The Book of Magic

by George R. R. Martin

  “I see,” Anatolie said. “And you’re hoping I can tell you where to find one of these now silent singers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But, Jack, you already know.”

  “What?”

  “That gentleman in your poker game. Why do you suppose he was wearing those cuff links?”

  Jesus, Jack thought, is she spying on me? But he knew it wasn’t like that. She just knew what she needed to know. He said, “So you’re telling me he got them in the Ibis Casino?”

  “Him? Of course not. Didn’t he say he bought them in Las Vegas? And that he didn’t know why he wore them to your game?”

  “Huh. So you’re saying he was a puppet.”

  “Exactly.” A “puppet” was a Non-Traveler who did some seemingly random action that in fact was really a message to someone who would understand it.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “I get it. The Ibis Casino is where I’ll find my Kallistocha. But what’s a head on a stick doing at the Ibis? Can’t exactly play cards or shoot dice.”

  Anatolie’s thick shoulders shrugged, a move that rippled through her body. “Who knows? Casinos have floor shows, don’t they?”

  Jack barked a laugh. “Right. The real question is, how do I get there? The last time it took a week to get an invitation. I don’t think Archie and the Djinn have that long.”

  “As I recall, the last time you were seeking to play Creation, yes?” Jack nodded. Creation was a card game played only in the Ibis Casino. If you played it right—and won—you could change reality. Jack had gone there to try to bring his daughter back from the Forest, maybe even bring Layla back to life. He’d left lucky to still have his three souls at harmony in his body.

  Anatolie went on, “And now you simply wish a rendezvous. Perhaps I can help. Do you mind going to the supply closet?”

  The supply closet was pretty much that, a door to a small space that probably once held a mop and bucket, and maybe a vacuum cleaner. Now it could house most anything—magical texts, artifacts from other worlds, messages from before Creation inscribed on a thin sheet that weighed more than the Earth but was held in a zero-gravity lock.

  Jack walked over and opened the door. And there it was, just on the other side of Anatolie’s tiny apartment: a wide, bright hall lit with miniature suns set on golden columns, a black-and-white floor that always made Jack feel like a chess piece, table after table of people—only a minority of them human—playing blackjack or poker, shooting dice, watching a small ball shaped and colored like the Earth spin around a roulette wheel that resembled the Milky Way. There were no slot machines. There were never any slot machines in the Ibis Casino. Jack had no idea why.

  He turned around, but of course there was no door, only more floor, more tables, more gamblers. But now, at the back, he saw the famous raised table, fenced off by a golden guardrail. That was where they played the Game. Creation. A dozen players were there, some human, some barely a shadow. Jack’s chest tightened. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to play again, to try one more time.

  “Mr. Shade!” a mild voice said. “How nice to see you again.” He turned and saw a cat-headed woman in a floor-length gold-and-green dress. “Have you come to play?”

  “No,” Jack said, though he could not resist another glance at the raised table, where a treelike figure threw down a hand in disgust, then slumped in his seat. “I’m looking for someone,” Jack said. “A Kallistocha. I was told I might find one here.”

  “Oh, what a pity. We do have someone. A tribal chief, in fact.” She leaned forward and whispered confidentially, “You can tell by the markings on the stick.” Louder, she said, “He had agreed to perform for us. We were very excited.”

  Jesus, Jack thought, Anatolie wasn’t joking.

  The woman said, “But I’m afraid he’s gone silent. I’m told they all have.”

  His voice tight, Jack asked, “Is he still here?”

  “I think so. At least no one has moved him from the stage. It would be disrespectful.”

  “Where?”

  She bristled a bit at his sharp tone, but pointed behind her to a large double doorway at the far end of the room. Not the direction of the Creation table, Jack saw. He was both relieved and disappointed that he would not have to walk past it.

