The Necromancer's Grimoire (28 page)

First Corbett. A tendril found him at the vizier's house, sitting quietly in a room alone. She saw in his memory a lovely young girl on a low divan, naked but for multiple strands of gold around her neck and arms. She was prettily decorated with henna on her hands and feet. Her hair was elaborately braided and entwined with strands of pearls. The Turks expected a show of faith, but demonstrated their respect for Corbett with the quality of their test. Nadira watched as the men filed into the room and with a gesture from one of the ministers, Corbett was prompted to begin.

She felt his acute embarrassment as he fumbled with his belt. A great surge of pity overwhelmed her and she considered breaking this thread. It was enough to know that he fulfilled his promise, and that the Turks were convinced that he had renounced his religion. She did not have to see it and feel it. But no. As she flashed back to Corbett sitting alone she realized that he had been unable to perform. A double humiliation now weighed heavy on him. He had been released from having to prove his loyalty to the Turks, but at a great cost. She heard the laughter and ribald comments of the ministers as they took the girl and left him. Ridicule. A savage weapon against a proud man.

Corbett put his hand over his heart. He felt her there.

Are you a prisoner?
She asked him.

Yes
.

She thought about that for a moment. Then told him
, I have the Grimoire. We must leave Istanbul. Immediately.

You will be leaving without me. I am to go to the Anemas prison.

We will not abandon you. Be ready when I come to claim you.

Nadira searched for DiMarco. He was safe in a
caravanserai
waiting for the streets to clear. Now Calvin.

She sat up quickly. Not safe. Calvin was in a dark alley, sword drawn. He was trying to make his way back to Corbett. A feeling of dread was attached to his image.

A group of janissaries came around the corner. They, too, were looking for Corbett. Calvin did not try to negotiate. He slashed and his sword put one of the sultan's guards on the ground. The five remaining had steel drawn and flashing. Nadira forgot to breathe. She wondered if she was watching this skirmish in real time, or if the
Grimoire
was merely feeding her the information she asked for.

She watched the janissaries leap and strike. They were a team and skillfully worked Calvin back against the buildings, then into the paved street against the trunks of trees with orchestrated movements. Two janissaries were down. Three tormented him. Like Montrose, Calvin was taller and had a longer reach. He was swinging a heavy broadsword while the janissaries preferred the lighter scimitars. Calvin's blows were heavier and when his strikes connected he hit hard, but he could not see everywhere at once. The guards who had not been struck moved in and out of the broadsword's reach. They would wear Calvin down before beginning their final assault. Nadira pressed her palms to her eyes, wanting to know, but not wanting to see.

Calvin was using his legs, now. His kicks were powerful enough to knock back an assailant and they gave him time to focus on the next man who swung at him. But each man he knocked down returned to his feet. Nadira raised her arms trying to ward off blows that landed on Calvin's blade. He would need help. Soon. She tried casting a tendril to Calvin's assailants. She imagined puffs of wind tossing dust into their eyes. Nothing she tried to do seemed to help. She would have to leave her body on the narrow ledge and go to him. She lay down and placed the
Grimoire
carefully on her chest with her arms around it, then cast herself into the darkness.

She appeared suspended over Calvin's head. Perhaps now she could use the tendrils. She caught one of the janissaries in a skein and made him dizzy until he tripped and fell. She put an astral foot on his chest when he tried to rise. Calvin's blade sliced through another man and rose behind his shoulders. Nadira ducked even though she knew his sword could not touch her. The man beneath her foot struggled to rise. She leaned harder, pinning him to the paving stones with her intent.
One at time
. She fortified her tendril with a thought, “Stay down. You cannot get up.” Calvin backed against a tree and braced himself to launch a vicious kick that sent a janissary sailing past her and against the wall of a house. The man's head struck the building at an odd angle and he slumped to the foundation, unconscious. Nadira cast a tendril at him to keep him that way, then spun about to throw a net at the man about to leap at the Templar. She caused him to stumble, but could not check his movement. Calvin had time to plant his feet firmly and strike the enemy's sword arm. He then leaned on the tree, panting, as he readied himself for the last one.

Nadira's man began to roll away and she found she could not completely stop a man who was determined to move, but managed only to slow him. “One more,” she shouted at Calvin, though she knew he could not hear her. Her man got to his feet and charged Calvin, scimitar raised. The Templar's shoulders rose again as he swung and knocked the last janissary's blade into a high arc over the shrubs and into the back garden of another house. But his hands were wet with blood and sweat, and the force of this last blow sent his own blade bouncing and clanging on the paving stones ten paces down the street. Calvin turned and leaped upon the disarmed man, taking him down with a knee to his chest and hands on his throat. Nadira felt herself called to her body and slid into its warmth in the darkness of the cistern.

She sat up against the wall and took deep breaths.

It was William who had called for her. He touched her arm. “Do you have the
Grimoire
? I do not.”

“Yes,” she said, pressing it into his hands. She had not exerted herself in the least yet she gasped as though she had been the one who swung the great sword and kicked her enemy into a house. A searing pain tore at her leg and she cried out.

“What is it?” Montrose cried. She heard the splash that told her he had leaped into the water.

“Thomas Calvin is hurt,” she told him breathlessly, rubbing her leg. “It is time to go. Come.” She lowered herself into the cool water and felt it up to her knees as she moved away from the cistern walls. She cast for Calvin as she stopped and waited for the men to find her in the darkness. She saw the Templar huddled against the trees that lined the street, bleeding; his hands tried to stanch the blood that flowed down his leg from a gaping wound in his thigh.
I left him too soon
, she grieved.

