8. “Misfits of misfits, outcasts of outcasts”
Chapter 8
“Misfits of misfits, outcasts of outcasts”
“And you sense no interloper? No new presence? Answer, Reinhardt.”
I had hurried down Victor’s long narrow stone stair with all the speed I dared, traversed the landing, rushed past the several wax-dripped candelabras on the mantel and into the hallway.
“Professor, I assure you that had I sensed anything amiss, I would?—”
The previous voice had been Victor’s; this second man’s voice, smoother and with a different accent, I did not recognize.
“Answer. Reinhardt.”
Victor again, commanding and abrupt as he interrupted the other.
The massive doors to Victor’s regal hall were near now, propped half-open by some unseen force: I slowed my steps, quieted my nerves, paused to catch my breath. It was bad enough that I had overslept and arrived late to what was to be my first of his sorcery classes—even after so long and thrilling and taxing a day I could not believe I had managed such a ridiculous error, and on the morning of my first full day of apprenticeship, no less—but a few moments more would not signify, if they meant that I could regather some small amount of lost dignity by choosing an opportune instance to cross the threshold of those great Gothic doors.
“No, professor.” Reinhardt, too, seemed to be left with rather less dignity than he might have preferred.
“Walker?” Victor grunted. “Tell me, Walker: is my apprentice here?”
“Yes, professor.”
“Yes! Ah, such certainty. Such swagger. Are you merely antagonizing Reinhardt, Walker,” and here I heard some amused murmuring of men’s voices, “or will you describe my apprentice to me?”
“I hope to accomplish both, professor.” The murmurs broke into quiet chuckling, either appreciative or nervous. The audience for this exchange consisted of perhaps a handful of men—none particularly old, I thought, and no women, by the sound of it.
“A man of many talents,” Victor pronounced. “Speak.”
“It’s a lunar sense, deep and spreading, eclipse-like, similar to yours. I’ll imagine him something like yourself—tall, rugged, broad-shouldered.”
“A veritable beast of a man. He’ll darken our door any moment now?”
“Mark my word, professor.”
Victor grunted an acknowledgement. I took it as my cue.
There was no sound, I think, but the tap of my little shoes on the stone floor as I entered through the arched doors and walked to the carven table at the back of Victor’s soaring underground hall, ignoring the half-dozen pairs of wide eyes that turned and fixed on my approaching form. “Doctor D’Arco,” I said as I came near, holding the skirts of my black mourning dress—a more pliant silk today, no more the stiff bombazine of the past year’s widow’s weeds. I felt no sorrow for my husband, but such were the clothes that I owned, purchased when I had greater care for propriety. “I apologize sincerely for my tardiness. I assure you it will not happen again.”
“Accepted. Come. Sit.” Still in his hooded black cloak and the steel half-mask that hid his nose and mouth, Victor gestured to the chair directly across from his own, where I had sat before him the previous day: it was now the central seat of the line of students who faced him across his grand table (when they were not staring at my approach), while he loomed like a lone shadow enthroned before the fiendish glow of his Hellmouth hearth. “Walker, you will help the lady to her seat.”
Walker, too, was cloaked in black, though not hooded; a tall, thin rail of a man perhaps my age, his glossy black hair slicked back from the severe lineaments of his brown face, with a quick, searching gaze his small smile did not reach. He stood up on my right side and pulled out my chair for me courteously enough, and I nodded to him in thanks, watching his taut frame endure the smug stare of the man whose chair was situated to the left of mine. That was Reinhardt, surely: a shorter man, probably, both coarser and more consciously polished, though his dark brown hair (already receding up his pale forehead) was too long for the fashion. He wore a blood-red waistcoat, the moderate paunch of his stomach straining at the buttons and his matching cravat tied somewhat too loosely, and I noticed that from his watch chain hung a small metal death’s-head. When I looked to him, he exhaled a mouthful of smoke from his stub of a cigar to the side, away from me, with a nod and an easy smile.
