The Necromancer's Grimoire

by Annmarie Banks

  She embraced the shade and held it, reaching for Corbett and surrounding him with understanding and reminding him of his God’s love. She could feel the necromancer there too, playing to Corbett’s fears, expanding them and encouraging them.

  She focused her thoughts on memories of Corbett’s face, to remind him of who he was. The necromancer worked to twist the Templar’s soul into a slave to his will. As much as Corbett loved and worshipped his God, he feared sin and damnation. The necromancer fanned those fears with his own reserves of energy and made them powerful. This was how he had taken DiMarco.

  Nadira touched the memory of the intended wedding. This memory was loaded with guilt and pain. She brought it into focus and elaborated on the combined emotional fervor of each of the participants. She touched Corbett’s father and felt his fury and frustration with his oldest son. She touched Corbett’s mother and felt her sympathies for the bride. She touched the teenaged Malcolm and felt his revulsion.

  “Please,” she said to him kindly. “Revulsion? She is a nice girl, the daughter of your father’s best friend.”

  Corbett shuddered from deep within the dark cloud and she held tightly to him. He answered her, “Her body is the seat of the devil, corrupt with the desires of the flesh that will bring damnation upon me…” He was prepared to go on, but Nadira stopped him. The necromancer was enjoying the Templar’s torment; she could feel his amusement through the vapor.

  “Your God said to be fruitful and multiply. This command cannot be obeyed if every man tucks himself into a cloister. Besides, you are about to be married before God. He is supposed to convey his blessings upon your union. Are you saying that marriage is sinful?”

  The necromancer pulled Corbett away from this idea and paraded images of naked women in various sexual postures before them both. Corbett recoiled, but could not remove the images from his mind. Nadira could. She replaced them with images of the Madonna and scores of cherubic infants. She swirled a golden cloud around the small part of Corbett the necromancer had not seized. She moved closer to it and whispered, “The son of God emerged into your world from the body of a woman. Would your God have placed him there to grow inside her if she were the root of evil?”

  The necromancer scoffed and pelted them with more images of the most depraved sexual couplings he could imagine. Nadira could not help but look at some of them with surprise and disbelief, but held tightly to Corbett while the Templar considered her words. She poured as much love and compassion into her touch as she could. The necromancer countered her soft caresses with blows from each of the seven deadly sins. Corbett had certainly sinned throughout his long life. The Templar had counted each one over the years and held onto them tightly in a bundle of despair.

  Nadira blocked the necromancer’s blows with the blanket of compassion she wrapped around Corbett’s soul. The old man refused to give up his sense of guilt. In desperation she cast about her for more ideas. She did not know enough of the Templar’s religion to use it against the necromancer. She knew only what she had been told. A few stories, some admonitions. Not enough.

  She could see that Corbett saw his devotion to his mission to protect Christendom was rooted in his fear that his soul was damned. She flipped through the pages of his life, looking for the seed of this torment. There. Corbett felt her touch the memory and struggled mightily against her as she brought it forward. The necromancer was equally eager to show it in all its color and form to Malcolm. Nadira was startled to feel the necromancer move to stand with her and help her bring these images forward.

  The three of them stood in an immense field of grain in southern France. It was late summer. The wind blew the ripening heads of wheat into swirling waves. Around the edges of the fields the peasants harvested swathes of golden grain and made towering stacks of the straw. Corbett pulled back as if to run and the sky darkened with his fear. The necromancer held him by the back of his neck and pushed him to his knees at Nadira’s feet. She locked eyes with Evren Farshad over the Templar’s bowed head. This was how one battled over the soul of a man; their weapons were thoughts, ideas and beliefs. More of the Grimoire’s words became clear to her, and the lessons of the priestess were not forgotten.

  Corbett was sobbing now, his face in his hands and his shoulders shook. She put a hand on one shoulder to comfort him as Farshad put his hand on the other, shaking Corbett and forcing him to look.

  Mewling sounds came from the edge of the field. The three of them parted the long stems of the wheat to see two young people in an embrace of love. The woman lay on her back, her feet in the air. Between her legs lay a young man, his bare arse moving up and down. Both youngsters were enjoying this coupling. Nadira moved closer to see. This was not a rape. The girl had her eyes closed in bliss, and the young man’s mouth was open with his exertion. The necromancer invited her to touch the image and she did. She felt the increasing crescendo of the man’s pleasure. Intoxicating waves of ecstasy shimmered from the images and were felt by the observers. His hips moved faster and faster as he neared his climax and both of them cried out when it was over.

  The young man collapsed on the body of the girl and he panted for a few moments before lifting himself on his elbows and covering her face in kisses. She hugged him in return and there was a flurry of French endearments that Nadira heard and understood without translation. She smiled on Malcolm Corbett. “You loved her,” she said. She saw the two meeting in secret places, making promises, kissing and holding each other in exquisite tenderness. Corbett had been deeply in love with this girl for years.

