looked slightly embarrassed at that, but even he could see this was no time for wounded pride.
When I looked back at the pyramid of light, the little yellow sun was moving westward like a bird.
Was there no sound to this? Or was the crowd – a truly massive one – just absolutely silent? They were motionless, all standing very calmly. There wasn’t even anyone on stage yet. So what had made them gather so far in advance? It struck me as pretty damned bizarre.
I could see a few blue uniforms at the edges of the vast throng. There was no telling if Saul Hobart was present. As for myself, and Cassie …
I felt rather glad I couldn’t make out either of us. That would have been just too weird. I relaxed again, and simply watched the scene unfold.
The sun drifted toward the far horizon. Then, as it began to drop, two things happened.
Mayor Aldernay emerged from the Town Hall, flanked by his assistant and his deputies. They went briskly down the steps and up onto the stage.
Then, swift shadows moved across the heavens, all of them coming from the same direction. Gaspar Vernon sprung into being beside the mayor. Then Levin, both of the McGinley sisters, and a smiling, nodding Kurt van Friesling.
A few lesser adepts appeared too. I thought I recognized Cobb Walters from his waistcoat and bow tie. And there was Martha Howard-Brett, the Hill’s most elegant beauty.
A huge ripple went through the crowd and some people applauded, although it turned out that there really was no sound. The adepts took it as their due. Vernon and Judge Levin nodded mildly. Kurt and the McGinleys waved. Chairs had been set up for each of them, but none of them sat down.
Aldernay took center stage behind a microphone, produced a sheaf of papers and – so far as I could make out – launched into a speech.
“Fortunately, this is sped-up too,” Raine murmured.
The sun was halfway down by the time that he had finished, and had turned a harsh crimson. Shadows sprawled across the crowd. Thousands of eyes glinted – hopeful, pleading – in the dimness.
Gaspar Vernon raised his arms. And on that signal, hundreds of torches were lifted among the throng. Smaller flames were applied to them and they began to blaze.
I began to see what they were doing. Hadn’t there been torches used when Regan Farrow had been burned alive?
Most of their faces looked ghostly in the firelight, like they were already standing at Death’s door. And there were other points of brightness appearing in the crowd. Glitters, twinklings, of precious metal and of crystal.
Most people had brought their own magic along, their favorite amulets and charms. The entire combined potential of the town was there, in other words, all concentrated in one place and focused on one goal.
The sun had almost gone. Up on stage, the adepts formed a semicircle and joined hands.
Then, in the sky above them … there had only been a few small clouds until this point. But a massive one began to form, entirely out of nowhere, like a spreading, jet black inkblot on the darkened firmament.
Lightning started to dance within it.
Back behind the adepts, Aldernay pointed at it, his feet almost stamping with excitement.
“You see?” I imagined he was calling out. He gestured at the townsfolk. “It’s working! I always knew it would!”
The vapor churned, densening even further.
The last ray of sunlight winked away, at the world’s edge. But no stars came out.
In the depths of the cloud, Saruak’s face appeared, the same way Gaspar Vernon’s had done, but f
ar more massive. It was leering down, its eyes ablaze. Another stir ran through the people below, but not of anticipation this time. Mouths came open, and I could almost hear the screams.
His hat was gone, as was his beard. His hair was tied back in a ponytail. His eyes were a bright, sickly green, and the points of his long, sharp teeth glinted when he smiled.
It was a delighted one. He had the town’s complete attention, right up close. Which was what he’d wanted all along.
There was a mass of writhing tentacles beneath him. Scaled ones, like I’d seen when he’d revealed himself to me that first time. One of them lashed down and ripped a banner away. Another knocked Mayor Aldernay off his feet and halfway across the stage.
Nobody else was moving, yet. The crowd simply couldn’t – they were far too tightly-packed. And the adepts were just staring up, bewildered and seemingly helpless.
But then fire began to rain down from the blackened sky. And there was pandemonium, after that.
I felt glad that there was no sound, because it would have been plain awful to listen to. The people up on the stage got off quite lightly, since they had a clear run at the Town Hall steps.
But the folks below them were a different story. There was a terrified stampede in a bare few seconds. People were pushing every which direction, trying desperately to get out. Small children were being lifted overhead. The weak were already falling.
The whole square began to shake, caught up in the grip of some tremendous earthquake. Splits appeared along the flagstones. Then a chasm, about a yard wide, opened up. That only made the chaos worse. Sections of the crowd were falling into it.
They were too small to make out their faces, but some of them had to be people that I knew. I had to look away a moment.
Willets and Raine muttered a few more words. The glow within the white jewel faded. And the scene, thankfully, went away.
Sweat was running down my face. My mind was still trying to take in what it had seen – a large part of it didn’t even want to.
Finally, I peered at my companions. Even Woodard Raine looked grave.
“You have to show this to Levin,” I told them.
It was the judge who’d asked for proof this morning, after all. What more did he need? And I trusted him a lot more than the rest of them. Watching this, he’d call the ceremony off, whatever the opposition. He’d demand it.
The jewel on its gold chain was still floating in mid-air. Willets stepped forward and snatched it down, a determined gleam in his red-flecked eyes.
“I’ll do it right away,” he offered. “He’s at home in his study, and alone.”
He dissolved into a murky shadow, vanishing completely.
Which left me alone with Woody in the dancing candlelight. A sad, wistful expression spread across his features and his golden eyes took on a hint of dampness.
“I wish …” he whispered, almost to himself, “I could do more.”
I gazed at him. And I had never seen him look quite so ill at ease.
“I wish … I could have gone with the Doctor, at the very least. It seems ridiculous really, when I think about it. All this power at my fingertips, and I’m afraid to … to even …”
And then his voice trailed away.
