James Potter And The Morrigan Web (2 page)

James knew what his father meant. The prisoner in question was an American, even though he’d been captured in London. By international law, a representative from the American wizarding court had to be present for any interrogation. Quizling, the American arbiter assigned to the prisoner’s case, had been reluctant even to allow James to accompany them. Fortunately, the Department of Ambassadorial Relations had been pressed to file a formal request with the International Magical Police, claiming that James’ recollections might provide essential insight into the prisoner’s guilt or innocence. They had agreed to the interrogation, on the grounds that Arbiter Quizling be allowed to cut it short at any time that he felt that his “client” was being unfairly condemned outside of a court of law.

The troop finally reached another door. It stood atop a short landing, framed on both sides by greenly glowing lanterns. The door was no less than twenty feet high and comprised entirely of black metal, studded with rivets. There was no handle or lock as far as James could see. Blunt approached the door with his torch still held aloft. It crackled faintly, casting his skeletal shadow far up the wall on his left.

“Dad,” James whispered, watching raptly. “How does it even open? I don’t see any hinges or bolts or anythi—”

The words froze in his throat as Blunt neared the forbidding door. He did not stop when he reached it, but continued forward, and James feared for a moment that the little man might bounce right off the cold iron. Instead, Blunt’s torch flared bright green for a moment, bursting its light over the entire width and breadth of the door. In response, the studded iron rippled in the air, like something seen through a heat shimmer. As the torch’s green flames unfurled into darkness, the great door broke apart into curtains of smoke, which quickly vanished, revealing a cavernous entryway, heavy with shadowy depths.

“Intriguing,” Quizling admitted, tilting his head. “So the iron door was just a mirage of some kind.”

“Not exactly,” Harry said, following Blunt into the bowels of Azkaban proper. “The door is exactly as real as it looked. Mr. Blunt’s magical torchlight is the real mirage. It creates the illusion that we can pass through the impregnable door. And thus, we can.”

Quizling frowned skeptically. James suspected that his father’s answer was a much simplified version of the truth, but he didn’t really care about the actual Technomancy behind it all.
It’s all quantum
, as Zane surely would have said.

The main hall of Azkaban was surprisingly large. Monstrous pillars leapt upwards, each as thick as redwood trunks. Crouched atop the pillars were ancient stone gargoyles, their downturned faces scowling and their shoulders supporting the buttresses of lofty vaulted ceilings. The walls were nearly featureless, comprised entirely of rough, cracked stone. Lanterns lit the hall far too insufficiently for James’ taste, leaving enormous shadowy gaps in the echoing depths.

“Why’s there no hearth,” he shuddered, hugging himself.

“Because we are wizards,” Hardcastle answered quietly. “For us, hearths are more than light and warmth, they are a means of transport. Catch my meaning?”

“Oh,” James said, nodding his understanding. “Right. No hearth means no Floo Network. No easy way out.”

As Blunt led them toward a distant archway, James’ eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. He noticed other people in the massive hall, most dressed similarly to Blunt, but there were far fewer than he would have expected.

“Dad,” he whispered, sidling up to his father. “Where’s everybody at? I figured this place would be crawling with guards. For that matter, where’s all the doors? This doesn’t look like a prison at all.”

Harry glanced at his son, his eyes serious behind his glasses. “It’s like I said, son. There’s only one way in. One way in, and one way out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Harry opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment Blunt turned left, into a low hall. Harry, James, Hardcastle and Quizling followed him, and then stopped abruptly as they met a blank stone wall. James blinked and shaded his eyes against the room’s sudden illumination. Bright lanterns were embedded into the walls behind thick glass blocks, all glowing with nearly painful whiteness.

Blunt approached the blank wall and produced his wand. He tapped the wall with it, and a series of intricate carvings began to unfurl onto the stone, emanating from the tip of Blunt’s wand. The carvings, James noticed, formed the shape of a small door, surrounded by indecipherable symbols and shapes. With a scraping grate, the door swung open, revealing only a small, dark alcove. Deftly, Blunt lowered his torch toward the alcove. Its flame flickered and buffeted as if in the teeth of a sudden hard wind. Then, with a hollow
fwump
and a flash of green, the torchlight leapt from the end of Blunt’s torch and into the alcove. There, the fire swirled and spun, forming a bright, flickering orb. Instantly, the stone door clapped shut over it.

