The Cornerstone (22 page)

Coronzon’s lilting laughter again. “Only to the uninitiated does it appear so. Look again.”

Upon closer scrutiny Marlowe saw in the flickering candlelight that indeed the roundish surface was incised with whorls and spirals, punctuated at intervals with diagonal slashes. A clear image of the sun, with uneven rays extending from a perfect circle, appeared near the top. Although certainly no expert in antiquities, he knew enough to recognize the stone as something ancient, akin perhaps to the monument at Stonehenge, which he had in fact visited.

“What you see is a kerbstone from a passage tomb in the Boyne Valley of the Irish isle.” Dee pointed to the solar disc. “Sun worshippers, holding in reverence the elemental powers of Creation. Do you know what that portends?”

Marlowe took a breath. “Earth magick…the strongest kind.”

Coronzon clapped him on the back. “Did I not say, my esteemed doctor, that Master Marlowe was the perfect choice?”

“Is’t enchanted, then?” Marlowe felt as if he could hear it singing right at the edge of hearing.

Dee pulled the bag away so that the stone sat unfettered on the round table. “‘Tis not the rock itself, but what is within that holds the power.”

“Power that may be yours,” added Coronzon softly at his ear, “if you choose.”

They stood, shoulder to shoulder, in silence as Marlowe stared at the stone, its barely felt siren’s song a tickle in his ear. “What lies inside?”

Dee ran thin fingers over his beard. “By my troth, ‘tis a
bain-sídhe
.”

Marlowe fell a step back. “God's death…” Words failed him, something growing alarmingly common the longer he kept company with these two.

“Yes, my illustrious wordsmith,” purred the scholar from Wittenberg, if that was indeed his real profession, “we have trapped a banshee within this ancient burial stone. Moreover, the witch who called her for us resides there as well.”

Marlowe took another step away from the baleful stone. “But…to what end was it made?”

“The power over life and death.” Coronzon’s pale eyes caught the firelight. “More specifically, the one who claims ownership over the stone literally holds his own death at bay, for an eternity if he so chooses.”

Marlowe wiped his brow. “And which of you is its master?”

Dee bowed imperceptibly. “That honor is mine.”

Struggling to work it out, Marlowe fought with his muddled thoughts. “But why give’t up? I fail to see—”

“I was an older man when the
buachloch
was made. I have not aged greatly since that day, but it takes all my strength to retain that
status quo
. A man more robust in nature and personal ambition could profit beyond measure from it.”

“The binding spell that holds the
bain-sídhe
requires that she, as the Herald of Death, cannot call the Black Coach for you until you wish it. Further, she must ensure your life force continues to thrive. If, for instance, a poetaster such as yourself were to embed the stone in the foundations of a theater, all your endeavors there would likewise prosper.”

Marlowe’s imagination began to take flight. His ambitions to become the greatest writer of his age could perhaps be realized with certainty. He tried to think it through. Looking back to Dee, he asked, “Can your body be killed while you possess the object?”

Dee shuffled his feet. “In a manner of speaking. This body can be damaged, even to the point of death, but gradually it will revert to the state it inhabited when ownership was sealed. For expediency, naturally, if this seeming death were witnessed by ordinary men, one would need to take on a new identity once the body recovered...to prevent the Church from burning it to ashes as a manifestation of the Devil.”

Coronzon cleared his throat. “Part of the bargain of ownership is that the banshee must protect the life of the owner, especially where discovery is concerned.”

Dee added, “If, mayhap, the soul’s earthly vessel is destroyed, as by burning, not even her ladyship can prevent the Black Coach from coming to collect its due.”

Coronzon breathed in his ear. “But a careful man might live indefinitely, thriving on the bounties of an extended life. You have all the time in the world in which to accomplish your most cherished ambitions.”

Again silence descended as Marlowe contemplated the stone. Could he truly wield control over such a talisman? He knew himself to be a willful personality with a strong sense of identity and arrogant confidence in his mental agility—tonight’s escapade excepted—but he was no mage. He felt there must be details Dee and his companion were not disclosing, perhaps a lot of details, but his growing desire to have the stone was pushing his sense of caution to the side. It also occurred to him that if his spywork for the Crown were to turn deadly, here was a means to save his life.

