Wolf in Shadow-eARC (42 page)

“Take no notice,” Fairbold said. “When we were in the BM’s basement people said it was the ghost of Pharoah Amon Ra haunting his coffin. Total nonsense, of course, the moans are much louder here than Bloomsbury.”

“Of course,” Jameson replied.

“It’s actually echoes from the Holy Land.”

“The Holy Land?” Jameson asked, thinking Israel was a long way off for an echo.

“The St. Giles Rookery,” Fairbold replied. “We are right on top of the stew here. The slum wasn’t the biggest or the worst in London but it was right next door to the gentility in Oxford Street and the West End. They say that a watch stolen at eleven o’clock had changed hands three times and was being chawed in St. Giles by twelve.”

“Chawed?” Jameson asked, wondering if he was going mad.

“Old Romany word for fencing stolen items, like “totty” meaning a pretty girl or “chav” a low-born youth. There’s lots of Romany in vernacular Southern English.”

“Fascinating as this is, Professor Fairbold . . .” Jameson said.

“All totally harmless, although I have to say that the hauntings have become more prolonged and frequent in the last few weeks.”

“Professor . . .”

“And you’re a genuine daemon, my dear,” Fairbold said to Karla, taking her hand. “I’ve never seen one in the flesh before, so to speak. We academics lead such sheltered lives in our studies.” He beamed at her. “I’m told you are one of the blood-sucking kind.”

Karla leaned towards Fairbold. Jameson made to stop her, but she put her face close to the professor’s and extended her teeth.

“Fascinating. May I take a closer look?” he asked, producing a small magnifying lens and holding it over her mouth.

Karla looked very confused. Prey was supposed to recoil in terror, not try to study the hunter’s fangs.

“How rude of me not to offer you some blood, my dear,” Fairbold said, rolling up his sleeve.

“Professor, please!” Jameson said, despairingly. “We’ve eaten. Now about
The Book of the Dead
.”

“Ah yes,” He sat back, reluctantly putting away the glass. “Well, you may have read that Budge cut the Papyrus of Ani into thirty-seven pieces to smuggle it out of Egypt, irreparably damaging it in the process.”

“Go on,” Jameson said, unwilling to admit he knew no such thing and cared even less.

“Utter nonsense, of course, Budge was a Museum man through and through, not Indiana Jones. The Papyrus was cut up here in the Museum to disguise the fact that we were excising certain sensitive sections. One of them was the Coming Forth into the Light Spell. We have the only copy ever found, that is, until you people showed up. It has quite shaken the Director, I can tell you.”

Fairbold tittered, apparently amused at the Director’s consternation. There was little love lost between the academics and the management in most academic organizations.

“You are sure?” Jameson asked.

“Oh yes. Now where did I put that key? Trust Howlet to be missing when I have visiters.”

Fairbold fumbled through the drawers built into the side of his desk.

“Howlet?”

“My assistant, he’s not the most reliable of fellows, but good at finding things. Ah, here it is.”

Fairbold produced an ancient brass key with a double-loop handle and trotted over to a bench. On it was an antiquated iron press of a design new to Jameson. It looked the sort of thing that might have been used to grill steaks or press trouser creases. The curator put the key in the lock at the front and strained on it without success.

“Allow me,” Karla reached over him and clicked the key through a complete turn.

“My, you’re strong for a little thing,” Fairbold said.

Karla smiled at him and gave Jameson an “is this nut for real” look.

“I suppose it’s because you are a daemon.”

“Professor, is it supposed to do that?” Jameson pointed to the press. The tension had come off the plates and white vapor was rolling from between them as if carbon dioxide was melting inside.

“It’s just water vapor. The Papyrus always decreases entropic levels, lowering the temperature sharply in its immediate vicinity. It’s not dangerous, take no notice.”

Whatever he professed, Jameson noticed that Fairbold donned a pair of latex gloves before pushing back the top plate on a rear hinge. Yellow light streamed from inside, imparting a golden glow to the study. Fairbold averted his eyes until the light dimmed. He put the paper beside the press and stepped back to give Jameson access.

“See for yourself.”

