Rats and Gargoyles (48 page)

"Go on," Pharamond said. "Is there more?"

"Yes." Lucas raised the paper again to the light,
following the florid hasty script. "He says:
‘From Baltazar Casaubon,
Archemaster, Scholar-Soldier of the Invisible College.’ "

Pharamond grunted, black brows rising. "A
respectable Archemaster mixed up with those vagabonds?"

"My dear Pharamond, that was discredited years ago.
A completely fictitious organization. You’ll recall Dollimore’s excellent
article in
Mage and Magia.
However . . ." The elderly woman who had asked
about Heurodis rested her chins on her hand, staring down at the map-table. She
pointed with a plump finger. "This person
has
named all seven locations
of the necromantic
magia,
and in two cases more accurately than we could.
I believe we should listen to what else he has to tell us."

"You know about the necromancy?" Lucas blurted.

Shamar glanced up, remarked, "Discovered and
monitored this past two weeks," and went back to rustling the maps, dragging out
a second set from under the first.

"It’s come at
just
the wrong time. First
term’s always a bitch." The freckled Reverend Mistress at the far end of the
table looked up, her dark eyes meeting Lucas’s. "Your own attendance-record’s
pretty bad, Prince Candover."

"Regis, this isn’t the time for that!" Pharamond
tugged at his black beard, made to lean down the length of the table, and had to
move around to the side to stretch across and grab a chart. He reached back
without looking, snapped his fingers, and took the golden pin that the elderly
woman handed him.

"Archeius-arcanum-elementum-hal-hadid-aurum-neboch!"

His beard jutted as he raised his chin, gabbling
through the incantation. Lucas saw him pass the pin through the nearest
candle-flame and stab it into the map-paper.

A tall man on the far side of the table hitched
himself up, looked, frowned, then nodded. "That should hold it for now."

"If we’d known the university was investigating . .
." Lucas scratched through the hair of his bare chest, gazing at the room from
under dark meeting brows. His loosely buckled belt and stolen sword jingled as
he shifted position, shoulders straightening. "We might need what you know!"

"Candover couldn’t
afford
us." The dark man,
Shamar, made a small gesture at the paper in Lucas’s hand. "Well? Read the rest
of the
message,
lad."

" ‘We . . .
’
" The image in his head not Candover, the
White Mountain, Gerima or any other, but red hair streaked with silver, and
narrow shoulders in a white cotton shirt. He squinted at the Lord-Architect’s
scrawling hand:

"
‘From B. Casaubon, Etc., to the Reverend
tutors:

" ‘What I do now with the Archemaster’s Art is
against immediate danger. Time leaves me time for nothing else, until that’s done. You are not above this battle,
masters. Therefore this appeal to you. ’ "

Pharamond snorted. The freckled Reverend Mistress
held a map of Nineteenth District up to the darkness of the windows, impaling a
point with a silver pin.

"
‘You will realize, or I am mistaken in your
Arts, how one single cause brings about epidemic in the city, powerlessness in
the Fane, and the demonium meridanium, the Night Sun. Therefore this appeal. .
.’ "

Lucas read with difficulty, hearing his own voice
falling flat into the air.

"
‘Masters, you are students of knowledge and
wisdom. I put this to you plainly therefore.

" ‘It hath oft been writ, nothing can be done in
magia without knowledge of that branch of Mathematics which is mystical and
spiritual, that is, Mathesis.’ "

Lucas held the paper up, letting his gaze sneak
past it. Heads around the table lifted, paying attention.

"
‘To wit, Pico della Mirandola his eleventh
conclusion: "By numbers, a way is had, to the searching out, and understanding
of everything able to be known. " ’ "

"A mathematical analysis is the basis of a sound
understanding, very true." The dark Reverend Master Shamar nodded thoughtfully,
resting his chin on his hand, his gaze still on the piled maps. "A man of
learning, your Archemaster."

