Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  “Just don’t tell them that, dear,” said Camille. “But I sense Halsey has something she wishes to speak with me about. Isn’t that right, Halsey?” She looked into my eyes, reading them as easily as if she were a Wiccan witch herself.

  “Actually, there is something I would like to talk to you about,” I said. She and I went off a little ways so we could speak alone together. Dallace and Lia, meanwhile, looked like they were on their way to becoming fast friends. They laughed and chatted while Camille and I got down to it.

  “It’s about magic and witchcraft,” I said. “I want to know––”

  But Camille could see it. I remembered what Lennox had said about Camille having magic senses.

  “You want to know if we are sisters in those arts you seem to value so highly,” she said.

  “It’s just that I can see your hair...” It was candybright of a color I had only seen Mistresses wear... “And, then, when Maria broke into my mind––” I said. “I don’t trust her. When I look at her I feel a draw, not for her, but for what she can do.”

  “It’s true, she does have certain powers. We all do,” said Camille. “As do you. As will Lennoxlove, when he comes back. I feel him in the very throes of the Agonies...”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Camille sniffed. “Recall Asher,” she said. “Write to him. Never mind. I will. You have to know.”

  She left me there, staring after her, as she rejoined Dallace.

  “Oh, and Halsey!” she said.

  I looked at her.

  Camille made the Wiccan W with her hand, raising it up to me, as if she were wishing me farewell. As I looked I saw the finest of fine pen strokes of her Wiccan Mark. She had swirls. Corkscrewing swirls. But they had not been used in years. I nodded to her to show that I understood and she was gone, with Dallace behind her.

  Chapter 19 – The Aether

  Life under the Styles Master was growing more demanding by the day. Magic was not just cast by thinking. It was crafted. Hence, the name. The only problem was, we were so busy being indoctrinated into the magical world––learning about ardanes and the ethics of wielding our power (“What are you going to do, if somebody disagrees with you? Craft them into submission––?”) that we weren’t really learning how to direct our magic, intentionally. On the very first day somebody had popped––gone from one place to the other as if instantaneously––but we had still not learned how they had done it.

  It was as if it was all just one big crafting accident, and things were happening by chance.

  “You may all have experienced random magic,” said Lux. “Which is why I have not taught you anything specific. It does us no good if you do not learn self-control.”

  Tell me about it. We had still not learned how to levitate a grain of sand; much less really conjure. We had no Craft-sense whatsoever.

  “Your Wiccan books may be full of handwritten spells but you couldn’t perform them,” said Lux.

  It was like a pipe exploded; we ran everywhere, sloshing all over the place, spraying in each other’s faces, the other Initiates and I––with our anger.

  “Why is that?” we suddenly all demanded. It was like we had all been trying to do Magic, to bend it like spoons or something, but hadn’t been successful. We hadn’t managed to conjure. Suddenly, as I looked around, I felt happy.

  Lia and I sighed with relief. None of the other Initiates could craft either. “And I have my Mark!” said one.

  “YEAH,” they all agreed.

  The rest of them looked at each other. This was the part I wasn’t so happy about. It looked as though I was the only one who was still without her Wiccan bloom. I would have to wear manica langas for an entirely different reason. Why was everything so backasswards with me?

  Lux held his scar again, waiting for us to quiet down.

  “Are you through? Because this yakking does us no good,” he said. “You wanted to know about wizards dueling? What about teenagers behind the wheel?”

  “I have my license and I haven’t killed anyone yet,” said Pilar.

  More shouts of yeah and What the heck?

  Tomorrow’s crafters today, I thought.

  I could see where this was going.

  “You wouldn’t give a kid a firearm to play with, would you? Maybe you would. But we Wiccans do not. It is a slow indoctrination,” said Lux.

  “What about this One, whatever they call her, the Wiccan supergirl? She’s only a kid and she has Power!”

  The other Initiates seemed to think they had scored a point.

