The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers (55 page)

Most wizards know nothing of exorcism. But Pelagius Zozimus was a master wizard of the order of Xluzu, which specialises in the animation of corpses. This order has necessarily developed several sidelines which exploit bodies of related knowledge. Since there are many ugly Things from Beyond which can convert animated dead meat for their own purposes, the wizards of Xluzu have of necessity become expert at exorcism.

Of course, there is a vast difference between cleansing a corpse of a demon and expelling the same entity from living flesh. The possession of live bodies by Outsiders is rare in the extreme, so it is scarcely surprising that Pelagius Zozimus had absolutely no personal experience of dealing with this phenomenon.

So—

Would his methods work? Furthermore, if they did work, would the Empress Justina still be sane at the end of the proceedings? Exorcism is, to put it mildly, a most unpretty enterprise.

There was only one way to find out.

Try it and see!

Zozimus’s first move was to take Justina’s pulse. It was slow. Very slow. Her body was at rest, her mind likewise. He could not hear her breathing for all the fidgeting, whispering, coughing and shuffling in the room, but he could see that the rise and fall of the imperial abdomen was slow and regular.

‘She can take it,’ muttered Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, speaking in the High Speech of wizards.

‘Her flesh can,’ said Zozimus to his cousin. ‘But can her mind?’

‘That,’ said Sken-Pitilkin, ‘we can only test by trial.’

Then talk between the two ended - for Zozimus was concentrating his mind for the exorcism proper. After due mental preparation, he put his hands to the imperial forehead, finding it moist with sweat and slightly feverish. Then he discharged the first of the Exorcising Energies.

Here it would be pleasing to be able to increase the narrative appeal of this history by saying, for example, that the Empress kicked and convulsed upon the bed. Or that she turned first blue then red, that her hair stood on end, that lightning discharged from her fingertips, that a bloody flux streamed from her nostrils, that her clothes were consumed by an unearthly fire of cold-burning silver, that her ribcage burst open to reveal her pulsing heart, that the thunder of her heart rose till it deafened all those who stood horrorstruck by the bed, and that a Thing the colour of blood and bile then ascended from, say, the imperial pancreas.

However, since this is a sober and responsible history, it must concern itself with the truth, however dull the truth proves to be. Truth to tell, when Zozimus unleashed the Exorcising Energies, there was not one single visible manifestation of the horrorshock which nightmared through the imperial psyche.

There should have been.

There should have been - at the very least - a piercing scream and a few convulsions.

But there was not.

Zozimus began to sweat.

Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin mopped his brow solicitously.

Zozimus slid two fingers alongside the imperial windpipe to take the imperial pulse. The carotid pulse was strong, swift and irregular. It told him he had certainly shaken up whatever lurked within.

'Again,' muttered Sken-Pitilkin. ‘You can’t stop now.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Zozimus.

The master wizard of the order of Xluzu was acutely conscious of the pressure of the presence of so many people. Watching him. Watching and waiting. He hated working like this. Exorcism should be done alone, out of sight and out of earshot of any other person. But the knife-edge politics of the island of Jod made such solitude impossible. Most of those in the room feared Zozimus to be a potential murderer. If he tried to banish them from the chamber then suspicion would turn to certainty.

Zozimus shuddered.

Then settled himself.

Concentrated.

Gathered his strength.

Then again placed his hands on Justina’s forehead and again released the Exorcising Energies.

The eyes of the Empress Justina flickered. Opened. A red light flared from those eyes. Such was its intensity that Zozimus was near-blinded. He cried out in anguish and clutched his hands to his eyes. Shabble squeaked in terror and fled through the nearest window, bursting the mosquito gauze in the process. There was a shouting and jostling in the room till Log Jaris called for order - and got it.

Justina was sitting up on the bed.

‘My!’ she said, rubbing the side of her head ruefully. ‘You certainly know how to give a girl a hard time!’

‘She’s all right!’ said Chegory.

Then clapped his hands to his mouth in horror. For he had spoken in Odolo’s accents!

