A Study in Sorcery: A Lord Darcy Novel

by Michael Kurland

  Father Adamsus smiled wryly. “How did you know I was here, Your Lordship?”

  “I deduced it.”

  “Really?” Father Adamsus was both curious and amused by the answer. “And just how did you deduce it?”

  “Simple, really.” Lord John was enjoying himself. “When I stopped by your apartment in the palace and found you gone, I noted that you had taken your heaviest cloak. It’s chilly out, but not that chilly simply for travel, particularly as the priestly changeover from winter woolen to spring cotton is still six weeks off in this parish. So clearly you planned to be outdoors for some time. I checked with the seneschal and learned that you’d left without leaving any word of your destination. Most uncharacteristic of you; obviously you wanted to be alone.”

  “Hmm, yes,” Father Adamsus agreed. “That’s very good, so far.”

  “Well. You wanted to be by yourself, no doubt to think about our—project—tomorrow, and you expected to be outside in a place where it might be colder than usual. There are a few good possibilities, but only one of them has a view of the temple of Huitsilopochtli. Quod erat demonstrandum.”

  Father Adamsus laughed, for the first time that day. “When I first met you in London, I remember you were a fresh young journeyman sorcerer with a burning ambition to become a Master Forensic Sorcerer like Master Sean O Lochlainn. Now that you have achieved that goal, it would seem that you’re planning to become a master of deduction as well, like Master Sean’s associate, Lord Darcy.”

  Lord John Quetzal laughed in turn. “Good heavens, Father, please don’t ever say that to Lord Darcy, or Master Sean either for that matter. I have a long way to go before I even begin to match Master Sean in his forensic skills. I wouldn’t want him to think I have pretensions of adequacy as a forensic sorcerer. And as for Lord Darcy, Heaven alone knows where he gets his miraculous deductive power. It certainly isn’t magic, at least none that I’ve ever been taught.”

  “Your secret is safe with me, Your Lordship. Now I’ll do a bit of deducing of my own. Something’s up, and it must be fairly troublesome. You’d not have disturbed me otherwise, knowing I wished for a bit of solitude.”

  “Indeed, Reverend Father. If you’ll forgive my interrupting you, I would like to see you before we retire tonight. I shall await you in my chambers. We’ve got problems. More problems.”

  “I’ll start back now,” Father Adamsus said.

  * * * *

  Lord John Quetzal slowly paced the floor of his apartment in the west wing of the Palace. It was not an expression of impatience, for master sorcerers tend not to indulge in unproductive emotions. He simply found that he thought better when he was moving, and at the moment he had a good deal of thinking to do.

  Having been raised in the surroundings of a ducal palace, and then having undergone most of his magical training in London—where the doings of King and Parliament were the lifeblood of society, both high and low—Lord John was resigned to the way politics permeated all activities above a certain level. Too, since the treaty signing was nothing if not political, one could expect more than the usual bureaucratic interference with one’s work.

  But why this? What earthly (or other, he thought wryly) purpose could be served by having a royal envoy standing around watching while he and Father Adamsus did their difficult and demanding work? The count was not a sorcerer; indeed he had no magical training at all. Further, he was not a sensitive. So—he couldn’t help, couldn’t really sense anything; he would just be in the way, and possibly in danger if there was anything nasty in the residual psychic forces up there. And there would be hardly anything for the count to see, and precious little that he would understand of what happened. Why was it necessary for him to be present? What did whoever was sending him think that he might see?

  Lord John paused for a moment, staring at himself in the huge gilt-frame mirror that took up half the space of one of the sitting room walls. He had already dressed for dinner, in the two-piece blue and silver garment that was the dress suit of the master sorcerer. The colors were a striking contrast to the dark reddish-brown of his face. Beneath the shock of black hair the almost-as-dark eyes contemplated their reflection without enthusiasm.

  * * * *

  There was, Lord John had to admit to himself, nothing really wrong with the Count de Maisvin. That went without saying, else the man would hardly have been an imperial envoy. To work directly for His Sovereign Majesty John IV was an honor, and a trust, given to few.

