Alchemist (80 page)

Between the waterfall and the rock wall behind it, Theutus stood rigid on the Stone of Purification, drenched in spray, his eyes closed, repeating the cleansing incantations he had long ago learned by heart.

When he had finished, the sentinels stepped forward in their black, cowled jellabas, wordlessly dried his naked body with pure linen towels, and led him through a cavity, along a passageway, into a tiny hollow that formed a chamber lit by a single tallow candle.

The chamber was bare except for a row of seven silver aspergilla suspended from hooks by their chains, and a raised slab on the floor, seven feet long and two wide. Fashioned from pure malachite, it had been burnished weekly for centuries into a dull green sheen. Theutus knew from his studies that this was the Altar of Anointment, the second stage of the purification. It was the third stage that he was anxious about, and now it was nearly time. He had been preparing for it for thirty years.

He positioned himself on his back on the altar, closed his
eyes and began repeating to himself the Anointment Keys; the sentinels, their silence never breaking, began the Anointment of the Vials of the Seven Planets.

One took the first aspergillum, a silver, perforated ball, stolen like the other six many years back from the Vatican, and desecrated with menstrual blood, semen, urine and faeces. It contained a saffron perfume appropriated to the sun, mixed together with the pulped brain of an eagle.

Swinging the aspergillum from side to side, the sentinel walked one complete circuit around Theutus, sprinkling droplets of the perfume on to his naked flesh. When he had finished, the second sentinel repeated the procedure, then the third, and the fourth.

The next aspergillum contained a perfume made from the seeds of white poppies and appropriated to the moon; mixed together with menstrual blood. The third contained a perfume of black poppy seeds appropriated to Saturn, mixed with the brain of a cat and blood drawn from a bat. The fourth was to Jupiter; the fifth was appropriated to Mars, the sixth to Venus and the seventh to Mercury.

The same ritual was repeated with each of the aspergilla. Then with a touch of their hands the sentinels gave the signal to rise. Two in front and two behind the anointed one, they proceeded along a labyrinth of passages lit only by the occasional candle, and finally through the Grand Arch into the temple of the Eternal Flame of Satan.

Theutus found himself in awe of the sacred chamber which he now entered for the first time in his life. Its five sides, naturally formed out of the polished rock faces, rose majestically like the walls of a Gothic cathedral up to the summit of the plateau above. Each wall had been elaborately and beautifully carved with Cabbalistic numbers and symbols; but there was no vaulted cathedral roof above their heads, just a small pentagram of rapidly darkening sky.

Forty-two Assessors stood, backs pressed against the walls, completely encircling the room. Silent as statues, they were dressed in pure white linen robes, and their identities were concealed behind the gold face mask of the beast of their choice.

The flames of an intense natural gas fire leapt from a hollow in the floor, the centre of a series of intricately carved concentric circles. The fire had been lit, according to legend, by Satan Himself as His final act of defiance when He was defeated by God. Only Satan could extinguish it, and on the day He did so, He would rise through the ashes to wreak vengeance on God. And in the centre of the fire lay a massive granite crucible. The impurities in the molten gold that filled it to the brim were bubbling to the surface like volcanic lava.

Between the spot where Theutus stood and the fire was an anvil, and a stone slab displaying the heavy tools of a blacksmith and the delicate ones of a goldsmith. Of the many rituals which Theutus had learned in the past thirty years, the work of the foundryman and of the goldsmith had been among the first. Having been instructed that it was necessary for a great magician to cast his own vessels, and to fashion his adornments by his own hand, he had mastered both skills.

But today he had come without his jewellery and without his crown. He came naked into the temple, bringing nothing of the old world with him that might carry a taint that could diminish his powers. Here, in front of his peers, from the crucible's smelted gold, he would forge new vessels – a new crown, new rings and a new pendant.

The gold had come from the vessels and adornments of the outgoing Ipsissimus, the previous elected figurehead of the forty-two Assessors – an 87-year-old banker who lay slowly dying of bone cancer in a private clinic in Switzerland.

