Authors: Elizabeth Hand
And now we were nearing the end of the corridor. There was a heavy oaken door with a brass handle, a little brass plaque that read
Please Knock.
“Here,” murmured Professor Warnick.
I stopped and shook my head. “No. I mean,
no.
I’m not going in there.”
Professor Warnick slid a key into the lock, turned it, and listened for the clicking of hidden tumblers.
“I didn’t
do
anything,” I pleaded. “I mean,
everyone
keeps some pot in their rooms, you can’t just—”
“This isn’t about your drugs,” he said, grasping the doorknob. “It’s—”
“No!” I cried; but at that moment the door creaked open.
“—it’s just my study,” said Professor Warnick gently, raising an eyebrow. “Please, come inside.”
I went inside.
It was a large room, very dark until Balthazar switched on a tall floor lamp. A fringed maroon paisley throw had been tossed over the shade, and its rosy glow did a lot to make the place look less threatening, more like an eccentric scholar’s homely lair. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of flaking leather volumes and curling manuscripts, sheaves of computer printouts and encyclopedias and something that looked very much like papyrus.
“I won’t keep you very long, Katherine. Have a seat.”
I remained standing. Balthazar had crossed to the far wall, a wall taken up by an enormous bay window with many small, mullioned panes. On the window’s wide sill there was a small brightly colored model of the solar system. Balthazar stared at it thoughtfully. The orbs representing the planets were enameled in bright, almost violent, colors—scarlet, cyan, Tyrian purple—and embellished with odd symbols and curlicues. The sun was sheathed in gold with a network of black wires across its surface. After a moment he picked up the orrery and stared at it, brow furrowed.
“It is changing,” he murmured.
Balthazar raised the model to his face and poked one of the glowing beads with a finger—the ball that was enameled emerald green and blue, the orb that was third from the sun. It turned languidly, a marble in slow motion. With a sigh Balthazar pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Worlds within worlds,” he began, and stopped.
In his hand the planets in their shining orbits trembled. A thin sound filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. A sound like shattering crystal; a sound I had heard before.
Balthazar’s eyes widened and he raised the orrery, as he had done with the sistrum all those weeks before. In the air before him the globes began to spin: slowly at first, but more and more quickly, until it seemed he was beset by a cloud of bees. Tendrils of grey smoke rose from their blurred circuits. Balthazar’s ruddy face grew pale.
“No,” he whispered, then grimaced in pain. He swore and snatched his hands from the model, as though it burned his fingers; but instead of falling the orrery remained in the air before him. With a crackling sound, flames erupted from the dizzying vortex. Professor Warnick fell back against the window.
“No!—”
There was a roar, a sound as though somewhere miles beneath us the earth was collapsing. The floor lamp swayed perilously back and forth before it crashed to the floor, plunging the room into darkness—save where the orrery burned in the empty air. Its brightness terrified me: as though waves of liquid flame poured forth from some depthless fiery sea. Yet the flaming globe gave off no heat. And while the roar continued it was muted now, a pervasive vibration that made my bones and blood hum.
“Get back, Katherine!”
The orrery candled into a single glowing mass, not the warm gold of any fire I have ever seen but a blinding silvery white, with a black core. It pulsed like a swimming medusa, and then suddenly, soundlessly, its dark heart exploded outward. I was staring at a spherical void, a black hole crowned by a fiery white corona. At its center glowed a bloody-looking crescent. Dark liquid streamed from it onto the floor.
“Professor Warnick!” I cried. I could barely see him behind the luminous apparition, but I lunged across the room, knocking aside a chair as I tried to reach him. “Professor Warnick, can you hear me?”
“Stay back—don’t come near—”
His voice sounded faint and thin; it might have been the sound of branches scraping at the window. Behind the dazzling crescent he was all but invisible, enveloped by the black heart of that flaming mass.
“Get away—” His voice echoed faintly. “—warn them—!”
An anguished shout came from behind the glowing sigil, then a scraping sound, a sort of
gnawing.
My boots grew unbearably hot, as though I’d been kicking at live coals. Balthazar’s voice grew fainter still, and more desperate, as frantically I tried to get closer to the pulsing spectral orb. But it was futile: like trying to force my way through a wall of flame.
