The Initiate

by James L. Cambias

  At the door on the left all he could hear was the hum of a fan. From across the hall came the smell of cooking. Zadith had just eaten an enormous late lunch, so…fan, then. Once again Sam touched his key to the locks and pushed the door open.

  The living-dining-kitchen room displayed a nice design sense and minimal housekeeping ability. Striking squares of colored fabric draped the thrift-store furniture, but the dishes had been in the sink long enough to breed a crop of flies.

  Sam tiptoed toward the bedroom door, then shoved it open rudely. “Get dressed, kid. Moreno wants to see your boss,” he said. As the young woman started to scream Sam released his sleep-spirit at her, and she fell back into the messy bed.

  Nude, Zadith’s borrowed body looked even more impressive. Three or four months of heavy drinking and overeating hadn’t done much to ruin that perfect physique. He got up and approached Sam menacingly. “Get out. You will pay for this, and Moreno also. Zadith will punish you both.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re just hired help,” said Sam, maintaining the fiction that he didn’t know who he was talking to. “I’ll wait outside if you want.”

  He stepped back out into the living room, pulling the bedroom door behind him. As soon as it was shut he dug in the duffel bag for the cloth inscribed with the sigil of Menqal the Lord of Ruin, and the bottle Lucas had prepared. He laid the cloth on the floor in front of the door and set the bottle on it, then held the bunch of rowan flowers dipped in holy water in his right hand. His left hand stayed in his pocket.

  As soon as Zadith opened the bedroom door Sam began the exorcism. “By Osiris, Lord of the living and the dead I banish you. By Anubis and by Bes I expel you. Out, unclean spirit! By the power of Menqal I command you!”

  He had hoped the rite of exorcism would interfere with Zadith’s ability to control his puppet, but the young man stepped forward, cocking a fist to slug Sam.

  Sam pulled his left hand out of his jacket pocket and fired the taser right at the middle of the young man’s carefully-waxed chest. The handsome body twitched and jerked with the shock. Sam felt his own will pressing against something that resisted—something big. Zadith’s spirit was strong. Suddenly Sam didn’t doubt at all that he was centuries old. Even distracted by the taser he was powerful.

  And then Sam felt a second will joining his own, pushing against the mighty wizard. It was weak and didn’t have a scrap of Apkal blood, but it was trapped in that handsome body, and it was furiously angry at Zadith.

  “I banish you by Osiris and the secret name of Ra. Madet Ankhusar I command you to begone!”

  He felt the monstrous will fighting back, and then suddenly—nothing! It was like trying to push a heavy weight and then feel it slide away. Sam tossed away the taser and grabbed for the bottle. “Ruwaya!” he shouted. For an instant he sensed multiple presences in the room, struggling together. The bottle became heavy in his hand, and Sam corked it with the lead stopper marked with Solomon’s seal.

  The young man stirred on the floor. “What happened? Who are you?”

  “Never mind that,” said Sam, as he picked up a lapis-blue pair of pants and took the wallet out of the back pocket.

  “Hey!” The young man started to get up, but Sam had his driver’s license now, with his true name on it.

  “Eresikin Michael Bauer Carlson iginudug Ruax. Get dressed, get out of here, and stay away from Zadith from now on. Forget my face, forget my words, forget I was here.”

  “Right,” said the young man, shaking his head. He got to his feet and looked vaguely around the room for his boxers. Sam put down his wallet and left.

  He used one of his disposable phones to contact the police precinct nearest the Pythian building, and reported hearing screams and gunshots from the fifth floor there. An hour later he sat in the multiply-ticketed rental car down the block on Seventieth Street and watched as paramedics carried a covered form to an ambulance.

  By the next morning, the sealed bottle didn’t feel heavy anymore. Zadith’s spirit had…gone? Ceased to exist? Sam didn’t know and didn’t want to ask.

  * * *

  Moreno’s inquiry was barely more than a formality. When a man who has been dead for decades finally stops moving, not even the most paranoid investigator devotes much time to looking for evidence of foul play.

