There are these things out there called demons. They’ll drag me off to the hell I refuse to believe in, if they get half a chance. They’ll eat me alive, starting with my fingers and toes. They’ll twist me in a knot and use me as a fire-lighter. They’ll cut off my head for a bowling ball. They’ll make me eat my own intestines for all eternity.
Different grimoires, different threats. But they all agree on one point: demons are a Bad Thing.
According to the Popular Grimoire, to control a Bad Thing you must be free from common weakness and common vice, and you must be fortified by divine grace and favor.
According to the Grand Grimoire, you must arm yourself with prudence, wisdom, and virtue.
I meet all these requirements.
But there’s one thing everyone agrees on: you must prepare . . . well, like hell. There’s your basic chastity—generally defined as abstaining from the company of females, which leaves several loopholes I can think of. You have to fast. You’re supposed to meditate upon the forthcoming task. And pray a lot.
Some of the grimoires say you must prepare for three days. Some of them say three months . . .
I have twenty-four hours, so I cut quite a few corners. And by the way, none of the published or pirated grimoires are accurate or complete. The Society is dead protective and anything I describe is edited down. So don’t bother trying any of this at home.
I spend four of those precious twenty-four hours asleep. My chances of surviving this are zero if I’m totally exhausted. Then I devote three hours to lying flat on my face in front of the altar in the monastery chapel.
I know what you’re thinking. Three hours is a long time—what’s going through my head? If anything . . .
Well, what’s supposed to be going through it is a whole bunch of stuff about what a wretched little worm I am and how, through the grace of God, this miraculous Gift was bestowed upon me. And how the purpose of this Gift is not to make me look clever, but to shed the light of truth over all humankind . . .
Then I’m supposed to pray for steadfastness and purity—no sniggering at the back. And so on, and so on. Actually, my mind’s pretty much a blank. The floor is cold and hard. If I had any sense I’d be tucked up in bed.
But I’ve got to know.
I hear the termites shuffle in and there’s a lot of whispering—and a couple of sly kicks—before they step over me and get on with their wailing.
Back in the studio, I disable my scryer and petrify my door behind me: if I get any visitors, they’ll just see a blank wall. I consider going back to bed and hiding under the covers. Finally I dive into my cabinet and haul out a thick, battered book, bound in black leather: the 1863 edition of Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal. After leafing through it for an hour, I’ve decided who—well, what, really—to invoke. I dig out a dozen detailed demonologies and settle down to work out all the smells and symbols.
I cut a new goose quill—the third feather from the right wing, if you’re interested—and write out all the conjurations I’ll need on virgin parchment.
I sharpen, purify, and mark up the cutlery. For a procedure like this, the proportions of the herbs and spices for the incense have to be precise; I weigh out an ounce of rosemary, seven drachms of frankincense, twenty scruples of myrrh, nine scruples of cinnamon, and three ground-up cat’s whiskers. While I grind and mix, I alternate the set prayers with rehearsing everything over and over again in my head.
Around four o’clock in the afternoon I hear Marvo yelling in the corridor. She goes away after a while.
As the sun sets, I’m back in the chapel, with my forehead against the cold slabs of the floor, wondering who I’m trying to impress and reminding myself that I’m supposed to get authorization from the Society for something like this.
You don’t need me to tell you that demons are dangerous. The Society doesn’t want to spend years training sorcerers just for them to blow themselves up, so it usually appoints a supervisor, partly to oversee the summoning and make sure that whatever gets called up gets put back down again, and partly because if two different sorcerers invoke the same demon at the same time . . . well, it can only end in tears. So even if I survive the night, I’m in a heap of trouble if anybody finds out.
But I’ve got to know. Remember that guy I told you about, Dinny? It was about a week before his sixteenth birthday that his Gift disappeared. That’s just a couple of months older than I am now. I mean, it’s rare for it to go just like that, but it can happen. And if the reason I failed to detect contiguity between the head and body is that I’m losing it . . . then best to get it over with.
Make or break.
I check and pack all the gear I can possibly need. I drink off a concoction of my own invention that’ll keep me bouncing like a kangaroo for hours. My head hurts. The room’s folding in and out around me . . .
But I am steadfast. I shave. Then I strip and wash myself from head to foot with exorcised water. Shivering with cold, on top of sheer terror, I mumble the final prayers and struggle into clean silk socks and underwear.
It’s two o’clock. There’s always a few termites awake, counting their blessings in the chapel. So I creep across the garden, pausing briefly to throw up in one of the herb beds, and sneak into the stable. I harness a horse and muffle its hooves, then lead it out through the back gate to the street.
Maybe I’m deliberately trying to sabotage myself, because I take the direct route over the Cherwell Bridge and through the Hole. There’s the usual fires burning—the Hole never seems to run out of stuff to burn—but I’m too busy with the pictures in my head to pay any attention . . .
I imagine the chapel at Saint Cyprian’s. It’s night and the light of the candles barely penetrates the heavy clouds of incense. The pews are crammed with sorcerers, their faces invisible in the black shadows cast by their cowls. There’s a coffin in front of the altar—not very big; they didn’t find much of me—and Matthew’s standing there with one hand on it and he’s saying what a tragedy it all was, such an amazing Gift.
