The Initiate

by James L. Cambias

  But he could still sense the spirit before him. Once again he chanted the binding, feeling its will strain against his own. It was like arm-wrestling with his mind: For a time the two of them were balanced in opposition, but then it weakened just a fraction and Sam pressed his advantage. Bit by bit he forced the spirit into the ring and then spoke the words to lock it in. As soon as he was finished his vision—his physical vision—returned.

  He put on the ring, then stood and chanted a banishment. The spirits he had called to him moved back each time he repeated it, and finally flew off in all directions.

  Sam raised his left hand and looked at the iron ring. “How are you doing in there, buddy?”

  It didn’t speak, but he sensed its anger and hunger as a kind of repetitive chatter. “Eatyoureyeseatyoureyeseatyoureyes…”

  “Just be patient. When I need your help, you can go wild. Until then, sleep.”

  * * *

  Two days later he sat in his apartment, reading and rereading one of the sheets Lucas had given him, trying to work up the nerve to use it. Calling spirits was frightening, in the same way as working with high-voltage power systems or live ammo was. He had to be careful to avoid killing himself. But this list of simple phrases was dangerous in a different way. According to Lucas they could be used to control the minds and emotions of other people. Until he actually started getting ready to use them, Sam hadn’t really thought about what that really meant. Could he really control someone’s mind? Should he?

  It was a little scary, once he started thinking about what he could do. Very scary, really. There were some limits, thankfully. All spells of commanding required the victim’s true name, and most worked best with certain talismans and materials present. Still, just imagining how he might use this power made Sam realize how much influence the Apkallu must have in the world. Tycoons, politicians, officials—someone with “the gift” and a single sheet of instructions could make the most powerful people in the world into puppets. This was a lot bigger than summoning spirits. Now Sam understood why Lucas had been so insistent that he take on a new identity.

  Twice he laid the sheet aside, and once he actually crumpled it up and tossed it into the wastebasket. But then he got up and fished it out, and smoothed it flat again. It was just too damned useful. He could get people to tell him the truth, make them forget things, perform tasks for him. For a man who needed to protect his identity and take on a whole organized secret society of wizards, it would be stupid—it would be insane—not to learn how to use this kind of magic. Today was a Tuesday, a good day for it.

  He promised himself that he would only use it against the Apkallu and their servants. Never for personal gain. But even as he made that vow he felt tainted.

  And with that, he rehearsed a couple of the phrases until he was sure he could repeat them from memory, put on a red silk tie, pocketed a few items, then went down the badly lit staircase to the street.

  A block away on Bedford Park Boulevard there was a “multiservice” store—a combination tax-preparation outfit, currency exchange, money-transfer service, Internet access by the minute, mail drop, utility-bill payment center, and phone-card vendor. It was one of thousands of little storefronts in New York where people with no credit, no green card, or no fixed address could dip a toe into the digital economy. With a cash surcharge, of course. Sam used it regularly.

  He waited in line patiently, staring at his phone as if engrossed by a video of cats jumping onto things. He was actually keeping an eye on the woman in front of him. She had a phone bill to pay, and by the time the two of them had moved up to just behind the head of the line, Sam knew her full name.

  “This is taking too long,” he muttered, as if to himself, and abandoned his place in line. Outside, he lit a cigarette. It tasted awful but tobacco helped the magic work. After about ten minutes, the woman came out. She was a tiny, very old black woman with a colorful scarf knotted on her head; Sam guessed she might be from someplace in the Caribbean.

  He put his hands into his pockets, one crushing the scarlet poppy blossom he’d ordered from a supplier in Belgium, the other holding a steel arrowhead. “Eresikin Elizabeth Calder Richardson iginudug Ruax. Hand me your purse. Segah.”

  The old lady turned to look at him, and as she did he had the odd sensation that he was the tiny woman looking at the dark-haired man wearing a red tie. She/he held out the purse and the man took it.

