Magic and Loss

Chapter 5

Whoever coined the term “absence makes the heart grow fonder” clearly had never met Boss Marz. Over the next few days the Maladanti quickly picked up from where they had left off, collecting “tribute” from the businesses along the waterfront and the brothels and cabarets of Duivel Street.

The return of the Maladanti was not felt just by the citizens of Golgotham; the twunts who had come to know the red-light district only during the crime cartel’s eclipse were swiftly and roughly schooled as to what was considered proper decorum in the gentlemen’s clubs under their “protection.”

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did. After that creepy little smile he gave me at the Fly Market, I was convinced Marz had something villainous planned for us. But no one left a decapitated goat’s head on our doorstep or attempted to curse me. I guess Boss Marz was simply too busy trying to reestablish his hold on Golgotham to waste time and energy on personal revenge.

Still, despite the Maladanti’s apparent disinterest in us, Scratch continued his nightly patrols, and I never took off the protective glad eye amulet Hexe created for me. Better safe than sorry. I’ll admit I was initially anxious, but after enduring jealous ex-girlfriends trying to curse me, being attacked by soulless homunculi, and having my arm broken by a demon, I had built up a pretty thick skin, and once several days had gone by and the crime lord had yet to make a move, I decided I had better things to do than worry about what Boss Marz’s evil plan might be.

So I put on my welder’s helmet and fired up my torch and threw myself headlong into my work. The Maladanti be damned, I had a project to finish and I wasn’t going to let a bunch of spellslinging goons in bad suits screw with my deadline. For the next month, Canterbury and I put in long, arduous hours every day of the week. I came home so exhausted I could barely take off my clothes before crawling into bed.

We finished the installation at the end of March, less than a week before the Jubilee. Even replicated in reduced scale, it still took three brawny Clydesdale-sized centaurs and six ipotane drovers to load and haul the crates containing the clockwork dragon to its new home. On the day of the delivery Canterbury led the convoy from the shop, hitched to a cart containing our welding equipment and other tools, while I rode shotgun with Fabio, the head drover.

The Museum of Supernatural History, located on the corner of Nassau Street and Maiden Lane, towers ominously over the surrounding buildings like some ancient temple dedicated to a long-forgotten god. It is set atop a thirteen-hundred-foot-square granite-clad concrete platform that covers an entire city block. A fifty-foot-wide, three-hundred-step staircase leads to a pair of huge bronze doors embossed with scenes depicting such ancient heroes as Chiron, Pan, and Arum. To the right of the stairs are six forty-foot-tall marble statues of Kymerans, male and female, in historical dress, while on the left are arrayed six rampant jade battle-dragons.

However, as majestic and awe-inspiring as its public face may be, we were essentially tradesmen making a delivery, and the museum’s loading dock, accessed via a subterranean deck, proved no different from that of any other skyscraper in New York.

“Stay put and keep an eye on the gear,” Canterbury instructed as he unhitched himself from the equipment cart. “I’ll go find the Curator.”

“No need, Master Canterbury,” said an elderly, but firm female voice. “I am already here.” A Kymeran woman with long cornflower blue hair woven into an elaborate double-drape French braid emerged from the shadows at the far end of the receiving platform. She wore a floor-length satin jacket the color of celadon pottery, with wide, stiff sleeves and a Mandarin collar, and about her neck was hung the badge of her office: a jade dragon with its tail in its mouth.

“I take it this is the installation?” the Curator asked, pointing to the crates the drovers were loading onto the dock.

“Yes, milady,” Canterbury replied, with a ritual bow of his head. “The larger box contains the body, while the others hold the wings, head and tail. It shouldn’t take more than six hours for it to be assembled.”

The Curator turned her pale gray gaze upon me. “I see your apprentice is human. That is most interesting. Please follow me to the exhibit hall.” Without further explanation, she turned her back to us and began to walk away, forcing us to hurry after her as she headed into a warren of rooms filled with warehoused exhibits. Everywhere I looked the past and present seemed to be colliding in a jumble of dust, rust, and flaking paint, as a small army of restorers cleaned and rehabbed artifacts that dated back before the pyramids of Giza.

