To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

and from the contents of vessels of milk. This last, according to what was said, was of three types. Firstly that of a virgin cow inspired to produce it by giving her a calf to foster, secondly of a whore who was feeding, or had been, her own baby, thirdly of a pure mother whose spouse belonged to the Order. There were other things also; chips of bone and splinters of wood, which Vilmos assumed had been hacked from reliquaries. Dusts ground from precious stones had been added in miserly quantities. But too there were other commodities. Some – many – Vilmos did not recognise. His mouth, tongue and throat did not wish to be used, and so he could not inquire.

The Master oversaw the entire labour. He chid the artisans, once or twice struck them with his staff. Those that fainted he chose to inspect. In some he found virtue. Others not. One he spat on, saying the fool smelled of drink and had perhaps upset the ritual. But in the end it seemed not; the old man was satisfied.

He had rarely glanced at Vilmos. He must know how Vilmos was, and that he had been primed to his present condition and use.

Vilmos did not even feel any anger at the Master, let alone entertain thoughts of revenge. Revenge, of course, could not enter into the equation. When all this was – done, Vilmos would be no more. As some other foreign poet had once described it, Vilmos was to be their torch, and like a torch they would not light him for himself. He would kindle and burn up, and reaching the sixth stage, the point of dark blue fire, his purpose for them would be accomplished, and his own life snuffed out.

Yes, for all these lumbering and inadequate imbeciles, for these talentless lesser things, he was to attain and instantly freely render up the power of utter dominion over the inner and outer spheres: Mastery of Self, Mastery of All.

This it seemed the Devil granted to the Order, having become sick of the idiocy of mankind. For Satan loved God. He longed hopelessly only to be forgiven and raised.

And Vilmos felt neither fear nor struggle in him. He did not care anymore what became of him.

Like Satan, Vilmos was sick of the world and all its works. And if God did not want him, neither did Vilmos want any part of God.

And then. He beheld Reiner.

And a little while after, perhaps two or three minutes after, Vilmos saw what this meant. And also he saw that none but he had seen it – either Reiner, or what his presence suggested. The rest of them, the rabble in the Chamber, the educated and wise, virtuous acolytes chosen of the Master, the cripple-hearted Master himself – none of them saw or knew.

The very fitness of Vilmos, and his use to them, was predicated upon his having killed men and women to the number of thirteen. For this reason had they not brought him here another man to slaughter, while the girl they brought for his carnal release they swiftly removed after congress, in case he might offer her also death – and so increase the number of the slain.

But Vilmos, since Reiner lived, had formerly killed in total only eleven, and now, with his single murder here, only twelve.

After all, something salient in the rite was out of alignment, a broken bone sticking from the skin of the spell.

TWENTY-ONE

Lynda left me, not only because of her well-off aunt near Manchester. I haven’t been quite honest about that either in these pages or with myself.

Lynda left me because, the night she put it to me that she – and I – might go up north, where things were cheaper and the aunt presided, we had a row.

We’d often fought. When I tried not to join in it only made her more furious, I think. Certainly my neutral answers and refusal to lose my rag seemed to provoke her at these times to greater acrimony.

“Oh, you just sit there, Roy. Just sit there with that book. Don’t you understand I want something a bit more than this rotten little flat and working for that horrible old rat, Christmas…” She meant her boss, a Mr Christmas. “…and your stupid hours at that library and never having any money or doing anything exciting. Oh, you just sit there. You don’t care, do you? Long as your dinner’s on the table, long as I’ve washed and ironed your clothes.”

In fact we shared a lot of the chores. But for some while, Lynda had seemed to believe my late nights at the library, compulsorily working until six-thirty or eight p.m., were my choice in order 1) to get out of cooking a meal or helping clean the flat or 2) to avoid Lynda.

“But why do I bother to say anything? You won’t try anything new, will you? You’re like a bloody old man, Roy, you’re like some old guy of forty-five.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry. You’re not!” she screamed. And then dropping back to a tone, which even she herself would describe as sarcastic, “But it’s no good trying to shift you, is it? No good being sarky even. You have to have your own little way, don’t you, Roy? Roy knows best.”

She was always on about my liking to have my own little way. I’ve mentioned this before. It rarely failed by now to get on my nerves.

“I’m sorry, Lynda. Why don’t you go and visit your aunt? I can’t take any holiday now, you know that.”

“Yes. I know that.” Her thin lips squeezed almost white. The hard fluorescent kitchen strip shot lightnings over her glasses.

“Look, I need to go and try to finish that story in a minute – there’s a good chance they’ll take it but I have to have it with them before next…”

“That’s all you do, isn’t it? You’re out all bloody day and half the night and