My master raised his eyes to the heavens. “It doesn’t matter. But this bit does. I think I can reverse the normal summons easily enough, but if a gate does open up, I need something on the other side to guide me safely through. Something that provides a destination.”
“That’s a problem,” I said. “There are no ‘destinations’ in the Other Place. No mountains, no forests. I’ve told you that countless times.”
“I know. That’s where you come in.” The boy was crouching on the floor, rummaging through a pile of the usual magical paraphernalia that every Egyptian magician accumulated: scarabs, mummified rodents, novelty pyramids, the lot. He held up a small ankh4 and thrust it in my direction. “Think this is iron?”
A waft of essence-stinging cold; I leaned back irritably. “Yep. Stop waving it about.”
“Good. I’ll keep this on my body for protection. Just in case any imps come calling while I’m gone. Now, back to you. Rekhyt, I thank you for all the services you have done me; I am in your debt. In a moment I shall dismiss you. Your obligation to me, such as it is, will be at an end.”
I bowed in the customary way. “My thanks, master.”
He waved his hand. “Forget that master business now. When you are in the Other Place, listen out for your name—your true one, I mean.5 When I have finished my incantation, I shall call your name three times. If you wish, you may answer me: I believe that will be enough to provide the destination that I need. I shall pass through the gate to you.”
I looked dubious in that way I have. “You reckon?”
“I do. “The boy smiled at me. “Rekhyt, if you are sick of the sight of me after all this time, the solution is simple. Do not respond to my call.”
“It’s up to me?”
“Of course. The Other Place is your domain. If you do see fit to call me over, I shall be most honored.” His face was flushed with excitement, his pupils dilated like a cat’s; in his mind he was already tasting the wonders of the other side. I watched his movements as he went over to a bowl beside the window. It contained water. He washed his face and neck.
“Your theories are all very well,” I ventured, “but have they told you what will happen to your body if you pass across? You are not a creature of essence.”
He dried himself on a cloth, looking out over the rooftops, where the commotion and bustle of midday hung like an invisible pall upon the city. “Sometimes,” he murmured, “I feel I am not a creature of Earth, either. All my life has been shut away in libraries, never experiencing the sensations of the world. When I come back, Rekhyt, I shall wander afar like you have done….” He turned and stretched his thin brown arms. “You are right, of course: I don’t know what will happen. Perhaps I will suffer for it. But it is worth the risk, I think, to see what no other man has seen!” He stepped across and closed the shutters on the window, shrouding us both in dim, pale light. Next he locked the chamber door.
“Perhaps,” I said, “you will find yourself in my power, when we meet again.”
“Very likely.”
“Yet you trust me?”
Ptolemy laughed. “What else have I been doing all this time? When did I last bind you within a pentacle? Look at you now—you’re as free as I am. You could throttle me in a blink and be gone.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I hadn’t thought of that.
The boy clapped his hands. “Well, the time has come. Penrenutet and Affa are already dismissed; I have no obligations left. So—it is your turn. If you want to hop into the pentacle, I’ll set you free.”
“What of your own security?” I glanced around the darkened room. Slats of light from the shutters ran like claw marks across wall and floor. “With us departed, you’re helpless if your enemies find you.”
“Penrenutet’s last task was to take my guise and ride south along the old highway. He let himself be seen. The spies will be following his caravan. So you see, dear Rekhyt, I have thought of everything.” He motioned to me. I stepped into the circle.
“You know, you don’t need to risk yourself in this experiment,” I said. I was looking at his narrow shoulders, his scrawny neck, the skinny legs sticking out beneath his tunic.
“It’s not an experiment,” he said. “It’s a gesture. It’s redress.”
“For what? Three thousand years of slavery? Why take the burden of so many crimes? No other magicians have ever thought this way.”
He smiled. “That’s just it. I’m the first. And if my venture goes well, and I return to record it, many others will follow after me. There will be a new era between djinn and men. I’ve made some of the notes already, Rekhyt—my book will take pride of place in every library on the Earth. I won’t be there to see it—but who knows, perhaps you will.”
