The Necromancer's Grimoire (45 page)

“Then what is it?”

Nadira did not answer, but circled the room, careful of the furniture and the edges of the woven rugs that covered the tile floor. William reached over the table to re-light the candles from the one that still burned.

The room was warm from the day's burning heat, but there was a cold spot in one corner. Nadira stopped there and put a hand into it. It was like ice. She made a fist, thinking. The cold air spiraled around her body as it rose up to the ceiling and through the floor above them.

William watched her follow the path of the cold air with her eyes. “What do you see?” he asked softly.

“He has conjured something.”

William crossed himself. “What do we do?” his voice wavered.

“We send it back to him,” she answered.

William took a step closer to the table and lifted the
Grimoire
. He shook the spine until the book opened. Pages fluttered for a few moments as the book selected the correct passage. William leaned over the open book, tilting it toward the candles.

“It says…” He was interrupted by the scrape of furniture on the floor above them. There was a thump and a shout. William looked up and Nadira locked eyes with his. She spun on her toes and made for the stair.

Nadira did not knock politely, nor did she wait to be invited in to the Templars' room. Moonlight through the large open window allowed her to see that the thump she heard was a body hitting the floorboards. The shout must have come from Calvin because Malcolm Corbett was lying on the floor by his bed, his face ashen gray, his eyes open and still.

Calvin had dragged himself out of his bed and was now propped against the wall. His eyes blinked with disbelief as he stared at Corbett. He glanced only briefly at Nadira as she entered, then focused his gaze on his companion, his face told her he could see what she saw there.

A dark wispy cloud swirled around Corbett's body. Nadira stopped and pressed herself against a wall as Calvin had done. William came to a shuddering stop in the hallway just outside the door. He did not enter. She could hear him breathing behind her.

“Bring lights,” she whispered to him. She had not saved DiMarco. She must save Corbett. There had to be a way. She looked at Calvin. He would be next.

“Yes,” William answered breathlessly and disappeared into the hall.

Calvin looked at them both. “What is it?” His voice was tight and low.

“A shade,” Nadira answered. “He sent it to frighten us.” She had told the Templars what had happened to DiMarco. She saw Calvin make the connection. His jaw tightened and his eyes became cold and hard. She moved along the wall to get a better view. The dark swirling vapor seemed to be forming a solid shape. When she reached Calvin she put her hand out to him without taking her eyes from the thickening vapor.

“Can you walk?” she murmured.

He blew his breath out in a way that told her he could not. She glanced down quickly at his legs before returning her eyes to the dark presence that hovered over Corbett's body. Calvin was braced against the wall on his good leg, now trembling with the strain. He was dressed in a short loose tunic he wore as a night shirt and nothing else. She tugged gently on his arm. “I want you to try to leave the room.” Below the hem of the tunic the cords of his thigh stood out hard against the weight of his body. On his other leg, the wound had festered. After Montrose left, there was no one but himself to care for and bind it and Calvin refused to allow her to touch his body. She could see how much it pained him. He would move slowly, if at all.

“No, Lady,” he answered tightly. “I will not leave you alone with a spirit from hell.”

“I am here,” William reminded him from the hall. He had an oil lamp in one hand and the
Grimoire
in the other.

Calvin glanced up at the sound of his voice. “Bring the light in. Perhaps it will flee.”

Nadira did not think so. She watched the column of vapor coalesce into the shape of a man. Arms and legs and a smoky head undulated from the column. She touched Calvin's arm. “Sit then, Calvin. Go down.”

He did not resist. He could not. His knee unlocked and he slid to the floor, his back scraped against the plaster and tile behind him. His wounded leg bent under him and folded. His face tightened and his teeth clenched hard.

She placed a hand gently on the top of his head and then moved herself between Calvin and the prone Corbett to address the thickening spirit.

“What are you, and why have you come here?” she demanded.

The spirit swirled tightly for a moment before solidifying into a man. When it turned its head to answer her she saw Corbett's face formed from the cloud.

