Sun Cross 2 - The Magicians Of Night (7 page)

The barmaid Sara, who had returned with Poincelles’ drink, bumped Rhion’s shoulder playfully with her hip. “No sense of humor, Professor?”

His mouth quirked dryly. “I guess not.”

She looked down at him and some of the brittle quality eased from her face. “Kurt will see they don’t hurt him, you know,” she said in a quieter voice, and nodded at the impassive barman. She shrugged her shoulders, oddly delicate above the jutting splendor of her breasts. In spite of the lines of cynicism and dissipation around her dark eyes, Rhion realized she couldn’t be more than twenty-two. “It gives the boys a laugh. They don’t mean any harm.”

Neither, Rhion supposed as the girl strolled away, had the guards in the Temple of Agon, the faceless servants of the Veiled God, who had pretended to set his oil-soaked beard on fire when Lord Esrex had had him imprisoned there.

He looked back to meet Poincelles’ narrow, speculative eyes behind a haze of putrid smoke. “What price?”

“I want you to teach me.”

Rhion gave his beer mug another quarter turn. “I am teaching you,” he said quietly. “I have been teaching you for over six weeks now, and aside from the fact that you now know spells that work in my world, and your technical knowledge is cleaner than it was, none of the four of you is any closer to making magic work than you were before I came. You know that.”

“I know that.” Poincelles leaned forward and the smell of his breath, drowned in whiskey and cigar, was like the exhalation of a month-old grave. “And I know also that you’re keeping something back.”

Rhion kept his eyes on the beer mug but his hands and feet turned perfectly cold.

The Frenchman chuckled throatily. “My little friend, we all keep something back.” He drained his whiskey with a gulp, stood and shook back the limp swatch of hair from his forehead. Across the room Horst, engaged in buying a condom from the barman to augment the weekly barracks ration of one, hastily departed to fetch the car around. After a long moment, Rhion stood up also and followed the tall occultist shakily from the room.

If the man has to make one true statement in the entire night
—
which is not a bad average for Poincelles
, Rhion thought as he climbed into the rear seat of the open Mercedes that waited for them in the harsh trapezoid of yellow electric light—
why does it have to be that one?

For Poincelles was quite right. They all did keep something back.

What Poincelles had kept back in the course of the discussion was what von Rath and the others had been keeping back from the start—that the Dark Well had not, in fact, been destroyed.

Rhion had confirmed his suspicions a few weeks after the expedition to the Dancing Stones, as soon as his ability to use his scrying crystal had grown strong enough to get a clear image once more. Those weeks in between, those weeks of suspicion, of not knowing who was lying to him and when, were nothing he would care to go through again. He had known he was entirely at von Rath’s mercy for food and shelter and advice in this strange world—only during those weeks had he realized how much he’d felt comforted by the illusion that he was among friends.

He sighed and shook his head, glancing sidelong at the tall man beside him as the car shot with its eerie speed along the forty kilometers of woods between Kegenwald village and Schloss Torweg. He still felt keenly the disappointment that had come over him when it had been clear that Poincelles had no intention of telling him that the Well still existed; the fact that the Germans were in the process of invading his erstwhile country evidently did not mean that the Frenchman opposed them in principle. Had that little charade tonight been for Poincelles’ own purposes, he wondered, or at von Rath’s instigation, to find out if Rhion knew more about magic than he’d  taught them in the weeks since his recuperation?

In either case, it made no odds. Poincelles was not to be trusted, and it left him in a horrible position, for he desperately needed the help of a wizard he could trust.

For Rhion, too, was keeping something back.

He had found—or thought he had found—the thing for which the wizards of the Occult Bureau had begged Jaldis to come here in the first place—the trick of making magic work in this magicless world.

The problem was that without the help of another wizard, bringing this about in order to get himself home would almost certainly kill him.

“Captain wants to see you,” the guard at the gate reported when the car pulled up and the electricity was turned off long enough for the gate to be opened. When the SS had taken over Schloss Torweg, in addition to erecting the fence and cutting down all the trees that surrounded the lodge itself, it had rigged floodlights to drench the grounds in a harsh white electrical glare. The sentry at the gate furthermore shined the beam of an electric torch—a flashlight, they called such things—into the back of the open car before passing it on through, presumably, Rhion thought, to assure himself that no “enemies of the Reich” were hidden under the lap rugs.