I glanced left and right down the table as I settled myself, stealing a glimpse of what manner of creatures had aligned themselves before Doctor D’Arco. There were two men seated to the other side of Walker, and another two to the other side of Reinhardt; I saw mostly black clothes, some flashes of royal purple or crimson; the faces for the most part were brooding or furtive or somehow strange, and all of them intent. A regular rogues’ gallery , I smiled privately to myself, remembering Victor’s words. Had these men been at the Midwinter Gathering of the Order, lurking unseen in some dim corner of Hargrave’s dining room? I remembered seeing no more than perhaps one or two of them, if that: the rest were entirely strangers. But of all the varieties of esoteric arts available to be learned from Hargrave and his secret society, these were they whose talents or inclinations led them to study sorcery : misfits of misfits, outcasts of outcasts, seekers whose search led them beyond even that hidden world of which most of London could scarcely dream.
A year or two ago, I think I would not have liked to find any one of them before me on a darkened street. Now I was in the center of them all, sitting erect in an only half-feigned confidence with my hands folded in my lap, dividing the two fellow-students who seemed most likely to lunge for each other’s throats.
“Gentlemen and Magisophists,” Victor intoned, his deep voice firm and clear, “you are joined by my new student and apprentice ,” he seemed to relish the word, “Novice Sorceress Mrs. Elizabeth Buckingham.”
The heavy doors swung shut with a resounding boom to punctuate his sentence. His students’ hush deepened. Surely they had guessed this from the moment of my entrance, but to have it confirmed by their professor was another matter. Fire danced in the gaping devil’s mouth behind Victor. In the corner, I thought I heard a stalactite drip.
The first one to move was Reinhardt, leaning back to look behind and past me to Walker; it did not take much imagination to visualize his mouth in some kind of slow, triumphant grin: I was not very tall, and neither rugged nor broad-shouldered after all.
“Mrs. Buckingham, I introduce you to Second Degree Sorcerer Randall Ashcroft”—from my place at the center of the student side of the table, I could scarcely see the man to my far left who seemed to nod—“First Degree Sorcerer Edward Forsythe; Second Degree Sorcerer Luther Reinhardt, Illusionist; Second Degree Sorcerer Deep Walker; First Degree Sorcerer William Lloyd; and First Degree Sorcerer John Brighton, Lord Greycliff.
“You will respect her power of sorcery,” Victor continued. “It is raw thus far, yet she already feels it and endeavors its use, and therefore she—a novice in name—is presently more dangerous than a book-learned Magisophist in his first or second rite. Do not test her. You will aid her at need, and you will protect her when necessary, until she is capable of doing so herself. And,” a twist of bitter amusement crept into his voice, “that will be your last cigar, Reinhardt. You are in the presence of a woman , though if you have upheld your celibacy vows, perhaps this is the first time you have seen one in a while.
“Now.” Victor leaned forward, resting his hands on the table, weaving his fingers together. I kept my attention on what I could see of his eyes. “Not one of you was able to accurately detect Mrs. Buckingham’s arrival. Reinhardt sensed no new presence. Walker, if we take him at his word, sensed a presence which turned out to be my own.”
“Quite hopeless,” came a voice I had not yet heard speak, somewhere to my left.
“You expect me to punish them, Ashcroft? What do you imagine I will do, and why? Sense it.”
A pause. “I can’t, professor.”
“Why not? Are the lot of you entirely insensible this morning?”
“No true wrath, professor. I don’t sense any. I don’t think you mean to punish them.”
“Correct, Ashcroft. They have this time done nothing to deserve it; unlike some professors with more delicate sensibilities, mine are not appalled by the mere fact of a sorcerers’ feud. For one thing, while their detections were incomplete, each of them was in his own way correct.” Victor seemed to scan the row of faces before him, likely hoping for some spark of insight. Finding none, he continued. “Solve me this riddle: how is it that I would call them both correct when Reinhardt sensed no new presence, and Walker, declaring that my apprentice had arrived, described me to myself?”
