Harry Turtledove - The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

But this fellow was cool as an ice elemental. He called on Vepar in a clear and piercing voice: “I conjure thee, Vepar, by the living God, by the true God, by the holy and all-ruling God, Who created from nothingness the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all things that are therein, Adonai, Jehovah, Tetragrammeton, to pour your waters upon the blaze there in such quantity and placement as to be most efficacious in extinguishing it and least damaging to life and property, in this place, before this pentacle, without grievance, deformity, noise, murmuring, or deceit. Obey, obey, obey!”

“It pains me to cease the destruction of the monastics housed therein.” I felt Vepar’s voice rather than hearing it. Like the demon’s visible form, it was sensuous enough to make me want to forget from what sort of creature it really came.

The wizard didn’t forget. “Obey, lest I cast thy name and seal into this brazier and consume them with sulphurous and stinking substances, and in so doing bind thee in the Bottomless Pit, in the Lake of Fire and Brimstone prepared for rebellious spirits, remembered no more before the face of God. Obey, obey, obey!” He held his closed hand above the brazier, as if to drop into the coals whatever he held.

I wouldn’t have ignored a threat like that, and I’m a material creature. To Vepar, who was all of spirit, it had to be doubly frightening. Water suddenly saturated the air around the burning tower; you could see fog turn to mist and then to rain. The same thing had to be happening inside, too. The flames went out.

“Give me leave to get hence,” Vepar said sullenly. “Am I now sufficiently humiliated to satisfy thee?”

The mage from the firecrew was too smart to let the demon lure him into that kind of debate. Without replying directly, he granted Vepar permission to go: “O Spirit Vepar, because thou hast diligently answered my demands, I do hereby license thee to depart, without injury to man or beast. Depart, I say, but be thou willing and ready to come whenever duly conjured by the sacred rites of magic. I adjure thee to withdraw peaceably and quietly, and may the peace of God continue forever between us. Amen.”

He stayed in his own circle until the mermaid-shape vanished from the pentacle. Then he stepped—staggered, actually—out. I hoped the fire truly had a stake through its heart; that mage didn’t look as if he could summon up ten coppers for a cup of tea.

A slim, Asian-looking man in constabulary uniform came up to me. “Inspector Fisher?” He waited for me to nod before he stuck out a hand. “I’m Legate Kawaguchi. As I said, Brother Vahan asked for your presence here.” He affected to notice Judy for the first time. His face went from impassive to cold. “Who is your, ah, companion here?”

What are you doing bringing your girlfriend along on business? he meant. I said, “Legate, allow me to present my fiancÇe, Judith Adler.” Before he could blow up at me, I added, coldly myself, “Mistress Adler is on the staff of Hand-of-Glory Publishing. As I feared magic might well be involved in this fire, I judged her expertise valuable.” I gave him back an unspoken question of my own: Want to make something of it?

He didn’t. He bowed slightly to Judy, who returned the courtesy. Kawaguchi turned back to me. “Your fears, it seems, are well-founded. This indeed appears to be a case of arson and homicide by sorcery.”

I gulped. “Homicide?”

“So it would appear, Inspector. Brother Vahan informs me that eleven of the monks cannot be accounted for. Firecrew have already discovered three sets of mortal remains; as the site cools further, more such are to be expected.”

“May their souls be judged kindly,” I whispered. Beside me, Judy nodded. Until it happens, you don’t want to imagine men of God, men who worked for nothing but good, snuffed out like so many tapers. Murder of a religious of any creed carries not just a secular death sentence but the strongest curse the sect can lay on, which strikes me as only right.

Kawaguchi pulled out a note tablet and stylus. “Inspector Fisher, I’d be grateful if you’d explain to me in your own words why Brother Vahan believes your recent work to be connected with this unfortunate occurrence.”

Before I could answer, Brother Vahan himself came up. I might have known nothing, not even magical fire, could make the abbot lose his composure. He bowed gravely to me, even managed a hint of gallantry when I introduced Judy to him. But his eyes were black pools of anguish; as he stepped closer to one of the firecrew’s St. Elmo’s lamps, I saw he had a nasty burn across half his bald pate.

I explained to Kawaguchi what I’d been investigating, and why. His stylus raced over the wax. He hardly looked at what he was writing. Later, back at the constabulary station, he’d use a depalimpsestation spell to separate different strata of notes.

When I was through, he nodded slowly. “You are of the opinion, then, that one of the firms in some way involved with the Devonshire dump was responsible for this act of incendiarism?”

“Yes, Legate, I am,” I answered.

Brother Vahan nodded heavily. “It is as I told you, Legate Kawaguchi. So much loss here; enormous profit to someone must be at stake.”

“So I see,” Kawaguchi said. “You must understand, though, sir, that your statement about Inspector Fisher’s investigations is hearsay, while one directly from him may be used as evidence.”

“I do understand that, Legate,” the abbot answered. “Every calling has its own rituals.” I didn’t really think of the secular law, as opposed to that of the Holy Scriptures, as a ritual system, but Brother Vahan had a point.

A firecrewman with the crystal ball of a forensics specialist on his collar tabs stood waiting for Kawaguchi to notice him. When Kawaguchi did, the fellow said, “Legate, I have determined the point of origin of the fire.” He waited again, this time just long enough to let Kawaguchi raise a questioning eyebrow. “The blaze appears to have broken out below ground, in the scriptorium chamber.”

I started. So did Brother Vahan. Even in the half-dark and in the midst of confusion, Kawaguchi noticed. Judy would have, too; I wasn’t so sure about myself. The legate said, “This has significance, gentlemen?”

The abbot and I looked at each other. He deferred to me with a graceful gesture that showed me his arm was burned, too. I said, “I drew the information alerting me to a problem around the Devonshire dump from the scriptorium. Now, I gather, any further evidence that might have been there is gone.”

“The actual parchments from which you made your conclusions, and from which you might have gone on to draw other inferences, are surely perished,” Brother Vahan said heavily. “I confess I have given them little thought, being more concerned with trying to save such brethren as I could. Too few, too few.” I thought he was going to break down and weep, but he was made of stern stuff. He not only rallied but returned to the business at hand: “The data, as opposed to the physical residuum on which they resided, may yet be preserved. Much depends on whether Erasmus survived the conflagration.”

“Erasmus?” Legate Kawaguchi and I asked together.

“The scriptorium spirit,” Brother Vahan explained. He hadn’t named the spirit for me when I was down there, but that had been strictly business.

Kawaguchi, Judy, and I turned as one to look at the smoking ruin which was all that remained of the Thomas Brothers monastery. Gently, Judy said, “How likely is that?”

“If the spirit betook itself wholly to the Other Side when the fire started, there may be some hope,” the abbot said. “The monastery is—was—consecrated ground, after all, and thereby to some degree protected from the impact of the physical world upon the spiritual.”