Eventually we came to a large freight elevator. As we drew near, a sloe-eyed sphinx stepped forward, blocking our path. Like most of her kind, the human-headed lioness wore a golden vulture cap atop her jet-black head and a bejeweled pectoral about her neck. When she spoke, her voice was deceptively beautiful.

“Wood, wire, iron or stone,

Inside of me are treasures sown.

Some say I’d be a seat on high

For those unable to decide.

I cannot be opened by lock or hinge,

And protect all things that lie within. What am I?”

“You’re a garden fence,” the Curator replied without pause.

The sphinx smiled, displaying a fearsome double row of very sharp teeth, and then bowed her head, moving aside. As we passed by, the Curator ran her hand down the length of the monster’s spine, and in response the sphinx made a purring noise and arched her back like a house cat.

“Please forgive the extra security measures,” the Curator said, “but we have recently suffered a theft.”

Canterbury raised an eyebrow. “Was anything of value taken?”

“All our exhibits are of historical value,” the Curator replied as the freight elevator’s accordion gate opened on its own, revealing a car the size of a studio apartment. Upon entering, the gate trundled shut behind us, as if closed by spectral hands. “But, luckily, that which was taken is not completely irreplaceable.”

A few moments later we arrived on the second floor of the museum, which was currently closed to the public. As we walked toward the main exhibit halls, Canterbury’s hooves echoed loudly in the darkened hallway. The centaur grimaced and came to a halt.

“Give me a moment to muffle my shoes,” he said, digging into the satchel he wore slung about his shoulder. “I’m making a hell of a racket and I don’t want to scuff up your floors.”

As we waited for my master to reshoe himself, I peered into a gallery off the main hall that bore a sign that read, in both Kymeran and English: THE LOST KINGDOM. The far wall was covered by a mural depicting a city of towering glass spires, about which flew brightly colored dragons bearing riders dressed in ornate suits of armor like the one I had seen at Lady Syra’s penthouse, all of which was dwarfed by the terrifyingly huge tidal wave bearing down upon it. Scattered about the gallery were sealed display cases mounted on artfully lit plinths, inside of which were shards of pottery, bits of jewelry, and other tattered fragments that were all that remained of a civilization that drowned when mankind was picking its collective nits.

As I was studying the exhibits, I caught the scent of figs and dried roses and turned to find the Curator standing behind me. “There are artifacts in this section that date back fifty thousand years,” she said, speaking in a hushed voice. “It’s amazing anything was left at all, considering the survivors fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and what little they could gather in their arms.”

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to an exhibit behind velvet ropes. Inside the display case was an opalescent vessel the size and shape of an amphora that contained a viscous pinkish-purple liquid that sluggishly churned to and fro, like a captive octopus hiding in a jar.

“That is our most precious exhibit,” the Curator replied proudly. “It is the only living glass left in the world. Our ancestors used it to build their cities, much like the ancient Egyptians used mud and straw to build the pyramids.”

“That stuff is glass?” I frowned. “It looks more like the goop inside a lava lamp.”

“That’s because living glass is, indeed, alive,” she replied. “It’s a boneless, amorphous creature, not unlike a jellyfish. It thrives on magic, much the same way plants feed on carbon dioxide. Although it possesses no intellect, living glass is highly sensitive to the thoughts of those around it. Once tamed and sculpted, it takes on the appearance of its namesake, but has the strength of tempered steel.

“Back when Kymera was in full flower, there was a class of wizards, known as artifices, who specialized in domesticating and sculpting living glass. But when the tsunami struck, it wiped out the breeding tanks, along with those who tended them. The only artifex to escape the destruction of Kymera was the Lady Ursa, consort to the Witch King, Lord Arum. She brought this very same container of living glass with her when she fled Kymera. She planned to reestablish the species, but died before she could do so. There has not been another artifex since. It is considered a lost talent, drowned along with the shining spires it once raised.”

At the far end of the gallery was an archway leading, according to the signage, to the Hall of Arum, which was twice the size of the first gallery, and included life-sized dioramas. I stared in fascination at a wax dummy with long hair as blue as a peacock’s breast and golden eyes that seemed to possess an eerie luminosity. The mannequin was dressed in elaborately embroidered robes and seated on a golden throne shaped like a rampant dragon, its bejeweled wings spread wide to either side. On the wax figure’s head sat a diadem resembling a pair of dragons, one jet black, the other gold, entwined from tail to snout so that they faced one another, holding a fire opal the size of an egg balanced between their gaping jaws.

