The Warlock's Curse (35 page)

Will blinked again, twice this time.

“What are you talking about, the
Earth
told them to?”

“Oh, this is where it gets really crazy,” Court nodded. “See, the Mantic Anastomosis is not just a giant web of magic rock. It’s a giant
living
web of
conscious
magic rock.”

“Oh, hogwash,” Will blurted reflexively. “With fried hog and a side of hog stew.”

Court snickered. “I’m just telling you what the book says.”

“So how did the Earth go about telling these Russian scientists to fundamentally change its own structure?” Will asked skeptically.

“Alcestis,” Court said.

“Who?”

“Well, that’s what she’s called in the book, but that’s just a pseudonym, based on a tale from Greek mythology. It doesn’t give her real name, but you don’t really need to know it. The important thing is that she was a real person. A witch. She had some kind of special psychic connection with the consciousness of the Mantic Anastomosis. So she became kind of an avatar for the earth—its voice, its human representative. Speaking on the earth’s behalf, she relayed that the earth itself wished for the implementation of the Anodyne.” He paused. “And so, they took her word for it.”

Will thought through this.

“So.” He attempted to summarize. “Before The Great Change, human beings could work magic without any kind of real limitation—all the toxic residuals would simply build up within the Earth. Of course, sometimes you’d get Aberrancies, big huge monsters tearing up the plains and stuff like that. But after the Great Change, people couldn’t work magic without immediately suffering from the toxic residue that magic created.”

“Sounds simple when you put it that way,” Court said, as if trying to prompt Will to a conclusion. “But you haven’t even mentioned the Black Flu.”

Will narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what he was getting at. “Some people are just naturally sensitive to Exunge,” he murmured, remembering Briar’s words. Then, awareness dawned on him instantly. “It’s Exunge that causes the Black Flu! I mean, allergy to Exunge. It’s not allergy to magic, it’s allergy to
Exunge
!”

Court touched the tip of his nose with his finger and nodded gravely.

“But it was
children
who died in the Black Flu epidemics!” Will said. “They never worked any magic!”

“
Life
is magic,” Court said. “Just by being alive, we humans work a tiny bit of magic. We work a tiny bit of magic, and create a tiny bit of Exunge. The children who were intensely allergic to Exunge ... they were the ones who got the Black Flu and died immediately. Those who were less allergic ... they lived longer, but became twisted, deformed wrecks.”

Will thought of Claire—and of his own sister Catherine. Ben had written that the children who suffered the worst cases of Black Flu were thought to be those with the greatest inborn magical talents. Perhaps magic just flowed more freely through their bodies ... and after The Great Change, that physical anomaly would have been a death sentence.

“Alcestis must have felt like an idiot,” Will commented wryly, after a long thoughtful pause. “I guess she was kicking herself for taking advice from the Earth, huh? A million dead worldwide will do that to a witch.”

“Oh, it gets worse,” Court said, shaking his head gravely. “Much worse.”

“How can it get worse?”

Court took a deep breath. At this point in his exegesis, he had to fortify himself with a cigarette. He withdrew one and lit it, sending smoke curling up over his head.

“So, as you say, a million dead worldwide is definitely a cause for concern. And so in 1880, the same group of warlocks and scientists who had created the Anodyne—a kind of cabal, let’s call them—convened a special summit. Alcestis and her consort—some guy the book calls Admetus, he isn’t that interesting—traveled to New York City where the summit was being held. The cabal wanted her there to channel the spirit of the Earth so they could get some goddamn answers about just what the hell it was thinking.”

“And what did the Earth say?” Will asked. “Oops?”

Court released a grim, graveyard chuckle. “No. The Earth said: ‘Yeah, I know
.’
”

“
What
?”

“The Earth knew exactly what it was doing. The Earth knew what would happen. It
wanted
it to happen.”

“What the hell are you saying?” Will whispered, horrified.

“See, when Alcestis made a psychic connection with the consciousness of the Earth, it infected her mind with all its alien hugeness and strangeness. But
she
infected
its
mind too. She infected it with human notions it had never experienced before. Paranoia, hatred, and fear—fear of death, especially. The consciousness of the Earth had no way of knowing about death before—not its
own
death, anyway. It had previously understood existence as eternal. By bonding with Alcestis’ mind, it learned of death, and came to fear it.”

Court paused, letting his words hang before saying, finally:

“And it came to feel that humanity was its greatest threat. It decided that it would be better off without us.”

Will stared at him, open-mouthed. “You have got to be kidding,” he said finally. “So why all the nonsense about Anodynes and witches and everything ... if the Earth had decided it wanted humanity eradicated, surely it could have found a more effective way?”

“Shh!” Court said anxiously. “Don’t give it any ideas! But you’re right, it seems like it would be pretty simple just to wipe us all out with fire and flood, and I have no idea why, if it feels that badly about us, it doesn’t just do so. Maybe it doesn’t understand its own strength. Whatever the reason, that was why it wanted the Anodyne implemented in the first place. As a weapon against humanity.”

