Mirror Image (20 page)

Dee looked at the woman again, and then shook his head. “Hair is without silver or gray, skin smooth and unpoxed, a full set of teeth. One-and-twenty, two-and-twenty?”

“She was born in 1491, the same year Henry VIII, the queen's father, was born.”

Dee looked at the woman in astonishment. Why, that would make her eighty-two! He turned to look at Kelley, his thin eyebrows raised in a silent question. The red-haired man nodded. “Kept young by her magic. Ever young. Perhaps immortal.”

“And she wants to speak to me?” Dee sounded almost surprised.

Edward Kelley lowered his eyes. “You have a reputation, master. That has drawn her to you.”

“I'll speak to her, of course,” Doctor John Dee said decisively.

“But not here, master. Too many eyes, too many ears.”

Dee nodded. He trod a particularly dangerous path; he was a known occultist close to the queen, he had prepared the horoscope that had shown that the young princess, Elizabeth, would indeed be queen and had then prepared the horoscope which decided upon the most auspicious day for the coronation. Although his travels in Europe had discovered much that had been of military or economic use to the queen's advisors, he had also made many enemies, and the church especially despised him, labeling him a practitioner of black magic and a heretic. He was in little danger while the queen still lived, but should anything happen to her, then his position could turn quickly perilous. And there were always those eager to report his every movement to Elizabeth's enemies, looking for signs of weakness, trying to blacken his name.

John Dee made his way through the crowded room and stepped out into the street, pulling his cloak up around his shoulders. The night was bitterly cold, the frigid air tainted with the stench of the streets and the pungent effluence from the river. He lived in Mortlake, a village on the edge of London and so was particularly conscious of the difference in the air of the city and the country, but he knew that Londoners were rarely aware of the stench of their own city.

Kelley came out a few moments later, with the woman following close behind.

Sensitive to odors, Dee caught the scents of herbs and spices from her, expensive bath oils sweetening the foul night air. She had pulled up the hood of her heavy cloak and now the oval of her face stared at him from shadow, her eyes huge and dark against her pale face.

“I am Doctor John Dee,” he said formally.

The woman curtsied before him, but did not extend her hand and did not proffer her own name. Dee glanced at his assistant, but Kelley shook his head slightly, warning him to say nothing.

“You have an interest in Natural Magic,” she said suddenly. Surprisingly, her voice was uneducated, her accent placing her somewhere to the north of the Thames.

“I am used to dealing with people with names,” Dee said shortly.

“Names are symbols with which we chain others; the knowledge of names grants power.”

“That is a superstition and applies only to magical names. To know a person's magical name is to have power over that person.”

“Untrue. A name—any name—conjures the image of that person. Knowledge of the name—any name, be it true or false, so long as it is used consistently to represent that person—grants power.”

Dee bowed slightly, conceding the point. Her accent may be that of an uneducated woman, but her knowledge was evidence of learning and education, and that was a privilege of the wealthy.

“You have an interest in Natural Magic,” she repeated.

John Dee smiled. “I have.” He nodded to Kelley. “My assistant tells me you were born in 1491.”

“It is true. On the first day of the autumn equinox of that year.”

“And you have preserved your youth through this Natural Magic?” Dee asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral. As an alchemist, he had heard of the Philosopher's Stone, the magical formula which granted eternal life to the user.

The woman looked up suddenly. “We should not talk here. Follow me.” She turned and walked away, her wooden heels clicking loudly on the few pieces of paving that still remained this close to the river. Dee looked at Kelley and shrugged. The doctor touched the knife on his belt and he was relieved to find that Kelley was wearing his sword. This was a particularly unsavory part of London.

The woman led them down through the warren of side streets and alleys running parallel to the docks. Rats scurried across their path, huge creatures that could easily be confused with a cat or a dog. Dee was horrified to discover that even though it was after midnight on a bitterly cold winter's night, there were still women and children on the streets, begging and selling themselves for the price of a meal. If he could truly discover the Elixir of Life then surely he should be able to put it to some use to ease man's suffering?

He was becoming nervous now. They were in the heart of the docklands, a vicious, no man's land, where even the Watch rarely ventured. He clutched at Kelley's arm. “Where are we going?”

“She has some sort of base close by,” he said carefully. “Her Natural Magic draws its power from the river.”

Dee nodded, not completely satisfied with the answer. His every instinct warned him of danger, but his desire for knowledge, his thirst for information, was greater.

They stopped outside a rotting wharfside store and the woman produced a brightly shining key from the depths of her cloak. The key turned easily in the lock and she stepped into the darkness. After a moment's hesitation, Dee and Kelley followed her.

Flesh touched his, and Dee stifled a shout as he recognized the woman's hand on his, her soft fingers wrapping around his wrist pulling him forward. Kelley's heavy hand dropped onto his shoulder as they moved into the darkness. He wondered how she could see in the dark, and supposed that it might be a side effect of her Natural Magic; perhaps the senses grew more finely tuned as one aged, rather than degenerating as they did at present.

Or perhaps she was a demon leading him to hell.

They moved down into the bowels of the rotten building. The smell of decay, or ordure and corruption, was stronger now, and there was a ripe dampness in the air that caught at the back of his throat, eased its way into his lungs. Still in total darkness, the nameless woman led them across an echoing chamber, boots splashing through water that had been long stagnant by the smell it exuded.

And then there was light.

Dee didn't realize he was holding his breath until they reached the lighted chamber, and then he took a great sobbing breath that he turned into a cough.

The room was set up as an alchemical studio, a long table laden down with instruments occupying one wall, a broken chair beside a rough cot in the corner. There was a second, completely bare wooden table shoved up against another wall.

