“Pig with the head of a mule,” she said, in a lowered tone, “do you stop looking at me like a sick calf, and go away! For I must confess in what a state of sin I have been living, as a devil’s wife, and I have little faith in your black magic, and you know as well as I do that there is no telling what blasted tree-trunk or consecrated bottle or something of that sort he may seal you up in until the holy Morrow of Judgment, precisely as he has done all those other evil spirits.”
Ninzian replied, “I shall not ever leave you of my freewill.”
“But, Ninzian, it is as if I were putting you into the bottle, myself! For if I do not tell that spiteful old bag of bones”—she crossed herself,—“I mean, that beloved and blessed Saint, why, he would never have the sense, or rather, I intended to say that his faith in his fellow creatures is too great and admirable for him ever to suspect you, and so you see just how it is!”
“Yes, my most cruel love,” said Ninzian, “it is quite as if you yourself were thrusting me into a brazen bottle, for all that you know how dependent I am on open-air exercise, and as if you were setting to it the unbreakable seal of Sulieman-ben-Daoud with your own dear hands. But, nevertheless—!”
He took her hand, and gallantly he kissed her finger-tips.
At that she boxed his jaws. “You need not think to make a fool of me! no, not again, not after all these years! Oh, but I will show you!”
Then Balthis also went into the house where the gaunt Saint was making ready to hear her mensual confession.
Chapter LIV. Magic That Was Rusty
Poor-spirited, over-easy-going Ninzian sat upon the stone bench, an outcast now in his own garden: and he thought for a while about the pitiless miracles with which this Holmendis had harried the fairies and the elves and the salamanders and the trolls and the calcars and the succubae and all the other amiable iniquities of Poictesme; and about the Saint’s devastating crusades against moral laxity and free-thinking and the curt conclusions which he had made with his ropes and his fires to the existence of mere heresy. It seemed uncomfortably likely that in dealing with a devil this violent and untactful Holmendis would go to even greater lengths, and would cast off all compunction, if somehow Ninzian could not get the better of him.
So Ninzian decided to stay upon the safe side of accident, by destroying the fellow out of hand. Ninzian took from his pocket the stone ematille, and he broke off a branch from a rose-bush. With the flowering rose branch Ninzian traced a largish circle about his sleek person, saying, “I infernalize unto myself the circumference of nine feet about me.” Here the sign of Sargatanet was repeated by him thrice. Then Ninzian went on, “From the east, Glavrab; from the west, Garron; from the north—”
He paused. He scratched his head. The boreal word of power was Cabinet or Cabochon or Capricorn or something of that kind, he knew: but what it was exactly was exactly what Ninzian had forgotten. He would have to try something else.
Ninzian therefore turned to the overthrowing of Holmendis by cold and by heat. Ninzian said:
“I invoke thee who art in the empty wind, terrible, invisible, all-potent contriver of destruction and bringer of desolation. I upraise before thee that rod from which proceeds the life abhorrent to thee. I invoke thee through thy veritable name, in virtue of which thou canst not refuse to hear,—JOERBET-JOPAKERBETH-JOBOLCHOSETH—”
But there he gave it up. That dreadful, jaw-cracking obscene appellation had, Ninzian recollected, eleven more sections: but in bewildered Ninzian’s mind they were all jumbled and muddled and hopelessly confused.
After that a rather troubled High Bailiff rearranged his clothing; and he now tried to get in touch with Nebiros, the Field-Marshal and Inspector General of Hell. But again Ninzian was in his magic deplorably rusty.
“Agla, Tagla, Malthon, Oarios—” he rattled off, handily enough,—and once more he bogged in an appalling stretch of unrememberably difficult words. Black magic was not an accomplishment in which you could stay expert without continual practice, and Ninzian had regrettably neglected all infernal arts for the last five centuries and over.
So in this desperate pinch he turned perforce to a simple abecedary conjuration such as mere wizards used; and the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra said, rather shame-facedly, “Prince Lucifer, most dreadful master of all the Revolted Spirits, I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy mighty minister, Lucifuge Rofocale, being desirous to make a pact with him—”
And Ninzian got through this invocation at least, quite nicely, though he a trifle bungled the concluding words from the Grand Clavicle.
This conjuration, however, worked a bit too well. For instead of the hoped-for appearance of genial old Lucifuge Rofocale endurably disinfected of his usual odor, now came to Ninzian, from among the sweet-smelling rose-bushes, the appearance of a proud gentleman in gold and sable; and a rather perturbed Ninzian bowed very low before his liege-lord, Lucifer, Prince over all the Fallen Angels.
Chapter LV. The Prince of Darkness
The newcomer paused for an instant, as if he were reading what was in the troubled mind of Ninzian, and then he said: “I see. Surkrag, whom mortals hereabouts call Ninzian! O unfaithful servant, now must you be punished for betraying the faith I put in you. Now is your requital coming swiftly from this ravening Saint, who will dispose of you without mercy. For your conjuring would disgrace a baby in diapers; you have forgotten long ago what little magic you ever knew; and when this Holmendis gets hold of you with one hand and exorcises you with the other, there will be hardly a cinder left.”
So did Ninzian know himself to stand friendlessly, between the wrath of evil and the malignity of holiness, both bent upon his ruin. He said, “Have patience, my prince!”
But Lucifer answered sternly: “My patience is outworn. No, Surkrag, there is no hope for you, and you become shameless in perfidy as steadily you go from good to better. Once you would have scorned the least deviation from the faith you owe me: but a little by a little you have made compromises with virtue, through your weak desire to live comfortably with your wives, and this continual indulgence of women’s notions is draining from you the last drop of wickedness. Not fifty centuries ago you would have been shocked by a kindly thought. Twenty centuries back and you at least retained a proper feeling toward the Decalogue. Now you assist in all reforms and build churches without a blush. For is there nowadays, my deluded, lost Surkrag! in candor, is there any virtue howsoever exalted, is there a single revolting decency or any form of godliness, before which your gorge rises? No, my poor friend: you came hither to corrupt mankind, and instead they have made you little worse than human.”
The Angel of Darkness paused. He had spoken, as became such a famous gentleman, very temperately, without rage, but also without any concealing of his sorrow and disappointment. And Ninzian answered, contritely:
“My prince, I have not wholly kept faith, I know. But always the woman tempted me with the droll notion that our sports ought to open with a religious service, and so I have been now and then seduced into marriage. And my wife, no matter what eyes and hair and tint of flesh she might be wearing at the time, has always been bent upon having her husband looked up to by the neighbors; and in such circumstances a poor devil has no chance.”
“So that these women have been your ruin, and even now the latest of them is betraying your secret to that implacable Saint! Well, it is honest infernal justice, for since the time of Kaiumarth you have gained me not one follower in this place, and have lived openly in all manner of virtue when you should have been furthering my power upon Earth.”