Behind the throne was a detailed three-dimensional landscape showing the building of a great city high atop a mountain. Architects could be seen in the background, consulting their schematics as surveyors hovered overhead on winged dragons. Meanwhile, an armored guard sat astride a bearded, wingless dragon, keeping an eye on the brace of Cro-Magnons dragging a mammoth block of stone up the steep hillside.

I glanced down at the placard mounted at the foot of the diorama, which read, Lord Arum, Savior of the Kymeran people and founder of the city-state of Dragon Arum, located in what is now known as the Carpathian Mountains, circa 50,000 B.C.E. (Before Common Era). The likeness of Lord Arum is modeled on his death mask.

There came a dull thumping sound behind me, and I turned to see Canterbury enter the gallery, his hooves now safely muffled by rubber cuffs. “I see you’re checking out your boyfriend’s family tree,” he commented dryly.

The Curator gave me a speculative look, as if sizing me up for a display case, then motioned for us to follow her. “Come this way, please.”

As we entered yet another exhibition hall, this one called the Hall of Sufferance, we paused in front of yet another diorama, this one depicting a Kymeran with a forked cerulean beard holding a platinum scepter entwined by a golden and a black winged dragon. Arrayed before him were representatives of all the major supernatural races found in Golgotham, each of them wearing a crown. These royal figures were forever frozen in an attitude of ritual obeisance, with either their heads lowered or knees bent.

The plaque attached to the diorama read: In the Year 1036 C.E. (Common Era), Lord Vexe accepted the fealty of King Chiron IX of the Centauri, King Omester XII of the Satyrisci, King Koukakala of the Leipreachán, Lord Tasson of the Dwarves, and Queen Tallemaja of the Huldrefolk, thereby granting their peoples eternal protection and asylum within his kingdom.

A polite cough from the Curator drew my attention away from the tableaux. “This is where the exhibit will be installed,” she said, motioning to a large alcove off the main gallery. “This section is dedicated specifically to the Dragon Rebellion and will feature a re-creation of the battle between Lord Bexe and his brother, General Vlad.” She pointed toward the ceiling. “As you can see, Vlad’s mount is already in place.”

I looked up and gave an involuntary gasp at the sight of a fierce black dragon, its wings spread wide and claws extended, directly over my head. It was easily twenty feet long, from snout to tail, with a wingspan to match. Once my heart slowed back down, I was able to marvel at its workmanship. The attention to detail, from its glowing red eyes and razor-sharp teeth to the barb at the end of its tail, was amazing. The thought of the skies having once been filled with such glorious monsters was both awe inspiring and terrifying.

“Nice work,” Canterbury admitted grudgingly. “Who fabricated it for you?”

“It’s actually a piece of taxidermy,” the Curator explained casually. “It’s a juvenile, of course. There’s no way we could display an adult battle-dragon indoors, much less two of them.”

“Speaking of which—what’s keeping those damned drovers?” Canterbury scowled as he fished his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “They should have been here by now!” He tapped the Bluetooth headset in his right ear. “Fabio! You better not be taking a break on my dime—and no, I don’t care what the Union has to say about it. If you and your team want to get paid, get your horses’ asses up here.”

As Canterbury continued to argue into his headset, I returned to the main hall and sat down on a large marble bench. As I did so, a trio of monitors arranged in a semicircle flickered on and the fourth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique swelled from hidden speakers. As I watched, a series of woodcuts and engravings of Witchfinders skinning werewolves, cutting off the extra digits of Kymerans, and burning nymphs and satyrs alive flashed across the flat screens.

“And so the war between the human and nonhuman populations of Europe and Eurasia raged for the better part of a century,” intoned a deep, authoritative, and decidedly British voice, “until the sacred groves were dyed red and the skies grew black with the ashes from the autos-da-fé. Then, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the twelfth century C.E., there came a sign from on high. . . .”

Suddenly images of the three holiest sites in Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture appeared, one to each screen: the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher; the Wailing Wall; and the Kaaba. Without warning, there came a thunderclap so loud it made me jump in my seat as fiery words written in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic miraculously appeared on the walls of all three shrines at the very same moment.

