An Affair Of Sorcerers

fluttered as I read it aloud. ' The search for truth is neither moral nor immoral: it is the prerequisite of a civilized society.' ' I slowly crumpled the paper and jammed it back into my pocket. 'Mad,' I said softly, 'I found that little homily tacked up inside Esobus' cubicle. What do you make of it?'

'It sounds strange,' Madeline said in a choked voice. 'On the surface, it sounds a little academic. For the leader of that coven, it sounds incredibly self-serving.'

Madeline breathed a deep sigh and rested her head wearily against the side window. Up until that moment, I'd hoped I was wrong and that I'd simply misread all the clues.

But now I realized with a sudden, sickening jolt that I was right, and I groaned inwardly. Garth hissed through his teeth and quickly glanced at Madeline. April was staring at me, her eyes wide.

'You're Esobus, Mad,' I said softly, feeling short of breath. 'You knew it had to come to this one day. 'The Wizard of Oz is dead'; remember when you told me that?'

'Facts, Mongo,' Garth said tightly. 'Where are your facts?'

'I don't have any facts, and there's still a great deal that I don't understand. Madeline is going to have to fill us in on the details.'

Mad shook her head; her silver hair rippled and cascaded over the back of the seat. Then slowly, like a tree toppling in a forest, Mad fell sideways until her cheek came to rest on Garth's shoulder. Garth started to bring his arm up to put it around her shoulders, then uttered a startled grunt. There was a swirl of movement in the front, with Madeline sliding back across the seat and flinging open the door. Suddenly the roar and spit of the storm was in the car. Garth grabbed for Madeline and missed as the woman leaped out of the car and was swallowed up in the deluge.

'She's got my gun!' Garth shouted, scrambling across the seat and diving into the storm after her.

'Stay here!' I snapped at April as I opened the door on my side and stepped out.

I was soaked through to the skin within moments after getting out of the car. The fury of the wind and rain was even greater than I'd imagined listening only to its voice; a sudden gust of wind threw me against the car's trunk, spinning me around and momentarily disorienting me, robbing me of precious seconds. By the time I got around to the other side of the car, neither Garth nor Madeline was in sight.

Shielding my eyes from the driving rain with my hands, I could see that I was at the foot of a fairly steep embankment that rose off the right shoulder of the turnpike. There was a flash of lightning, and in that moment I could see the tops of trees whipping violently back and forth along the top of the embankment.

Suddenly I felt a hand grip my arm. I spun around and found April standing next to me. Her hair was matted to her cheeks and the top of her head, and tiny rivers of water cascaded down her face, blurring her features.

'Get back in the car!' I shouted, spitting water.

'No! She'll need me!'

'She's goddamn likely to shoot you, woman! Do as I say!'

'No, Robert! No matter what you say or do, I'm going to help search for her. Even if Dr. Jones is Esobus, she's not evil. She saved Kathy's life-and yours. She's a woman; I'm a woman. I'm going to her. You can't stop me, so take me with you!'

There was no time to argue. April's voice rang with determination, and I couldn't have her wandering alone in the storm. Nor could I drag her back; the decision to expose Madeline in this manner had been mine. What was happening was my responsibility, and I couldn't leave Garth and Madeline alone in the storm.

I started to scramble up the embankment, gripping April's hand tightly and pulling her up after me. The force of the storm was tearing away loose patches of sod, turning the face of the hill into a checkerboard of ice-slick patches of grass and slimy, clinging squares of mud. We slipped often, breaking our slide by digging our fingers into the ground. We would rise again, resume climbing; within seconds, the rain would strip the clots of mud from our clothes and bodies. It was a difficult climb for anyone, not to speak of an injured fifty-year-old woman. Logic dictated that Madeline had not attempted it, that she had run parallel to the highway. Somehow, I knew she hadn't. I sensed instinctively that, driven by desperation, Mad would want to be alone, to seek the natural sanctuary of the trees-and that she had made it. Madeline was too intelligent to believe she could get away; there was no place to go. And I did not believe that she intended to shoot us. Instead, I believed she had something else in mind-a ritual; an epilogue to the strange book of shadows that was her life. For some reason, that thought frightened me more than the idea of being shot myself.

