Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 18

A day and a half later, I was on a flight back to Philadelphia, in a first-class seat, carefully pondering what I’d learned over a glass of Glenlivet.

Hermes Trismegistus may well have been the greatest sorcerer to have ever walked the face of the Earth. His grimoire, and the personal journals of several of his students, had been treasure troves of information about the nature of the veil, the structure of the magical universe, even the ley-line network.

The grimoire had laid out in detail the relationship between Earth and the Otherworld, far beyond Bertoni’s simplistic hypothesis despite having lived thousands of years before Bertoni had been born. He’d compared the waxing and waning of the veil throughout the year to the tides, a phenomenon driven by the cycles in the connection between the Earth and its moon, but not the connection itself. The wheel of the year, pinning the quarters and cross-quarters between time in the two worlds, was more like the monthly lunar cycle. The Great Cycle, on the other hand, was akin to the actual orbits of the Earth and the moon and all the other planets and their moons whirling through the heavens: just as the solar system spun in a great interconnected dance driven by the force of gravity, so our world and the Otherworld, and likely still others besides, spun in an immensely vast and complex cycle. Furthermore, according to the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus at least, magic itself was a product of this Great Cycle of the Worlds.

As I flew over the Atlantic in comfort, whisky in hand, I contemplated all that I knew so far, trying to understand how it all fit together.

First, I needed to know what the Tamesis rite was supposed to do to the Great Cycle. It was possible the Avartagh was trying to destroy the Cycle completely, but I doubted it. He wanted to restore the glory of his people, not annihilate them. He’d spent centuries carefully experimenting to find the proper balance in his rites, which suggested to me that destruction wasn’t the end goal. Besides, the Great Cycle was vast and complex—it would be virtually impossible to destroy, especially from the inside. But what if the critical point he’d identified would enable him, if pushed just right, to throw the Cycle off balance enough that it would settle into a new equilibrium?

Trismegistus believed the Cycle to be the source of magic—such a shift could change the nature of magic as we knew it. The right force, at the right point, might be enough to do so. That would explain why everything needed to be so carefully balanced: too much force, or applied to the wrong spot in the cycle, could easily lead to the wrong equilibrium, with unwanted effects.

As for determining what he hoped to achieve with such a change in the Cycle, I had only his own words. To break the Arcanum’s power and end humanity’s dominance over the Fae, to restore their glory. To rid them of “humanity’s scourge entire.” How would shifting the Great Cycle do so?

I only saw one way. If the Cycle were the source of magic as Trismegistus hypothesized, moving it to a new equilibrium could potentially neutralize the source of the Arcanum’s power: the ley-line network which gave humans such potent magic on this side of the veil. The Fae didn’t power their own magic with the ley-lines; they drew directly from the veil itself—that was a large part of what made their magic unique. If the Avartagh’s supposed critical point would shift the Great Cycle such that it maintained the veil but disrupted the ley-line network, it would greatly weaken the Arcanum—along with the other magical races of this side of the veil—while leaving the Fae’s source of power untouched.

The Tamesis, if successful as the Avartagh intended, could be the end of a thousand years of peaceful coexistence between the magical races. While what I’d said to Connors and Lajoie about their inability to win a full-scale war with humanity at large would still be true, the Fae would become almost unchecked in the magical world, free to interfere with human affairs to their hearts’ content once the Arcanum no longer had the strength to challenge them.

But, as Nemain had mentioned, any disruption to the veil could be catastrophic. If the Avartagh’s calculations were off, or if something went wrong in the execution, it might not just disrupt the ley-line network. It could disrupt the veil itself—the bridge between the two realms and the source of the Fae’s power. It could break the connection between the Earth and the Otherworld, leaving those Faeries trapped on this side defenseless and unable to hide, possibly even killing them outright given how much magic was woven into their very being. I couldn’t even speculate what the consequences of such an error would be for the Otherworld and its inhabitants, but Nemain had suggested it might be the doom of all Fae. That was a hell of a gamble, even for an insane monster. The Avartagh must have been exceptionally confident that his rites would work as intended.

And the Avartagh was locked in the Dún Dubh, while someone else was trying to enact the Tamesis now. Whoever it was, what did they want? I knew there was a Faerie involved, so perhaps it was simply another Unseelie seeking to right perceived wrongs from ages past. Though that left open the question of how this Faerie had learned the details of the rites so long after the Avartagh was imprisoned.

