Waking the Moon

was Too Much!—and where, as the night burned to dawn, one (and sometimes two) of the more comely undergraduate boys might be discreetly steered toward the little back room, while the rest of her admirers were directed to the door. Oh yes: Professor Kurtz was famous.

But always she was aware of how the other, older members of the Benandanti regarded her. Not quite, not necessarily, as a traitor. Certainly there had been others before Magda Kurtz who left the Divine, to carry on the Benandanti’s work in the government and the arts and even at other places of learning. But Magda’s work had reawakened an old, old feud, perhaps the very oldest one of all.

So this summer she had kept to her students, and to her tower room. Her little romances and necromancies helped pass the time, and the Divine’s extraordinary library, and of course all the other pleasures of the City on the Hill. She avoided the other faculty members as much as she could, especially Balthazar Warnick; but it had been difficult. As always she found herself falling under the diminutive Balthazar’s spell, his peculiar blend of wistfulness and melancholy and biting wit.

I might have fallen in love with him, she thought, slightly wistful herself now as she sipped her champagne and gazed absently across the crowded reception room of Garvey Hall. It might have all been different then, it might have—

But really it could never have been anything but the way it was.

“We serve at different temples now. Different temples, different gods,” Balthazar had said a few weeks earlier, over lunch in one of the sunlit upper rooms of the Old Ebbitt Grill. It had always been one of Magda’s favorite places in the city. Balthazar had taken her there when they first met, awkward student and ageless mentor, and ordered her a Clyde’s omelet—bacon and spinach and sour cream—and kir in a round goblet. It was the most sophisticated meal she had ever eaten, and the first time she’d drunk wine from a wineglass.

“Different gods,” he repeated, and his voice sounded sad.

Outside the afternoon traffic strained past, inching toward the Old Executive Office Building and the White House. Magda sipped her kir. Balthazar continued to stare at her with those piercing electric blue eyes.

“Perhaps we always have,” he added.

Magda answered smoothly, pretending to misunderstand.

“Oh, but it’s always the same old ivory tower, Balthazar, you know that! And you’ll see, I’ve been right all along. Soon every student at the Divine will have read Tristes Tropiques and Of Grammatology—”

Balthazar made a face, and Magda laughed. “Well, I’m still very grateful you let me teach here this summer, Balthazar.”

He smiled. “But who could turn away the lovely and brilliant Magda Kurtz?”

“You refused Paul de Man.”

“You’re much better looking.”

Magda stared at him, amused, but then she saw how Balthazar’s eyes had clouded, blue shivering to grey.

“It’s nothing but theory, Balthazar. Just another way of looking at the world.”

“Theories can be dangerous things,” said Balthazar. His tone was light, but she saw how his eyes were cold and parlous as fast-moving water. “Remember Rousseau and romanticism.”

“I can’t sleep for thinking about them,” Magda said, laughing; but that gaze had stayed with her for a long time, like a bad chill.

She shivered at the memory, quickly composing herself as a passing couple greeted her. It was exhausting, keeping up the pretense of being just another Molyneux scholar made good in the ivory tower. She knew there’d been talk. Within the legions of Benandanti there was always talk. Conspirators wormed through its long history, brazen or retiring or deadly, but always there. In this the Benandanti were like the Vatican, only far more ancient. Like the Inquisitors of old they had their little ways, their probings and inquests, scrutators and catechists, their spies and delators and indagations. Cabals of old men—the oldest of old men—and they gabbled and gossiped like crones. Women had gotten a bad rap for being gossips, Magda thought bitterly. She had never known a group more eager to snipe and speculate than old Catholic priests and the Benandanti. No better place than the Divine (or the Vatican) for that.

Though, unlike the Vatican, the Benandanti left no histories for the world to read. Most of their cadastrals and cartularies had perished with the libraries of Alexandria, after which time the Benandanti became a nomadic sect. They maintained their eternal vigilance from behind the marble clerestories of the Eternal City, and the Kaaba in Mecca; from the Maharajah’s pavilion at Varanasi, and Italy’s octagonal Castel del Monte and even, very briefly, the Old Map and Print Room on the fourth floor of Harrods. It was not until the colonization of the Americas that the Benandanti found at last a permanent home, a place where all the old wise men of the Indo-European steppes could settle to grow even older and wiser, and from the dusty classrooms of the Divine watch their proteges make their way into this brave new world.

And now that an unmistakable Sign had come, those at the Divine would be especially watchful against traitors. Without thinking, Magda touched the amulet at her throat.

In hoc signo vinces. Othiym Lunarsa, Othiym, Anat, Innana, Othiym evohe! Othiym haiyo.

The ancient tongues ran together but she knew them all. In this sign we shall conquer, Othiym. We exult! We praise you.

She’d been recklessly stupid the other evening, leaving her room with the spent Hand of Glory and the other remnants of her craft in it. That was what happened when you toyed with the naphaim—they made you feel indestructible, made you forget that while they could soar above it, you were likely to plunge into the inferno and burn. Her fingers played along the smooth edge of the silver crescent, the half-conscious refrain still echoing in her head.

Othiym, Anat, Innana…

But she should watch her thoughts here—especially here—shroud them in nonsense or dull mental chatter. She closed her eyes and dredged up one of George’s dopey verses, composed on that endless flight to Estavia—

Magda is so very mean
She’s a Ramapithecene
When she hangs around with us
She’s Australopithecus.

Someone touched her elbow and she started. One of her students, holding a bottle of Heineken and peering at her in concern.

“You okay, Professor Kurtz? You want a beer or something?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No thanks. Just tired. I have an early flight.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Oh, yeah, man, I can relate. Jet lag. Have a few drinks first, it really helps.”

She grimaced. “At 7:00 A.M.? Maybe not.”

He grinned and left her, weaving slightly.

Magda took another sip from her champagne. All these drunk kids, thrilled to be drinking Heineken when there was Veuve Clicquot and Tattinger Brut for the asking. She sighed.

Because of course it was the kids who had brought her here tonight. Knowing it was foolish, knowing it might mean dangerous questions from Balthazar or his toady Francis—still she hadn’t been able to resist the notion of seeing in the flesh one or both of the faces she’d scried in her room the night before. She wondered if