Black Easter (11 page)

That … is … true …’ Father Domenico said in a sick whisper. His face as grey as an untinted new blotter, he groped for the chair and sat down again.

‘Nobly faced. I’ll have to instruct everyone here, but I’ll start with you, in deference to your obvious distress –’

‘One question,’ Father Domenico said. ‘Once you’ve instructed us all, you’ll be out of touch with us for perhaps as much as a month to come. I demand the time to visit my colleagues, and perhaps call together a convocation of all white magicians –’

‘To prevent me?’ Ware said between his teeth. ‘You can demand no such thing. The Convenant forbids the slightest interference.’

‘I’m all too horribly aware of that. No, not to interfere, but to stand by, in case of disaster. It would be too late to call for them once you
knew
you were losing control.’

‘Hmm . . probably a wise precaution, and one I couldn’t justly prevent. Very well. Just be sure you’re back when the time comes. About the day, what would you suggest? May Eve is an obvious choice, and we may well need that much time in preparation.’

‘It’s
too
good a time for any sort of control,’ Father Domenico said grimly. ‘I definitely do
not
recommend piling a real Walpurgis Night on top of the formal one. It would be wiser to choose an unfavourable night, the more unfavourable the better.’

‘Excellent good sense,’ Ware said. ‘Very well, then. Inform your friends. The experiment is hereby scheduled for Easter.’

With a scream, Father Domenico bolted from the room. Had Baines not been taught all his life long that such a thing was
impossible in a man of God, Baines would have identified it without a second thought as a scream of hatred.

Theron Ware had been dreaming a journey to the Antarctic continent in the midst of its Jurassic splendour, fifty million years ago, but the dream had been becoming a little muddled with personal fantasies – mostly involving a minor enemy whom he had in reality sent for, with flourishes, a good decade ago – and he was not sorry when it vanished unfinished at dawn.

He awoke sweating, though the dream had not been especially stressful. The reason was not far to seek: Ahktoi was sleeping, a puddle of lard and fur, on the pillow, and had nearly crowded Ware’s head off it. Ware sat up, mopping his pate with the top sheet, and stared at the cat with nearly neutral annoyance. Even for an Abyssinian, a big-boned breed, the familiar was grossly overweight; clearly an exclusive diet of human flesh was not a healthy regimen for a cat. Furthermore, Ware was not even sure it was necessary. It was prescribed only in Éliphas Lévi, who often made up such details as he went along. Certainly P
HOENIX
, whose creature Ahktoi was, had made no such stipulation. On the other hand, it was always best to play safe in such matters; and, besides, financially the diet was not much more than a nuisance. The worst that could be said for it was that it spoiled the cat’s lines.

Ware arose, naked, and crossed the cold room to the lectern, which bore up his Great Book – not the book of pacts, which was of course still safely in the workroom, but his book of new knowledge. It was open to the section headed

QUASARS

but except for the brief paragraph summarizing the reliable scientific information on the subject – a very brief paragraph indeed – the pages were still blank.

Well, that, like so much else, could wait until Baines’s
project was executed. Truly colossal advances might be made in the Great Book, once all that CWS money was in the bank.

Ware’s retirement had left the members of Baines’s party again at loose ends, and all of them, even Baines, were probably a little shaken at the magnitude of what they had contracted for. In Baines and Dr Hess, perhaps, there still remained some faint traces of doubt about its possibility, or at least some inability to imagine what it woud be like, despite the previous apparition of M
ARCHOSIAS
. No such impediment could protect Jack Ginsberg, however – not now, when he awakened each morning with the very taste of Hell in his mouth. Ginsberg was committed, but he was not wearing well; he would have to be watched. The waiting period would be especially hard on him. Well, that couldn’t be helped;’ it was prescribed.

