Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and picturesque façade of the City of Redemption lies another city; a community of dark and ancient magic populated by creatures of the night.
Strephon has forced Inanna, Lord Melchior’s executive assistant, to bring him before her true master, publisher Simon Knox, also known as the Prince of the Nephilim and the Giant Togwogmagog. Knox is now revealing his master plan and how it involves Strephon’s friend Miss True.
Dark Redemption is an Urban Gothic Fantasy which will be running in weekly installments Wednesday evenings. Previous installments can be found linked at the Dark Redemption Index.
|
If you enjoy reading this, please consider clicking on the newest Community Needs List diary, to see if you can kick in a couple bucks to help someone there.
All material is copyrighted by the authors. 📚 Click on their name to follow individually, or on genre, group, etc. in the taglist, to get those diaries in your activity stream. 📚 Depending on RL, authors may arrive some while after posting; this is a feature, not a bug.
|
Chapter 70 Aithea’s Secret
In Which Mr. Knox, now revealed as the Giant Togwogmagog, shows little sign of shutting up
“Sir...? Sir...?” Inanna's voice carried a plaintive note, like that of a subordinate needing to get her master's attention, but at the same time fearful of receiving it.
Knox ceased his laughing. “Eh? What is it?” He seemed to have forgotten her presence and was clearly annoyed by her interruption.
“You said that the True girl was irrelevant to your plans.”
“And so she is. That is to say, she's indispensable, but she has nothing to do with you.” Knox returned his attention to Strephon and did not mark the look of terror on Inanna's face. “You, however, Bellman,are not indispensable at all.”
Knox slid his gargantuan frame off his desk and bent over to address Strephon like an overly jovial uncle about to pull a shilling from his young nephew's ear. “You are hardly the only man with faerie blood in the United Kingdom,” he said. “I could easily find someone else to summon the Hunt, but as it so happens, I shan't need to. Tell me, Bellman, are you familiar with computer games?”
“I have never considered a lack of familiarity to be a deficiency.”
“Jolly Bellman! We must remedy that someday. No matter what the game, whether it be shooting monsters, or solving riddles, or challenges of manual dexterity or even something as simple as 'Naughts & Crosses', they all involve a transfer of information. The player enters instructions, and the program processes them and displays results. In Olden Days, this was all done within the player's computer or game machine. These days, it's done 'In The Cloud', as they say. Instead of happening in a single machine, everything is sent to a network of computers which breaks everything into little bits, calculated out piece-meal, and then re-assembled for the player. This allows the games to be far more complex and for the players to connect with other players all over the world. What Melchior's system does, and I will give him due credit for this, is to transfer the Cloud into the Fairy Realm. Instead of manipulating numbers, the game is manipulating magic, which I must say multiplies the game's computing power exponentially, but has other more interesting side effects as well.”
“Now normally, casting a magical spell would require the caster to have some magical ability of his own,” Knox continued. “That is axiomatic, isn't it? But magic can also be manipulated through rituals, which may be performed by pretty much anyone, regardless of their innate magic talent, so long as there are enough of them. You see?”
“Pretend I don't.”
“Melchior has discerned how to break a spell into sub-components, and convert them into lines of computer code which may be inserted into his games. As the player plays the game, he is also participating in the casting of the spell. Every time they level up, they are performing digital versions of the necessary rituals. Since the Virtual Reality platform runs partially on faerie magic to begin with, this is quite easy to achieve. The effects of a single play are, naturally, quite minute; but the cumulative effect... Innana, dear, won't you show Mister Bellman?”
Inanna lurched to life – her resemblance to a marionette was becoming even more pronounced – and she shambled to a filing cabinet by the artificial plant. Although Knox's desk had enlarged to match his stature when he assumed his form as one of the Nephilim of old, the rest of his office, or rather, this simulation of his office, remained at human scale.
“Stage One of the project will introduce the platform with updates of some of Vanir's established games such as Bowling for Light Bulbs, Featherbunnies and the Magic Spoon, and Virtual Hot Tub. I believe Inanna showed you a demo of the last. Phase One is also a test bed for incorporating spells into the program that the players will cast as they progress in the game. Simple spells at first, of course. It's coming along quite nicely, and Melchior plans to have the games in every shop in Britain in time for Christmas. That will help build anticipation for Phase Two.”
