The Last Days of Magic: A Novel

by Mark Tompkins

  Entering the chamber, Orsini spread his arms. “‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’”

  “So I have been recently reminded,” muttered Jordan, recalling his conversation with Najia that morning.

  “Every word that God utters contains power unimaginable to men. God’s words are gathered in these grimoires,” said Orsini, indicating the library shelves. “An angel’s true name has power over that angel, even a fallen angel, because God himself named them.” Orsini added another seal to his small wax tablet and tossed it onto the coals. An intense blue fire blossomed. “Which is very handy, as demons and angels can do all sorts of things for you if you force them to, like telling me who killed my men in Oslo.” Picking up the three books sitting on the table, Orsini tossed them onto the blue flame. Green, red, and gold sparks flew up the chimney.

  Jordan watched parchment pages curl, blacken, and begin to disintegrate.

  “There are only two original lines of true grimoires on this earth,” Orsini continued. “The closer a book is to one of these lines, the more power its words have.” He picked up a set of tongs, fished around in the fire, and pulled out one of the books. The cover boards were charred, but the pages were in perfect condition.

  “Ah. I thought so,” said Orsini. “This is the quickest method I have found to determine the authenticity of a grimoire. Words of true power do not burn.” He dropped the book back onto the table, sending a small cloud of ash floating into the air, then opened it and stroked a delicate page. “Such fine work. Virgin vellum made from the amniotic sac of an aborted calf fetus. This one is worth studying.

  “Come and sit. Let us have our lunch. Damn, I should have brought some wine.”

  “Perhaps you could turn some water into wine?” Jordan ventured.

  “But we have no water either. Oh, well. As I was saying, there are two original lines of grimoires. The most recent line originated from Solomon himself. Using the Ring, Solomon gained control of thirty-six demons and bound them into bronze vessels. He forced them to reveal their true names, tell him the evil they and their minions were responsible for, and teach him enchantments. All of this knowledge he recorded in his grimoire, called the Testament of Solomon.

  “It was Solomon who first used the term ‘exorcist,’ derived from the Greek exorkizein, meaning the ability to command and bind by oath. It is a delightful ability that I will use with my cache of demons to eliminate one final nagging issue before the English sail forth.”

  “And that would be?” asked Jordan.

  “You must leave me my surprises. Be assured it will be quite the unique event, and I am so looking forward to it.” Orsini clutched both fists in excitement. “Anyway, it is also from Solomon’s grimoire that the Church gets its directive to protect men from such knowledge, for in the end Solomon knew he was becoming corrupt and yet could not stop it. All he could do was write a warning.

  “Solomon’s son hid the grimoire away with the Ring, and so it passed from Graecus to Pope Fabian and into the protection of the Church. In fact, this book was the genesis of the VRS League. Unfortunately, Graecus made copies of portions of the material, which we are still trying to gather and destroy. Grimoires do seem to multiply like rabbits.

  “It is the role of the VRS League, and soon to be your role, Marshal, not only to battle Nephilim—there are merely a few of those battles left to fight—but also to protect men from knowledge that is too powerful for them. As for those already corrupted, we send them on to God’s judgment before they can corrupt others.”

  “The VRS seems to mainly hunt women these days,” said Jordan.

  “Ah, well. Much progress has been made, but it does seem that women have a strong tendency toward corruption. They are daughters of Eve after all. And you have killed witches.”

  “Only the one I witnessed with my own eyes practicing dark arts,” Jordan snapped back. “She was killing infants.”

  “I am sure you only did what you had to do, Marshal. Do not worry, we will find some appropriately dark witches for you to fight—perhaps the High Coven.”

  “What are you going to do about them? Your emissaries in Oslo weren’t exactly successful in forcing those two witches to meet with you. They strike me as formidable.”

  “The Grande Sorcière was too smart to attend a conclave with me. She knew I would have trapped her in Rome. I will think of something else, after I am finished with the Irish Nephilim. We will have to kill off those witches as well, if we are going to subdue the French Church. But let us return to King Solomon. My time is quite limited.

