I closed the book. “I don’t go for that kind of invocation,” I said slowly.
“Oh, you could recite it aloud,” Marmiadon blurted. “In fact, an ordinary communicant of the Church could, and get no response. But I’m a toiler. A summoner, you’d call it. Not too high-ranking or skillful; nevertheless, certain masteries have been conferred.”
“Ah, s-s-so!” The sickening explanation grew upon me. “You raise and control demons in your regular line of work—”
“Not demons. No, no, no. Ordinary paranatural beings for the most part. Occasionally a minor angel.”
“You mean a thing that tells you it’s an angel.”
“But it is!”
“Never mind. Here’s what happened. You say you got mad and spoke this curse, a black prayer, against us. I say that knowingly or not, you were casting a spell. Since nothing registered on detectors, it must’ve been a kind of spell unknown to science. A summons to something from out of this universe. Well, you Johnnies do seem to ’ve acquired a pipeline to another world. You believe, most of you, that world is Heaven. I’m convinced you’re fooled; it’s actually hell.”
“No,” he groaned.
“I’ve got reason, remember. That’s where my kid was taken.”
“She couldn’t have been.”
“The demon answered your call. It happened that of the Nornwell people around, my wife and I had the—one household exposed that night to his action. So the revenge was worked on us.”
Marmiadon squared his puny shoulders. “Sir, I don’t deny your child is missing. But if she was taken . . . as an unintended result of my action . . . well, you needn’t fear.”
“When she’s in hell? Supposing I got her back this minute, what’ll that place have done to her?”
“No, honestly, don’t be afraid.” Marmiadon ventured to pat my hand where it clenched white-knuckled around the knife. “If she were in the Low Continuum, retrieval operations would involve temporal phasing. Do you know what I mean? I’m not learned in such matters myself, but our adepts are, and a portion of their findings is taught to initiates, beginning at the fourth degree. The mathematics is beyond me. But as I recall, the hell universe has a peculiar, complex space-time geometry. It would be as easy to recover your daughter from the exact instant when she arrived; there as from any other moment.”
The weapon clattered out of my grasp. A roar went through my head. “Is that the truth?”
“Yes. More than I’m canonically allowed to tell you—”
I covered my face. The tears ran out between my fingers.
“—but I want to help you, Mr. Matuchek. I repent my anger.” Looking up, I saw him cry too.
After a while we were able to get to business. “Of course, I must not mislead you,” he declared. “When I said it would be as easy to enter hell at one point of time as another, I did not mean it would not be difficult. Insuperably so, indeed, except for our highest adepts. No geometers are alive with the genius to find their way independently through those dimensions.
“Fortunately, however, the question doesn’t arise. I just wanted to reassure you enough so you’d listen to the real case. It may be that your daughter was removed in answer to my curse. That would account for the displeasure of my superiors with me. But if so, she’s under angelic care.”
“Prove it,” I challenged.
“I can try. Again, I’m breaking the rules, especially since I’m under penance and you’re an unbeliever. Still, I can try to summon an angel.” He smiled timidly at me. “Who knows? If you recant, your girl could be restored to you on the spot. A man of your gifts and energy would make a wonderful convert. Conceivably that’s been God’s purpose right along.“ ‘
I didn’t like the idea of a Calling. In fact, I was bloody well chilled by it. Marmiadon might think the creature that arrived was from Heaven. I didn’t. But I was prepared to dace worse than devils on this trip. “Go ahead.”
He turned his Bible to another passage I didn’t recognize. Kneeling, he started to chant, a high-pitched rise and fall which sawed at my nerves.
A wind blew down the tunnel. The lights didn’t go out, but a dimness came over my eyes, deepening each second, as if I were dying, until I stood alone in a whistling dark. And the night was infinite and eternal; and the fear left me, but in its place there fell the suddenly remembered absolute despair. Yet never had I known a grief like this-not the three times before, not when Valeria was taken, not when my mother died-for now I had reached in the body the final end of every hope and looked upon the ultimate emptiness of all things; love, joy, honor were less than as they had never been, and I stood hollow as the only existence in hollow creation.
Far, far away a light was kindled. It moved toward. me, a spark, a star, a sun. I looked upon the vast mask of a face, into the lifeless eyes; and the measured voice beat through me:
“The hour is here. Despite the afreet, the salamander, the incubus, and mortal man, your destiny has endured, Steven. It was not my will or my planning. I foresaw you would be among my keenest enemies in this cycle of the world, the danger that you would wreck my newest great enterprise. But I could not know what would bring you to confront my works: the thoughtless call of one fool, the rash obedience of another. Now you would seek to storm my inner keep.
“Be afraid, Steven. I may not touch you myself, buts I have mightier agents to send than those you met before. If you go further against me, you go to your destruction. Return home; accept your loss as humbly as befits a son of Adam; beget other children, cease meddling in public matters, attend solely to what is your own. Then you shall have pleasure and wealth, and success in abundance, and your days shall be long in the land. But this is if you make your peace with me. If not, you will be brought down, and likewise those you care for. Fear me.”
The sight, the sound, the blindness ended. I sagged, wet and a-reek with sweat looking stupidly at Marmiadon in the candlelight. He beamed and rubbed his hands. I could scarcely comprehend him:
“There! Wasn’t I right? Aren’t you glad? Wasn’t he glorious? I’d be down on my knees if I were you, praising God for His mercy.”
“Hu-u-uh?” dragged out of me.
“The angel, the angel!”
I shook myself, as if I’d come from wild waters that nearly drowned me. My heart was still drained. The world felt remote, fragile. But my brain functioned, in a mechanical fashion. It made my lips move. “I could have seen a different aspect of the being. What happened to you?”
“The crowned head, the shining wings,” he crooned. “Your child is safe. She will be given back to you when your penitence is complete. And because of having been among the blessed in her mortal life, she will become a saint of the true Church.”
Well, trickled through my head this doubtless isn’t the first time the Adversary’s made an instrument of people who honestly believe they’re serving God. What about Jonathan Edwards, back in old New England? “The floors of hell are paved with the skulls of unbaptized children.” Who really was the Jehovah he called upon?
“What did you experience?” Marmiadon asked.
I might or might not have told him my revelation. Probably not; what good would that have done? A sound distracted us both—nearing footsteps, words.
“What if he hasn’t been here?”
“We’ll wait for some hours.”
“In this thin garb?”
“The cause of the Lord, brother.”
I stiffened. Two men coming: monks, from the noise of their sandals; big, from its volume on the stone. The adept I met upstairs must have grown suspicious; or Marmiadon’s invocation and its effect had registered elsewhere; or both. If I got caught—I’d been warned. And my existence was beyond price, until I could get home the information that might help rescue Val.