A rectangular section of papyrus was held down by a plate of glass. To Jameson all Egyptian writing looked alike. Figures with strange perspectives, legs sideways, chest flat, some with animal heads, marched in columns carrying unspecific objects. He picked up the Badford paper and moved it across the papyrus, looking for a match. His eyes ached and he found it difficult to focus. The papyrus hieroglyphs seemed to squirm and fade into the distance when studied. The check took longer than he had expected, but Fairbold was right. The match was exact.

He could hear distant shouts and assumed that the ghosts from the Rookery were active again, but the cries seemed more joyful. The figures on the papyrus were splashing in the water and hunting wildfowl with nets and sticks. How had he thought Egyptian art cartoony? These pictures were rounded, vibrant and highly colored. He could hear the beat of the bird’s wings and the slap of the river against the hull of his reed-boat.

“Don’t fall in,” Karla hauled him back, fingers gripping him so tightly that they hurt.

“I’m okay.” He wanted to rub his shoulder but forced himself to stand still.

“I should have warned you,” Fairbold said, in concern. “People with active imaginations can get sucked in, mesmerized, if you like. Did you see the Field of Reeds, Heaven?”

“Something like that,” Jameson replied. “Professor, what does this spell do?”

“Hm, thought I said. It is The Coming Forth into the Light.”

Jameson looked at him uncomprehendingly.

“It’s a spell to allow the Ba to safely open a door from the Field of the Reeds into the living world. So he can take up offerings and gifts from his living relatives and do favored people good. Conversely, the Ba might want to play cruel tricks on his enemies and curse them and their possessions, smiting them and so forth.”

“In other words, it’s a magic spell for opening a door from deep into the Otherworld to the material world,” Jameson said.

“That is correct,” Fairbold said, beaming.

“Oh shit!” Jameson replied.

“Yes, but surely it’s not dangerous?” Fairbold asked.

“You think?” Jameson replied. “The ability to open a hole in space-time into the deep Otherworld isn’t dangerous? What, in your view, might be dangerous, the Sun going nova?”

“But the spell won’t work for a modern sorcerer,” Fairbold replied, speaking quickly so Jameson couldn’t interrupt. “I know, you want to tell me that all Western magic originated in Egypt, that even the sorcerers’ wand is a representation of the Goddess Weret Hekau, Great in Magic, who was depicted as a cobra.”

Actually, Jameson wanted to ask something quite different.

“Our world view is so different from the Bronze Age that ancient Egyptian is not translatable, so the spell won’t work in a modern language.”

“So, just use Ancient Egyptian for the ritual.” Jameson said, finally getting a toe hold on the conversation.

“We don’t know Ancient Egyptian.” Fairbold held up a hand to block Jameson’s protest. “Did you know that Egyptians had two words that we translate as magic,
heka
and
akhu
? The difference was important to them. It described two quite different types of sorcery, but we can’t make head nor tail of the distinction. We can more or less translate hieroglyphics where their meaning has some analogy in modern thought, but we have no idea how the words were pronounced or what gestures should be used while invoking the magic. And, as I keep trying to explain, we don’t follow the concepts clearly enough. For example, Thoth was the god who stood with Ma’at on Ra’s boat as it travelled across the heavens. But if Ma’at was his wife and associate, why was Seshat his feminine equivalent and how was she vital for maintaining the universe? Even the name
Thoth
, is Greek, not Egyptian.”

“What is his Egyptian name, then?” Jameson asked.

“It’s translated as
Dhwty
in the modern alphabet and may, note
may
, be pronounced as something like
dee-hauty
, but who knows?”

“I begin to see,” Jameson said, thoughtfully. “Thank you, Dr Fairbold, you’ve been most helpful.”

“One thing before you go,” Fairbold said. “Would you be interested in the parallel spell from the Papyrus of Ani, for closing the door to the Field of Reeds?”

Jameson had a distinct feeling of déjà vu. Randolph chaired the meeting, Kendrics and Miss Arnoux squabbled, Karla gazed at the ceiling, and he got increasingly frustrated.

“None of this makes any sense,” Miss Arnoux kept repeating. “No one would copy out an Egyptian spell to create a portal to the other world. Fairbold is right to say that it probably wouldn’t work, and why should anyone bother? There are other rituals that do work and are well understood.”

“I suppose the fragment I found was copied from the Black Museum?” Jameson asked.

