Black Light

“Then you’re a fool. We all serve something. I do so with full knowledge—”

“You do so as a thief,” Ralph said. “You and all your kind. The Good Walkers—nothing but poachers and thieves. And murderers.” He extended his finger and drew a figure in the air. Faint gold letters appeared, almost immediately faded.

“‘God is the author of all good things,’” Ralph recited, lifting his eyes as though reading the words in the sky above him. “‘To continue the good customs which have been practiced by idolaters, to preserve the objects and the buildings which they have used is not to borrow from them; on the contrary, it is taking from them what is not theirs and giving it to God, its real owner.’ Saint Augustine,” he ended. “See, Professor? I really was paying attention in class, all those years ago.”

Balthazar shook his head. “If you think you act freely, he has deceived you, Ralph. ‘The god of illusion’—”

“Oh, no. ‘The god of ecstasy,’” Ralph drawled. “Tell me something, Professor: why does the Devil have all the good music? At least I have sense to know which way the wind blows, right? Oh, she’ll go to him very willingly, and the rest—the rest will follow. Twenty-four hours from now the cycle will already have begun again. The Malandanti will be that much stronger. Unless…”

He lifted his hands and waggled them suggestively. The gorse petals dropped from the blossom that Balthazar held, and the older man tossed the spent flower into the wind.

“Unless what?” he asked wearily.

“Unless the Benandanti initiate me into the Conclave.”

Balthazar snorted. “That’s impossible! You betrayed us, Ralph—”

“No. I refused to murder Corey,” Ralph replied. “I refused to kill my best friend, when it turned out he wasn’t going to be as useful to you as you first thought. I refused to be your straw man—”

“You obstinately refused to obey my command: you invoked Erichto, you stole entry to our portals, and you paid the price. And Corey died all the same,” Balthazar added regretfully. “And for what? For nothing, Ralph. We will always triumph. Why didn’t you listen to me? How could you have imagined you would get away with it?”

“I did get away with it. I’m here now, right?” Abruptly Ralph turned and began striding toward the hilltop. Balthazar watched him, his mouth tight; then quickly followed. Around them tiny blue butterflies dipped in and out of the gorse. The sun burned down, strong enough that the bracken crackled dry as autumn leaves beneath their feet. On the westernmost edge of the sea a fog bank was beginning to take shape, like a wall between land’s end and the world beyond.

They climbed in silence, their suit jackets flapping in the wind. When he reached the summit, Ralph halted and turned, waiting for Balthazar to catch up.

“So you won’t petition the Conclave on my behalf.”

“There would be no point.” Balthazar stooped and picked up a stone. He drew his hand back and threw it, a black jot like a bird arcing higher and higher, until it disappeared. “None.”

Ralph wiped sweat from his cheek, wincing as his hand grazed the scar around his eye. “Well. I didn’t think you would, actually. But I thought I would at least show you common decency, and give you the chance. You’ve really fucked yourself, Professor—you know that, don’t you?”

When Balthazar said nothing the other man went on. “She’ll go with the god. When she kills him it will start all over: Finnegan, begin again! You will have the pleasure of seeing your eternal love betray everything you’ve lived for…And I will have the pleasure of watching the Conclave find out about your negligence. By then it will be too late: the first gods will return, and the Benandanti will be defeated.”

Balthazar looked at him with contempt. “You always were a rebel without a clue. Wasting your life, thinking that Dionysos or Erichto or Spes will prove kinder masters than the ones you had at the Divine! Would you spend your years rooting in the dirt with them? You could have worked with the Benandanti, you could have served us —”

“As a goddam foot soldier. Forget it, Professor. It’s over.”

Ralph turned and walked to where the granite pillar loomed against the gathering mist. A few feet away, tucked amidst the thistles and the gorse’s reddish thorns, grew a small laurel bush. Its leaves were jade-green, smooth as marble. Ralph stood eyeing it contemplatively. Then he stooped and took one of its gnarled branches in his hand, twisting it until it pulled loose.

Balthazar watched in silence as Ralph crushed one of the laurel leaves between his fingers, sniffed it and then put it into his mouth. He chewed, grimacing; then spat into his hand. He took the branch and began to rub it between his palms, faster and faster, the leaves switching back and forth in a green blur.

Daphnomancy, thought Balthazar.

“That’s right,” said Ralph.

“Parlor tricks,” Balthazar retorted, but Ralph only stared at the branch whirling between his hands. The solar scar upon his cheek began to glow. As though catching a spark from it the laurel burst into flame. There was a harsh scent, black wisps of ash, and the crackle of burning leaves. Ralph continued to hold the branch, turning it this way and that so the wind fanned the little blaze.

“There,” he said, pleased. “Have a look, Balthazar.”

Within the flame were two tiny figures, a girl whose fiery hair trailed into the edges of the blaze and a robed man with saturnine features. The man was speaking, his voice thin as the wailing of the birds overhead.

“…the amazing thing about Fellini, he’s always doing the same thing, it’s always the same thing…”

The girl said nothing, only rubbed her arms as though she was cold. Watching her Balthazar felt tears score his eyes. He swallowed, his mouth dry and throat aching, and turned to Ralph.

“Free her.”

Ralph shrugged. He dropped the branch into a patch of gorse. Yellow flames devoured the girl’s image. With a soft hiss the fire went out. A coil of smoke rose into the air and joined the mist that had begun to cloak the hilltop.

“I’m not holding her, Balthazar.” Ralph sighed and ran a hand across his face. He suddenly looked very tired. “She’s a part of it, that’s all. There, in Kamensic—I have no more power over her than you do…

“What was it you always used to say, Professor? That we all have our parts, that they never change and we only fuck ourselves if we try to change them—”

Balthazar allowed himself a small smile. “I’m certain I never said that.”

“Well, words to that effect. We do the same things over and over and over again, down through the centuries; we worship the same gods and slaughter them and wait for them to be reborn. The pattern repeats itself endlessly. Nothing ever really changes—”

“But that’s exactly why we must be resolute!” cried Balthazar. “To keep the chaos at bay, to maintain order—”

“One man’s order is another guy’s ordure. If you take my meaning.”

Ralph stood, shading his eyes. The mist had thickened until it was impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. Sunlight charged the fog with a preternatural brilliance, so that it was like staring into the milky glowing heart of an opal. Ralph blinked, trying to find the portal within the shifting clouds. For an instant the mist cleared and there it was, a dark lozenge hanging in the air like a watercolor by Magritte.

“I have to get back to the party,” said Ralph. He looked at his former mentor, stoop-shouldered, graying hair blown across his melancholy face, and unexpectedly felt a spasm of regret. “I—I guess I’m sorry, Professor Warnick. That we couldn’t find any common ground. That we couldn’t reach an understanding.”

“Let her come to me,” Balthazar pleaded one last time. He opened his hands to Ralph beseechingly. “Please.” In the blanched light he looked small and wizened, a goblin in black formal wear grasping for something that would forever be out of reach.

“She’s not mine to give, Balthazar,” said Ralph softly. He turned and strode toward the portal, raising his arms as though to embrace it. At the last moment, before stepping through, he looked back. “She’s pledged to the god of illusion. And you know what that’s like. She’ll fuck him, and then she’ll kill him. Or