The Sorcerer

ERIC ERICSON

A New English library Original Publication 1978

by Eric Ericson 1978

‘

FIRST NEL PAPERBACK EDITION FEBRUARY 1978

Conditions of sale: This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise be lent, refold, hired out? or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which It Is published and without n similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

NEL Books art published by New English Library Limited from Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, London

45003565 4

INITIATION

God Almighty, what have I got myself into? What a setting for an orgy. No divans, no floor cushions, no thick carpet. Just a big draughty room with a bare wooden floor. I must have been out of my mind to agree to this. I thought Esta knew what she was talking about.

Mason was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle of two dozen men and women, all naked. Up above, a many-branched chandelier with dim bulbs helped make the scene more dismal. Even the background music was uncomfortable. Electronic workshop gratings and winnings that set the teeth on edge.

I suppose by orgy they meant a screwing party where we all go off with somebody else’s partner. What a faree! Esta promised to bring me to an orgy beyond anything I could imagine as long as I agreed to go along with their games first. Ritual, she called it. And she’s not even in the circle yet.

She had brought Mason to the house, told him to strip and sent him upstairs to sit with the others there. She had other things to do first, she said, before she came up for the start of the ritual. Whose house is this? he asked her. Frazer’s, she said, and you’ll meet him later on when things get going. Go upstairs and take your place with the others. You’ll find a vacant place between two women. They’ll show you what to do.

Only there was nothing to do except sit cross-legged on the hard floor and wait. No one spoke a word. They all looked as if they were in a pot trance, glassy-eyed and gone-out.

There were metal bowls in the four corners of the room, giving off a sweetish vapour. Nothing that Mason recognized. But dope of some sort for sure, he thought. Dope and the ultrasonics of the imitation music, working away together on the nervous system to get us in the mood for whatever it is we are going to do. It’s all too damned obvious.

He looked round at the women speculatively. Would it be free choice when the games got going, or did they work on some system of drawing lots? Or car keys, or whatever? No, couldn’t be that, because everyone’s clothes and other gear were all downstairs. All as naked as the day we were born.

In the middle of the room two wooden trestles supported a yellowish stone slab, four or five inches thick and about six feet across. It was circular, but the edges were rough and unfinished, A big stone wheel. That’s for the live show, he thought. But why make it so drab and uncompromising?

Who would perform first? The women were a more attractive lot than he had hoped for at this sort of gathering. Mostly in their late twenties and thirties, reasonably good figures. One fat woman who was older, and a skinny girl in her teens. Mason was sitting between these two.

As I’m the new boy they put me next to the two I fancy least. Well, that’s the way it goes everywhere. First in the queue gets the best helping. Still, we’ll see about that when the party warms up. If it ever does.

The men were not the old lechers or hung-up businessmen Mason had half expected. About the same age as the women, give a few years, like himself. A couple of them maybe ten years older and one exception who must be approaching sixty.

Taken together they looked very ordinary. If they were sitting on chairs with their clothes on they could have been taken for an amateur dramatic group reading a play. But in cold blood there was something incongruous about so many breasts and quiescent male parts on show. Off-putting.

Should I get up and go now before the party begins? It’s going to be a complete flop. Not even a drink to get the blood circulating. I couldn’t perform to save my life. I don’t know what Esta could have been thinking about when she suggested coming here. She’s been before, so she must know what it’s like. I’ll give it a bit longer.

There was a muddy sea-shore with a ring of black pebbles round a jagged central rock. A grey lowering sky and a cutting wind. Two gulls flew screeching from the sea and settled on the white-streaked rock. Their round red eyes stared at him unblinking.

Mason shook his head to dispel the illusion. No rock, no beach, no birds. Only the dope burning in the bowls making me hallucinate. But it was so real I felt the wind on my body.

There was a ring of trees round a glade. A moss-grown log in the middle. Two ravens flapped down from the sky to perch on the log. Their feathers gleamed blue-black in the fading sunlight.

The people were getting to their feet. Mason struggled up with them, shaking his head again to clear it. Psychochemistry, he thought. Changing the perception of this room and the contents into beach and forest. That could be interesting, though it might be dangerous.

They had stood up because Esta had come in through the double doors at the end of the room. She was naked, of course. In each of her hands she held a lighted candle as thick as an arm. She passed through the circle to the slab and stood the candles firmly on it. The miserable overhead lights went out.

In the last few weeks, since he had known her, Mason had been to bed with her plenty of times. It seemed to him that she had never looked so naked as she did now and his logical mind groped for an explanation. The breasts he had handled, at times gently, at times brutally. The round belly with its deep-set navel like a half-closed eye. The bare shaven lips between her thighs. Familiar territory to him.

It was the expression on her face that made her different, he decided. A knowing look? No, more than that - a detached look which suggested that she knew all that there was to know about sexuality. That she had experienced it all and was unmoved by what she knew. A not quite human look. Dreamy, depraved, innocent, all at once. Mason gave up trying to put it into words and let himself enjoy it. It excited him. She must be high on something to produce an expression like that.

The Circle stirred again as a man entered the room and paced towards the middle. Amidst so much nudity he was strikingly dressed in a long robe of black velvet heavily embroidered with gold. This must be Frazer, thought Mason, staring at him. Our host and master of ceremonies for the evening’s entertainment. Ringmaster, maybe, as we’re a bit like a cageful of nervous beasts waiting to be put through our paces. In one hand Frazer held a foot-long blade upright and in the other he carried a metal bowl the colour of gold.

All this bloody symbolism. Sword, bowl, candles. Ritual kisses on Esta’s slit and breasts. It’s all so obvious. How can he expect it to have any effect on us? Amongst primitives, maybe, but hardly in a post-Freudian society. Or are we a back-to-nature group? That would be too much.

Frazer walked slowly round the inside of the circle, letting each of them see closely the blade and the bowl. And for the first time Mason got a close look at him. Naked under the rich robe, a slender wide-chested muscular body. Approaching forty, Mason fudged, but looking as if he were made of steel springs and whipcord. His hair was very dark, nearly, black, cut in a sort of skull-cap so that it looked more like fur than hair. On the left side of his face was an ugly purple-red birthmark, stretching from the earner of his eye down to the corner of his mouth. A spoiled face, uncompromisingly repulsive.

His dark eyes bored into Mason’s. A flicker of amusement at his shock and his attempt not to show it. Then he moved on.

Mason was on a high moor, watching a white doc in a hollow. A stag with formidable antlers nuzzled her side and she turned her haunches to him. The stag bellowed his challenge. Grey-black clouds scurried low overhead, presaging rain. Satisfied that there were no contenders, the stag turned back to the doe and clambered on her back.

Mason struggled free from the image that had enveloped him, his heart pounding. Esta was lying on the stone slab with her legs hanging over the edge. Her arms were stretched out sideways, as if crucified, holding one of the lighted candles in each hand. The music was louder and more unpleasant than before. Frazer chanted something unintelligible, standing between Esta’s parted legs, facing her. In his pauses, the watching circle chanted a response, but Mason could make no sense of it. It was no language he had ever heard. The intonations were wrong for any European language he knew of and it was not the Latin of his schooldays. A made-up language, perhaps, or an extremely are ane one from the past. Presumably the purpose was to invoke whatever dim and forgotten god these lunatics thought they revered and get him or her to look down with favour on their rigmarole. The whole thing was preposterous.

