A Study in Sorcery: A Lord Darcy Novel Read online

  “Sounds like black magic to me,” Coronel Hesparsyn said, staring off at the cluster of Azteque high priests.

  “Magic, you will remember, is largely a matter of intent,” his magic officer told him. “In the Angevin Empire such magic would be of the blackest black. The sort that destroys the magician as well as his object. But here the history is different, the background is different, and the intent is different. I don’t know for certain what would encompass black magic here. And you know, Coronel, I don’t think I want to find out.”

  Company B of the Duke’s Own settled down for the night, a little behind and to the left of the Azteque encampment. The two didn’t mix at all. Not that the Azteque warriors objected to an Angevin trooper being among them, not at all. They appeared not to notice it. And being ignored is a hard way to strike up an acquaintance. Hesparsyn’s men, who were trained and encouraged to make friends with the natives wherever they were, had shown small interest in befriending any of the company of Azteques, who were as alike and self-contained as peas in a pod. Fierce, stubborn, unyielding peas in a bloody pod, Coronel Hesparsyn thought.

  The coronel sat at the small, portable travel desk in his small, portable command tent and composed his daily report by the bright light of his small, portable alcohol lamp. The lamp’s mantle had been treated magically to glow pure white in the alcohol flame. It burned out twice as fast, but gave three times the light of untreated mantles.

  Hesparsyn had just written, “and, therefore, I strongly suspect the possibility of hostile action from the local tribes, although we have thus far seen no signs of them,” when an arrow thunked into the desk top, four inches from his hand.

  The coronel leapt to his feet, pulling his Legion-issue MacGregor .36 from its holster, and raced outside. Dusk had passed into night, and the only light came from the stars and the three small campfires used by his men. There was no way to see anything beyond. Hesparsyn stood there for a minute, looking and listening; but all was silent beyond the campfires.

  The guard outside his tent was standing at easy attention. “I take it you didn’t see anything?” Hesparsyn asked him.

  “Like what, sir?” the guard asked.

  “Never mind,” Coronel Hesparsyn said. “Pass the word for Leftenant MacPhearling and for the top serjeant.” He turned to look back at his command tent, and realized what a fine target it made, with the intense white light from the magicked alcohol lamp spilling out of the open flap. The tent canvas itself was treated not to allow any light to filter through, so Hesparsyn would just have to remember to keep the flap closed in the future.

  Leftenant MacPhearling came running along the row of sleeping tents, struggling to button his trowsers as he ran. As he reached the command tent, Serjeant Tavis appeared from the other side and walked calmly to the entrance, looking as though he were dressed for parade.

  “Sir!” Serjeant Tavis snapped, coming to attention and saluting at the tent flap.

  “What is it, Coronel?” Leftenant MacPhearling asked, pulling himself to something resembling attention and managing a hasty salute.

  Coronel Hesparsyn returned the salutes and beckoned to the two men. “Here,” he said. “Look what I just, ah, received.”

  They stepped inside the tent and Coronel Hesparsyn pointed to the foreign object protruding from his travel desk.

  Serjeant Tavis reached over and pulled it out. “It’s Quapaw, sir,” he said. “A Quapaw message arrow.”

  “It was shot into my desk,” Coronel Hesparsyn said. “Four inches to the right, and it would have pierced my hand. We must find some way of discouraging them from sending messages in a like manner in the future. Leftenant MacPhearling, is the avoidance spell around the camp not working?”

  “It is working well, sir,” the magic officer said. “My guess would be that this arrow was shot from beyond the effective range of the spell.”

  “I see,” the coronel said. “Can we not extend the effective range of the spell until it is beyond the effective range of Quapaw arrows?”

  “No, sir,” Leftenant MacPhearling said. “Not easily. Not for an overnight encampment. Not with only one journeyman magician as company magic officer, we can’t.”

  “I see,” Coronel Hesparsyn said. “Serjeant, would you unroll the message from around the arrow and let me take a look at it?”

