Читать книгу The Cracks in the Aether - Robert Reginald - Страница 14

CHAPTER NINE

“FISHING FOR IFRITS?”

I was able to reach Doctor Scarabbaios quite readily. That was not the problem, as it turned out.

“Who the Hades are you?” he said, “and what do you want?”

I gave him my name and bona fides.

“Never heard of you.” He spoke in an almost staccato fashion.

I explained my quest.

“Why would anyone want to go to the Otherworlds? I spent three decades there trying to find my way home. Do you think that was enlightening? Good day to you, Sir.”

I caught Scooter laughing at me off to one side. “You humans,” was all it could say.

The second time I tried a different tack.

“I have a copy of The Old Mage and the Sea, by Magister Terentius Callister,” I said.

“The one about fishing for ifrits for one hundred and some odd years? Have three of them. Simplistic nonsense. Good day.”

The third time, I thought, would be the proverbial “charm.”

“How about Master Victor de Vannis’s De Verrucis Mysteriorum?”

“Claptrap, although the notion of reading the splotches on some fat fart’s fat ass was at least original.” Then static.

And so it went, back and forth for over a month. I was getting more and more frustrated. I even spoke to Doctor Árbogast again.

“Well, you must realize,” my old teacher said, “That Scarby’s about three or four hundred years on, and he’s had the time, money, and energy to secure copies of just about everything he wants. Of course, there’s one book that he’s been seeking for most of his life.”

“Really? Which one?” I asked. Maybe this would provide the information I needed.

“The Necropompeion of Fredo von Schweitzermeister. According to Phôstêridês, the book was created in a half dozen identical renditions by the Associated Shades in Hades, under the direction of Johannes Kendrick de Sonipedis, and then smuggled across the Styx on a houseboat—and by its very nature, being linked to the Netherworld, it cannot be duplicated or printed in the real world. There’s said to be a copy in the Bibliotheca Borgis, but, of course, the Avignon Papacy will not allow access to it, since they refuse as a matter of policy to allow magical practices within the Holy Roman Empire; and even its purported existence there is unverified. The other copies remain unaccounted for—either destroyed, lost, or perhaps in private hands. I venture to say that presenting him with one of these volumes would gain you unlimited access to his accumulated wisdom, such as it is.”

“Then I shall locate one,” I said.

But that was easier said than done, and my first feelers to bookmongers and private collectors were all unsuccessful.

In the meantime, I kept trying to reestablish contact with the distant female prisoner, but I had no better luck there than I did with the Hadish necrography. It seemed as if all of the omens were turning against me.

To compound matters even more, I was summoned to Court again a few days later, there to provide a round-robin set of prognostications at the Queen’s Soirée of Soothsaying, with moi occupying the seat of honor, so to speak. Gad, I was getting tired of the utter trivialness of it all:

“Yes, Lady Kólményi, you have both love and riches to look forward to.” I didn’t mention that she’d be murdered within six months by a jealous lover.

“Ah, my dear Lord Düttermann, there is much about your existence that I envy.” And there was much I didn’t, either, since Düttermann was doomed to perish in a nasty house fire three years hence.

“Metropolitan Sygmunt,” I said, “You will rise even further in the Church hierarchy.” Yes, he would become Patriarch of Kórynthia, and he would always regret having advanced just one step too far. The burden would wear him down in the end.

“Of course, Master Krotz, you will attain great success with your epic poem set among the Angels”—but you will never be able to pen anything comparable the rest of your life, and you will come to rue that one great success with bitterness.

“Minister Jákman, how great to see you again! The treaty with the Liets will indeed be signed”—and be broken within the year by our faithless enemy. You will fall as a direct result, and ultimately go to the block, when your real nature is uncovered to the world.

And so on and so forth, ad nauseam. The problem with an innate talent is that you can never turn it off. It works whether you want it to or not. In the end, I could always see more than I wished—things about the frailty of human nature, about the fate of human nations, about the flaws in human nobility. I see and saw too damned much—that is and was both my curse and my fate, and I’m so damnably tired of it all. There has got to be some way out.