It’s great. Watching it play in my head, I’m nearly in tears myself.
The crack of gunfire snaps me out of it. I pull at the reins, but the horse is already aware that it’s in danger of finding itself on the menu tomorrow, and swerves to a halt in the shadows beneath an overhanging wall. Two men run into sight, chased by four uniformed jacks on horseback. Several shots; one of the runners drops to the ground. His companion scuttles off into the darkness, with the riders on his tail.
I figure the grown-ups are checking if anybody in the ASB is in the mood to confess.
At the mortuary, half a dozen men in identical baggy suits are sitting side by side on a bench. They’re all data elementals for different cases; they’ve all got their eyes closed and they’re all snoring gently. As I tiptoe past, one of them gets up and follows me into the autopsy room.
I close the door behind us. “Stay!” I say. Mr. Memory drops into a chair and goes back to sleep.
Inside the cold room, I have this sudden, wild hope that in my absence somebody will have gotten me off the hook by taking the head and body away. But no such luck. I waste ten minutes leaning on the trolley, trying to persuade myself not to go ahead with this. Finally I wheel the body out into the main lab and give it a wash. Nothing very thorough; it’s just a symbolic procedure. Then I tell the elevator to take us down to the sub-basement.
I push the trolley along a short corridor, past a deep alcove lined with cupboards and sinks, toward a set of double doors that glows with a faint blue light. I wriggle around the trolley and hold my ring up. The light flickers. The doors—solid cedarwood, ten inches thick—rumble back. I push the trolley through into the summoning room.
This is just an empty square space, about thirty yards across, with black marble walls, floor, and ceiling . . . and one hell of an echo. The walls are oriented to the four points of the compass. The ceiling is heavily soundproofed: things can get a little out of hand sometimes. There are no fittings, apart from a few brass studs sunk into the floor. No furniture: it’d only get wrecked.
I park the body in the corner and start by washing the floor. Partly symbolic, mainly practical: I don’t want any leftover chalk marks. And a distraction from the fact that I’m shaking with nerves.
While the floor dries out, I take the elevator back upstairs and get the head.
After that I sit on the floor of the summoning room for ten minutes. Eyes closed. Breathing slowly. I can take everything back upstairs and nobody need be any the wiser. When I open my eyes, the wrapping has fallen open and Wallace’s head seems to be looking at me reproachfully.
I purify a brazier and set it up. Once the charcoal is glowing, I throw in cloves and cinnamon, praying as I go. I trot back to the alcove and dig out a cedarwood box containing various lengths of cord. I select one and fumigate it in the smoke rising from the brazier. I loop one end around the stud at the exact center of the room and, with a piece of chalk, trace out the first circle.
The grimoires are packed with designs for magic circles and squares, all different; even successive editions of the same book will have dramatically different floor plans. The Society codified them during the nineteenth century, but I don’t think it got them right.
That’s where it all went wrong at Saint Cyprian’s. In my final year I worked out some improved designs and a couple of the examiners wanted to fail me on those—except that my outcomes were near perfect. So they gave me a Second instead of a First and I wound up working for Caxton instead of doing what I wanted to do: theoretical thaumaturgy.
Anyway. Two hours later the floor is covered in a network of circles, squares, and symbols. I’m standing in the middle, scratching my head and wondering if I’ve missed anything, when I hear the elevator doors rattle.
“Don’t come in!”
Too late. The doors from the corridor rumble open and Marvo steps right out into the summoning room. She looks around. “Now what are you playin’ at?”
“Watch it!” I fish the chalk out of my pocket and repair the outer circle where she’s scuffed the line. “How did you get down here?”
“Your pal—”
Mr. Memory is standing just behind her, fiddling with his bow tie. I’ve never actually seen an elemental look sheepish before. I beckon him in and point to an empty corner.
“Stand there. Don’t move.” I turn to Marvo. “You too.”
“You had anything to eat?” she asks.
“Not allowed to.” I pull the sleeve of my sweater up. “Now the time by my magic watch—”
She’s staring at the face. “What’s magic about it?”
“Absolutely nothing; it’s just what I call it. What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was going out to look for Alice an’ I went to the studio to ask if you wanted to help me, coz it was your fault an’ all for being an idiot . . . Only your door wasn’t there.”
“That was a hint. So did you find her?”
“No, I looked all over, but nothing. Anyway, I’m on my way home an’ I realize you’re up to something stupid.”
“And you’re here to save me from myself.”
At four o’clock in the morning. Dressed as a deck chair again.
She smiles. “Someone’s got to.” She’s spotted the head and body. The smile has gone. “Frank?”
“Get out of here, will you?”
She’s staring around at all the circles and symbols and the penny drops: “This isn’t a contiguity test. What’s goin’ on?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Why can’t you just let it go? Yeah, I know, stupid question.” She leans over a small wooden cage and recoils as a black rat scuttles up to the bars. “This amount of work . . . You gotta be up to something really stupid.” She looks up at me. “Something that could get you killed.”