Silence, again. Utter silence, and I did not know why. Only a brief, logical consideration was wanted before the solution became apparent. Must there be some taboo of speaking to him? Some unspoken rule to which I was not yet privy? Were political lines drawn in this apparent strife between Walker and Reinhardt, lines which none dared cross?
“Not one of you seven,” Victor intoned, “dares a simple riddle?”
“Professor,” I ventured—he had said you seven after all, his count therefore including me.
And his attention, which had drifted toward Ashcroft’s end of the table, whipped back to me with frightening precision. “Mrs. Buckingham.” I felt six faces turn, some more obliquely than others, towards mine. “Speak.”
“If Walker sensed your presence from a separate direction—from behind us, through the doors—” I looked to Walker, who nodded carefully, his hawkish eyes keen—“then I should say he sensed your own shadow on me as I arrived, lingering from the blood pact yesterday, still strong enough to dominate whatever I might have of my own. And that is why Reinhardt sensed nothing novel—because it was not novel. It was some part of you coming back.”
I thought I saw his hands relax somewhat into each other: a subtle release of tension, like an inaudible, nearly invisible sigh of relief. He let long moments pass. I held back the sensation in my lips that threatened to become a smile.
“Correct, Buckingham.”
“Doctor D’Arco,” Ashcroft nearly stuttered; a low commotion broke out along the tableside, multiple men’s voices in muttered unrest. “She had inside information; how was anyone supposed to know that she was with you yester?—”
“ Silence .” They stopped at once, all of them, mid-sentence and mid-word. I wondered whether it was a spell, or whether the faint sibilance of his single word of command, more powerful and unyielding for its suggestion of surging force scarcely restrained, was enough. “I told you she is my apprentice; would I not spend time, do you think, with my apprentice? Would there not be some rite to seal our mutual will? Recall that yesterday was the Solstice of Midwinter, and occasion therefore for the Midwinter Gathering of the Order—not that I attended in person, nor any of you, apparently—and it follows thus that if I have an apprentice now, yet did not before, she must have begun her apprenticeship yesterday. Inside information is seldom so entirely obvious—” Victor’s voice sank, the unnerving hint of threat in its low, calm rumble—“wouldn’t you agree, Ashcroft?”
“Of course,” Ashcroft’s voice seemed to waver, albeit faintly, “professor.”
“Good. And to address your piqued interest as to what Buckingham does and does not know, I grant you the choice of subject for today. Do we continue our study of summoning, banishment, or materials? Theory, or practice? Choose what you imagine to be to her advantage or disadvantage, as you will. Meet her as a new ally, or a new rival.”
“Theory of banishment, professor.”
Victor nodded, his head half-cocked in a nearly casual indifference. “Theory of banishment. To recapitulate the basics briefly, for the benefit of the new student: what are you learning to banish,” his gaze drifted to my right, past Walker, “Lloyd?”
“Disprites, professor.”
“Correct, Lloyd. In brief summary, explain what is meant by disprites .”
“An English corruption of the French term êtres d’esprit , from an old summoning grimoire—a spell book—in which its meaning included, roughly, what are now often called demons, faeries, and ghosts. A useful word, since it eliminates such artificial distinctions.”
“And are we regularly in the business of banishing these disprites, Lloyd? Whether to rid the world of their influence simply because they are adept at frightening fools, or to suppose we are benevolently assisting them on to some other realm we have decided they would prefer, or some similarly rarefied brand of vigilantism?”
“No, Doctor D’Arco,” Lloyd replied again. “But disprites can be mercurial and dangerous, and it behooves one who has dealings with them to be prepared. Some harbor ill-will toward us. Some make genial acquaintances. But they aren’t mortal.”
