The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 9
Occultus
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I struggled against the hands that had grabbed me. Though I wasn’t sure they were physical hands, their cold grip was like steel. I didn’t have the strength to pull away from them. I might have worked out a magical way to do it, but there wasn’t time.
I couldn’t analyze the hostile magic, either, but I quickly realized one thing—I was no longer in Pharaoh’s palace at Alexandria. I couldn’t miss the sudden, jarring absence of the magical maelstrom that had seemed close to ripping the fabric of reality. I was too disoriented to tell much else.
Rainbows and darkness alternated around me as I was swept along like a drowning man trapped in a river’s current. I no longer had any sense of time or place. I could still have been in Egypt, or I could have been on a different plane of existence. I could have been trapped this way for just a few minutes or for thousands of years. I couldn’t even tell whether my surroundings were illusion or reality.
At some point, I stopped moving, and my environment settled a little bit. I was lying on the floor of a dark chamber. I knew because I could feel the floor beneath me. There were also dark walls, though they must have been translucent, because I could see rainbow swirls just beyond them that provided the chamber’s only light.
I braced myself when I realized I wasn’t alone.
The figure standing in front of me was completely dark, as if it had been carved from shadow. But using the Philosopher’s Stone to refine my vision, I could see minute differences in the levels of darkness that betrayed the figure’s physical nature. For one thing, the rainbow light caused the figure to cast a shadow, barely distinguishable against the darkness of the floor.
I opened my mouth to speak but paused for a moment. I wanted to be sure I could keep my voice from shaking too obviously.
“Welcome,” said the figure in a voice that sounded male, human, and fairly old—the voice of an experienced sorcerer, perhaps.
“Isn’t it a little odd to welcome someone you’ve just kidnapped?” I asked. To my relief, my voice sounded light, unconcerned.
“Our intent was not to kidnap you but to rescue you.”
“Rescue me from what? I was in a tight spot in Egypt, but I would have gotten out of it.”
“That is far from certain,” replied my mystery host. “But no, it was not from the Egyptians we rescued you, but from Medea, who is up to no good, as you should have figured out by now.”
Medea wasn’t going to be winning any popularity contests in the supernatural world any time soon. But I’d worked with her long enough to know that she was far from being the monster Euripides had portrayed in his Medea. And though she’d hated me at first, she’d gotten over the fact that I was a reincarnation of her disloyal husband, Jason.
“I’ve seen no evidence that she’s evil,” I replied. “In fact, she seems to be doing a lot of good.”
“I am disappointed,” he said. “I expected more from you.”
“At least, Medea doesn’t hide in the shadows.” I needed to figure a way out of here, but even with the help of the Philosopher’s Stone, I was having a hard time analyzing the magical part of my surroundings. I knew what the rainbows were really made of, and I could have started transforming the nearby ones, which might have unscrambled my vision. But the shadowy stranger might have realized what I was doing—and our friendly conversation might suddenly be a lot less friendly. I needed to keep him talking until I had a chance to be alone.
My host shrugged. “The world is a dangerous place—as you know better than most. The darkness—and, as you have no doubt noticed, the rainbows—keep us protected from prying eyes. Not even the best seer could get a vision of this place.”
“But if, as you say, you brought me here to save me, you should at least be able to tell me your name.”
After an uncomfortably long pause, the stranger replied, “You may call me Occultus.”
“You’re going with the Latin word for hidden or secret? That doesn’t exactly inspire trust.”
“If we wished you ill, would we not have harmed you already?” asked Occultus, his voice betraying his annoyance.
“Who is this we you refer to?”
Another long pause didn’t do anything to calm my fears.
“We have no public name, but we call ourselves The Brotherhood of the Rainbow. Since you have some knowledge of alchemy, you will appreciate that the rainbow symbolizes totality, with each color representing a different phase in the process of alchemical transformation. It also symbolizes a bridge between heaven and earth, or between the alchemical elements of earth and air. As the rainbow can also be thought of as a union of fire and water—sunlight and rain—it can be seen as embodying all of the alchemical elements in its function or its nature.”
His voice had become progressively more excited as he spoke, though I couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely thrilled by alchemy or just trying to distract me.
But I wasn’t distracted. I spent the whole time trying to glean what information I could from visual clues like his silhouette and from whatever the Philosopher’s Stone could give me.