“And so it was commanded by the God of the Christians, YHWH of the Hebrews, and Allah of the Muslims,” the narrator intoned solemnly, “in words of fire, which still burn today, for all to see: ‘Suffer the witches to live, and those who come unto them, for they, too, are precious in My sight. Judge them not, lest ye be judged accordingly; and with what measure ye mete, shall I return measure to you a hundredfold.’”

The photographs of modern-day Jerusalem and Mecca dissolved, to be replaced by Leonardo DaVinci’s most famous painting: The Divine Truce. As I looked at Lord Bexe, surrounded by his former enemies, I was struck by how much Hexe resembled his ancestor. The only real difference between the two was the color of their hair—and the look of haunted sadness in the Witch King’s golden eyes. But perhaps that was merely artistic license on Leonardo’s part, since he re-created the famous meeting three hundred and eighty-seven years after the fact.

“Following what is now called the Divine Intervention, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, Pope Paschal II, Sultan Mehmed I, Patriarch John IX of Byzantium, Rabbi Ibn Megas, and Lord Bexe gathered in Constantinople, and with the signing of the Treaty of 1111, the Sufferance finally came to an end.”

“I see you’ve found our new multimedia exhibit. We recently updated it in order to make it more immersive.” The Curator had, once again, ghosted up behind me without my being aware of it. I had to hand it to the old girl—she had some mad ninja skills.

“Is that Sir Ian McKellen doing the narration?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” she said proudly. “Royal Shakespeare Company actors work best as the Voice of God, in my experience. The previous narration was by Sir Ralph Richardson, but we decided to record a new version when we upgraded from analog to digital sound.”

As I turned away, a flash of bright yellow caught my attention. It was a length of police tape wrapped about a display case. “Is that the exhibit you mentioned earlier—?”

“Yes, it is,” she sighed sadly. “We lost an entire collection of authentic Witchfinder devices: finger-cutters, witch-hammers, spell-gags—that sort of thing. The finger-cutter was particularly valuable, as it is rumored to be the same one Lord Bexe used to take his own magic upon surrendering the throne of Arum.”

I grimaced in disgust. “Why on earth would anyone want to steal stuff like that?”

“There is a brisk business in antique witchbreaking devices, not unlike the underground trade in Nazi memorabilia,” she replied. “Although it was part of the Treaty of 1111 that all such devices be destroyed, a few have managed to survive the centuries in private collections.”

The Curator fell silent as the brace of horse-legged ipotanes came clattering into the hall, lugging the welding equipment and heavy crates as if they were made of balsa wood. The head drover, Fabio, set his burden down with a loud thud that resounded throughout the gallery.

“Here is your delivery, Master Canterbury,” the ipotane announced sarcastically. “Please sign at the bottom, to verify that the items have been delivered in satisfactory condition. And I will be filing a complaint with my shop steward regarding your use of a racial slur.”

“You go ahead and do that,” the centaur grunted as he scribbled his initials on the paperwork.

Once Fabio and his team were out of the way, Canterbury and I opened the crates and set about connecting leg bones to hip bones, wing bones to shoulder bones, tailbone to butt bone. When I finished the final weld connecting the head bone to the neck bone, I stood back and gazed upon the fully assembled clockwork dragon.

It stood ten feet high and fifteen feet long, about a third of the size of an actual adult battle-dragon, or so I have been told, and was all gleaming gears and escapements. The body itself was eight feet long, with the remainder being its tail, which tapered down to a barbed point, like the cracker on a bullwhip. It had a long, wide snout, flaring nostrils, and antlerlike horns that grew from its forehead like antenna. Its powerful legs resembled those of a Komodo dragon, and the wings attached to its shoulder joints were tightly folded while grounded. Once activated, the clockwork mechanism inside it was designed to move the head and tail in a realistic fashion and trigger a bellows attached to a resonator in its chest, which simulated the creature’s infamous war cry.

“You did amazing work, Canterbury,” the Curator said with an appreciative nod. “She’s a real beauty.”

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You mean this thing is supposed to be female?”