  Voices called out to him as he walked across the room, but he paid no attention. The doors, when he got to them, did not look so imposing as they had from a distance. The twin arclike handles, silver on the left, gold on the right, had seemed shoulder height when he’d looked at them. Now they were heart-level. He gripped them together, took a breath, then pulled.

  Jack had wondered if he’d find himself on a cracked glacier, or maybe the Arabian Desert, that place they called “God’s Anvil” in the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Jack had never been there, but like many Travelers he’d seen the film about a dozen times.

  Instead he just saw a nightclub—polished floors, elegant place settings, bottles of champagne and brandy on each table—and no people (or other beings). At the far end rose a darkened stage. There was a golden set of curtains, but they were pulled back, and from what Jack could see, the stage itself was bare.

  He walked up to it anyway. It wasn’t until he got to the edge that he could spot anything, and even then, it was only when he climbed onstage and walked up to it that he could actually make it out. Just as everyone said, a head on a stick. It looked asleep, the overlarge eyes closed, the face motionless, the black hair in frozen waves down the side of the face. Even though it couldn’t move (did they have to carry it onstage?), there was something terrifying about it. The skin was a mix of colors—rust red, blue, yellow. Maybe that’s what Carolien had meant when she’d said, “Somewhere between you and me.” Only, they did not flow together, but seemed like pools of water that had gone sluggish. Jack thought of Carolien seeing a face like that come alive, and then hearing it sing—

  Jack remembered a story of a sculptor who sought the perfect inspiration. He was said to have found it and never touched stone again. Jack had never understood that story. Now he was sure the poor man had seen, and maybe heard, a Kallistocha. And yet, he thought, Carolien still paints.

  Jack wanted to turn and run, but he forced himself to say, “Great one. You who are the first. I am seeking help. Not for myself, but for the Djinn, whose very lives flow from your song. Why have you gone silent?” Nothing. “Has some great evil stolen your music?” Nothing. Anger filled Jack’s chest. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know what this is about for you, but the Djinn are dying. I want to help them. And that means helping you. Tell me how to help you.” Silence. “Shit,” Jack said, and turned to leave.

  He was nearly to the end of the stage when the voice came. “John Shade!” For a second Jack thought his bones would crack. He would have run for his life, but his legs wouldn’t work. And then grief filled him, for he realized the Kallistochoi were not silent by force, but by choice, for this was how they sounded with their songs taken from them. He made himself turn around.

  The huge eyes were open, staring at him. The voice said, “Who hates the captive more than the one never taken? Who hates the slave more than the one who stayed free?”

  Jack cried out and fell to the floor.

  3.

  When he stood up, Jack found himself in front of the hotel, right in the path of a young Asian woman walking with her white boyfriend. The woman just managed to swerve rather than knock Jack over. The boyfriend said, “Jesus, Jen. You almost knocked that guy down. What’s the matter with you?”

  “But he wasn’t there!”

  “Of course he was there. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “No! Mark, I’m telling you—”

  Mark took her arm. “Now you’re just embarrassing yourself. And me. Will you come on?”

  The woman was a Natural, of course
, one of those proto-Travelers who have no idea of their talent. As for Mark, well, he was just an asshole. Jack cast a glamour over both of them to forget anything had ever happened. Then he glammed Jen a second time, so that sometime soon she would find herself on Twelfth Street, in front of the store Books of Magic, and that she would go inside and talk to the owner, Mrs. Fenton. Maggie Fenton was a talent scout, someone who could size up a Natural in just a short conversation. If Jen was strong enough, and ready, Maggie would send her on.

  Jack went inside and up to his office. He was glad Miss Yao had not been in the lobby. He wasn’t much in the mood for conversation, at least not the everyday kind. Using the hotel phone, for some reason, rather than his cell, he called the offices of Suleiman International, and told the pleasant-sounding woman who answered, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Hakeem, please. Tell him it’s Jack Shade.” There were very few people whose name could bring the director of SI’s New York division for Djinn services to the phone, but Jack had helped Hakeem out years ago in a tricky situation with Jack’s mother-in-law. Jack had drawn on that connection when he’d originally borrowed Archie. He hoped it was still good.

