Unnatural Issue (5 page)

His life had withered, and his spirit contracted into a hard, cold thing, as infertile as a lump of stone. As he had grown bitter, twisted, and blighted, so everything he could see from his windows had grown. That gave him a grim sort of satisfaction, seeing the land itself as stark and withered as his heart.

In his soul he had hoped that this neglect of his own body would make it fail him, but his body had been too stubborn and refused to die. Two years, three? He lost count of the days as he lay for hours with his face to the wall, roused only by the housekeeper’s insistence that he eat. He lost track of the seasons, noting only dully the presence or absence of a fire in his fireplace. At some point, however, it became apparent that his body was not going to oblige him. That was when he took on a semblance of living again. He ate—if not regularly, then at least once a day. He changed his clothing when the housekeeper laid out new. He even bathed now and again, hacked off his hair and beard with shears when it annoyed him, cut his nails the same way. Finally he had taken refuge in the only thing that gave him even a particle of release—not pleasure, for he still took no pleasure in anything—but the release of study and concentration.

Books were somewhat of an escape. Not fiction, though. There were enough lies in the world without adding fiction to them. He found his studies in the magical library that had been amassed by generations of Whitestones. He had scarcely looked at these books during his training; Earth Masters tended to be less than scholarly, more inclined to hands-on practicality. There had always been an Earth Master here, but the Whitestones, at least according to family tradition, had spawned all manner of other magicians, and some, like Air and Water, tended to be bookish. And, of course, once the books were in the house, the Earth tendency to “keep and hold” took over, and they were never even lent out to friends, who were perfectly welcome to come as guests to study but were not permitted to take so much as a child’s book away.

It was a massive library, rivaled only by the one at Exeter House. There were books that dated all the way back to the time of Henry VII and some for which he could find no date—things written in the careful script of someone trained to copy ancient manuscripts or in the crabbed and peculiar handwriting of some unknown mage’s personal grammarie.

Ah, the grammaries . . . the word was actually a corruption of “grimoire,” a book of spells and incantations personally collected by an individual magician. The witches called such things both a “grammary,” and a “Book of Shadows,” but a true grimoire could be a perilous thing indeed, full of notes, speculation, and experimentation. Peril appealed to him now. Puzzling out the strange handwriting and odd abbreviations involved him and made him forget his pain for a little while; these books required endless hours of study, learning the peculiar quirks of the author’s hand, puzzling them out word by word and transcribing them into bound notebooks to be left with the original. There were entire shelves full of such blank books, created by some past squire of Whitestone and left there for the use of successive generations. Well, he might as well use them; there would be no more Whitestones at the Manor. He was the last. And for a time, he had thought that this library would be his only legacy; Alderscroft would never permit the home of a Master who died without a proper heir to be left for strangers to paw over. He’d helped Alderscroft himself, twice, in such circumstances. A special delegation would go to the home and make sure there was nothing in it to cause trouble later. Libraries would be stripped of dangerous volumes and harmless ones left in their place, Working Rooms either sealed off completely or made to look like ordinary storerooms. Then any unique books would go to the library at Exeter House, while duplicates became the property of whoever in the party wished to take them. Some of the books here had come by that route.

So when he died, another delegation from the White Lodge would come, take the books away, and leave common things behind.

They’d take the grammaries and the transcriptions. Maybe they would find something of use in them.

None of these were the work of Elemental Masters, of course. The Masters had always had their own private printing presses from the time such things existed, and before that, they had had their own private scribes. The books for the training of new Elemental magicians and recording the results—and only the
results
—of experimentation on the part of a Master were grave and legible volumes intended to be passed down through generations. These grammaries were generally the work of one mage, who might not be altogether sane, and were never intended for any eyes but his or her own.

Rebecca had never been interested in this, so transcribing the books called up no memories of her. He had spent years transcribing these books, delving deeper and deeper into the cobwebby recesses of the shelves. They were not organized in any particular fashion, not even by date. So it was not terribly surprising when, in the middle of a shelf piled high with the maunderings of half-literate “yarb-healers” and the scratchy notes of self-styled “alchymists” that must have been three hundred years old, he found a bundle of books of a much more recent date.

Furthermore, although at first he had been certain they were just as worthless as the rest, the deeper he delved into them, the more he felt drawn, even compelled, to work with them—and the more certain he became that these books were not only of
some
worth, they were of incredible value.

Especially to him.

Because these were the private notes and detailed workings of a necromancer.

Necromancy was related to Earth Mastery, although no Earth Master associated with the White Lodge would ever study such a thing even out of the purest of motives. He had known such books existed, though he suspected that if old Alderscroft had any reason to suspect the Whitestone library held such volumes, the entire Lodge would descend on Whitestone Manor and carry them away to be burned.
Technically
it was possible to be a necromancer and practice entirely benign magic.
Technically
the Spiritualist movement was nothing but necromancers—they spoke, or at least tried to speak, with the dead, after all.

But real necromancers never stopped with merely entreating the dead to appear and listening to whatever they had to say. Real necromancers
compelled
the dead—both the spirits and the bodies too, if they were strong enough. And as such, in the eyes of most “right-minded” Elemental mages, they and their magic were absolute anathema.

But then, those same “right-minded” Elemental mages had likely never lost someone so beloved that life was not worth living without her. And the moment that he recognized the books for what they were was the moment when a seed was planted in his heart that had grown to strange proportions indeed.