His passion won me over. I nodded. “Let’s hope you’re right.”
He didn’t answer, only snapped his fingers and spoke the Dismissal. The last thing I saw as I departed was his face gazing after me, confident, serene.
22
Kitty woke to a light that blinded her and a sharp pain in her side. As the seconds passed, and she lay quite still, she became aware of the blood pounding in her head and the dryness of her open mouth. Her wrists ached. There was a terrible smell of burned cloth and a tight pressure around one hand.
Panic swelled inside her chest; she wrenched at her limbs, opened her eyes, sought to lift her head. She was rewarded with scattershot pain and certain insights into her situation: her wrists were tied, she sat against something hard, someone was crouched beside her, looking into her face.The pressure on one hand was suddenly released.
A voice. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”
Kitty opened one eye a fraction. A dark shape swam into focus. The magician, Mandrake, bent close; he wore a look of concern mixed with relief. “Can you speak?” he said. “How do you feel?”
Kitty’s voice was weak. “Were you holding my hand?”
“No.”
“Good.” She was acclimatizing to the light now; both eyes opened steadily and she looked about her. She sat on the floor at the edge of a great stone room, older and grander than anything she had experienced. Thick pillars supported a vaulted ceiling; on the floor, beautiful rugs were spread upon the flagstones. Around the walls, in many recesses, stood statues of regal men and women dressed in bygone costumes. Magical globes drifted against the vaulting, creating an ever-changing pattern of light and shadow. In the center of the room sat a brightly polished table and seven chairs.
On the near side of the table a man was walking up and down.
Kitty struggled to shift her position, an operation made difficult by the cords binding her wrists. Something dug into her back. She cursed. “Ah! Can you—?”
Mandrake held up his hands, bound tightly together with the fingers swathed in thin white cord. “Try wriggling to the left. You’re leaning against a stone shoe at the moment. Careful—you’ve been badly knocked about.”
Kitty shifted her bottom sideways and became marginally more comfortable. She looked down at herself. One side of her coat was blackened and burned away; she could see tattered fragments of her shirt beneath and, hanging loose in an inner pocket, a singed corner of Mr. Button’s book. Her brow furrowed. How had—?
The theater! In a rush, she remembered: the explosions in the box opposite, the raising of the lights, the sea of demons in the stalls below. Yes, and Mandrake next to her, pale and frightened, with the fat little man holding the knife to his throat. She had tried—
“I’m glad you’re alive,” the magician said. His face was gray, but his voice was calm. There was dried blood on his neck. “That’s impressive resilience you’ve got there. Can you see through illusions too?”
She shook her head irritably. “Where are we? What’s—?”
“The Hall of Statues at Westminster. This is the room where the Council meets.”
“But what’s happened? Why are we here?” Panic engulfed her; she pulled frantically at her bonds.
“Calm down
… we’re being watched.” He jerked his head toward the figure by the table. It was someone Kitty didn’t know, a young man with long, bandy legs, still pacing back and forth.
“Calm down?” Kitty gave a strangled cry of fury. “How dare you? If I was free—”
“Yes, but you’re not. And nor am I. So shut up for a minute and let me tell you what’s happened.” He leaned in close. “The whole government was taken captive in that theater. Everyone. Makepeace used a host of demons to subdue them.”
“I’ve got eyes, haven’t I? I saw all that.”
“All right, fine. Well, some might have been killed, but most, I think, are alive, but gagged and tied so they can’t summon anything. We all got rounded up and taken out the back of the theater, where a group of vans was waiting. Everyone got bundled in; they threw the ministers in one on top of the other, like sacks of beef. The vans left the theater and drove here. No one outside the theater is any the wiser yet. I don’t know where the prisoners have been taken. They must be locked in somewhere close. That’s what Makepeace is seeing to now, I think.”
Kitty’s head ached. She struggled to grasp the implications. “Was it him who”—she looked down at her side—“did this to me?”
