The Necromancer's Grimoire (41 page)

“Let me try to help you.” The priestess reached inside her for Kemal.

“Don't hurt him!” she cried, for the image of Kemal writhed when the priestess touched him.

“Fascinating.” The priestess withdrew her touch. “He is bound to you with this cord you placed in him when you cracked him open and broke him.” She frowned. “Or perhaps not.” She put her hand over Nadira's heart. “Oh, my dear, he has placed a cord in
you.
That is why you cannot put him away.” Nadira tried to sit up, but the priestess pushed her gently down. “I have not seen this before.”

“How can he do that? I thought one must read the
Hermetica
to gain that ability.”

The priestess opened her palms and closed her eyes. She smiled. “Apparently there is another way.” She sighed. “The two of you joined…you entered him too deeply, Nadira. You have a piece of his soul in yours. When you withdrew from him, it came with you.”

Nadira was stricken with guilt. “I did not know.”

“No. You were clumsy with inexperience, and you harmed him. It is possible to climb gently into the minds of others. You do not need to rip them apart and make them bleed.”

Nadira put a hand over her eyes.

The priestess shook her head and the tiny bells in her headdress that held her veil tinkled and echoed in the stone chamber. “He wonders why he cannot concentrate on his work. He spends much time on the high walls of Istanbul looking west out to sea. His men assume he is deep in thought, planning, analyzing, engaged in the logistics of managing the most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean.” The priestess laughed. “What they would say if they knew he was aching for the touch of a woman and the return of his soul? Only you can return that piece of him you stole.”

Nadira groaned and put her hand where the priestess had touched her. “Here? This is where it is?” She tried to feel it but could not.

“We will have to work around this.”

“I did not want to hurt him. I only wanted to see the necromancer. I didn't know this would happen.” She tried to tug at the invisible cord in her heart. “I can't fix this.”

“It does not need to be fixed at this moment.” The priestess' voice was warm and smooth. “Nadira. Let him be. He does not draw out your energies, but his strength sustains them. You left a piece of you inside him when you withdrew. Do you feel diminished?”

Nadira shook her head. “No, but the necromancer will hurt him through this connection, as you did when you touched him.”

“The
reis
is strong. Strong enough to plant a cord in you without your knowledge. Lie down and calm yourself. I will brush the
reis
aside gently when I go in. I will not hurt him.”

Nadira relaxed her body and cleared her mind.

Evren Farshad was looking out to sea as well. The priestess touched him and the necromancer twitched. He turned in a circle and raised his staff. The horns of the golden calf glowed red. “I feel you, Mother,” he said. “You cannot hide behind that little girl.”

Nadira's mind wondered, ‘Mother?', but the priestess warned her to be still.

“I do not hide, Evren. You have overstepped your boundaries and we know it.”

“Stay in your hole, witch. The world of men command it.”

Nadira felt the priestess' anger. “The world of women command you to withdraw. Go back to Persia.”

“Or?” The staff spun around and bright red whirls of light rose over his head and spun into a shimmering cloud of his intent. “She has taken what is mine.”

Nadira withdrew from the intensity of the necromancer's cast, but the priestess held her tightly. “He can hurt you only if you believe that he can,” the priestess told her. “Do not let your eyes rule your soul, Nadira. None of your senses have the whole Truth. All of them record the illusion of life. As above, so below.” To Farshad she said, “You know she did not steal the
Grimoire
. It abandoned you and left with her. It chose her as it had once chosen you. You have failed, Evren. Go back to Persia.”

The necromancer did not reply, but she saw inside his mind. Whatever he feared had its source in Persia. Before he withdrew, she felt a glimmer of his intent. He waved his staff at her and she felt the heat of his determination strike her. She rolled from the couch and hit the floor with the force of his anger. Then he was gone.

“We will work on that,” the older woman said. “We will discover where your weakness lies and cut it out. I suspect you harbor a belief in the strength of evil somewhere in your heart.”