But I could be wrong. At that very moment, Madeline could have Garth-or us-in her sights, pressing her finger on the trigger. .

Perhaps Garth had caught her. Garth was young, strong. But he was also a logical-thinking policeman. If he had not seen her start up the hill, he would be searching up and down the turnpike.

April and I reached the top of the embankment and fell to our knees, leaning against each other and gasping for breath. Rain cascaded and swirled around us, making it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction. It was difficult to breathe, almost as if the air were filling with water and we were drowning.

There was a loud, sharp crack, and I cringed, thinking it was a gunshot. But it was only thunder.

Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, the wind began to subside. Through the translucent sheets of rain I could make out a thick growth of tall grass and brush a few feet in front of us. There was a low retaining fence; beyond that was the wooded area I'd glimpsed from below.

'Robert,' April gasped, 'she couldn't have come this way. She must be down on the highway.'

I shook my head. 'No. She's somewhere near.' I half-turned, put my face very close to hers. 'Go back, April. Please. I'm afraid for you.'

'I can't, Robert. Don't waste time arguing.'

I pulled April to her feet and led her toward the fence. I held the wire strands apart for her to climb through, then followed. The foliage and trunks of the trees provided some cover from the lashing elements, and we ran ahead. I shouted the names of Garth and Madeline, but my words were sucked up and extinguished by the storm.

The stand of trees was only a few hundred feet wide; on the other side of the wooded strip, thick factory stacks speared the black sky. Between, forming a buffer zone perhaps a half mile wide, was an ugly no-man's-land of rolling, lumpy landfill, garbage dumps and occasional oases of grass.

Madeline, her figure barely visible through the curtains of rain, was kneeling in one of those oases which formed a small basin a hundred yards away from the foot of the embankment. Her body was bent forward at a sharp angle, and both her hands were pressed hard into her stomach. For one horrible moment I thought she had shot herself. But she was sitting too still, too steady. Her stiff immobility was statuelike, as though she intended to kneel there in the open, exposed to the pelting rain, for as long as it took to cleanse herself-perhaps forever.

With April clinging to my arm, I began to move down the slippery face of the hill, heading toward the basin where Madeline knelt. Suddenly, April drew her breath in sharply and squeezed my arm. I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw Garth emerge from the woods, perhaps fifty yards away. He immediately took in the scene, motioned to us with a single, terse wave of his hand, then began moving down himself, angling to his left in an attempt to approach Mad from the rear.

But Madeline wasn't going to be taken by surprise. Suddenly, as if sensing our presence, she lifted her head. I winced when I saw that the rain and wind had stripped the bandage from her forehead, exposing the cross-shaped wound. Blood oozed from the raw flesh between the crusted stitches, mixed with rain and covered her face in a pink wash. Shaking, I raised my arms-more as a calming gesture than to show I was unarmed-and continued moving toward her, keeping my body in the line of fire between Madeline and April. Garth had almost reached the bottom of the embankment. He stopped to wait for us, and we cautiously converged on Madeline together.

When we were about ten yards away from Madeline the wind abruptly abated even further, until there was only the steady drumbeat of the rain, much lighter now. I had an eerie, chilling sensation that the storm was no more than a special effect; the tens of thousands of buildings, the millions of people, the hundreds of square miles surrounding us, were a backdrop for a movie. Our movie. All the master shots had been made, and now we had arrived at center stage. The camera was moving in for an Extreme Close-Up. I shook off a chill.

'Please don't come closer,' Mad said evenly. Her voice was soft, but could be heard clearly in air that now, almost stripped of wind, suddenly felt too thin, drained of oxygen.

April, Garth and I squatted in a semicircle before Mad.

'Give me the gun, Dr. Jones,' Garth said quietly. 'You're hurt. Let us take care of you.'

There was no answer, and Garth started to reach out toward her. Madeline tensed and straightened to show