The cat uncurled, yawned, stretched, lurched daintily to its feet and paused at the edge of the bed, peering down the sideboard as though contemplating the inward slope of Fujiyama. At last it hit the floor with a double
splat
! like the impacts of two loaded sponges. There it arched its spine again, stretched out its back legs individually in an ecstasy of quivering, and walked slowly towards Ware, its furry abdomen swinging from side to side.
Hein
? it said in a breathy feminine voice.

‘In a minute,’ Ware said, preoccupied. ‘You’ll get fed when I do.’ He had forgotten for the moment that he had just begun a nine days’ fast, which when completed he would enforce also upon Baines and his henchmen. ‘Father Eternal, O thou who art seated upon cherubim and seraphim, who beholdest the earth and the sea, unto thee do I lift up my hands, and beseech thine aid alone, thou who art the fulfilment of works, who givest booty unto those who toil, who exaltest the proud, who art destroyer of all life, the fulfilment of works, who givest booty unto those who call upon thee. Do thou guard and defend me in this undertaking, thou who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen! Shut up, Ahktoi.’

Anyhow it had been years since he had believed for an instant that Ahktoi was really hungry. Maybe lean meat was what the cat needed, instead of all that baby fat – though
still-births were certainly the easiest kind of rations to get for him.

Ringing for Gretchen, Ware went into the bathroom, where he ran a bath, into which he dashed an ounce of exorcised water left over from the dressing of a parchment. Ahktoi, who like most Abyssinians loved running water, leapt up on the rim of the tub and tried to fish for bubbles. Pushing the cat off, Ware sat down in the warm pool and spoke the Thirteenth Psalm,
Dominus illuminatio mea
, of death and resurrection, his voice resounding hollowly from the tiles; adding, Lord who has formed man out of nothing to thine own image and likeness, and me also, unworthy sinner as I am, deign, I pray thee, to bless and sanctify this water that all delusion may depart from me unto thee, almighty and ineffable, who didst lead forth thy people from the land of Egypt, and didst cause them to pass dryshod under the Red Sea, anoint me an thou wilt, father of sins, Amen.’

He slid under the water, crown to toes – but not for long, for the ounce of exorcised water he had added still had a trace of quicklime in it from the tanning of the lambskin, which made his eyes sting. He surfaced, blowing like a whale, and added quickly to the steamy air,
‘Dixit insipiens in corde suo –
Will you
kindly
get out of the way, Ahktoi? – who has formed me in thine image and in thy likeness, design to bless and sanctify this water, so that it may become unto me the fruition of my soul and body and purpose. Amen.’

Hein
?

Someone knocked on the door. His eyes squeezed closed still, Ware groped his way out. He was met at the threshold by Gretchen, who sponged his hands and face ritually with an asperged white cloth, and retreated before him as he advanced into the bedroom. Now that his eyes were cleared, he could see that she was naked, but, knowing what she was, that could scarcely interest him, and, besides, he had been devoted to celibacy since his earliest love of magic, like anyone in orders. Her nakedness was only another rule of the rite of lustration. Waving her aside, he took three steps towards the bed, where she had laid out his vestments, and said to all corners of the phenomenal and epiphenomenal world:

‘A
STROSCHIO
, A
SATH
,
à Sacra
B
EDRIMUBAL
, F
ELUT
, A
NABOTOS
, S
ERABILIM
, S
ERGEN
, G
EMEN
, D
OMOS
, who art seated above the heavens, who beholdest the depths, grant me, I pray thee, that those things which I conceive in my mind may also be executed by me through thee, who appear clean before thee! Amen.’

Gretchen went out, flexing her scabby buttocks, and Ware began the rite of vesting.
Hein
? Ahktoi said plaintively, but Ware did not hear. His triduum was launched, devoutly, in water, and would be observed, strictly, until the end in blood; wherein would be required to the slaughter a lamb, a dog, a hen and a cat.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe, and to feel an excessive or unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. …

We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least not yet. … If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’ – then the end of the war will be in sight.