“Fairbold’s assistant has been found in a pub car park in South London with a hatchet in his head,” Randolph said. “In the boot of a Ford Focus stolen from Essex.”

“The Mitchell gang tying up the loose ends,” Jameson said.

“Presumably, although the style of killing has also been the modus operandi for a gang of corrupt police running a murder incorporated out of Catford Nick. Maybe Frank Mitchell’s mob subcontracted to the Met. Mitchell himself and an Inspector Drudge have disappeared,” Randolph said. He smiled fondly at Jameson and Karla, or as near to the expression as he got.

“Shternberg is The Worshipful Master of The Badford Lodge, so why don’t we ice him?” Jameson asked.

“We have been through this,” Randolph said. “He has protection at the highest levels.”

“He might have an accident or just disappear,” Jameson replied.

“That thought had not escaped me,” Randolph replied, putting his hands together as if in prayer. “And I would not hesitate to sanction the kill, whatever the political fallout, if I was convinced it would solve matters, but would it?”

“Well, we have to do something. Without Frankie’s intervention that last portal would have resulted in a mass killing. The sudden rise in entropy might have stabilized the hole in space-time, giving the Sith a permanent door into London,” Kendrics said.

“I wouldn’t have used those precise terms, but Kendrics is correct,” Miss Arnoux replied, somewhat unwillingly.

The room fell silent. Jameson poured himself a glass of water and took a sip. He didn’t really want it but it gave him something to do. He would have liked to pace up and down but he knew it irritated the hell out of Randolph.

“Maybe we are looking at this from the wrong angle,” Jameson said. “What about motivation, as dear old ‘Ercule would put it? Let’s use our little grey cells. Why would anyone short of a raving lunatic want to let the Elves in?”

“They think they will get power,” Kendrics replied, hesitantly.

“Sith would share about as much power with a human as a hungry man would with a lamb curry,” Karla said, making one of her rare interjections.

Jameson was addicted to curry, but Karla loathed the meal. She found all forms of human food disgusting but especially disliked heavily spiced dishes like curry, chili, or sofrito. He had often wondered whether that was the source of the old superstition that garlic would repel vampires.

“Maybe we are looking at this all wrong,” Jameson said thoughtfully. “Maybe contact with the Sith was an accident caused by someone who didn’t have access to modern Western magic and was trying to achieve something else.”

“Like what?” Randolph asked the obvious question.

“If we knew that, we would be halfway home,” Jameson said. “Miss Arnoux, what were the main properties, perhaps I should say preoccupations, of Egyptian magic?”

“How long have you got?” she replied. “Much of it was what we would call daemonic magic, to control or placate various gods and daemons. That is one reason we have lost knowledge of Egyptian magic rituals. The medieval Church had a downer on magic generally, even harmless healing spells, but daemonic magic really riled them.”

She sighed.

“Not that it mattered. Most of the ancient knowledge was already destroyed by then, the great fire in the Library of Alexandria, the burnings of magic scrolls ordered by the Emperor Augustus, and the Islamic conquests. The Church just flushed away the last remnants.”

She grimaced, and Jameson suspected she was thinking of all the witches who had been tortured and killed by the clergy, but, being a professional, she kept to the point.

“Many of the spells concerned the afterlife in the Otherworld, which, as you know was an Egyptian obsession.”

“How about spells to affect the real world?” Jameson asked.

“There was a variety of magic to protect individuals against magical or natural harm, like an attack by crocodiles, and, conversely, spells to harm an enemy. They even used what looks to us as voodoo-doll magic, pins and all.”

Jameson shook his head. “Why go to a lot of trouble to hurt someone by magic when you can just put out a contract on them? It has to be something more grandiose, more all-encompassing to interest the likes of Shternberg.”

“Some of the spells try to force a god to act. I recall a headache-cure spell that threatens to kill a sacred cow in the forecourt of the Temple of Hathor, the cow-goddess.”

“And now we have aspirin,” Randolph said.

“Yes, but some spells threaten sacrilege on a grand scale. Magic designed to cause truly cosmic disaster, such as plague, famine, or the Sun not rising. The magician would protect himself from divine retribution by using a form of words that blamed the god for the disaster, not himself. He had to avoid payback because such a powerful invocation worked by disrupting
maat
.”