These books may well have been the spoils of some former Master who had destroyed the necromancer himself and brought the books home as a kind of trophy. Although the White Lodge of London was very old indeed, not all Elemental Masters in England felt compelled to join it, and Richard was very well aware that not all the Whitestones of the Manor had been on cordial terms with the Huntmaster of the White Lodge of London. Someone who was not part of the Lodge could do whatever he wanted to with the trophies of his combat.

It had not truly occurred to him at first that he could actually use these books. He had merely allowed himself to be lost in the fantasy of bringing her spirit to speak to him, so that he could beg her forgiveness for leaving her alone, for not being there in her dark hour of suffering and need.

But then . . . then he began to think. Why
shouldn’t
he bring her back? Surely she longed for him as much as he longed for her. It was the cruel will of Heaven that kept her from him. Furthermore, it was Heaven that had allowed her to die, and not any lack of devotion to him. But enough power could break the gates of Heaven itself, at least for a single soul. So why shouldn’t he? Though it might be cold comfort to have only a faint ghost for company, it was better than no comfort at all.

So, in the past six months, he had begun to try.

His first effort at calling her back been a simple one and no more hazardous than anything some simple farmer’s wench would perform on All Hallows. Well . . . perhaps a
bit
more hazardous. A dairymaid would simply recite this “Spell to See the Beloved Dead” while staring into a mirror, and if it worked, she would see the person she longed to view looking over her shoulder.

But the necromantic version enchanted the mirror first, so that not only would the spirit summoned be compelled to answer, but once present, it would be caught and held in the mirror itself. When you looked in the mirror, you would not see your own reflection. You would see the spirit caught in the mirror.

He worked on that mirror for three days.

To no avail.

He performed the incantation perfectly. Everything was correct. He had not left out a single step.

But nothing whatsoever happened. There was not even a shadow in the mirror, a suspicion of a figure.

In a rage, he dashed the wretched thing to the floor and shattered it, grinding it to powder beneath his boot heels, then flung himself into his unmade bed for a torrent of furious weeping. He had been so sure, so
sure
it would work! He had put all the force of his formidable will behind it!

And yet . . . nothing.

His fury collapsed as his strength and energy ran out, and his choking sobs turned from angry to heartbroken.

It must have been his own fault. He was not single-minded enough. He must have allowed his concentration to slip at a crucial moment. Perhaps one of the components had not been sufficiently pure.

Then, from a state of heartbreak, he slipped, as always, into a state of despair. How could he ever have thought this would work? He should have known better. He didn’t deserve Rebecca in life, and why should that have changed?

He lay in bed without changing his clothing or even getting up to eat for three days, alternating between despair and anger.

Anger won.

At the end of three days he rose, more than ever determined to restore Rebecca to his side.

He tried incantation after incantation, spell after spell. All were utterly unsuccessful, and he was going nearly mad with frustration. He
knew
necromancy worked! He had
fought
necromancers before! So why did these spells keep failing? What was it that they did that he was not doing?

And then, finally, he came across a passage that he must have skimmed over a hundred times—

Now . . . now he began to understand just what that passage was (rather coyly) saying. “The Highest of Prices” could only mean Blood Magic.

It had been nearly twenty years since Rebecca had been taken from him. That was a very long time indeed. Even spirits that
wanted
to remain faded over time, and for all of his trying he had not seen a single sign to tell him that Rebecca remained on this side of the Veil.

Of course not. She had always been the most docile, sweet-natured, and biddable of women, which was something of a disadvantage when what he wanted was for her to rebel against those who would insist that she pass through the Great Door and into the Light. She had, in fact, probably done exactly that the moment that her body gave up the uneven struggle against blood loss and pain. She had been on the Other Side hours before he had arrived at her bedside. And while he had no doubt whatsoever that he could persuade her to remain if he forced her back, until he actually had her standing in some form before him, her current guardians would see to it that no voice reached her ethereal ears but theirs.

It was a moment of great epiphany for him—and while on the one hand it meant that in order to get her back he would have to engage in the very sort of magic he had always fought against, on the other, well . . . he knew that this would be easier than anything he had tried until now. Blood Magic always was. There would be no need to spend his own strength; the power of the magic came from the life force he would take. The younger the sacrifice, the greater the life force, as all the years the creature
would
have lived translated directly into greater power.

This was why those who sought magic and had no power of their own went straight to Blood Magic. If you had the tools, the sacrifice, and the will, you didn’t need your own power.

He did not for a moment hesitate when he realized what it was that he would have to do. He opened the third volume of the set, the one he had set aside when he realized it was a treatise on Blood Magic, and began to study it.

The words fairly leaped off the page and into his mind, where they burned themselves into his brain. For months now, he had lived, breathed, eaten, and slept his studies. When the house was asleep, he would slip down into the yard and find some animal that no one would miss—kittens and puppies (that were going to be drowned anyway, no doubt), the odd hen or rabbit. These were his instruments of practice, learning how to shape the spells, how to eke the most power out of the sacrifice. It was easily done; the remains went into the privy-hole, the rest was trivial to clean up. The more he practiced, the more he began to realize that he actually was going to be able to do more, much more, than bring Rebecca’s spirit back. If he was bold enough. He was intelligent, he had a strong, trained will, and he had a considerable amount of personal power.