I didn’t get much in either case. His silhouette made me think he wasn’t armed, though it was possible he had a concealed dagger. But that wouldn’t matter much if he had powerful magic. However, there was too much interference for me to tell. He might have had none. He might have been almost godlike. Though I was close to him, the background was too magically noisy for me to be sure of anything. Reality was so vague here that I wouldn’t put it past him to be able to hide his magic in a number of different ways.
“Exactly what is the Brotherhood of the Rainbow trying to accomplish? I’m assuming the organization doesn’t exist solely to protect me.”
Occultus chuckled. “No, we have broader goals. The most important one is reversing some of the effects of the Catastrophe.”
That got my attention. “To do that, you’d need to understand what caused it.”
“Our understanding is. . .incomplete at this time. That is why we require your help. The Philosopher’s Stone can give us the final piece of information we need to begin our work.”
My heartbeat sped up a little. How could Occultus know that I had the stone? If his magical senses worked better than mine did in this environment, he could probably tell simply by watching me. I’d been using the stone’s energy to investigate my surroundings. But his bringing me here suggested that he already knew about the stone. Did he have a spy in New Colchis? Even if so, the person would have to have been fairly close to me, and I was sure no one in Medea’s inner circle would have betrayed her—or me, for that matter.
A shrill, repetitive sound that might have been an alarm rattled my nerves. Occultus’s body language suggested that it unnerved him as well.
“Excuse me a moment,” he said. Before I could reply, he vanished in a multicolored flash.
I wasn’t sure how long he’d be gone, but I did what I could to investigate the chamber. I couldn’t yet be absolutely sure what his agenda was—but I didn’t trust him. At best, he was completely wrong about Medea, which made me question the accuracy of his other statements. At worst, he was up to no good himself. Either way, I needed to get out of here.
I found no obvious exit, and the walls, though translucent, were solid enough that breaking through them would require substantial magic—and be very conspicuous to whoever Occultus had assigned to watch this. . .cell. That seemed the most fitting label.
I tried using Hermetic magic to open a portal, but all I got was a momentary pearl-gray mist. It was likely outgoing portals that used anything other than rainbow magic—for lack of a better term—were blocked.
I could probably escape from the room, but I had no idea what the surrounding area was like or how many guards might descend on me the moment I was outside.
As I planned my escape, I had a moment of doubt. Occultus’s methods were dubious at best. He’d spied on me. He’d kidnapped me. But what if he could reverse the worst effects of the Catastrophe if he had my help? He could be wrong about other things but right about that.
Logically, those were good questions, but my instincts continued to scream at me to escape—not later, but right now.
One tiny bit of information helped me harmonize instinct and logic. The same magic that had swept me away had been trying to prevent the ghost of Hermes from speaking to us. I couldn’t imagine a good reason for doing that—but I had no trouble thinking of evil ones.
As I became more aware of my environment, I realized the difference between the darkness around me now and the earlier manifestations of what must have been the same power. When I had seen figures I now knew where members of the Brotherhood of the Rainbow running toward me, they had been as dark as Occultus, but their darkness was blended with rainbow shimmers. That was true also of the force that brought me here. But Occultus had no rainbows running through his darkness. Neither did this chamber. The same kind of rainbow swirls were just outside, presumably shielding the chamber from any kind of detection. But their effect was not quite as strong inside. I still couldn’t tell anything much about what was happening beyond the walls. However, I was beginning to sense more information about the room itself.
The walls, the ceiling and the floor had no physical material in them at all. They were literally solidified shadow. I knew such things were possible. Iskios, Jason’s grandson, the child of his estranged daughter, Eriopis and the primal god, Tartarus, could do some amazing things with shadow. But the solid shadows here didn’t feel like Iskios’s power. I could sense a little bit of Greek magic, but there were also a large number of other forces at work.
Why build a structure so reliant on magic instead of using ordinary materials? If the Brotherhood ever lost control of the anti-nyv in those rainbows, the whole place would disintegrate in under a minute.
Occultus reappeared in a flash of rainbow light that momentarily scrambled my magical senses again.
“I apologize for the delay,” he said in a warm tone that sounded fake to me—the voice of a slick salesman rather than an ally. “We had some. . .unexpected complications.”
“Which you aren’t going to tell me about,” I said, keeping my voice carefully neutral.
“You will learn everything. . . once you commit to our cause.”
Finally, we were getting somewhere.
“What kind of commitment do you want?”
“An oath to support our plans, reinforced by a binding spell.”
