Black Easter (12 page)

On that penultimate morning, Theron Ware faced the final choice of which demons to call up, and for this he needed to
repair to his laboratory, to check the book of pacts. Otherwise his preparations were all made. He had performed the blood sacrifices the previous evening, and then had completely rearranged the furniture in the workroom to accommodate the Grand Circle – the first time he had had need of it in twenty years – the Lesser Circles and the Gateway. There were even special preparations for Father Domenico – who had returned early and with a gratifyingly troubled countenance – should it become necessary to ask the monk to call for Divine intervention; but Ware was tolerably sure it would not be. Though he had never attempted anything of this magnitude before, he felt the work in his fingertips, like a well-practised sonata.

He was, however, both astonished and disquieted to find Dr Hess already in the laboratory – not only because of the potentialities for contamination, but at the inevitable conclusion that Hess had worked out how to placate the Guardian of the door. This man evidently was even more dangerous than Ware had guessed.

‘Do you want to ruin us all?’ Ware demanded.

Hess turned away from the circle he had been inspecting and looked at Ware frankly. He was pale and hollow-eyed; not only had the fasting been hard on his spare frame – that was a hazard every neophyte had to come to terms with – but apparently he had not been sleeping much either. He said at once:

‘No indeed. My apologies, Dr Ware. My curiosity overcame me, I’m afraid.’

‘You didn’t touch anything, I hope?

‘Certainly not. I took your warnings about that with great seriousness, I assure you.’

‘Well … probably no harm done then. I can sympathize with your interest, and even approve it, in part. But I’ll be instructing you all in detail a little later in the day, and then you’ll have ample time to inspect the arrangements. I do want you to know them intimately. But right now I still have some additional work to do, so if you don’t mind

‘Quite.’ Hess moved obediently towards the door. As he was about to touch the handle, Ware added:

‘By the way, Dr Hess, how
did you
deceive the Guardian?’

Hess made no pretence of being puzzled by the question.
‘With a white pigeon, and a pocket mirror I got from Jack.’

‘Hmm. Do you know, that would never have occurred to me. These pagan survivals are mostly a waste of effort. Let’s talk about it more, later. You may have something to teach me.’

Hess made a small bow and finished his departure. Forgetting him instantly, Ware stared at the Grand Circle for a moment, and then walked around it clockwise to the lectern and unlocked the book of pacts. The stiff pages bent reassuringly in his hands. Each leaf was headed by the character or sign of a demon; below, in the special ink reserved for such high matters – gall, copperas, gum arabic – was the text of Theron Ware’s agreement with that entity, signed at the bottom by Ware in his own blood, and by the character of the demon repeated in its own hand. Leading all the rest was the seal, and also the characters, of L
UCIFUGE
R
OFOCALE
, which also appeared on the book’s cover:

There then followed eighty-nine others. It was Ware’s sober belief, backed by infernal assurances he had reason to trust, that no previous magician had held so many spirits in thrall. After forty years, true, all the names would change, and Ware
would have to force the re-execution of each pact, and so, again and again through the five hundred years of life he had bought from H
AGITH
in his salad days as a white magician. Nevertheless it could be said that, in the possession of this book. Ware was at least potentially the wealthiest mortal in all of history, though to anyone else in the world the book would be worth nothing except as a
curiosum
.

These spirits, not counting L
UCIFUGE
R
OFOCALE
, comprised the seventeen infernal archangels of the Grand Grimoire, and the seventy-two demons of the Descending Hierarchy once confined in the brazen vessel of Solomon the King: a fabulous haul indeed, and each captive commanding troops and armies of lesser spirits, and damned souls by the thousands of millions, more of them every minute. (For these days, virtually everyone was damned; it had been this discovery that had first convinced Ware that the Rebellion was in fact going to succeed, probably by the year
A.D
. 2000; the many plain symptoms of chiliastic panic already being manifested amongst the laity were almost certainly due to be vindicated, for everyone was rushing incontinently into Hell-mouth without even the excuse of an Antichrist to mislead him. As matters stood now, Christ Himself would have to creep stealthily, hoping to be ignored, even into a cathedral to conduct a Mass, as in that panel of Hieronymus Bosch; the number of people who could not pronouce the Divine name without a betraying stammer – or their own names, for that matter – had grown from a torrent to a deluge, and, ridiculously, hardly any of them were claiming any fraction of the possible profits in this world. They did not even know that they were on the winning side, or even that there was more than one side. No wonder that Ware had found so much fat in the cauldron, waiting to be skimmed.)

But as Ware had already warned Baines, not all of the spirits in the book were suitable for the experiment at hand. There were some, like M
ARCHOSIAS
, who hoped after an interval to be returned to the Celestial choirs. In this hope, Ware was grimly certain, they were mistaken, and the only reward they would receive would be from the Emperor of the Pit, that kind of reward customarily given to fair-weather friends and summer soldiers. In the meantime, the evils they could be persuaded or
compelled to do were minor and hardly worth the effort of invoking them. One, whom Ware had already mentioned to Baines, V
ASSAGO
, was even said in the
Lesser Key
and elsewhere to be ‘good by nature’ – not too trustworthy an ascription – and indeed was sometimes called upon by white magicians. Others in the hierarchy, like P
HOENIX
, controlled aspects of reality that were of little relevance to Baines’s commission.

Taking up the pen of the Art, Ware made a list. When he was finished, he had written down forty-eight names. Considering the number of the Fallen, that was not a large muster; but he thought it would serve the purpose. He closed and locked the book, and after a pause to rebuke and torment the Guardian of his door, went out into the Easter morning to rehearse his Tanists.

No day, it seemed, had ever gone so slowly for Baines as this Easter, despite the diversion of the rehearsal; but at last it was night and over, and Ware pronounced himself ready to begin.

