The Day After Judgement (7 page)

Ah, now he had it. The left-hand figure was V
ASSAGOS
ordinary infernal sign, but the second was the seal under which, it was said, he could be called by white magicians. Ware
had never used it, nor had needed to – the infernal seal had worked very well – and he had always doubted its efficacy, for
by definition no commerce with a demon is white magic; however, it would be well to try it now. It might prove an additional
factor of safety, if it worked at all.

Into what should he draw the water? Everything was filthy. Eventually he decided simply to make a puddle on the workbench;
it had been decades since he had studied oneirology, which he had scorned as a recourse for mere hedge wizards, but to the
best of his recollection it called for nothing more extraordinary than an earthenware vessel, and could even be practised
successfully in an ordinary, natural forest pool, providing that there was sufficient shade.

Well, then, to work.

Standing insecurely before the workbench, the little weight of
his spare upper body resting upon his elbows and his hands beside his ears, Theron Ware stared steadfastly down into the little
puddle of mud, his own bushy head – he had neglected his tonsure since the disaster – shading it from the even light of the
overcast sky. He had already stared so long since the first invocation that he felt himself on the verge of self-hypnosis,
but now, he thought, there was a faint stirring down there in those miniature carboniferous depths, like a bubble or a highlight
created by some non-existent sun. Yes, a faint spark was there, and it was growing.

‘Eka dva, tri, chatur pancha, shas, sapta, ashta, nava, dasha, ekadasha,’
Ware counted.
‘Per vota nostra ipse nunc surtat nobis dicatus
V
ASSAGO!
’

The spark continued to grow until it was nearly the size of a ten-lire piece, stabilized and gradually began to develop features
Despite its apparent diameter, the thing did not look small; the effect rather was one of great distance, as though Ware were
seeing a reflection of the Moon.

The features were quite beautiful and wholly horrible. Superficially the shining face resembled a human skull, but it was
longer, thinner, more triangular, and it had no cheekbones. The eyes were huge, and slanted almost all the way up to where
a human hairline would have been; the nose extremely long in the bridge; the mouth as pink and tiny as that of an infant.
The colour and texture of the face were old ivory, like netsuke. No body was visible, but Ware had not expected one; this
was not, after all, a full manifestation, but only an apparition.

The rosebud mouth moved damply, and a pure soprano voice like that of a choirboy, murmured gently and soundlessly deep in
Ware’s mind.

W
HO IS IT CALLS
V
ASSAGO FROM STUDYING OF THE DAMNED?
B
EWARE!

‘Thou knowest me, demon of the Pit,’ Ware thought, ‘for to a pact hast thou subscribed with me, and written into my book thine
Infernal name. Thereby, and by thy seal which I do here exhibit, do I compel thee. My questions shalt thou answer, and give
true knowledge.’

S
PEAK AND BE DONE.

‘Art still in Hell with thy brothers, or are all abroad about the Earth?’

S
OME DO GO TO AND FRO. BUT WE ABIDE HERE.
N
EVERTHELESS, WE BE ON
E
ARTH, ALBEIT NOT ABROAD.

‘In what wise?’

T
HOUGH WE MAY NOT YET LEAVE
N
ETHER
H
ELL, WE BE AMONG YE: FOR THE
P
IT HATH BEEN RAISED UP. AND THE
C
ITY OF
D
IS NOW STANDING UPON THE
E
ARTH.

Ware made no attempt to disguise his shock; after all, the creature could see into his mind. ‘How situate?’ he demanded.

W
HERE SHE STOOD FROM ETERNITY; IN THE
V
ALLEY OF
D
EATH.

Ware suspected at once that the apparently allegorical form of his utterance concealed a literal meaning, but it would do
no good to ask for exact topographical particulars; demons paid little attention to Earthly political geography unless they
were fomenting strife about boundaries or enclaves, which was not one of V
ASSAGO’S
roles. Could the reference be literary? That would be in accordance with the demon’s nature. Nothing prevents devils from
quoting scripture to their own advantage? so why not Tennyson?

