I indicated the concentric circles with my toe. "What is this? A hermetic circle? A medicine lodge of some kind?"
He wanted to roll his eyes, I could tell, but he managed to control the impulse. He shrugged. "Neither," he said. Then, less certainly, "Not really."
"What, then?" Another shrug. "Is it hermetic or shamanic?"
For a moment he looked really uncomfortable. He shrugged once more.
Which was interesting. Neither hermetic nor shamanic… or maybe both hermetic and shamanic, if that made any sense. Hell, at one time or another, everyone's overheard those airy-fairy philosophical discussions about the structure of magic-the hypothesis that magic is magic and that's it. That the distinction between hermetic and shamanic is entirely artificial, one made by (meta)human minds, but not innate to the mana itself. Was that what these symbols represented? Or were they just meaningless-some fraghead mage-wannabe copying something he saw on the trid?
"What would you use something like this for?" I asked me kahuna.
"I wouldn't use it for anything," he snapped.
I sighed. "What would someone else use it for then? What might they use it for?" I corrected quickly, to forestall another case of literal-mindedness.
"Don't know."
I shot the kahuna a penetrating look. He was really uncomfortable now, and it was making him sullen. (Magicians of all stripes hate admitting they don't know everything-I learned that long ago.) "You've got to have some idea," I pressed. "It's got to remind you of something. What might it be?"
For a moment he just glared stink-eye at me. Then I saw his eyes change as he surrendered. "Could be some kind of conjuring circle," he mumbled. "Could be."
"For summoning spirits? You mean the mage or shaman or whatever stands in the circle-"
"No," he cut in with a look that clearly completed the thought-you fragging twinkie. "Conjurer stands outside the circle, thing that gets conjured inside the circle… till kahuna lets it out. Okay?"
"So what would you conjure using something like this? Elementals? Spirits? What?"
Some unreadable expression flickered across his face. "Nothing," he said firmly. "Couldn't conjure nothing with this. Not elementals, not spirits, okay?" And-deputy's badge or not-he turned his back on me and strode away. I watched him climb into one of the Patrol Ones, shut the door, and just sit mere in a sulk.
Interesting. What was it the functionary had told the Ali'i' Up until now, the magical mumbo-jumbo surrounding the sacrifices in Puowaina had been meaningless. This time, though, the kahunas hadn't been sure of that. That represented a pretty significant change in things, didn't it? The cop-kahuna's reaction had certainly fit with that analysis.
So this ritual-circle drek was similar to the stuff the mystics use for summoning-similar, but not exactly right. If I'd known more about magic, maybe that would mean something to me. It's unfortunate, in a way. Unlike a lot of people I know, I'm not a magophobe-how the frag can you be magophobic in the Sixth World, tell me that?-but I'm certainly no spellworm. I guess the most time I've ever spent with a real-and-for-true practicing spellworm was when I worked alongside Rodney Greybriar back in Seattle… before he was geeked, of course.
Well, magic or no magic, the laws of logic had to stay more or less the same, neh? Maybe all I needed was a little common sense.
What must you do to summon a spirit, or whatever? No, take the question one step further back. Where do spirits and their ilk hang when they're not being summoned? Somewhere else, obviously. On the astral plane, maybe, or on one of the "metaplanes" (whatever the frag they are…). Bringing them across takes effort. It takes magical jam, and- from what I've heard-to drag the big boys, kicking and screaming, into the material world, it can really harsh a spellworm out.
Why? Obviously-well, it's obvious to me, at least- there's some kind of barrier between the material world and the other planes. No, let's call it something pseudo-mystical-say there's a curtain between this world and the others, or maybe a veil. Okay, some kind of curtain. Sure, that made sense, otherwise people might just stumble from this world into some freaky metaplane without intending to do so, or even knowing it happened.
So, to summon something, logically you'd have to break down that barrier-pull back the curtain-or it just wouldn't work, neh? Could that be what the weirdo circle was for? To open-or maybe weaken-the curtain between what we laughingly call the real world and those other places? An interesting hypothesis… and, now that I thought about it, not a particularly comforting one.
Oh, drek… combine that nasty thought with another one that had just struck me. When the cop-kahuna said he wouldn't conjure anything using that circle, could he have meant that (meta)humans couldn't use something like that? Who could?
How about the friends of Adrian Skyhill? The fragging insect spirits. They were involved somehow-if I was to believe Barnard, and I had no reason to disbelieve him at the moment.
Great. Hadn't I read somewhere that certain sites on the earth-typically ancient "places of power"-had high mana "background counts" that made magical activity easier? Mount Shasta, apparently. Crater Lake possibly. Why not Puowaina?
Could the insect spirits be trying to use the power of the Hill of Sacrifices to do to Hawai'i what they'd done to Chicago? To bring forth hordes of their kind from whatever hell had spawned them?
Or was I a paranoid slot getting his exercise by jumping to really out-there conclusions? (Go back, go waaay back…)
I shook my head. It was a dead fragging certainty I wasn't going to figure it out just by standing here and pummeling my brain. Who knew, maybe the kids-the ones that sumo-Saito had been questioning-had seen something relevant.
But the kids were gone when I looked around. The forensic boys had finished their work, and were piling into the car with the still-sulking kahuna. Saito was standing by the open driver's door of his car, watching me-and almost concealing his impatience-in case the "deputy" might want to waste his time with more dumb-hooped questions. I waved to him and gestured that he could take off if he wanted. He wanted, and I was left to breathe in the dust of his departure. With a sigh I started walking to the Bus stop.
I felt eyes on me, that creepy feeling that the academics say doesn't exist but that every nonacademic has felt many times. I stopped and looked around.
He was standing, totally motionless, leaning casually against the trunk of some kind of flowering tree, watching me. Rapier-thin, he seemed to radiate a sense of pent-up energy, explosive movement. He was an elf, I was almost certain. From this distance I couldn't see his ears, but the morphology looked right. His eyes were hidden behind those radically styled shades that advertise they can stop a 12-gauge shotgun blast-reassuring only as long as the slag busting caps on you confines his aim to your sunglasses- but I could feel his gaze on me. I raised an eyebrow questioningly.
He stepped away from the tree and jandered over toward me-slowly, casually-yet purposefully. (A contradiction, true enough. But that's exactly how he moved-with the lethal casualness of a predator.) I gave him the top-to-toe scan as he approached.
Thin face, high cheekbones, a nose that an eagle would kill to possess. He wore his hair-red, streaked with silver gray-long, pulled back in a ponytail that reached the middle of his back. He was dressed in dark clothes-a slate gray synthsilk shirt, black pants wide at the thighs and tapering to the ankle. Expensive, high-quality clothing, but anachronistic in style. When was the last time you saw a shirt buttoned to the neck with no tie, and bloused cuffs? It was almost as if the elf had stepped right off the virtual pages of Gentlemen's Monthly Online, but from an issue twenty years old. Instinctively, I played "spot the heat." No luck-if he was packing anything larger than the smallest of hold-outs, he'd found a damn fine way of concealing it.