“Jesus, Mark, what the hell are you talking about? What secrets?”
Mark seemed to sink down into the car seat as Phil accelerated down the road. “It’s a long and complex story. And anyone who has even the slightest involvement is … well, they’re all potentially in danger. I don’t know.” He glanced out the window as if collecting his thoughts and pointed at an approaching crossroad that would take them through town. “Head over toward Barney Doyle’s. I want to get to Erl King Hill, but I don’t want to use the path at your house, in case … they’re already waiting for me.”
Phil turned. “Just who are these people you are so afraid of? And what would they be doing at my house?”
Mark looked out into the rainy night. “I was in Friedrichshafen—on the border of Switzerland. For a week I was held prisoner. They got a little sloppy one night and I escaped. It took me three days to get to Paris—I had some problems at the border and had to pull strings. I think they almost found me twice.”
“Mark, I know you’re stressed out, man; we all are. But you’re not making sense. They who?”
“The Magi.”
Phil said, “Magi? Like in ‘We Three Kings’ …?”
Mark’s face was illuminated briefly as they passed under a lamp at an intersection. “Gary sent me some translations of what he’d taken to Seattle, while I was still in New York, and they gave me the leads I needed. Along with what I’d gotten translated in New York, it all fit together with what I’d come to believe. I knew that Kessler’s group was still around.” He paused. “Well, they found me.
“The guy in the car with Aggie was named August Erhardt. Erhardt was a Magus.”
Phil glanced at Mark. “Like in the John Fowles novel?”
Mark said, “There’s a lot of history here, and we don’t have a great deal of time, so I’m going to just skip across the high points.
“About 550 B.C. the Persians conquered Media, what is now Azarbaijan in Iran and Azerbajdzh in the Soviet Union. There was a secret priesthood in Media called the Magi which was quickly assimilated into Persian society, becoming a political power. Historians don’t know a lot about them.” A car passing in the other direction shot a shower of water at Phil’s Pontiac that drenched the window in a curtain of wavering fluid. Then the wipers swept it aside. “When Persia fell to Alexander the Great, they survived. They also survived Rome, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane. By the third century they’d become one of the dominant religions in the East. It was thought they were finally destroyed by the Shiites during the seventh century, when Islam conquered Persia. But it turns out they weren’t.”
Phil shook his head, unsure of what he was hearing. “You’re saying that this man with Aggie was a member of some supersecret Persian cult that’s been around twenty-five hundred years?”
Mark nodded. “As was Fredrick Kessler. Kessler, Erhardt, and Gary’s friend up in Canada, Van der Leer, all were inheritors of some tradition that came down over the years from that ancient Magian priesthood. And that Persian tradition is directly linked to a primitive spirit worship that has evolved into legends of fairies and other races which lived on Earth alongside mankind.”
Phil said, “That thing in Patrick’s room? That’s some sort of fairy changeling?”
“Something like that, though there’s a lot more here than fairy tales can explain away. I’ll know better after we get where we’re going.”
“Then tell me, how could these Magi be around all these years and no one knows about them? Couldn’t it just be some sort of group that … claims to have gone back all those years?”
“You still don’t believe, truly believe, in the magic. You’ve seen it, that thing in the hospital, but you still don’t believe it.” Mark thought a moment as Phil drove. “The Masons claim a history back to the founding of Solomon’s temple. And other groups claim ancient roots as well. Who can say not? All I know is there was a lot about Fredrick Kessler that made no sense, until you understand he was backed by a powerful organization that provided him with the way out of Germany, smoothed over things with the German and American governments, gave him his capital for investment, his introduction to local bankers, everything. It was the same for Van der Leer in Canada. He had a lot of the same advantages.
“What happened in Germany at the turn of the century was a completely unnecessary conflict between this secret priesthood and the traditional religions. One of the Magi went insane and tried to go public. He turned some of the peasants around, returning to ancient rites, until the local religious leaders opened up on him and his followers. It was open warfare for a time. And it was the other Magi behind the efforts of the churches to hush things up. They arranged for anyone who was known to have connections with the crazy Magus to leave Germany. Other Magi took their places.”
Phil pulled over to pass a slow pickup truck and was reentering the right lane when another car came speeding around a curve in the road. Lightning tore the sky as headlights briefly illuminated the passing vehicle.
“Damn,” said Mark, almost a whisper.
“What?” said Phil, glancing over at his passenger.
“The men in the car that just passed by. I recognized the one in back, I think. It’s a man named Wycheck. He’s one of them.”
“Them? The Magi?”
Mark only nodded. “They’re heading for the hospital. That means we’ve only got about fifteen minutes on them.”
Phil turned the car down county road 451, heading toward Barney’s workshop. “This is all too much for me. What does this have to do with your being held prisoner? And what about magic and that thing that took Patrick’s place?”