Why the hell do I feel so uneasy? What is there to be worried about, anyway? A bunch of would-be witches in the middle of London, playing dismal games with a naked woman. Infantile, maybe perverted. Sex-kicks for the jaded. All slightly nasty when you view it at close quarters. But hardly anything to be afraid of. That apparent thickening of the air is only the smoke from the bowls, no more than that. And the shadows are caused by the candles, Frazer is creating a bogus religiosity with all the tricks he can muster, poor though they are. He wants us to feel a sense of the numinous. An illusion for his own purposes, Frazer let his embroidered robe slide down his body and bent over Esta, Mason realized that he was penetrating her in view of the watchers. He stared in a kind of sick excitement at

Frazer’s taut buttocks pumping away, making Esta’s legs jerk with the force of his movements.

Mason was afraid. He acknowledged it now. Of what, he didn’t know. For his safety? His sanity? His life? He tried to pin it down, got nowhere and dismissed it. Bloody nonsense, he thought. This is no more than I’ve paid to see in live sex shows abroad. A woman being screwed to get the audience worked up and ready. Only it’s more artistic abroad. This is damned crude.

His thought was cut off by a triumphant cry from Frazer. The whole circle shouted with him. Mason Joined in the shouting without knowing why, and not caring any more. He felt that something of importance was going to happen to him. More precisely, Frazer was going to make something of importance happen,

A thick-bodied man stepped forward from the circle. From one hand dangled a black cockerel he was holding by the legs so that its red comb brushed the floor. Frazer had separated himself from Esta and was standing silently between her dangling legs. The assistant held the cockerel high over her body and took hold of its head with his other hand. Frazer kissed the shining blade of his long knife and sawed through the bird’s neck.

It was only when it squawked and beat its black wings in its death throes that Mason realized that it had been alive. He saw Frazer catching the spurting blood in the metal bowl and heard him praying in a strong voice. Mason felt sick. The game had gone further than he had expected. Kinky sex was all right if that’s what you liked, but animal sacrifice was altogether another matter. He knew that it was no partner-swapping club he had been invited to join. It was all too purposeful and directed at some end other than sexual gratification.

The cockerel’s flutterings weakened as it bled to death. When it was finally still, the assistant took it away while Frazer moved round the circle of men and women with the bowl of blood. Each knelt to be touched on the forehead with a thumb dipped in blood.

Mason was huddled on the bare shoulder of a mountain that stretched up into the clouds above. He was waiting for the guide who knew the way to the peak. His face and hands were numb from the cold wind. The guide came towards him, a tall brown-faced man wrapped in furs. He pointed upwards with a gloved hand.

The bare wooden floor was hard under Mason’s knees and Frazer was bending over him to touch his forehead with a blood-slippery thumb.

These sudden images - they seem so real. Not like a dream, but as solid as if I’m actually there. Are they hidden in the depths of my mind already for the dope or the music to bring out, or are they planted by some sort of suggestion at key moments in the ritual? They must be planted because they are so alien to me. I’ve never been in any of these situations. Yet they seem so natural when I think I’m experiencing them. Can there be such a thing as race memory? No, they’re planted, I’m sure of it.

Frazer had completed his round and was back by the slab. For the first time that evening Mason understood what he was saying.

‘We will accept a new man into our coven tonight, if he is worthy. He must pass through the same gate we have passed through and tread the path we have followed to reach the truth we have gained.’

It was a shock to Mason to find the whole circle staring at him. The women on either side of him took his hands and led him forward. They tugged him down to kneel with them in front of Frazer and then stood him between Esta’s legs while Frazer moved round the slab to stand at her head.

The sight of Esta below him froze Mason. From throat to spread thighs she was splashed with dark blood. Her eyes were open but unfocused.

The woman on his left, the fat one, nudged him with her elbow and whispered, ‘Get on with it.’

He tried to say what? but his mouth was too dry.

‘Get it up her,’ she whispered sharply.

The suggestion was revolting. An icy feeling in his churning guts had wiped out any possibility of sexual activity. And yet, to his amazement as he looked down, he was hard erect ‘Yes or no?’ the fat woman asked in an undertone. ‘The knife is ready.’

It was some sort of horrible test, Mason saw. The consequences of failing it were too sickening to think about. He clenched his teeth and guided himself into Esta’s waiting wetness. He gripped her by the hips and pushed in deep, loathing what he was doing.

A giant eagle sank its claws into the flesh of his shoulders and lifted him into the air. Below he saw the snow-capped pine-trees of a forest fall away as the wings beat upwards and the bird wheeled and soared, making for a distant mountain top. Higher still, swooping past a sheer rock-face down which a frozen waterfall had congealed.

The eagle and the mountain were gone. He was riding a shrieking tornado, naked and alone, up above the black thunderclouds. The earth was miles below. A river across the plain was shrivelled to a winding silver thread. Up and up he was whirled dizzily by the seething strength of the wind.

The earth was gone completely. He was in space. His lungs collapsed in the vacuum and his blood froze solid in his veins. A blaze of black light destroyed him in a million-decibel roar of silent sound. Awareness nickered out. He was a thin cloud of nothing, fast dispersing into less than nothing.

Esta’s ecstatic wail brought him back to himself. He looked up, sweating and trembling, into Frazer’s impassive face.

‘You have felt the power,’ said Frazer. In his eyes there was a blurred afterglow of the black explosion.

Mason nodded, unable to speak. His loins were still twitching involuntarily.

‘That power shall be yours and you shall be a part of it.’ Mason stopped trembling. In an instant he felt strong and full of life, and knew that he had passed through the gate Frazer had spoken of. He withdrew from Esta and in simple elation raised his arms, palms upwards, towards Frazer over her body. He could discern something new in his mind, something quite different from anything he had known before. He had no words for it, but it was there, just below the edge of his consciousness. In time he would be able to look at it and understand it.

Frazer reached out to take his hands. Below them, Esta was muttering an incantation. The words were strange but Mason ha If-understood. She was invoking long life and success for him in his new existence.

‘He has been accepted,’ Frazer said loudly.

There was a shout of acclamation from the circle of watchers. When Frazer released his hands, Mason raised his arms above his head in sheer inexplicable pleasure. Something important had happened, though he could not name it. He felt more olive, more vigorous, more confident, than he could ever remember.

‘I give him his name among us,’ said Frazer. ‘He shall be called Thomas.’ ‘Thomas!’ they shouted. ‘Thomas.’

Frazer led him back to his place in the circle. The music was loud and fast and no longer displeasing. It made him want to dance and leap and laugh. The teenage girl on his right grabbed him by the hair above his ears and kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. Her body was hot against his, her thighs clasped one of his thighs between them as she rubbed herself against him.

The orgy had begun.

DISAGREEMENTS

‘Hallucination, sexual tension, group hysteria,’ said Thomas. ‘It was fascinating, of course. I was involved in spite of my determination to be just an observer. Completely drawn in and submerged. I have never been so potent in my life before. I performed with five different women. At least, I think I did, though there is no way of being sure because of the altered state of consciousness we were in. Besides having Esta on the altar, that is.’

‘Esta was the altar,’ Frazer corrected him. ‘There is an important difference.’

‘Yes, well, I’ve never managed more than twice before in an evening. And the next day I felt tremendous, not exhausted at all. Whatever it is you put in those incense-burners would make your fortune if you marketed it as an aphrodisiac What is it?