"Not to say craft." Lucas lowered his gaze and
hastily read on:

"
‘And to our immediate crisis this:

" ‘Doctor Johannes Dee his Book, writes how the
gods, through their divine Numbering, produce orderly and distinct all things.
For Their Numbering, then, was their Creating of all things. And Their continual
numbering, of all things, is the conservation of them in being. And, where and
when They shall lack an unit, there and then, that particular thing shall be
Discreated. ’ "

"We’re already facing a consensus reality
breakdown." Pharamond stroked his beard. "What would he have us do–pray to the
gods to keep numbering the formulae of our existence?"

‘It hath oft been writ, nothing can be done in
magia without knowledge of that branch of Mathematics which is mystical and
spiritual
,
that is
,
Mathesis.’
Title page of
Monas Hieroglyphica,
John Dee, Antwerp, 1564

"Don’t be ingenuous." Regis snapped her fingers impatiently. "What does your Archemaster
say? What does he want us to do?"

Lucas cleared his throat and read into the
attentive silence:

"
‘You have amongst you natural philosophers,
professors of Mathesis, physicists. You must set about numbering the formulae of
the world; add your support to Those Who number All, in this hour when They
begin to fail us.

" ‘Do this. Hold fast to the measurements and
proportion of macrocosm and microcosm, as they become discreated–as it is the
law that spatial, temporal, diurnal things be discreated when They cease to hold
them in existence.

" ‘Break that law, masters.

" ‘Not merely the criminal law, but the laws of
nature. Cheat physics, matter, energy, and form.
Break the laws of Mathesis.
No hope to counteract the equal and opposite reaction to the use of true
necromancy now, no hope
–
but this.’ "

All through the vast network under the heart of the
world, lanterns and candles bob circles of light on brickwork. Rats and humans
crowd the platforms and the train-tunnels where niter spiders across curved
walls.

Here and there, they fight.

Refugees: some sleep in an exhausted daze; some
stare into nothing; some calm their children; some cry themselves into hysteria.

Even in the train-tunnels it is possible to hear
the crashing collapse of buildings in the city above.

Refugees.

A female Rat in a torn scarlet jacket, the priest
Fleury, crouches with her hand to the cinder-floor of a tunnel. Far, far below
the heart of the world. Below (although she has lost all direction) Ninth Bank
House, Moon Lane. Through long dark fingers resting on the earth, she senses
something.

Silver gleams.

A substanceless petal brushes her snout, and she
springs up, hand going to the
ankh
at her throat. Black petals drift down
from the tunnel ceiling. Voices behind her shriek.

Now even an untrained priest can tell that
necromantic
magia
flowers beneath the city. Growing, still. Growing into
its full power. Transmuted from its first design and purpose until, now, it is
nothing its creator would recognize.

Black and silver, unbearably sweet: the haunting of
roses throws out tendril and bramble and runner, choking the tunnel ahead,
spreading rapidly towards her.

She has no desire to begin a panic stampede in the
crowded tunnel.

Not until she sees the tide of nightmare flooding
up in the wake of the haunting does Fleury break, scream and run.

Ribbed wings curdled the sky. Dust puffed out from
between the masonry blocks of the wall. Desaguliers shouted a warning and
leaped.

The wall of the palace’s aust wing slid out, almost
slowly, gathered momentum and collapsed into the courtyard with a roar and a
whirlwind of dust. Flying glass and splintered beams battered the side of the
commandeered siege-engine.

"Fire!" Desaguliers clawed his way back along the
platform to the Cadets loading the ballista. One tripped the lever as he got
there. The catapult shot up, slammed against the upper beam and halted, the
machine quivering.

A scoop of Greek fire sprayed skyward, lashing the
bodies of the swarming acolytes. The burning gelatine clung.

"It’s not affecting them! They don’t even feel it!"

Desaguliers slid into cover beside St. Cyr at the
back of the machine. Masonry dust drifted by, shadowing them with light. Screams
echoed from Rats trapped in the collapsed building. St. Cyr pointed.