Mark said, “The Magian priesthood is not just another cult. They are a real power, a supersecret worldwide organization: a delusional paranoid’s worst conspiracy fantasy come to life. The Illuminati was just an inaccurate reference to the Magi. They are men and women who have taken positions of importance in governments, churches, businesses, all through history. They ran the sisterhood of Vesta in Rome—they had the power to pardon prisoners condemned to death by the imperial Senate, on a whim! They were the Druid class of the ancient Celtic races—the scholars, the priests, the rulers—and, for all I know, the obliteration of the Druids by the Romans may have been a sham, the consolidation of their position in various governments, or it may have been a power struggle between factions. We’ll never know. And they probably had shamans and medicine men all over the New World long before Columbus got here, from what I can tell.
“Anyway, I am not positive of all the details, but what I think is going on is that a faction within the Magi are trying to seize power. I’m not sure, but I think the world situation is getting too complex for even them to ensure we don’t blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust, so some of them want to take over openly, and to do that they have to have an edge.” He shook his head. “I think they plan to unleash these fairies on humanity, let us knock each other around a bit, then take over. It’s a mad plan.
“Everybody’s lives are on the line, but even if I somehow prevent that from happening, both factions of Magi might still be trying to kill me—one because I balked their plans, the other simply because I know too much. And then they’ll come after me, and you”—he nodded at Phil—“and Gloria, and Jack and Gabbie, the kids if we get them back, Ellen, the doctors and nurses at the hospital, and anyone else who might have a clue they exist.”
“Oh fuck,” whispered Phil. “I think I’m going to be sick.” He looked nearly green with nausea.
“You don’t have time,” said Mark.
Phil’s voice was a whisper. “What do we have to do?”
Mark said, “This is the part Gary couldn’t bring himself to tell you. Hell, he didn’t believe it all himself. That thing in the hospital was a creature of another race, a race that we’ve called over the centuries gnomes, elves, pixies, and other names; I’ve come to think of them as fairies. I’ve had evidence of their existence before, maddening bits and scraps of nothing more
than hints, never enough to make me undertake serious research, nothing like this year on this property. Gabbie’s attack, Jack’s wound, your problems around the house, all were part of what these creatures are.
“This race has a name in their own language, but whatever they are called, they are a race of … the irrational, the unreal. They’re spirit beings. But these fairy creatures have corporeal qualities just as humans have spiritual qualities. Their world is separate from ours, but it overlaps. You get there using … we call it magic.”
Phil said, “That’s imposs …,” but stilled his voice before he finished. It would have been a plea, not an objection. “Oh shit!” he said as he passed the cutoff to Williams Avenue. He had lost his concentration. He made an illegal U-turn and then pulled around the corner. The mundane consideration of driving seemed to restore some of his calm. He said, “So what have the Magi to do with the fairies?”
Mark said, “The oldest-known legend of the fairy people is the Peri wife. Persian, which hints that the oldest stories about them are coincidental to the rise of the Magi. The old lore was real stories, a … guide of how to deal with the Old People, not a collection of legends.
“Now, there’s a treaty, something called the Compact. It’s what keeps the fairies from waging war on us. There’s more to it than that, but I can’t tell you much more, because that’s about all I know. There is among the fairies a being, and he’s the one who’s trying to mess up this treaty. That’s what these Magi do. They keep him from breaking the rules, from ending the peace between the two races. It’s this being who has Patrick.”
Phil began to speak, then paused, helpless before these words. At last he said, “What are we going to do?”
Mark looked over his shoulder at Phil. “We must repair damage. By taking the gold you voided the Compact.”
“The gold?”
Mark nodded. “It’s theirs, part of the … treaty. I’ve got to go where these creatures are and talk to them. These scrolls tell how to get there … and survive. I’ve memorized what I need. I told Gary to grab them as he and Ellen left town. I want them out of your place for insurance.”
“Against the Magi?” asked Phil. Mark nodded.
“I’m confused,” said Phil. “You want to keep the treaty intact, and the Magi want the treaty kept, so what’s the problem?”
Mark laughed a bitter laugh, its sound softened by the falling rain. “Because of some mess-ups on my part and because of our adversary’s being especially clever, the Magi think I’m in league with the creature who took Patrick. They sent Erhardt to fix the damage, but this elf, this creature who started all the trouble, ran Aggie off the road, killing the only man close enough to keep the Compact intact. I’m certain this cinches in the Magi’s minds that I’m in league with this creature. The only possible hope I—we—have is if I can somehow take his place and fix things before midnight. Otherwise.…”
“Who?” said Phil. “Who has our Patrick?”
“The same guy who engineered the breaking of the Compact, by leading you to the gold. He’s likely the one to have grabbed Patrick. The Erl King.”
Phil said, “I don’t know if I can handle this, Mark.”
Nearing Barney’s shack, Phil slowed, as if reluctant to reach his objective. Mark spoke. “You don’t have much choice, Phil. We’ve the Magi on one side, fairies on the other, and if we don’t do the right things before midnight, we’re all going to find ourselves in the middle of the next world war, and it won’t be the Russians we’re fighting.” He laughed bitterly. “And even if we do, the Magi might still come after us all.”
They pulled up outside Barney’s shack. Mark said, “Have you got a flashlight?”