“He did. An Inferno. Close range. When you tried to”—his pale face flushed a little—“when you tried to help me. You ought to be dead; in fact, we thought you were dead, but just as the mercenary was taking me off, you groaned and dribbled, so he scooped you up, too.”
“The mercenary?”
“Don’t ask.”
Kitty was silent for a time. “So Makepeace is taking over?”
“It seems he thinks he is.” The magician scowled. “The man’s quite mad. How he plans to rule the Empire without a governing class, I can’t imagine.”
Kitty gave a snort. “Your governing class wasn’t doing so well, let’s face it. He might be an improvement.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Mandrake’s face darkened. “You haven’t the slightest idea what—” He controlled himself with difficulty. “I’m sorry. You’re not to blame. I shouldn’t have brought you to the theater in the first place.”
“True.” Kitty looked around the chamber. “But what gets me is I don’t understand why either of us has been brought here.”
“Nor me. We’ve been singled out for some reason.”
Kitty regarded the man walking to and fro beside the Council table. There was an air of nervousness about him; he frequently consulted his watch and looked over toward a set of double doors. “He doesn’t look that hot,” she whispered. “Can’t you whip up a demon and get us out of here?”
Mandrake groaned. “All my slaves are on a mission. If I could get to a pentacle I could summon them here easily, but without one, and with my fingers tied like this, I’m stuck. I haven’t got so much as an imp on tap.”
“Useless,” Kitty snapped. “Call yourself a magician.”
A scowl. “Give me time. My demons are powerful, especially Cormocodran. With luck, I’ll get a chance to—”
The doors at the end of the hall burst open. The man by the table swiveled around. Kitty and Mandrake craned their heads.
A small procession walked in.
The first few persons were unknown to Kitty. A diminutive man with round, moist eyes, built like a winter twig; a dull-faced, somewhat slatternly woman; a middle-aged gentleman with pale, shiny skin and protruding lips. Behind them came a young man, slender, sprightly of step, with oiled ginger hair and glasses perched on a little nose. About these four an air of suppressed excitement seemed to hang: they tittered, grinned, and looked about them with quick, nervous movements.
The bandy-legged man beside the table hurried to join them. “At last!” he said. “Where’s Quentin?”
“Here, my friends!” In through the doors strode Quentin Makepeace, emerald frock coat flapping, chest puffed out like a bantam cock’s. His shoulders rolled, his arms swung with an insolent swagger. He passed his companions, clapping the ginger-haired man soundly on the back, ruffling the hair of the woman and winking at the rest. On toward the table he went, glancing up and down the room with proprietorial ease. On noticing Kitty and Mandrake sitting by the wall, he gave a plump-fingered wave.
At the Council table Makepeace selected the largest of the chairs, a golden throne, ornately carved. He sat himself, legs crossed; with a flourish, he drew from a pocket an enormous cigar. A snap of the fingers: the cigar tip burst into smoldering life. Quentin Makepeace placed it between his lips and inhaled with satisfaction.
Kitty heard Mandrake beside her give a gasp of rage. She herself saw little but the ostentatious theatricality of the performance. If she hadn’t been a prisoner, she might have been amused.
Makepeace made an expansive gesture with the cigar. “Clive, Rufus—would you be so kind as to bring our friends over?”
The ginger-haired man approached, followed by his thick-lipped companion. Roughly, without ceremony, Kitty and Mandrake were hauled to their feet. Kitty noticed that both conspirators were regarding Mandrake with malevolent dislike. As she watched, the older man, lips moistly parted, stepped forward and struck their prisoner hard across the face.
The man rubbed his hand. “That’s for what you did to Lovelace.”
Mandrake smiled thinly. “Never been slapped by a wet fish before.”
“I hear you were looking for me, Mandrake,” the ginger-haired man said. “Well, what are you going to do to me now?”
From the golden chair a mellifluous voice projected: “Steady, boys, steady! John is our guest. I have affection for him! Bring them over, I say.”
A grip on Kitty’s shoulder; she was propelled forward to stand with Mandrake on a rug before the table.