  Lux coughed and acknowledged they had.

  “She is different,” he said.

  “Oh, come on.”

  “The Wiccan Prime Mover is said to possess unheard-of powers. She is a myth,” said Lux. “We look for her but she does not exist. Do not believe in her.”

  He had to wait until we all quieted down.

  “Just because she’s hocus-pocus, isn’t to say you are,” said Lux. “Think about it. Each of you has been tested. Each of you has been wiccaned. Some seriously powerful wizards and witches have read your minds.”

  “I thought Asher would never stop pawing my brains out...” said Astra.

  “You see? So you’re all still here, aren’t you, you’re all being taught? You are the dangerous playthings, the firearms, and the engines with the horsepower. You are Wiccan, and you will craft, but you have to be patient.”

  He started going into ethics again. We groaned, but eventually everyone paid attention. Lux was a first-class speaker; any opportunity to hear him should not have been missed. I was only sorry when he cut short our lesson because he wasn’t feeling so well.

  The rings on his fingers had dug into his hand from clenching his fist too tightly. He took them off.

  “Oh, and I will say this,” he said, gazing out at all of us. “Just because duels existed with swords––which wizards and witches also used to fight with––” He had to stop to breathe “––wands and swords just being extensions of the aether––does not mean that all of the formalities should be adhered to. You are in a fight for your lives, when you duel. Act like it. Cheat, if you have to. Living isn’t a test. It’s a survival strategy.”

  He left us there, smiling at his own wit.

  * * *

  The rest of the day passed as it usually did––with meals and gossip––and it also passed as it usually did not. I had begun trying to craft in my free time, something Lia thought was a very good idea. We practiced shooting pale smoke at each other. But nothing would happen except for coughing fits. “It’ll happen. I know that now,” said Lia. She winked at me.

  “I guess,” I said. I wasn’t so sure. Lux’s pep talk was like a band-aid. I needed a new one now.

  “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” said Lia, encouragingly.

  At dinner Ballard was with the rest of the werewolves. I saw him drinking from his moon flask, pretending like the rest of the Meadpalace didn’t exist. He, Paolo and Locke were sitting together. Ballard shook his head forcefully, like he didn’t want to hear anymore. Locke got up and left him, after which Paolo paid attention to his steak, and Ballard stared at a spot on the wall.

  Most of the vampires, by this time, had stopped coming to the Meadpalace. You saw them, time to time, in the hallways, but they rarely if ever engaged people in conversation, keeping mostly to themselves. The Wiccans were also distant. It was a good thing that each particular race had somewhere they could go, because the more I saw, the more it looked like we were getting tired of each other.

  I wondered if every Wiccan, werewolf and vampire was a social misfit, and then, when I thought about it, yeah, we kind of all were. At least we had that in common!

  I left Lia and went to go back to my dormitory. But before I could get there I was hailed by someone I had not seen in a while.

  It was Asher, and he was motioning to me like I should follow him. He looked guilty about something, almost as if he had done something wrong, or was about t
o, like he had carnivorous butterflies gnawing at him or something.

  I said, “Hey, what’s up, Asher?”

  “Come with me,” he said. Wouldn’t you know it, he led us straight to the space in the wall, I had seen him coming from once before. And there were the stuccoes with the sculptures of the warriors on them. Asher felt around, trying to find the finger hold which would allow him to open the secret passageway.

  “This is a cryptoporticus,” he said. “It leads to the columbarium.”

  Crypto-what? Columbarium-who?

  “Hurry! We’ll be safe there!” he said.

  I followed after Asher. Ballard’s and Gaven’s vouching for him wasn’t the only reason why I felt safe; I had come to trust Asher. He took a torch from a bracket on the wall and whispered secret words to it. A flame lit. The entrances closed and we were standing in a small tunnel which went on for as far as the eye could see.

  I saw various niches in the walls, Asher said were called loculi. They had urns tucked into them.