  “There is some indication that Solomon may have also read the Book of Raziel, the other line of true grimoires, the original line, older and more powerful as it is closer to the first words of God. Archangel Raphael, God’s general in this war, was frustrated at having to battle both demons and their Nephilim offspring, who were scurrying around everywhere causing mischief. So, six millennia before the birth of Christ, Raphael talked God into allowing him to enlist man’s help, at least with battling the Nephilim.

  “Raphael gave Enoch a grimoire, written by the Archangel Raziel, describing how to fight the Nephilim. Raziel, as you surely know, was the Archangel Keeper of Secrets. Raziel’s grimoire also contained plans for the Ark, which Enoch shared with his grandson Noah so his family could survive the Flood. Raphael said the Flood was coming to wipe out nine of every ten Nephilim. By the way, Enoch is the only man not to be corrupted by such knowledge, and God decided to take him up to heaven before the Flood, without the benefit of death first, to help administer his legions of angels.”

  “And what of the book that Enoch himself wrote?”

  “That is a very important book, almost a grimoire, but Enoch was careful not to record any of Raziel’s more powerful enchantments. Fortunately, Noah’s sons, Shem and Ham, preserved the Book of Raziel. Ham also wrote a book describing how to work Raziel’s enchantments.

  “For centuries it was thought that the books of Raziel and Ham were lost in the Great Flood; however, almost three hundred years ago, Herbert de Losinga, the first bishop of Norwich, discovered evidence in the second-century writings of Celsus that the grimoires had been hidden on the Ark and survived.”

  Jordan leaned across the table. “Can I see these books?”

  “We continue to seek them. What we do now know is that Moses studied them while training to be a magus in the house of Pharaoh Chephren, his adopted grandfather. Moses wrote ten books. The first five are included in our Bible, books of history and teaching. In addition to Genesis—which was derived from Jubilees—there was Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The next five are grimoires.”

  Jordan asked, “And the VRS has these books?”

  “Yes. The sixth and seventh books contain instruction for the spells Moses used to win the magic contest with the pharaoh’s sorcerers and the magic he worked during the subsequent exodus of the Jews. The eighth book explains how to conjure angels and subdue demons using their true ineffable names. The ninth and tenth books, sometimes called the Sword of Moses, contain lists of symbols corresponding to those names.”

  Orsini shook his head. “But just like Solomon, without the Church to watch over him too much knowledge corrupted Moses. He thought he could prove his power to the Jews by bringing water forth at the rock at Meribah using an enchantment of his own creation, instead of the one dictated by God. So God punished Moses by taking his life within sight of the promised land.”

  Orsini wiped his hands on his white surplice and stood dismissively, his lamb roll half eaten. “You should keep this in mind, Marshal. No man, no matter how strong a sorcerer he is, can avoid being corrupted by that much knowledge. He needs the True Church to watch over him, to protect him and pull him back from the brink when necessary.”

  Jordan rose and followed Orsini out.

  “When you return from Ireland, you will have access to all these grimoires, within the safety of the bosom of the Church.�
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  “Thank you, Your Holiness,” said Jordan. “You are as generous as you are persuasive.”

  Upon entering the guardroom, they were greeted by a guard holding a rope binding the hands of a young girl, whom Jordan estimated to be around sixteen. Manacles had worn raw and bleeding rings on her ankles, a gag stretched her mouth back, and her red-rimmed eyes were wide with fear.

  “What have we here?” asked Orsini.

  “The witch Catherine Simon, from Lugano,” said the guard. “I thought you might want to see her before I took her to Castel Sant’Angelo.”

  The girl shook her head violently, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Such a small, sweet thing,” said Orsini. “We will not need much wood to burn you, will we? Tell me, child, have you ever seen a witch die in the flames?”

  The girl began screaming, the sound muffled by her gag. The pungent smell of fresh urine filled the air.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” said Orsini, stroking her cheek. “Perhaps a mistake has been made. Let us have a quick test—almost painless, really. You see, a fully consecrated witch is bound to fornicate only with Satan. If a girl can still give herself voluntarily to lie with a cardinal of the Church, then perhaps she is not too far gone and can still be saved.”