Her gasp was echoed by Calvin's cry.

Calvin called out, “Then he is dead!”

Nadira saw William move through the doorway with the
Grimoire
open. The covers splayed out and hung down both sides of his hand. His golden eyes were fierce.

“Back!” he shouted. He advanced into the room to stand beside the Templar's body. He held up one hand against the dark spirit and the book in the other.

Nadira watched the spirit recoil from the
Grimoire.
It turned and grinned at her with Corbett's mouth, then leaped at Calvin.

She dove to intercept it, thrusting her arms out to grab at it, substantial or not, to keep it from touching Calvin. The young Templar threw himself to the floor and rolled like a log toward the door. Nadira felt her hands on the shade like clutching at a stream of cold water. She could feel it, it was there, but there was nothing to grasp when she tightened her hands.

The dark shape dissolved in her hands, then reappeared over Calvin. She leaped over the body of Corbett and embraced the shade. William was waving his free hand, his eyes on the open book. He spoke a few words in Latin that she did not know, then shouted clearly, “
Vos mos vado
!”

She knew those words, but the dark shade did not go. William repeated them louder. The shade merely reached for Calvin through her body. She called out to William. “It is not working!”

The shade did not like her touch, and swirled about her as if repulsed. The
Grimoire
told her that it could only affect the living in its solid form, and could only move quickly in its vapor form. She kept after it, touching and reaching and moving with it, stepping carefully around the furniture and the men. It avoided her by roiling through the room and finally keeping itself floating near the ceiling where she could not reach it. It did not go when William ordered it to leave again.

Nadira stood in the center of the room, her feet on either side of Corbett's body and her arms raised over her head ready to intercept the vaporous shade. She kept her eyes on the dark shifting shape but spoke to William.

“Are you making any progress with the book?”

“I am reading as fast as I can,” he answered.

She asked the
Grimoire
directly, “What needs to be done?”

The book spoke to her.
The necromancer has taken Malcolm Corbett just as he took DiMarco. He has twisted his soul and is using it now as a weapon against you.

Nadira narrowed her eyes. “Yes,
the sky is blue
,” she snapped at it. “Yes. I can see that. I wish to return the Templar's soul to him and release him from the necromancer.”

The
Grimoire
was silent. William cleared his throat. “It says here that…” he stopped, reading. Nadira tried to curb her impatience. The dark shade was settling on top of the heavy wardrobe, and soon would become solid again. She flew through the possibilities in her mind, going quickly over what she had learned and trying to pull out the knowledge she needed to release Corbett.

Calvin had dragged himself across the floor and was sitting near Corbett's head, his hands over the old man's face as if he could block the spirit from using his friend's visage again. She felt his energies as a great force protecting Corbett's lifeless body with the fervor of his religion. Even diminished and in pain, he was a formidable fighter, strong with his beliefs in righteousness. She glanced down at him. She had removed him from her imagined arsenal because of his injury, but now realized this was a mistake.

“Calvin,” she said softly, so as not to disturb William's concentration. “I am going to drop my body to the floor.”

The Templar looked up at her.

“I will drop it to the floor. You are not to be alarmed. It is not the shade's doing.” She looked down at him. “Cover my body with yours. Protect it, and do not let William think I am dead.”

Calvin glanced at William then nodded once. Nadira closed her eyes. She felt her physical body fall away from her like a tree felled by a woodsman. It struck the floor with a loud thump, her hair splayed out around her head like a dark halo over Calvin's legs. She heard William cry out before she launched herself into the air at the shade.

The shade had not expected her to enter its world. She sensed its momentary confusion before it reacted to her presence. It rose up and expanded into a dark storm cloud. Silver streaks of lightning shot from its depths toward her. She felt a tingling and a cold downdraft across her ethereal body. The room around them disappeared. Nadira flung herself at it and enveloped the stormy vapor. As she touched it she could feel Malcolm Corbett's life in France. She felt his childhood among tutors, his lessons in combat, and his hours on his knees in his family's chapel. She saw him reject his intended wife and enter the church. She saw his father and his men ride up to the cathedral in Paris and drag the young man kicking and screaming back to the country manor to stand before the altar beside a cringing bride.

