The Death Of The Necromancer - The Death Of The Necromancer Part 6
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The Death Of The Necromancer Part 6

Algretto, probably resenting the sudden cessation of attention from himself, drawled, "I, personally, am an unbeliever in this sort of fantasy, Doctor. Do you really propose to make our good hostess's late brother appear among us?"

Madame Everset winced and Nicholas made the mental note, discover the history of the dead brother. Her face was white in the lamplight and the skin beneath her eyes bruised by fatigue. Nicholas had assumed any signs of strain were due to being married to Captain Everset; now it was obvious Madame had other concerns. It seemed less and less as if she had sought Octave out simply for the societal coup of holding a circle at a salon party. He wondered if perhaps Octave had sought her out, instead.

The doctor said, "Belief is unnecessary." His voice was almost the same as the golem's, perhaps a trifle lower in pitch. Nicholas reminded himself again that this might be an entirely different person from the golem he had met. Its reactions were nothing to judge the real man by.

"Is it?" Algretto smiled, prepared to enjoy baiting Octave and plaguing his obviously anxious hostess.

"I thought it essential to this sort of. . . enterprise."

"Your thought was inaccurate." Octave was unruffled. He was in his own element and confident. He had his hand in the pocket of his frock coat and there was something about his stance that was not quite natural. Nicholas might have suspected a pistol, but somehow he didn't think Octave would carry a weapon. Or not that sort of weapon.

Algretto was not accustomed to being parried with such unconcern. Eyes narrowed, he said, "If you would care to word it thus. Your tone is insulting, Doctor. Though what you are a doctor of, exactly, has never been specified."

Madame Algretto sighed audibly, Amelind Danyell tittered, and Belennier looked bored. Madame Everset tried to interject, saying, "Really, I'm sure no harm was-"

"Really, Algretto," Reynard said, managing to sound as if the subject both amused and wearied him.

"Poetry is your field of expertise. Why don't you stick with that and let the good doctor carry on?"

Algretto's eyes went hooded. There was nothing of outright insult in the words, but Reynard was a master of insinuation. The poet said, "I hadn't thought you were the type to be interested in poetry, or this spirit nonsense, Morane."

"Oh, I don't know poetry, but I know what I like."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm here because I was invited. I often am, you know. Everset and I are the dearest of friends. Why are you here?"

Octave was obviously enjoying the confrontation, a smile playing about his pale lips. Belennier said, "Really, gentlemen, surely it's not-"

Watching his opponent intently, Algretto said, "Perhaps to lend a badly needed air of artistic integrity to the proceedings. But I suppose, after hearing what is said of you, you are unfamiliar with the subject of integrity."

"Perhaps," Reynard agreed, smiling gently. "After hearing about your performance of your latest epic at Countess Averae's literary evening, I think you might be better qualified to lend advice on monkeyposturing."

Algretto came to his feet with a curse, knocking back his chair.

With reflexes honed by years of dueling, Reynard stood just as abruptly, his elbow knocking Doctor Octave's arm and sending the spiritualist stumbling back a step. In an unconscious gesture to keep his balance, Octave's hand came out of his pocket.

Nicholas was smiling to himself, thinking, good old Reynard, when Octave's hand came up and he saw the object the spiritualist was clutching. There was only time for a moment's glimpse, before Octave hurriedly stuffed it back into concealment. Reynard was saying to Algretto, "Sorry, old fellow, didn't realize you'd take it personally. My apologies."

Algretto was hardly appeased but it would have been the worst manners to refuse the offered apology. He managed to nod grudgingly and sit down as Reynard gravely excused himself to Octave for jostling him and took his own seat again.

Nicholas's smile had died. The object had appeared to be a metallic ball. It had looked very much like one of the models of Edouard Viller's apparatus, except it was much smaller.

It can't be, he told himself. The others were destroyed. He had seen the Crown Investigators smash them to bits himself. It had been Edouard's last experiment in combining natural philosophy and magic, begun from a desire to communicate with his dead wife, whom Nicholas knew only as a portrait in the main salon at Coldcourt. By itself, a device for speaking to the dead, whether it worked or not, was not necromancy. But Count Montesq had made it appear as though Edouard had murdered a woman in an attempt to perform magic, fulfilling the legal definition of necromancy. And when the court had discovered what the device had been meant to do, Edouard had looked all the more guilty.

But how had Octave gotten his hands on one of the devices? Every bit of Edouard's surviving work, his notes, his journals, the last intact models of the apparatus, everything the Crown hadn't burned was at Coldcourt. Nicholas cursed silently. Perhaps there was some sort of prototype we never knew about.

Arisilde Damal would know, if anyone would. He had worked most closely with Edouard in the initial studies at Lodun. The only alternative was that Octave had somehow recreated that work and had developed the same theories independently.

