Tales From the Black Chamber (30 page)

This last chant, I believe, refers to the seraphim's chanting, not that of the pious.
Boghda
means “holy, sacred, divine,” and three
boghda
s is very likely Father Boiohæmus's gloss on the
Sanctus
(
Sanctus sanctus sanctus | Dominus Deus Sabbaoth | Pleni sunt cæli et terra gloria Tua | Hosanna in excelsis
), or its predecessor, the Hebrew
Kedusha
(
Kadosh kadosh kadosh Adonai Tz'vaot melo kol ha-aretz kevodo
), the traditional hymn of the seraphim, as described in their single mention in the Bible:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the
LORD
sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is the
LORD
of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:1–3)

Please accept my apologies for the length of time it took me to compose this. My pre-modern Mongolian isn't what it once was, and my Judaic and Christian angelology was nigh non-existent.

I apologize more abjectly for my inability to shed the slightest insight as to what this means. Take care, darling Claire, and I hope and pray—yes, this dire tome moved me to prayer for you, something I have not been able to do since the occasion of Alma's death—that I shall see you again soon, whole, hale, and undefiled.

With profoundest solicitude,

Lewis

“Well, that bothers me to no end,” said Claire, biting the corner of her lip. “Not least because the good professor doesn't scare easily. He spent World War II in Burma, killing God knows how many Japanese and being shot six times, though never seriously.”

“So what the heck
does
that mean?” asked Rafe.

John said, “Well, I recognize some of the names of angels as standard Christian angels, but some of them seem kind of off the wall. Tarquam? Are they from Jewish lore?”

Rafe and Claire looked at each other and shrugged. Claire said, “If they are, it's awfully obscure.”

Anne said, “Can I see that?” Claire handed her the fax. “These sound really familiar. I mean, like I've run across something like this very recently. Of course, these books are just packed full of gobbledygook names of angels and devils. It's the groups of three that jump out at me. Wait!” She grabbed one of the tomes off her desk and flipped quickly through it, scanning the pages through a squint of concentration. “Aha!” she shouted, stabbing at a page with a finger. “Okay, this is from
De magia mathematica
, or
On Mathematical Magic
, by Giordano Bruno, a serious heavy hitter in the field.
Nomina angelorium dierum et primo die Solis
. ‘Names of the angels of the days and the first day, Sunday.' More or less. Okay, I'll spare you the Latin. ‘The foremost three angels of Sunday are Michael, Dardiel, Huratapel (says Peter de Abano in his
Elementa magica
—
Elements of Magic
, page blah blah blah). The names of the angels of Monday. The three are foremost Gabriel, Michael, Samael. The names of the angels of Tuesday. The three foremost are Samael, et cetera.' That's his
et cetera
, not mine.”

“Those match up,” said Claire, having picked up the fax.

“Now, he only names the main angel of every other day, but they match up. Hold on.” Anne dug in her satchel of books. “Ha! I thought I packed this.
Heptameron, seu Elementa magica!
” She flipped through the pages. “Yep. Look here. They all match up. Except that Torquaret joker and his homies Tarquam and Guabarel. Not on the list.”

“So they match up to
days
?” asked Steve.

“Yeah, how do days reach out to each other?” asked Rafe. “I mean, space-time is curved, but …”

“Hey, here they are!” said Anne. “
Angeli autumni
: Tarquam. Gualbarel.
Caput signi autumni
: Torquaret. So Tarquam and Guabarel—he misspells it—are the angels of autumn, and the head of the sign of autumn is Torquaret.”

Rafe drawled, “So that means …”

“Beats the hell out of me,” said Anne.

“Yeah, days of the week and a season don't really help us out, do they?” frowned Claire.

“Wait a second,” said John. “Anne, you've read a ton of these books. Don't they attribute multiple associations with various angels?”

“Oh sure.” She opened another book. “This is the
Key of Solomon
. You've got hours of the day, days of the week, archangels associated with angels, planets, metals, and colors, and that's just one book.”

“Metals?” said Rafe. “Maybe it's a metallurgical code of some sort.”

“Could be,” said Anne. “Alchemists were notorious for using all sorts of metaphors like that.”

“Okay, let's take one,” said Rafe. “Okay, we've got my namesake Raphael—woo—reaching out to Sachiel. What ‘days' are those?”

Anne looked down at the
Heptameron
. “Wednesday and Thursday.”

“And what metals are those?” Rafe followed up.

“Hmm. If he's using the
Key of Solomon
, it's tin and mercury,” said Anne. “What does that make?”

“Uh, you can make a mirror out of that. Or dental amalgam. Or an amalgam for a fluorescent lightbulb,” said Rafe.

“So, maybe we need to shine a fluorescent light on it? Or a mirror or something?”

“I'd think a mirror is more fifteenth-century technology,” said Claire.

“What's the next one?” asked Rafe. “Cassiel and Gabriel.”

“Um … Saturday and Monday … lead and silver,” said Anne.

“Well, you could make solder,” said Rafe.

“Next?” said John.

“Sachiel and Michael … Thursday and Sunday … tin and gold.”

“Geez, either a hard solder, or a covering for electronic components. Electroplate?” said Rafe.

“Okay, folks, I'm out of my depth,” said Steve, standing up. “I'm going to go start dinner.” He walked back towards the galley.

“Samael and Anael,” continued Anne. “Tuesday and … Friday. Iron and copper.”

“Steel or cast iron,” said Rafe. “But I'm seriously baffled as to where this is all going.”

“Hold on,” said Claire. “You don't have any correspondence for Torquaret, do you?”

“No,” said Anne.

“So if this is a chemical formula, we've got some mystery ingredient here that we don't have the key to.”

