The Necromancer's Grimoire (48 page)

“I can send you to him.” She drew him down.

He allowed her to lay him on the stones with his head in her lap. His blood soaked through her gown, she felt its warmth on her knee. She brushed the soft brown hair from his brow. When he relaxed, she touched his forehead between his eyes, as the priestess had done to her.

She traveled with him to the church in London. He was such a little boy in such a little brown cassock. His eyes opened in wonder as he gazed upward at the altar. He believed God lived inside the reliquary. She asked him, “Is that what they told you?”

The little boy turned to her, “They told me that when the priest raises his arms, the bread becomes the body of our lord. Really. I was afraid to eat it. Who wants to eat a person?”

She agreed. “That is strange. And you were asked to drink his blood?”

Tears filled the little boy's eyes. “I know. I was so afraid.”

“So this was your first encounter with God?”

“Face to face, so to speak,” the little William answered. “I was supposed to put him in my mouth.” He shuddered. “Bleh.” He made a little boy's face.

She said gently, “Yet little boys play in the mud and eat worms on wagers.”

The little William laughed.

“So. Did you meet God this day?”

“No. It tasted like bread and wine, but the priest was happy and I went to sleep with his blessing.”

“When did you get close to meeting him?”

“The day I promised to serve him with all my life,” he answered.

“What did he say to you on that day?” William was silent. Nadira saw the priests around him and other novices in the cavernous church. She prodded him. “What did he say to you?”

William shook his head. “He did not say anything.”

“So when did he accept your vows?” There was a long silence. Nadira waited. “Will?”

“He has to accept my vows?” he asked. He moved his hand to take hers.

“Of course,” she told him. “You make the vow, and the other accepts it with a vow in return. Did God not promise to keep you and protect you, and upon your death allow you to enter into heaven to be with him for all eternity?”

“The priest made that promise.”

“Not God? Did God never speak to you?”

William frowned.

She waited, breathing deeply, willing him to comprehend. She waited. One breath. Two breaths. She watched his golden eyes. They blinked. His lips parted and he sucked in a deep breath as his pupils quickly dilated to deep pools of black. His voice hummed in his throat. “Ah…” he breathed. “Ah.” His body trembled and Nadira held him tighter. “Ah,” he said again, and then the darkened eyes focused on hers. “Ha,” he whispered.

He broke her hold on him and leaped from her lap. He stumbled across the room to the
Grimoire
, picked it up and flipped it open. He tipped the book down so she could see the image on the third page. The honey brown eyes of a friar stared out at them both from within the cowl of a Franciscan cassock. William lifted his hand and placed it gently on the image. There was a red flash and searing heat filled the room. The noose was gone.

He turned to her and his eyes glowed with determination. “Let us go now. Right now. Get up, Nadira.”

“Saint Francis was right. The pope in his grand palace is wrong, selling heaven for coin,” he said with a gentle smile. “And all the world is made up of the love of God. It is lack of his love that is perceived as evil.”

Tears filled her eyes.

He nodded slowly, the blood dripped from his head in a ring around his brow. “God told me this. Just now.”

She sighed with relief and wiped at the tear that tracked her cheek. “Then the necromancer can no longer touch you with anything.”

“No. He cannot. But we must still put him far away from this world. He will prey upon others. Not everyone has a teacher like you, Nadira,” and his voice cracked. “I will wear the cassock again when this is over.”

She gave him her hand. “We go very deep. Which demon will hold the door for us?”

He bent over the book and opened a page. “This one. Nerulu.” William glanced at her once before turning back to the pages. “We will put him there.” He pointed his chin to a space in front of the priestess' couch. “Her body shields this space. He will not be able to escape into the world should we fail.”

“We will not fail,” she assured him.

“None would attempt this if they thought so,” he said reasonably. “But I am careful.”

“You are.” Her heart swelled with love for him, and she felt the priestess inside her agree. All the women of the temple were seeing a man in a different light.

William looked up from his book again, puzzled. “I just felt the kiss of a thousand maidens.”

She gave him a sad smile, “Feels good, doesn't it?”

“Better than what this is going to feel like,” he grimaced as he touched a page with a finger. He took a few deep breaths. “But what is pain but proof that we are not dead?” He extended his arm and she watched as a glow began to form in the room. “Nadira,” William was serious. “He is going to attack the baron. My lord Montrose will not be able to use his sword against this foe.”

She nodded and wiped her cheeks with both palms. “I know. We will do what we can.”

William shook his head. “The only thing we can do is defeat him before he can strike at Montrose.”

“Let us go.” She made a great effort to put aside her love for Robert. She felt the anxiety as cold bands around her heart. She would not be able to work if she were fettered with this fear.

William set his feet firmly on the stone of the cave floor. His concentration was total. In her mind she heard him ask her,
are you ready now?

She raised both arms over her head and formed a triangle with her thumbs and forefingers. “I am,” she said, “
ego sum
.”

Will lifted an arm, and with a glance one more time at the
Grimoire
, he drew the sigil in the air over his heart with his finger. Nadira watched the room for signs of entry. William drew the sigil over and over again, faster and faster. She was able to see the glow of light he generated with his energies. Each movement of his hand drew a line of light into the shape of a name. He cast it to the floor where it first glowed and then sparked.

She pressed her fingers together harder and thrust tendrils of herself through her triangle into the next world. “I am,” she repeated, but this time the words went where no ears would hear them.

A soft breeze swirled over the sigil on the stone floor of the temple.

“Will.”

“I see it.” She glanced at him quickly, then returned her concentration to her triangle.

William wavered; the hand tracing the sigil in the air shook hard enough to throw off bits of light like a Catherine wheel.