Phil reached back under the seat and pulled out a large three-way light, flood, fluorescent, and emergency blinker. He flicked it on, testing that the battery was up, and it produced a satisfactory light.
Phil seemed reluctant to leave the car. “What you’ve just told me sounds crazy, Mark. If I hadn’t seen that thing in the hospital, I’d be calling for the wire bus to come get you. But a lot of this is speculation. What do you know!”
“Not much.” Mark switched the light back on and glanced at his watch. “We don’t have much time, but I’ll tell you what little I know and what I’ve surmised as we head over to your place. We’ve only got a little time left.”
Both men got out of the car and looked at each other. The rain had lessened to a drizzle again, but both were getting wet. They ignored the discomfort.
Mark flicked on the light and led Phil into the woods.
31
Moving through the wet woodlands, Mark said, “These Magi have always been a thorny problem for historians: few documented facts. We know they ran things in Persia for a long time. They headed Zoroastrianism after Zoroaster, and the most famous of them was a man named Saena. We know some things from the Zend Avesta, the Zoroastrians’ sacred book, but we can only guess at what beliefs were common to both religions. Everything else is only inference.” He thought a moment, then added, “Now, maybe as sort of protective covering, the terms ‘magi’ and ‘magus’ came to be applied to the priests of most any hereditary religion in that part of the world. Some remnants of the Zoroastrian faith exist today. The Parsis in India are still hereditary: You have to be born into the faith; no converts allowed. But we know now that, behind the public sects, this secret organization of Magi continued to function.”
They maintained a steady pace along the path, but the trail was slippery and, despite the light, the footing treacherous in the dark. “The Magi were monotheists. The Zoroastrians speak of two demigods created by the Supreme Being, a good force called Ormuzd who remained loyal to God, and an evil force called Ahriman who, like Satan, rebelled. The Magi had no temples, conducting their rites in the woods and on mountaintops—the room in your basement was a storeroom, and a library of sorts, not a secret temple. They worshipped fire or light, and the sun, in a manner of speaking. Not the forms of fire and light, but rather some spiritual energy or essence demonstrated by fire and light. They were astrologers and, reputedly, enchanters.” Dryly he added, “Which seems to be fact more than legend. They were conversant with spirits and could control them. Before the discovery in your cellar, the origins of the sect had been attributed to everything from their being the lost tribes of Israel to the last priesthood of Atlantis. But those were only legends.”
Mark lapsed into silence as they moved down a gully running fast with water. Phil found himself in water up to his ankles and felt his socks soak through.
Mark seemed unmindful of the discomfort and continued his narration. “I don’t know how many of them still exist. But they can’t be under every rock. You shouldn’t have been allowed to buy Kessler’s place, Phil. Had it stayed on the market for a while, the priesthood would have sent someone to buy it. That you did proves there wasn’t another Magus close by. But even without great numbers, they have great influence.
“They have contacts at every level of business and government, I’m certain, a network of people that makes the wildest conspiracy theory look reasonable. The priesthood must have some impressive connections to be able to keep all this under wraps for this long. We’re speaking of centuries.”
“Even if somebody stumbles on the truth, who’s going to believe him?” Phil pointed out. “Christ, I’ve seen some of this shit, and I don’t believe it.” After a moment he said, “No, I believe it.” Then he asked, “So, then, why are the … fairies on my land?”
Mark said, “They’ve got to be somewhere.” He pushed a low-hanging branch aside, his breathing a little heavy, and said, “This is all guesswork on my part, but … have you ever considered man’s social development? Homo sapiens has been around for something like a million years, yet civilization been around only, say, nine thousand—giving the broadest definition to civilization as we accept the term. What was going on for the previous nine hundred ninety-one thousand years? Maybe constant warfare between the two races,
neither quite able to finish off the other. Dozens of attempts to rise above the level of barbarism lost as the fairies knocked mankind back down to the level of simple hunter-gatherer. And we wreaked as much havoc upon the fairies, capturing and enslaving them, stealing their powers by … er, magic, destroying them as they destroyed us.
“Then something happened. If we get through all this, maybe we can someday learn what that was. But a peace was established, and both races were allowed to exist. A truce, or armistice”—he thought—“a compact. That’s what the Magi who found me called it. The Compact.
“Perhaps a battle was fought that was too bloody for either side to withstand another onslaught. Perhaps some cooler heads on both sides agitated for treaty, I don’t know. I can’t even begin to guess how these creatures might think.
“But if all I surmised is true, then it would be likely that when this treaty between men and fairies was first made, part of the agreement was the priesthood would set aside places where the fairies could spend their six months unmolested, and in turn have a free shot at whoever trespassed as long as they left everyone outside alone.”
“Sort of like a reservation?” asked Phil. “You mean these priests are sort of like Indian agents for fairies?”
“More like jailers,” said Mark, “if mankind had the upper hand when the Compact was agreed to. That’s a guess,” he admitted.
“Anyway, it’s clear Herman Kessler was the last Magus around here. And the thing with Gabbie, and with me in the woods, satisfies me that things are happening that wouldn’t have if a priest were still close by.”