The Magicians

by James Gunn

  As I looked up from the automatic, I froze into place, unable to move, unable even to twitch an eyelash or prevent a tear from welling out of the corner of my eye. Only my chest expanded shallowly, automatically, to draw in air, and my heart kept beating even though it felt leaden within my chest. I could see, however, and by straining I could see Ariel. She, too, was rigid, like a statue of the loveliest woman in the world.

  The tear rolled down my waxen cheek.

  “Now,” he said, “I'll have to put you away until tonight. I must get back to the meeting.” He turned to me and smiled. “But thank you for calling and letting me know that you were on your way up."

  I cursed my eternal stupidity. When would I learn how to behave in this strange, magical world? Never. It was too late to learn. But why, I groaned inwardly, did I have to involve Ariel as well? I could have left her behind. I could have come on my own. But I knew that I wanted her with me, because I was weak and afraid, because I wanted her to help me and protect me, because I was afraid to let her out of my sight.

  Night came like blindness. I had a moment to wonder if I would ever see again before the light came back. I was in a bedroom, standing, immobile, in the center of the room. I could see the corner of the yellow satin coverlet on the bed and the sunlight coming through the venetian blinds onto the gold carpet. I could not see Ariel. She could have been behind me, and I would never have known, since I could not move my head and she could not speak, but I had a feeling that she wasn't in the room.

  The room was large. It had damasked chairs and tables and lamps, and a door that led, apparently, into a bathroom. I remembered that the penthouse had two bedrooms.

  Somewhere a door opened and closed. I could still hear and see. That was good. I would not have wanted to be blind and deaf while I waited for my fate to arrive. But I felt a bit like a caterpillar paralyzed by a wasp waiting for its larvae to consume me while I still lived.

  I endured the silence and the uncertainty as long as I could. I'll admit that wasn't very long. I struggled against my invisible bonds, if one can struggle without moving a muscle, by willing myself to move, to break free. It was useless. Finally even the will wore out. I felt as if I were sagging inside a frozen husk.

  Ariel, Ariel! I thought, unable to call out to her. Where are you?

  Here. It was like hearing a cool, quiet voice inside my head. Ariel's voice.

  Ariel! Is that you? I'm not just dreaming?

  Yes, Casey, it's me.

  Then it's telepathy. I'm hearing your thoughts.

  And I'm hearing yours.

  Have you always had it? Telepathy, I mean?

  Not until just now, when you called. I think it must be a kind of compensation, a natural ability brought into use by our circumstances.

  Where are you? I'm in a bedroom.

  In a bedroom, too. The bed has a dark green coverlet.

  Mine is yellow.

  That's gold. You're in the other bedroom of the penthouse suite.

  Are you all right? He didn't hurt you?

  Oh, no.

  Can he hear us?

  No. He's gone.

  Her mental coolness surprised me. It shouldn't have. She was a woman of great courage and fortitude. She had been frightened, but she wasn't frightened any more. The worst had happened, and now she wasn't afraid. I was the one who was afraid.

  Can you do anything? I asked.

  No. I've been trying.

  We're trapped then. We have to wait for them to return, for whatever they intend to do with us.

  Yes. But she didn't sound hopeless.

  Uriel!

  Yes.

  But Solomon will be watching for him.

  Uriel knows that. Don't underestimate him the way, I hope, Solomon will. In spite of his appearance, Uriel is very clever.

  Let him be clever now, I prayed. Ariel?

  Yes.

  What is your real name? I want to know. You said that Solomon knew it, but he didn't know that he knew.

  It's Ariel, she said. Father said they'd never suspect the completely obvious. Like the purloined letter, they'd keep looking for something hidden.

  My name's Kirk, I said. Kirk Cullen. K. C. Casey. There. We had shared the one thing in this world of magic that meant more than anything else. Well, more than almost anything else. I love you, Ariel.

  I love you, Casey. The sweetness of it poured through me like wine. I longed to take her in my arms and hold her there forever, but I could only stand stiffly like a statue—a statue of ice with a melting heart.

  Ariel, I thought wildly, we've got to get out of here.