“The entrance flame must stay hidden for the duration of any interaction with the prisoner,” Blunt said gravely, turning back toward the troop. “From the time we open the cell tower until the moment it is secured again, we are as much prisoners here as the inmates. Is that understood?”

Everyone in the room nodded except Mr. Quizling.

“Can we please get on with it,” he said, raising his eyebrows impatiently.

“May I have the prisoner requisition number?” Blunt asked, turning to Harry.

Harry nodded. There was an exchange of formal parchments, which Blunt peered at for barely a moment. Then, deftly, he turned back toward the stone wall. He tapped it once again with his wand. The etching of the elaborate stone door unfurled. The carven lines rearranged, flowed together, and formed the shape of a large frame. Within the frame were three numbers: 0-0-0. Blunt touched the first number with his wand.

“Six,” he said. The etchings that formed the first zero began to dissolve and swirl, reshaping into an ornate number six.

“Two,” Blunt said, tapping the second zero, and then, “Nine.”

The numbers resolved. They glowed faintly for a moment, pulsing purple in the bright white of the room. Then, the entire wall began to shift. With a grating rumble that James could feel in the soles of his feet and the pit of his stomach, the stone slid sideways, taking the etched frame and numbers with it. A moment later, a door slid into view. It was heavy iron, with a tiny barred window set into it. In the center of the door, the numbers 001 glowed bright purple. The door shuttled past as James watched.

Another door followed, moving slightly faster. This one had the number 002 emblazoned on its center.

James’ father leaned close to him. “Our man is rather near the top, I believe,” he said quietly.

James nodded speechlessly. The doors in the stone wall began to pass by with increasing speed. As they did, the rumbling grate rose in pitch. The floor seemed to thrum with the noise. James’ fancied he could feel his very eyeballs vibrating in their sockets. Soon enough, the doors were flickering past in a blur, their glowing numbers forming an indecipherable purple streak. James’ sensed that the doors were not just spinning past, but lowering slightly, as if the interior of the great tower was a sort of bolt, screwing itself into the depths of Azkaban’s foundation.

James waited for the doors to begin to slow, but they never did. He wanted to ask his father just how deep the cell tower could go, but knew that he probably wouldn’t be heard over the grating roar. Then, shockingly, the tower’s wall simple slammed to a halt. It clanged, stone on stone, so deafeningly that James clapped his hands to his ears. By the time he touched them, however, both the motion and the noise were over. Silence rang in the stale, bright light of the hall. Standing prosaically in the center of the stone wall was one last iron door. The purple numbers on its front read 6-2-9.

The door opened silently, swinging outward.

James peered into the cell beyond. It was quite small, barely as deep as the thin bed that lined the right wall. There was no window, and the stone that formed the cell walls was utterly seamless. James felt another twinge of claustrophobia just looking into the tiny space. Sitting against the rear wall on a straight-backed metal chair was a small man. He was thin, balding, and wore tiny rimless spectacles, with which he seemed to be reading a book. He did not look up.

“Inmate number six two nine,” Blunt announced stoically. “Identified as Ratimir Worlick, citizen of the United States, apprehended this twentieth of August in Peckham, England, charged with attempted manufacture and distribution of potions of warfare and dark magic.”

There was a long silence as the occupants of the viewing hall studied the man in the tiny cell. Worlick paid them no attention whatsoever. His eyes were magnified behind his spectacles as he stared down at the book in his hands. After a moment, he languidly licked one finger and turned a page. James noticed the title of the book, emblazoned in tarnished gold foil on black leather: POWERS of the BLACK ALCHEMIES.

“These are simply abominable conditions,” Quizling said flatly. “I demand to be granted a private interview with my client to ascertain his mental state.”

“His mental state is just fine,” Hardcastle commented through gritted teeth. “You might instead consider the mental state of the three aurors that were wounded during his apprehension. Of course, there’s only two of them left to interview now, seeing as Jakob died this last evening.”