“Phase Two will unveil a wholly new game designed especially for the new platform: Nowhere 2 Run, Nowhere 2 Hide. Miss True had a taste of that one at Melchior's party.” Knox chuckled. “Dear Inanna rather muffed that, and could have caused quite the setback to my plans, but fortunately you were there to save the day. The subsequent phases will see newer versions of Nowhere 2 Run, coming out every year or so, each featuring better graphics, smoother gameplay, more violence and more complex components to the spell. Then when we reach market saturation we will be ready for the final phase. Inanna?”
By this time Inanna had produced the item Knox requested, and handed it to Strephon: a computer game package depicting a horned rider on horseback leading a pack of demonic hunters and bearing the title NOWHERE 2 RUN ULTIMATE: THE WILD HUNT.
“So that's where the Wild Hunt comes in.”
“Yes. We have a massive media campaign planned for the launching. Everyone will be anticipating it. But in order to play it, the players will have to enter the final game codes from Nowhere 2 Run numbers I, II, and III. With that, the spell will be almost complete, needing only one final incantation to initiate, which will be sent to the players on the stroke of midnight (Greenwich Time, of course) on the release date. Millions of people, all over the world will participate in the casting, creating a Hunt which will sweep over not just a county, not just England, but over the entire globe: Europe, America, Japan... Glorious, isn't it?”
“The word I was thinking of was ‘Monstrous’. But what about Miss True? What has she to do with all this?”
“Ah yes. Miss True. Let's check in on her, shall we?” Knox leaned over to manipulate the mouse on his desktop computer. Strephon craned his neck to see the computer screen, but as Knox had enlarged his desk as well when he transmorgified into a giant, the angle made it difficult. Knox noticed him trying to peek and primly turned the screen away from him.
“I see she's called in reinforcements,” Knox remarked. “She has some friends over. At least I assume they're friends. I don't recognize all of them. The Jamaican witch I know. The girl with her must be one of her brood. And Miss True's wanton flatmate. And the other witch, I think she must be the one married to that silly vicar...”
Strephon held his tongue. At least Mrs. Simms was there to help; and Lydia Palmer too, by the sound of it. That gave him some relief.
As if hearing Strephon's thought, Knox said, “Little good it will do her. The spell is already working.”
“What spell? You said you weren't calling the Wild Hunt yet.”
“Hum? No, a different spell. This has nothing to do with the hunt. It involves the spell that renegade witch Aithea put upon me imprisoning me beneath this hill. You remember Aithea, don't you?”
“Yes, but I don't--”
“Quite the thaumaturge she was. She could have been the greatest sorceress of her era but for one fatal flaw. She fell in love. You know, Bellman, I've often thought that of all the calamities to emerge from Pandora's Box, Love was the most disastrous. And so it proved with her. When the Benedictine missionaries sent out by St. Augustine to convert the wild Saxons of the North arrived, one of them, skilled in the Saxon tongue and appointed as translator, captured her heart. He charmed her with his seductive piety and his sexy tonsure and his ability to conjugate 'amo' – you know what these clergymen are like – and before you could say ‘fornication’, they were, well, doing just that. Together they cooked up the scheme to arrange a contest between the Priests of Togwogmagog and the Monks of the Benedictines. I had given my priest a spell to summon me, you see, because it seemed a beneficent thing to do. I was in a beneficent mood that century. Of course, I made a point of keeping them terrified of me so that they wouldn't abuse the privilege; that's just good employee relations. Aithea had other ideas. She and her amorous monk devised a plan to combine my summoning spell with the exorcism spells of the Benedictines, held together with her native knowledge of earth magic.”
Strephon had been holding his tongue pretty well, he thought, but at this he could not hold back a remark. “I think you mean the prayers of the Benedictines.”
“Prayers, spells, it comes to the same thing.”
For some reason, this outraged Strephon's sense of pedantry more than Knox's boasts and casual cynicism outraged his sense of morality. “It does no such thing,” Strephon snapped. “A prayer is a supplication to a Higher Power. A spell is a formula to control that power. That's a significant difference. God is not like... like a computer game that rewards you if you simply type in the correct code.”
“I have known churchmen who regard prayers as exactly that, and so have you. But be that as it may, under normal circumstances the spell of the Togwogmagites and the... we'll call them the rituals of the monks would have opposed each other, like an arm-wrestling match, and whoever had the most power would win. Which is what both parties intended. Instead, they combined to form an exquisite trap.”