By now I had all but lost sight of him. The gnawing sound gave way to avid lapping. To my horror I realized that the luminous sphere was moving. This was no illusion of darkness and radiance: the spectral moon was
devouring him.
Bit by bit Balthazar Warnick was being eaten away by the utter blackness, a man in eclipse; and all the while sparks and dazzling rays of white and silver-blue shot from the half-moon above him. For an instant I was paralyzed. Then I dived at him through the moon’s penumbra.
Silence. The fluid lapping sound faded. I could see nothing
feel
nothing but cold, a cold so penetrating the breath froze in my throat. I choked, unable to breathe or move or cry out, and crashed to the floor.
The rug beneath me was soaked through with warm liquid. I stumbled back to my feet, straining to see something in the clouded darkness. I drew my hands in front of me; I could barely discern that they were stained black. I could smell something hot and bitter-rich, and realized that I was soaked with blood. Desperately I looked around for Balthazar.
He was there, a few feet away, shielding his eyes from the terrible radiance that surrounded us. He looked tiny and wizened, and unbelievably ancient. Like one of those mummified cadavers dragged from the bottom of a peat bog, his skin turned to friable leather, his hair a few damp strands across his skull. His hands were drawn before his face and his mouth was open as though he were screaming in agony, but he made no sound.
Around us that awful light billowed and pulsed. On the nap of the worn rug in front of me I could see the tiny star-bright image of the moon, its body black and swollen, capped by a shining crescent like the indentation left by a fingernail. Like one of those images you make of the solar eclipse, using a piece of cardboard with a pinhole in it. I took a deep breath, my throat still raw with cold, and reached for Balthazar, then, with all my strength, crushed the image of the moon beneath my boot.
A shriek pierced the air—a woman’s voice. At that moment my arms closed around Balthazar. Beneath his heavy sweater his bones were like bundled twigs. The shriek grew into a roar. But worst of all, worst of any of the things I could have imagined, there came a cry so faint it was scarce a sound at all—
“Sweeney
—”
“Angelica!” I gasped.
She was there. Dazzling flames flowed from her, and upon her breast the moon shone like a beacon—only it was not the moon but the lunula, brighter than any moon, brighter than the sun. Her face was like the face I had seen that night upon the Mound, terrible and beautiful, her hair a streaming darkness as she reached for me, her sweet voice begging me to come to her. And I would have gone, would have embraced her as eagerly and heedlessly as I had done before, had not Balthazar Warnick pulled me away.
“Sweeney, no!”
For an instant we strained against each other: me striving to flee into Angelica’s arms, Balthazar holding me back.
“Swee
—
ney!”
She wailed my name as though her heart would break, and I felt my own heart torn inside me. I lunged forward, trying to shake Balthazar from me.
“Come to me!” cried Angelica, her voice piercing me with sorrow and longing as her fingers grasped at mine.
“Swee
—
ney
—”
She was aflame, the tendrils of her hair whipped about me but I didn’t care, didn’t care about anything save that this was Angelica and at last I would be hers. I felt myself tumbling forward, falling into her arms, into her open mouth, and suddenly my boot skidded across the floor. It was enough for me to lose my balance, enough for my hand to slip from hers so that Balthazar could drag me away.
“Close your eyes!” he shouted. “Don’t look at her, come this way—now!”
I shut my eyes and turned. Balthazar clutched me as we staggered through the darkness. From behind us came a sound that made my entire body shudder, a horrible freezing cry.
“Sweeney, nooo
—”
Her voice cut off. I pulled away from Balthazar, shaded my eyes; but whatever had been there was gone. I was on the floor, Balthazar sprawled beside me. In front of the window, the oriental carpeting was bunched up in a blackened heap. I could smell the coppery hot stench of blood. Against the edge of the ruined carpet, a small twisted mass of wires smoldered.
“The orrery,” said Balthazar. He got to his feet and stumbled to the window. I stayed where I was, feeling as though I’d been beaten black-and-blue. My clothes were stiff with blood, my arms scored with raw red lines, as though someone had gone at me with a razor. I thought of the lunula’s glistening edge raised above Hasel, and felt sick.