  Sam did have to help “decontaminate” the Pythian building and dispose of Zadith’s personal property. On the Friday before Halloween he and Moreno spent the night in Zadith’s condo doing banishing rituals. Sam had to leave all his own magic at home, because Moreno brought the Mitum, and it might undo all of Sam’s binding spells. A perfectly genuine letter from the medical examiner’s office got them past the building staff.

  Sam got his first look at the Mitum in Zadith’s living room. Moreno carried it in a handsome maroon leather case with a polished brass lock, and opened it only when the two of them were alone. The Mitum was a short club of black iron, about a foot long, obviously hand forged and very old. The head was seven sided, and bore inscriptions in an alphabet Sam didn’t recognize. It smelled faintly of oil and myrrh.

  With the Mitum present, Sam’s Inner Eye was useless. There were no spirits to see. Somehow he had expected that the magic-canceling relic would make its surroundings seem plain and drab, but the reverse was true. Around the Mitum everything felt intensely real and vivid, as if Sam was seeing the world clearly for the first time. In college he’d watched one of his fellow students who’d been dropping acid stare in fascination at the texture of a knit sweater. Within the Mitum’s influence Sam had the same urge to comprehend things.

  “Pretty intense, huh?” said Moreno, watching Sam with amusement. “You get used to it after a while.”

  They went through the whole place systematically, touching the Mitum to anything which might hold a spirit. In practice that meant anything old, anything made of a planetary metal, or anything which looked expensive.

  Once that was done, they began boxing up Zadith’s books. “Dr. Greene’s going to take ’em all up to Boston and go through them,” said Moreno. “She’s the real expert. She can figure out which ones aren’t safe for the subur.”

  “Why does it matter? I thought only Apkallu could do magic.”

  Moreno gave him a look of genuine surprise. “The guy who taught himself to bind a hafaza before he ever found out about the Apkallu says that? Who knows how many other people are out there with the bloodline who don’t know it? One of them starts fooling around with workings without proper training and all kinds of bad stuff could happen.”

  “So does Greene keep all the real magic books for herself?”

  “Sort of. She’s got the best library in the world, but all the Apkallu can use it. Even the Sages sometimes ask her for advice.”

  “I’m surprised she’s not a Sage herself.”

  “She could be, if she wanted to. Doesn’t really care about the political side. Like that guy Lucas. He’s been teaching you, right?”

  Sam felt a chill which had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. “A few things.” This was not a subject he wanted to discuss with Moreno. “Oh, I forgot to tell you: that binding you told me about, the one from Dee’s Heptarchia—it didn’t work. I tried it on a gnome and it damn near broke my kneecap.”

  “Huh. It looked legit. I can’t use it myself, of course. I’ll pass that info along to Dr. Greene. Maybe that copy’s the wrong printing or something.”

  While Moreno dealt with the potentially powerful stuff in Zadith’s magical workroom, Sam sorted through the books in the larger library/parlor in the middle of the apartment. A man’s books revealed a lot about him. Zadith’s were no exception. Most of the nonmagical works were in English or French, and Sam found a whole shelf of language texts about Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform. So much for his claim of being millennia old.

  Zadith’s taste in fiction ran to the frankly pornographic, which Sam found a little sad. Here was a man with literally cosmic power, capable of taking on o
ther people’s bodies like so many suits of clothing, and yet he had managed to collect close to a hundred two-dollar paperback fuck-books.

  Those all went into a box for recycling. Sam was shifting his third armload from the shelf to the box when a folded piece of paper slipped from one book to the floor. That wasn’t particularly interesting, but what happened next was: The paper got to its feet, revealing itself to be a little origami figure of a human—and started running for the door.

  Sam dumped the books and dove for it. He managed to catch the little paper figure between his thumb and forefinger, and held it up to get a better look. The paper figure raised its fingerless hands to its featureless face in a praying gesture, as if pleading with Sam.

  He moved out to the vestibule to get as far from Moreno and the Mitum as possible, then opened his Inner Eye. This was definitely a spirit bound into the paper, but he couldn’t make out exactly what kind it was. Not a human ghost, nor an elemental being. It seemed fairly intelligent. He wanted to study it further, but he knew that if it got near the Mitum he’d have nothing but a creased bit of paper.