Knox sighed. “I could almost admire Aithea, if it weren't so bloody inconvenient. By answering the summons, I made myself vulnerable to the rest of the spell, bound in the earth for all eternity. Most vexing. For several centuries I tried to free myself, but to no avail. The best I could do was create my simulacra which could walk about the city while my body remained here, but even then I found that they could go no further than a day's travel from Togwog Tor. I had hoped that the invention of railway trains would extend that a bit, but no such luck. It's a damn nuisance for a man with any sort of ambition. Friends keep urging me to stand for the House of Commons and I have to give them lame excuses for why I don't. I probably could have become PM long ago if I could only leave the bloody county.”
“How terrible.”
Knox ignored the understated sarcasm. “Eventually, I had to face facts. I could not break Aithea's spell from the inside, as it were. It must be done from the outside. It's a matter of thaumaturgical leverage, like trying to raise oneself by pulling on one's whiskers. What's more, I came to realize that Aithea had crafted the spell too well. Only she could undo it; she, or someone of her bloodline.”
Strephon wished the old bore would get to the point. “Since Aithea is dead and had no children, that would seem to be that.”
“No children that you know of.”
A sense of foreboding came over Strephon. He could not fathom where this was heading, but a dreadful certainty settled in his chest that he wouldn't like it.
“By the time I was able to send my simulacra out beyond the Hill, Aithea had been forgotten. The Church authorities buried the more sensational facts of the case. Even the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England dismissed the Contest on Togwog Tor as merely a legend, and Bede usually knew his stuff. The witches, however, remembered Aithea, and kept her memory alive. She was one of their own, you see. But witches are a tight-lipped bunch. They do not share their secrets willingly. Eventually, though, I uncovered a part of the story which not even Mergyn learned. You remember Mergyn, don’t you?”
“Yes. Stories Queer and Curious. Get on with it!”
“Ah. Yes. Well, it seems that when the day came to put all the clerics of Togwogmagog to the sword, it was discovered that Aithea was with child.”
“With child?”
“I believe that's what I said. That left the monks with a dilemma. Was it ethical to execute an innocent? To complicate things, Aithea refused to name the father.”
“Her amorous monk, no doubt.”
“Undoubtedly. I did mention the fornication, didn't I? How good of you to catch that. But having no mortal candidate for the child's father, and being men of reason, the monks could not rule out the possibility that the child was the spawn of a demon. Would you believe, they actually thought I might be the father!”
“And were you?”
“I should say not! My word, Bellman, you mortals seem to think that demons do nothing but think of sex! Anyway, the monks ultimately decided that they would defer Aithea's execution 'til after the child's birth so they could examine it for signs of diabolical DNA, so to speak. To their disappointment, the child turned out perfectly ordinary. No horns, no tail, no cloven hooves or propensities to grow colicky in the proximity of holy water, They were even able to baptize her without the font boiling over. So they placed her to be raised in a convent where she was given the name 'Verita'”
“As in veritas? Truth? They named her Truth? Don't tell me...”
Knox grinned. “Yes, she became the ancestress of your Miss True. Amazing how these things work out, isn't it?”
“It's bosh! If this Verita became a nun, how could she have children of her own?”
Knox shrugged. “She wasn't a very good nun.”
“And what of Aithea. Was she executed then?”
Knox waved his hand in a dismissive manner. “Does it matter? Some stories say yes; others say she joined the convent herself. By the time I tracked the legend down it had become horribly muddled. The important part was that I had found a bloodline to trace.”
Strephon shook his head. “I don't believe it. Cassandra is an ordinary girl. There is nothing the least bit unnatural about her. At least not until...”
“Not until you drew her into the World of Magic, you were going to say? But what about that book she found: the copy of Mergyn's Stories Queer and Curious?
“How did you know about that?”
“Oh, I might have arranged for her to come across it. But she couldn't have read it at all if she didn't have some degree of magical blood in her.”
He was right about that, plague take the man. Cassandra had wondered about that very matter earlier but Strephon had set it aside.
“I daresay Miss True has experienced all manner of odd occurrences in her life; she just never gave them much thought. You English are so good at ignoring things like that. But the fact is that you didn't draw her into your world at all. She drew you into hers.
“See here, Knox,” Strephon blustered. “What do you intend to do with Miss True?”
“Do? Do? Bless you, Bellman, I've already done it!”
“Done what?”
”I've sent Miss True a little billet-doux – under your name, of course. She has already read it and become enmeshed in its spell and is now under a compulsion to complete the spell's incantation She's done a remarkable job of resisting it so far, but she can't hold out forever. Let's see how she's doing, shall we?”
Knox turned his attention back to his desktop computer and frowned. “And who are these? It's those two tame fairies of Morrigan's. What the devil are they doing here?” he muttered.