C. S. Lewis,
The Screwtape Letters

Father Domenico found getting north to Monte Albano a relatively easy journey despite all the snow; he was able to take the
rapido
most of the way. Absurdly, he found himself worrying about the snow; if it lasted, there would be devastating floods in the spring, but that was not the only affliction the spring had in store.

After the journey, nothing seemed to go right. Only about half of the world’s white magicians, a small number in any case, who had been summoned to the convocation had been able to make it, or had thought it worth the trip. One of the greatest, the aged archivist Father Bonfiglioli, had come all the way from Cambridge only to find the rigours of being portaged up the Mount too much for him. He was now in the hospital at the base of the
Mount with a coronary infarct, and the prognosis was said to be poor.

Luckily, Father Uccello had been able to come. So had Father Monteith, a venerable master of a great horde of creative (though often ineffectual) spirits of the cislunar sphere; Father Boucher, who had commerce with some intellect of the recent past that was neither a mortal nor a Power, a commerce bearing all the earmarks of necromancy and yet was not; Father Vance, in whose mind floated visions of magics that would not be comprehensible, let alone practicable, for millions of years to come; Father Anson, a brusque engineer type who specialized in unclouding the minds of politicians; Father Selahny, a terrifying kabbalist who spoke in parables and of whom it was said that no one since Leviathan had understood his counsel; Father Rosenblum, a dour, bear-like man who tersely predicted disasters and was always right about them; Father Atheling, a wall-eyed grimoiran who saw portents in parts of speech and lectured everyone in a tense nasal voice until the Director had to exile him to the library except when business was being conducted; and a gaggle of lesser men, and their apprentices.

These and the Brothers of the Order gathered in the chapel of the monastery to discuss what might be done. There was no agreement from the outset. Father Boucher was of the firm opinion that Ware would not be permitted to work any such conjuration on Easter, and that hence only minor precautions were necessary. Father Domenico had to point out that Ware’s previous sending – a comparatively minor one to be sure, but what was that saying about the fall of the sparrow? – had been made without a sign of Divine intervention upon Christmas Eve.

Then there was the problem of whether or not to try to mobilize the Celestial Princes and their subordinates. Father Atheling would have it that merely putting these Princes on notice might provoke action against Ware, since there was no predicting what They might do, and hence would be in violation of the Covenant. He was finally outshouted by Fathers Anson and Vance, with the obvious but not necessarily valid argument that the Princes must know all about the matter anyhow.

How shaky that assumption was was revealed that night, when those bright angels were summoned one by one before the convocation for a council of war. Bright, terrible and enigmatic They were at any time, but at this calling They were in a state of spirit beyond the understanding of any of the masters present in the chapel. A
RATRON
, chiefest of Them all, appeared to be indeed unaware of the forthcoming unleashing, and disappeared with a roar when it was described. P
HALEG
, most military of spirits, seemed to know of Ware’s plans, but would not discuss them, and also vanished when pressed. O
PHEIL
the mercurial, too, was preoccupied, as though Ware’s plotting were only a negligible distraction from some immensely greater thought; His answers grew shorter and shorter, and He finally lapsed into what, in a mortal, Father Domenico would have unhesitatingly called surliness. Finally – although not intended as final, for the convocation had meant to consult all seven of the Olympians – the water-spirit P
HUL
when called up appeared fearsomely without a head, rendering converse impossible and throwing the chapel into a perilous uproar.

These are not good omens,’ Father Atheling said; and for the first time in his life, everyone agreed with him. It was agreed, also, that everyone except Father Domenico would remain at the Mount through the target day, to take whatever steps then appeared to be necessary; but there was precious little hope that they would be effective. Whatever was going on in Heaven, it appeared to leave small concern to spare for pleas from Monte Albano.

Father Domenico went south again far earlier than he had planned, unable to think of anything but the mystery of that final, decapitate apparition. The leaden skies returned him no answer.