Nadira rubbed her hands over the cool stones of the floor. She felt her failure like a sword thrust through her body.

The priestess bent down to touch her hair. “You cannot defeat him as long as you have such a strong belief in evil. He uses that to strike you, as you have just seen.”

“You said yourself,” Nadira said in a small voice, “that the evils of the world are caused by men. Evil exists. I have seen it, felt it. Your fear of it has consumed your life. You have created a massive defense against it inside this cave.”

The priestess smiled gently. “My belief in evil has troubled me for many years. I know it is there, but I have not the courage to confront it. Instead I built this great wall.”

Nadira looked up sharply. “Courage?”

The priestess's smile faded, but her eyes shone brighter. “I was once walked through an exercise like the one you are about to encounter. I failed miserably. So miserably that my teacher never tried to teach me that lesson again. I cannot shake my belief in evil, but you must.” The priestess made a gesture toward the couch. “Lie down again. I will be with you the entire time.”

Nadira obeyed warily.

“Close your eyes,” the priestess told her. “You must pass this test or you will fail any attempt to use the
Grimoire
in the realms of the necromancer. Do you understand?”

Nadira nodded, though she could not refrain from asking, “I am to use a book that touches the evils of the world, but am instructed that I cannot use it as long as I have a belief in evil?”

“It is not as strange as it sounds. You are not merely trying to use a book. Any evil man may use the book for his evil purposes. You are going to
conquer
what you believe to be evil and all the misery it contains. You cannot do that without losing a
belief
in evil. Only what you believe can hurt you. Do you understand? To protect yourself from evil, you must lose your definition of it.”

Nadira nodded again, thinking.
How can one unlearn what one has learned?

The priestess heard her thought. “By learning something new that replaces it. Perhaps when you were a child you believed your mother could solve any problem that troubled you. At some point that belief was replaced by the truth: that she could not.”

Nadira winced at the mention of her mother. “What are you going to teach me?”

“That evil does not exist.”

“Impossible.”

The priestess nodded, as if agreeing with her. “I have known only one person who had been able to achieve this mastery.” She turned her eyes on Nadira. ”Do you refuse to try?”

Nadira thought of her friends, of the necromancer. If she did not try then they would suffer from her lack of courage, and for her doubts. She took in a sharp breath to clear her mind of the images that began to force themselves into her inner vision, the results of her imagined failure. “I will. What is the worst that could
happen?” She asked honestly.

“That you realize you cannot travel where the magicians go. That there is a place in this world from which you are barred, as I am barred. That evil will continue to exist because you could not vanquish it. Evil proliferates with every soul who believes in it and diminishes with every spirit that does not.”

“Very well. If it is the only way.”

“It is.”

Nadira lay on the couch and the priestess covered her with her blue shawl. The older woman knelt on the hard floor and took her hand. “You must relax. Listen to me carefully. You may question me if you please. It is very important that you answer every question truthfully. You cannot lie to yourself and triumph. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“What is the most horrible thing you can think of?”

Nadira's mind immediately went to Montrose and his ruined thumb. Then to Richard and his tortured eyes, then Marcus and his sacrifice. The images flew before her of William's bloody back and Corbett's agony, Calvin's crippling limp. Kemaleddin Reis and his torn soul. The priestess interrupted.

“Those are indeed painful events, but they are not yours.”

Her mind went blank at this, and she began to understand what the priestess meant by the difficulty. She tried to squeeze the images of her mother's death before her but nothing would come. She knew her mother had died in childbirth. She had been there but the images remained dark.

“What was your mother's name?” the priestess asked softly.

“Jasmine,” Nadira answered immediately, and the memory returned in a flash of light and sound. She was at her mother's bedside, holding her mother's slender hand. Her mother knew the child was dead and that all her pain had been for nothing.