It was possible, I supposed, that whoever it was had no idea what it was designed to do. When he’d been stopped the first time, Avartagh may have managed to set in motion a backup plan, designed to ensure someone else would attempt the rites the next time the cycles aligned correctly. He could have started a cult, giving them the details of how to enact the rites but lying about or concealing its purpose, which had carried the tradition through the centuries and was only now acting at the appointed time. That was certainly plausible—stranger things happened in the magical world.

But anyone with the knowledge and power to enact such rites would also be able to put together the clues. Knowing the details of the rites, the meanings of the glyphs, and even vague hints about the cycles of the worlds, any halfway competent sorcerer could put it together and figure out they were trying to break something. And whoever had put together that ambush spell was more than halfway competent. They were a genius, an artist of the highest order. Equipped with the full knowledge of the rite, they’d absolutely be able to figure out what it was intended for; there was no way to keep something like that a secret in the structure of a working that complicated. No, whoever was murdering sorcerers was doing so with the full knowledge that their ultimate goal was to change the nature of magic itself, and possibly the connection between the Earth and the Otherworld.

Then, of course, there was still the mysterious individual who had helped the Avartagh, the one who set him on the path to the Tamesis in the first place by helping him identify his supposed critical point. Who might that be? And were they once again pulling the strings? It had to be someone who had extensive knowledge of the Cycle, and shared the Avartagh’s ambitions to restore the Fae to power in the magical world, but for some reason didn’t want to get his or her hands dirty conducting the actual blood rites.

It was almost certainly not a human. Not only were there only a handful of humans who had ever bothered to delve into the nature of the Great Cycle—hell, I hadn’t even heard of such a thing until days ago—but none of them would have any logical motive for helping a Faerie destroy the source of human sorcery’s most potent powers. For that matter, I couldn’t see the Avartagh accepting any help of that sort from a human, at least not knowingly. He used humans as his lackeys, but not as advisors.

Nuada was an unlikely candidate, having died in battle long before the Avartagh’s previous efforts. Lugh was a possibility, I supposed. But if so, why would he have imprisoned the Avartagh in the Dún Dubh for centuries? No, Lugh made little sense even considering unknowable Fae logic. Same with Odin, who’d drunk from Nuada’s well and almost certainly possessed the necessary understanding. And the sons of Lir were tasked with a sacred geas to protect the veil; they would not be involved in something that could easily pose a significant threat of its destruction if anything went wrong.

I even briefly considered Aengus—his mysterious falling out with his father and the Tuatha Dé centuries before were about the same time, and it might even provide him a motive. But I quickly dismissed the thought. He was unlikely to have had the knowledge needed to put the Avartagh on the right path—Aengus Óg was known as a great warrior and poet, and even a healer, but not a magician of any particular renown among the Fae. He was powerful, but that didn’t translate to the understanding of the Great Cycle apparently necessary to develop the Tamesis rites. Furthermore, he wasn’t the type of person to handle a grudge by endangering innocents. He was an alien being, sure, but I knew him well enough to know that. He’d spent centuries protecting the Fae on this side of the veil; he would not knowingly put them in danger.

There was one person who might be able to help me identify a suspect. My old mentor Johannes the Immortal—he who had taught me so much about the nature of magic so many years before. But that would mean facing him and confronting my shame.

That was the crux of the matter. I had already saved the world from almost certain destruction once before, and it had cost me everything. The only woman I’d ever loved had died in the Shadow War. In her name, I did what I did and perverted the Immortal’s sacred teachings, corrupting my very soul in the process. I had lived with that shame every day since. Hero of the Fields of Fire, they called me. But I was no one’s hero. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to do that again, if that’s what it took. More importantly, I wasn’t sure if I believed in the Arcanum, and its mission, enough to pay that price even if I could.

The world was once again on the line. But this time I wasn’t sure I still believed it was worth saving. Not very heroic, that.

I brooded, and sipped my whisky, and scrutinized, and sipped my whisky, and tried to find the connections, and sipped my whisky. Finally, I made a decision. I knew there was no other real choice. But the fact it was the only option didn’t make me happy about it.

The stewardess refilled me more than once before I finally fell asleep.

When the flight landed in the morning, instead of going home I took the train to 30th Street Station, transferred to a northeast regional Amtrak line, and ninety minutes later I found myself at Penn Station in Manhattan. I caught a cab to Brooklyn, giving the driver the address from memory.

He dropped me off outside a brownstone in Cobble Hill. My backpack slung on one shoulder, I slowly walked up the stoop to a door I’d thought I’d never see again. I raised my hand to knock but hesitated with it hovering a few inches from a carving of two crossed spears in the wood.

