There were forty or so of them, as Thunstone estimated. Most of them were young women, but here and there stood men. One of these was the giant who had played Hume in the first scene at the theater that night. He still wore his priest’s cassock, but his stage makeup had been wiped off. He bulked huge there, a full head taller than the girls on either side of him. The drum thudded, thudded.
Other music joined in, strange wailing music. The man beside the drummer played a fiddle, the woman blew on some sort of flute. As these instruments blended into their harmony, a figure moved out of the shadows behind the throne and into view. It was a female figure; it was Grizel Fian, in the low-cut gown of silvery cloth she had worn on the stage. The music fell silent.
“Awake, strong Holaha!” cried Grizel Fian in a voice like a bugle.
“Holaha!” repeated the two ranks of listeners.
“Powerful Eabon!” repeated Grizel Fian. “Athe, Stoch, Sada, Erohye!”
Again the chorus repeated the names. Those were names that Thunstone knew, names he had heard invoked by his enemies in the past. The lamps glittered and blinked, seemed to cast a gory light, A sort of dimness, like gray fog, crept in the great chamber. The air seemed heavy. Thunstone clutched his sword cane closely, felt a quiver from its handle. The silver blade within the cane was aware of where it was. It responded. It made itself ready.
“NOW!” blared Grizel Fian at the top of her ringing voice. “The time is now—the past is gone, it is not! The future has not come, it is not! NOW, NOW, is our moment.”
“NOW!” her hearers fairly bellowed in response.
“Rejoice, rejoice,” Grizel Fian cried to them. “We seek and worship the one true wisdom, given us by the great ruler on earth, as he was in heaven!”
“AMIN!” chorused the listeners.
As he was in heaven, Thunstone repeated to himself. Lucifer, son of the morning, had ruled in heaven, had been cast down from heaven. Lucifer was the god these people worshiped.
Thunstone, cautiously peering from the folds that hid him, saw those listeners sway and writhe where they stood. Grizel Fian had caught them up into the wild show she was giving them. Again her voice, even more loud and commanding:
“Here, here, in the dark away from unbelievers, we are shone upon with the light of wisdom!”
And light sprang out, greater, more glaring light than the flickering lamps could give. An impressive trick, if indeed it was a trick, Grizel Fian gestured widely with both bare arms,
“Wine now, to pledge one to another, drink!”
From somewhere appeared two scurrying girls, their loose dark hair tossing snakily, their bodies hidden only by little scraps of cloth. Each carried a brown jug in one hand, a bundle of goblets in the other. Swiftly they passed the goblets out, swiftly they splashed wine into them, and Grizel Fian’s followers drank greedily, with wordless cries of relish. Grizel chattered out something, words that sounded like a burlesque of the communion service. At last:
“Dance now!” she commanded them, her arms lifted again. The air was heavy; it seemed to hold cloudy mist that made the lights of the lamps dance.
“Dance now!” she called again, and Thunstone saw the listeners fairly ripping off their clothes, the robes they wore, the shirts and jeans they wore. Their naked bodies glistened weirdly. They moved toward the center of the floor and formed a new arrangement of themselves. Around the pentacle ranged a circle of them, two by two. All the men were in that circle, each with a girl for a partner. Unkempt hair tossed; bodies quivered. Around this circle formed another, a wider one. The music of drum and flute and fiddle rose again. Insinuatingly minor. The two circles began to dance.
“Haa, haa!” cried a girl.
“Sabbat, sabbat!” responded a man’s deep grumble.
“Dance here, dance there!” cried Grizel Fian.
The paired dancers of the inner circle trod a measure, turning their backs to each other. The outer dancers paced more slowly, around and around to the left—counterclockwise, the classic widdershins of dancing witches. The couples laughed and jabbered incoherently. As they danced, the men fondled the naked bodies of their partners. Thunstone saw the giant who had played Hume, wearing only a pair of big, clumsy-looking shoes. His mighty chest and arms were matted with tangled brown hair. He picked up his girl and almost fluttered her in the air above him. His muscles flexed and swelled—plainly he spent hours at work with weights. Effortlessly he tossed the girl high in the air. She shrieked, from startled terror or crazy joy. His bearded face grinned as he caught her, put her on her feet again, and danced on with her, not missing a step.
