The Hidden Goddess (36 page)

Perun lit his cigarette, gave it a few deep puffs before speaking again.

“Until about a hundred years ago, the practice of magic was self-limiting. A Witch or Warlock could only channel the amount of power his or her body could stand. As you say, this is the natural way of things. But humans always seek power beyond what is given by nature. The lessons of science and engineering began to be applied to the practice of magic. Methods for extracting raw power were developed—and now have developed to the point where they can be implemented on a large scale, as with the Terramantic extraction factory you saw in Charleston. Raw magic can be sucked straight from the earth in vast quantities. Exponentially larger magical schemes could be brought to fruition—resulting in
exponentially larger production of Black Exunge, overwhelming the Mantic Anastomosis’ ability to process it. And so there are eruptions of Exunge, and Aberrancies, and all manner of foul imbalance.”

Perun swallowed smoke, exhaled.

“But worse than that,” Perun continued, “is that the collection of such huge amounts of raw power makes possible unholy magical practices on a scale hitherto unimaginable. The Black Glass Goddess, Itztlacoliuhqui, who once required the blood of thousands of human sacrifices simply to
manifest
in a human body, can now easily be provided with enough power to wreak whatever havoc on the world she desires—all thanks to the bastard union of magic and modern technology.”

“And just what kind of havoc does she desire?” Emily asked.

“Temamauhti,”
Perun said. Emily remembered hearing Sophos Mirabilis speak the word once before, and his scoffing dismissal of it.

“The half-baked apocalypse?”

Perun grunted.

“It is now quite thoroughly baked, Miss Edwards. Do you remember all the power from the Terramantic extraction factory? Power that Captain Caul was amassing to oppose the so-called ‘half-baked apocalypse’? After Caul’s death, General Blotgate, the Army’s highest-ranking magical practitioner, advocated for a military alliance with the Black Glass Goddess. Instead of using all that power to oppose her, the United States Army has delivered it into her hands. And soon the calendar will ripen, and soon she will begin the Remaking.”

Emily’s flesh went cold.

A stair-stepped pyramid made of skulls …

“The earthquakes along the Pacific Coast, the Aberrancies terrorizing cities and towns … they are just the first manifestation of the Goddess’ efforts,” Perun continued. “They will continue to spread.”

Blood dripping down the sides of a frost-rimed altar … bodies piled all around it, hundreds of thousands of them …

“The Army can’t have given her that much power,” Emily whispered.

“The power they have provided her is merely a match set to kindling,” Perun said. “We believe the Goddess has discovered some means by which she can filter Black Exunge. Release the power trapped within it, just as the Mantic Anastomosis does naturally, except much more quickly, and far more efficiently. And as she does this, channeling evermore enormous amounts of pure raw magic, the more Black Exunge the Mantic Anastomosis will produce, and the more Black Exunge she will have from which to draw power.” He paused once more, letting his silence hang. “Until, of course, the entire earth has been transformed into an Aberrancy—a sphere of lifeless filth.”

Emily remembered another vision Ososolyeh had shown her.
A lake drained, leaving nothing but foulness behind, poison pumped into the deepest places, clogging them with filth and venom …

At the time, she had thought it referred to the Black Exunge the Terramantic extraction plant was pumping deep into the earth to extract refined pockets of chrysohaeme … but it had meant this, too.

“Morozovich did not live to see these days come to pass, but he foresaw their coming. That is why he developed the Anodyne. It is a toxin, yes. But the toxic effects are aggregative. A practitioner doing a small work—a healing for example—might feel no effects. A practitioner doing a larger work might feel slightly ill from the exposure to a larger amount of the toxin. A practitioner manifesting a spirit as powerful as Itztlacoliuhqui’s, giving her the blood and body she needs to wreak havoc on the world, would die like a rat given cyanide.”

“And someone like my fiancé?” Emily said. “Someone burned?”

“That is not our concern,” Dmitri said from his corner of the room. “And given what we know about your fiancé—”

Perun lifted an abrupt hand, and Dmitri fell silent.

“Miss Edwards, your fiancé had had ample opportunity to remove that baneful blight,” Perun said. “He chose not to, and now, with Zeno gone, it is too late.”