  He handed it back and said “Elizabeth Calder Richardson Ishchuch. N’pkudh.”

  She blinked at him then, as if waking up. “What you say?”

  “I said do you know if there’s a barber shop around here.”

  She shook her head. “Ask somebody else,” she said, and walked away, a little more quickly.

  Sam walked away in the other direction. He realized he was trembling. His emotions were a weird mix of triumph and disgust. The cigarette in his mouth suddenly tasted vile and he tossed it away. But the folded sheet in his shirt pocket stayed where it was.

  Chapter 5

  By the time he got back to his apartment he had calmed down a little, but he still felt odd. Unclean, almost. The thought of spending time alone was intolerable. He remembered that Ash’s card was still in his coat pocket. Calling her was a terrible idea on so many levels. He was putting his cover identity in danger, and she probably wasn’t interested in him anyway.

  “Ash? This is Sam,” he said when she answered. “Still want to buy me dinner? I’m free tonight.”

  He heard her chuckle. “Okay,” she said. “I’m at my office, on Thirty-Eighth and Eighth. Want to meet up at six? I’ll take you someplace good.”

  He took extra time getting there, following some of Lucas’s precautions to shed any supernatural watchers. She came out of the building five minutes before six. They wound up at a little Italian place right by the Lincoln Tunnel exit. It was kitschy and old-fashioned, with un-ironic red-checkered tablecloths and old travel posters of Rome and Venice, but the food was good and so was the wine.

  He managed to steer the conversation away from himself. They talked about their high school, people they’d known, and what had become of them. She told him a little more about herself.

  “I was married for a year,” she said. “After six months we both knew it was a mistake. Both of us were pretending to be other people, and when we stopped pretending, there wasn’t any reason to stay together.”

  “No kids?”

  “No…”

  Her expression made him change the subject quickly. “So: Have I been in any buildings you designed?” he asked.

  “Not unless you’ve been living in an old tobacco barn in North Carolina, or running a start-up from a converted airport in L.A.”

  “Sounds pretty cool. What are you working on now?”

  “Well…we haven’t got the contract yet, and there’s all kinds of NDAs, but it’s a neat project. There’s a big old textile factory complex in western Massachusetts, and a casino looking for a site. If the developer can put it together, we’ll be designing the whole thing. It’ll be about half new construction, half rehab. We’re going for full LEED certification, reduced wastewater…sorry, am I drifting into archibabble?”

  “I think I understand enough.”

  They didn’t leave until nearly eight, when the restaurant began filling up and the waiter began stopping at their table every five minutes or so to ask if they wanted anything else. She paid, as promised, and they walked up Ninth Avenue before cutting over to Columbus Circle. At the subway station they lingered a little awkwardly.

  “I’d like to do this again,” she said.

  “Me too. You busy Saturday? We could get lunch.”

  “That would be great,” she said, but neither of them moved.

  On pure impulse, before he had time to think about it, Sam leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss. “See you Saturday, then!”

  She smiled, he smiled, and then he almost skipped down the stairs to the subway.

  On the platfor
m he was lost in a mix of plans for the weekend and memories of how her skin had felt under his hands back in high school, until he heard the echo of a familiar giggle over the noise of ventilators and approaching trains. All of a sudden Sam was alert and on guard, raising his left hand to ready the ring he had hand forged himself, and making mental contact with the spirit of blindness bound into the iron.

  “Is she nice?” asked Isabella, worming her way between two women who seemed oblivious to her presence. She planted herself in front of Sam and grinned up at him. “She’s pretty.”

  He noticed that Isabella looked considerably cleaner than he had ever seen her. Even her hair had been combed. “It’s not nice to spy on people,” he said.

  Isabella shrugged. “Nobody can ever spy on me. My friends keep any sneaky spirits away. You need to do that, too.”

  Sam made a mental note to do just that, as soon as possible. Tuesday would be a good day for it. “Maybe so. But I’d appreciate it very much if your friends wouldn’t hang around me when I’m with my friend.”