  But Corbett was not remembering this love. He was remembering the consequences. His weeping grew louder and his breath rasped in his throat. Farshad narrowed his eyes as he squeezed the Templar’s shoulder. The necromancer said to Nadira, “He sinned. He took this innocent girl and filled her with his seed. She was a virgin when he took her out of wedlock. He caused her to sin as well. They both are tainted. She became full of his child. Her father put her out of the house and she became a whore. His father forbade him to send her money or to contact her or the child she bore.”

  Nadira frowned. “He could have married her…” she began, but the truth came to her with the wave of remorse that flowed from Corbett’s sobs. His lover was a peasant girl. One of the daughters of his father’s workers. He could never have married her. When he learned of her pregnancy and subsequent fate he fled to the Church.

  “I see,” she said softly. This would be difficult. Malcolm had been forced to marry another, but had trouble consummating his marriage. The guilt from his first love wilted his resolve. His bride reported the failures to her father who was not silent about this insult to his family. This shame was a deep blow to his manhood.

  Nadira knelt before the sobbing Templar and took his hands from his face. “When your father died you entered the Church and renounced your bride. The marriage was annulled, but your wife was ruined, wasn’t she? No one would have her and she was sent to a convent. She was miserable and blamed you for this lifelong imprisonment. She had hoped to be a great lady, mistress of a large estate and the mother of many children. Instead she found herself alone and on her knees for the next thirty years.”

  Corbett’s eyes were filled with this knowledge. It was not only the guilt of his sins he carried, but the guilt of the harm he did to two women.

  Nadira better understood his torment in the vizier’s house. She looked up at the necromancer. “What good is this man’s soul to you, Farshad?”

  “Give me what I want.”

  Nadira narrowed her eyes. “So now we bargain.”

  “You have proven yourself a skillful necromancer,” he admitted. “You have stolen my Grimoire.” His golden staff appeared in his hand and he turned from Malcolm Corbett to face her. “And you possess an ability I do not have. I would have it now.”

  “And you use Corbett as coin?” She stood between the sobbing Templar and the necromancer and spread her arms to her sides. “You shall not have him. Go back to P
ersia,” she demanded. “You must earn your skills, not steal them or bargain for them.”

  Farshad’s face hardened. “I already have the Templar. You are mistaken if you think I do not.” The golden calf on the tip of his staff waved and Corbett got to his feet, dry-eyed and staring blankly into nothingness. “I will stab at your heart and take each of your friends one by one until you give me what I want. Give me the Grimoire. Show me this power you possess and I do not.”

  “I will not.”

  Farshad raised both arms and Nadira felt lashed by whips of heat. She opened her eyes in Calvin’s arms. The Templar sat upon the floor, his wounded leg stretched out in front of him. She sat upon the other, leaning back against his chest. William’s face peered down at her.

  “The shade disappeared when you fell,” he said.

  “How long have I been gone?” she asked. Her body felt like a damp cloth. Calvin’s arms were strong bands of muscle holding her together.

  “A count of ten, maybe.”

  “Ten? That’s all?” She tried to move her legs.

  “Is the necromancer here?” William asked.

  “He was,” she told him. One foot wiggled. She worked on the other.

  Calvin whispered, “Malcolm?”

  Nadira stopped trying to move. She sighed deeply. “He is lost.”

  Calvin’s arms tightened around her and he touched his chin to her head. His beard was rough and his voice rougher when he spoke. “Can we do nothing for him?”

  Nadira did not answer. Malcolm Corbett had given himself to the necromancer by refusing to give up his guilt. She turned her eyes to the Grimoire in William’s hands. “I should be holding that,” she said.

  “No,” he said and snapped it shut. He pressed it to his chest.

  She made a great effort to climb from Calvin’s arms. He released her. She was careful of his thigh as she wobbled to her feet. She put one hand on William’s shoulder to support herself and put the other on the cover of the book. He did not struggle against her, but neither did he release it.

  “Give it to me,” she pitched her voice to command him.

  His golden eyes flashed at her and he refused, chin up in defiance. “No,” he said.

  Nadira paused, confused by his reaction. She glanced down at Calvin. The Templar suddenly doubled over his thigh, eyes closed, clutching it with both hands. His mouth was open and his breath was loud in his throat. She released William and took a step. She circled the room, her eyes bore into every dark corner, every space between furniture and floor. The necromancer was not finished with her. He must be here.

  She blinked rapidly, trying to see his tendrils. Slowly the red glow from his cords became visible to her eyes. She saw them twined around Calvin’s thigh, probing him and intensifying his pain. She saw thinner ones swirling around William, entering his ears and telling him that he was the master of the Grimoire.

  She gritted her teeth, feeling a welling of anger from the depths of her belly rising to her eyes. She heard a crash across the hall and a squeal of fear. She ran through the door to Thedra’s room and found her friend awake, eyes wide. The tendrils filled the room from floor to ceiling. “Stay in here,” she told the frightened woman. “Do not come out.”

  She marched back to the Templar’s room, anger growing with every step. She had won the Grimoire from Assad and passed through the tests the priestess had set for her. She should be able to use her skills now to put the magus away. There would be no more souls stolen.