But the room was dominated by the mirror.

The woman walked into the center of the chamber and threw off her cloak, while Kelley took up a position at the door, arms folded across his chest. Dee walked up to the mirror, mesmerized by its size: he had never seen a glass so big.

“Do not stare into its depths,” the woman advised.

Dee immediately whirled around. “Why not?”

Her lips moved in a smile. “It has certain … properties.”

“Properties?”

“Properly activated it can be used as a scrying glass for example,” she said, repeating the words Kelley had tutored her in earlier.

Dee turned to look at the glass again. Scrying—the ability to see the future in a glass—had always been one of his especial interests. “And how does one activate it?” he asked, running his long fingers along the smooth wooden frame. Yet again, he cursed his lack of any Talent or Ability. He glanced over at Kelley, wondering why he didn't approach the glass. Did he know something, did he see something with his second sight that disturbed him? “How does one activate the glass?” he repeated when the woman didn't answer him. He glanced over his shoulder—and stopped.

The woman was naked.

She looked at him, lifting her arms, running both hands through her thick black hair, exposing herself to him. “Blood will bring it to life,” she said, “clean blood, with the proper incantation from the Key of Solomon. Semen too, will enliven it. Seed and blood, the building blocks of all life.”

Dee turned from the woman and stared at the mirror again, watching it from the corner of his eyes, his agile mind evaluating these snippets of knowledge. He had heard of such glasses—though never on such a scale before—and they too had to be fed with the body's sacred fluids, blood, semen, or tears. But once fired they showed many, many wondrous things, the future, the past, Heaven, Hell.

“But we did not come here to discuss the glass,” she continued, “we came here to discuss Natural Magic.”

Dee dragged his gaze away from the mirror and turned back to the woman. She was now wearing a blood-red cloak over her nakedness, though the cloak hung open down the middle, and he found the tantalizing glimpse of flesh even more arousing than the sight of her fully nude.

“Natural Magic,” the woman said, walking past the man to stand with her back to the mirror, hands on her hips. “We are all of us vessels of power, repositories of magical energy. But few realize that, and fewer still can tap the unlimited power of their own bodies.”

Dee nodded slowly. His own theories ran very much along these lines.

“I have developed a system of Natural Magic that can access the unlimited power of the human body,” she continued, her large dark eyes now locked on Dee's face. As she spoke, her right hand had moved off her rounded hip bone and slid into the dark patch between her legs. “This is the oldest magic in the world,” the woman continued, her fingers moving, probing, “sacred in some parts of the world, shunned in others. The druids knew of its power and the witches, their successors, knew a little also. The Egyptians knew the secret of this special magic, and we know the savages conduct their ceremonies naked.”

Dee said nothing, mesmerized by the sight of the woman arousing herself so brazenly. He was conscious of the odor of the woman's body in the room, aware of his own arousal.

“The power is only evident at moments of great emotion: pain, anger, desire, arousal, orgasm. These are the most potent of all the emotions…” Her fingers were moving swiftly now, delving deeply into her body, and her breath was beginning to come in great gasps.

And suddenly Dee was aware of the mirror behind her. Rainbow hues were flickering down its length, shimmering tints that hinted of pictures. He started forward, his gaze fixed on the glass.

Edward Kelley bent his head to hide his smile. They had Dee now. Much of what he had instructed the woman to tell Dee had been true, and the display on the glass was an almost natural phenomenon, triggered by the proximity of the woman and the intensity of her growing orgasm.

She had started to pant. “At the moment … of orgasm for example … the natural magic of the human … human body is available. All one needs to do … is to … to capture that magic, utilize it. I have used … the magic of my own … body to remain young. Properly employed there is no limit to its … POWER!” The last word was a scream as the woman collapsed into a writhing heap on the ground, her entire body shuddering in the throes of orgasm. But Dee's eyes were not on the woman; he was watching the undulating display of rippling colors on the glass. There were pictures in the glass, images, half seen, barely glimpsed. But they were there.

And what would he see if he were to properly apply the laws of Natural Magic to the glass, he wondered. What would he see if he fed the glass with blood and semen and tears?

*   *   *

M
ANNY FRAZER WRITHED
on the bed, the duvet a tumbled ball on the floor. Her hands were busy at her groin, her breath coming in heaving gasps, her entire body covered in a sheen of sweat.

She dreamt she was standing before a huge glass mirror, masturbating before a gray-haired, gray-eyed old man …

 

43

T
HIS ONE
was perfect.

Such power, such passion. It fed off her sensations, savoring their intensity. It was one of the mysteries of the human body. Such a frail delicate shell, and yet it was capable of such response. It was a mystery that had never failed to intrigue, a paradox.

There had been others, women always.

The image of the naked woman was one of the most potent symbols of power it possessed in its armory. It had experimented with the men, but men were tools, to be used, useful to bring the offerings and to perform the petty mundane tasks necessary for keeping the gateway open and safe. Perhaps because it had once worn a female form, it felt happier in that guise, and in truth, it never trusted the male species since the betrayal.

But womankind.

Since time immemorial they had kept the secrets, fed the fires, given freely of themselves and their great passions to honor the mysteries.

And yet it could not dismiss the male.

There were always two, male and female, one was never enough: a male to feed the symbol and a female, made in its image.

Across the Otherworld, colors flickered and the seething column of power trembled with anticipation. In its core, the souls of those who had fed its hunger down through the countless centuries screamed their agony.

 

44

I
MAGE.

The mirror, the topmost left-hand edge touched with moonlight.

Image
.

The mirror, the moonlight now further advanced down its length.

Image
.

The moonlight now completely bathing the tall length of glass.

Image
.

A solid rectangle of white light, flat and featureless.