Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  "Apprenticeship." Corbineau shrugged. "One is admitted to the Lodge as an Apprentice, and then you learn from others longer in the service. I've not been in but a year myself, an Admitted Apprentice. That's why my sash was white the other night."

  "And the colored sashes?" I asked, thinking of the blue one Lannes had worn, and the red one of Michel's.

  "They've taken a higher degree," Corbineau explained. "When you become a Journeyman, you are dedicated to the service of a particular patron, and you wear their colors. Which isn't to say that you don't work with or invoke anyone else, or that you can't stand any quarter, but you have a special relationship with your patron. You can still work with others, though, especially if you have an affinity for the work. The Marshal called Serapis the other night, and he's not a dedicant of Serapis."

  "Who is his patron?" I asked, though I thought I knew.

  "The Archangel Michael."

  Original Sin

  "I can't get through."

  I sat in the midst of the circle for the third time in a week, the candle on the table burning low before me. About me the gentlemen of the Lodge waited, their white robes glimmering in the candlelight. Wordlessly, Lannes reached around me to offer me a glass of water he had waiting. I took it, my hand shaking.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  I gulped the water and nodded. Three times I had done this, three times fled from the air elemental called into being over the Channel. Each time it got easier. Each time the return to my own body was smoother. I drank the water down, letting it ground me.

  "I can't get past it," I said. "This time I tried going southwest, far out to sea, but as soon as I turned north again and came in on the coast of Britain it was there. I must have been somewhere west of Portsmouth. It shows up as soon as I get a mile or so from shore."

  Reille cleared his throat. "It's been tied to the boundaries somehow. I don't think we can take this thing down without knowing how it was summoned."

  "I can't go through it," I said.

  "I don't imagine you can," Reille said.

  Subervie nodded. "The same thing happens to our ships. The winds are foul constantly. If we try to sail into this, we'll be blown straight back to Boulogne."

  "If we're lucky," Lannes said. "Remember, part of the Spanish Armada was wrecked off Scotland!"

  "We need to find out how it was summoned," Reille said. "Jean-Baptiste, any luck?"

  "Oddly enough there aren't many rare books about British folklore lying around Boulogne," Corbineau said testily. "In fact, there aren't any. The only thing about swans I've got is a nursery story about a princess turned into a swan in Ireland." He looked at Michel. "You need a scholar at La Sorbonne on this, not me."

  "We don't have time for that," Michel said. "That could take months."

  Lannes looked at Michel over my head. "Then you know what that means. Are you willing to try it?"

  Michel nodded, his face grave in the flickering light of the candles. "I don't see how else to do it quickly. If Noirtier thinks it's possible."

  Noirtier steepled his hands before his chin. "I think it's possible. Whether or not I can do it, and whether or not you are a good subject for this practice is unknown. But it is worth a try, if you are willing to risk it."

  "I am," Michel said.

  "What are you talking about?" I demanded. "What kind of risk? What are you going to do to Michel?"

  Noirtier looked vaguely surprised. "An experiment, Madame, which may give us some answers. Marshal Ney has said that he has vague memories of a past life during the time of the Spanish Armada, a life in which, if he is not mistaken, he may have been the Earl of Leicester."

  I met Michel's eyes. It was I who had named him thus, who had given form to the memories.

  "Your pardon, but most of us have no idea who that is," Corbineau said.

  "Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was Queen Elizabeth's favorite for thirty years, and was Captain-General of the Queen's Armies at the time of the Spanish Armada," Noirtier said. "He was also a student of Dr. John Dee, the most noted alchemist and magician of his time. Whatever working was done against the Armada, it is indisputable that Robert Dudley would have known the innermost secrets of it. If it is true that Marshal Ney was indeed Robert Dudley in times gone by, he already knows the things we seek. It's only a matter of finding those memories in his mind."

  "And how do you propose to do that?" I demanded. "It is not as though past memories lie near the surface, and finding them at all is very rare. You are talking about very complicated things too, not just someone's name or a flicker of memory."