‘The power is not in the incense,’ said Frazer.

He was sitting on a high-backed wooden chair in his living-room on the ground floor. His legs were folded comfortably beneath him in the lotus position. All in black - sweater, trousers, socks. His face was half-turned away from Thomas so that only the normal side showed.

‘Then where does it come from?’

‘You are a scientist, and so you look for a physical explanation of anything you don’t understand. You want a mechanistic explanation because you see everything in mechanical terms. This causes that. That causes this.’

‘Not always,’ Thomas cut in. ‘But generally speaking, however long and complicated the process, it starts somewhere.’

“Not necessarily where you think it starts. You saw visions during the ritual. You found yourself strengthened. You had a fleeting glimpse of a distant truth. And because you cannot explain these things to yourself, you immediately conclude that you were drugged.’

‘It’s the principle of Occam’s razor. Look for the simplest explanation.’

‘Forget all that, Thomas, and learn again. As you follow our path you will come to understand that reality is very different from your first assumptions.’

‘Follow your path? What do you mean - come to more orgies? Not for me, thanks. Once was interesting but I can’t see myself taking to it as a regular therapy session.’

‘Orgies,’ said Frazer venomously. ‘I am not a brothel keeper. I do not stage orgies for your entertainment. We perform certain rituals to achieve particular results. Sexual activity is part of some of our rituals, but it is only a means to an end.’

Thomas shrugged.

“What was the purpose of the other evening,’ he asked, ‘apart from working us into a state where we took off into a sexual frenzy?’

‘Did nothing happen to you when you penetrated Esta?’ ‘The usual thing happened. To my surprise.’

‘There was more.’

‘My mind was so jumbled that I imagined all sorts of things. But that was only hallucination.’

Frazer leaned forward and stared at him without blinking, his blotched side coming into view.

‘You still do not understand the commitment you made in the initiation ceremony. But you will.’

‘Commitment to what? To you?’

‘To me, yes, and through me to the power I serve.’

Thomas grinned at that.

‘Are we talking about the powers of evil - the devil and all that black magic rigmarole? Let’s not be childish. You are on intelligent man - you know that you can’t put that rubbish across.’

‘You have seen one of our rituals for yourself. We do not spit on crosses or desecrate wafers to raise the devil. We have no need of the paraphernalia of witchcraft in the Middle Ages. You described all that correctly as childish. We are far beyond such kindergarten nonsense.’

Then what power are you talking about?’

Frazer put his hands on the carved rams’ heads on the arms of his chair and stroked them for a moment.

‘You will learn that for yourself. It is not possible to explain to a beginner. We have important work for you to do, so you must learn quickly.’

‘What do you mean - work? Obliging female members of your group on the floor?’

“By now you must have realized that you were chosen to join us,’ said Frazer, ignoring the sareasm. ‘Chosen?’

‘You surely do not think that it was by accident that you met Esta? Or perhaps you do. Perhaps you think that it was your charm that got her into bed with you? No, you are not that vain.’

Thomas glared at him in angry humiliation, his thoughts racing.

‘Think, man,’ Frazer went on, stealthily destructive. ‘You have seen the ritual of initiation and Esta’s part in it. Besides you and me at least half a dozen other men had her on the stone. Do you think she is casually attracted to strangers when that experience is part of her ordinary life?’

Thomas clenched his teeth and said nothing.

‘She prepared your mind. She attracted you to herself and gained your confidence. You accepted an invitation from her to what you thought was a sex party. You stayed of your own free will. You accepted initiation when I offered it to you. Now you are one of us. You are committed.’

‘Rubbish! I’m not committed to anything at all. What are you planning - blackmail? Did you take photographs of me sticking it up Esta? Forget it - I’ve got no money, no influence and I don’t know any secrets.’

Frazer closed his eyes and smiled thinly.

‘What a fool you are for an intelligent man. You were chosen to join us because you are a trained scientist and have no family ties of any importance.’

‘Witches need scientists? I thought you superseded ordinary knowledge with your spells.’

‘You are being wilfully dense, Thomas.’

‘Don’t call me that. My name’s John Mason.’

‘That was before. Your name is Thomas now and you can’t change it.’

‘Look - I’m getting bored with hocus-pocus. If you have anything worth saying, say it. Otherwise I’m going.’

Frazer seemed not to notice the irritation in his voice.

“Now that we have you, our circle is complete again. Thirteen men and thirteen women. Each one has a special talent. Together we shall be able to carry out a project I have been planning for years.’

‘An experiment?’ Thomas asked, his curiosity asserting itself.

‘If you like. An experiment that will produce an incredible result. Incredible by your standards, I mean.’

‘Tell me about it and I’ll give you an opinion, for what it’s worth.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. In your present state of ignorance of our ways, you would not understand. There is a great deal we must teach you quickly before you can begin to grasp what we are planning. You must be patient for a time, until you are ready,’

‘Sony, not good enough,’ said Thomas. “You can’t expect me to get involved in mumbo-jumbo that I can’t even be told about. I’m not a half-wit’

Frazer’s dark brown eyes were fixed thoughtfully on him.

‘There are twenty-six of us. Thirty-nine would be better, but it would take too long to find, initiate and train another thirteen suitable people. We can do it with twenty-six, though there are dangers. We must trust each other implicitly before we run the risk. Do you see?’

‘It sounds as if you are planning a bank robbery,’

Frazer brushed the irrelevancy aside with a gesture of his fingers.

‘Each of us will contribute a vital part to the project. We have all been together for some time, except you. We know and trust each other. We don’t know you yet, or you us. It will take time,’

‘Years, I should think,’ said Thomas, irony in his tone. ‘Much less than you think, because of our way of doing things,’

‘You surely do not expect me to go along with anything at all being in the dark about it.’

‘You won’t be. Enlightenment will come to you with each Step.’

‘As I see it, all the trust is on my side and none on yours.’

‘All the knowledge is on our side and none on yours,’ Frazer corrected him. ‘Think back - when you had your first science lesson at school, did you insist that the teacher should explain everything he knew in forty minutes? Or did you study for years at school and at university, learning bit by bit, until you knew as much as your first teacher?’

‘But that’s entirely different. Science is a systematic body of knowledge based on observation and experiment.’

‘Our secret knowledge has been established far longer than your science, and by the same means - observation, experiment, trial and error, intuition, calculation. It also must be approached and learned systematically.’ ‘Prove it to me.’

‘Certainly, but not in one evening. Can you prove to me that water is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen? Or do you need time and apparatus?’

‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ said Thomas, his stubborn streak in evidence. ‘Tell me one thing - what is the purpose of your witchery?’

“Yes, though first tell me the purpose of your science.’

‘Science is concerned with the understanding of nature.’

‘And the control of it?’ Frazer prompted.

‘Applied science, yes.’

‘That is our purpose too.’

He doesn’t speak English as if he were born to it, Thomas was thinking. Perfect, yes, but as if he had learned it with great skill. Aloud he said:

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘I am serious. Our methods are different because we have a better understanding of nature than you, but our purpose is the same - control.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Of course you do. But you will sec such marvels as will convince you. And you will learn how to perform them.’

‘I’m waiting to be convinced. Show me a marvel’

Frazer sighed and looked round the room. The dark red stain on his face was turned to Thomas as he looked at the sideboard.