  Inspiration struck. Sam went back into the library and hunted through the desk drawers for an envelope and some stamps. He addressed the envelope to “William Hunter’s” post office box, sealed the protesting figure inside and dropped the whole thing down the mail chute by the elevator.

  They finished packing up the books and a few key magical materials by midmorning. Sam and Moreno moved the boxes downstairs and told the manager a van would come for them. The two of them breakfasted together at the coffeeshop down the block.

  “Big show tonight,” said Moreno, nodding at the Halloween decorations in the windows. “New Master of the Circle. It’ll be at the Rainbow Room—up on top of the RCA Building. Formal wear. If you show up in some J. C. Penney shit I swear I’ll throw you off the balcony.”

  * * *

  Stone’s inauguration as Master of the Circle went off without a hitch. The Rainbow Room’s decor was perfect camouflage: to any outsider it looked like nothing more than a high-end Halloween party, with lots of candles, a big circle painted on the floor with occult symbols around the edge, and some of the guests in funny costumes.

  The party started just after sunset, but the guest of honor didn’t appear until nine, when Taurus was visible in the eastern sky. Stone looked uncharacteristically serious as he entered, clad only in a linen robe with open sides like a tabard—a garment with no stitch or seam, held shut with a sash. He took his place at the center of the painted circle.

  Three other members of the Circle of the West stood at the points of an equilateral triangle on the rim of the circle, wearing normal clothes and elaborate masks: a golden lion, a cow crowned with a crescent Moon for horns, and a skull. Stone swore oaths in English and Sumerian, he sacrificed a black rooster before the man wearing the skull mask, the man in the lion mask struck him twice with a rod hard enough to leave purple welts on Stone’s shoulders, and the woman wearing the cow mask placed a sheepskin cap on Stone’s head.

  Watching from the back of the crowd, Sam felt a stab of awe. This ritual had been going on since the days when a shepherd’s hat like that was the regalia of Sumerian kings. Stone didn’t look like a half-naked fat man in weird clothes: He was priest, magician, and king. The new dignity suited him.

  Stone withdrew to a private room so that his new subjects could greet him and renew their oaths of loyalty. “William Hunter” knelt and swore by his name to obey and defend the Master.

  “I hear you fixed up that trouble I had with Z. Thank you,” said Stone.

  Sam was about to protest that it was all Lucas’s doing, but stopped himself. It wasn’t. About the only thing Lucas had done was to tell him about the problem. He smiled at Stone. “Glad to help out any time,” he said.

  “That’s good to hear. A wise Master rewards those who serve him well.” He handed Sam a card. “We should get together soon. I’d like to get to know you better, William.”

  On his way out of the room Sam passed Isabella going in, dressed for the occasion in a black “Halloween Princess” costume and a witch’s hat decorated with blinking orange pumpkins. She had an invisible retinue around her, and walked as if Stone was going to pledge fealty to her rather than the other way around.

  Back in the main room Sam had a cup of kykeon for appearance’s sake and surveyed the crowd. Lucas didn’t seem to be there. Moreno caught his eye from across the room and flashed him a thumbs-up sign. Evidently Sam’s tuxedo passed inspection.

  He was about to go join Moreno when he felt a hand on his forearm. It belonged to Taika Feng—very striking in a long-sleeved silk cheongsam dress exactly the color of her white-blonde hair. “You’re Ace,” she said, not asking.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sam took a sip of his kykeon just to avoid meeting her eyes. He had shaved off the beard and mustache, but his head was still bald. Would she recognize Phil the plumber’s assistant?

  Taika smiled at him, as if flirting. “You work for Moreno. Has he determined who killed my husband yet?” she murmured. Her tone was low and pleasant, completely at odds with what she was saying.

  “It was the Count. Everyone agrees on that,” said Sam, nodding and smiling back.

  She leaned close. “Not everyone. I think others were involved.”

  Sam’s mouth was dry. How much did she know? He forced himself to keep smiling. “This isn’t the place to talk about it,” he whispered in her ear.