  The Serjeant broke the threads holding the message in place and unrolled it. It was a sheet of thin paper, that looked to be of European manufacture, in the standard six-by-eight-inch letter size. Serjeant Tavis straightened it by rubbing it against the side of the desk, and handed it to Coronel Hesparsyn.

  “A printed letterhead,” Coronel Hesparsyn noted. He read:

  he-who-laughs-last, m.a., o.a.e.

  chief of the ruling council

  osage tribe

  to—The Honorable Coronel-Commander Hesparsyn

  Company B

  The Duke’s Own New England Regiment

  The Angevin Imperial Legion

  I bring you greeting.

  We intend to attack the accursed Azteque horde at some moment in the immediate future.

  As we bear you and your magnificent company of legionaries no ill will, we strongly suggest that you leave the area so that we are not required to kill or injure any of you.

  If you choose not to, we will understand, but it is on your heads.

  No Azteque warrior will again take prisoners from our peoples, for as long as the grass grows and the water flows. We have sworn it.

  In hopes that this finds you in good health, I remain yours,

  Laughs-Last

  “What do you think about that?” Coronel Hesparsyn asked, passing it to his magic officer.

  “Well-educated chap, I’d say,” Leftenant MacPhearling replied.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The guard patrolling Fort St. Michael’s upper battlements paused to study the tall, lonely figure who stood watching the bay. By the man’s robes, the guard knew him to be a priest. By his careworn face, the guard judged him to be in his early sixties. In this the guard was mistaken. Father Adamsus was in his fifty-second year and—considering some of the hardships he had endured—in remarkably good health.

  One cannot, however, deal with Those whom Father Adamsus had confronted without having the experience leave its mark. Father Adamsus was an exorcist.

  In his fifteen years on this lonely path he had faced many Intelligences, many Entities and Powers. Some of these had been victims themselves, tools in thrall to a human sorcerer’s twisted Talent. Others had also been tools, but not, Father Adamsus knew, of anything human or angelic. Such creatures served their Master well, each in its own malevolent fashion. Father Adamsus had fought these evil beings many times in the shadowland of ritual sorcery and each time had vanquished them, banishing them from the person or place where they had been uninvited and

  He had not—indeed could not have—destroyed them; a mortal cannot destroy the immortal. Had he ever failed to vanquish them, however, he knew all too well that the Law did not operate in reverse. They might well have destroyed him.

  And death, of course, would be only the beginning.

  * * * *

  Father Adamsus leaned against the crenelated battlement wall of the South Tower, feeling the cold of the stone seep through his robes, and looked again out across the great bay. It was almost barren of ships, which was perhaps not surprising given the violent March weather, and a faint mist moved above the water in rapid swirls. Still, from this vantage point at the southern tip of long, thin Saytchem Island, one could easily see the small island far out in the bay, and the massive structure which covered its entire surface.

  This was an ancient Azteque pyramid of staggering dimensions; Father Adamsus had seen only one that was larger, at Tenochtitlan, the great city in the Duchy of Mechicoe, historic capital of the Azteque Empire. He had been there four years ago, as part of the royal ambassadorial retinue of His Majesty, John IV, by the Grace of God, King and Emperor of England,
France, Scotland, Ireland, New England, and New France; Fidel Defensor, and present occupant of the eight-hundred-year-old Plantagenet throne.

  During that visit to Tenochtitlan, Father Adamsus had stood at the base of that great pyramid as others of the ambassador’s party had blithely ascended the great stone stairs. None of the others, of course, were sensitives, which was probably for the best, as they were all career politicians and courtiers. The priest, however, was a sensitive of the first rank, a basic requirement for an exorcist. Thus, he could see a world far different from that seen by the normally sighted.

  And he saw blood.

  The pyramid had appeared to him a crimson abattoir, a giant staircase awash with carnage. The image had been a phantom overlay on the “real” world, and had it been only visual he might have endured it; but he had heard the screams, he had smelt the...burning...and he had sensed, as though it were his own, the terror and agony of centuries of sacrificial victims.

