Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

“Yes.” I reached for the wine glass I had been neglecting. He had just described the installation of a new doge. “Isaia confirms that the procurator was murdered. Do you seriously believe you can unmask the culprit before the Ten take you in for questioning?”

He did not tell me what he believed, and it was what the Council of Ten believed-and would do about it-that mattered. I tried again.

“You think there was a botched attempt to assassinate the doge?”

Maestro Nostradamus thumped the table furiously with a tiny fist. “I told you this morning that His Serenity was appealing for our help, didn’t I? Whether someone is trying to murder him or he was just impetuous, he met with foreigners in a private house. If his enemies have the votes, that is enough cause to depose him, or worse. Any two of the three state prosecutors can indict him. He cannot hope to keep the Ten out of this, but the way the matter is presented may swing the vote.”

I murmured, “Yes, master,” and returned to my veal and oysters.

“There is more than one way to reverse an emperor. Tell me again about your tarot reading last night.”

I was both surprised and gratified, for I suspect that tarot is the one occult skill at which I can better him. I went over my reading again.

“As you say, master, it may be hinting that the doge was the intended victim,” I admitted, refilling my glass. “In spite of what you think of my humor, I do think that Death reversed was Circospetto ; Raffaino Sciara just looks too much like Trump XIII. He might have brought death and in the end he did not. Justice reversed meant my night in jail, I suppose, or does it mean a murderer getting off scot-free?”

“I think the jail. Your deck must be well attuned at present.”

From him any praise must be counted fulsome. Pleased, I said, “I can fetch it and try a more detailed reading.”

He shook his head like a chicken ruffling its feathers. “Not tonight. You must never overwork a tarot deck.”

Never having been told that before, I waited for more and there was no more. He reached for his staff. I helped him rise and he leaned on my shoulder all the way across the salone. He usually returns to the atelier after supper and either reads or lectures me until late, but that night he headed straight to his bedchamber and disappeared with a muttered Godbless!

Now was the moment I had mentally set aside to consult my tarot deck again. Why had the Maestro forbidden me to do so? The only reason he had ever given me for letting a deck rest was that it had started reporting obvious nonsense, and mine was certainly not doing that. What else could I do to help solve the murder? I could not use the crystal as he could.

I could summon Putrid. That was why the old rascal had not wanted me to lay out a tarot spread. My tarot was painted long ago by an artist of superlative skill and subtlety; since then the fears and yearnings of many owners have infused it with deep empathy. If I tried to consult it when I had a fiend in my immediate future, I might ruin it beyond repair.

The Maestro was a murder suspect and had to clear his name. He dare not risk asking a demon for help, but he would let me take that risk, because I needed help less than he did. Another reason was that I was less important and so, in a non-facetious way, relatively innocent. Summoning a minor fiend can stir up a major one instead. You never see senior condottieri fighting in the front ranks; they send the cannon fodder forward and shout encouragement from the rear, but any demon that managed to enslave the great Nostradamus would be capable of performing enormous mischief through him. All the legions of hell would rally to try it. I was mere cannon fodder.

I locked the door, then sat down at my desk and readied pen and paper. A summoning needs careful planning. Even my trivial fiend Putrid can be a terrifying apparition, and to panic and forget what comes next or change plans halfway through could be disastrous. It would do no good to demand, “Tell me who killed Procurator Orseolo,” or even “Procurator Bertucci Orseolo” because there might have been several men of that name in the history of the Republic. And the fiend could just reply “his doctor,” which might be true in a narrow sense. After much thought I wrote down two questions, plus the command of dismissal, which demonologists have been known to forget in emergencies, although none ever more than once. Purists conduct their summonings in Latin. The Maestro says that the fiends themselves don’t care what language you use and it is better to be right than classy.

I moved a chair over to the big mirror in the wall of books. Mirrors themselves are no more magical than crystal balls, but both can be used for occult purposes, like the piece of chalk I used to draw a pentacle around myself and the chair. I sat down, tried some deep breaths, and then uttered my first call, summoning Putrid (not his real name) to be manifest in the mirror before me.

The room cooled and dimmed. It always shocks me when mere words can do that. Even the flames in the fireplace seemed to shrink, and I wished I had brought a lamp inside the pentacle with me.

I summoned a second time. Now the mirror showed very little more than my own white face with darkness behind it, and the air was filled with a nauseating stench. Think of every bad smell you have ever experienced-bad fish, cesspools, warm pig dung-add them all together and multiply by thirteen. Gagging, anxious to get the seance over with, I spoke the words a third time.

My scared face in the mirror blurred and melted into a reddish globe, which shrank back and resolved as the iris of an eye. The surrounding space cleared into scaly, scabrous flesh of an indeterminate green-purple color, like a very ripe bruise. The monster moved farther back yet, until a second eye came into view. Whatever shade or shape they choose for the rest of themselves, fiends always seem to prefer red eyes. Putrid had begun his apparition the size of a house, and even now I could see only part of his face peering in, huge as the mirror was. The less I saw the better.

“You!” he said. He slobbered and his breath stank even worse than the rest of him. “I will eat you.”

I peered at my script in the feeble firelight.

“You have a nice smell of fresh sin on you, sier Alfeo Zeno,” the fiend said chattily. “You should have been shriven before you called me. And your harlot also I will eat.”

Another rule is that you never listen to fiends.

“Putrid, I command you by your true name that if there was no murderer present on San Valentine’s Eve last in the room in this city where Ottone Imer the attorney displayed books to certain potential buyers, that you instantly quit this realm and return to the place from whence you came.”

The fiend coughed, spraying the inside of the mirror with spit and almost choking me with putrescent fumes. My skin crawled.

“That’s clever,” he growled. “Thought that up all by yourself, did you, Alfeo?” He was still there, which disposed of any last hope that the procurator’s death had been an accident.

“Look, Alfeo,” the fiend said. “Violetta with her customers. Let me show you what she does, Alfeo. Look!”

I did not look. “Putrid, I command you by your true name that until and only until I clap my hands three times you show me in this mirror before me the murder committed by the murderer who was present on San Valentine’s Eve last in the room in this city where Ottone Imer the attorney displayed books to certain potential buyers, and I further command you by your true name that when and only when I clap my hands three times that you instantly quit this realm and return to the place from whence you came.”

“Damn you,” the fiend muttered, but the hideous images faded from the mirror.