  True, de Maisvin did have a strange air about him, a sense of watchfulness, and yet of distance and remoteness—but with the responsibilities he had to bear, this was hardly surprising. Lord John had met him only briefly, at a reception earlier in the day, and his immediate impression of the count was of someone thoughtful, dedicated, and serious.

  Lord John stopped pacing.

  There was something wrong here. Something his subconscious was trying to tell him. But it was probably not about the count. He had no logical reason to suppose that de Maisvin would be any trouble at all tomorrow, not from his reading of the man. As for the presence of an outsider at a ritual, that had been a healthy part of Lord John’s conditions of training, for one rarely if ever has the luxury of solitude for ritual work while investigating a crime. It would be more of a problem for Father Adamsus, who could not afford to be distracted while performing the actual exorcism.

  But the count, as a King’s man, must be both highly intelligent and highly motivated; he should be amenable to reason. Especially when it was pointed out that what might be distracting to Father Adamsus could prove fatal to those around him. Between them tonight, he and Father Adamsus would make ritual provisions to reduce any chance of danger to the count—or themselves—limiting de Maisvin’s presence to a mere annoyance.

  So what is bothering me? Could it be—?

  There was a rapping at the open door, and Lord John looked up to see Father Adamsus.

  “You made excellent time, Father.”

  Father Adamsus shrugged off his heavy woolen cape and draped it over a chair near the fireplace. “The master of the guard was kind enough to lend me a horse. Had I used the carriage, with the condition the roads are in, I’d have arrived barely in time to leave again.”

  Lord John frowned. “Isn’t that road paved? I thought—”

  ”I keep forgetting you’ve not been here very long. Yes, the Great Way is paved, but it only extends from the north end of Saytchem to the Palace and into Nova Eboracum—or, as the locals call it, New Borkum—proper. Just south of town it turns into what is in the summer the dustiest road in the Empire, and at the moment a very shallow canal with a slight crusting of ice.”

  The Mechicain sorcerer laughed. “You sound like you’re in no better a mood that I am. We really don’t seem to be looking forward to our job tomorrow, do we?”

  Father Adamsus regarded him narrowly for a moment. “No,” he said after a pause, “we don’t. You, for your own private reasons, and I for mine.”

  “Father—”

  The priest held up a hand. “Understand; I don’t mean that critically at all. I know part of what’s been bothering you—you keep getting caught up in the fact that it was your own ancestors who built those pyramids, who created the atmosphere of evil it will be our job to disperse.”

  Lord John smiled ruefully. “You have me there, Father; that’s precisely what I was thinking. And who should know better than you?”

  “One hardly has to be a sensitive to see what’s on your mind, John. Let me see if I can’t provide a somewhat different viewpoint on it. Do you remember your First Proposition?”

  “I think so.” Lord John smiled. The Nine Propositions were the first things the fledgling sorcerer had to learn. “Magic is the art of causing change in accordance with the will.”

  “Indeed; and the important word for us now is will.” Not, you notice, nature. Magic has little interest in what you are, only in what you do. We do not choose—as far as we know—our situation of bir
th; we do have free will to make of that situation what we will.” Father Adamsus paused, struck by a memory. “One time, oh, it must have been a dozen years ago, it happened that I was in conversation with His Majesty—it was to do with the problem of the St. Arthur gargoyles, do you recall? No matter—anyway, I said something to him about how proud he must be to bear the Plantagenet name. He looked at me for a moment in a disappointed way and said, ‘I try not to be. I had no say in my being born with this name. If I do have pride—and I do, probably to a sinful degree—it is that, insofar as I can tell, I have been lucky in my advisors. But then, if I get to feeling smug, the row of Plantagenets stare down at me from the Palace wall, and I am reminded of what others with that name have done, and I am again humble. And then I pray that I may continue to do my best, and that I am judged by no greater standard than that I did my best. I would hope to do no less had I been born into a family of coopers or draymen.’”