“Good,” Victor grunted. “Very good. Should it become necessary, the banishment of disprites may be achieved through various means—drawing of sigils, spoken or written spells, weapons—the selection of which rather obviously depends upon one’s knowledge of the thing to be banished. If you are vastly more powerful than the disprite you wish to dispel, anything will do, and I advise you to use the technique in which you are personally most accomplished. Yet if the individual is unfamiliar to you, and you suspect he may match or exceed your art—what then? Answer me,” he paused, leaning forward in his throne as he seemed to survey his silent students from beneath the shadows of his hood, settling at last upon the man seated to my left between Reinhardt and Ashcroft. “Forsythe.”
Forsythe cleared his throat. I could see little of him without bending too far and encouraging Reinhardt’s interest, but I noted his black-gloved hand where it lay on the table. “Cast around myself a circle for protection,” Forsythe replied, his enunciation precise as his black-clad index finger tapped lightly on the wood, “while I observe the disprite and devise my next move.”
“Ashcroft?”
“As Forsythe, professor,” Ashcroft answered, “yet I would perform specifically the Banishing Circle of the First Degree.”
“Precisely as it was taught to you by the Order for your First Degree ritual, Ashcroft? No alterations?”
“None, professor. I am here to learn, not to reinvent.”
Victor said nothing, passing over Reinhardt, and our eyes met as he looked to me before turning to the three men seated at my right. It could not have been for more than a fleeting moment, but in that moment was a strange depth of connection, and I thought—though I had no means by which to guess such a thing, his dark eyes unsmiling and everything below them covered by his steel mask—that something at once amused and chafed at him. I wondered what his mouth looked like, and whether behind the candlelight flash of metal it should twist in a sardonic grin.
But it was like to be fantasy—another projection of imagined sympathy—and I kept it to myself, and gave no outward sign.
“Lloyd?” Victor’s eyes were on the two men seated to my right, on the other side of Walker. “Greycliff? Should I assume it is the Banishing Circle of the First Degree for you as well, or do you presume to know better?”
“To go by the specifics of your description, professor?—”
“Yes, Greycliff?”
“If I suspect the disprite’s power exceeds my art, the wise decision would be to run .”
A general chuckle of approval arose from Victor’s students at what they must have taken for incisive cleverness, but beside me I sensed Walker’s tension, and from the corner of my eye I saw him set his jaw.
Victor relaxed into his carven throne to watch. “Pragmatic in theory, Greycliff, yet not always practicable in the field,” he said, his deep voice entirely calm, nearly bored. “Those who enjoy the notion ought to try it.” The chuckling on the student side of his great table died down to silence. “Why do I say so, Walker?”
“A disprite in incorporeal form can drift through walls, provided there is no magical barrier,” Walker replied. “Unless you can do the same, you’ll be climbing fences and rattling locked doors at night while the thing hunting you blows through them.”
No sooner had Victor nodded to Walker than I felt Reinhardt lean in closer to me at my other side, resting his elbow on the table and his cheek leisurely against his fist to hide his words as he whispered. “It’s the weak spirits that stay incorporeal at night.” Reinhardt’s breath smelt of cigar smoke; I let my eyes rest on the fire behind Victor, looking to neither man, but all the while watching indirectly as the relaxed calm seemed to burn off from Victor’s body: he leaned almost imperceptibly forward, his great looming form growing tense, the gathering darkness of his regard fixed on Reinhardt.
“Mrs. Buckingham,” Reinhardt’s smoky whisper continued, “anyone afraid of being chased down the road by some invisible pixie has no business summoning any?—”
“Reinhardt.” The depth and intensity of Victor’s voice made the name into nearly a curse. Reinhardt was close enough to my left shoulder that I thought I felt a shiver course through him: despite his bluster, there was something about Victor that chilled him to the bone.
And for all the loose rein Victor gave them, letting them champ and buck like unbroken colts, and run with their contentions and their petty feuds, he needed only tighten his fist around those reins to snap them back under his control.
“Reinhardt. You will not discomfit Buckingham.”
“The farthest thing from my mind,” he replied as he drew away from me and sat upright, but the attempt at bravado faltered as he spoke, “Doctor D’Arco.”