Inanna inched closer to Strephon. Her face was ashy and the iridescent tattoo on the side of her face had turned black, like the scar left on a tree from a lightning strike, but her eyes shone bright with a feverish kind of hope. “See?” she said. “Your Miss True will be all right. He only needs her to break the spell imprisoning him.”
Strephon seriously doubted this, but Inanna needed to believe it. It was the only way she could square her involvement with Knox's plots with her oath not to harm Cassandra.
“Hm? What's that?” Knox deigned to take notice of his subordinate. “Oh no. She's not breaking anything. She's casting a spell on herself. To take my place, see?”
“What?” Strephon had been expecting another shoe to drop, but he had not braced himself for how hard it would smite him. For a moment he could only stare blankly.
“Yes, it's like when one croquet ball hits another one and sends it rolling away – croquet is about your speed I should think – or one of those executive toys with the suspended ball bearings clacking into each other. It's a simple matter of physics, or metaphysics I suppose I should say.”
“Sir...? Sir...?” Inanna's face was no longer grey. The color had left it completely. “I swore an oath. You said I needed to gain Bellman's confidence, so I vowed I would bring no harm to Miss True.”
“And no harm shall come to her. She'll be fit as a fiddle. Functionally immortal. preserved for the ages in imperishable stone, just as I have these past fourteen hundred years.”
“I promised I would not harm her in body or soul.”
Knox's mask of jollity dropped for a moment. “Ah. I see. Psychic trauma and all that. The whole 'Quality of Life' thing. That was imprudent. I can see how that might be a problem.” Then he brightened. “Still, you might find some kind of loophole. You faeries are good at that sort of thing, aren't you? Buck up!”
Knox's pestilential enthusiasm offered her no solace. Inanna turned to Strephon. “Please, Strephon! Please believe me! I had no idea...” The tattoo running down her cheek now seemed to be flaking away. It was no longer a blackened scar, but a crack revealing a dark and fathomless void beneath. She gripped his hand, and Strephon shuddered at her touch. He could feel the fabric of her very existence unraveling like a scarf caught on a thornbush. She was losing her grip on reality and the only thing holding her form together was her glamour and sheer desperation.
“I shall be sorry to lose you, Inanna.” Knox said in a tone approximating sympathy. “I have always regarded you as a valued member of the Morning Star family, and you will be difficult to replace. Then again, perhaps Bellman here could take your spot.”
“I?” Outrage rose in Strephon's chest like bile. “Never!”
“Oh, I don't know about that. Once Miss True is entangled in hawthorn and entombed in stone, I will be the only person capable of freeing her, or even of easing her torment. I think you will be begging for the opportunity to curry my favor.”
“I'll be damned if I do any such thing!”
“No, Bellman. she will be damned if you don't!”
Strephon gave an incoherent cry and charged Knox, attempting to release the sword blade from within his crutch, but the latch would not turn. Damn! Thaddeus's charm locking the hidden sword was still in place and probably strengthened by the ambient magic of the chamber. Strephon cursed.
“My dear Bellman, you are so predictable! As dependable as the Bank of England. I swear, you must think in cliches! Now, your friend Miss True is more of a puzzle. She should have succumbed to the compulsion long ago. What is she up to?” He leaned over his computer screen and stroked his chin.
Strephon barely heard him. It had suddenly occurred to him that he was standing on both feet with no support from his crutch. What's more, he had just dashed three paces without collapsing in a ball of agony. He shifted his weight cautiously. Both legs seemed perfectly hale and well, as if they were as immortal as the rest of him. The splint and dressing he had conjured for himself had vanished. He must have done something unconsciously by reflex, as he had earlier in the Council Chambers, but how? He was able to change form, even of his mortal half, when dreaming, of course, or when visiting the Faerie Realm, but the rules were different there. The answer had to lie in the nexus, the intersection of magical forces where the Chamber had been constructed and where centuries ago Togwogmagog had been imprisoned. The concentration of magic in the vicinity was significantly higher than in the surrounding city and he must be unwittingly tapping into it.
“Hullo, what's this?” Knox said. “Now she's talking to a mayonnaise jar. How delightfully eccentric.” He did not sound delighted.
Strephon's attention returned to Inanna, cringing next to the potted plant. He had no reason to feel sorry for her; she was a treacherous and manipulative minx. She no doubt deserved whatever she had coming to her. Or did she? “Use every man after his desert and who shall 'scape whipping?” Hamlet said. What lies did Knox use to persuade her to relinquish her own name? – and Strephon had no doubt that forsaking her identity was a large factor in her current predicament. For that matter, he was in no small part to blame for her position himself. He had pressured her into making that vow, and he had bullied her by confronting her at the Council meeting. Yes, he felt completely justified at the time, but now, seeing her virtually disintegrating before his eyes, he felt less sure.