“She destroyed it.” Balthazar nudged the smoking clump of wires with his foot. His tone was more awestruck than angry, but when I looked at him I was shocked to see his face wet with tears. He pulled his bloodstained sweater over his head and wrapped it around his hand. Then he bent over the charred ruin and picked it up, holding it at arm’s length.
“See what your friend has done,” he whispered. “As above, so below.”
All the shining globes had melted and congealed into a single corroded mass. At one side there was a crescent-shaped hole, like a gaping mouth.
“It is a warning—an unnecessary one—that She has the lunula now; without it She would never have dared attack me here. But it is not whole.”
His finger probed warily at the opening, and I shuddered, absurdly afraid that the smoking moon would
bite
him. “And
that
might be what saves us—perhaps, perhaps …”
He stepped to a corner of the window and opened a casement. Leaning out into the night he flung the ruined orrery in the direction of the river, far below. I held my breath, waiting to hear a faint splash or crash upon the rocks. Balthazar seemed to be listening, too; but there was nothing but the sound of wind tugging at the trees. He waited a moment, then with a grimace pitched his sweater out as well.
“There,” he said as to himself. He turned back into the room, wiping his hands on his trousers. When he saw me watching him he started, as though he had forgotten I was there.
I stood, my legs still weak. “Is it—is it over? Is she—is Angelica dead?”
“Dead?” Balthazar’s voice hardened.
“Dead?
She has never been more alive—not for centuries, not for over two thousand years—”
“We knew that She would return, and so we watched for Her—in all the old familiar places, as the song goes.” He laughed sharply, a fox’s bark. “But I did not drink She would be so bold as to come
here.
And so I have spent a lifetime waiting for Her—
many
lifetimes—and it all comes down to this—a meddling child’s
foolishness
—
“No, Katherine, Angelica isn’t dead. But she isn’t
Angelica
anymore, either.” His eyes were livid with fury and disdain. “Your friend has been chosen for a very important task, but the work demands some alterations—”
“What did you do to her?” I whispered. “You bastard, what did you do to Oliver and Angelica?”
“What did I do to them?” Balthazar’s face darkened. “What did I
do
?”
“Tell me!”
“I did nothing, you stupid girl! Angelica has been
claimed
—by She who has a dozen names in every tongue, by the one we call Othiym—
“For aeons She has been waiting—for the lunula to be found; for the right woman to be born; for the moment when Her talisman and Her chosen daughter would be brought together. And for all those aeons we too have watched, and waited, and searched. We have prepared, as well, in each generation making certain that there would be one young man who might be strong and beautiful enough to win Her, to seduce Her and so weaken Her—and for nothing! Because in the end we have been betrayed. Betrayed by Magda Kurtz, whom I loved as my own—”
He looked away from me. “—as my own daughter. Betrayed by the daughter of one of our most trusted members, and by Oliver’s weakness, and
your
own meddling in things you cannot possibly understand.”
His hand tightened into a fist as he snarled, “I might have had the lunula, Katherine. I
would
have had it, there in Garvey House, had you not pulled your friend Angelica from my hands. Just as you pulled me from
Her
hands a few minutes
The vulpine snarl cooled to an icy smile. He stepped delicately across the floor, once more composed and elegant, and glanced over his shoulder at me.
“Come here, Katherine.”
I stayed where I was, tensed and shaking. “No.”
He stopped and drew himself to his full height. If I had been standing beside him, he would have come barely to my chin. But his face was so ravaged, his eyes so brilliant, that I might have been staring into the terrible visage of some ancient sphinx, might have been looking upon the dark Goddess Herself.
“Come here.”
There was a threat to the words, but more than that, a command; a Power. Even as I willed myself to run, I found that I was walking toward Balthazar Warnick, until I stood beside him at the far end of the room.
“I know everything there is to know about you, Katherine Cassidy,” he said softly. “And that is very little: because to us you are a little thing. Do you understand that? A little, little thing—”
His white teeth glittered as he pinched together his thumb and forefinger to show how insignificant I was, how small and stupid and clumsy, but not useless, oh no! Not that—