  She stopped on the threshold of their room and looked at her friends inside. Corbett’s corpse was discoloring on the floor. Calvin had fallen beside him, writhing, his thigh in both hands, red cords pulsed through his wound. She could hear him groaning in his agony. William stood still as a statue, the Grimoire against his heart, his eyes stared into nothingness as red cords surrounded his chest.

  All movement in the room stopped for a heartbeat, then all the red tendrils floated up from their targets and aligned themselves into a river of red. The river arched back like a snake about to strike. Nadira opened her arms and closed her eyes, ready to ward off the blow.

  The skein of red cords flew at her like arrows loosed from an army of archers. She opened her eyes and imagined the blue of the sky, the sparkle of the sea and the white birds of the shore. She flung them at the necromancer, washing him with sea water.

  The intensity of the red cords diminished, but did not leave the room. She sent another wave of water at him. She heard Farshad choke and gasp. She imagined the huge swell of a storm surge rising up over helpless ships and crashed the image down on the necromancer, smothering him. She crushed him with the weight of the sea and choked off his air with the sting of salty brine. She raised her arms and swept him with pounding surf.

  She inhaled deeply, ready for another salvo, but he was gone. Inside the room William was blinking as if trying to remember where he was. But it was Calvin who made her leap into action. She flew to his side and rolled him onto his back. A thick cord protruded from his chest like the shaft of an arrow. She grabbed it and pulled. Calvin curled up around her arms, gasping, both legs kicked beside her.

  “You will not have him, too!” she cried. The cord was firmly wrapped around the Templar’s soul. She felt she could not remove it without ripping Calvin’s heart from his body. She set her jaw and held tightly, one hand on his chest, the other twined around the glistening cord.

  William dropped to his knees beside her. “It says Calvin must release it,” he murmured.

  Nadira commanded, “Release your sins, Thomas Calvin!” Calvin opened his eyes. “Release them!” She insisted.

  The Templar blinked rapidly, his mouth opened and his lips moved in prayer. Nadira remembered him in the Anemas prison with this same look on his face. She said through her teeth, “William. Get the Mandylion from Malcolm Corbett’s body. Bring it to me.” She heard him obey. She would not take her eyes from the pulsing cord in her hand.

  William returned with the soft cloth. “Place it on his chest,” she told him.

  He placed the folded cloth over the hand she held on Calvin’s chest. Nadira leaned over Calvin’s face and whispered to him, “God is with you. Your recovery of His relic absolves you of all sin. You are pure, and glow with the grace of God. Agape.”

  She felt the flash of light as a cool breeze, tinted with the scent of lavender. William must have felt it differently for he gasped and fell back from Calvin’s body, scrambling toward the wall. The red cord was gone. Calvin panted beside her, his chest rose and fell and his heavy breathing was the only sound in the room. Nadira folded his hands over the Mandylion on his chest. “Rest, Thomas Calvin,” she murmured. “Your God is with you and no demon from hell or master of the dead can touch you ever again.”

  “Is God really with him?” William’s eyes were big.

  Nadira got up and lifted William to his feet. “Come with me,” she told him as she picked up the book and pressed it against her chest. She steered him into the hall. She stopped and pushed him against the wall and put the Grimoire back in his hands.

  “Do you not see? It is the idea of God that sustains him. It is our beliefs that control our souls. You saw this yourself earlier this evening. Can you not see it now in the others?”

  His throat worked up and down, and then he slowly nodded. “That night when I tasted the Hermetica…” his voice faltered. “I saw there was no God. Then you tell Calvin there is a God. What do I believe, Nadira?”

  Nadira pushed him harder as if she could shove the knowledge of the ancient magicians into his chest. “Calvin believed the necromancer when Farshad told him he was a sinner. He believed me when I reminded him of his salvation.” She stared hard into his eyes. “And you must understand this and know it in your heart or be susceptible to the necromancer’s touch. He will come for you with the same weapons.” She took the Grimoire from his hands and pressed it against his chest. “This book is only a tool. Its purpose is to teach this lesson. It will hint at the a
nswers only. If it tells you, you have not learned. Do you understand?” She felt washed with frustration. She understood the difficulty of bending the minds of others and why there were so few magi in the world when there could be thousands. She shook him gently. “Learn this quickly and you will be protected as Calvin is now.” Another thought came to her. “Robert.” Her eyes twitched.

  William murmured, “You sent the baron away.”

  She nodded. “I had to. His heart was not with me, but with Massey.” She clenched her fists. “Now he is in great danger.”

  He set his mouth. “The book warns me the baron is next.”

  “I cannot fight his battle for him.” She looked into William’s honey brown eyes. “Or yours.”

  William’s throat moved as he swallowed with understanding. “What does the necromancer want, Nadira?”

  “Everything. He wants everything.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nadira marched up and down the hallway, thinking. She needed to go to the priestess. She understood what Farshad would attempt, but did not know how she could stop him.

  Like both the dark shade and the flame of the candle, the necromancer could dance away from her at will. She would never be able to grasp him and hold him. He knew how both realms of existence worked. As above, so below. He could torment her forever if he pleased. One by one he would destroy those she loved by turning their minds against themselves. She rubbed her temples with both hands. William sat cross-legged on the floor against the wall, the Grimoire open in his lap looking for answers.