  "That is the challenge," Noirtier acknowledged. "However, a colleague of mine in Paris, Dr. Franz Mesmer, has produced some amazing results with a technique of his."

  Subervie stirred. "The man who was thrown out of Vienna for bizarre experiments with animal magnetism?"

  "Dr. Mesmer is a scholar whose work is not yet fully appreciated," Noirtier said stiffly.

  "Is this safe?" I asked hotly.

  Michel raised a hand as though he meant to touch me, then dropped it. "No, Elza. It's not safe. Noirtier has never done this before, and I have no idea what will happen. But it must be tried. If I do know the information we seek, it will save us months of work."

  "You're going to let him experiment with your mind," I said flatly.

  "Yes."

  "Do you have a better idea, Madame?" Noirtier asked. "You can't get through their air elemental, and we do not know how it was called. If the Marshal can remember it, then we can order our counterattack."

  "And if it goes wrong?"

  "Elza, how wrong can it go?" Michel said, his eyes on mine. "There's nothing I'm afraid of inside my own mind." I looked in his eyes and knew that was a lie. "I need to do this."

  I threw my hands up. "I have nothing to say about this," I said.

  "Then move back by Subervie," Michel said. "Corbineau, can you cut a gate and go get a blanket?"

  I waited while they went through the ritual of opening a gate in the circle with a sword, and stood while everyone rearranged things, a pallet of two blankets on the floor for Michel to lie on in the center instead of my scrying table. Subervie shifted into Michel's place in the circle at the northward quarter, and I into where Subervie had been, between him and Dr. Duplessis. Michel lay down on the pallet, his head to the east near me, and his feet almost in Lannes' lap at west.

  "I will need quiet for the first part of this," Noirtier said. "But after a while he will not hear you. Also, it would be helpful for someone to take notes."

  There was another stir while Subervie cut a gate for Corbineau to go out for paper and ink.

  I looked at Michel and he looked at me. His mouth twitched. "Now who's telling who what they can do?" he said softly. "You are as bad as I am."

  I shook my head. "Michel, be careful," I said. I glanced around at everyone still busy. "I don't see anyone saying you need to take your clothes off!"

  "I don't think I need to be naked to find my own mind," he said.

  "Quiet please!" Noirtier said, and gradually everyone settled back into their own places, with Corbineau designated as scribe. Noirtier lifted the candle in its base, now burned down to less than a hand's width.

  Michel looked up at it as it cast strange shadows across his face as Noirtier moved it, his blue eyes very bright. It came to me that perhaps this scared him as much as the scrying had me.

  I reached out and touched his shoulder with my hand. "It will be well," I whispered. "I'm here."

  "Focus on the candle flame," Noirtier instructed. "I will begin to make passes with it, and you must follow it with your eyes. Focus on the flame and nothing else. Watch how it burns, and let it fill your mind." As he began to speak, he moved the candle slowly back and forth before Michel's gaze, left and right, back and forth. "Focus on the flame. Let it fill you. See how it burns, and watch it."

  It seemed to me that the flame burned more brightly, that the shadows danced like waves acr
oss the room, brighter and brighter as it filled my gaze.

  "See nothing but the candle. Watch the flame. See how it burns, and focus on it with your mind. Let the flame fill you."

  Back and forward again, the movement of light and fire. Back and again, Noirtier's voice cool and calm, just at the edge of hearing. Back and again. The light flickered off Michel's face, changing and shifting.

  "There is nothing but the flame and the light." His eyes flickered. "You can close your eyes. You can still see the flame on the back of your eyelids, still see the light surrounding you as you float, light and soft as a dream amid the flame."

  I swayed and caught myself on my hands, glancing at the dark around me in startlement.

  Subervie squeezed my hand. "All right?" he mouthed.

  I nodded. It was easy, whatever this was. If this were a spell it was one that was so easy to fall into. Looking around the circle, I could see that Lannes was as entranced as I had been, Reille's eyes huge and dark, drifting closed. Corbineau, however, was doodling on the edge of his paper. That was oddly reassuring.