“Now he comes among us!” Grizel Fian shouted. “He, the advocate, the ambassador of our lord in the lowest!”
As she spoke, she caught the top of her silver dress with both hands and dragged it down below her waist, stepped out of it, and flung it to the floor. She stood revealed, palely shimmering in the misty light. She wore only what seemed like the skimpiest of bikini panties, sewn all over with jewels, red and green and yellow and glittering white. Standing with arms lifted, she flaunted her full breasts as the giant in the throng flaunted his hairy muscles. Seldom, Thunstone realized, had he seen such a fine figure of a woman, or one so blatantly, vainly displayed.
“Are we all present?” she cried.
“Not Thief of Heaven, he hasn’t come,” replied the girl with red hair. “He wasn’t at the theater, he isn’t here.”
“His excuse for absence had better be a good one,” declared Grizel Fian bleakly. “If he has disobeyed a command, we have no use for disobedience, for any kind of failure. But nevertheless—”
A pause. Thief of Heaven, Thunstone remembered, was Exum Layton’s coven name. All gazed at Grizel Fian. Well they might—she postured like a star of a burlesque show.
“He comes!” she cried again, and dropped to her knees and bowed toward the throne. Silence in the misty hall.
Somebody, something was descending those shadowed stairs behind. A burly figure emerged into the clouded light. It wore a purple robe that hung to the floor, and on its head was set a pair of curved horns, like the shape of a murky crescent moon. But Thunstone instantly recognized Rowley Thorne,
“Here,” rumbled Thome. “Here we deal with our enemy. He mustn’t last out this night.”
“Amin,” shouted the big man, and “Amin, amin,” echoed the others. Their voices echoed in the great chamber. They had gathered in a huddled throng in their nakedness.
Grizel Fian had risen to her feet again. She lifted her bare arms. “Hear the sentence,” her voice rang out. “Hear the manner of execution.”
“Amin!”
“Bring out the image,” Thome was ordering, and Grizel darted out of sight behind the throne. She was back in a moment. Across her ivory shoulder she seemed to bear a great, limp body in dark trousers and jacket. This she flung down at Thome’s feet. It lay face up, a dummy that seemed made of pillows dressed in clothes. The pallid face bore a painted black mustache, and a tangle of black yam showed for hair. It sprawled on the floor; it looked limp and helpless there. All the naked watchers stared. But none of them seemed so naked as Grizel Fian. She postured. She knew what she was doing.
On sandaled feet Thome paced to the throne and sat down upon it.
“Our enemy’s time is come,” he rumbled.
“Amin, amin,” agreed the watchers. Their voices echoed back and forth from walls and ceiling.
Grizel Fian had risen to her feet again. She flung up her arms. “The altar, the altar,” she chanted. “Set the altar.”
Half a dozen of the group dashed away behind the throne and came back with two stout wooden trestles and a dark rectangle of some sort of stone, the size of a door. They set the trestles before the throne, clear of the prone dummy, and hoisted the slab upon it. Thome pointed his finger at Grizel Fian, who came and lay upon the makeshift altar, face up. Her body glimmered. Thome rose and came forward. Stooping, he kissed her bare belly, then he moved a foot to trace a
cross on the floor.
Then this was going to be the mass of Saint Secaire. Many had wondered who Saint Secaire was. Thunstone had read, in an obscure notation to a book about diabolism, that some identified him with Saint Caesarius of Arles, who in the fifth century had been a stem enough enemy to devil worshipers. At any rate, the mass that bore his name was a singularly blasphemous one. And here it was to be performed.
Thome stood before the altar and the supine body of Grizel Fian and mouthed some sort of ritual, hard to understand. He waved his hands, and the onlookers began to recite in unison:
“Ever and forever, glory the and power and . . .”