It was the same gold that had been smelted down from each preceding Ipsissimus for nearly two thousand years, the same gold that had once formed the chalices and plates used by the great Impostor Jesus Christ and his evil followers. Those chalices had been recovered from the Cave of Qumran where they had been concealed after the crucifixion.

From his early twenties, Theutus had ceased to believe in the existence of the biblical God who had made his childhood such hell; and he did not believe in Satan as a deity either. He considered today's procedure to be mere mumbo-jumbo, but that did not diminish its value for him. God and Satan had both existed once, of that he had little doubt, but
they had been mortal humans, as real as himself, no more and no less.

They had been simply magicians, shamans, alchemists, who happened to have understood how to harness the energies of the universe to their own ends. The power they'd had was within the reach of all mortals, but access to that power was a secret shared only between the forty-two Assessors and their predecessors. It was the power of mind over matter. The ability to project, coerce, influence by sheer willpower, employing the forces of charisma, telepathy, astral projection.

It was a power that went back thousands of years. It was the power to create wealth, political dominance, control. The power to succeed totally in every conceivable worldly way. It was the greatest power known to man.

Theutus knew the individual identity of none of the forty-two silent Assessors here. He knew only that they had selected him with more care, more secrecy and more ritual than the processes by which the Vatican appointed a new Pope.

He was aware that they were all men of immense standing on the world's stage. One was a cardinal from the Vatican. One, an eminent scientist. One, a United States senator. One, a British cabinet minister. Each had been selected from covens all over the world for their psychic abilities, their business influence, their political influence – and their impeccable outward respectability.

Mental control ruled. All verbal communication was forbidden. All had been summoned solely by telepathy. They communicated in silence, they would depart in silence. They shared one common bond.

Power.

Give me a firm place on which to stand and I will move the world
.

And they had elected
him
to be their leader; their new Ipsissimus; their Magister of Magisters. The invitation had come out of the blue. Yet not a total surprise. They had been watching him for forty years. He had been aware of what was coming, he had received the signs. Now he had to prove himself able.

If he succeeded, this same group would assemble only once more, ever: for the final initiation ceremony in the Cave of
Demons. That meeting would take place eighteen days after the death of the outgoing Ipsissimus. There would not be another such assembly, Theutus knew, until he, too, was on his deathbed. That might be here in the bowels of this table mountain in twenty, thirty, forty years' time. By then many of those here would be dead also, replaced by younger blood that was just as carefully chosen to share the same knowledge, the same secret.

He had come a long way, Theutus reflected, since the day he had purchased that first rabbit from a pet shop in High Barnet. But he still had far to go. Tonight was the twelfth Ordeal and he had yet to pass it. And beyond that, to come, was the thirteenth Ordeal, with its infamous trek to the Cave of Demons. There had been others who had come this far in the past, and failed; there were rumours of terrible humiliation and agonizing death. To allow any such fears to distract him now would be to court disaster beyond imagination.

Mind over matter
.

They were watching, waiting.

Mind over matter
. The supreme concentration. He had walked barefoot over blazing coals. But that had been easy. He had spent ten minutes underwater holding his breath, his arms and legs weighted with stones; but that, too, had been easy.

None of the rituals were hard once you understood the secret of control.
Mind over matter
. Most humans used less than twenty per cent of their brains. The secret lay in the other eighty per cent, and none but those assembled here would ever find the key to unlock it.

The heat seared his flesh from a distance of ten paces, and the foul sulphurous fumes invaded his lungs. He stared up at the sky far above. It was darkening and the first stars were coming out.

Stars rule man, but a wise man rules the stars
.

The rim of the full moon was appearing over the lodestone high above him. When he could see the moon in its entirety he would begin.