‘Take any of the bottles over there and pour out half a glass of it.’

Thomas examined the bottles standing on a silver tray on the sideboard. Whisky, vodka, gin, white rum, sherry. He poured half a tumbler of whisky and sat down again with it.

‘Taste it,’ said Frazer, ‘and tell me what it is.’

‘Scotch whisky.’

‘Be sure in your mind that it really is whisky and not something else that’s been put into a whisky bottle.’

Thomas nodded. He approved of the sceptical approach. He sniffed his drink and then sipped it.

‘It’s whisky.’

‘Good. Now hold the glass between the palms of your hands and keep your eyes on it,’

Frazer stood in front of him and clasped his own hands round Thomas’s hands on the glass. “Whisky, you said. Taste it again.’

Thomas raised the glass to his mouth awkwardly, Frazer’s hands still on his. ‘It’s … it’s milk!’

Frazer took his hands away to let him see that the liquid in the glass was white.

‘Woman’s milk. Something you haven’t tasted since you were a baby sucking your mother’s breasts. Do you like the taste?’

Before Thomas could reply, Frazer cupped his hands round the glass again briefly and took them away.

‘Watch it closely.’

The milk was bubbling in the tumbler and the glass was hot to touch. Before Thomas could set it down safely the milk boiled up and it was too hot to hold. He dropped it and swore.

The heavy tumbler fell to the carpet without breaking and the milk was spilled. As the stain spread across the carpet, it turned red.

‘Dip your finger in it and taste it again.’

‘No.’

‘No? It’s blood now. Would you recognize the taste of blood?’

‘You are a master of deception,’ said Thomas slowly. The red stain was sinking into the carpet and turning dark.

‘I know it’s only a conjuring trick, but you had me believing it for a moment.’

The stain faded and vanished completely. He bent down to touch it and the carpet was dry. He picked up the empty glass and sniffed at it.

‘Perhaps there never was anything in the glass,’ Frazer suggested. ‘Are you sure you put whisky in it?’

‘How did you do it?’

‘You asked for a marvel and I gave you one. A very trivial one. Now you doubt the evidence of your own senses. Later on you will sec marvels that will stretch your mind to the limits of sanity.’

That sounds a bit ominous.’

‘There is no need to be afraid. You are strong enough to survive with us or I wouldn’t have chosen you.’ Frazer resumed his lotus position on the high-backed chair. ‘You can’t know that for sure,’ said Thomas.

‘I know it for sure because I have been inside your mind.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Only a psychoanalyst could say that after years of work with a patient. And then he wouldn’t be all that sure.’

‘At your initiation you penetrated Esta and gained acceptance. You saw a black light.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I am part of the power which you perceived as black light. It entered your mind and I entered with it.’

‘We seem to be back to hocus-pocus. What you are saying is utterly meaningless to me.’

‘I know that. But eventually it will assume a great meaning for you, when you reach the central truth.’

Thomas shrugged in disbelief.

‘I feel I shall make no progress with you tonight,’ said Frazer.

‘Nor any other night. We don’t speak the same language.’

‘To a peasant the squiggles in an algebra book are nonsense. To the mind that has learned to understand them they are full of meaning and of great use.’

Thomas didn’t bother to answer.

‘Let me say one thing before you leave. Along our path there are great rewards - rewards beyond anything you can imagine in that earth-bound mind of yours. There are also terrible punishments for those who offend. You will taste both because of the sort of man you are . Then you will drop your blind stubborn scepticism and work with us.’

‘Is that a threat?’

‘I have no need to threaten anyone. When you are ready to come here and talk again, I shall be pleased to see you.1

‘You will have a long wait,’ said Thomas pugnaciously, forcing himself to look away from Frazer’s eyes. ‘The orgy was interesting in a nasty sort of way, but the mumbo-jumbo is bloody ridiculous. And I don’t like having my life organized for me. When you meet Esta, tell her to find another partner for the next gang-bang. I’m opting out now.’

‘You will be back,’ said Frazer, without animosity. He turned his head as Thomas got up to go, so that the glaring red side of his face was towards him.

NIGHT-VISITOR

Thomas stopped in at the Shakespeare near his fiat in Victoria. He was irritated by his talk with Frazer and had no one to vent his irritation on. In retrospect the mystification with the whisky annoyed him disproportionately.

It was much like a conjuring trick he’d seen performed on the stage years before - the conjurer apparently pouring different drinks from the same jug. Why should Frazer think he’d be imposed upon by something that obvious? It was worse than unflattering - it was downright bloody insulting.

But the carpet was dry immediately. So had there been anything in the glass to start with? That started an unpleasant train of thought - equally unflattering. Thomas could accept in principle the idea of someone having highly developed hypnotic ability. Maybe Frazer had done it all by suggestion with an empty glass. Which Thomas thought he had filled himself. What was disturbing there was to contemplate the possibility that he personally might be susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, with no recollection of it afterwards.

Some explanation was needed as to why Frazer had deliberately planned to involve him in his sex games through Esta. Blackmail was the only rational answer he could find and that seemed inadequate. At thirty-three he was unmarried, unattached, had no access to secret information and his only income was his salary. No blackmailer was going to get rich out of that set-up. The situation made no sense.

Why had he gone to Frazer’s house this evening so readily when invited? And stayed when the man talked such rubbish? Complicity after the orgy had perhaps taken him there, to sec what Frazer had to say about it. And as for staying, the fact was that Frazer possessed what is called a compelling personality. He took the centre of the stage and held the attention, even when he was elaborating on the most infantile nonsense. One type of person would find him impossible to resist - he was a natural guru. Thomas found him irritating.

There was his stilted way of talking - nothing in itself, but in some way it reflected his underlying arrogance of mind. The squire telling his peasants what was best for them. The headmaster addressing his assembled school. Neither analogy was right, but both had an element of truth.

By closing time Thomas had drunk four large whiskies and was in a thoroughly bad temper. He thought of phoning Esta and calling her seventeen different kinds of bitch, and then decided it wasn’t worth it. He wanted no more to do with her or with Frazer. He walked home, made himself a cheese and pickle sandwich and ate it in bed with a glass of beer.

It took him a long time to fall asleep. When he did, he plunged into a frightening dream. He was lost in the dark in an endless forest. He tried this way and that to get out, but always huge wrinkled tree trunks loomed up towards the night sky in front of him. He stumbled over out-thrust roots in a hurry to get away from the danger he felt about him. But which way, which way? The wrong choice would lead him straight into it. He tripped and fell against a tree. It was clammy and spongy to the touch, not hard as it should be. Its base was tufted with coarse grass and it stood up slightly curving, its crest lost in the dark,

He started to run and stopped, anguished by the thought that every way was the wrong way. Whatever was stalking him could flit silently from trunk to trunk, always out of his sight, and always in front of him, waiting. A wind rustled through the trees, shaking the leaves so that it seemed as if a hundred voices were whispering together. They were whispering about him. He couldn’t catch the words but he knew they were gloating.

He struggled awake, drenched with sweat. A crushing bulk lay on him, pinning him to the bed. Gasping with fear, he wrenched and writhed to free himself, but he was as helpless on the mattress as a beaten wrestler. He tried to shout and at once a soft mass of something unrecognizable was clamped over his mouth. He fought with his whole strength to free an arm and reach the bedside lamp. He could do nothing.