She embraced the shade and held it, reaching for Corbett and surrounding him with understanding and reminding him of his God's love. She could feel the necromancer there too, playing to Corbett's fears, expanding them and encouraging them.

She focused her thoughts on memories of Corbett's face, to remind him of who he was. The necromancer worked to twist the Templar's soul into a slave to his will. As much as Corbett loved and worshipped his God, he feared sin and damnation. The necromancer fanned those fears with his own reserves of energy and made them powerful. This was how he had taken DiMarco.

Nadira touched the memory of the intended wedding. This memory was loaded with guilt and pain. She brought it into focus and elaborated on the combined emotional fervor of each of the participants. She touched Corbett's father and felt his fury and frustration with his oldest son. She touched Corbett's mother and felt her sympathies for the bride. She touched the teenaged Malcolm and felt his revulsion.

“Please,” she said to him kindly. “Revulsion? She is a nice girl, the daughter of your father's best friend.”

Corbett shuddered from deep within the dark cloud and she held tightly to him. He answered her, “Her body is the seat of the devil, corrupt with the desires of the flesh that will bring damnation upon me…” He was prepared to go on, but Nadira stopped him. The necromancer was enjoying the Templar's torment; she could feel his amusement through the vapor.

“Your God said to be fruitful and multiply. This command cannot be obeyed if every man tucks himself into a cloister. Besides, you are about to be married before God. He is supposed to convey his blessings upon your union. Are you saying that marriage is sinful?”

The necromancer pulled Corbett away from this idea and paraded images of naked women in various sexual postures before them both. Corbett recoiled, but could not remove the images from his mind. Nadira could. She replaced them with images of the Madonna and scores of cherubic infants. She swirled a golden cloud around the small part of Corbett the necromancer had not seized. She moved closer to it and whispered, “The son of God emerged into your world from the body of a woman. Would your God have placed him there to grow inside her if she were the root of evil?”

The necromancer scoffed and pelted them with more images of the most depraved sexual couplings he could imagine. Nadira could not help but look at some of them with surprise and disbelief, but held tightly to Corbett while the Templar considered her words. She poured as much love and compassion into her touch as she could. The necromancer countered her soft caresses with blows from each of the seven deadly sins. Corbett had certainly sinned throughout his long life. The Templar had counted each one over the years and held onto them tightly in a bundle of despair.

Nadira blocked the necromancer's blows with the blanket of compassion she wrapped around Corbett's soul. The old man refused to give up his sense of guilt. In desperation she cast about her for more ideas. She did not know enough of the Templar's religion to use it against the necromancer. She knew only what she had been told. A few stories, some admonitions. Not enough.

She could see that Corbett saw his devotion to his mission to protect Christendom was rooted in his fear that his soul was damned. She flipped through the pages of his life, looking for the seed of this torment. There. Corbett felt her touch the memory and struggled mightily against her as she brought it forward. The necromancer was equally eager to show it in all its color and form to Malcolm. Nadira was startled to feel the necromancer move to stand with her and help her bring these images forward.

The three of them stood in an immense field of grain in southern France. It was late summer. The wind blew the ripening heads of wheat into swirling waves. Around the edges of the fields the peasants harvested swathes of golden grain and made towering stacks of the straw. Corbett pulled back as if to run and the sky darkened with his fear. The necromancer held him by the back of his neck and pushed him to his knees at Nadira's feet. She locked eyes with Evren Farshad over the Templar's bowed head. This was how one battled over the soul of a man; their weapons were thoughts, ideas and beliefs. More of the
Grimoire
's words became clear to her, and the lessons of the priestess were not forgotten.