Jasmine had turned her head and looked at Nadira with luminous eyes and smiled. She had pressed Nadira's little-girl hand once, and then went limp. Nadira the child made no sound, but tightened the hold on her mother's hand. The weeping of the servants in the room grew louder.

“No.” Nadira sat up on the couch and put her hand through her hair, clearing the strands from her brow as though she could comb out the memory.

The priestess frowned. “This is not evil. This is sorrow.” The priestess pressed her further. “The truth remains hidden. You deceive only yourself.”

“Ah,” Nadira breathed. “I am strong. I can do this.”

“Yes. I see there was an afternoon when you were a small child. The sun is warm and the sandalwood gives off a heady scent in the women's quarters. There is a loud noise…shouting…the slamming of doors and heavy footsteps…” The priestess prompted her. “I can see it. You can see it too. See it. Be there, Nadira.”

Nadira lay back again on the couch. She realized she struggled against the priestess who forced the images into her mind. She took a long slow breath.
This is evil. This is proof that evil exists.

She opened the eyes within her mind and felt the priestess there with her in the great room of the harem. They were on the second floor sleeping room for their afternoon rest. The men in the courtyard below were not her father's men. Some of the older women had screamed, the younger ones gathered the children around them and trembled. Nadira the child turned to her mother with questioning eyes.

“Nadira, quickly. Behind the screen. Here.” She was thrust behind the carved wooden screen near her sleeping pallet. “Under the veils! Quickly! And make no sound. Silence.” Nadira was too frightened to argue, for the loud sounds of many men were coming from outside the door. The shrieks of the women filled her ears. She had no eyes but for her mother, standing straight on the other side of the screen, one hand beckoning for her to lie still.

The doors to the great room were barred; the dark eunuchs had their curved blades in hand and stood ready on either side. Nadira could peek through the veils that covered her little body and see other mothers hiding their children. She saw the grandmothers on their bellies in prayer. The youngest women pulled their veils closely around their faces and backed against the tiled walls.

The pounding on the great doors began. The pounding grew louder and more rhythmic. Bits of plaster began to fall from the edges of the doorframe. The screams from the women swelled louder. With a crack, the beam that held the doors closed burst inward, knocking two of the eunuchs to the ground. The other two stepped into the entry and began to swing their swords. Nadira covered her eyes, but only for a moment. She could not hide. She had to know. There was no comfort for her in not knowing.

Many men entered with swords. More men than can be counted on her hands. They raised their swords and the eunuchs were dead in a splash of red. Nadira looked up through the veils at her mother, still pressed against the screen. Her mother's silks waved about her ankles. Nadira reached one small hand out to them. Under the screen she could touch the blue and the gold of her mother's gown. Her blue silk slippers were a handbreadth away. Nadira knew that if she could touch the slipper the men would go away. She wanted them to be magic slippers, like in the stories her mother told her at night. One finger made it under the screen, brushing the hem of her mother's veils. The slippers disappeared with a sickening thud, as her mother's body hit the ground beside her. Nadira drew her hand back as if as snake had bit it.

Her mother lay on her back, the silk veils now in lifeless wads. She peered under the screen and saw that her mother was looking at her under the carved arch that supported the base of the frame. Her eyes were fierce and warned her not to move, not to make a sound. Nadira blinked at her before another movement took her eyes away.

Above her mother's prone body a man's face appeared, making her cringe lower into her nest of veils. He had an ugly mustache and filthy hair. Some of his teeth were missing and he smelled like the cesspit. He held her mother down with one thick arm while the other fumbled with his belt.

A moment later Nadira watched as his breeches fell low. The man forced her mother's legs apart and then he fell hard upon her. Nadira heard her mother groan.

“Ah!” Nadira the woman leaped up and flew from the couch, running for the crevasse in the chamber that leads to the bright sun and the sparkling sea. No more underground darkness. A wood door blocked her way. The priestess got to her feet slowly and made her way to the door as well.