  Yes! she thought, and I knew that she felt the incredible wonder of it, too. Now that we had found it, this love that knew no barriers between hearts, that let them meet and speak directly to each other, it would be the worst kind of waste to let it be taken away.

  Uriel, I said, after another tussle of will against the paralysis that held me, Uriel will rescue us.

  And so, while we watched the shadows creep across the floor, we shared our most intimate of thoughts and memories like gamblers doubling losing bets until what we stood to lose was unbearable.

  Finally we heard a door open.

  Uriel! It was an explosion of relief, and I think we both thought it at the same moment.

  And then we heard the bland voice we hated.

  “Put him down here,” Solomon said.

  Our hopes dropped with the body I heard lowered onto the bed beside me. The door closed.

  “Still silent, old man?” Solomon said. “Well, we'll put you away now, and put you away for good a little later. For good,” he repeated with relief. “You've caused me more concern and more trouble than all the rest put together."

  Then I heard Solomon leave the room. By straining my eyes beyond the point I had thought possible, I could see Uriel on the bed, small and pale and stiff. He didn't stir. Even his eyes were motionless and blank.

  Is he there with you? Ariel asked.

  Yes, I answered hopelessly.

  I can't reach him, Ariel said, and there was panic in her thought. What has Solomon done to him?

  The same thing he did to us, apparently, only he doesn't have the telepathic ability that we developed. I didn't try to reach her again for several minutes. Then I asked suddenly, What did Solomon mean when he mentioned virgins?

  I don't know, she replied. But she knew. She didn't want to tell me, and I didn't ask her again. I didn't really want to know.

  We stood, unmoving, and watched the shadows creep across the floor toward our feet like fingers of the approaching night.

  Chapter 15

  The universe, or Cosmos, is an immense organic being, all the parts of which are interlinked. It is the Macrocosm, or Great World, in contrast to man, who is the Microcosm, or Little World. All the parts of the Great World are subject to the same laws; they function in similar ways, and it is thus easy to arrive at comprehension of them by means of analogy, “Divine Analogy,” the universal law which governs all beings. That which is above is like that which is below. The lower is like the higher. In consequence, whoever knows one part of the Macrocosm knows, by analogy, all the parts. He also knows the Microcosm, which is like the Macrocosm and has a corresponding part for every like part of it. The adept can thus arrive at a perception of hidden things not known to the vulgar by the synthetic method put at his disposal by the universe itself, and this method raises him to such a height of knowledge as makes him almost a god.

  - Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy

  The darkness was virtually total. Clouds must have covered the sky as the night came, because not even starlight entered the room, and I could not see Uriel on the bed or even the bed itself. The carpet was a black pool at my feet, and it almost seemed to me that I could feel myself sinking into it.

  We had been listening to voices in the living room for some time now. We had heard furniture being moved around, preparations of some sort being made for something that w
as about to happen. Something terrible. But the bedroom doors were closed, and we couldn't see what was being done.

  I had heard distant thunder. Now lightning flashed outside the room, and a brilliant stroke lit it for a moment with awful clarity. I saw Uriel lying on the bed as stiffly as when he had first been placed there. He hadn't moved since it turned dark, as he hadn't moved before. He might be dead. The thunder rolled. If I could have moved, I would have shuddered.

  Ariel! What's going to happen?

  Something bad. Something evil. Solomon has been building up to this moment for a long time. With the covens and the black magic. And now it's November eve. We should have suspected why he picked this date for the convention.

  Why? Why November eve?

  It's Allhallow Eve, Casey. We call it Halloween, but it's no time for children's tricks-or-treats. It was one of the traditional special festivals for witches, a time for invocation and obscene rites, a time for summoning Satan himself, in the hope that at last he would break free of all restraints, he would triumph and assume his rightful throne, the mortal earth itself.

  No! I tried to shout, for now I knew with terrible understanding the nature of the ceremony that lay ahead.

  Oh, Casey! The door is opening. They're coming for me. They're picking me up. They're carrying me away!