  She shrugged again. “I’m going to the museum now,” she said.

  “The museum’s closed—and anyway, it’s past nine o’clock and below freezing outside. You don’t even have a coat.”

  “I don’t care. There’s a cihuateteo in the museum and I think I can catch her.”

  “A chihuahua? A little dog?”

  Isabella laughed at him again. “No, a cihuateteo. A Mexican dead lady with claw feet and a snake skirt. She’s inside a statue. I’ve seen her once or twice and tonight I’m going to make her tell me her name.”

  “What for?”

  She looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled and shook her head. “It’s a secret.”

  The D train came screeching into the station just then and the two of them got on board. Sam noticed that everyone on the platform veered away from Isabella and himself, boarding different cars, so when the train began to move again they were alone except for a man asleep on the handicap seats.

  “How do you know so much about”—he dropped his voice to a whisper, which made Isabella giggle—“magic? Did Sylvia teach you all these things?”

  Isabella frowned at that. “No, she’s dumb. She won’t teach me anything and she keeps telling me not to do things. The only reason I go to her dumb class is so I can get initiated, and then I’ll be able to do what I want without old Sylvia and Mr. Moreno being all nosy.”

  “Then how did you learn so much?”

  “I told you before—my friends tell me things. They know everything and they don’t try to keep it all secret. I like them a lot better than I like Sylvia.” She glared up at Sam. “You’re not going to try to stop me, are you?”

  “I’ll make you a deal, Isabella. I won’t mention anything about your dead Aztec lady if you don’t tell anyone about my friend you saw me with earlier. And no spying on her, either. Deal?”

  “Deal.” She spit on her palm and they shook hands, and as they did so Sam felt the attention of unseen presences around them stronger than ever. He didn’t want to find out what would happen if he tried to break his word.

  * * *

  He met with Lucas one more time before his initiation. This time he took a train to Tarrytown, crossed the Tappan Zee to Nyack at slack tide, detoured through a couple of churches, and finally climbed up Hook Mountain to where Lucas was waiting at the edge of a bluff with a view of Sing Sing prison across the river.

  “Why can’t we just talk in a”—he puffed a couple of times—“fucking Starbucks or something?” asked Sam. “It’s freezing up here.”

  “You know why. Nobody must know that you and I have ever met. Did you try the workings?”

  “Yes. Controlling people’s minds is creepy as hell.”

  Lucas shrugged. “It has its uses. You have some more guardians about you, too. That’s wise.”

  “Do they really do any good?”

  “Oh, yes. If nothing else, they would slow down any sorcerous attack against you, giving you time to react.”

  “Who’s going to be attacking me? I thought the whole point of the Apkallu was to keep the peace among magicians.”

  Lucas chuckled. “We have police to keep the peace among ordinary people, but the stores do a brisk trade in handguns, pepper spray, and burglar alarms. Let me remind you: The Apkallu, especially the oldest and most powerful members, are not bound by any sense of morality. The organization enforces order by superior force, not by shining example.”

  He walked Sam through a ritual to improve his perceptions of the spirit world. “It has various names—mostly some variation of ‘Opening the Inner Eye.’ If you perform it every morning when you wake, your senses become more attuned to the invisible commonwealth around us.”

  They practiced it a couple of times, but Sam noticed that Mr. Lucas wasn’t giving the working his full attention.

  “Something the matter?”

  “Eh? Oh—well, yes.” Lucas licked his lips and then took a deep breath, facing Sam squarely. “I will be present at your initiation,” he said.

  It took Sam a second to realize what he meant. “You’re one of them? But you said—”

  “I was rather hoping you had already deduced it yourself,” said Lucas a little peevishly. “The Apkallu do not allow rogue users of magic to exist. And as I said, I foolishly allowed them to gain power over me. Yes, I am a member; an initiate of the Circle of the Lodge, in fact. When I was younger and full of righteous outrage about some of the things the Apkallu have done, I thought I would simply rise through the ranks and then deal out justice. But since then I have learned that is impossible. At each new rank there are oaths and confessions. I am bound like Gulliver.”