If he hadn't, if he had somehow stolen Edouard's research. . . . He won't need a device to speak to the dead, Nicholas thought. He will do it quite comfortably from his own grave. He would rather have seen all of Edouard's work burned by the Crown than let Octave use it for some filthy trick.

Octave had recovered his composure as the other members of the party resettled themselves. He nodded at the still sullen Algretto and said, "To answer the original question, I am a doctor of the spirit, good sir. Any student of sorcery will tell you of the etheric plane. It is possible to use the ether to reach the souls that dwell beyond it, who were once part of our world. To communicate with them. To bring them-temporarily-back to the living. Now. ..."

Octave let the silence grow, until the only sound was the wind moving gently through the oaks. His eyes seemed to go blank, then roll up into his head. A tremor passed over him and he moaned softly.

Theatrics, Nicholas thought in disgust. And not very good theatrics at that. Octave must still be rattled from Reynard's near-battle with Algretto. He wasn't the only one who found the performance less than convincing. He could see an expression of quite open skepticism on Madame Algretto's refined features. But if the spiritualist was using a device that Edouard had had some hand in making, he was playing with power indeed.

A sudden loud rasp startled everyone. Someone gasped. The rasping noise came again and Nicholas realized it was the sound of wood scraping painfully against stone. Then he noticed what the others had already seen-the heavy wooden table was rotating, slowly, ponderously, rotating.Algretto said, "It's a trick."

Reynard pushed back from the table to look beneath it. Nicholas writhed inwardly, wishing he had thought of a way to make himself a member of the party, now entitled to jump up and examine the table for himself. Reynard said, "It's not a trick. He's not touching it." He scraped at something with one boot.

"And there are splinters on the pavement."

"Then it's sorcery." Algretto smiled. "Such a thing wouldn't even amuse the market crowds, Doctor.

Though I can see why you found this way of earning your bread more amenable than working as a hedgewitch in the Philosopher's Cross."

The lamps all flickered once and simultaneously, as if a hand had briefly lowered over the flame of each. Without dropping his pose of rapt concentration, Octave said, "Believe what you wish. I am the key that unlocks all doors between our world and the next."

"Necromancy," Madame Algretto said clearly, "is punishable by death, aptly enough." Her hands hovered over the still moving table, not quite touching it. That she was beginning to find the proceedings distasteful was obvious.

"But not before the party is over, I hope," said Amelind Danyell slyly.

A trace of irritation in his voice, Octave said, "This is not necromancy, not ghost summoning or grave robbing. This is communication of the highest form."

"This is a table moving," Algretto pointed out, rather cogently Nicholas had to admit. "We've seen nothing but-"

Octave held up a hand for silence. Behind him there was a man standing framed between the pillars of the temple entrance. Nicholas caught his breath. He had glanced in that direction a bare instant before and there had been nothing there.

The man was young, dressed in a naval officer's uniform. Nicholas stared hard, trying to memorize details.

The others were silent, those facing the other direction whipping around in their chairs to see. Even the table had stopped its halting clockwise progress. Madame Everset came to her feet without conscious volition, as if she had levitated out of her chair. Octave didn't turn, but he had abandoned his apparently trance-like state and was watching her with avid attention.

It isn't a projection from a picture-lantern, was Nicholas's first thought. Its eyes were moving.

Bloodshot, as if from salt water or lack of sleep, its eyes went from face to face around the table. It might be an illusion: sorcerous illusions could move, speak. Arisilde was capable of illusions that even seemed solid to the touch. It might be a living accomplice but he didn't see how a man could have gotten past the servants stationed down the terrace without being remarked.

Madame Everset tried to speak and failed, then managed to gasp, "Justane...."

Or how Octave acquired an accomplice Madame Everset would recognize as her brother, Nicholas thought.

Then Octave murmured, "Ask him, Madame. You remember our agreement."

Reynard started, his gaze jerking away from the apparition to Octave, and Nicholas knew he wasn't the only one to hear those discreet words. None of the others seemed to take notice.

Madame Everset nodded, swayed as if she meant to faint, but said, "Justane, your ship. Where did it go down?"

The young man's searching eyes found her. His face was not corpse white, Nicholas noted, but tanned and reddened from the sun. Somehow he found that point more convincing than anything else.The apparition licked its lips, said, "Off the southern coast of Parscia, the straits of Kashatriy." His voice was low and hoarse. "But Lise. . . ."

He was gone. There was no gradual fade, no dissolve into mist. He was gone and it was as quick as a door slamming between one world and the next. Madame Everset screamed, "Justane!"

In the suddenly vast silence of the night there was one sound. It was the click, click, click of a man's bootheels on stone.