  Lord John Quetzal stared into the glowing embers in the fireplace for several seconds. Presently he said, “The King is as wise as I am foolish.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Your Lordship. You’re certainly not the only man who has ever brooded on the eve of a difficult task. Not even the only man in this room.”

  This drew a smile without shadow from Lord John.

  “Now,” continued Father Adamsus as he poured himself a small glass of xerez, “what’s the rest of the trouble? Just what did I gallop through mud and rain to listen to?”

  * * * *

  “You’re right, of course,” he said several minutes later, after Lord John had told him of their Imperial observer. “The King, probably through His Grace the Duke, must have some reason for requesting de Maisvin’s presence; a reason that His Majesty doesn’t feel it necessary to burden us with. It’s just one of those things one has to contend with, but I share your misgivings. Like you, I don’t really foresee any great difficulties; we’ll be using fairly standard rituals all the way through. But—also like you—I am not entirely comfortable about our task, and the presence of Count de Maisvin is just one more thing to think about. We would be responsible if anything were to happen to him.”

  “That had occurred to me,” Lord John said. “Have you met the count?”

  “No,” said Father Adamsus. “I haven’t. And, uncharitable as it may sound, at the moment I don’t particularly want to. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The icy wind whipped across the bow of the small cutter; above Lord John’s head the new heavy canvas sails creaked in a random pattern of small whipcrack sounds.

  Against all odds, the dawn was bright and clear. More than that; the sun shone down with a brilliance almost unnatural, turning the choppy water of the bay into countless blinding mirrors. Lord John hugged the slick mahogany rail and found himself thinking about the weather.

  Any other time I’d be pleased if the rain stopped, especially when I had outdoor work to do.

  Then:

  Huitsilopochtli is a Sun god.

  It was silly; it was absurd. If it had been raining. Lord John thought, I’d have found some sort of omen in that. I’m going to have to pull myself together.

  He retreated toward the warmth of the small cabin. With his hand on the brass turnlatch, he stopped and looked at the commanding figure standing alone at the very front of the foredeck.

  Count Maximilian de Maisvin was of no more than average height, but he somehow gave the impression of being a tall man. It was perhaps partly in the ramrod-straight posture, but to a far greater degree it was sheer force of personality, a force which could be sensed even when, as now, de Maisvin was paying attention to naught but the approaching island.

  The count’s face was striking in appearance: deep-set dark eyes, a hawklike nose above a cruel mouth, a small, carefully tended black goatee. Most striking of all, however, was the blue-black mane of hair, far richer than Lord John’s own, which fell to his shoulders and which sat above the broad forehead in a pronounced widow’s peak.

  His clothes were of a severe, almost formal, cut—and they were all black—from the silk neckcloth to the polished boots. Three touches of silver offset the black: the Imperial insignia on the coat lapel, the massive finger-ring set with a huge black pearl, and the .40 caliber MacGregor revolver in the tooled pigskin holster at his hip.

  Lord John knew that the revolver was a special one; the engraved crest—the Lions of England quartering the Lilies of France—showed it to be a personal gift of His Majesty John IV. MacGregor & Sons only made the .40 caliber weapons for His Majesty to bestow as favors, and each bullet was hand-loaded in the company’s Selkirk factory.

  Lord Darcy, who also had such a weapon, had told Lord John that the King did not intend these gifts merely as presentation pieces, but as tools to be used. All the MacGregor skill went into crafting the weapons, which were dead-accurate man-stoppers. Those few who possessed them wore them proudly—and used them well.

  Lord John stepped inside the cabin. At a table sat Father Adamsus, warming his hands with a mug of steaming caffe. He looked up.

  “How’s our friend doing?”

  Lord John glanced out the forward porthole. “He seems as unhappy to be here as we are. He barely made it to the dock before we sailed, and since boarding he hasn’t said more than ten words.”

  Father Adamsus frowned. “He shows good sense. No one with a choice would be out here now. Did he tell you why he has come along?”

  “The duke commanded it. And de Maisvin is subject to the duke’s commands. But for no stronger motive than ducal anxiety, apparently. D’Arc is very concerned that all goes well with the various ceremonies, so I suppose he wants personal reports about everything, preferably from a disinterested party.”