That whole ghastly spectacle – he’d had to watch it twice, I knew – had obviously shaken him. And perhaps even worked something loose inside that crazy head of his. Self-knowledge … was that possible, for him?
His eyes slipped shut. You could only see a vague shape where he stood. It shuddered, going through some kind of powerful inner torment.
I felt almost sorry for him. But then, I’d be feeling sorry for all of us, if things unfolded in the way I’d seen. Our best hope was the judge, by this hour.
Lehman Willets reappeared.
And announced, “Something’s wrong!”
His face was like a detailed map of a place called confoundment.
“I – he – the judge was sitting at his desk, exactly as I thought. I appeared right in front of him. He didn’t even seem to notice me, Devries. He stared right through me. And when I spoke to him, it was like he couldn’t hear.”
My head reeled slightly as I tried to take that in.
“Was one of his pupils larger than the other?”
Willets’s head shook briskly.
In which case, it was really Levin. But his mind had been invaded, just the same way Cassie’s had.
“Try the rest,” I told the doctor. “Vernon, the McGinleys, anyone who can get this stopped. He can’t have gotten to them all.”
But could he? There appeared to be nothing stopping him. Willets nodded all the same.
“And you?” he asked me. “How about you?”
“I’m going to visit the judge myself, and try to snap him out of it.”
I’d already managed it with Cass, although I wasn’t planning to use the same tactics.
But Saruak was holding all the trump cards by this juncture. And there had to be something I could do to win a few of the good ones back.
THIRTY-EIGHT
It wasn’t too far from here to the Levin residence. But I was in a hurry, so I drove, my route taking me down avenues so lush with greenery they almost resembled public parks.
It was very quiet up here. But then it usually was. There were no stores, no malls, no movie houses. Plain nowhere for anyone to go. What was it about the rich, I wondered, that made them want to live in neighborhoods defined by their properties and little else?
I drove on through a spidery maze of silver light and shadow. Then remembered what the Little Girl had told me earlier. And so I started glancing upward at the moon. It was sailing high above the gathered branches. And there was nothing wrong with it at all, that I could see. What had she been trying to warn me of?
I came to a hairpin bend on a lofty ridge in the hill’s side. And slowed down a little, gazing at the town beneath me. There was nothing moving on its straight, broad boulevards. No headlamps showed at all. There was no sign of a light in any yard, despite the fact the weather was still warm. Far fewer lights in general, in fact.
No activity up here was one thing. But down among the ordinary people? It might just be that everyone was anxious and afraid. I got a gut feeling, though, that there was something else involved.
That instinct grew worse when I drew up outside Levin’s home.
There was no security around it, never had been. No bars or hedgerows or high fences. I guess he – and his forefathers – had always made a logical assumption. That if anyone was crazy enough to come after them, with all the power that they had, then a few bricks or pieces of iron were not going to stop them.
And besides, it would have looked all wrong. The judge’s was the most beautiful wood-built house in the entire town, all eaves and gables and scalloping and flower baskets. The conical turret in the roof even had a weather vane perched on it, an iron cockerel.
A dim light was showing, underneath the tiles up there. And I already knew that it was coming from the study. I’d been up there a few times in my old job, fetching warrants late at night.
No one answered when I yanked on the bellpull. Which was curious, since other lights were on downstairs. I could see them through the leaded windows, despite the fact that the drapes were closed. He had a family and servants, and they couldn’t all be out. So why did nobody respond?
I finally got out my pocketknife – feeling a little uneasy, doing it – and applied it to the latch. It clicked open after a few seconds. And then I put the blade away and pulled out my gun instead. The judge would have a blue fit, if he saw me waving it around his premises. But I could now feel something like a twitching in my bones. Something wasn’t right. And so, there was nothing else that I could think to do.
The murmur of a TV set came to me as I stepped into the hallway. It wasn’t at all loud. They’d still have been able to hear the bell. So why had no one even noticed it?
There were large prints, sketches of the Civil
War, on the walls all around me. This town had missed out on that completely. A framed copy of the Declaration of Independence sat behind a pane of glass. And several gleaming flintlock muskets were suspended from brass hooks.
A grandfather clock, more than a century old, clucked to itself over in the far, dim corner.
All of the lampshades here were opalescent, and the lighting very mild, subdued. I edged through the soft mist of it toward the doorway of the living room.
Fleur Levin and her two sons – Thad and Darius, both nearly grown-up – were sprawled across the couch and the matching high-backed chairs, gazing frozenly at the TV screen. Their attention was fixed on …
Nothing much at all, in point of fact. A program about home improvements, which I didn’t imagine they really needed to watch. It was being broadcast from a small apartment in the Boston area somewhere, hardly the kind of place they might be interested in. All the same, they were staring at it like store window dummies.
I stepped fully into view. But they didn’t even seem to take in the fact I was there. Not even when I called to them.
It brought back very unpleasant memories. This was far too much like going into the house next-door to mine, and finding Mrs. McGaffrey silent in her chair. Almost exactly the same, in truth. Only the jabber of the show’s presenters made it any different.
I could feel my palm becoming slightly damp against the grip of my revolver. And a bug seemed to be crawling down my neck again. Should I try to rouse them, bring them back to life? But that was not what I had come here for.
Quietly, I headed up, then went along the corridor. There were more prints of battles, redcoats against blues this time. The thick, patterned carpet made my footfalls almost silent. The door to Levin’s room was closed.
I rapped at it briefly with my knuckles.
“Judge?”
No answer. So I tried again.
“It’s Ross Devries.”
I went in. Only one small light was on, casting a pool of canary yellow round him. Judge Levin was seated behind a magnificent four-panel cherrywood desk. Its fittings had an almost unreal luster. The lamp sitting on it was a black one, apothecary-style, with a big round shade.
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