"The Chapel! It’s their next target."

Black wings beat, falling from the sky. One acolyte
gripped the roof with claws that sank into the blue tiles, bristle-tail whipping
up to curve about a spire. Down, down: ten, fifteen, twenty of the Fane’s
acolytes covered the roof and walls, digging in with their fangs and clawed feet
and the claws at their ribbed wing-joints.

Desaguliers touched his hand to his lean snout,
brought it away bloody. His other hand ached. Dully surprised, he realized it
gripped the stump of a sword. He prised his fingers open and let it fall,
reaching across the slumped body of a brown Rat to take her rapier. He shoved a
fallen pistol through his belt.

"Try to shift them from there?"

"We’ve taken thirty per cent losses, at least." St.
Cyr flinched as the siege-engine shook, another bolt of fire catapulted skyward.
"We can’t do anything else. Retreat, for gods’ sakes."

Desaguliers stared out across the great courtyard.
The Night Sun glinted from shards of glass, from buckles and rings on fallen
bodies. At least a dozen Cadets lay in plain view: most dead, one moving still,
another screeching. The gutted palace cast shadows of light across split-open
halls and chambers and kitchens.

Black shadows fell only from the daemons, shrinking
as they soared, growing immense as they struck.

Over the crackling of fire and screams of the
injured, he heard a roar. The roof of the chapel fell in, rafters jutting up
like broken ribs. A scarlet-jacketed priest ran outside, his black fur burning.
An acolyte swooped, beak dipping. Across the intervening yards Desaguliers
clearly heard the snap of the priest’s spine.

"Down into the lower tunnels?" Tired, he heard a
question in his voice that a while ago would have been an order. "St. Cyr?"

"We can defend the train-tunnels. They’d be at a
disadvantage if they followed."

He looked at the other black Rat, smiling wearily.

"Give the orders, then. Retreat. Take whoever you
can with you, civilian or military. Close the tunnels after you."

Desaguliers knelt up, one hand on the hot metal of
the engine-platform.

" ‘You?’ " St. Cyr demanded.

Desaguliers rubbed his eyes, wincing at sandpaper
vision. Burned patches charred his fur; a lean black Rat, febrile, running on
nervous courage and little else. One shoulder lifted in a shrug, and he winced
as his sword- harness chafed a patch of raw flesh.

"I’m taking a squad of the Cadets." He jerked his
head towards the last unfallen roofs of the palace, the shattered windows of the
cloverleaf-vaulted audience hall. "His Majesty. They can’t be moved, not now.
But defended–possibly. "

"No!"

"No, I know," Desaguliers said softly, "but
loyalty’s a hard habit to break. In the end."

Before St. Cyr could protest again he leaped from
the metal ladder to the ground, running at full tilt across the wreckage-strewn
courtyard, yelling hoarsely to the Cadets as he ran.

Warmth struck. Lucas glanced up to see
heating-pipes running along the vaulted arches of the Long Gallery; stopped, his
breathing suddenly shallow.

Machines towered to either side. A narrow space ran
down the center of the hall, diminishing into distance all of a quarter of a
mile away. Bars of light-shadow fell from clerestory windows to a polished
parquet floor. Lucas held up the five-branched candelabrum. The smell of hot wax
dizzied him.

"Analytical engines!"

He strode forward, barefoot, the candles held high,
sword and sword-belt clashing at his hip. His kerchief, knotted about his dirty
neck, tangled with carved stone talismans hanging on chains.

Ranked to either side, cogs and shafts gleaming
with darkness where the Night Sun’s light shafted in, the great analytical
engines rose twice his height and more. He walked staring at banks of dials,
levers, ornamented iron handles; moved a step closer and held up the candles to
peer at the interlocking network of large and small cogwheels, springs, iron
shafts and notched gearwheels.

A small iron plate shone, dye-stamped with a
factory’s mark.
White Mountains: Candover.