  Sobbing, the girl collapsed onto her haunches.

  “Take her to my personal chamber,” said Orsini, handing a small silver soldo coin to the guard as he pulled the girl roughly to her feet. “And have my steward clean her up!” Orsini called as the girl was led away.

  Jordan’s chest was tight, his hand involuntarily gripping his sword hilt. “Benefits of the position?”

  “All for the glory of the Church.”

  “Has any woman, girl, escaped the fires through this . . . test?”

  “Not yet, but you never know, if she is enthusiastic enough. At least until they bring in someone prettier. Now I must attend to my work. You can find your way out, I am sure.”

  The guards, alerted by Jordan’s tense bearing, eyed him suspiciously as he watched Orsini walk away, humming.

  . . . . .

  Leaving Innocent’s fortress, Jordan strode back across St. Peter’s Square, pushing his way through the crowded market, his agitation barely contained. There is nothing I hate more than being forced into impotence, he thought. He felt he should have done something, anything, to help that girl, but surrounded by guards and exorcists, what was there to do? Breaking free of the stalls at the far end of the square, he felt an itch on the back of his scalp, as if he were being watched. He stopped and turned around. Rising to the left of the basilica was the obelisk. He could feel power radiating from it, the globe perched on its pointed top watching him like a gilded eye. Caligula’s obelisk.

  Long before a depraved emperor brought the obelisk to Rome, this solid piece of red granite stood in the holy Egyptian city of Heliopolis. It had been quarried on the Nile island of Elephantine while Moses was still deciphering the grimoire of Raziel. Jordan remembered the writings of Herodotus, the first Greek to investigate obelisks in an attempt to unravel their magic.

  The Egyptians had embraced the Nephilim as true Gods, which left them with a problem: how to worship Gods who walked the earth but who you did not actually want to show up in your palace or temple. Staring at Caligula’s obelisk, Jordan wondered what it was like to be one of the Nephilim in that age of the world, fathered by an angel who had abandoned heaven for earthly pleasures. Loping through the desert at night, what did they see when they gazed up at the stars, how much of the expanded consciousness of their divine fathers did they retain? Could they see past this physical world into other realms? Jordan knew what the Nephilim saw when they looked upon human settlements along the river Nile: they saw food and soft flesh to rape.

  Packs of jackal-headed Nephilim, rabid with hunger and lust, drove the Egyptian sorcerers to develop the obelisk. Charged with enchantments and fed with sacrificial blood, it repelled most magical beings. Herodotus had been particularly interested in the metal cap the Egyptian sorcerers placed on the obelisks to magnify their power, a metal called electrum. He never learned the exact formula, jealously guarded as it was, only that it was an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, with some other elements added.

  First-century Rome faced a problem similar to ancient Egypt’s. Rome’s festivals of debauchery and blood sports attracted European Nephilim as unwelcome guests. They moved into the maze of dark alleyways and warrens of sewers and tunnels that underlay the city. From there they crept up to plague slaves and nobles alike. With no other remedy available at that time, the emperors were forced to bear the vast expense of moving fifteen of the most powerful obelisks from Egypt to Rome to protect key areas.

  Caligula brought this one to Rome, the centerpiece of the obelisk polygon. Weighing 326 tons, it required the construction of the largest ship the world had ever seen in order to transport it, a ship so big it took three hundred slaves to row. The ship was later filled with rock, scuttled, and used as the foundation for the new harbor at Ostia.

  When the obelisk was hauled into Rome, Caligula replaced the electrum cap with a gilded globe filled with blood drained from the corpse of Drusilla, who had been his favorite sister of the three he took as incestuous lovers. Caligula then erected it in the center of his circus, where its power would continue to be fed by sacrificial blood, including—after Nero had renamed the circus to honor himself—that of the apostle Peter, who was crucified upside down at its base. Jordan imagined he could smell the blood still throbbing in the heart of this red stone, though perhaps it was not his imagination.