Nicholas felt himself seized by something, some invisible force that seemed to stop his heart, to freeze the breath in his lungs. It was very like the moment when the ghoul had rushed him in the Mondollot cellars and he had been momentarily trapped, powerless to move. He wondered if he had made a fatal miscalculation in coming here tonight.

At first nothing was visible. Then the shadows between the lamps resolved into a dark figure walking at an even, unhurried pace up the bridge of the terrace toward the temple. Nicholas squinted, trying to see the man's face, and realized he was shivering; the normal dank chill of a late winter night had suddenly turned bitter cold. It was as if the temple platform was made of ice and his hands burned with cold inside his gloves. Something scraped across the roof of the temple, as if the wind had dragged a tree branch against it. Nicholas managed to move, jerking his head to stare up at the deeply shadowed edge of the roof. There were no trees overhanging the temple.

He looked at Octave.

The spiritualist was staring with grim concentration at the table. He hadn't turned to look at the approaching figure but something told Nicholas he was more aware of it than any of them. Octave wet his lips nervously and muttered, "Not yet, not yet. ..."

That worried Nicholas more than anything. Good God, the man can contact the dead, and he doesn't know what he's toying with. The figure was drawing inexorably closer. Nicholas tried to recognize it, to study its features, anything to understand what was happening, but something seemed to obscure its face. Even though he should be able to see it clearly at this distance his eyes seemed to slide away when he tried to focus on its features. He concentrated harder, knowing that Arisilde had told him it was a way to penetrate the most clever of sorcerous illusions, but it didn't seem to work. The constriction in his chest and his heart pounding like a train engine didn't help, either.

The figure was two paces from the temple entrance. It stopped. Nicholas caught a glimpse of dark clothing, the swirl of a garment, a cloak or coat. Then it was gone.

Nicholas found himself gripping the balustrade and trembling. The members of the circle still sat or stood like statues, like carvings of yellowed marble in the candlelight.

In the breathless silence, Octave said, "We are finished, Madame." He bowed briefly to Madame Everset and walked out of the temple and down the terrace.

Madame Everset tried to protest, but her legs seemed to give way and she sagged, gripping her chair for support. Belennier jumped up to grasp her arm and Algretto said, "Get her to the house-"

"Wait," Reynard interrupted. He called out, "Footman! Get down here with a lamp!"

He's thinking of our underground ghoul, Nicholas thought. And the scraping across the temple roof. He leaned back against the balustrade until he almost tumbled headfirst backward over it, but saw nothing. With the shadows moving across the weathered stone, there might be any number of ghouls crouched up there.

A confused footman brought another lamp and Reynard snatched it from him and moved back down the terrace, holding it high, trying to see if there was anything waiting for them on that roof. Nicholas could see he was questioning the footman, though he couldn't hear the low-voiced inquiry; the manshook his head as he answered.

Reynard said, "All right, bring her out this way."

The others didn't question him. Even the irrepressible Amelind Danyell was gripping Algretto's arm and shivering. Madame Algretto had gone to Madame Everset's side; their hostess seemed to have recovered a little, though she was obviously dazed and shaken. With Belennier's assistance she stood and the entire party made for the terrace.

It was more than time for Nicholas to go as well. If Everset had any sense he would turn half the household out to search the gardens and the surrounding area. If Nicholas hurried, he might manage to be one of the searchers. He climbed over the balustrade and dropped the rest of the way down, landing somewhat noisily in piled leaves and an unfortunate bush.

His own descent was so noisy that he almost didn't hear the corresponding crash of dried twigs and leaves from the nearest of the ancient oaks. He tried to fling himself toward cover, stumbled and fell sprawling. A few feet away something dropped to the packed dirt beneath the tree, stumbled, and caught itself on one of the massive lower branches.

There was just enough light to see it had the outline of a man, dressed in a scarf and a hunter's coat.

Startled out of all thought, Nicholas automatically said, "Pardon me, but-" at the same time it said, "Sorry, I-"

They both stopped, staring at each other in astonished and somewhat embarrassed silence. Then the other man said, "Good day to you," and bolted for the outer garden wall.

Nicholas scrambled to his feet and stumbled toward the relative safety of the kitchen garden, cursing under his breath. He knew that voice. He remembered it from ten years ago at Edouard's trial, testifying in the witness box, so calm, so confident, so damning. He remembered it from the Crown Hearing that had rescinded the conviction months too late to save Edouard's life, equally calm, despite the deadly mistake it was admitting. He remembered it from all the close calls, the other trials, when he had been carefully in disguise.

He had spoken to Inspector Ronsarde before, but this was the first time since he was a young man barely out of Lodun that he had used his own voice.

In all the confusion Nicholas managed to get into the formal areas of the house. Servants were running everywhere, and it was easy to look as if he had been summoned.