Closing his eyes, he cleared his mind and began to speak the only words he was permitted: ‘Hail Zoroaster!' Then he raised
his head to the sky. ‘Hail Alnath! Allothaim, Achaomazon.' He continued to hail, in turn, each of the twenty-eight mansions of the moon.

Then, bracing himself, Theutus stepped forward until he was inches from the rim of the fire and declared aloud: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, which is, which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. I am the First and the Last, who am living and was dead, and behold I live for ever and ever; and I have the keys of death and hell.'

He took a breath, ignoring the heat and the fumes, and worked on his mind, focusing on one thought and one thought only.

No pain. There is no pain. I feel no pain. I am as cold as the deepest waters of the universe. I am untouchable by heat, by pain. I am the supreme master of my body and of all elements. I am now going to use the heat of the Eternal Flame of Satan to burn off all impurities from my skin, but it will not burn the skin itself
.

Then he stooped forwards without allowing himself the grace of hesitation and plunged both arms, right up to the shoulders, into the molten gold in the crucible.

And held them there.

His brain was locked on water. Fire could not burn water. He counted. Thirty seconds. One minute.

Water
.

Two minutes.

Water
.

Five minutes. He felt heat, pushed it away in his mind. The pulse of a clock beat in his head; he was tuned into the clock of the universe.
Water
. Seven minutes. Eight. Nine. Ten.

He lifted his arms out and raised them above the crucible. Molten gold slid like globules of mercury from his skin back into the vessel, and within seconds his hairless arms were completely clear. There was not a mark on them.

He stepped back. There was to be no applause, no congratulations. It was what had been expected of him, no more, no less.

The Chief Assessor, in his Goat of Mendez mask, solemnly lifted the sacred branding iron from among the tools on the slab, placed it into the flames beneath the crucible and held it
there for a full minute. Then he removed it and held it aloft, the narrow strip of Cabbalistic numbers and symbols glowing red hot.

Theutus braced himself.

The Assessor turned, and with a solemn nod pressed hard against Theutus's right arm, six inches beneath the shoulder.

This time Theutus felt the full searing sting of the burn, but still he did not flinch. He held his head high, oblivious to the stench of his own charred flesh, and silently began, with intense concentration, to work through the difficult words of the next incantation.

London. Wednesday 7 December, 1994

There was a wall in front of him. It was covered in soft grey dimpled paper. A television that was switched off sat on a white shelf. A framed picture that had been irritating him hung on the wall near it. It was a childlike painting of sunflowers in a vase and the name of the artist eluded him.

It was maddening Dick Bannerman more every moment as he tried to claw the name from his memory banks. An Impressionist. Like Monet; Cézanne; Degas; that crew. The name was on the tip of his tongue but just would not come. No ear. The fellow with no ear, he'd cut it off … G – G –

It was as if part of his own brain had been cut off. He could see, hear, feel, smell, but nothing else. Couldn't move a muscle. He closed his eyelids slowly then opened them again to test that out. No problems. But the rest of him was locked solid.

He could see the blurred silhouette of what he took to be a nasogastric feeding tube protruding from his nostrils and could sense an obstruction in his mouth; drip lines were connected into his left hand. He could hear the steady clunk-puff of a ventilator. A light source indicated that there might
be a window over to his right but he couldn't turn his head to find out. It might just be an electric light. He had no idea what the time was, whether it was day or night, and no idea where he was.

Someone had been in a couple of times; a tall, sun-tanned man in a business suit whom he recognized but could not place. For all he knew this character might still be in the room, out of his range of vision.

He could see the bedclothes beyond the end of his nose rising and falling in tune with the ventilator. He was aware that he had been catheterized and he sensed he was lying on an incontinence pad.

His memory was foggy. One minute he had been in his laboratory, his old premises, and now he was here. He couldn't remember why he had not been in his new lab at Bendix Schere. Perhaps his mind was playing tricks. He wondered if he'd had a stroke. Where was Monty? Why hadn't she come to see him?

I'm a bloody vegetable
.