The massive burden bounced up and down in slow rhythm on his body. Over the rasping of his own breath he could hear a deep panting in the pitch darkness. A hoarse sound, more animal than human. He lay terrified and disoriented. What was it, what could it be - his mind was racing in a tight circle.

With sick fear he felt himself grow erect. The heavy bouncing became faster. Under his back the mattress springs were jangling. In spite of the horror and humiliation that gripped him, he could feel his body responding against his will to the crude physical stimulus. The pounding went faster, smashing the breath out of him with every downward lunge. His heart was beating so fast he thought it would burst. His labouring lungs gasped for air on each upward lift. He teetered on the edge of consciousness, slammed against the mattress at a furious pace until his belly jerked upwards in reflex and he ejaculated into his pyjamas.

The thing that lay on him gurgled and panted as it rode him mercilessly through his neverending orgasm. Then it was still. He felt the weight sliding away from him. Tears of relief ran down his face as his tortured lungs drew in a deep unconstrained breath, and he blacked out.

It was broad daylight when he woke up again. He could hear the telephone ringing and lay still waiting for it to stop, but it went on and on until he forced himself to get out of bed to answer it. He was so weak that he almost fell when he stood up, Muzzily, he realized that he was naked. His pyjamas lay on th e floor with the crumpled bedclothes.

He stumbled into the living-room, supporting himself against the wall, and half-fell into a chair before picking up the clamouring telephone. It was an effort to lift it.

‘Yes?’

‘How are you, Thomas?’

It was Frazer. His voice brought back the terrors of the night

‘What do you want?’

‘To assure myself that you are well,’

‘Why the hell shouldn’t I be?’

‘Why indeed? I remember that you told me how strong and well you felt the morning after your initiation, even after mounting five women. Or was it six? So as you performed only once last night - and passively at that - I was surprised to hear that you hadn’t turned up for work when I rang you there.’

The scareely disguised malice in Frazer’s voice made Thomas very uneasy.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve got a bit of a cold so I stayed at home today.’

‘Thomas, Thomas, there is no point in lying to me. I know what happened to you last night.’

‘It was your doing, was it?’

‘Of course. How could you think otherwise?’

‘You’re a lying bastard!’ said Thomas, anger dispersing his physical weakness. ‘Tell me about your visitor.’

‘If you know all about it, there’s no point in telling you.’

‘Not an enjoyable experience, was it? In the old days they used to call it a succubus. They’re very exhausting, I believe.’

‘Dreams, nightmares,’ said Thomas, mustering as much scorn as he could. ‘You bastard - it was post-hypnotic suggestion. You planted it in my mind when I was with you.’

‘Still straining after the rational explanation, I see. What a sceptic you are. But you will learn. Oh yes, I promise you that you will learn.’

‘Listen - you leave me alone or I’ll come round there and smash your bloody face in. Understand?’

Frazer laughed.

‘Thomas, leave these idle threats and listen to me. I told you yesterday that along our path there are rewards and there are punishments. You did not believe me and so now you have tasted a little punishment.’

Thomas rubbed his bristly face, wondering if he was talking to a madman.

‘Mental terrors,’ he said. ‘All right, you managed to give me a bad dream. I’ve had bad dreams before. They’re gone in the morning. None of it is real.’

‘Are we to argue about the nature of reality? We do not see it in the same way. So let’s be practical. Suppose that dream, if you want to call it that, came to you every night. I can easily arrange it. How long before you are ready for the psychiatric ward? A week? Could you last a fortnight? I doubt it.’

‘Frazer, tell me straight - what is it you want from me?’

“Your co-operation in our project.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘You will be told when you are ready.’

Thomas sighed. He was back to the beginning.

‘Did I hear resignation in that sigh?’ Frazer asked. ‘I think I did. Good - the sooner you start co-operating, the sooner you will approach the rewards.’

Thomas said nothing. There was nothing to say.

‘We are meeting at my house tomorrow at ten in the evening. Please be on time.’

He rang off without waiting for a reply. Thomas left his phone off the hook and went back to bed, aching all over. He slept all day.

THE WARNING

Thomas made up his mind to have no more to do with Frazer. He intended to ignore the summons and be out for the evening and the night as well. He had formed the opinion that Frazer was able to plant images of terror in his mind unawares and had done so at their meeting. No more meetings, he promised himself, no more contact, no more nightmares.

He stayed late at work to catch up on the day he had missed. It was seven o’clock when he left and his car was the only one left in the car park. He walked right up to it in the half-dark before he saw Esta sitting inside. He couldn’t remember whether he had locked it that morning, but he was fairly sure that his normal prudence would not have allowed him to omit doing so. He got in, annoyed by her presence.

‘What do you want? Come to take me to the prayer meeting? I’m not going, so you can clear off.’

She leaned over to kiss his cheek.

‘I wanted to see you. You’ve kept away from me since your initiation. I’ve phoned twice without getting you. What’s wrong?’

‘It’s no good wheedling, Esta. I know too much now. We only met in the first place because Frazer told you to pick me up. I thought it was real but I was being a fool. You were just doing a bit of whoring to promote his twisted interests.’

She said nothing. His temper flared.

‘You bitch! I never want to see you again. Get back to that red-faced lunatic and roll around the floor while they all have you!’

In his rage he struck open-handed at her face, meaning to hurt her. Sexual jealousy was a new emotion to him, and a painful one. Esta caught his wrist before he touched her and pulled his arm down with a strength so much greater than his own that he had no time to struggle. She held his palm against her breast. In disgust he tried to pull away but she held him easily.

‘Thomas, we are being very gentle with you because you have so much to learn still. But you’re behaving like a child and children get their bottoms smacked.’

His anger had evaporated, though the cause of it was still there. He listened to what she was saying.

“You threatened Frazer and he punished you a little. Do you think I can’t do the same?’

‘I don’t know. I thought he was the leader and all the rest just followers/

‘Then you’ve got it wrong. He is the leader, yes, but we all have abilities you can’t even guess.’ ‘All except me.’

‘We are waiting to teach you as soon as you let us.’

Contentment was flowing through Thomas, His busy mind was analyzing it.

She has some sort of power over me. She calmed me from a blind rage in seconds. It has to do with touch. She did it by putting my hand on her body. Just how calming is her physical contact?

He started to formulate questions to find out the limits of the influence she was exercizing, like a man with a bad tooth pressing it with his tongue to see if it started to ache again.

‘At the initiation,’ he said, ‘how many of the men had you?’

‘First Frazer and then you in the initiation itself. After that, seven others, one of them twice.’

He pictured it deliberately in his mind. Naked bodies on the parquet, heaving and grunting, wet and slippery with the sweat of their exertions. Esta, bloodstained and tousled, on her back with her legs locked round a man’s waist.

He was still calm, he found, checking his emotional temperature. He tried again,

“Which one twice?’

‘What does it matter?3

‘Tell me, though.’

‘Robert, since you ask.’

That was the thick-bodied man who had held the cock for Frazer to kill. Barrel-chest squashing Esta’s breasts flat under his weight. Heavy face contorting as h e ejaculated into her wet parts. Still calm. He persevered.

‘You’ve been with all of them, of course.’

‘More times than I can count. The men, I mean. And with quite a few of the women too. Why are you asking? Does it give you a thrill?’