“Shit, good point,” said Rafe. “Autumn. Hmm. Dried leaves? Pumpkin spice?”

“Let's try something else,” said John. “We can come back to metals.”

“I'm pretty sure, though, that if it comes down to it, I can scavenge all those metals from somewhere or other on this plane,” said Rafe.

“Good to know,” said Claire. “Okay, what else do we have?”

“Um, colors, planets, and archangels, at least in this book.”

“Well, they could be intermediate points of a color wheel or spectrum,” said Rafe. “One color ‘reaches' to the other.”

“Let me look at the colors,” said Claire, bending over the books.

“I'll put the planets on the monitor there,” said Rafe. “I have a cool program.”

Anne and Claire discussed the various colors and their combinations, asking John and Rafe if they had any associations with them, but nothing coherent came of it. Anne looked up at the monitor, where Rafe had put up a picture that showed a circle with planets and stars surrounded by land.

“What's that?” said Anne.

“Oh, this is what you'd see standing in my backyard and looking straight up. I mean, if there were no atmosphere. I turned that off. I can move the view around all different ways.” Rafe pressed some keys and it resolved into a more traditional perspective.

“No, no, go back to the first one,” said Anne. “The circle.”

“Okay. Here you go.”

“Can you draw some lines on there?” Connect planets?”

“Sure,” he said. “Like this?”

“No, extend them all the way to the edges of the circle.”

“Like this?”

“Exactly.” She pulled out an ancient-looking volume and opened it to a page full of inscribed circles crisscrossed by lines at odd angles. “Does that look like a magic circle?”

“It looks
exactly
like a magic circle,” said John. “And that's what you use to protect yourself from a demon you summon, right?”

“So they're planets,” said Claire. “But how do we figure out which ones, and when?”

Anne had anticipated the question. “I think we figure out where the planets are at the time and place we need the circle.”

Rafe said, “Oh, ok, so …” he pulled a GPS out of his pocket, “47° 9´ 47.05˝ north latitude, 118° 57´ 15.76˝ east longitude,” he typed the coordinates into the program. “At, say, nine a.m. local time on the day in question,” he typed more. “Bam.”

“Neat,” said John.

“Dude, that would have taken like three days with pencil and paper.”

“
Very
neat,” replied John.

“Okay, what do we have here?” said Claire. “We've got Mars over here near the horizon in the—what is this, north … east? This is disorienting.”

“East northeast,” said Rafe.

“Okay, the sun and Venus are high in the southeast quadrant right on top of each other,” continued Claire.

“Venus is actually beyond the sun and a little south and west,” said Rafe.

“And Mercury's there just to the north and west of them,” pointed John.

“Okay, the moon's really high in the southeast quadrant, closer to the south line,” noted Anne.

“Uranus and Neptune are here in the southwest,” said Claire.

“Yeah, but they won't be in Anne's book,” said John.

“Yep, weren't discovered until the 1700s and 1800s respectively,” said Rafe. “And Saturn and Jupiter are below the horizon, so I'm guessing we get to ignore them. I'll bet that's why there are two different options for each one, in case the primary one isn't visible.”

“Okay, so Michael, et al., Mercury, is connected to … Sachiel or Torquaret. Jupiter or … autumn,” said Anne.

“Not helpful,” said John. “Let's get back to that.”

“Okay, Cassiel and Sachiel … Saturn and Jupiter,” read Anne.

“Skip,” said Claire.

“Okay, Samael reaches out to Anael, Mars to Venus,” said Anne.

“Hey, we have a winner!” said Rafe, then plotted a purple line through the two points across the circle.

“Michael to Gabriel, Sun to Moon,” said Anne.

“Done and done,” said Rafe, connecting them with a green line.

“Okay, and we can rule out that last one,” said John. “Torky is reaching out to Saturn or Jupiter.”

“Wow, you did that in your head?” said Anne.

“What? I'm paying attention,” said John.

“So…Torky,” said Claire ruminatively. “Autumn.”

“I got it,” said Rafe. “Fomalhaut.”

“You sure you're not remembering that thing out in L.A.?” asked John.

“What thing?” said Anne.

“My first big gig,” said Rafe. “There's a big star out in Hollywood who famously belongs to a cult.”

“I think I know who you mean,” said Anne.

“Almost certainly. Over two years, sixteen people who'd crossed him in some way or another were burned to death, either their houses burning down around them, or almost spontaneously combusting, with nothing around them touched. Of course, he was the obvious suspect, but he had airtight alibis in every case, being miles away, on TV, at a party with dozens of witnesses, et cetera. So the thought was maybe the cult was doing it for him. But there was never a single scrap of evidence, no forced entry, no fingerprints, no footprints, no trace evidence, and—this is what made the arson guys crazy—no accelerants, ignitors, or any evidence of arson. The one pattern I found out was that the burnings started the night Fomalhaut entered the night sky and stopped when it left. But that was it. It still haunts me. Whoever or whatever was doing that could start again anytime.”

John said, “So you see why I tend to think Rafe has Fomalhaut on the brain.”

“Ha,” said Rafe. “Not in this case. I just happen to know
much
more about Fomalhaut than most people. Like that its name comes from
fam al-janûbî
, ‘mouth of the southern whale.' And another thing I know is that it's the only first-magnitude star in the fall sky of mid-northern latitudes. Hence its nickname: the ‘Lonely Star of Autumn.'”

Claire applauded, and John and Anne joined in.

“So where's Fomalhaut?” said John. “I don't see it.”

“It's … um … uh … aha!” said Rafe. “See this star just south of the southwest line right above the horizon?” Everyone nodded. Rafe pressed a button and the green-grass graphic disappeared around the edges. The label F
OMALHAUT
revealed itself next to the star.