might be misunderstood by these irritating onlookers. Lest misunderstanding lead to the loss of his head, Zozimus reinforced his position by having Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, Guest Gulkan and Thayer Levant come into the exorcism chamber, where the Empress had been laid down upon Pakrw's bed.
Olivia slipped into the room with all the others because she did not wish to be parted from Chegory. The pair stood hand-in-hand in the hot, sweating crush of the heavy-breathing crowd of onlookers. One last person was there. Odolo. He was the one whom Binchinminfin had possessed in the first place. He wanted to see this thing out to the end.
Oh, and there was Shabble, of course — floating above everyone else and humming very, very gently.
All the onlookers were most curious to see how the exorcism would be conducted. Most thought they were about to see an expert at work. Well… they were and yet they weren’t.
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