“That’s enough, Titus,” Harry instructed, although James sensed that his father was holding back his own anger. James had eavesdropped on his parents as they had discussed the raid on Worlick’s laboratory. He hadn’t heard all the details, but he’d learned enough to know that the wizard had been concocting some seriously dangerous dark magic, and that he had murdered more than a few Muggles to get the ingredients he needed. He had very nearly escaped from his father’s raid, unleashing a vicious powdered curse upon the aurors to slow them down. James didn’t know what the curse had done, except that it had horribly wounded two professional aurors, and killed one, Andrea Jakob, one of his father’s best young recruits.

“Ratimir Worlick,” Harry said loudly, addressing the small man in the cell. “Do you know who we are?”

Worlick finally looked up. His face was nearly expressionless. He blinked owlishly but said nothing.

“You are accused of crimes against Muggle and Magical humanity,” Harry went on. “You are suspected to be involved with the Wizard’s United Liberation Front, a known enemy of the Ministry of Magic and twelve other magical governing bodies. You may be tried on the charge of accomplice to murder for the death of American Senator Charles Hyde Filmore. These are your charges. Do you wish to invoke your right to formally admit or deny them?”

Worlick blinked at Harry Potter as if he were a rather interesting insect.

Quizling spoke up. “You don’t have to answer that question, Mr. Worlick. I am Monroe Quizling, the Arbiter assigned to oversee your trial. You have received my official correspondence, I trust.” As he finished speaking, he turned his gaze on Mr. Blunt, who nodded once.

Harry touched his son’s shoulder. James could feel the heat of his father’s anger through his fingertips.

“Make him stand up,” he said to Blunt.

Blunt nodded again. He raised his wand and called sternly into the cell, “Stand up and approach the door. Place the book on the bed and keep your hands lowered.”

Worlick looked at Blunt speculatively, and then sighed. He closed the book and laid it carefully on the ratty mattress next to him. A moment later, he stood and moved toward the open door of his cell.

“That’s far enough,” Blunt announced. Worlick stopped.

Harry lowered his voice and leaned close to his son. “This is it, James. Take a good hard look. Tell us the truth.”

James nodded. He frowned at the small man opposite him. Worlick stood illuminated in the harsh light of the hall. James studied him furiously, trying hard to remember.

It was hopeless, of course. He had known it even when his father had first asked him to come to Azkaban with him to see if he could identify this odious man from that horrible night months earlier. It had come to be called the Night of the Unveiling. Everyone remembered it—it was the event that had, by any measure, completely changed the world—but for James the entire night was just an awful blur: the trip into the World Between the Worlds, the death of his cousin Lucy, the final portal into the twin cities of Muggle New York and Wizarding New Amsterdam, where Petra Morganstern, with the aid of her sister Izabella, had torn away the veil of secrecy that hid the one from the other. James culled through his memories as carefully as he could, trying to conjure every detail. Had this man, Worlick, been there anywhere? Was it possible? He seemed so small and weak. Could he have been one of the wizard assassins who had attempted to kill his father? They’d all been wearing cloaks, hiding their every feature. There was just no way to tell for sure.

“I…” James began, screwing up his face in concentration. “I can’t quite…”

“The witness does not recall seeing my client,” Quizling stated firmly. “Let the record officially show—”

“Wait,” James interrupted. He leaned forward, peering at the small man in his grey Azkaban robe. The robe was ill-fitting, emblazoned with his prisoner number in black stitching. The sleeves were rather too short, showing the man’s thin, pale forearms. His left arm was marked with a faded sigil, barely visible beneath the frayed sleeve.

“The tattoo on his arm,” James said, pointing. “I recognize it, I think.”

Quizling narrowed his eyes. “His tattoo, you say. Are you quite sure, young man? There were many thousands of people present on the Night of the Unveiling, most of whom were rather far away from you. If my client was among those allegedly preparing to attack your father’s transportation, they were quite high up, out of the light of the street. I find it difficult to believe you could have seen a tattoo from that distance, in that light, much less be able to identify it now.”

James shook his head and glanced up at his father. “No, I don’t recognize it from that night. I saw it earlier, when we first arrived in New Amsterdam. It was when we were on the train, the Lincoln Zephyr. Do you remember, Dad?”