Von Rath was waiting for them in the library. The voices of Baldur and Gall were audible—arguing as usual—as Rhion and Poincelles ascended the wide, wood-paneled stairs.

“I still say that electricity must have
something
to do with the disappearance of m-magic! There is no d-documented, authenticated case of magical operancy—of the human will being converted to physical instrumentality—after the middle of the eighteenth century, and that was just when experiments with electricity were becoming p-popular. Benjamin Franklin…”

“Nonsense! Magic is a quality of the
vril
, the mystical power inherited by the Aryan Race from the men of Atlantis whom Manu, the last the Atlantean Supermen, led across Europe to the secret fastnesses of Thibet. It is not electricity, but the slow race pollution by mutants and Jews after the fall of the third moon that has robbed the race of its power. In Thibet the Hidden Masters and Unknown Supermen still hold this power…”

“And it’s in Thibet that this c-curse of electricity does not exist!”

“Nor does any way of verifying the reports one hears of magic and Hidden Masters,” Poincelles added maliciously, lounging in the doorway.

Baldur looked up swiftly from a huge mass of notes, his weak, piggy eyes slitted with irritation and cocaine; Gall merely sniffed. “That is the sort of argument one would expect from a Frenchman,” he remarked.

Von Rath, from the depths of his red leather armchair, raised a finger for quiet. Though the Schloss had been fitted with electricity thirty years ago, the wizards—for varying reasons—avoided using it, and the library, like the Temple of Meditations in what had been the ballroom of the north wing and the workshop above it, was illuminated by candles. They made a soft halo of his ivory-pale hair and caught sparks of molten gold in the silver buttons and collar flashes of his black uniform as he leaned forward to speak.

“You’ve been listening to the news, I suppose,” he said, and Poincelles folded his long arms and grinned.

“Yes—it looks as if the Luftwaffe’s botched the job pretty thoroughly and let the English army get clean away.”

Baldur jerked to his feet furiously. “The German Air Forces are mo-more than capable of d-d-destroying those d-d-debased b-b-b…” Rhion knew from past outbursts that the youth’s stutter was infinitely exacerbated both by anger and by cocaine, and the present combination was deadly. Poincelles’ grin widened at the boy’s blazing-eyed frustration and he was about to speak again when von Rath’s soft, level voice cut him off.

“I’ve had a call from Himmler. The German Armies will invade England before the summer is out.”

“Of c-course we must,” Baldur declared, sitting clumsily down again and knocking a sheaf of his notes to the floor. “The destiny of the Reich demands that all of Europe be ours,” he went on rather thickly as he spoke while bending over to collect them. “It is obvious that…”

“What is obvious,” von Rath said with a quick sidelong glance at Rhion’s impassive face, “is that the Jews and Communists who run the government of America from behind the scenes aren’t going to permit that country to mind its own business. If we don’t have England secured for our own defenses before they force the government into a declaration of war, the Americans will use it as a base to overrun us.”

When Rhion did not dispute this he turned to him more fully, his gray eyes grave in the deep shadows of his brows. “Himmler was quite emphatic in his demand that we of the Occult Bureau have something to contribute to this final battle, something to tip the scales in our favor to resolve the conflict in Europe once and for all. And I believe Baldur may have arrived at a way to solve the problem of the raising of magical power.”

Young Twisselpeck sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then rooted around in his notes again. Rhion settled himself on the red leather hassock beside von Rath’s chair, his mind still half preoccupied with the problem of how to gain the magical assistance he needed without giving Poincelles—the only thing resembling a maverick among the group—any information that could be used against him.

“My insight into this n-new line of reasoning,” Baldur began in his reedy tenor, “gees back, I think, to Major Hagen’s d-death…”

And for one cold, sickening instant Rhion thought,
They’ve guessed
…

The boy sniffled loudly and pushed his glasses more firmly into place on his nose. “He d-died stepping into the Dark Well, you see. And it was only after that, as he was dying, that our spells reached out into the Void and got anywhere. It must have been his death that released the magic.”

They haven’t guessed
, Rhion thought, shaken with relief. They hadn’t stumbled into the keystone of his own secret.