  Hakeem certainly sounded friendly enough when he answered the phone. “Jack! It is good to talk to you.”

  “You too, sir. But to be honest, I really need to speak to—” He realized he didn’t know Archie’s true name. He finished “—the djinni you so kindly lent me a while ago.”

  “Ah,” Hakeem said. “You mean Archie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jack, you should know that I do not help you only as a favor. Quite the other way around, I should say. This—thing that has happened to the Kallistochoi and the Djinn poses a massive threat to our business. I will help in any way I can. Would you rather just speak with Archie or have him join you?”

  “If he could come here, that would be great. Probably the sooner, the better.”

  “Very good, Jack.” He hung up.

  Jack set down the phone. When he turned around, Archie was there. “Greetings, Effendi,” the djinni said.

  Jack said, “I thought you couldn’t do that anymore.”

  “Transport my physical form?”

  “Yes.”

  “I cannot, at least under my own power. Mr. Hakeem, however, can send me where he will.”

  “Good. Let’s sit down.”

  Archie seemed to hesitate, and Jack wondered if he’d said something rude, but the djinni joined him at the table.

  Archie said, “You have found something, Effendi?”

  “Well, I found a Kallistocha.”

  “Ah. That is impressive. And did it speak?”

  Jack winced at the memory. “Yes.”

  “Then did it tell you who, or what, has taken their songs?”

  “Not exactly,” Jack said. “More like a riddle. That’s why I asked for you. I was hoping you’d know the answer.”

  “Please,” the djinni said. Jack repeated the questions the Kallistocha had asked him. He didn’t know what to expect, maybe that Archie might ponder it and come up with a direction.

  Instead, the djinni stunned him by jerking back as if stung. “Aisha Qandisha!” he said. “Of course, of course. Lolla Layla, Lady Night.”

  Jack winced a moment at the use of his wife’s name, but of course he’d always known that “layla” was Arabic for “night.” To Archie he said, “Isn’t she that one who put all those men in the hospital? Sexual possession or something?”

  “Yes, yes, but she is much more than that. Aisha Qandisha is the oldest of all the Djinn. Oldest and most powerful. Some say that she carries within her the Original Flame, the fire used to create the Djinn.”

  “But if she’s a djinniyah, wouldn’t the destruction of the Djinn destroy her as well?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps she herself does not know. She may hope that a spark will remain in her after the rest of us have gone, and she cannot only come back when she releases the songs, but even create a new race of Djinn. Free of shame.”

  “What shame? Why does she hate you all enough to want to kill you, and maybe herself as well?”

  “Ah, Effendi, you know, of course, that Suleiman, son of David, enslaved the Djinn to create his temple. And then, many centuries later, the Prophet summoned the Djinn to the mountain, where he recited the Qur’an and demanded that we accept or reject it.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then know as well that Aisha Qandisha avoided both demands. She knew that Suleiman’s great weakness was beauty, and so she made herself ugly. She gave herself the arms and legs of a goat, then covered her face and body in layers of mud from the Atlas Mountains. And then, when the Messenger brought forth all the Djinn from the day, and all those from the night, she hid in the City of Perpetual Twilight.”

  Jack nodded. He’d been to Twilight Town once, carrying a message from Anatolie to the mayor. The mayor stood motionless before Jack for at least a minute while Jack recited what his teacher had asked him to say and then walked away. Afterward, Jack could not have said one word about that person, whether male or female, human or spirit, or anything else.

  Softly, Jack quoted the Kallistocha again. “Who hates the captive more than the one never taken? Who hates the slave more than the one who stayed free?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how do we stop her?”

  “I cannot say, Effendi.”

  “What if we summon her and then kill her? Will that release the songs?” Archie said nothing, which Jack suspected meant, “Please don’t ask me that.”