“But now that it had seen the actual results, it found them unsatisfactory. It was displeased by the fact they weren’t worse. That it wasn’t killing humans off faster. Apparently impatience was one of the human traits the Earth inherited from the witch Alcestis.”

“Jesus!” Will blurted. “She’s probably the one witch in all history we
should
have burned!”

“If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else.” Court spoke with an infuriating air of philosophical distance. “Anyway, the members of the cabal knew that they were in hot water. They had the whole spirit of the Earth sitting right there in front of them, casually telling them that it was very disappointed that all of humanity wasn’t dying off as quickly as it would like. So what does this cabal do?”

“What
is
there to do?” Will said.

“Precisely,” Court said. “All they could do was stall for time and hope that they’d figure something out. So they had to placate the earth. Humans weren’t dying as fast as it wanted ... so humans had to be made to die faster. They struck a bargain with the Earth. They called it ‘The Settlement.’”

“A Settlement—to
kill
people?”

“To kill very
specific
people,” Court said. “All of them Old Users, the most powerful witches and warlocks of the last generation. They were still using huge quantities of magic under the old rules, and for the Earth, they were like cavities in a tooth—painful and annoying. So the Earth demanded that the cabal begin sacrificing these Old Users on its command.”

“And
did
they?”

“Apparently so,” Court said. “The book says there was a whole organization of warlocks created to do so. Fire to fight fire, I guess. They’re called the Agency.”

“They’re the ones you said were destroying the books!” Will remembered.

Court nodded gravely. “I can see why they’d want to, given that this book doesn’t make them sound very nice at all. See, the head of this Agency gets his orders directly from Alcestis herself. The Earth tells her who to kill—and she tells him.”

“And if he refuses to comply?”

“Hell to pay,” Court said. “You may not be a geologist like me, Will, but surely you know what the Earth can do if it wants. Natural disasters like Krakatoa, Tunguska, the great floods in Galveston ... all of these happened after the Settlement. And they all corresponded to occasions when the cabal failed to comply with the Earth’s commands to the slightest letter.”

“Just like I said!” Will lifted his hands. “The Earth doesn’t need witches or Settlements. It can destroy us at its whim. So why all the complication?”

“Maybe it has something to do with love,” Court said thoughtfully. “The witch infected the spirit of the Earth with human thoughts and emotions. Maybe the thing that’s hurt us the most is also the thing that’s protecting us.”

“All right, now for the big question,” Will said. “What does the book say we’re supposed to do?”

“Do?” Court shrugged. “It’s a confession, not a handbook.”

“If it’s a confession, then someone must be confessing,” Will said. “And whoever it is must know what we’re supposed to do. He must have some idea, at least. Who is the Goês?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Court replied. “But if he was mixed up in this—and he must have been, if he knows the whole story the way he does—I don’t know if I want to take any advice from him. But I have to give him credit for one thing. He chose the right name. Because he sure as hell is one big fool.”

Chapter Fourteen

First and Last

F
IVE DAYS UNTIL THE FULL MOON

T
hat Sunday, Will finished the schematics.

He made the final ink stroke, allowed it to dry, and looked down at the completed pile. He was very proud of them. While working on them, he’d thought through what happened with his prototype, and had come up with several important improvements and design enhancements. He’d even added a fuse. It was a wonderful piece of work.

A work of genius.

He’d done it.

It was late afternoon, and he and Jenny were both sitting in their accustomed places at the table in the breakfast nook. Jenny looked tired; her face was drawn and sallow, and not only had the usual curl escaped from her hairpins, but it had been joined by a sinuous tangle of its fellows.

He was just about to tell her the good news when something very strange happened.

A voice spoke in his head.

S
HE’S VERY PRETTY,
M
OONCALF.

The sound of it made him nearly jump out of his skin. It was like his own thoughts, but it was also just like when Ma’am would Send for him ... clear as spoken words. But it was not Ma’am’s voice. It was a man’s voice, tinged with a strange, broad accent like some two-bit British actor in a Teslaphone dramaplay.

He rubbed his face, ran his fingers through his hair. He was just tired. Exhausted. God, he was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

Jenny glanced at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly.

“Nothing.” He smiled. “Everything’s perfect. I’ve finished.”

Her eyes widened.

“Really?” she said. “You’re done?
Done
done?”

“Done
done
,” he said, pushing the drawings toward her. “They’re all yours now.”

“Oh Will, how wonderful!” Jumping to her feet, she raced over to hug him, and he hugged her back. He didn’t want to let her go. Finishing the schematics meant something else. It meant she was going to leave. And, at that moment, he realized that he didn’t want her to.

Flushing, she extracted herself from his arms. “You’re tired,” she said. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

He nodded. He was tired, so very tired. He walked to his room with heavy steps, his feet leaden and dragging. But just as he was falling asleep, the voice spoke in his head again: