N. White - The End - Visions of Apocalypse

My sign downstairs wasn’t entirely truthful, of course. Well, the wanker part might be I suppose, but not the Hieromancer. Hieromancy is divination through reading the entrails of a sacrifice, in case you didn’t know, and while I could do that it wasn’t exactly my main line of work. A man would struggle to earn a living looking at the insides of a pigeon, after all. The real money was in Sendings.

Summoning and Sending is one of the oldest, most dangerous and most taboo disciplines of magic. It’s also, it ought to go without saying, the most lucrative. That was what really paid the rent and bought the booze. I pushed open the door to my workroom and looked at the Burned Man.

“Morning,” I said.

“Now what?” it muttered.

The Burned Man was a nine inch tall fetish who stood on the altar at the far side of my work room. Tiny iron chains bound it by the wrists and ankles, and were bolted firmly into the solid oak top of the ancient, sanctified altar. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever owned, or even seen. The floor of my workroom was carefully inscribed with a grand summoning circle from the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis , the Lesser Key of Solomon, one of the great classical grimoires. Through the Burned Man, I could use that circle to summon demons and send them to do my bidding. Certain people, not the sort of people you’d have round for tea exactly, would pay a hell of a lot of money to get you to set a demon on someone.

“I’m in the shit,” I admitted.

The Burned Man snorted with laughter.

“No change there then,” it said.

I pushed my hands back through my hair and sighed. The only trouble with the whole set-up was that the Burned Man wasn’t quite as bound as it was supposed to be. Oh sure, it did what I told it to, it had to, but it had a bitch of an attitude problem. That, and it always wanted its cut.

I shrugged out of the crumpled suit jacket I had fallen asleep in and chucked it in a corner, well outside the circle. I noticed there were dried sweat stains on my white business shirt. Oh well. I pulled my tie off, too, wrinkled as an old typewriter ribbon after my night face-down on the desk, and dropped it on the floor. My hands fumbled with the buttons of my shirt.

“What’s up?” the Burned Man asked.

I looked at it as I took my shirt off. It was little, as I said, but it was horribly lifelike. Every millimetre of its tiny naked body was blackened and blistered, its skin cracked open in places to show the livid, weeping red burns beneath. It was thoroughly revolting, and the bloody thing was always hungry.

“Wormwood,” I said. “I owe him, and I can’t pay.”

I approached the altar and crouched down, offering my scarred chest to the Burned Man.

“You’ve been playing Fates again haven’t you, you pillock,” it said. “Were you drinking too, by any chance?”

I grunted as it lunged forward and sank its tiny, needle-like teeth into the flesh beneath my left nipple. It started to suckle, blood running down its chin from the fresh wound.

“Is a bear catholic?” I muttered, wincing against the pain. “I need you to get rid of him for me.”

The Burned Man snapped its head back and stared up at me.

“Wormwood?” it repeated. “ The Wormwood? Are you mental?”

“How many Wormwoods do you know, exactly,” I snapped. “Yes, that one.”

“I can’t do that,” it said. “No can do. Nein. Nyet. Not gonna happen. End of. No.”

It leaned its head forward and bit into my chest again, a little harder than it really needed to. Horrible thing.

“You have to,” I reminded it. “I own you, Burned Man. I command it.”

It whipped its head back again without opening its mouth first, spitefully taking a chunk of bloody meat out of my chest. I yelled in pain, hand raised to swat it. That, of course, would have been ten kinds of a stupid thing to do. I let my hand fall and glared at it instead.

“I command it,” I said again. “Send something. Summon and Send… I don’t know, Astaroth if you have to for pity’s sake, I don’t care. Just get rid of Wormwood for me.”

“Listen to me for a minute, you dog-sucking little puke,” the Burned Man spat, “or I’m really going to have to hurt you.”

I stared at it, and had to remind myself that this was just the fetish of the demon it represented and not the real thing. The real thing itself, bound somewhere in the Oblivion Marches by a magic far older than London itself, didn’t even bear thinking about.

“I’m listening,” I said, but I moved back out of reach.

“It. Can’t. Be. Done.” the Burned Man spelled out, slowly and carefully like it was talking to a simpleton, or perhaps to a very scared, very hungover magician who was in a very long way over his head. “Wormwood would have Astaroth for breakfast.”

I blinked. “Astaroth is a Crowned Prince of Hell,” I said.

“Astaroth lives in Hell ,” the Burned Man said. “Wormwood lives in Mayfair. Who do you think has the most pull, exactly?”

When you put it like that …

“Bugger,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

“You ought to pay better attention to who you’re playing cards with in future,” it said.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets and groaned. I could feel warm blood trickling down my chest from where the Burned Man had bitten me. My head was pounding, and I was seriously starting to reconsider the whole throwing up thing.

“What can I do, then?” I demanded. “I can’t pay him, unless you can summon me up an angel’s skull, or something worth the same amount.”

The Burned Man sniggered. “If I could summon up things you wouldn’t be broke, would you?” it sneered. “There’s a limit to what I can do, bound and chained to your sodding altar.”

I gave it a sharp look. The Burned Man never said anything it didn’t mean, and it never said anything useful at all unless you asked it a direct question.

“What?” I said. “That sounded like a hint.”

“There was a settlement on the Thames, where London stands now, long before the Romans came,” the Burned Man said. “I was bound before even then, bound by a magic you can’t even begin to imagine, you little puke. So if there are things I can’t say, it’s not because you’re clever, you understand me?”

I nodded slowly. “You can’t say,” I said. “I have to guess?”

The Burned Man shrugged, and rattled its iron chains.

“So,” I began, pausing to wipe the oozing blood off my chest with the back of my hand, “if there’s a limit to what you can do while you’re bound, there might be less of a limit if you weren’t bound, is that what you’re getting at?”

“I couldn’t possibly comment on idle speculation,” the Burned Man said. “I could tell you a little story, I suppose, if you’re bored. Just to pass the time, you understand.”

I shrugged. This was getting obtuse, even for the Burned Man, but like I say it never said anything without a reason.

“Go on then,” I said. “Story time.”

“Back then,” it said, “in Tir Na Nog, before the waters made this land an island, there was an antler druid called Oisin who had the gift of Summoning. Oisin had the words of binding, and the gift of iron, and the power to take his pick of all the demons of Hell to enslave to do his bidding. Oisin chose me, as the most powerful, and bound me into this fetish to serve him. Do you see?”

I frowned at it. “You’re saying he chose you over Astaroth, is that it?” I said.

The Burned Man shrugged. “Is it?” it asked. “Why would that be, I wonder? If a man asked a direct cocking question maybe I could answer it.”