The Lord’s Prayer, recited backward. As Father Bundren had said, these ceremonies were mockeries of orthodox masses. At last Thome stepped away from the improvised altar and motioned to Grizel Fian, who rose quickly and moved to a place beside the throne.
“And now to our enemy,’’ proclaimed Thome.
Grizel Fian flung up her arms again. She writhed and quivered.
“Hear the sentence,” she chanted. “Hear what his fate will be.”
“Amin!” they all responded,
“The image to the altar,” commanded Thome, and Grizel stooped, lifted the dummy, and flung it upon the altar slab where she had lain. It slumped there, face up.
“The likeness of our enemy,” growled Thome. “John Thunstone. Deal with him, Grizel, you have the right, you have the method.”
“He will die,” she said. “His allies, that priest-creature, that Indian savage, can read the message of his finish, will flee in terror. The other one, the smirking Japanese pedant—he seems to have retreated already, he must have seen what the future holds here.”
That meant Shimada. If she was right, if Shimada had fled, then Shimada was not on her side. But where had he gone?
“Amin!” again.
“But Thunstone,” cried Grizel Fian, “he who is so certain of his strength, who rests tonight in his room yonder, he is doomed.”
“Amin!”
The music began again, drum and violin and flute. Grizel darted back behind the throne, returned with a spear in each hand. The hafts of the spears were as shiny black as charcoal. Their heads gleamed redly, like copper. Stooping beside the altar with the sprawled effigy, she laid one spear on the floor. Its head pointed past the throne where Thome sat. She stooped lower, as though to sight, and moved the spear a trifle. Then she straightened again, the other spear in her right hand.
“There,” she said, “we point our spell to where he lies. And the midnight hour comes when his fate will close on him.”
She faced the gathering and lifted the spear to the full length of her arm. She chanted, naming names Thunstone knew from the past:
“Haade . . . Mikaded . . . Rakeben . . . Rika . . . Ritalica . . . Taarith . . . Modeca . . . Rabert . . . Tuth . . . Tumeh . . .”
And high over her head she flourished the spear. Its copper point shimmered in the lamplight. Her whole body waved like a flag.
“I have made my wish before,” she intoned. “I make it now, and there never was a day in which my wish was not granted.”
“No use in striking that dummy!” Thunstone cried at the top of his voice.
Every head turned toward him. He came out from where he hid in the drapery and strode swiftly into view, his silver blade drawn.
“It’s not going to work,” he shouted. “You haven’t pointed your curse to me in the right place. Here I am, and I’m come to stop you.”
IX
Thunstone had stunned them, every one of them, by his sudden rushing appearance. They stood like uncouth statues, flat-footed, with goggling eyes and wide-open mouths as he came charging across the floor, across the gaudy pentagram. In his right hand he poised his unsheathed silver blade with its prayer inscription, while in his left he carried the sheath of the cane. Naked bodies, male and female, sagged out of his way to the left and the right. Even the hairy giant who had played Hume lurched clear of him. Perhaps they thought he was part of the ritual Thome and Grizel Fian were creating.
At a dead run he went among them and through them to where Thome sat staring in his strange regalia, to the altar where the slack effigy lay limp, to where Grizel Fian stood and shakily poised her copper-headed spear to strike downward.
With a powerful, whirling motion of his arm, Thunstone circled his silver point around that crude dummy of himself. He felt a tingle in his right hand as he did so; he heard a singing whine as of a plucked banjo string.
“Now go ahead,” he grinned at Grizel Fian. “Stab at it.”
Her eyes flamed at him. Her lips writhed apart to show him her clenched teeth. Her naked body flexed itself quiveringly. With all the strength of her arms she darted her point at the effigy.
A frantic, quivering rattle of sound, and the spear’s shaft shattered in her hand at midstroke. The copper head skipped and sparkled across the floor. Grizel Fian stared at the splintered end of the shaft in her hand, then she hurled it at Thunstone with deadly intent. He batted it away with the shank of the cane in his left hand. It flew clear of him, to clap and clatter on the pale paving.