“How does one take possession of the
bain-sídhe
?”
he heard himself ask.

Coronzon stepped forward. “A simple blood seal. ‘Tis quickly done, and the stone becomes yours.”

Marlowe licked his dry lips. “How, exactly?”

Dee pushed back his voluminous sleeves and bent toward the stone. “Observe.” He pressed both palms down over its surface, and appeared to be communing with the entity he claimed was ensorcelled inside. Then he released the stone and stood to his full height. In the flickering shadows, he resembled nothing so much as a carrion crow. He gestured toward the stone. “Touch and feel her presence.”

Marlowe reached out tentatively with his left hand and rested it palm down on the cool surface. He felt the spirals under his fingertips and then something else—a tingling sensation that raised the hairs on his arm. He could almost make out the voice now, a keening
Dies Irae
such as one might hear at a Mass for the Dead. He raised his eyes and found Coronzon’s riveted to him. “That’s right,” the soft voice whispered, “you hear her, do you not?”

Marlowe nodded.

“If you agree to take ownership and make the seal, she will appear to you in your mind, as your servant.”

Marlowe’s hands were shaking, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Verily, must I shed blood to claim the stone as mine?”

“The
bain-sídhe
is nourished and bound to you by blood.
This you must do if you are to bind her to your will.”

Marlowe cast his eyes back toward the carved stone that continued to tingle under his fingers. “H-how much blood?”

Dee reaching into his robe. “A small amount.” He opened his hand and a slim dagger with a handle of inlaid mother-of-pearl lay across his palm. “An ensorcelled athame, which also belongs to the owner of the stone.”

Marlowe’s breath hissed. That blade looked sharp.

Coronzon said, “Do you wish to become owner of the
buachloch
and master of the
bain-sídhe,
who will be bound by spellcraft to preserve your life?”

“Y-yes.”

“Done.” Swifter than thought, Dee plunged the dagger into the top of his hand, driving it through meat and bone into the very rock itself.

Marlowe howled from pain and shock as small bones splintered, blood vessels ruptured, skin shredded. His body shook as if with palsy as he stared at his hand, pinned to the stone. The athame was embedded to its hilt, dark red blood pooling and spilling over the rock and tabletop. His knees buckled, but Coronzon swiftly caught him with an arm tight around his waist. A cacophony of screams, voices old and very young, roared in his ears and he felt consciousness slipping away as pain beyond endurance flared up his arm and over his body. He was barely cognizant of Coronzon grabbing his free hand and pressing it onto the stone awash in his blood. The stone turned red-hot and seared the flesh from his fingers as they made contact.

Smoke rose from the granite surface and slowly coalesced into a shape, a woman in a shroud, at first with luminous sea-gray eyes and silver seaweed hair, but then dissolving to rot and finally revealing a death’s head with a few scraps of hair and flesh clinging to its whitened surface. The ravening mouth, from which came the unbearable shriek that he’d imagined only a moment before as faint singing, rushed toward him, gaping black as a starless night.

Marlowe screamed and screamed till his throat was raw, but the Magister’s grip around him was iron. And in a blink, his soul fled his body.

He hovered above the table with the glass retorts and crucibles, watching two tall men inflicting bloody torture on a shorter man, for what reason he couldn’t immediately fathom. At that moment a presence materialized beside him—a young man of perhaps nineteen or twenty with golden hair and eyes the color of the midsummer sky. The youth smiled at him with full, rose-tinted lips. The features were otherworldly, but familiar. Coronzon.

In his disconnected state, he knew it was a glamour, but welcomed the artifice anyway. How not? The youth was beautiful almost to the point that Marlowe could not bear to look at him.
Come with me
, the shining figure said, holding out its shapely hand. Marlowe’s shade took hold, and instantly he was astride the back of an enormous dragon, its scales like armor plate beneath his thighs, sweeping over unfamiliar lands far below. The youth’s body melded itself against Marlowe’s back, arms around him in a warm embrace that belied the freezing cold of the dragon’s flight.
See what we two can do?
said the voice beside his ear.
Say to me now…what is your will?