“All battle-dragons were female; the males didn’t have wings,” the Curator replied. “The one Lord Bexe flew against General Vlad was called Skysplitter. She was the last dragon to die in the Disarmament. Immediately after Lord Bexe put her down, he severed his sixth fingers and went into exile.”

“It seems like such a waste,” I sighed.

“Indeed it does,” the Curator agreed. “But Lord Bexe truly had no choice. I have studied this single moment in history my entire adult life, from every possible angle, and have found no other means of resolution. General Vlad’s decision to attack human settlements following the signing of the Truce—knowing that mankind dare not retaliate for fear of divine punishment—forced the Witch King to take extreme action. There were already rumors circulating amongst the human powers that the Divine Intervention had been nothing more than Kymeran trickery. The Treaty of 1111 was in danger of being destroyed, and the Sufferance rekindled. Lord Bexe had no choice but to side with the human race against his own brother.” The Curator shook her head, as if clearing it of visions only she could see. “Well, that’s enough waltzing through history,” she said with a wan smile. “It’s time we put the finishing touches on our friend here and make her presentable so she can meet her public.”

She briskly clapped her hands, like a school teacher summoning silence from her class, and a wooden trunk appeared before her. Reaching into the voluminous folds of her sleeves she retrieved a large ring of keys of various sizes and shapes, quickly flicking through them until she came to the one she sought. She opened the trunk, revealing what looked like folded cloth-of-gold. She gestured with her right hand, like an orchestra conductor calling four-four time, and the empty skin rose upward like a gilded ghost.

The fingers of the Curator’s right hand moved like those of a puppeteer manipulating a marionette, guiding the shed so that it once more assumed the shape of the proud beast that had once worn it. The empty skin hovered above the clockwork dragon for a moment, then gently lowered itself so that it draped the automaton from the nape of its neck to an inch short of the barbed tail. Once the shed was in place, the Curator began tapping her fingertips together, as if she was playing a pair of invisible castanets, while at the same time miming a seamstress fitting a garment on a dressmaker’s dummy, until the gleaming skin was securely bonded to the clockwork dragon.

“Look at you,” Canterbury smiled, addressing his handiwork as if it were a beloved pet. “Aren’t you gorgeous?” He then turned and nodded to me. “Okay, kid—time to do your stuff!”

Before I became Canterbury’s apprentice, my talent for animating the sculptures I created was entirely unconscious, and invariably a response to “fight-or-flight” scenarios. But under his tutelage, I had since learned how to make deliberate contact with the spark that resides in my creations and activate it through the force of my will. All artists put a little of themselves into their work—but in my case it’s literally true.

I took a deep breath and focused my attention on the clockwork dragon, rerunning how I had put it together, piece by piece, in my mind. As I slowed my heart rate and steadied my breathing, I felt the edges of my consciousness travel outward, like the ripples on a pond. Suddenly the clockwork dragon reared back onto its hind legs, its forelegs clawing at the air, and spread gold foil wings that shimmered like the sun. It opened its mighty jaws and a deep, reverberating growl, like that of a bull alligator, rumbled forth from its chest. For the briefest of moments it felt as if the thing was genuinely alive, and I was its master, holding it on the end of an invisible leash.

“Turn the head toward me a tad,” Canterbury instructed. “Now lift the wings a little higher—spread them out farther—no! Too much! Pull it back a bit! Yes, that’s it! Perfect! You can let go now, Tate.”

I sighed and retracted my concentration, leaving the automaton posed to my master’s specifications. As my will slipped free of the clockwork dragon, I felt the spark I had awakened within it retreat, as if the golden reptile had fallen into hibernation.

“Most impressive,” the Curator said, regarding me like a potential exhibit. “I have never seen the inanimate made animate without the ritual of the Unspoken Word. Are you certain you’re fully human?”

“Believe me, there is nothing magical about my parents,” I assured her. “So how are we supposed to suspend this thing from the ceiling? I don’t see any hooks or mounts up there. . . .”

Before I could finish my sentence, the golden dragon floated upward like a Macy’s parade balloon, positioning itself opposite its ebon foe.

“The remainder of your commission is waiting for you in the administrative office on the ground floor, Master Canterbury,” the Curator said, returning her hands to her voluminous sleeves. “And don’t forget the gift shop on your way out.”