  It had taken all his concentration to get through the simple shielding ritual, and even then, the impressions had not entirely vanished but had seemed to continue, like a conflict vaguely heard through the stone walls of a fortress.

  His own stupidity had caused it, Father Adamsus had realized in annoyance. He knew that no human sacrifice had taken place at the pyramid for over two centuries, since the Azteque priests—partly of their own volition and partly under the benevolent guidance of the Angevin Empire’s legionnaires and its Catholic missionaries—had given up their bloodier gods in favor of a more pacifistic pantheon. He knew too that three generations of priests had blessed the site and conducted purifying rituals. Still, one cannot always scrub the stain of blood from stone; sometimes the stone must be ground down. Sometimes it must be reduced to powder and scattered to the winds.

  Little hope of that happening in this case, thought Father Adamsus. He stared out at the massive pyramid on the small island on the right-hand side of the harbor. It was a solid pile of granite topped by twin temples. One of those temples, the larger one, was consecrated to the bloodiest god yet invented in the long human history of bloody gods. The pyramid had lain in disuse for live centuries, since the fullest expansion of the Azteque Empire had begun its inevitable contraction to its natural boundaries.

  Now, however, it was to be used again.

  Probably no more than a few hundred miles away now, a treaty party was heading toward Nova Eboracum, the Royal Colony at the center of the settlement in the south-central part of Saytchem Island. In this party, Father Adamsus knew, was Lord Chiklquetl, the High Priest of the Azteques. As part of the treaty-signing ceremonies, an Eternal Flame would be kindled in the pyramid’s other temple, the one dedicated to Tsaltsaluetol, a more peaceful god than his companion on the island. The Eternal Flame would be lighted with a flame from the pyramid in Tenochtitlan, carried from there by the High Priest. And I would dearly love to know who thought of THAT little touch, thought Father Adamsus with very unpriestly anger; certainly it wasn’t a priest or any licensed member of the Sorcerers’ Guild, who would have as soon suggested spit-roasting a joint of meat next door to a munitions room.

  But it will be done, which means that Lord John and I must to go out to Pyramid Island tomorrow and cleanse that pile of stone; make it into nothing more than the empty, long-deserted stone structure it seems to be. If we can.

  Father Adamsus was by no means certain that this could be accomplished; he had said as much to the Archbishop not twenty-four hours earlier. “This is not a simple cleansing, Your Grace,” he had pointed out. “Such a technique is effective in purifying a structure that has been used for evil purposes, even if that evil has extended over a long period of time.

  “But that”—Father Adamsus had pointed a finger out into the lowering mist beyond the great mullioned window set into the south wall of St. Brigid’s Cathedral—“that thing out there was not simply a vessel which once held an unhealthy drink. It was made for evil. Every stone was set upon the one beneath it, with that thought and that purpose. The main temple was originally consecrated—if I may use that holy word in such a diabolic sense—to Huitsilopochtli; who was—and is, in some areas of Mechicoe today—a god of war, murder, and hatred. I am an exorcist, and a priest, and will do as I have been directed. It is my duty, however, to point out that the Rite of Exorcism removes a Being from a place to which it has no right. It is not intended to throw a god out of his own house.”

  “Are you saying,” Archbishop Patrique had inquired, “that you can’t do it?” His Grace forbore from mentioning that Father Adamsus had overstated the case in at least one particular; no one—not even the Holy Father—could order an exorcist to his task. In the exercise, of religious—or secular—authority, one might risk another man’s life, but never his immortal soul.

  Now, standing on the parapet at Fort St. Michael, Father Adamsus recalled his reply. No, he had said, not that I can’t do it, with the help of Lord John. Only that in this case, it might not be enough. Whatever malevolent Being lurks in there will be driven out. But we shall have to stay alert for a long time. You see, Your Grace, it just might come home again.

  Rapid footsteps approached, a sharp staccato sound echoing off the stone. “Reverend Father?”

  It was the guard. A young man not yet twenty, he wore the green-and-azure uniform of the Duke’s Guard, and owed his allegiance to His Grace Charles, Duke of Arc, Imperial Governor of New England.