‘Be this valley under the ambassadorship of R
IMMON
?’

N
AY.

‘Then what officers inhabit the region wherein it lies? Divulge their names, great prince, to my express command!’

T
HEY ARE THE INFERIORS OF
A
STAROTH WHO ARE CALLED
S
ARGATANAS AND
N
EBIROS.

‘But which hath his asylum where Dis now stands?’

T
HERE RULETH
N
EBIROS.

These were the demons of post-Columbian magic; they announced forth to the subjects all things which their lord hath commanded,
according to the
Grimorium Verum,
in America, and the asylum of N
EBIROS
was further specified to be in the West. Of course: Death Valley. And N
EBIROS.
as it was said in the
Grand Grimoire
was the field marshal of Infernus, and a great necromancer, ‘who goeth to and fro everywhere and inspects the hordes of perdition.’
The raising of the fortress of Dis in the domain of this great general most strongly suggested that the war was not over yet.
Ware knew better, however, than to ask the demon whether God was in fact dead; for
were He not, the mere sounding of the Holy Name would so offend this minor prince as to terminate the apparition at once,
if not render further ones impossible. Well, the question was probably unnecessary anyhow; he already had most of the information
that he needed.

‘Thou art discharged.’

The shining face vanished with a flash of opalescence, exactly as though a soap bubble had broken, leaving Ware staring down
at nothing but a puddle of mud, now already filming and cracking – except in the centre where the face had been; that had
evaporated completely. Straightening his aching back, he considered carefully the implications of what he had learned.

The military organization of the Descending Hierachy was peculiar, and as usual the authorities differed somewhat on its details.
This was hardly surprising, for any attempt to relate the offices of the evil spirits to Earthly analogues was bound to be
only an approximation, if not sometimes actively misleading. Ware was presently in the domain of H
UTGIN,
ambassador in Italy, and had never before Black Easter had any need to invoke A
STAROTH
or any of his inferior Intelligences. He was characterized by the
Grimorium Verum
as the Grand Duke of Hell, whereas Weirus referred to him as Grand Treasurer; while the
Grand Grimoire
did not mention him at all, assigning N
EBIROS
instead to an almost equivalent place. Nevertheless it seemed clear enough in general that while the domain of A
STAROTH
might technically be in America, his principality was not confined thereto, but might make itself known anywhere in the world.
H
UTGIN
in comparison was a considerably lesser figure.

And the war was not yet over, and Ware might indeed find some way to make himself useful; Baines had been right about that,
too. But in what way remained unclear.

Very probably, he would have to go to Dis to find out. It was a terrifying thought, but Ware could see no way around it. That
was where the centre of power was now, where the war would henceforth be directed; and there, if Baines actually succeeded
in reaching the SAC in Denver, Ware conceivably might succeed in arranging some sort of a
detente.
Certainly he
would be of no use squatting here in ruined Italy, with all the superior spirits half a world away.

But how to get there? He did not have Baines’s power to commandeer an aircraft, and though he was fully as wealthy as the
industrialist – in fact most of the money had once been Baines’s – it seemed wholly unlikely that any airline was selling
tickets these days. A sea and overland journey would be too slow.

Would it be possible to compel A
STAROTH
to provide him with some kind of an apport? This too was a terrifying thought. To the best of Ware’s knowledge; the last
magician to have ridden astride a devil had been Gerbert, back in the tenth century. He had resorted to it only to save his
life from a predecessor of the Inquisition, whose attention he had amply earned; and, moreover, had lived through the ordeal
to become Pope Sylvester II.

Gerbert had been a great man, and though Ware rather doubted that he had been any better a magician than Ware was, he did
not feel prepared to try that conclusion just now. In any event, the process was probably unnecessarily drastic; transvection
might serve the purpose just as well, or better. Though he had never been to a sabbat, he knew the theory and the particulars
well enough. Included in the steel cabinets which held his magical pharmacopoeia were all the ingredients necessary for the
flying ointment, and the compounding of it required no special time or ritual. As for piloting and navigation, that was to
be sure a little alarming to anticipate, but if thousands upon thousands of ignorant old women had been able to fly a cleft
stick, a distaff, a besom or even a shovel upon the first try, then so could Theron Ware.