My hand was trembling. I took several deep breaths to calm myself. This shouldn’t be so hard. Finally, I knocked twice.

The door swung open immediately.

“Thomas,” the Immortal greeted me. “I saw you out here. I was wondering if you’d actually be able to go through with it.”

“Johannes,” I replied, meeting his eyes. I took another deep breath. “I need your help.”

For a long moment, we stood there in silence. He looked me up and down.

“The years have not been kind to you, Thomas,” he remarked. “You look terrible.”

“You look exactly the same,” I answered.

He did. Johannes the Immortal was a handsome man, with darkly bearded Mediterranean features, olive skin, and a straight patrician nose. I knew it wasn’t the face he’d been born with, but it was the one he’d worn for over two millennia, at least since he’d walked the streets of ancient Rome. I didn’t know what name he’d used back then; he’d started calling himself “Johannes” during the middle ages.

The Immortal was a human sorcerer, but one who’d somehow conquered death ages ago. I’d first encountered him about a century before, a few years after Tunguska. He’d been impressed with me, had found me and taken me in and become my mentor. He taught me many secrets and mysteries over several decades, things far beyond the teachings even of the Arcanum’s greatest masters.

I hadn’t seen Johannes since I’d left this house in 1946, and I didn’t know how he’d receive me. But no one else alive possessed his understanding of the nature of magic, nor his knowledge of those who wielded it. If anyone could help me figure out who was behind the Tamesis, who had set the Avartagh in motion so many centuries before, it was the Immortal.

I had nowhere else to turn. I could only hope he’d still be willing to help me even after what I’d done so many years before.

He stood there for another long minute. Finally, he stepped back and waved me in. “Come in, Thomas. You can tell me what brings you to my door after all this time.”

I nodded in thanks and stepped inside. He led the way down the short hallway to the parlor and took a seat in an armchair, gesturing for me to sit in the other. The room hadn’t changed since I was here last: dark wood paneling, original paintings from Italian Renaissance masters, a shelf of ancient books, very much a classic “old money” aesthetic. Johannes was a man of exorbitant wealth and refined taste, and I supposed after thousands of years of life, those tastes were unlikely to change much within a single century.

“I assume,” he began without small talk, “that this visit has something to do with the mysterious killings of sorcerers in Philadelphia.”

“You knew I was in Philadelphia?” I asked, rather than answering immediately.

He looked at me as if I were a particularly slow child. “Please, Thomas. Don’t insult me. Of course, I know where you’ve been. You honestly think I wouldn’t keep an eye on you? I also know,” he continued in a reproving tone, “what you’ve been doing with yourself for all these years. And frankly, I must say that I’ve been quite disappointed with you for many years. You had so much potential. I had such hopes for you. But you’ve chosen to throw your life away with drink and self-pity. It’s a great shame.”

He paused for a second which seemed an eternity. He sighed. “But it’s your life to throw away if you so choose. Now, tell me what is so important as to overcome whatever compunction has kept you from my door these past decades.”

It was remarkable. I was almost two and a half centuries old. I’d shrugged off my own mother’s disapproval for over seventy years. But when faced with the same reproach from Johannes, I felt like a small child in front of a stern parent.

The difference, of course, was that I could tell myself my mother didn’t understand, that she didn’t really know what had driven me down the path I’d taken. The Immortal did. He knew me and my sins, in a way no one else did or could. In front of him, I could feel nothing but shame and guilt.

But I’d come here for a reason. Guilt or no guilt, I had a job to do.

“Someone is attempting a rite called the Tamesis. I need your help figuring out who might be behind it.”

“Oh?” he replied in a tone of mild curiosity, his eyebrows slightly raised. “I am familiar with the rite. The Avartagh, wasn’t it? Well, that would explain the murders, yes. The police haven’t released any details of the actual crime scenes, so while I knew the Tamesis rites were a possibility, I couldn’t be sure.”

“How did you know they were a possibility?” Just knowing of two ritual murders wouldn’t have been enough to tell him that, even with his vast knowledge and experience.

“The ley-lines, my dear boy.” He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “The news reports mentioned the general locations of the murders. With the shifting ley-lines, that particular ritual fit the evidence the best. I mean, honestly, Thomas, do I have to spell everything out for you? I taught you better than that. Think.”

“The…” I began, but then I shut up and followed his advice.

The ley-lines. I’d been investigating their strange movements just before getting sidetracked by Evan’s murder. It suddenly all clicked. Of course. How had I missed that? The key to the whole puzzle had been right in front of me the whole time.