  I looked back at Michel, the rise and fall of his chest with his breathing even and slow, as though he slept. It seemed that this went on and on, oddly repetitious, fire and flame and the same words again and again. It might have been a quarter hour that we sat thus. It might have been half the night.

  There was a pattern to the passes the candle made across Michel's body, from his right wrist to his left shoulder to his right shoulder, from his right shoulder to his left wrist to the crown of his head to his right wrist. I caught my breath.

  Reille's eyes were open, and he leaned closer to whisper, "It's an invoking pentagram. Don't worry. It's nothing bad."

  If that was supposed to be reassuring it wasn't, but Noirtier did not hush us, so intent on Michel was he. Michel seemed oblivious. I would have thought he slept deeply, so still was he, the light dancing off his face. For a moment I thought I saw gold coins resting on his eyelids, heavy tetradrachmas with a king wearing rams' horns on his brow….

  "You are standing at the top of a flight of stairs," Noirtier said, and I jumped. After so many repetitions I had almost forgotten him, let his voice become part of the flame and movement. "A flight of stairs spiraling down into the past, into your past. Are you ready to walk down them?"

  Michel's lips moved laboriously, as though sunk in some illness. "Yes," he whispered, a thread of sound.

  "Then begin walking down the steps. And as you walk, you will see many doors that open onto the stairs. Each door represents a life that you have lived, a past that has been yours. Do you see the doors?"

  Again the whisper. "Yes."

  "Go down the stairs," Noirtier suggested. "Go down and down the spirals, past the doors, until you come to the one that conceals behind it the moment where begins the problem foremost in your mind. When you reach that door, stop."

  For a long moment nothing happened. I wondered what spirals Michel was walking in his mind, long counterclockwise stairs deep into the heart of himself. I could almost see the cressets along the walls, the dark stone, almost see them as though I walked with him into the dark.

  "I am there," he said, and his voice sounded a little stronger, though his eyes did not move beneath their lids.

  "Can you open the door?" Noirtier asked.

  "Yes."

  "Then pass through."

  His face changed. I knew no other way to describe it. While his features were the same that I had always known, the set of his lips, the way he held his chin, the lines about his eyes all changed. Younger, yes, with a different way of holding himself, a different expression….

  I had hardly begun to catalog it when Noirtier spoke. "Where are you?"

  "At a wedding." His voice was different too, lighter, the words spoken a little slower.

  Corbineau scratched madly on paper with his quill.

  "Whose wedding? What do you see?" Noirtier prompted.

  His eyes flickered beneath his lids, as though Michel were looking about at a scene only he could see. "Hanging lamps. Tables. Food on the tables, servants going around with wine. It's the wedding banquet."

  Lannes and Noirtier exchanged glances and Lannes shrugged as if to say he had no idea.

  "More tables. Cups. There's a musician."

  Hanging lamps? I mouthed at Lannes. I didn't think that Tudor England used hanging lamps, though I was no expert on such things.

  "Incense smoke everywhere. The tumblers are coming in. They're mixing more wine in the krater. No more water!" he called out, as though directing a servant.

  Incense? Krater? Corbineau was writing away. Reille looked up like a hunting dog on a scent.

  "No more water! Give it to me neat, man!" He stirred a bit as though reaching for something, his voice slurring a bit.

  "Is he drunk?" Subervie whispered. "He sounds drunk…."

  "He's not in Elizabethan England," Reille whispered back.

  "Fill it all the way! That's it!"

  "What do you see?" Noirtier asked. "Who is around you? What are you doing?"

  For a long moment he said nothing, though his eyes continued to move.

  "Where are you?" Noirtier asked. He was beginning to sound a little rattled.

  "Outside," Michel said. His voice was softer now. "Outside. I'm walking along the wall and going out on the overlook. It's night and the moon is reflected in the river at the bottom of the cliff. I can see it making a path across the water. I'm climbing out on the rocks. It feels like halfway between water and stars."