  Father Adamsus grinned, surprising even himself. “At the moment, he looks very disinterested indeed.” After a pause, he continued, “How can he stay out there without a cloak? Doesn’t he feel the cold?”

  “He doesn’t seem to. But—” Lord John glanced again out the port, “—you can ask him yourself. Here he comes.”

  Count de Maisvin stepped inside and carefully latched the door behind him. He did not shake, nor shiver; for all the effect it seemed to have on him, the weather outside might have been that of high summer. Pouring himself a mug of caffe, he turned to face the priest and the sorcerer.

  “Sorry we didn’t have an opportunity for more than brief greetings at dockside,” he said. His voice was deep and resonant. “Of course I imagine we’ve all had a great deal on our minds.” He paused for a long moment and gazed at each man in turn with a curious, intent expression. “I do know what you’re thinking—not, I hasten to add, in a literal way; I’m not a sensitive, Father—and believe me, I will stay out of your way completely. When a magician knows what he’s doing, I am quite content to just stand there quietly and watch.”

  Lord John couldn’t resist the opening. “And when a magician doesn’t know what he’s doing?”

  “Then,” responded de Maisvin as he took a sip from the steaming mug, “I don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity.”

  * * * *

  The three men paused at the top of the long wooden staircase that led from the pier, and gazed at the pyramid before them.

  They were alone on the island. Father Adamsus had been prepared to insist that the captain and his crew of four stay aboard the cutter, but this had turned out to be unnecessary; the sailors had no intention whatever of setting foot on the island, and the captain had made it clear that the sooner the landing party’s task could be completed and departure could be made, the happier he would be.

  The gray-and-white stones of the pyramid shone brightly in the intense sunlight. For a structure five centuries old, subjected to the extremes of weather on New England’s Atlantic coast, it appeared remarkably undamaged. In fact, with the exception of a few cracked stones here and there, it might almost have been built yesterday. Lord John realized that he had been carrying in his
mind the image of a crumbling ruin, as the many pyramids he’d seen as a child had led him to expect. The weather conditions were certainly as severe here; perhaps the difference was in the northern granite. But it was unnerving; the pyramid looked new. It looked—ready to be used.

  Father Adamsus found that he too was upset, in a paradoxical way. Because he wasn’t.

  He had prepared his shielding ritual as soon as they had stepped from the ship, before he had even ventured up the wooden steps. Even with such a shield, the sensitive can detect the presence of Entities, of psychic vibrations; it is the ravaging emotional content of such impressions that is screened out. So Father Adamsus had been prepared, and now, as they reached the foot of the pyramid, he sensed—

  —nothing. Nothing at all.

  Oh, there was the avoidance spell, put on by Angevin sorcerers to keep the unwary off the pyramid for the past century, but that was a familiar sensation and had no overtones of evil, for no evil was intended.

  He tried to persuade himself to feel relieved about this development, about not having to deal with a psychic onslaught such as he had experienced at Tenochtitlan; but he could not. It was as strange as seeing someone stand in the sunlight and cast no shadow.

  Even de Maisvin seemed to be affected by the place, saying nothing, but watching the other two men with an expression of doubtful concern on his face.

  As they approached the stone steps the avoidance spell became stronger, which Father Adamsus found especially annoying, as he didn’t want to be there in the first place.

  Lord John placed a small brass brazier from his sorcerer’s bag on the first step and carefully set fire to the charcoal inside. It blazed up unnaturally fast, and then began glowing brightly. “This will take but a moment,” he said. “The spell is a simple one.” He poured some powders into his thurible and placed one of the glowing coals on top. As Lord John swung the thurible around his head, muttering some indistinct words to himself, it emitted green smoke from one side, and red from the other.

  Suddenly, after two sharp words that sounded like Latin—although they were unfamiliar to Father Adamsus—the smoke ceased, the air cleared, and Father Adamsus no longer felt any more than his natural aversion to climbing the pyramid.