“Both murders took place directly over shifting nodes,” I finally answered. “And both nodes stopped moving after the rituals.” I wanted to kick myself for missing it.

“Precisely,” he answered. “I knew you’d get there eventually. During the Avartagh’s original rites centuries ago, the ley-lines exhibited similar shifts to those currently occurring in the greater Philadelphia area. And his sacrifices all occurred at one of the new node locations.”

I’d even noticed the nodes myself when I’d visited each location, but I hadn’t put the pieces together until prompted by the Immortal. Mentally comparing the addresses to my ley-line survey maps, I knew that the node under Evan’s apartment had been shifting for days before the murder, but had stopped by the time I rechecked the network the morning I’d met the detectives.

Similarly, the node I’d felt under my feet at the second crime scene was still moving at the time I’d last mapped the network days prior. Its presence hadn’t struck me as unusual at the time, so I’d barely even registered it consciously. That explained the murdered family in the other room: they had nothing to do with the ritual, the murderers needed their house for the sacrifice. They’d been killed and discarded like trash, merely for being in the way.

“And the nodes stay in place after. Are the sacrifices both to fix the node locations in place as well as to the harvest the victim’s power? Or are the locations already where the nodes will become fixed points?”

“I would imagine the former,” Johannes said. “It would seem an odd coincidence if the sacrifices all occurred precisely when the nodes stopped moving—if the location is important and the nodes were stopping on their own, the practitioner could simply conduct his or her ritual at any time after the nodes were in place. It would make more sense to wait until all relevant locations were ready, and then conduct all the rituals as quickly as possible, rather than spacing them days apart as each node settled into place, no?”

I was nodding. “Yes, that makes sense. That explains why he needed human sorcerers to help him, since the Fae can’t control the ley-lines. It also explains why everything needed to be precise, so that the relevant patterns reflect the cycles of the two worlds. Meaning not only precise execution of the ritual, but also precise timing. Which suggests the sacrifices aren’t only building power toward a final event, but also aligning the regional ley-line network to the necessary pattern.”

“Presumably,” Johannes added, “to either focus and amplify the power of the final rite, or perhaps to propagate its energy along the network properly. Maybe even both.”

“If my theory is correct,” I mused, “and the Tamesis is designed to shift the Great Cycle between the two worlds, and the ley-line network is connected to that Cycle, then aligning the network would be necessary to direct its energy to the critical point. So…”

I looked at Johannes, who was smiling proudly. “Go on,” he encouraged. “Finish the thought, boy.”

“So to stop the Tamesis,” I met his eyes for a second, “we only need to stop the next sacrifice, to disrupt the alignment of the ley-lines.”

“There you go,” he replied. “At least your insistence on living in a bottle of whisky hasn’t dulled your wits beyond all hope.”

I ignored the comment. “But even if I manage to stop it, I still need to figure out who’s behind it. Or it will just happen again the next time the cycle comes around.”

The Immortal didn’t answer for a second, looking thoughtful. “The Avartagh was behind it last time. You spoke to him, no? Did he tell you anything that might suggest to whom he’d passed the details of the rites?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think he passed them on. He said someone pointed him in the right direction, that he had help in identifying the weak point in the cycle. I suspect he wasn’t the brains behind it at all, really. I think that whoever helped him managed to escape the Arcanum’s notice, and either passed the rites on or, more likely, is still alive. If the latter, he or she could have just bided time until the cycle was right again, then set out to try the rites with a new Faerie assistant.”

I looked over at the Immortal, who appeared contemplative, his fingers steepled together and pressed against his pursed lips. After a moment, he looked back over at me.

“Means, motive, and opportunity. You are looking for someone with intimate understanding of both the Great Cycle and the ley-line network, and the magical power and skill to control such a working, who also harbors a motive to break that Cycle and unleash the ensuing chaos. Who have you already eliminated as a suspect?”

I shrugged and told him my reasoning about Lugh, Odin, Aengus, and the sons of Lir, as well as human sorcerers. “That’s the problem. I’ve eliminated everyone I know who has the knowledge and power for lack of motive, and those with motive for lack of knowledge and power. So I’m left guessing wildly.”

“Could be another of the Aes Sidhe,” Johannes mused, “but if so, why use the Avartagh at all? Perhaps as a patsy, I suppose. But I would look toward other tribes of the Fae entirely.”

“The djinn are too disorganized. The Neter have been peaceful for millennia. But the Olympians…”

He nodded, his lips pursed in thought. “They have been quite bitter at humanity since being forced back to the Otherworld, yes.”