  He called Carolien. “Did you find a Kallistocha?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He told her what had happened, and when he said Archie had identified the enemy as Aisha Qandisha, she said, “How can she destroy the Djinn without hurting herself?”

  “Apparently she considers herself immune. Look, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Of course. What do you need?”

  “A way to summon her. Make her come to us. I want to do it here.”

  “Jack, is this wise?”

  “What choice do we have? I don’t think we can stop her without taking her on. And this is my home ground.”

  “What of damage to the hotel? To Miss Yao?”

  “I know, I know. But I can’t think of anywhere we’d be stronger. I’ve spent years warding the hotel, and this room in particular.”

  “Very good. I will be there as soon as I can.” She hung up. For Carolien a mission like this, even one so desperate, was always tinged with excitement. She loved the challenge, and especially the chance to discover something new. Jack didn’t feed on research the way Carolien did, but he had to admit the energy got to him. It was one of the things that bound them together.

  One look at Archie reminded Jack how deadly serious this was. The djinni sat very straight, head up, hands on his knees. He looked old, Jack thought—something that disturbed him more than he would have thought possible. Archie was still elegant, but his skin, his hair, and even his clothes appeared vaguely see-through. Beneath them, Jack could half feel the Holy Fire, dwindled now, like logs in a woodstove that glow with orange heat but no longer leap up in waves of flame. He said, “Look, Archie—you don’t have to stay for this. I know how hard it is for you. Maybe even dangerous.”

  Archie shook his head. “Thank you, Effendi, but I did not come only for myself. I represent all the Djinn. I would hope to help, or at least not hinder, but even if I do nothing, I must witness.”

  “Okay, then,” Jack said. He sat down. “We’ll wait together.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, but when he did so he saw the Kallistocha, face all twisted in the darkness, so he opened them again.

  The wait turned out longer than Jack would have liked. Carolien called back in just over an hour. “I maybe hav
e found something,” she said. “We will need supplies, but perhaps it is best to wait until I get there.”

  “Come quickly.”

  “Of course.” She hung up.

  Archie said, “Perhaps I could help—”

  Jack told him, “Your job is to keep going until we can restore the songs. We don’t want you expending any fire.”

  Archie nodded. “That is wise.” He added, “Perhaps we could try an experiment.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Will you please bring a glass of cold water?”

  “Sure.” He went and filled a glass from the bathroom. “Now what?”

  Archie held out his hands, palms up. “Now pour it, please, Effendi.” Jack poured out the water in a steady stream. When it touched the djinni, the water bubbled and hissed for a couple of seconds, then spilled onto the floor. Archie slumped slightly in his seat.

  Jack said, “Not what you were hoping for, I guess.”

  “At one time, that water would have turned to steam the moment it touched me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said. He was about to say they would fix it, but then he remembered Anatolie telling him never to make promises he didn’t know he could keep.

  Carolien arrived less than ten minutes later, still dressed in her multi-splattered painter’s smock, and carrying a tote bag from Trader Joe’s. Jack expected it to contain candle stubs, roots, jars of iron filings, oils, and other paraphernalia, but instead she just took out her own favorite magical tools—books, two of them, both clearly old, one a couple of inches thick, with uneven hand-set paper, the other no bigger than an A5 Leuchterm journal, black, with even, machine-set pages. Neither had a title. Jack wondered where she’d stolen them or what she’d had to do to get them. Apparently, Archie wondered as well, for he stared from the smaller book to Carolien and back again. “Mefendi,” he said, his voice suddenly harsh, “where did you find that?”

  She ignored him as she pointed to the larger book. “In here it tells of a very old Iranian working to see the Djinn. This is, of course, when they are in the room, but invisible. So. It would seem useless, since we indeed have a djinni present but he does not cloak himself. And I think we can trust that Aisha Qandisha does not simply lurk here without any of us sensing her.” She looked from Jack to Archie, who nodded.