David Liss - The Twelfth Enchantment - A Novel

Lucy examined the image in the book. It was a very simple square of seven boxes across, each containing a single Roman letter, the top line spelling out “KONOVON.” In form, it would be an easy charm, but she sensed there were tricks and hidden pitfalls. There were flares in the letters, and she understood almost immediately, purely as intuition, that the letters could not be written in order. Feeling almost certain she was copying it correctly, Lucy took several minutes to duplicate the charm. She then looked up at Mary, for there were no instructions upon the page.

“Toss it upon the rose,” said Mary.

Lucy looked around the marketplace. People hurried about their business, and no one paused to consider a pair of young ladies huddled in conversation. So, in that public setting, Lucy did as she was told. Nothing happened. She sat there for a moment, waiting for instructions.

“You copied the charm perfectly,” said Mary. “Have no fear upon that score. You have a wonderful hand and excellent instincts. The charm did not work because it is not powerful enough to work upon its own. It needs some added force, like a mule that requires a push to begin its labors. And that added force can be provided by a sacrifice.”

Lucy felt uneasy. She had images of mad Picts slitting the throats of lowing cows. “I do not know that I wish to perform a sacrifice of any kind.”

“I will not ask you to sacrifice living creatures,” said Mary, her voice soft. “I have no interest in causing any living thing distress, but there are other kinds of sacrifice. Your choices can constitute a sacrifice. Denying yourself something, or taking on tasks you would choose not to. For now, I will show you a more direct, simpler kind.”

She picked up Lucy’s charm and handed it back to her. “I want you to try again, but this time, pick that flower, and focus on converting its energy to the charm.”

Mary pointed to a dandelion that grew between the stones at their feet. It was a bright yellow and the weight of the flower burdened the stem so that it bent over slightly. Lucy knew from her reading that a tea made from the dandelion could be used as a diuretic, and the juice of the crushed plant was good for removing warts.

Lucy had never before hesitated to pick a flower, but thinking of it as a sacrifice made her uneasy. Picking it seemed suddenly brutal, barbaric.

“You wish me to sacrifice one flower to destroy another.”

Mary smiled. “It does seem a little tasteless.”

Tasteless indeed, but Lucy had a strong wish to see if there was anything to what Mary said, so holding the charm in her right hand, she picked the dandelion with her left, concentrating, as Mary had said, on its energy. The moment she picked the flower, she tossed the charm upon the rose.

There was no sign that anything had happened, but when she lifted the charm, she saw the rose had been reduced nearly to powder, and that it lay in a little pool of dampness. The water in the plant had been leeched out entirely.

Lucy stared, hardly able to speak. Every bit of magic she had done until now had been vague and general, hard to prove, and leaving no physical result, but here was something else entirely. She had, using magic, physically altered something in the world. Even after all she had seen and done, this struck her as difficult to believe.

“I think you understand now,” said Mary. “The information contained in the Mutus Liber is dangerous, and if it should fall into the wrong hands, it would be very bad indeed. And that is why we must hope it falls into your hands. You see, that was but a minor charm, and your sacrifice was but a small one, but it was enough to push the energy far enough to work. With a powerful sacrifice, almost anything is possible.”

“Well, I shan’t go around destroying life for power,” said Lucy. “I won’t.”

“No, you will not,” agreed Mary. “I would not trust you with this information if I thought you should, but as I have shown you, there are many kinds of sacrifices, including the sacrifices others make for you. Those can be the most powerful kind, and you would be well to remember that. If a friend sacrifices something of value out of love, it can render powerful the most impotent spell, it can break the strongest ward, change powerful enemies. To understand the principles of sacrifice is to understand when the time is right to act, when others have made you something better than yourself.”

After putting her items back in the leather pouch, Mary began to walk Lucy back to her uncle’s house. “I don’t wish to keep you from your sister long,” she said. “But you need to understand what is happening. There is no book on earth so dangerous as the Mutus Liber . Its secrets are devastating.”

“But you said it contains the secret of eternal life. Surely eternal life is not a terrible thing.”

Mary adjusted her wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off her pale face. “Alchemy is transformation, Lucy, not addition. Man is born to die, and mortality defines man’s nature. To possess eternal life is to be human no longer. Those who have pursued this secret must undergo a terrible alteration. They lose their souls and so become vile creatures, evil, mere shadows of themselves. They feel no regret. Murder, theft, violence, destruction—none of these things give them pause. Whatever terrible, monstrous person you can imagine—that is nothing compared to one who has become immortal. These transformed creatures may do the most horrendous things and think about them no more than you would think of the grass upon which you trod as you go on your way. They live for nothing but to continue, to indulge their pleasures, and to remain hidden.”

Lucy felt a chill, and drew her cloak around her. “Do you believe that there are such people? That what you speak of has truly been done?”

“I have seen it,” said Mary. “I have seen more than you could credit unless you’d seen it yourself. That is why I brought you to the fairy barrow, for it was such a fit place for our first discussion of these things. Do you know what those mounds truly are?”

Lucy shook her head. First immortal people, and now fairies. She did not know what to think.

“They are ancient graves, tombs of people from so long in the past that their bones are likely nothing but dust. They tell us that the ancients knew what we have forgotten. Stories of fairies are as old as this island, but their nature in our stories has changed over time. However, I assure you, such creatures are real, but they are not what you imagine. I do not speak of silly, sprightly, mischief-makers. What the ancients called fairies are the dead, returned to life. They are revenants, given existence with the most ancient of alchemy.”

Lucy looked upon her friend with unabashed incredulity. She had seen things, done things, that most people would have thought impossible, but what Mary spoke of now was beyond her ability to accept. “In asking me to believe this, you ask too much.”

“I know these beings are real as much as I know you are. These fairies—these revenants, if you prefer—have long wielded their influence over this kingdom, but their influence has been waning. They fear to increase their numbers, because they fear the power and vigor of those who are young, and yet the old ones, powerful as they are, grow torpid, weary of life and fearful of death. But in their limited influence they have funded and supported the rise of mills. Clothing mills and iron mills and pottery mills. Mills that make everything once made with the careful eye and hand of the artisan. These revenants have lost their humanity, and now they seek to rob the rest of us of ours.”