Emily’s eyes darted between the men.

“What are you talking about? There’s no cure for his condition. He told me so himself.”

Perun frowned at Emily for a moment, then grunted a mild concession.

“Then I am mistaken, and I apologize,” he said. He paused before continuing. “There is no way to know what the poison will or won’t do to your fiancé. But I can promise you, if we do not stop
temamauhti
, your fiancé, and you, and I, and your pap and the very earth itself will suffer and die in miserable agony under the cruel reign of the Black Glass Goddess.”

There was a long, horrible silence as Perun finished speaking. The sound of clinking china made Perun look over at the head-scarved woman, who was spooning heaping portions of food into large white bowls.

“It smells of heaven in here, Irina Sidorovna,” he called to the woman. He looked at Emily. “Are you hungry, Miss Edwards? The
pelmeni
with
smetana—
”

“I know. Delicious,” Emily said. “But for some reason I’m not hungry.”

Perun shrugged as the woman called Irina Sidorovna slid a plate in front of him. Fat steaming dumplings were topped with a mound of glossy sour cream and sprinkled with fronds of dill and black dots of caviar. A bottle of vodka from an icebox and a small glass completed the meal. Without a word, Emily took the bottle of vodka and poured herself a glass. She tossed it back. Perun looked at her, but didn’t comment. He ground out his cigarette and picked up a fork.

“When news of Morozovich’s work leaked out, the Temple marked him for death. He went into hiding, of course, but Warlocks from the Temple found him. They tortured him, forced him to surrender every scrap of paper in his possession and made him swear that he had given the information to no one else. Satisfied that they had wrung the truth from him, they dragged his bleeding body to his laboratory in Saint Petersburg and burned it down with him inside. They believed that by destroying him, they had destroyed the poison.”

Emily shuddered, the vodka spreading warmth through her gut. She watched Perun stab one of the small dumplings and
pop it into his mouth. “But if no other copy existed—” she began.

“Of course the notes still existed,” Perun interrupted curtly, touching a napkin to his mouth. “Morozovich had entrusted copies to his assistant—your father—then wiped his own memory clean with a cheap elixir bought from one of the old
koldunyas
around Gostiny Dvor. When the Temple Warlocks found him, he knew no more about the poison than you or me. They confronted him with his own notes. He said he did not recognize them. The torturers thought he was withholding information and redoubled their efforts.”

Dmitri made a strangled sound. Perun shook his head, and picked up another little dumpling. He chewed it thoughtfully before continuing.

“Your father fled to America. We kept him in a series of safe houses. The Kendalls—your mother’s family—provided one of the safe houses. There, he worked to complete Morozovich’s work on the Anodyne. It was quite unexpected that he would fall in love with their daughter.” He paused, reaching over to reclaim the glass from Emily. Uncorking the bottle, he poured some for himself. “He left their house and took your mother with him. And after that, we lost track of him.” He threw the vodka back with a jerk.

“So you did not know what happened to him either?”

Perun exhaled, shaking his head.

“Our last contact with him was in 1856.”

When I was five
, Emily thought. So he’d contacted the Sini Mira just before he died. She remembered him telling her that he was going to meet his friends. Before her mother—before
Aebedel Cowdray
, Emily corrected herself fiercely—had killed him.

“He had arranged to meet with us in San Francisco to deliver the formula,” Perun continued, “but he never arrived there. And we never heard from him again.”

Perun was silent for a moment, his eyes searching her face as if to read an answer there. Emily looked away. She was not ready to talk about that night, that horrible moonlit night full of knives and blood.

“We thought the poison was lost to us forever,” Perun said finally, “until the Indian Witch spoke of it at the Grand Symposium.”

“You were not at the Symposium,” Emily said. “How did you hear of it?”

“Zeno told us,” Perun said. “I’ve known him for a long time, Miss Edwards. In some ways, we were even allies.”

“I don’t believe you,” Emily said, looking at Dmitri. “I know how you people feel about Witches and Warlocks.”

“You know what you have been told,” Perun said, “but that does not mean you know everything.” Reaching inside his coat, he pulled out something round and golden. Emily gasped when she realized what it was. It was Komé’s rooting ball.

Perun handed it to her, and Emily cradled it against her chest with her good hand.