I looked at him. “You know them better than anyone.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “I dealt with the Olympians for centuries when I lived in Rome.”

“Do you think one of them could really be behind this?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t spoken with Jupiter or his kin in over a thousand years, since they withdrew from this world. But they have the necessary knowledge; if anyone knows anything about the Great Cycle between our worlds, it’s Janus. He’s the one who taught me what I know of it. They have the motive, blaming the Arcanum for their decline. And they certainly have the means and the influence to recruit followers, even among the Fae. At the time of the original rites, they had been driven to Olympus in final defeat only a few centuries before, which may explain why they needed the Avartagh—his access to this realm and ability to operate here unnoticed was far greater than their own back then. But their renewed worship has been on the rise among humans over recent decades, which could have given them the chance to begin anew. If I had to bet—and you know I’m not a betting man, Thomas—but if I had to, I would take a long, hard look at the Olympians. Janus would be at the top of my list.”

“Then,” I said, standing up, “I need to start researching Janus and his kin.”

He remained seated and raised an eyebrow. “Is that it? You come to my door for the first time in three-quarters of a century, pick my brain about your most recent problem, and leave without any attempt to discuss what has kept you away all this time?”

I shook my head. “Johannes, I can’t. Do you know what it took for me just to knock on your door in the first place? I know the mistakes I made, the atrocity I committed with the beauty you taught me. I want to apologize and sit down with you and see if there’s any way I can repair the damage I’ve done to our friendship. I do. But right now, I can’t. I just can’t. Maybe when this is all over, we can have a drink and talk about it. Just not today.”

The Immortal smiled. “Thomas, have I ever told you the story of how I became what I am?”

I looked at him quizzically. “No, you haven’t. That’s one mystery you kept to yourself.”

He shrugged. “It’s not really a mystery, just forgotten history. You see, I was there when magic first came into this world. I remember a time, long ago, before the Fae. When our worlds collided, when Earth first united with the Otherworld, there was a great cataclysm.”

He steepled his fingers and looked away, staring off as if into a great distance. “Magical energy flowed like a mighty flood throughout the world, and we almost drowned in it. Only a small number of humans, a few thousand or so, survived the onslaught. Human scientists now recognize that there was a population bottleneck among Homo Sapiens tens of thousands of years ago. But it was no supervolcanic eruption that killed most of us. It was the collision of two universes through the veil. We were the survivors, those strong enough to conquer the magical flood and tame it to our will. We became the first sorcerers.

“From us, all of humanity. We bred and spread, but our progeny were not like us. While some of them could use the magic themselves, and those few were longer lived, all were still mortal. That first massive wave of magic had changed us, stopped our aging. Made those of us who survived immortal. We could still be killed, yes, but it became near impossible for us to die of natural means, and still incredibly difficult to be killed by our fellow humans. Our lives had become tied to the flow of magic throughout the world. Only the strongest effort could break that bond and let us pass on.”

He grew quiet for a moment, and when he resumed speaking his voice had changed, become more somber, melancholic.

“Over the tens of thousands of years, many made that effort. Our original numbers steadily dwindled—some through fighting with one another, but mostly through suicide as the unending weight of immortality drove them to seek an end, any end. And now, countless eons later, I remain.”

He looked back at me where I stood, silently transfixed by his story. His eyes met mine and I saw the weight of those ages, the toll they’d taken on him.

“Do you know why I’m telling you this now?”

I shook my head.

“Because, Thomas, I want you to know that I understand. That I truly do—I understand what you did, I understand why you did it. Did you think I would not? That I could not appreciate the weight of your decision, and forgive you? I have been disappointed in you for years, my boy, but not because of what happened in Canada. No matter what you think you should be ashamed of, I have never been ashamed of you. How could I be? Of all people, how could I not understand?”

“I…” I opened my mouth to answer, but I didn’t know what to say. I felt like crying, and just stood there fighting to keep control of the many emotions Johannes had just released in me.

He held up a hand. “Go, Thomas. Go save the world. I know that’s what you do. We can talk when you’re ready. But the last time you walked out that door with a promise to return, it took you almost seventy-five years to do so. Don’t let it happen again. I expect to see you very soon. We have much to discuss.”

I looked at him for a long minute. I still felt ashamed, but no longer of what I’d done at the Fields of Fire. Now it was for not coming here sooner.

But there was nothing I could do about it at that moment. I nodded and turned to go.


Back | Next
Framed