  “There are the ashes of the warriors that were killed when a great war was fought here, Halsey Rookmaaker,” he said, pointing them out. He wasn’t going to start that Halsey Rookmaaker nonsense again, was he?

  “It was their sacrifice that repaired originally relationships between shapeshifters and Immortals. Follow me.”

  He guided me as fast as he could through tunnel after tunnel––what looked like trenches. You could still see where the ghosts of soldiers had fought and died.

  “Where are we going, Asher?” I said.

  “There’s no time. Hurry!”

  I hurried after him as fast as I could. When we finally got there, he entered into a circular room, which was like the Pantheon, except buried deep underground. An oculus in the ceiling fed into daylight. The Columbarium––the vaulted tomb.

  Five funerary urns the size of living people stood in the corner, as well as other tombs. “The Five Fallen,” he said. “Five immortal vampires who died defending Rome. They rest now with the Dog Kings, in the royal columbarium.” He saw me looking up. “Above us is the fighting pit,” said Asher.

  “So this must’ve been what Gaven was talking about,” I said. “The tomb of his forebears. The Columbarium. But there are vampires?”

  I asked Asher about this. He said, “We––that is, shapeshifters and other Supernaturals––have not always hated each other... Much. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not the best of friends. But this Gatheringplace was selected to honor the past––in an attempt to try and prevent it from reoccurring.”

  In the center of the room was a large and ornate sarcophagus––the kind Egyptians used to bury their mummies in. It looked like a man and woman had been sculpted on the cover of it.

  “Rhea Silva,” he said. “She was said to possess all eight of the Wiccan Virtues. She found her true mate. They rest now, in peace, at an eternal banquet.”

  The man and woman looked peaceful, powerful, old.

  “Asher. I think I may be her,” I said. “This super witch they have all been waiting for. I have disturbing nightmares. And my mind––it can go places. When I asked Gaven about my visions, and the thing which is chasing me, he said it may have been ‘the Calling’, what werewolves feel before they change.”

  “I see,” said Asher. “You think you may be one of them, a Witch Shifter. It’s true. Such beings have existed. Before the change, as you call it, young warriors are possessed of their Animals... in their dreams. It is only natural.”

  “You mean, it will try and become one with me, that I may be a werewolf?” I said.

  Was that what the monster was that was chasing me? My Animal? Before I became a Shifter?

  “Who were your parents?” asked Asher. “Forgive me.” He could see that he had made a fur paw. “So you, like me, Halsey Rookmaaker, are outcast, too.... You know, this animal may be your Other, or it may not be, but I perceive incredible things for you––” He wanted to say my name again. “If you are this One, then this would be your Mecca. Rhea Silva was a true Level Nine Wiccan. She was not any of the Virtues. She was all of them. Beyond Fledged. She was also a Witch Shifter and she could See.”

  “You mean like you do? Is that why you are here? Did you see––something? Me? Did you see something with me?”

  “Camille asked me to come here,” said Asher. “She wrote to me about you. She said you deserved the right to look, even though her husband––and these were her words––worried that you might overreact, if you saw what was happening. Halsey needs to know, said Camille, for her own illumination, WHAT THESE THINGS ARE,” said Asher.

  “What what things are?” I said.

  Asher blinked.

  “Do you know, Miss Rookmaaker, who and what, the Dioscuri are?”

  “I have heard that name before,” I said. “But I do not know what they are.”

  “They are here with us––in Rome,” said Asher. “Even Prague is nervous. They have sent their emissaries, the two twins. Two very deadly men. Never speak to them.”

  “I haven’t. I won’t. But who are the Dioscurvy?”

  “Dioscuri.” Asher trailed his torch along the rounded walls of the werewolf tomb. I saw the figures battling in two dimensions. “The stuccoes tell the tale of the First War,” he said. “The Dioscourges, on the other hand, tell the tale of the Second.”

  I didn’t follow. “But what Second?” I said. “I thought there was only one war. The First War. You mean to say, there’s another?”