“Too bad,” he mocked her at the top of his voice. “Too bad, isn’t it?” he threw at Rowley Thorne, who still had not moved from where he sat and stared mutely. “Things aren’t turning out the way you planned, are they? You have to have helpless targets. Let’s see what I can do here for a change. I’m not helpless at all.”
He made a sudden slash at the grotesque dummy of himself. The cloth of its dark jacket ripped and some sort of cottony stuffing leaped out of the pillow inside. The shape stirred where it slumped. Thunstone shoved at the stone slab with his elbow, shoved powerfully. The slab tipped off the trestles and spilled the dummy to the floor. It fell in an awkward heap. He laughed aloud at everyone in the chamber.
“No harm to me, you see?” he mocked. “No harm whatever. You were pointing to find me and strike me at a place where I didn’t happen to be waiting to be found and stricken. Pick up that other spear, somebody. Try again.”
Thome found his voice at last. “What are you doing, standing there like fools?” he blared at the frozen onlookers. “Come on, capture him. We’ll deal with him, here and now!”
There was a stir in the naked assembly, but not a bold one. Thunstone stepped clear of the overturned altar and the dummy. He whipped his blade around him in a whistling circle, pivoting on his feet as he did so. He knew that he postured, even as Grizel Fian had postured.
“Didn’t you hear what your master said?” he called out derisively. “Come on and try to cross that line I drew—any of you, all of you.” Again he turned to face toward Thome and Grizel Fian. He smiled bitterly at them.
“Your mumbo jumbo has gone flat, hasn’t it?” he jeered. “Somebody or other isn’t listening to you, not very closely. I’m afraid that I’ve embarrassed you, breaking in on you like this, all uninvited. Shouldn’t I remove myself, wouldn’t my room be better here than my company?”
“You stay right where you are,” shrilled Grizel Fian.
She bent and snatched up the other spear, the one she had positioned on the floor to point toward the Inn, where she had expected Thunstone to be a target for attack. She poised it above her head as though either to thrust or to throw.
Thunstone made a long, smooth stride toward her with his right foot. He slashed powerfully with his blade, and heard it sing in the air. The head of the spear went in a jangling somersault across the floor.
“And now what?” he challenged her. “Shouldn’t I just get out of here, I say, and leave you to your jabberings?”
“Capture him, I told you!” Thome howled, surging to his feet.
Thunstone moved swiftly to make his way around the throne and toward the dim stairs. The musicians had fled to huddle in a comer. For a brief moment Grizel Fian stood to oppose him, her mouth open and trembling, her eyes staring, her bare body drawn up. Thunstone extended his arm. The keen point of his blade almost t
ouched her between her stirring breasts.
“I’d really hate to,” he said to her, “but I will if I have to.”
Her cheeks went pale as milk and she cowered aside. Thunstone darted behind the throne in the same instant. He made out those darkened stairs, wide, thick slabs of old brown wood. They must lead somewhere upward to ground level. He sprang upon them and went racing up, two steps at a time.
“I said, bring him back!” Thome’s voice came roaring. “I give you the power to do that!”
Thunstone heard the sudden stamp of pursuing feet.
The stairway was dark, but at the top of it showed cracks of light around a closed door. Thunstone got to that door even as those feet mounted the stairs below him. He groped for a knob, turned it, and ran into a lighted room with high shelves of dark-bound books and a table on which stood a crystal globe the size of a small melon. On the far side was another door, of sooty-black wood with metal clamps. Thunstone rushed at that, dragged it open, and sprang out upon flagstones in the white light of the great soaring moon.
Before him stretched a shadowed expanse of clumps and shrubs, a garden of what plants he could not see, could not wait to see. At the far side of it rose a tall, shaggy hedge. Thunstone made for that, hoping that there would be no rails or wire fencing to stop him, and he drove through a twining of thorny branches, his strong body smashing its way. Then he was out in the cemetery again, with its tombstones and trees. He heard the chirping voices of tree frogs, of night insects. He ran on into the open, and behind him sounded the rattling struggle of his pursuers as they came through the hedge after him.
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