  “Then why are we even doing this?”

  “You are not bound! And if we manage things properly, I can aid you without breaking any oaths I have made. As long as you guard your blood and your name, you can fight them where I cannot.”

  Sam turned his back on Lucas and walked to the edge of the bluff. Six inches in front of his toes was a sheer drop down to jagged basalt boulders. One step forward and all this would be over. The wind fluttered his coat around him.

  Finally he turned around. “Okay,” he said. “I get it. You have to keep secrets to survive. Fine. But I’m not going to be your little sockpuppet. We have to trust each other.”

  “I agree. Will you trust me, Samuel?”

  “I guess I have to. But no more secrets.”

  “Naturally. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s go over the Inner Eye working once more. It has many uses.”

  When they were done with Sam’s magic lesson the two of them adjourned to an all-night diner in Nyack to warm up with an early breakfast. While they waited for their food, Lucas explained the inner workings of the Apkallu, much more than Sylvia was allowed to tell.

  “Let me outline the power structure—both in theory and reality.” Lucas dipped a finger into his coffee, then drew a circle on the tabletop. Inside it he made seven dots with his fingertip. “Here we have the Seven Sages, also known as the Aganu or Circle of the Lamp. Another translation might be the Illuminated Ones.” He glanced over at Sam and raised his eyebrows. “Nowadays each of them has responsibility for a continent-sized region.”

  “Moreno told me about them. So does the Sage of the West actually rule America?”

  “More accurate to say he rules its rulers. The Sages seldom involve themselves directly in mundane politics. What they can do is to keep rein on the ones who do manipulate kings and presidents, the next layer of the onion.”

  He dipped his finger in the coffee again, and drew seven smaller circles touching the central one. To make them fit he had to elongate them, so it wound up looking more like a child’s picture of a flower.

  “Now, this is where the important things happen. These seven circles are known collectively as the Agé, the Circles of the House. Or if you prefer, the Lodge.” When Sam still didn’t react, Lucas shook his head a little sadly. “Eac
h is led by a Sage. In theory each Circle of the House should consist of exactly thirteen members, but in practice they sometimes have considerably more. At present the Circle of the West has nineteen members, including myself and Hei Feng.”

  “And these are the guys who rule the world.”

  “Yes. Initiates of the House are the ones who control corporations, governments, media organizations, criminal gangs, et cetera. Of course, the Sage has the blood of all the initiates of his Circle. That is the great power of the Sages: they rule the rulers.”

  “So what do you rule?”

  “I have been at pains for many years to present myself as a harmless scholar of the history of our order, so my mundane influence is limited to a few academic institutions here and in Europe.” He glanced at Sam again, this time with a grin. “Of course, those universities have enormous endowments, giving me significant power in financial markets, their graduates fill all the upper echelons of government and business on five continents, and their faculties have tremendous influence on the culture. I seldom flex my muscles, but they are there.”

  Lucas made a number of smaller circles on the edge of one petal of his flower. “As above, so below. These represent the Aka, the Circles of the Gate, which constitute the outermost layer of our organization. There are thirteen in the West, scattered about North America. Each is led by a member of the Circle of the West.”

  “It’s a cell structure,” said Sam. “Revolutionary groups and terrorists use it, too. Compartmentalized.”

  “No doubt—although it’s important to note that the Apkallu have no real sense of what you would call security. Members often know people in different Circles. We keep the structure of nested circles out of tradition, not necessity.”

  “Where does Moreno fit in?”

  “He is an initiate of the Lodge, part of the Circle of the West like myself, and leads no Circle of his own. He answers only to the Sage of the West—although in practice anyone can call upon him.”