Then he realized what conclusion Baldur
had
stumbled into.

“Now in the Grimoire of Pope Leo, and d’Ehrliffe’s
Culte des Goules
, and in any number of letters and diaries, there are reports of power being raised by drawing it out of a human being at d-death. We have partial accounts of the Blue Hummingbird Society of the Aztecs, and these tally closely with what we know of the rites practiced by the Adepts of the Shining C-Crystal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—”

“No!” Rhion cried sharply, almost before he was aware he was speaking.

“
DON’T INTERRUPT ME
!” the boy screamed passionately. “Everybody’s always interrupting me! Here!” He fumbled in the notes, dropping papers all around him like a tree shedding leaves in a high wind. “There are seven references in the Vatican letters, two in the communications of the Fuger banking house, one in Nostradamus’ third letter to the Viscountess de la Pore and in Bernal D-Diaz’s account of—”

“I’m not arguing that you can’t make magic from the energies released from the human psyche at death,” Rhion retorted, aware from the corner of his eye of the interest on the candlelit faces of Poincelles and Gall. “But it’s a damn dangerous thing to do and in my world there isn’t a respectable wizard who’d try it… I take it you’re not talking about using volunteers.”

“Of course not!” Gall snapped indignantly. “The ancient Druids raised power from the sacrifice of prisoners of war! The spirits of the noblest of their foes…”

“Here!” Baldur straightened up and thrust out a mass of references with trembling hands. “Letter from Gustavus Dremmel to the Fugers, November of 1612. ‘
B-by reliable witnesses these Adepts have been seen, by various rites and ceremonies involving the murder of the aforesaid wo-wo-women, to empower talismans which later enabled them to find hidden treasure, to drink poisons unscathed, to draw the love of both wo-wo-women and men
…’ ”

“Well, that should interest you, at any rate,” Poincelles remarked
sotto voce
, studying his pointed fingernails.

“If we c-could discover what those rites were…”

“Is it truly so dangerous?” Von Rath crossed his knees, his tall boots gleaming like oil in the wavering light. “You understand that we are willing to take the risk.”

YOU are willing?!?
Rhion almost shouted at him. But there was nothing in those grave eyes that he could shout it to.

There was long silence, von Rath waiting politely for his answer, and Rhion, struggling with shock and outrage, trying to come up with an argument against murder that the Nazi
would
credit. At length he said, “You seem to think dropping dead like Hagen did is the only thing that will happen. You’ve never seen a magic field go septic. I’ve talked to people who have. I’m telling you: Don’t do it.”

Down at his end of the table Jacobus Gall straightened his thin shoulders militantly and stroked his flowing silver beard. “That is nonsense. On Witches Hill, in my dreams of ancient days, I saw the ancient priests cut the throats of their tribal enemies, pouring out the sacred blood of sacrifice to bring them victory…”

“As you saw the Roman legions surrounded and routed by their Teutonic foes in places the maps show to have been permanently underwater since the retreat of the last glacier?” Poincelles retorted, his black eyes glinting wickedly.

“You understand none of these things.”

“My friends…” The Frenchman raised his hands. “We’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to bring in an expert as a consultant, and while I’ve got no objections on principle to slitting a few throats, I’d say that we listen when he says something is dangerous, because he does know more about this than we do. But it’s up to you—do as you please.” And with that he pushed with his flat, bony shoulders against the doorframe and stood up straight, lighting a cigar as he strolled out of the room and down the electric brightness of the hall, the acrid whiff of smoke as disrespectful as the snap of fingers.

With a massive sniffle Baldur started to jerk to his feet to go after him, and von Rath waved him down again. “I agree,” the young Captain said with a sigh, and rubbed the high bridge of his nose with his fingers, as if his eyes were suddenly weary even of the candlelight.

“That still doesn’t give him the right…”

“Of course one doesn’t need voluntary sacrifice!” Gall declared. “That was a different matter entirely.”

“No.” Von Rath lowered his hand and looked over at Rhion again. “You’re right. We do not know what might happen. But we must find something, some way out of this impasse, before the Americans decide to interfere in our struggle against England and its allies. We lost Eric… we cannot take another risk like that.”