  A chill ran down my back. I could see it in my mind's eye, the river like a silver snake through the gorge beneath, the fires behind me sending up sparks to heaven from the wedding feast, the drums and wild notes of flutes on the breeze, ecstatic and Dionysian.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Sitting. Just sitting and drinking. Watching the sky." His voice trailed off.

  I could see him there on the edge of the precipice, the night breeze stirring his long red hair….

  Perhaps in some other world, Noirtier and Lannes were whispering furiously, Reille leaning in. "Are you the only one who knows any damned history?" Lannes hissed to Reille.

  "This is not the Tudor period," Reille hissed back. "I don't know what you've got but it's not the right thing."

  "I asked for the roots of the problem uppermost in his mind," Noirtier replied hotly. "Dr. Mesmer said never to specify a date or a person's name."

  "Your hair smells like incense from the feast," Michel whispered, and I knew that tone, the softest tone he took with me after, when we lay replete in each others’ arms. "Fourteen years, my friend. Since I was a boy. The gods know I have never wanted it to be more difficult than it had to be."

  "Oh love," I whispered, wondering what he saw, what moved his face to that tender expression. I had seen it before.

  "Black hair like a raven's wing, smelling of myrrh and mystery," Michel said softly. "Those eyes that see too much…. You are always temptation, a beautiful thing unknowable and within reach, seeming simple and yet labyrinthine enough to lose myself in forever…."

  "Well, this isn't it," Reille hissed at Noirtier. "You've got some assignation with a black-haired lady a thousand years earlier!"

  Not a lady, I thought. Not hardly. I swallowed hard.

  Noirtier cleared his throat. "I want you to step away from the scene and go back out the door. Can you do that?"

  It was almost painful to watch that expression fade from his face, to see his face relax into familiar lines. "Yes."

  Noirtier looked at Reille, who made scissor motions with his fingers as though walking upstairs. "I want you to go up the stairs. Go up until you find the summer of 1588, the summer of the Armada. Find the door that leads there."

  "All right." His voice was level and timbreless. For a long moment he was silent before he spoke again. "I have the door."

  This time I was prepared for the change when he stepped through. His chin rose, the set of his should
ers changing, his brows rising as though in pleasure and astonishment.

  "Where are you?" Noirtier asked.

  "On the Field of Tilbury," he said, and his voice was deeper, more resonant, older.

  Reille nodded sharply and encouragingly.

  Noirtier looked at him. "Go on," he whispered. "He won't notice a change in questioner."

  Reille leaned forward. "What do you see?"

  "My men," he said, and there was a pride in his voice I had heard before. "All the Queen's men. We stand united as Englishmen this day, with no division of shire or party between us."

  "And the Queen?" Reille asked.

  "She is ahead of me on her horse, a steel cuirass about her and ropes of pearls in her hair. Not the Son of Venus, but Venus herself, Gloriana of the Waves!"

  Again a chill ran down my spine, the magic in his words, repeated as she spoke in memory, "Therefore I am come among you as you see at this time, not for my pleasure or sport, but being resolved in the midst and heat of battle to live and die among you all…." Michel's mouth quirked, as though he spoke to a friend at hand, "Has ever a man served such a queen? Ever, since the world was made?"

  Reille frowned, as though working out a mathematical equation in his head. "My Lord of Leicester, do you know how the fleet of Spain was routed by the wind not a fortnight ago, preventing their first landing?"

  He moved, and I thought if his eyes had been open they would have been keen and penetrating. "Yes."

  "I am not asking you to tell me," Reille said quickly. "I am asking you to fix those facts in your mind, to recall exactly what you know of how it was done, in the most minute detail. And when you wake, you will recall those facts exactly. You will know them waking precisely as you do dreaming. Is that clear?"

  "Yes," he said.

  "Then fix them in your mind." Reille sat back, looking at Noirtier, who spread his hands. "It's the old trick of asking the genie for more wishes," Reille whispered.

  "That's usually not allowed," I said with a smile.

  "We'll see if it is." Reille smiled back.

  Noirtier took it up again. "If you have fixed those memories in your mind, then pass back out through the door."