She heard William slide from the ledge. Both men splashed towards her until they touched her. She found she did not need to feel the walls, or shuffle her feet in the shallow water. She set out across the empty space, one foot into the darkness, then the other. The bottom was slick but she did not slide. She heard the two men behind her trying not to splash with each step because they could follow her only with their ears.

That thought reminded her of what she had read in the
Hermetica.
“Only the eye fears darkness”. She looked around at nothing.
The ear does not fear darkness.
Now in this place the ears will show their quality and be admired for their usefulness.
Using her ears, she formed the image in her mind of the high arched ceiling of the cisterns from the many echoes. She heard the many pillars as she passed them to her right and her left. She could see the path before them in her mind without eyes. She felt the great age of the columns in the sound of the water. She cocked her head and listened behind her. William and Montrose pushed through the water, following the sounds of her passage. She stopped until they both touched her.

“We turn here.” She pushed through the water, listening as they followed. After a long while she stopped again. “There is another entrance here above me. There is a man standing there. Not a soldier. I will put him to sleep.”

She moved forward until she could feel the first step, then lifted her sodden skirts to ascend the steps. Very gradually her eyes took back their power from her ears and she could see the cleft that opened into the moonlight. She stopped and the men stopped with her. A silver tendril found the man sitting at the entrance and toppled him to the side. She waited to hear a deep snore before moving past him into the street.

William and Montrose joined her.

She looked up at the sky. Dawn would come soon and expose them. The
Grimoire
had shown her the way out of the cistern, but would it show her the way out of the city? She turned to William and touched the covers of the book he held in his hands.

“Will. Put that away,” she told him. William lifted his shirt and tucked the book inside against his chest, then tied his sash tightly around it, winding it to his waist.

“You do not want to stop and read it?” he asked as he tied the red cloth in a knot.

“No. It is not like the
Hermetica
at all,” she answered. “Not at all.”

She looked up and down the empty street ahead of them. “The janissaries are like wild horses,” she said to them, “Powerful and beautiful when harnessed, but dangerous and uncontrollable when maddened.” They were maddened now. “They riot. The necromancer has told them that Corbett is a spy for the pope and that he is responsible for the carnage in his library.”

She searched for Alisdair and Garreth.

They were long gone beyond the city gates. The necromancer would turn to them later. He was more immediately interested in Montrose and William. She felt him stab at them with feeble shards of light, testing for weakness. She felt him cast a red tendril at Kemal. The necromancer had seen the
reis
in her heart. He was not so eager to antagonize him at this moment, for Kemal had some strength of his own to resist and was beloved by the Padishah. But she cringed, for she could feel the thin red thread that snared the sultan's captain and was merely waiting for the right moment to strike.

He would kill Corbett, now. His rage at the Templar was fierce. The janissaries pounded at the gates of the prison, demanding that Corbett be brought out to them.

“Corbett.” Montrose was grim. “Where is he?”

“He is a prisoner. The vizier has him and only an order from the sultan will release him. Calvin cannot walk. We must find him before the janissaries do. But between now and then…” she felt danger and a rising tide of dread as she touched the magus with her threads. Her head began to ache. The pain intensified and she lowered herself to the ground. She had to breathe in little shallow bursts, for any movement felt like a large nail being slowly driven into her temple. She put a hand over the place where the pain entered her, but it did not abate. She was vaguely aware of her name being spoken, then being picked up and cradled. She lost all contact with the world of light and sound.

The darkness was deafening. She felt the necromancer with her in the nothingness. No words, just feelings. She felt his anger. She felt his intent. He could not harm her body, for she possessed the
Grimoire
, and he feared its retaliation should he attack her directly. He could not harm her mind, for it was her own and inviolate. But he could strike at her heart, because one's heart never belongs to one's self, it is always given to others. The
Grimoire
could not stop him from striking at her there. Corbett and Calvin were the first. They had been separated from her and were easy targets.

The necromancer told her this. Nadira pressed back against his intrusion. She formed a whirl of threads and cast a net about her, warning him to back away.

He did, but not because her net repelled him, but because he had sent his message, and would now turn to other things. Vengeance. He faded and her eyes opened. William and Montrose were looking down at her, concerned. She smiled quickly to reassure them, but there was no warmth or meaning in it. She struggled to get up, but Montrose held her tightly.

“What just happened?” he asked, “Your face was not slack with sleep, but moved through pain and fear. Your cheek twitched and your lips moved. I heard you moan.”

William knelt beside her. “Did he do this to you?” he asked.

She nodded. The pain in her head was gone, the twisting nail had instead moved to her heart as she realized the true meaning of the necromancer's message.

“He will strike at you and at the Templars,” she whispered. “I must find a way to protect you all. I have to get to Eleusis.”

She looked down at her body, her bloody silks from the neck down had dried to a brown crust, only below the knees where she had waded through the cisterns was the blue silk free from gore. Montrose saw what she was doing and looked down at himself as well.

“Well, then,” he said. His brigandine and breeches were still splattered with the remains of the janissaries in the necromancer's house.

William, too, was splattered.

“I did not plan anything beyond capturing the book and bringing it to Corbett,” she said. “But now we must act quickly, because he will. He will stab at Corbett through the vizier, and he has informed the janissaries where Calvin hides.”

“What can we do? How do we find them? None will allow us to pass through the gates, even if we were fresh from the baths,” Montrose said. “If the Templars are prisoners we would need papers from the palace to leave with them,” he sighed, “and I cannot be disguised.” He turned his head toward the sounds of shouting in the streets. The sun had come over the horizon and shone brightly on the city of Istanbul. The janissaries were gathering into a mob at the gates of the prison not far below them. ”Bloodlust will not be satisfied. Soon they will fan out for us. We are trapped.”

“There is another way out,” William said. “There must be.”

Nadira looked at the high walls. “You cannot walk out of this city without passing through a gate.”