Marlowe leaned backward into the caressing arms and gave himself over to the swoop and glide of the dragon’s muscular wings. He said without thought, “I am yours.”

The vision popped like a soap bubble, and his soul slammed back into his body, still held on its feet by the unyielding arm of Magister Coronzon. But now, oddly, he felt nothing as he studied his bloody hands gripping the stone. The elegant demon who was now his pledged companion took hold of Marlow’s right hand and wrapped it around the hilt of the embedded dagger. “Pull it out and the bargain is sealed.”

Marlowe gripped the pearl handle and looked up at Dee, who had retreated further into the shadows of the laboratory. Without a word, he tightened his flayed fingers around the hilt and withdrew the athame as if pulling it from butter. In shock he stared as the stone soaked up his blood like water over a diver’s sponge, and slowly, inexorably, his hands began to heal. Flesh rebuilt itself, bones realigned and made themselves whole, veins knit themselves together. He watched in fascination as the pearl-handled dagger fit itself perfectly to the palm of his open, unscathed hand.

“How now, sirrah,” Coronzon said in a tone that could only be described as gleeful. “How does it feel to be immortal?”

Immortal indeed. Kit Bayard ground his teeth. Had he been duped into taking ownership of the stone? Most certainly. But he had to face the fact that his inflated ego and overweening bravado had allowed it to happen. Although he’d asked Dee why he was willing to relinquish immortality so readily, he’d not gotten a straight answer. He could see now how artfully the two had steered his questioning away from that critical point and toward the wonders that awaited him if he took possession. Yes, he’d been a fool, an overreaching coxcomb greedy for power over his own destiny, not unlike his poor protagonist of this week’s production. Was his fate eventually then to follow that of his doomed Faustus? Bayard clenched his fists. Had four hundred years spent wresting life from Death’s pall been a wasted effort? He recalled with revulsion his discourse with Dee’s shade here in this very spot. The answers to his questions were obvious to anyone with eyes to see.

In a fury, more at himself than anything else, he grabbed the metal thermos, turned on his boot heel, and thudded up the stairs to the lobby, slamming the basement door behind him.

Thursday, 3:00 P.M.

“
Qui non intelli
…something or other.” Tom startled at Nanette’s voice, close to his shoulder. “My Latin’s pretty rusty.”

He closed the store’s only copy of Dr. John Dee’s
The Hieroglyphic Monad
. “
Qui non intelligit, aut taceat, aut discat
. Who understands not, should either be silent or learn.”

“Testy old buzzard, wasn’t he?” Nanette laughed. The Rookery did a brisk trade in the writings of John Dee—translated, edited, paraphrased, anthologized, riffed on, and rarely, an unabridged scanned reproduction of an original. “You’re a fan of Dr. Dee?”

He slid the book back into its slot on the shelf. “Not a fan, just curious. I think he was brilliant in some ways—mathematics and his work on maps and navigation. But I also think he went off the deep end with all the Enochian stuff.”

“So you don’t buy the angelic dialogues bit?”

Tom smirked. "He wasn’t talking to angels, I can assure you.” He gathered up a handful of books that needed shelving. Funny how used bookstores tended to be like libraries. People thumbed through books and then left them lying wherever was convenient.

“Maybe he was hitting ye old absinthe bottle too much.”

Tom smiled at Nanette in her Addams family makeup and hair. He was going to miss her. “I guess I may as well tell you. This is probably my last day on the job.”

Her eyes went wide and liquid. “But why? I thought you were happy here. I’d love to pay you more if I could.”

He was a little surprised. She seemed genuinely upset, more than just losing an employee. He’d tried to avoid getting too close to people, but sometimes they managed to get past his defenses anyway.

“It’s not about money. I have some family business to take care of. I really enjoy working here. Believe me, I’d stay if I could.”

“Well, family comes first, of course. I’m sure your parents must miss you. Do they live near Atlanta?”

Tom studied the books in his hand. “No. I never met my father. Don’t even know his name. No siblings, either.”

“Oh. So it’s just you and your mom—” He gave her the answer before she could ask.

“My mother’s been dead for awhile. Murdered, actually.” He was careful to show a neutral expression.