‘He’s demon-possessed,’ said Odolo flatly. ‘That’s my voice he’s using.’

‘Don’t let him get away!’ said Zozimus.

Then realised that he too had spoken in a voice not his own.

‘What’s going on here?’ said Log Jaris.

The sound of Odolo’s voice issuing from the mouth of the bullman was so comical that Chegory could not help himself. He broke down in laughter.

‘The demon is among us,’ said Sken-Pitilkin in the same voice.

‘Yes,’ said Zozimus. ‘It hides by hiding its accent by changing the accents of us all. It must be weak, weak to the point of death from the exorcism. Otherwise it wouldn’t need to hide.’

‘But we’re all conscious!’ protested Odolo. ‘When the demon leapt from myself to Varazchavardan it caused unconsciousness! The wonderworker dropped as if dead! Now the demon’s left Justina but nobody’s fallen over. Yet you say the demon’s still here.’

‘I didn’t fall over when the demon came to me last night,’ said Chegory.

‘But you were drunk,’ said Zozimus. ‘In theory, demonic possession is much easier when the target is drunk. You were drunk, weren’t you?’

"Yes,’ admitted Chegory.

‘Well then,’ said Zozimus briskly. ‘That explains it. Someone here must be drunk. The only question is - who?’ But nobody would admit to being drunk.

‘Look,’ said Chegory, ‘when the demon got drunk, it was drunk just like you or me being drunk. I mean, it’s, it goes along with the body, okay? If the body’s drunk, the demon’s drunk. So if, like, someone here was drunk, it would show, wouldn’t it? You can’t hide it, can you? I mean, within limits, maybe, but we’d tell, wouldn’t we?’

“Young Chegory has a point,’ said Zozimus, deeply disturbed that he had not thought of this. His excuse - a reasonable one - was that the effort of exorcism had left him too exhausted to think straight. He turned to Sken-Pitilkin. ‘Cousin mine,’ he said, ‘there’s something simple I’m missing. What is it?’

‘I’m missing breakfast,’ said Justina loudly. ‘Possession or no possession, how about getting some food in our bellies?’

Sken-Pitilkin ignored her. To his cousin Zozimus he said: ‘Group possession. That’s what you’re forgetting.’

‘Of course!’ said Zozimus. ‘But - but there’s no actual cases on record. It’s theoretical purely.’

‘It has been till now,’ said Sken-Pitilkin, still in the same Odolo-voice. ‘But now it’s fact.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Uckermark, managing to roughen the conjuror’s accents till he sounded something like his old self. ‘Are you saying we’re - we’re all possessed?’

‘It explains the voices,’ said Zozimus. ‘It explains the lack of an unconscious casualty. You see, possession of one person places a great shock on a single psyche, leading to instant oblivion. When the shock’s shared among so many, nobody drops down unconscious.’

‘I didn’t feel any shock,’ objected Ingalawa.

‘Didn’t you?’ said Zozimus. ‘I did! The light! It was near-blinding! We were all shocked, weren’t we? But put it down to the burst of light.’

‘But,’ protested Chegory, ‘why should the demon make all our voices Odolo’s? Why not leave us with our own voices?’

‘Because,’ said Odolo himself, ‘this way the demon can contribute to our counsels. Am I not right? At any moment the demon might command one of our bodies, one of our voices. It could give advice - the rest of us thinking that advice to come from our friends.’

‘One thing’s for certain,’ said Zozimus, ‘while the demon’s doubtless weak from the exorcism, its strength will renew swiftly. We have to act! Now!’

‘Dear cousin,’ said Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, ‘our options are limited. Theory allows for group possession - but scarcely for group exorcism.’

‘Yes,’ said Zozimus. ‘But Theory is a stranger to the Hermit Crab. There is a Power which may help us yet!’ His words brought a babbling outcry of fear, protest and terror. The Hermit Crab! Most of those who dwelt on Untunchilamon feared it more than anything else imaginable. It was known to be cruel, ruthless and unpredictable. It had turned people inside out. It had once - or so legend said — brought darkness to Injiltaprajura for ten days at a stretch.