  “Yes? What is it, my son?”

  “A message just came over the speaking-tube, Reverend Father. There’s a teleson call for you, from the Residence.”

  Father Adamsus could hear the capitalized R plainly, and knew that it could refer to only one residence—the palace of Duke Charles. “You’ll have to lead the way. I’m not as familiar with Fort St. Michael as I’d like to be.”

  “Of course, Reverend Father. Just one minute.”

  After whistling down the brass speaking-tube for the guardhouse to send up a replacement, and receiving permission to leave his post before the replacement arrived, the young guard led Father Adamsus down through a maze of corridors and stairways, past torches flickering in sconces—only the Palace had gas lighting, as yet—and woven hangings, which did little to lessen the March chill.

  As they made their way, Father Adamsus found himself brooding about the teleson. He had hoped he could be alone with his thoughts for a while longer, and had come down to Fort St. Michael at least in part for that reason. On reflection, he realized that a strategic outpost such as the Fort, with its view—and its guns—commanding a sweep of the bay and the narrows leading to the ocean beyond, would undoubtedly have the device. Instant communication with the Palace would not be a luxury but a necessity.

  For many years telesons had been something of a rarity. The devices, which consisted of two cuplike shapes attached to a small wooden box, operated on principles not entirely clear even to the best theoretical thaumaturgists. Once the proper spell had been put on the crystals within the teleson, anyone could use it; you simply held one of the cups to your ear and spoke into the other one.

  The spell for activating a pair of telesons, however, was not only intricate and difficult but had a tendency to wear out over a period of time. The expense had made the device affordable only for a privileged few.

  But recently a new version of the device had been perfected by Sir Thomas Leseaux, Th.D., the Chief Theoretical Sorcerer in all the Angevin Empire. Sir Thomas had replaced the paired crystals with thin disks, almost membranous in consistency. A simple melding of a Relevancy Spell with a standard Sympathy Ritual would cause two disks connected by any length of symbolic copper wire to vibrate in unison, no matter how far apart they might be (as long as the wire did not pass through or over running water; no spell will operate with such a barrier). One spoke into the speaking tube of one teleson, and this caused the disk to vibrate; the disk in the earpiece of the other teleson vibrated in precisely the same fashion, reproducing the sounds clearly if not absolutely fai
thfully. Preparation of the telesons was simple for any skilled artificer, and even a journeyman sorcerer could master the elegantly simple activation ritual Sir Thomas had devised.

  And they all will, thought Father Adamsus gloomily as he trudged along. Well, you couldn’t stop progress, so they said. Before long, telesons would be everywhere, and most people would find them a wonderful convenience. It would be difficult to explain to such people that so convenient a device might have drawbacks, that the loss might offset the gain.

  Sorcery, thought Father Adamsus, is moving ahead too fast. Why can’t we think about these things a little more before we do them?

  Presently the two men arrived at a paneled oak door just opposite the Gate Room. As nearly as Father Adamsus could tell, their journey had taken them to a point less than a hundred feet from their starting point. That starting point was, however, now directly overhead.

  The door guard opened it for Father Adamsus, and the priest peered into a small windowless room. His guide hastened into the Gate Room opposite, and brought forth a spirit lantern, placing it in a wall bracket in the room. By its steady flame, Father Adamsus saw a small unadorned chair and table. On the table rested the teleson: a polished wooden box with what looked like a black caffe cup to speak into and a black wineglass to hold to one’s ear. A small silver bell was provided to attract the attention of the person possessing the companion teleson.

  Its own little room, Father Adamsus thought, how nice.

  He picked up the teleson and spoke into it. “This is Father Adamsus.” Many times he had used the devices, particularly during his long years in England and France; but he could never escape a slight feeling of foolishness at speaking aloud into a caffe cup.

  “Lord John Quetzal here, Reverend Father.” Lord John spoke perfect Anglic without any detectable Mechicain accent; he had been schooled in it from his youth in his native duchy, and had perfected it in London during the years he spent studying for his Master’s in Sorcery.