The other conspirators had seated themselves. Their eyes were hostile. The sullen-faced woman spoke. “What are they doing here, Quentin? This is a crucial time.”
“You should kill Mandrake and have done,” the fish-faced magician said.
Makepeace took a puff on his cigar; his little eyes sparkled with merriment. “Rufus, you are far too hasty. You too, Bess. True, John is not yet part of our company, but I have high hopes that he might become so. We have long been allies, he and I.”
Kitty took a sharp side-glance at the young magician. One cheek was scarlet where the blow had struck. He did not reply.
“We haven’t got time to play games.”This was the little man with wide, wet eyes; his voice was nasal, whiny. “We need to give ourselves the power you promised.” He looked down at the table, ran his fingers over it in a gesture at once covetous and fearful. To Kitty he seemed weak and cowardly, and angrily conscious of this cowardice. From what she could see, none of the conspirators was any different, save for Makepeace, radiating self-satisfaction from his golden throne.
The playwright tapped a dollop of ash from his cigar onto the Persian carpet. “No games, my dear Withers,” he said, smiling. “I can assure you I am perfectly serious. Devereaux’s spies have long reported that—among commoners—John here is the most popular of the magicians. He could give our new Council a fresh, attractive face—well, certainly more attractive than any of you.” He grinned at the displeasure he had caused. “Besides, he has talent and ambition to spare. I have a feeling he’s long desired the chance to kick Devereaux out and start again…. Isn’t that right, John?”
Again Kitty looked at Mandrake. Again his pale face gave no inkling of his thoughts.
“We must give John a little time,” Quentin Makepeace said. “All will become clear to him. And you will shortly get all the power you can handle, Mr. Withers. If only the good Hopkins would hurry along, we can proceed.” He chuckled to himself—and with that noise, with that name, Kitty knew him.
It was as if a thick veil had fallen from her eyes. She was back in the Resistance again, three years before. On the advice of the mousy clerk, Clem Hopkins, she had gone to a rendezvous in a disused theater. And once there … a dagger held to the back of her neck, a whispered conve
rsation with an unseen man—whose words of guidance led them to the abbey and to the dreadful guardian of the crypt….
“You!” she cried out. “You!”
All eyes turned to her. She stood stock-still, staring at the man on the golden throne.
“You were the benefactor,” she whispered. “You were the one who betrayed us.”
Mr. Makepeace winked at her. “Ah! You recognize me at last? I wondered if you’d ever recall.… Of course, I knew you as soon as I saw you with Mandrake. That’s why it amused me to invite you to my little show tonight.”
At Kitty’s side John Mandrake stirred at last. “What’s this? You’ve met before?”
“Don’t look so shocked, John! It was all in a good cause. Through my associate Mr. Hopkins—whom you will meet shortly; he is currently tending to our captives—I had long followed the activities of the Resistance. It amused me to watch their efforts, to see the outrage on the faces of the fools in Council as they failed to track them down. Present company excepted, John!” Another chuckle.
Kitty’s voice was expressionless. “You knew about the monster in Gladstone’s tomb, but you and Hopkins still sent us there to get the Staff. My friends died because of you.” She took a small step in his direction.
“Oh tush.” Quentin Makepeace rolled his eyes. “You were traitorous commoners. I was a magician. Did you expect me to care? And don’t come any closer, young lady. Next time I won’t bother with a spell. I’ll cut your throat.” He smiled. “In truth, though, I was on your side. I hoped you would destroy the demon. Then I’d have taken the Staff from you for my own use. In fact”—he tapped his cigar, refolded his legs, and looked around at his audience—“in fact the outcome was mixed: you ran off with the Staff, and let Honorius the afrit escape the tomb. What an impact Honorius made! Gladstone’s bones, hopping around the rooftops with a demon encased inside! A marvelous spectacle. But it set Hopkins and me thinking …”
“Tell me, Quentin.” Mandrake spoke again; his voice was soft. “This Mr. Hopkins was supposed to have been involved with the golem too. Was it so?”