That night, using just the one sky-orb I carried in my luggage, but with Scooter’s strength to assist me, I reached out from my quarters in the Palace to the æthernet, hoping beyond hope to find the captive woman again.

“Where are you?” I cried, putting my entire soul into the query.

“Here!” came the faint reply. “They took me away for a week.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for more than a month,” I said.

“It has only been…days here,” she said. She was fading in and out, and I could barely hear her words.

“Who are you?” I asked.

There was a long hiss of static, and I thought for a moment that our communication had lapsed again.

“I am…Niobë daughter of…,” she said. “That is…not my birth name, but….”

I understood immediately. Within most worlds, even beyond Nova Europa, the same basic rules of magic always seemed to apply. Mages often adopted pseudonyms early in their careers, and their real names were then carefully put aside. There were many reasons for this, including the safety of the practitioner. Knowing an individual’s real name can, under certain circumstances, grant another mage great power over that person.

“I’m called Morpheús,” I said. “Morpheús of Kórynthia in Nova Europa. Where are you?”

“I am…held in…called Mirabö, in Naprimér. I…-ing forced to…my captor. I cannot….”

“What did you say?”

“I am being forced to foretell the future of my captor.”

“You’re a soothsayer? So am I!” I said.

“Oh, please!” Scooter interjected in my right ear. I shooed it away.

“Who was that?” Niobë asked.

“My familiar companion,” I said, “Scooter by name.”

“Mine is…Sable,” she said. “It’s the…friend I have.”

“No, Lady,” I replied, “you have another.”

A long silence.

“Thank you….” I heard a rattling in the background. “What’s that?” Then: “I must go! Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” I whispered into the glowing crystal globe.

Imagine, I thought to myself: another hypatomancer! In its most refined form, this is a very rare talent in Nova Europa.

“Uh, she’s using you, Sir,” Scooter said.

“What? Oh, piss and vinegar, you weasely wherret! You can be such a negative entity at times. I’ve spent my whole life in study and work and brown-nosing the powers that be. Why shouldn’t I begin enjoying myself for a change? Why shouldn’t I…?”

“No one’s objecting to you having a bit of fun, Master,” my companion said. “But this female isn’t what she seems. Even under the best of circumstances, she couldn’t possibly be a companion to you. You can’t reach her physically, and you will never know her psychically. There’s no future to this relationship.”

“So you say.”

“Have you ever even heard of this Naprimér? Do you have any idea of what Circle it’s in? The fact that time for them runs slow is not a good sign. It means that her place is very distant from ours. She could be what passes for human there, whatever that is in her world, and still be very ‘different’ from you, both inside and out. She has to be inhabiting at least a Fourth or Fifth Sphere world. How do you get there? How do you get back? Do you have any notion at all of the difficulties involved?”

I’d known Scooter for a very long time. I’d given it refuge when the wherret needed it, and in turn the creature had had to indenture itself to me for seven times seven years—the usual term. I knew that it had my best interests at heart—if it had a heart, and I wasn’t really sure of that, given its metamorphic nature—so I couldn’t be cross with the wherret for very long.

“I do listen to what you say,” I said. “I do understand the risks involved. But what I had to do today for the Queen is becoming unbearable to me—not just tedious, but dangerously irritating. One of these sessions, I’m just going to blurt out loud what I think—and that will be the end of me, and the end of you too, I think. Evetéria cannot be crossed without severe consequences.

“So let’s do what we can to support each other. If I’m successful in reaching this Niobë’s world, it’ll at least be a grand adventure. And my life has become over-stale of late, dear friend—you know that quite simply to be true.”

Its lack of response was an acknowledgment of the reality of the situation.

But we still had to locate a copy of that blasted book to gain access to Doctor Scarabbaios and his (we hoped) much-touted window into wisdom. And I hadn’t a clue as to where one might be found.