The Grand Circle now on the parquetry of the refectory bore a generic resemblance to the circle Ware had composed on Christmas Eve, but it was a great deal bigger, and much different in detail. The circle proper was made of strips of the skin of the sacrificial kid, with the hair still on it, fastened to the floor at the cardinal points with four nails that, Ware explained, had been drawn from the coffin of a child. On the northeast arc, under the word
BERKAIAL
, there rested on the strips the body of a male bat that had been drowned in blood; on the northwest, under the word A
MASARAC
, the skull of a parricide; on the southeast, under the word A
SARADEL
, the horns of a goat; and on the southwest, under the word
ARIBECL
, sat Ware’s cat, to the secret of whose diet they were now all privy. (Indeed, there had not been much of moment to the rehearsal, and Baines had inferred that its chief object had been to impart to the rest of them such items of unpleasant knowledge as this.)

The triangle had been drawn inside the circle with a lump of haematite or lodestone. Under its base was drawn a figure consisting of a
chi
and a
rho
superimposed, resting on the line,
with a cross to each side of it. Flanking the other two sides were the great candles of virgin wax, each stick sitting in the centre of a crown of vervain. Three circles for the operators – Ware, Baines and Hess (Jack Ginsberg and Father Domenico would stand outside, in separate pentacles) – were inside the triangle, connected by a cross; the northern circle had horns drawn on it. At the pinnacle of the triangle sat a new brazier, loaded with newly consecrated charcoal. To the left side of the horned circle, which was to be Ware’s, of course, was the lectern and the book of pacts, within easy reach.

At the rear of the room, before the curtained door to the kitchen, was another circle, quite as big as the first, in the centre of which was a covered altar. That had been empty this afternoon; but there now lay upon it the nude body of the girl Ware had used to address as Gretchen. Her skin was paper-white except for its markings, and to Baines gave every appearance of being dead. A small twist of violet silk, nearly transparent and with some crumpled thing like a wad of tissue or a broken matzoh inside it, rested upon her navel. Her body appeared to have been extensively written upon with red and yellow grease paint; some of the characters might have been astrological, others more like ideograms or cartouches. In default of knowing their meaning or even their provenance, they simply made her look more naked.

The main door closed. Everyone was now in place.

Ware lit the candles, and then the fire in the brazier. It was a task of Baines and Hess to feed the fire periodically, as the time wore on, the one with brandy, the other with camphor, taking care not to stumble over their swords or leave their circles in the process. As before, they had been enjoined to the strictest silence, especially should any spirit speak to them or threaten them.

Ware now reached out to the lectern and opened his book. This time there were no preliminary gestures, and no portents; he simply began to recite in a gravid voice:

‘I conjure and command thee, L
UCIFUGE
R
OFOCALE
, by all the names wherewith thou mayst be constrained and bound, S
ATAN
, R
ANTAN
, P
ALLANTRE
, L
UTIAS
, C
ORICACOEM
, S
CIRCIGREUR
.
per sedem Baldarey et per gratiam et diligentiam
tuam habuisti ab eo hanc nalatimanamilam
, as I command thee,
usor, dilapidatore
,
tentatore, seminatore, soignatore, devoratore, concitore, et seductore
, where art thou? Thou who imposeth hatred and propagateth enmities, I conjure thee by him who hath created thee for this ministry, to fulfil my work! I cite thee, C
OLRIZIANA
, O
FFINA
, A
LTA
, N
ESTERA
, F
UARD
, M
ENUET
, L
UCIFUGE
R
OFOCALE
, arise, arise, arise!’

There was no sound; but suddenly there was standing in the other circle a dim steaming figure, perhaps eight or nine feet tall. It was difficult to be sure what it looked like, partly because some of the altar could still be seen through it. To Baines it resembled a man with a shaven head bearing three long, twisted horns, eyes like a spectral tarsier’s, a gaping mouth, a pointed chin. It was wearing a sort of jerkin, coppery in colour, with a tattered ruff and a fringed skirt; below the skirt protruded two bandy, hooved legs, and a fat, hairy tail, which twitched restlessly.

‘What now?’ this creature said in an astonishingly pleasant voice. The words, however, were blurred. ‘I have not seen my son in many moons.’ Unexpectedly, it giggled, as though pleased by the pun.

‘I adjure thee, speak more clearly,’ Ware said. ‘And what I wish, thou knowst full well.’

‘Nothing may be known until it is spoken.’ The voice seemed no less blurred to Baines, but Ware nodded.

‘I desire then to release, as did the Babylonian from under the seal of the King of Israel, blessed be he, from Hell-mouth into the mortal world all those demons of the False Monarchy whose names I shall subsequently call, and whose characters and signs I shall exhibit in my book, providing only that they harm not me and mine, and that they shall return whence they came at dawn, as it is always decreed.’

‘Providing no more than that?’ the figure said. ‘No prescriptions? No desires? You were not always so easily satisfied.’

‘None,’ Ware said firmly. ‘They shall do as they will for this their period of freedom, except that they harm none here in my circles, and obey me when recalled, by rod and pact.’

The demon glanced over its transparent shoulder. ‘I see that you have the appropriate fumigant to cense so many great
lords, and my servants and satraps will have their several rewards in their deeds. So interesting a commission is new to me. Well. What have you for my hostage, to fulfil the forms?’

Ware reached into his vestments. Baines half expected to see produced another tear vase, but instead Ware brought out by the tail a live mouse, which he threw over the brazier as he had the vase, except not so far. The mouse ran directly towards the demon, circled it frantically three times outside the markings, and disappeared in the direction of the rear door, cheeping like a sparrow. Baines looked towards Ahktoi, but the cat did not even lick its chops.