“Zeno gave it to me the night before the Investment, the night you saw us together.” Perun scraped the last of the sour cream from his plate, licked it from his fork. “He was worried that something might happen, and he asked me to keep it safe.”

Emily closed her eyes, feeling for the old Indian Witch’s consciousness within it. To her joy, Emily could feel the woman’s presence. She was there, but despite Emily’s efforts to rouse her, she would not speak. She just sort of … 
hummed
.

Emily looked at Perun. “What have you done to her?”

Perun smiled softly.

“Miss Edwards, we have done nothing to her. You are a Witch who knows the earth; surely you recognize the metamorphosis of nature. It was the very reason she was put in the rooting ball. She is sprouting, growing, transforming from what she was into what she will become. You cannot expect her to feel particularly conversational.”

Emily held the ball tightly. She knew Perun’s words to be true as soon as he spoke them. The satisfied hum of roots growing outward—it was precisely what she’d heard. Frowning, she looked up at him.

“I still don’t understand why Zeno would ally with you. Credomancers use magical power just like anyone else.”

Pushing his plate away, Perun extracted a fresh cigarette and tucked it between his lips.

“Of all the magical traditions, credomancy requires the least free magic—only a fraction of what is required by sangrimancy. It is theorized that the practice of credomancy will be only slightly affected if the poison is implemented,” Perun said. “Perhaps Emeritus Zeno thought that the poison might be a good way to advance the cause of credomancy over the long term.”

“Quite convenient for the credomancers,” Emily said, waving a hand in front of her face to dispel the sudden cloud of smoke. “So you’re saying that Zeno
wanted
to see the poison implemented?” Emily said. “To set the practice of credomancy above all others?”

“He
was
once a priest, Miss Edwards.” Perun smiled wryly. “Old habits die hard.”

“Then Zeno had no more moral high ground than the sangrimancers he claimed to despise!”

“He wanted to see the damage to the great consciousness of the earth halted.” Perun squinted as he lifted the cigarette to his lips. “That is not a matter of human morals, it is a matter of human survival.”

“I can’t believe it,” Emily muttered to herself. But actually, speaking the words, she found that she could believe it. Remembering Zeno’s eyes, the soft storm of schemes that had churned behind them … yes, she could believe it.

“Now, Miss Edwards, I have answered your questions. You must answer mine. Tell me of the hair sticks you mentioned.”

Emily looked down at the floor, stroking the golden ball in her lap thoughtfully. The Black Glass Goddess had the hair sticks now, and whatever secrets were on them. What use was it to hide the information from these people, even if she did not fully trust them? Now that the barn door had been left open and the horses had vacated their stables, what harm could it do?

“My father gave me a pair of silver hair sticks,” Emily said. “They had Faery Writing on them, and the name Aleksei Morozovich. I am almost certain that they had the formula for the poison on them.”

Perun and Dmitri exchanged glances. Shadows of rage and pain passed over Dmitri’s face.

“So they have been lost,” he said, his voice a horrible strangle. “And those poor people murdered, and …” Dmitri rubbed a hand across his mouth, turned away.

Despite how unkindly he’d spoken to her, Emily felt sudden sympathy for him. She understood the awful burden of guilt he felt. She’d brought the sangrimancers to the doorstep of Abner Pearl and his family … and for what? For a secret that was lost before it was even discovered. It was a waste—a terrible, useless waste.

“And what are we to do now?” Dmitri crossed the room in three steps. Obviously needing some outlet, he snatched the empty plate in front of Perun and threw it across the room. Emily winced at the sound of it smashing. “There is not a single hope left for the world!”

“Calm yourself, Dmitri Alekseivitch,” Perun frowned. “Hope is never entirely lost. Even in the coldest darkness of winter, hope remains.”

Dmitri made a sound of disgust. “You have been listening too much to credomancers,” he said darkly. “And Witches.”

Ignoring the barb, Emily held Perun’s eyes. “Without the hair sticks, how can we have any hope at all?”

Perun laid a kind hand on her shoulder. “Get some rest, Miss Edwards. Dmitri will take you to a place where you can sleep. I am going out for a while, but I will be back soon. And I will have a plan.”