‘No, it doesn’t. It means nothing to me at all,’ he answered truthfully.

The extent of her mysterious influence through touch was impressive. That needed to be remembered. ‘So why ask?’ she persisted.

‘With sexual experience on that scale, one man must be just like another to you. Just something hard between your legs. So why should you bother to phone me. I can’t believe that you’ve missed me in any way. Where were you last night, for instance?’

‘As you’re interested, I was with Evin. But you’re wrong about all men being alike. There’s something different about you. I felt it at your initiation.’

‘Such as?’

‘I can’t explain it exactly. Look - I’ve served as the altar at a great many rituals and I’ve felt the power flowing into the men. With you there was something out of the ordinary going on. I want to know what.’

He had long since stopped trying to pull away from her. He slid his free hand under her thin sweater to hold her other breast. She released his wrist.

‘Any time you want to, Thomas. But not here. There’s something I have to tell you first.’

‘Tell me then,’ he said, his hands ranging over her breasts.

‘Frazer told you that he needed a scientist to complete the coven. Did he tell you that you are not the first?’

‘No, he didn’t Who’s the other?’

‘Well, it’s a long story. He was chosen for the same reasons as you were. He was initiated. You know all about that. But there was something wrong about him. He was taught a lot but he never really believed any of it. He was full of stupid theories to explain everything. None of us ever came to trust him, so he was useless to us. In fact, he was getting to be a danger, even though he was sent warnings. His mind couldn’t accept what we showed him, you see. He half-believed, half-didn’t. He started to have a sort of nervous breakdown.’

‘What happened?’ Thomas asked, not relishing the answer he expected.

‘Frazer got rid of him and we looked for someone to take his place.’

‘What do you mean - got rid of him?” ‘He died.’

‘Died? You mean you murdered him? I don’t believe you. You’re trying to intimidate me.’

‘I didn’t think you’d take my word for it. You’re the sort that has to sec everything for himself. Start the car and drive towards Ealing.’

She pushed his hands away as she spoke.

‘This is silly’ said Thomas, turning the ignition key.

‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry to make your mind up. There are a lot of things you don’t know.’

‘So everybody keeps telling me.’

They drove west out of London, Esta directing, until she told him to stop outside a block of flats in a quiet road. At the entrance he looked at the row of bell buttons and names.

“That one,’ Esta said, pointing.

The card by the button read M. C. Denton, PhD. Thomas pressed the bell hard.

‘No point in ringing,’ said Esta, ‘he can’t hear you. Come on.’

She had a key to the front door. Thomas followed her into the entrance hall. The lift was on its way down. Esta pulled him quickly out of sight up the stairs and they went up to the second floor. They moved quietly down the passage, past a door where they heard the raised voices of a man and a woman quarrelling, past another where someone was playing a Bach recording, and stopped at number 6.

Esta unlocked it with another key and pushed it open. Thomas caught an unpleasant smell from inside the flat and hesitated. She pushed him inside, followed him and closed the door silently behind her. They stood in the dark, not speaking. The smell of corruption was strong now - the sweetish, sickening smell of rotting meat.

Esta spoke in a low voice.

‘You needn’t go any further than this if you don’t want to.’ Thomas gagged and ground his teeth together. I won’t be frightened by tricks. Damn you to hell and Frazer with you!’

‘The door to your right, then,’

He screwed up his fading courage, stepped forward and felt for the door-knob. As he pushed the door open the stench of decay was so strong that he had to stop to find his handkerchief and hold it over his nose and mouth. He groped for the light-switch on the wall and clicked it down.

He was in a small bathroom. On the floor at his feet a bloated pyjama-clad corpse lay on its side in a huge stain of black dried blood. The throat was cut deeply, the edges of the wound curled back like open lips. Putrescence had turned the skin of the face and neck greenish and slimy.

Thomas retched into his handkerchief. As he turned to stumble out of the bathroom he accidentally trod on an outstretched dead hand. He almost fell, then Esta had an arm round his waist and was helping him quickly out of the flat and down the stairs.

Back in his car he sat shivering for some time. When he could speak, he said, “You’re bloody mad, all of you. God Almighty, I’m going straight to the police,’

Esta put her arms round him and held him close.

‘There,’ she soothed him, ‘you’ll be all right in a minute.’

She stroked the hair away from his forehead and wiped the cold sweat from his face. When another fit of shivers took him, she put her hand inside his shirt and pressed her palm lightly to his chest over his thumping heart. The physical contact tranquillized him rapidly. He recognized the effect and welcomed it as relief from the shock he had experienced.

‘We can’t leave him there, you know,’ he said eventually. ‘The police have to be told.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’ve just put your fingerprints all over the place. Yours and his are the only ones there.’ Thomas sighed. He’d fallen into a trap.

“What happened to the poor bastard? Which of you lulled him?’

‘He killed himself. Didn’t you see the razor blade in his hand?’

‘Why should he do that?’

‘I told you. He was a danger to us, so Frazer sent him a visitor one night’ ‘Who?’

‘Not a who, a what. Not like your visitor, though. That was a harmless one,’ she said, making Thomas shudder at the memory. ‘Benton killed himself to get away fro m it’

‘But it’s all unreal,’ Thomas said uncertainly. ‘I had a bad dream. Dreams don’t drive you to suicide.’

‘Do you want to go back into the flat and make sure?’

‘No, There’s a dead man in there and I believe he took his own life. But—’

‘Believe this,’ Esta interrupted, ‘Frazer can do to you what he did to Michael Benton. You’ve had one warning. The next will be much more drastic. Now stop being a fool and do what he Wants.’

‘I need a drink. Let’s find a pub.’

‘All right, but we haven’t got all night,’

They found a pub on the way back into London. Thomas downed a large brandy to get the taste of corruption out of his mouth, and ordered another. It seemed insane to be sitting in a cheerful bar discussing what he had just seen with an attractive woman, but he had to ask.

‘How long ago did it happen?’

‘Eight or nine weeks.’

‘And nobody’s found him yet?’

‘He had no close ties. No friends to come calling No one to miss him. Just like you.’ ‘What about his work?’

‘He lost his job when he started to crack up. They gave him a month’s salary one morning when he got in unshaven and half drunk about midday and told him to go.’

‘But sooner or later …’

‘Oh yes, sooner or later, when the rent gets too long overdue or the rates aren’t paid or the gas board send someone round for their money. Or something like that.’

‘What happens then?’

‘Nothing at all. Four lines in the evening paper. Brilliant young scientist found dead. Police enquiries. Post-mortem examination. Coroner’s court with witnesses from where he used to work. Took his own life verdict. Goodbye, Michael Benton.’

‘How can you be so confident? Aren’t you in the least worried?’

‘No. He did take his own life. There’s nothing in his flat to connect him to any of us. He had been keeping a diary but we removed it the day after he died.’

‘Why did you take me there to see him? Another warning?’

Her dark brown eyes studied him carefully.

‘Your last warning, Thomas. Frazer wants to get on with the project. You are holding him up and he’s losing patience with you. There won’t be any more warnings, just something very nasty and fatal.’

‘So I’d better start co-operating if I know what’s good for me?’

‘Please yourself. Benton was in such terror that he ran into the bathroom and slashed his throat with a razor blade to die and get away from it. That could happen to you tonight or tomorrow night or any other night if Frazer decides you’re no use to him.’