“Hey, I’m fine.”
“You’re gonna prove you’re right—no, it’s more’n that . . .”
She’s got that glazed look again. For a moment it looks like we’ve lost her and I’m just hoping she’ll keel over and I can drag her out and lock her up somewhere until I’ve finished . . . when she blinks and says, “You haven’t lost it, Frank.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Enough to stay and watch.” She takes off her bag and drops it in the corner. “I know what you’re thinking: you’ve got this picture in your head of being found dead an’ there’ll be all these people—Caxton, Ferdia, your boss—saying what a tragedy, the way your Gift just disappeared, and what a great sorcerer you were—how brave an’ all that crap.”
I’m desperately trying to look like she hasn’t seen right through me.
“If you go into this, you know, thinking like that . . . well, that’s what’ll happen an’ I’m not letting you get away with it.” She drags off her red duffle coat and tosses it after the bag. “If you go down, I’m going down with you.” She pokes her finger hard into my chest. “So you better get it right, yeah?”
“It’s illegal. I haven’t got authorization from the Society.”
“You didn’t have to get it before.”
“This is different. I’m going to summon a demon.”
Marvo’s staring at me. “Won’t you go to hell?”
“Not if I’m careful.”
She hesitates, just for a moment. “Better get on with it then.”
“Right, there’s four censers in the second cupboard along the alcove outside. You’ll find silk gloves in the drawer under the bench.”
Hell, I need all the help I can get.
One good thing about Marvo: she’s quick to catch on. I show her where to hang the censers and get her to fill them with laurel charcoal and start it burning, while I unpack all the cutlery from my case. We set up four candles and light them. I pull a linen surcoat out of one of the cupboards and tell her to put it on.
I’m rushing because the dieners come in at seven and even though they’re half blind they may just notice that the body and head have disappeared from the ice room. But at last I’ve got everything set up. I close the doors. I jab a finger toward Mr. Memory, still standing in his corner, looking mildly interested.
“Don’t move.”
Right. Starting from the center and working out, I’ve got a circle just large enough for me to stand in and wave my arms about without knocking over a small copper brazier and the cage containing the rat. Another concentric circle outside that, making a ring with symbols scrawled around it.
That’s all inside a square with its sides parallel to the walls of the room. Then another larger square, rotated through 45 degrees so that its corners point north, south, east, and west. Inside each of its angles there’s a small pentagram: a five-pointed star drawn with five single strokes. Plus a small cross extending from each corner. Pay attention at the back . . .
Farther out, I’ve got four circles, each containing a hexagram—a six-pointed star constructed from two interlocking equilateral triangles. Marvo, in her linen coat, is standing in the western star with a brazier at her feet. She’s clutching a silver shaker and a glass bottle and looks justifiably scared.
Not half as scared as I am. But then I know what’s coming.
Surrounding all this I’ve drawn an outer ring: two more concentric circles, a couple of yards apart. Between these I’ve drawn the outline of a snake. Starting from the head, at the north, it spirals inward through two and a half loops so that the tail ends at the south. Along the entire length of its body I’ve drawn almost a hundred symbols.
This ring isn’t closed. There’s a gap of about ten inches in the outer circle, to the north, beside the snake’s head. And there’s a similar gap at the southernmost point of the inner circle, by the snake’s tail.
Another yard outside the outer ring, at the north-east, south-east, south-west, and north-west, four pentagrams, each with a blue candle burning at its center.
And finally—no, really! To the east, there’s a large equilateral triangle. Along its sides I’ve written TETRAGRAMMATON, PRIMEUMATON, and ANAPHAXETON. Inside the angles, the word MI CHA EL, split into three. The triangle encloses three circles. One contains the body and another the head, both lying on silk cloths on the floor.
The third circle is empty. So far.
I’m wearing a white linen robe with symbols embroidered over my heart in red silk, white silk slippers, and a paper crown with “EL” written on it. I’ve got a lion-skin belt tied tight around my waist, with a wand and a sword stuck through it. I’m clutching a handful of white ash and a black-handled knife.
A silver disk hangs from my neck by a silver chain.
Moving dead carefully—I can’t afford to drop anything—I enter the outermost circle through the gap at the north, by the snake’s head. I turn to let a trickle of ashes fall through my fingers, sealing the boundary behind me.
Then I move sideways along the body of the snake, running the tip of the knife along the circumference of the outer circle. I lift and place my feet carefully, so as not to smudge any of the symbols. I recite the prayers as I go . . .
When I reach the snake’s tail, I step back through the gap in the inner circle and seal it with more ashes.
One final look around—and yeah, I’ve remembered to take off my ring. I step into the central circle. Blue flames flicker in the brazier. The rat peers up at me from its cage.
I turn to Marvo. I want to tell her how grateful I am. If it wasn’t for her I’d have charged into this and got myself blown up, just to prove a point.
“Whatever happens,” I say, “don’t step off the star.”