Strephon placed his hand on her shoulder. He half feared she might burst like a soap bubble, and from the way she flinched at his touch, she must have feared so too. “I release thee,” he said.
“You... what?”
“I will not hold you to your oath to me. You are free. Well, at least as far as your promise to me is concerned.”
She took a step back from him and regarded him with a suspicious frown. “Why?”
“The devil if I know except... it's the gentlemanly thing to do.”
Some color had returned to her cheeks. She looked more solid than she had a moment before, but she still carried a sense of hesitancy. “I am still bound to... him.” She still could not bring herself to say Knox's name. “I can do nothing to help you.”
“Then I am no worse off than I was before.”
“Morrigan!”
Knox had been ignoring them as he fiddled with his computer. It wasn't a real computer, Strephon realized, but the illusion of one which Knox had conjured to contain whatever scrying spell he was using to spy on Cassandra.. The downside to this was that using a computer screen to scry meant that Knox was forced to use the computer interface to enlarge the image, and apparently it had taken a bit of trial and error. When he finally succeeded in zooming in close enough to see the contents of Cassandra's mayonnaise jar, he slammed his hand upon his desk. “Morrigan!” he repeated. “I thought we'd lost her. Where the devil did she come from?”
Strephon was thinking the same thing, and even more than before wished he could see what was happening on Knox's computer screen.
“I can't imagine Morrigan would actually help Miss True,” Knox mused, “and I don't think there's anything she can do either way. Still, I don't like loose ends coming back. It's untidy. I may have to deal with this personally.”
This could not be good. Yet, it gave Strephon a perverse sort of hope. Cassandra was doing something! He had no more idea of how Morrigan's presence could benefit her than Knox had, but since Knox seemed perturbed by it, well, that was something. Whatever Cassandra was up to, Strephon would do his damnedest to prevent Knox from interfering.
Strephon hefted the crutch in his hand. He couldn't release the sword-blade hidden in its shaft, but he could shape the crutch itself into a sword. He focused his mind on the crutch, just as if he were in the dream realm and desired to change the dream-reality to his wishes. Then he opened himself to the sea of magic surrounding him – just a little; he didn't wish to be overwhelmed as he had at the Council meeting earlier.
Even though he had braced himself, the surge of magic entering his body hit him like a dam bursting. He had only intended to create a sword, but either his subconscious or the magic itself had other ideas, for when the tide subsided, he found himself wearing a suit of armor like Sir Lancelot after a wax and shine. He probably looked ridiculous, but he had no time to dither about his wardrobe. He raised his voice and, trying to project more confidence than he felt, said, “Mister Knox, you and I have some unfinished business.”
“What is it this time?” Knox was starting to lose interest. One would think someone who had been imprisoned under a hill for over a thousand years would have a longer attention span. “Good heavens, Bellman! St. George? Really?”
Strephon looked down at his armor and saw that, yes, his shield bore the cross gules on argent field of the English flag, the Cross of St. George. Damn his subconscious. Perhaps Knox was right. Maybe he did think in cliches.
“Do you really mean to fight me?” Knox's towering bulk shook with laughter. “You can't possibly think you'll win.”
“Since you are trying so hard to dissuade me, that suggests that there may be some value in making the attempt.”
Knox clapped his gargantuan hands together, then dropped on all fours. His form was once again enlarging. Scales emerged from his skin, and leathery wings from his shoulders, and a long, scaly tail from the back of his trousers. His face lengthened into a reptilian snout and his smile displayed even more teeth than usual.
“It's been a while since I've been a dragon,” Knox said. “I've heard it said that transforming into a serpent to fight a hero never helps and is a cardinal mistake for the enterprising Evil Overlord. Nevertheless, there is a tradition to be respected here. If you are going to assume the role of St. George, you must have someone to play the dragon. It just wouldn't be cricket otherwise. Just don't for a moment imagine that this version will end the same way.”
Now Knox's dragon form filled the entire chamber and his wings could only half unfurl in the close quarters. His massive bulk curved around the spot where Strephon stood.
“Did you really think, Bellman, that by drawing on the magic of this spot you could match my might? Silly little man! You have but dipped your toe into the Nexus, whereas I, Bellman, I have been marinating in it!”
NEXT: Here’s Looking At Euclid