The contrast between her youth and the threat she was uttering chilled Thomas and silenced him completely.

She’s as mad as Frazer. Mad and bloody dangerous. What kind of people are they, for God’s sake? This girl can look at the rotting body of a man who died in terror and despair and she’s not even faintly moved by it.

He drained his glass and nodded to the barman for another.

My life is in danger. I’ve got to be very careful if I’m going to escape from them. Careful and cunning. They’re murderers or at least, Frazer is and Esta’s a willing accomplice.

‘Time to go,’ said Esta, cancelling the third drink. ‘Frazer is expecting us soon and he mustn’t be kept waiting.’

“He certainly mustn’t,’ Thomas agreed.

CANDLE FLAME

Frazer’s house was one of a terrace of Victorian family houses in a square that had been prosperous a century ago. As the area had gone down in esteem, the solidly built homes which had once sheltered middle-class couples with eight children and two or three servants had been carved up into warrens for transients. This was bed-sitter land, bachelor-flat land, board ing-house land. Frazer’s house was the only one in the square in single occupancy.

From the pavement stone steps led up under the portico to a heavy front door. Frazer’s living quarters were on the ground floor and the big room where Thomas had been initiated took up the whole of the floor above, the partition walls being removed. Esta led him up the wide stairs, past the big room and up to the top floor.

The room they entered was painted entirely black - walls, ceiling and floor. The windows that looked out over the square were covered by heavy black curtains. The only contrast was a large design painted in white lines on the wooden floor. Wall-brackets supplied the only light, and the dull black of the walls seemed to absorb most of that. It was a very uncomfortable room to be in.

Frazer half-turned to face them as they entered. He smiled briefly, showing the white side of his face. From the corner of his eye Thomas saw Esta nod, as if answering a question.

Yes, I’ve seen Exhibit A, he thought, and I’m suitably scared. So what’s next?

‘Welcome, Thomas,’ Frazer said, pleasantly enough. He was wearing a dull red caftan that almost matched the colour of the left side of his face.

‘I’m glad you’ve decided to join us. You will find this an interesting and enlightening evening.’

As if I had any choice.

‘You know everyone here, of course, but if you can’t yet put names to faces, that’s Robert, This is Meg and that’s Brigit.’ ‘Are the others coming too?’

‘No, we only need six for our work tonight. I’ve invited Meg and Brigit because you had both of them after your initiation and so there is a bond between you already, of a sort. And Esta, of course, because she was your altar.’ ‘And Robert?’

‘Robert has special links with all three of them.’

‘Before we start, Frazer, will you explain things to me? I learn very quickly, but so much has happened in the last few days that I’m bewildered.’

The conciliatory approach. Let him think I’m won over. Find out what the hell it’s all about, if it’s about anything at all except souped-up sex. Once I can understand him I’ll find a way to put a spoke in his wheel and break loose,

‘Asking questions is the beginning of wisdom,’ said Frazer, sounding very sententious. ‘We are going to begin building the trust and understanding between you and the others which we must have before we can get on with our project.’

‘How?’

‘We do it through shared danger. There are other ways, but they take much longer. And we’re in a hurry. You will understand as we go along.’

He spoke to the others.

‘We’re ready to start. Take your places,’

They began to undress at once. After a moment or two of hesitation Thomas did the same, feeling selfconscious about it.

The design on the floor was a circle, about six feet across. From a white disc in the centre, curving lines ran out to meet the circumference, like a wheel with twisted spokes. Frazer, naked, stood on the point where one line cut the circle. Esta took up her position on his left, at the next intersection. Robert took the next station to her. Meg and Brigit showed Thomas where to stand between them to complete the circle, male and female in sequence.

If Frazer said he had performed with them both, he was prepared to believe it, though he had no recollection himself. He had been so hyperactive on that occasion that he had reached out blindly for one woman after another, his mind drowned in a sea of rushing sensation.

Brigit was the very young one, not yet twenty, he guessed, looking closely at her nakedness. She was tall and thin. Spiky little breasts set high and a wispy pubic triangle. A straight nose and a square chin line that was out of keeping with her air of gawkine ss. Long yellow-brown hair parted in the middle and tied back with a lilac ribbon at her neck and spreading out below over her freckled back-Not much over the age of consent, was Thomas’s thought. What the hell is she doing in this sort of set-up?

By contrast Meg was at least forty, broad-faced and plump. Heavy breasts starting to droop. Long nipples with enormous brown surrounds. Short fair hair on her head, very dark brown hair between her thighs.

They stood in silence for some time, facing inwards. Thomas tried to make geometric or arithmetic sense of the design on the floor. It was constructed carefully to a formula, but without the opportunity to measure it and do some calculations he could not decide what the formula was. Frazer’s voice broke into his thoughts.

‘We welcome you to our circle, Thomas. What we are now doing will bring us into danger - especially you, because you do not know how to protect yourself as we do. But we are here to support you through the ordeal and so long as we have your trust and confidence, you will be safe.’

Thomas swallowed. What the hell am I in for now?

Frazer gestured and they sat down cross-legged on their marks, except Robert, who first set a tall white candle in the centre of the circle and lit it. He switched off the wall-lights and sat down in his position. To Thomas the room seemed to by getting smaller and more oppressive, though he dismissed it as the effect of the light-absorbing walls and the deep unease he was feeling.

‘Link hands,’ said Frazer, ‘and look into the flame.’

Thomas reached out and touched Meg’s warm thigh in the gloom. She took his hand, and from the other side Brigit took his other hand.

‘The circle is closed. Concentrate and make it strong,’

All right for them, they know what he’s talking about. I’m the new boy and nobody’s telling me the rules of the game.

He tried to visualize the circle in his head, linked by hands, man, woman, man, woman, man, woman. Like atoms linked in a ring to make a molecule. Not a good comparison - the molecule is a totally different substance from each of its component atoms. Maybe the circle is different too, in which case the comparison is good.

He felt the first stirring of a force flowing round the circle. It came from his left, out of Brigit’s hand into his own and up his

arm. It looped through his body, setting his guts and genitals tingling, then out down his right arm and through his hand into Meg’s hand. It grew stronger and flowed faster, as if the circle were connected to an electrical power source.

‘The pattern on the floor,’ said Frazer, ‘the candle, the words I shall use - they are only aids to concentration. No more than that. Be clear about it in your mind. We have no spells, as you think of them. We tune our minds to send out and receive particular vibrations, and with these we achieve everything. Do you understand, Thomas?’

‘I think I follow you.’

‘Good. Now keep your eyes on the flame and whatever happens do not break the circle. Your life depends on the protection it gives you.’

He began to chant in a low-pitched voice. It was an unpleasant sound, mindless, empty - the sort of wordless crooning you would expect to hear in an insane asylum, Thomas thought. If, as he said, the pattern and sounds are only aids to concentration to set up vibrations, then what in this world can he be concentrating on with a noise like that?

There was another sound now behind the chanting. It was like the wind moaning round an empty house in winter. Thomas listened in disbelief. Outside it was a mild spring evening. There was no wind. And yet it was unmistakably rising in pitch and strength. It’s a recording, he told himself. Nobody can conjure up a gale inside a house. More trickery to baffle me.

He shuddered as the icy air touched his naked back. He could deny it no longer - the air in the closed room was moving round the circle of linked men and women, loud and fast. The temperature dropped steadily as Frazer’s voice droned on above the keening of the wind.