But Zozimus was adamant..

‘The Hermit Crab,’ said Zozimus, ‘hoped for help from the demon Binchinminfin. The Hermit Crab wished for such help in order to become a human. We have the demon. Perhaps the Hermit Crab can extract the demon then imprison it in a cat. Or a dog. Or something. But one thing I do know for certain. When the demon gets back its strength it will take a most terrible revenge upon all those who helped with the exorcism here today. Which means all of you.’

‘But — but why?’ said Odolo.

‘If you’d been inside my head, my lad,’ said the Empress Justina severely, ‘you’d not ask any question so stupid. I don’t know what this exorcism looked like to you. But I can tell you what it felt like. It felt - no, you’re a man, you wouldn’t understand that. So - ah yes, I know. Imagine yourself being castrated while someone with a red-hot poker—’

The Empress Justina continued in this vein until Odolo, despite the natural olive coloration of his skin, had grown quite pale.

‘All right,’ said Zozimus, bringing Justina’s spirited description to a close. ‘I’m sure everyone here realises how serious this is. All of us are doomed if we give the demon chance enough to regather its strength. Let’s get ourselves to the Hermit Crab.’

So, with fear of demonic vengeance at last overmastering fear of the Crab, the group left the exorcism chamber to visit the Power which dwelt so close at hand, the Power which was a worker of wonders far greater than anything any mere sorcerer could have attempted.

Counting that morning’s dawnsun breakfast, the Hermit Crab had now enjoyed a full four meals prepared by Pelagius Zozimus, leading the master chef to hope that its mood would be tolerably mellow. Even as Zozimus exited from the Analytical Institute he was rehearsing the eloquence with which he would convert the Hermit Crab to his cause. But his chain of thought was disrupted abruptly when he found a hostile force drawn up outside the Institute.

‘Varazchavardan!’ cried Chegory Guy.

It was indeed Aquitaine Varazchavardan - his right arm in a sling to support the collar bone which Artemis Ingalawa had broken. The wonderworker had changed into fresh robes: those he had been wearing just a few days earlier when he interrupted a luncheon at the Institute. Serpentine dragons blazed upon the ceremonial silk, their colours alive in the sun.

[Here an impossibility, for surely we have seen these specific robes ruined twice already. Once when Varazchavardan was swept into the sea by the first flood from the wealth fountains. A second time when the Master of Law set his own clothes alight when using fire to defend himself against pirates Downstairs. Such an obvious lapse severely undermines the credibility of this text.
Srin Gold, Commentator Extraordinary
.]

[My colleague Srin Gold is forgetting that Varazchavardan was a sorcerer and therefore surely capable of repairing his clothing by magic.
Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary
.]

[Dawbler should know better than that. No sorcerer ever possessed control of his Powers sufficient to enable him to undertake an operation as delicate as tailoring. The Originator of the Text must have been mistaken.
Jan Borgentasko Ronkowski, Fact Checker Superior
.]

[No. The Originator appears to have relied heavily on Shabble’s recall, which we have reason to believe to be perfect. Therefore we should not suspect error in an account of a scene so well witnessed. The logical inference is that Varazchavardan, who is elsewhere stated to be very rich, had a number of robes made up to the same pattern and identically adorned.
Oris Baumgage, Fact Checker Minor.]
[This is very plausible. Nevertheless, it is entirely inappropriate for a fact checker minor such as Baumgage to be making ‘logical inferences’. He demonstrates pretensions totally unfitting to his lowly station in life. Worse, he has shamelessly contradicted his superior, the eminent Ronkowski. Five lashes!
Jonquiri
0
, Disciplinarian Superior.]
Despite the lightness of his silken robes, Varazchavardan was sweating heavily, outpouring salted water to join the sungrease which glistened on his albinoid skin, protecting it from the burning rays of the sky’s major luminary. Perhaps it was partly fear which made him sweat so much, even though the weight of numbers was on his side.