  When the Ring of Solomon was brought to Rome two centuries later, it proved more effective than the obelisks, and now all of them had either fallen or been pulled down, except for this one. Caligula’s obelisk had become too powerful for even the Roman Church to abandon. They continued to use it to protect St. Peter’s Basilica.

  Jordan turned his back on the obelisk and resumed his walk away from the Vatican. The Roman Church was repelling the wrong creatures, he thought. While fallen angels and their Nephilim offspring were kept at bay, human devils were rising up and seizing control. Human devils—the exorcists and their inquisitor offspring—who hungered for power and lusted after women. A lust that had darkened into festivals of torture and death.

  Anxious to return to Najia, Jordan quickened his pace.

  18

  The Isle of Man

  June 1394

  An Irish Viking longship slipped from the fog that hung like a curtain across the bay’s entrance. Fingers of white clung to the ropes and mast as if trying to pull the vessel back, then relented and were reabsorbed into the mist, which was beginning to glow in the morning sun.

  Patrick, standing on the prow, glanced over his shoulder, but the longship carrying the Colmcille contingent was still hidden. He nervously fingered the Blood Bell hanging in its holster on his belt. This trip was risky, and Patrick—despite the increasing animosity between the orders—would feel better with the Colmcille force by his side. The Colmcille longship had entered the fog at the same time, but it seemed to be slower to find the bay.

  Patrick looked out at Castletown, Isle of Man. Behind him he could hear the Vikings lowering the sail, relying on oars to reach the dock. He thought of his new wife, who had asked to accompany him; she had never left Ireland and was excited by the prospect. He had flatly refused, hardening himself to her rants and tears. There was too much danger. He did not trust the Roman Church.

  When an offer to negotiate a truce between the two churches arrived from the legate, his first instinct had been to dismiss it out of hand, but Colmcille had insisted that it was their duty to at least try to avoid a bloody conflict. Patrick requested an update from the Fomorian spies who were keeping an eye on the preparations of the English; the message back had said the armada would not be ready for at least another nine months. Still, he wouldn’t have seriously considered the offer had Colmcille not declared that he would meet with the Vati
can’s representatives—Patrick didn’t want to appear cowardly by not offering to go as well. So he had replied to the legate with his terms: the meeting had to take place at a neutral site, the Irish Church’s delegation would be armed, and he would bring the Blood Bell. When the Roman Church agreed, Patrick found himself surprised—he had hoped they would refuse.

  The Irish Church’s contingent consisted of twelve armed monks from each of the two orders, his blue-robed Order of Patrick and the brown-robed Order of Colmcille, along with Colmcille himself.

  Disembarking at the Castletown dock, Patrick was met by an old priest standing beside three small donkey carts. Bowing reverently, the priest said, “Welcome, Your Grace. I am the legate’s personal secretary, here to provide transport to Rushen Abbey.”

  Patrick looked back over the bay once again. Colmcille’s longship was just emerging from the fog. “Thank you, but we’ll wait for our Colmcille brothers.”

  Pointing at the carts, the secretary said, “The abbey here is quite humble. They barely have enough carts to transport your own brothers. I’ll bring them back to pick up the Colmcille brothers just about the time they land.”

  Patrick relented and climbed onto the front cart. His brothers, each with a short sword strapped over his robes, were barely able to squeeze into the carts for the three-mile ride northeast along a muddy track. Patrick allowed himself a brief smile when he heard small bells jingling on the donkey’s harness. They would have been blessed by the abbot to frighten away faeries and were probably completely ineffective, unlike the Blood Bell, which he touched once again to reassure himself that it was still attached to his belt.

  Arriving, they were shown into the great hall of the cloister. The dining tables and chairs were pushed back against the eighteen-foot-high stone walls supporting the wooden roof. Small windows set into the tops of the walls cast rays of mild light into the gloom. The monks’ footsteps echoed as they walked into the vast, empty space, and Patrick became increasingly uneasy.