  A scream rang through my mind, and I struggled desperately against the paralysis that held me unmoving. Futility surged through my mind. I couldn't stir a finger. I couldn't close my eyes. All I could do was listen helplessly as Ariel's broken thoughts transmitted to me a scene of horror made vivid by her panic and my anguish.

  The living room was changed. Ariel scarcely recognized it as two men carried her into the dark room, lit only by tall tapers and the intermittent flickering of lightning, that came now through the windows open to the night. The penthouse, I realized, was a new Brocken a modern “exceeding high mountain” from which to see the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and be tempted.

  They carried her through the room toward an altar draped in black at the other end, where Solomon waited, black-robed and Satanic, as shadows changed his face from one demonic image to another, seeming now to give him the look of a wolf and then an ape and then a goat with horns. And behind him the candlelight cast an even larger shadow upon the wall, a shadow that seemed to lurk and loom, to approach and retreat, but always to seem ready to materialize into something more evil than Solomon himself.

  There were others in the room. Their dark faces slipped past Ariel on either side, but she recognized only one, the magnificent Catherine La Voisin, who smiled knowingly at Ariel and winked.

  Ariel's overwrought senses felt other things in the room, devils perhaps or demons or the spirits of the restless dead. She could not see them, but she could feel them crowding the room, pressing close as if to share in what was about to happen.

  On a tripod in front of the altar was a copper dish. In it charcoal burned, making the air shimmer just above it with heat and a trace of smoke.

  The men ripped off her clothing. The knit top came off in raveling shreds; the slacks split down the side seams. The underclothes were torn from her body, and then they lifted her and placed her face up on the altar. All she could see now was the shifting face of Solomon towering above her, looking down at her with evil delight, smiling, his teeth gleaming sharp and ugly and sinister....

  Casey! she moaned. Her thoughts were terror itself.

  The room was silent except for the thunder that came at intervals like the roll of giant drums, distant but getting nearer. Solomon's head lifted, and he began to speak in a low voice. Ariel could not make out the words at first, and then slowly his voice grew louder until at the end it rivaled the thunder.

  “...gathered here in the required numbers, we summon Thee, Prince, Ruler of Darkness, Lord of Evil; your worshipers summon Thee to receive our sacrifice. We summon Thee by our allegiance. We summon Thee by the great Names of the God of gods and Lord of lords, ADONAY, TETRAGRAMMATON, JEHOVA, TETRAGRAMMATON, ADONAY, JEHOVA, OTHEOS, ATHANATOS, ISCHYROS, AGLA, PENTAGRAMMATON, SADAY, SADAY, SADAY, JEHOVA, OTHEOS, ATHANATOS, a Liciat TETRAGRAMMATON, ADONAY, ISCHYROS, ATHANATOS, SADY, SADY, CADOS, CADOS, CADOS, ELOY, AGLA, AGLA, ADONAY, ADONAY..."

  Casey! He's got a sword! And there's something coming. Something evil! Something terrible! I can feel it. I can feel it getting closer!

  Her silent screams echoed and reechoed through my mind. My heart bursting in my chest, I made one last, convulsive effort that broke my unseen bonds like rotten ropes and sent me hurtling to the door. I tore it open.

  Far across the room was the altar with Ariel's white body outlined against its blackness like innocence against sin. Behind her was Solomon, his face looming almost disembodied above the black robe, lit by the red glow of the charcoal fire in front of the altar and the tall candles and the lightning that flickered beyond the windows, almost within the room itself. But the face of Solomon seemed to glow from within with a dark light.

  Behind Solomon, cast like his shadow against the wall, was a towering shape of darkness that appeared to draw in upon Solomon as I watched, in upon Solomon and Ariel waiting helplessly on the altar as Solomon's hands lifted the sword high.

  “Stop!"

  The shout froze the room into a fantastic tableau. But it hadn't been my shout.

  Someone else was moving toward the altar, coming into the light of the tapers and the charcoal fire. It was Catherine La Voisin, her hair gleaming brighter than the fire. And then, suddenly, it was no longer the red witch. Uriel stood there, where she had been. Small, old, shabby, he defied the room.