The guests were gathered in the largest salon, the one with enormous bay windows in the front of the house, that overlooked the grotto and the sunken garden and the triumphal arch, all lit by colored lamps now and as strange in that light as something out of Fayre.

The room was yellow-yellow brocaded fabric on the walls, the firescreen, yellow silk upholstery on the scattered couches and chairs, yellow gowns on the nymphs in the woodland scene in the painted medallion on the high ceiling- and guests and servants were scattered throughout. Madame Everset was draped on a divan like a dead woman, her pale features blue-tinged from shock. A maid hovered over her, trying to persuade her to sip a glass of brandy. Everset stood nearby, ineffectual and bewildered.

Reynard was saying, "Dammit, man, you've got to turn the servants out to search."

Algretto was pacing impatiently. Danyell was collapsed on a sofa but still the center of a little whirl of activity, with her escort and the opera singer Isolde and a small cluster of maids in anxious attendance.

Belennier seemed to be describing what had occurred to a tall, dark man who must be Vearde. One of the tables bore wine glasses and a scatter of cards from an interrupted game. As evidence for how Vearde, Everset, and Isolde had occupied themselves while the others were at the circle, Nicholascouldn't accept it at face value. He would have to pry more information out of the servants in their remaining time here. He wasn't willing to dismiss the notion of accomplices, not yet.

Octave was nowhere to be seen.

Everset shook his head, baffled. "Why? Search for what?"

Reynard stared. "For accomplices, of course. The weasel frightened your wife out of her wits, you've got to find out if those ... if those men were what they seemed to be or compatriots of Octave's."

Reynard, Nicholas thought wryly, you've been keeping company with me too long and it's beginning to show.

"What's the point? The bastard's leaving with his fee. They're bringing his coach round in the court."

"Leaving already?" Algretto said, turning back toward them and unexpectedly siding with Reynard.

"That's damned suspicious, Everset. You ought to detain him at least until you've had a chance to inventory the plate."

. .. Coach round the court. Nicholas was already slipping out of the room. He found the nearest servants' door and bolted up the stairs to the third floor, digging in an inside coat pocket for notepaper.

In the guest room he scribbled a line hastily and stuffed it in the pocket of Reynard's spare coat, then he was dashing back down the stairs.

He made his way to the front of the house, cutting through the formal rooms since anyone of note was gathered in the salon. He reached a conservatory with a wall that was formed entirely of glass panes in a wrought iron framework, lit only by moonlight now and looking out on the grotto and the sunken garden.

He ducked around cane furniture and stands and racks of potted flowers, boot soles skidding on the tile floor. Down the steps to the lower part of the room where a fountain played under a draping of water lilies. Yes, there was a door here for the gardeners.

He unlocked it and stepped out into the chill night air, closing it carefully behind him. He was at the very front of the house, at the head of a stone path cluttered with wind-driven leaves that ran along the edge of the sunken garden and toward the triumphal arch. The stone of the grotto entrance was to his right, the archway that led under the house and to the carriage court to his left. He needed to be on the opposite side.

A brief scramble over the rock left him glad of his gloves. It was made of dark-painted concrete and not much softened by time. He was too near the side of the house to be seen from the windows in the salon; there was a possibility someone would spot the unorthodox method that he planned to depart in, but it would be too late for them to do anything about it and he would probably be taken for one of Octave's hypothetical accomplices. Nicholas climbed down the side of the grotto entrance and took up a position flat against the wall next to the exit archway for the carriage court.

He had only been there a few moments, barely long enough to calm his breath, when he heard quiet footsteps in the carriage passage. He sank back against the wall, into the thick shadows.

A man stepped out of the passage, stood for a moment in the light from the lamp above the archway, then turned suddenly and looked right at Nicholas. It was Crack.

His henchman swore under his breath. Nicholas smiled and whispered, "I was here first."

Crack slid into the decorative hedge bordering the path. A moment later his apparently disembodied voice said, "Ain't I your bodyguard? Ain't that my job?"

"Two of us hanging onto the back of the coach would be noticed. On my own I'll be taken for a groom." Nicholas was only fortunate that Octave kept a private vehicle. Hire coaches often had a harrow installed beneath the groom's step, to keep children and anyone else from snatching free rides. A private coach wouldn't be equipped with that deterrent. "And I doubt even Reynard could conceal two servantsabandoning him in the middle of the night. And someone has to keep an eye on him."

Crack snorted, possibly at the idea that Reynard needed guarding.

"And more importantly," Nicholas added, allowing a hint of steel into his voice, "because I said so."

Crack had a tidy mind and tended to dislike it when others questioned Nicholas's orders. The implication that he was guilty of this himself seemed to subdue him. One of the bushes trembled and there was some low muttering, but no further outright objections.