  “The Dioscuri have, indeed, begun to predict of late a second war,” said Asher.

  “You mean...”

  “They are Seers. The most powerful kind. But they are untrustworthy.”

  “But what are they?” I asked.

  Asher shook his head.

  “Not just what, who. They are... alive in some strange sense. Avoid them. And most importantly, the twins. They will be missing you soon. I would like to meet you here tomorrow night. We will throw our minds together, eh, and cast out, to see what we may see. I have certain things I wish to show you. Among them Lennox. And the Agonies.”

  * * *

  Time moved like sludge, when it used to flop out of the taps in my old apartment building. The clawfooted tub reminded me of Lennox. I wanted to wallow in memories of him but I couldn’t afford to right now. Lux was going to be showing me what dark aether looked like today, and I couldn’t miss it. I got out of my bed and got dressed. Lia was already at breakfast when I got there. I was piling my tray up with food––calf’s liver and sautéed onions––when I turned and saw Ballard. He had a Succo del Gatto in his hand. It was thanks to the werewolves no doubt that our menu had become, shall we say, more K-9-friendly. Ballard’s dog’s body looked tired, careworn. “I suppose I would shirk my responsibilities, too, if I thought I was special,” he said to one of the betas, whose name I didn’t remember. Ballard moved on as if he hadn’t seen me.

  I told Lia about it but she told me not to think about it.

  “It’s my brother’s misfortune that he considers himself the only important person in the world. We need to concentrate on us now. Otherwise, we’ll get left behind.”

  “So have you decided on your House, Lia?”

  “I dunno,” she said. She dug through her robes. I saw some of the same brochures I had received. And some other ones. “This one says they have an excellent library full of arcana, but I’ve always felt pulling your face out of a book to be more beneficial when it comes to deflecting a whammy or some other curse, don’t you? I don’t want to suffer the effects of the kibosh just because my eyes don’t work anymore because of all the books I’ve been reading, you know what I mean?”

  “I guess,” I said. “What about that one?”

  “Ravenseal,” she said, handing it to me.

  I flipped through it. It showed lots of pictures of Prague. And was that––?

  “The Districts of Magic,” said Lia.

  It was an alcove of the oldest Magical city.

&nbs
p; “Entirely magical population,” she said.

  It looked like a combination of algae-infested stone masonry, and dark forbidding alleyways. That was where the Vampire Hunters and other monsters lived. “And also,” said Lia, when I told her this, “it’s where the House of Houses resides. And I don’t mean Ravenseal.”

  I looked at her questioningly.

  “Honestly, you need to read more,” she said, which I thought was contradictory. “Ravenseal isn’t the be-all and end-all. They’re just a House. One of hundreds, maybe even thousands. It is this House,” she said, taking the brochure and flipping through it to one of the pages, and tapping the picture, “that is the Master House. The one beholden to none. They don’t recruit anyone.”

  I looked.

  “Apparently the twins are from it,” said Lia.

  A huge and ancient edifice soared above the rest of the Districts of Magic, there in Prague. Its golden dome flashed in the non-existent sun. The Master House.

  “Everybody wants to go there. Including Veruschka Ravenseal. Or so I’ve heard,” said Lia. “All the Mistresses are jealous of her, because apparently her time is coming; she’s going to be made a member. The Master House will select her; it’s apparently an opportunity that cannot be refused.”

  Lia petered out. “Is that where you want to go?” I asked her.

  But Lia had dropped her fork in her fegato alla Roma, and was trying to fish it out.

  “I can’t even eat like a werewolf anymore,” she said. “Where do I want to go? I want to go here. To Rome. I don’t want to go someplace else. This is my home, Halsey. Besides, I would miss Gaven too much.”

  Lia got this faraway look in her eyes––

  “We’re supposed to be married soon,” she said. “He asked, did I tell you? I can’t wait to go on our honeymoon....”