No one in their right mind would swear an oath involving such a sweeping commitment, particularly not to a total stranger. Most supernatural beings were wary of swearing oaths at all, knowing the power they held even without binding spells. Indeed, it was considered rude at best to demand that even real friends make such a commitment, except in the most unusual circumstances.
Yet refusing might cause me to be subjected to anything from mind control to on-the-spot execution. I’d need to find a middle ground until I could come up with an escape plan.
“You’re asking a lot and giving me very little explanation of your aims,” I said. “What have you learned so far about the Catastrophe, and how exactly do you plan to use the Philosopher’s Stone to reverse it?”
I didn’t trust Occultus one bit—but he might know something useful.
“There are things I can’t tell you until you are sworn to us,” he said slowly. “But I can tell you part of what we know. A great many powerful practitioners worked on the magic that provoked the Catastrophe. We don’t know what their goals were, but we do know that they mixed a number of different magical processes, some of which involved alchemy.”
“Even school children know that much,” I said, watching Occultus carefully as my senses recovered from the earlier rainbow burst.
Unlike the chamber itself, Occultus wasn’t made entirely from shadow. Nor was the shadow surrounding him a part of his body, as had been the case with Iskios. It would be more accurate to say that he was coated in shadow. It was darkest around his head, so I couldn’t even begin to make out facial features. But I did manage to catch a glimpse of his clothing—and I cringed.
Black, monk-like robes would reinforce the effectiveness of the shadow coating, but Occultus’s robes looked identical to those worn by the inquisitors, a faction best known for burning people at the stake for practicing magic—or for having any faerie or other nonhuman ancestry.
Surely, the choice of attire must be coincidence. But inquisitors had shown the ability to manipulate anti-nyv, apparently without realizing that they were doing magic. And anti-nyv was a key component in the Brotherhood’s rainbows. Could that be coincidence? Up until the appearance of banestones, powered by anti-nyv, most magic practitioners hadn’t even known that such a force existed.
Occultus was responding to my last comment, but I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I kept staring at his outfit, trying to determine whether it really meant anything. In the process, I noticed a detail the Brotherhood was obviously trying to hide—a dark-on-dark design woven into the black robe with black thread of a slightly different shade. Without the help of the Philosopher’s Stone, I’d never have seen that slight difference. It was invisible to the naked eye, and it didn’t have magic, so even someone sensitive to the supernatural wouldn’t normally have noticed it.
The design covered most of Occultus’s chest and featured an exploding planet—Earth, presumably. Hovering above this destruction was a cowled head, smiling broadly at a new catastrophe even bigger than the one that shifted the balance between technology and magic.
Could it really be that the Brotherhood wasn’t seeking to reverse the Catastrophe at all? That what they really wanted was to help it reach what they saw as its logical culmination?
I was not about to stick around to find out.
I tried hard not to think about just how wrong an escape attempt could go. But Occultus seemed to want me alive. Perhaps that would prevent him from reacting as strongly as he could.
The enemy of any magic involving shadow was light. The shadows around me might be resistant to most physical light sources. But the Philosopher’s Stone, also known as the light of nature, was a completely different matter.
Occultus was still talking when I threw my hands up and projected pure light at him. He shrieked in surprise and closed his eyes against the light as the shadows around him disappeared. I didn’t notice much about him except that he was bearded and gray-haired, confirming my guess about his age. He didn’t seem to be preparing any kind of magical retaliation, so I took a second to turn the black thread in his robe design white, just so that he’d know I’d seen it. Then I turned the light full force on the wall to my left, which shuddered and vanished.
I had to use a bit of air magic to fly through the opening, but I hadn’t used any Hermetic magic in some time, so my head didn’t start aching immediately. That quickly changed, however, when the shrill alarm from before started blaring at ear-splitting volume.
Two problems immediately became apparent.
First, I had no idea where I was going. My light didn’t immediately vanquish the rainbow swirls as it did the shadows, so my magical senses were too scrambled to navigate effectively.
Second, shadowy members of the Brotherhood started flying at me from all directions. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I could protect myself against any shadow-based attack by surrounding myself with light, which I did immediately. But from what little I could tell through the rainbow interference, they had far more magic than just the shadow kind at their disposal. It was surging toward me like a tidal wave.
My heart felt as if it would beat right out of my chest when I admitted the truth to myself.
I had just made a colossal mistake.
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