  Taika laughed as if he’d made a good joke, and raised her glass of champagne in a half toast before sipping. “Leave when I do,” she murmured. “Let everyone see.”

  Sam’s brain was overclocking as he tried to work out the implications. Taika wanted his help—and wanted everyone to know. Who was the target of her ploy? Stone? Moreno? Or Sam himself—did she want him to look like a sleaze hitting on Feng’s widow?

  No, he decided. None of the Apkallu would even care about that. She was trying to get him to make a public show of picking a side. Okay, Sam thought. I’m game. Let’s see where this leads.

  She drifted away from him and went to chat with Shimon’s parents. He abandoned the cup of kykeon and got a Bloody Mary from the bar. The bartender’s shaggy hair didn’t quite hide the little horn buds atop his head, but Sam tipped him five dollars anyway.

  Taika left the party just after midnight, favoring Sam with a blatant come-hither look across the room. He followed, his cheeks burning a little. This was definitely going to cause some gossip.

  She had a big Mercedes and a liveried driver. He sat with her in back, but she didn’t speak until the car had pulled away from the curb and she filled the back compartment with cigarette smoke accompanied by a brief ritual of banishing.

  “I expect someone or something is following the car, but at least they won’t overhear us. You’ve been working with Moreno—why?”

  “I guess I think he’s doing something worthwhile. Keeping the peace, keeping the secret, all that stuff.”

  She watched him closely. “Would you be interested in taking over his job?”

  “Absolutely!” said Sam. He didn’t even have to fake it: with the Mitum in his hands he could hold all the Apkallu to account for their crimes.

  Taika smiled at that. “Good. I think he made a mistake in the matter of Feng’s death. If you help me expose it…”

  “I was there when the Count tried to ambush Moreno. He sure didn’t act innocent.”

  “Oh, he was involved, no question. But—do you know Lucas?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “He’s a friend of Stone’s, and the other day he mentioned that Stone had borrowed his copy of Al-Buni’s Shams al-Ma’arif al-Kubra. Now that he’s Master of the Circle Lucas is afraid he’ll never get it back.”

  “I don’t follow,” said Sam.

  “I think that book’s where Stone got the binding for the div that killed my husband. It makes sense: The Count had the mundane influence needed to smuggle a talisman into our home
, and Stone could provide the weapon. For all I know, Stone may have tricked the Count into attacking you and Moreno.”

  “Stone? He doesn’t seem like he could trick anyone.”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “I could be wrong. It’s not important. What is important is that he may have helped destroy Feng, and now has taken his place as Master. That must not stand.”

  “Why are you so concerned about it? At least one person we talked to mentioned you as a suspect.”

  “My husband was not an…easy man to live with. I married him to cement an alliance, not out of love. But he is my Cat’s father, and we trusted each other. If I were dead I know he would want to avenge me. Does any of this make sense?”

  “A little.” He tried not to feel pity for Taika. She was one of them. He remembered the test Feng had imposed on him at his initiation. She must have known where the dog spirit guarding MoonCat had come from.

  The car pulled up in front of a brownstone. Sam hadn’t been paying much attention to where they were, but it was somewhere in the West Village.

  “You’d better come inside,” said Taika. “In case we’re being watched.”

  Was she hitting on him? It had been nearly four months since her husband had died. Maybe she was just…lonely?

  He got out and opened her door for her, then followed her up the steps to the entrance. Apparently she owned the whole building.

  “I can’t stay,” he told her as she unlocked the door. “If anyone’s watching they’ll think I’m under your influence.”

  That got him a strange look. “Would that be so bad?”

  Definitely hitting on him. And she was very attractive, especially now that she’d revealed a couple of cracks in the ice-queen facade. He found himself trying to justify playing along, see where it all would lead.

  Except that he knew where it would lead. There was no such thing as a casual hookup between Apkallu. It would create a link between them, and he couldn’t afford that.

  “Good night, Mrs. Feng,” he said. “I’ll keep in touch.”

  He was too old to be led around that way, Sam thought as he walked south toward the Christopher Street station. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to Ash. And Alice.