“As it happens,” Victor continued, “your information is generally correct. Corporeal embodiment of a spirit demands a certain strength of art, thus the lesser disprites do not tend to maintain a tangible form of any decent size for long, if they can achieve one at all.” I sensed his gaze bore into Reinhardt, as if to impress upon him that he must have heard his whispered words, or seen through his hand to watch his lips, or simply read his mind. To judge by Reinhardt’s strange stillness, the message was not lost. “Yet you generalize at your own peril. Disprites are varied; the most powerful night demons have limited corporeality beneath the sun. Time must also be considered. As you know, the other world gains in power during our world’s times of transition: dusk, midnight, dawn, noon; the turns of solstices and seasons.”
And then, as he continued, the unmistakable weight of his glance shifted to me. “For the mortal sorcerer, however, the temporary dissolution of the body is rarely worth the effort and risk. Note that a similar effect can be achieved by the formation of a phantom: a useful attribute of the sorcerer’s shadow, and therefore another reason to cultivate one. The phantom is an extension of the self. You see what it sees; feel what it feels.”
His phantom. His phantom had been no dream. My mind began to race: his apparition, his spectral image that once haunted me in my bedroom at night, that somehow I had summoned despite Hargrave’s instruction to dispel it—the ghastly, moon-pale skull where Victor’s face should have been—the circle on fire?—
“Buckingham.” Victor’s deep voice called me back, a low rumble in the warm air before the hearth. My gaze and my mind must have drifted away. “Lloyd correctly notes the utility of observing the disprite’s corporeality before choosing a course of action. Physical means of banishment, while the rest of the Order may deem such things crude and unfashionable, can be highly effective against corporeal spirits.
“And so, Buckingham, the original question: with an unfamiliar disprite before you, and assuming the necessity of dispelling it, do you join your peers in casting around yourself the Banishing Circle of the First Degree?”
“I don’t know, professor,” I replied slowly. “I haven’t yet seen it performed, much less attempted it in practice.” Some murmurs to my left, and a faint tsk from Reinhardt: whether for my inexperience, or Victor’s exposure of it, I was not certain. “Yet as we speak of theory: I think the circle is not without danger.”
“Nothing is without danger.” Beneath his hood, Victor’s dark eyes flickered in the candlelight. “Continue.”
“I think it could become a cage. A powerful disprite might merely wait beyond its border for the inexperienced sorcerer to fail in his concentration. The circle to fall. I think it could keep out the storm for a while, but not forever. If the disprite pressures the outside of the circle—or tempts the sorcerer within?—”
“Yes.”
“Then the disprite is allowed to change the nature of the battle. The sorcerer’s power is no longer applied to banishment. Now the sorcerer is on the defense, and all of his energies go to merely maintaining an embattled wall.” I paused, well aware of the six other pairs of eyes on me, the furtive faces bending in from my right and my left. “I speculate, professor. I don’t know if it works like that.”
“It does.”
“Then I offer that, when in doubt, it seems one must lead with an attack.”
“Sheer suicide,” I heard a voice, perhaps Greycliff’s, mutter to my right.
“Maybe so,” I replied, “but no more than running from a thing which cannot be outrun, or defending a fortress which cannot be defended forever. Were I in that place—had I your experience—I should prefer to take the chance?—”
Scarcely had I finished the word than I felt a strange sense of sinking and a shock through my marrow, as if the entirety of the cavernous hall wavered and dropped half an inch onto granite. My gaze shot from Greycliff to Victor, and in the flash of a moment it took me to turn my head I hoped to find some reassurance that I had felt again the touch of Doctor D’Arco’s art, some unsettling pulse of his power?—
But I knew even then that the feeling was not quite the same.
Victor bolted up from his throne with his regard fixed on the arched doors, standing like a dark tower, wreathed in the firelight of the roaring Hellmouth hearth behind his broad back.
“Company,” I heard Walker whisper at my side as he loosened some sheathed weapon in its hidden scabbard and drew up the hood of his black cloak.