First, however, he drew from the cabinet a flat slab of synthetic ruby, about the size and shape of an opened match folder;
and from his cabinet of instruments, a burin. Upon the ruby, on the day of Mars, which is Tuesday, and in the hour of Mars,
which is 0600. 1300, 2000 or 0300 on hat day, he would engrave the following seal and characters:

This he would henceforth carry in his right shirt pocket, like a reliquary. Though he would accept no help from A
STAROTH
if he could possibly avoid it, it would be well since he was going to be travelling in that fiend’s domains, to be wearing
his colours. As a purist, it bothered him a little that the ruby was synthetic, but his disturbance, he knew, was only an
aesthetic one. A
STAROTH
was a solar spirit, and the ancients, all the way through Albertus Magnus, had believed that rubies were engendered in the
Earth by the influence of the Sun – but since they were not in fact formed that way, the persistence of the ruby in the ritual
was only another example of one of the primary processes of magic,
superstiiion,
the gradual supremacy of the sign over the thing, so that so far as efficacy was concerned it did not matter a bit whether
the ruby was synthetic or natural. Nature, too, obstinately refused to form rubies the size and shape of opened match folders.

For a magician, Ware reflected, there were indeed distinct advantages in being able to practise ten centuries after Gerbert
had ridden upon his demon eagle.

7

Transvection, too, has its hazards, Ware discovered. He crossed the Atlantic without incident in well under three hours –
indeed, he suspected that in some aspect beyond the reach of his senses, the flight was taking place only partially in real
time – and it began to look as though he would easily reach his goal before dawn. The candle affixed by its own tallow to
the bundle of twigs and rushes before him (for only the foolhardy fly a broomstick with the brush trailing, no matter what
is shown to the contrary in conventional Halloween cartoons) burned as steadily as though he were not in motion at all, casting
a brilliant light ahead along his path; any ships at sea that might have seen him might have taken him to be an unusually
brilliant meteor. As he approached the eastern United States, he wondered how he would show up on radar; the dropping of the
bomb two days ago suggested that there might still be a number of functioning radomes there. In quieter times, he though,
he might perhaps have touched off another flying saucer scare. Or was he visible at all? He discovered that he did not know,
but he began to doubt it; the seaboard was hidden in an immense pall of smoke.

But once over land, he slowed himself down and lost altitude in order to get his bearings, and within what seemed to him,
to be only a very few minutes, he was grounded head over heels by the sound of a church bell forlornly calling what faithful
might remain to midnight Mass. He remembered belatedly, when he got his wind back, that in some parts of Germany during the
seventeenth-century flowering of the popular Goetic cults, it had been the custom to toll church bells all night long as a
protection against witches who might be passing overhead on the way to the Brocken; but the memory did him no good now – the
besom had gone lifeless.

He had fallen in a rather mountainous, heavily timbered area, quite like the Harz Mountain section of Germany, but which he
guessed to be somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Though it was now late April, which was doubtless warm in Positano, the night
here was decidedly cold, especially for a
thin man clad in nothing more than a light smear of unguent. He was instantly and violently all ashiver, for the sound of
the bell had destroyed the protective as well as the transvective power of the flying ointment. He hastily undid the bundle
of clothes, which was tied to the broomstick, but there were not going to be enough of them; after all, he had assembled them
with Death Valley in mind. Also, he was beginning to feel drowzy and dizzy, and his pulse was blurred and banging with tachycardia.
Among other things, the flying ointment contained both mandragora and belladonna, and now that the magic was gone out of it,
these were exerting their inevitable side effects. He would have to wash the stuff off the minute he could find a stream,
cold or no cold.