The breeze over the sigil on the floor had become a twisting column. Moments later Nerulu appeared in demon form, wavering and transparent within the chalky outline. His curled ram horns and pointed tail appeared, shrouded in the red mists he brought with him through the portal.

She beckoned to Nerulu. “He gives you his energies freely. A gift. I will not have him harmed. You take as much as you need, but no more.”

The swirling shape extended a sinuous thread of glowing light toward them. It snaked its way across the floor as it homed on the warmth of their living bodies. It paused at her feet, then changed direction toward William, touching him at his knees, then circling his body to pierce his heart.

William let his breath out slowly in a long sigh.

“That's enough,” she said.

The tendril glowed brighter as it pulled William's life from his body. She repeated, “Enough! You have enough!”

The outline of the sigil puffed into a cloud of smoke, and Nerulu stood tall and erect when it cleared. The tendril remained, connecting the demon's left hoof with William's heart, pulsing with umbilical life.

She glared at Nerulu. “I will be obeyed.”

The demon gave her a slight bow, “You will. Though the payment for my services is usually all of the living. Not a mere taste.” His yellow eyes moved to William and back to her, his snaky tongue flicked at his lips.

“Not today. Today you will open the portal only. I have no other need for you. You are paid well enough for that task.”

The demon turned his glowing yellow eyes from William and looked at her. “Say when.”

“Now.” She touched him.

She expected the flash of light and the sharp crack that signaled the opening of the portal. She anticipated a whirl like the ones that accompanied her travels. She did not expect to burn. A searing heat that came from inside immediately followed the crack. She felt the heat in the core of her body radiating outwards, as though she were the fire starter. The base of her spine writhed, and an unbearable surge shook her upwards, seeming to fling her body like so much laundry on a line. Nadira opened her arms and the whirling stopped. She forced her eyes open and demanded that they see. She was in the Abyss.

She pulled in all her tendrils but the one tied to William. Then projected them outward in an explosion of light particles. One would touch the necromancer. One would find him.

And there he is.

With a great swelling of intent, she called the necromancer to her, feeling the tug
at the other end of her focus that signaled she had connected with him. He tried to remove the barb of light from his chest, but like a fly in a web, his struggles only drew her closer.

She drew on all her memories of summer days and brightly flavored ices. She imagined the vivid colors of silken gowns and floating veils. She remembered Thedra's dancing girls and the music of the streets of Istanbul. She opened her arms and gathered in the power and grace of the sultan's fine white stallions on the parade ground, and the feasts and orgies of the Romans. All this and more she knew were the images that would entrap the necromancer.

The necromancer tried to resist. He was strong and knew what she was doing to him. She felt him conjure blocking walls and tempests of fury.

There was a pause, then a slow building of something else. She braced herself as she felt him probing her mind. Around her swirled his attempts, earthquakes, storms at sea, fires in cities…he piled on the images of death and fear. She allowed herself to feel the despair of the innocent, knowing such eruptions were transient and would fade as they always did. Around her she formed the fields of Andalusia in the springtime. She stood among long blades of green grass waving in the warm breezes and looked up at the blue sky

Something fell slowly, spinning toward her. She waited.
This is a test. He throws something my way, I throw it back
. But as the dark form grew closer she could see it was a man, and as it landed with a thump at her feet she saw it was Montrose.

No.

He is an illusion as everything here is. The necromancer wants me to despair.

Nadira knelt at the man's side. It was Montrose. He was dressed in his fighting leathers with his high boots and baldric buckled diagonally across his chest, but the scabbard was empty. He lay as if dead, his body broken from the fall, arms and legs bent and twisted. She looked up.

Try again
. She thought at Farshad.
This is not Robert. It is a shade of his form only.

No. You look again
, the necromancer replied.

She touched Montrose's cheek. Cold. The lids of his blue eyes were half open, the crescents of blue were dull and dry. Above his leather belt caked flakes of blood dusted his trousers and tunic.
This body has been dead at least a day. Maybe two.
She touched the stab wound that had killed him. The shivers of dread she felt only reminded her of how the necromancer would try to control her. Icy fingers of panic crawled up her spine and she felt his satisfaction.
This is not Robert.
It is a trick of
the mind. This is how love becomes a weapon.

Alexandria. She felt the necromancer plant the vision on her mind. She saw Montrose striding down the wide streets toward the docks, Alisdair and Garreth marching behind him. His sword hung at his side, his tall boots swung with determined rhythm. He was going somewhere important. She looked at his face. She recognized the set of his jaw and the steely intensity of the familiar blue eyes. He must be going to meet Massey.

She tried to look ahead, to will herself to get there before he did. She felt blocked, as though she were wading through thick mire.
Very well. I can only move with them
. The three men turned a corner and she could see the wharf ahead, the masts of the anchored ships like a forest without leaves. She found herself in step beside them. There was no sound, which usually signified to her that she was observing something that had already happened. She reached out to touch Montrose and found she could after a fashion, but that he could not feel her hand, nor did he appear to sense her presence. Grasping at his clothing did nothing. There was the initial contact, then her hand slipped through the cloth.

She tried to engage Alisdair and Garreth as well with the same negative result
.
No tendril would enter any of the men.
I am a spectator only.

Six men came striding around the corner of a warehouse, swords at their sides. Both groups of men stopped. She watched as each group recognized the other. Swords were drawn. Garreth pulled his ax from his belt and shook it out until the handle reached the sweet spot in his hand. Montrose had his broadsword poised at the ready, the blade placed strategically across his chest. Alisdair's great claymore rose from behind him as the big man reached with both arms over his head to pull it from the huge scabbard on his back.