  “Begone, shadows!” he said, pointing one long finger toward Solomon and the altar. As he pointed a spear of light shot out from his finger. “Flee, shadows! As you must always flee before the light!” His body seemed to glow in the darkness. “Twisted projections of a twisted mind, vanish into the nothingness from which you came!"

  He rattled off a series of equations, filled with functions and derivatives, faster than I could begin to follow. But I felt a fresh, clean wind blow through the room, like the wind that follows the rain as the cold front passes. Cobwebs and old superstitions seemed to be swept away. Ariel stirred.

  The shadow behind Solomon had shrunk when Uriel's finger of light struck it. Now it dwindled further, seeming almost to crouch behind Solomon.

  “Go!” Uriel commanded.

  Solomon awoke as if from a daze. “Night conquers the day,” he thundered. “Darkness conquers the light. Power makes all men bow before it. Then bow!"

  The sword over Ariel trembled in Solomon's hands as he fought to bring it down, to complete the awful sacrifice that would complete the victory of evil, that would complete the bridge that would allow the Lord of Darkness to cross over into our world. Solomon's Satanic face and black figure towered over Uriel's white-haired insignificance. They battled for the sword, the two of them, straining against invisible forces.

  Slowly the sword started down.

  “Senator!” I shouted.

  Solomon looked up. He peered across the room toward me, trying to see who was speaking, his face contorted with effort, beaded with sweat.

  “This time the gun will not fail, Senator!” I yelled. “The bullets are silver, and your name—your real name—is written on them!"

  I pulled the trigger of the gun that had rested in my hand for more than twelve hours. My hand recoiled again and again. I saw his robe twitch. He staggered. The sword drooped in his hands. And then slowly, certainly, it lifted again.

  The hammer clicked emptily.

  “Lights!” Uriel shouted. “Let the light chase away the darkness!"

  Blindingly the lights came on. The young man who had been doorkeeper of the Crystal Room was blinking dazedly beside the switch. But all the others in the room seemed just as dazed.

  Uriel's finger was outstretched now toward Solomon himself. His lips moved rapidly, but I could hear none of the words because thunder was rumblin
g through the room. Energy flashed, brilliant, electrical.

  Lightning seemed to pour down the blade of the upright sword. The sword fell harmlessly to the floor. There were no hands to hold it. The black robe crumpled to the floor. There was no one inside it.

  Solomon was gone.

  I heard a door opened and the sound of running feet, but I didn't look to see what was happening. I was racing toward the altar, toward Ariel. I gathered her into my arms and kissed her and held her tight. She was crying shakily, but in a few moments her arms went around me, and she stopped trembling.

  “Casey!” she said softly. “I knew you would save me."

  I wanted to savor the occasion, to keep her gratitude all for myself, but I couldn't. “It wasn't me,” I said. “It was Uriel."

  I half turned. Uriel was standing beside us, smiling mildly, looking pleased but not triumphant. Otherwise the room was empty; the others had fled.

  “It was mainly trickery,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “To confuse Solomon, because he believed in such superstitions. He opened his hand. There was a laser light in it. “That was the beam of light. I used a phosphorescent dye on the clothes and by hypnosis induced the young man by the light switch to smuggle in an ultraviolet projector. The most difficult job was immobilizing La Voisin.” He shuddered. “A most uncouth and violent woman."

  “What about Solomon?” Ariel asked, shivering as she turned to the black robe crumpled on the floor behind the altar.

  “Oh he's gone,” Uriel said cheerfully. “Where I haven't the slightest idea. But he won't be back. I hated to do it, but he kept insisting on forcing his warped ideas onto formless energy. When I turned that back upon him, he was, so to speak, consumed by his own demons. Now that he's gone his simulacrum in Washington will die in a few days. A neat ending for public consumption, although something of a puzzle to the doctors, no doubt.” He looked, at me approvingly. “Those bullets were very helpful. They distracted him at a crucial moment."

  They didn't seem to do much damage,” I said ruefully. “Of course they weren't silver, and they didn't have his name on them."