In the black turmoil behind him Thomas caught the first faint cries and rustlings. He stared fixedly into the golden flame of the candle, determined to ignore the unaccountable sounds. He gasped as his back was touched and flinched away from what felt like cold fingers. The room was full of shadowy presences, swirling in the turbulent air, looking for a way into the circle of humans. He could feel their insistent and yet insubstantial pressure against his outstretched arms as they tried to break his grip. Appalled by whatever Frazer had set loose in the room, he clung hard to Meg and Brigit for help.

Frazer had stopped chanting and the struggle of wills was joined. In his mind Thomas was furiously multiplying numbers to distract his wavering attention from the voiceless cries behind his exposed back. Eight times fourteen is a hundred and twelve. Nine times fourteen is … a hundred and twenty-six. Ten times fourteen … his eyes flickered up momentarily from the candle flame and he cringed at the unformed presence he saw hovering above Esta and Robert.

He could feel it behind his own back too. His instinct told him to scramble up and get out of the room as fast as he could.

He half-sensed a thin shriek of triumph. The pressure against his arms grew until his grip was being torn slowly from the hands on either side of him. It was as if cold lingers had penetrated his head and were peeling away the outer layers of his mind. He was hanging on by his fingertips. And he knew that Frazer was not lying when he had spoken about danger.

By a gigantic effort of will he compelled himself to sit still and stare hard into the flame, his teeth clenched and muscles knotted. He went back to his numbers. Eight times fourteen is a hundred and … twelve? Yes, a hundred and twelve. Nine times fourteen is a hundred and twenty-six.,.

The pressure on him was easing, but it was still there. He got a tighter hold on the women’s hands.

‘These are the disembodied forces that roam everywhere,’ said Frazer, his voice under perfect control. ‘They were attracted by the vibrations we set up, like rats to garbage. Their entire existence is no more than a blind hunger to break through into the world of warmth and sensation. That is their only escape from their own cold plane of nothingness.’

‘Do you mean ghosts?’ Thomas asked from between gritted teeth,

“You mean spirits of the dead? No, these have never lived.’

‘What happens if they do manage to break through?’ Thomas asked, his curiosity quickening in spite of his fear.

‘That can only happen if they find a person whose mind is not strong enough to resist.’

‘What do you mean by mind?’

“Not intellect. Sense of identity, perhaps.’

‘No one could resist this on his own, whether he was sure of his own identity or not. There’s more to it than that.’

“We have attracted a great many of them. They usually wander about alone looking for a victim. They are solitary hunters.’

“What happens when one finds a suitable person?’ ‘It squeezes into his mind and enjoys a brief life through him.’

‘Or her,’ said Brigit, and giggled like a schoolgirl.

‘But the human mind soon collapses,’ Frazer went on, paying no attention to her. “The body goes on for a while with its new owner, but not for long. These things are too frantic for sensation. After a while the body also collapses under the strain and dies.’

The pressure was nearly gone, but the unseen were still in the room, drifting round the circle, waiting for an opportunity.

‘Clinical psychiatry would never be the same again if you told them this,’ said Thomas dryly.

Frazer chuckled.

‘How did you protect yourself when they nearly took you?’ he asked.

‘I recited the multiplication tables to myself. How did you?’

‘There is a word we know. It sets up vibrations which guard against these unformed things.’

‘You might have told me,’ said Thomas, clinging to Brigit’s and Meg’s hands as the shadows in the room’s corners seemed to thicken again.

‘That would have made it too easy for you. But you will hear it now as we disperse our visitors. Remember it’

In a loud and clear voice Frazer spoke a round, golden word. It meant nothing to Thomas, but he felt a quiver of pleasure at its mere sound. Frazer repeated it many times and the others joined in. The different tones of their voices chimed together like a peal of bells. Without understanding what he was saying, Thomas added his voice to theirs, smiling with the ripples of sensuous enjoyment the sound caused.

He risked a quick glance up from the candle flame now that he knew how to cope. The room was clear and bare. The cold was retreating as if the sun were shining on snow and melting it Frazer released the hands he was holding.

‘They have gone.’

Sighs of relaxation from around the circle. Thomas unashamedly wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

‘Did Thomas do well enough?’ Frazer asked. ‘Meg?’

‘There was a second when I thought we’d lost him. He very nearly let go. I was furious, flunking of having to sort things out afterwards. But he held on - just’

‘Well, I think he did very well for his first time,’ said Brigit. ‘He must have been scared stiff. He’s only a novice, you know.’

‘I was terrified out of my wits,’ Thomas agreed, wishing that someone would get up and turn the lights on.

“What do you say, Esta?’ Frazer continued.

‘Good enough for a novice. I’ve got a lot of faith in him.’

‘So you have told us. Though not why. Robert, what do you think?’

‘He’s still here in one piece and in his rightful mind, so he’s passed the test as far as I’m concerned.’

‘I agree. So you have four friends, Thomas. You’ll have to convince Meg on another occasion. She doubts you.’

‘I’ll try,’ Thomas said, glancing at the plump woman on his right.

She smiled back at him through the gloom.

‘Don’t take it to heart,’ she said, ‘it’s just that we’ve got to be absolutely sure.’

Frazer got up and switched on the lights. They all stood up stiffly and stretched their legs. Thomas was surprised to see how far down the candle had burne d. They must have been sitting for much longer than he thought. The ordeal had seemed endless, but that was subjective and he would not have put it at more than half an hour in real time. While he dressed he looked at his watch. It was after midnight. He had survived nearly two hours of Frazer’s mental terrors.

But I only got to ten times fourteen. Or did I? Did I go up to nineteen times nineteen, which is the top, and then start at the beginning again with two times two? That candle flame bit is hypnotic - there’s a big gap in my memory, for sure.

Dressed again, Frazer put a hand on his aim.

‘Take Brigit home. You’ll enjoy her.’

1 came with Esta and I was planning to give her a lift home.’ ‘I do the planning here,’ said Frazer, his piebald face unsmiling. ‘Esta is promised to Robert tonight. Take Brigit home.’

BRIGIT

Brigit lived in a block of flats in Regents Park. Thomas stared enviously at the expensive cars parked outside.

‘Nice place,’ he said as they rode up in the silent lift. ‘You must be pretty well off.’

‘Well, of course I am, darling. That’s one of the advantages of being a witch. You can be rich. A rich witch. And a bitch. I’m a rich bitch witch.’

Thomas laughed at the way she said it.

‘It’s an advantage that hasn’t come my way yet.’

‘You’ve only been with us a week,’ she said, leading him along a thickly carpeted passage. ‘It takes time to find out how to get what you want.’

Once inside her apartment she pressed herself to him and kissed him hard. She was half a head shorter than he was. As he responded, she pulled away.

You smell a bit sweaty. You really were terrified, weren’tyou?’

‘Did you doubt it?’

‘Still, you didn’t break. The bathroom’s over there. I’ll join you in a minute.’

In the bathroom he stripped and stood under the shower. Hot water needling his skin washed away some of his tension. He heard the door open and turned to see Brigit, naked again, coming in. She tucked her long straight hair under a flowered shower cap and stepped under the spray with him. Barefoot, she was two or three inches shorter, her forehead level with his lips. She soaped him all over carefully, the touch of her thin hands on his body exciting him.

‘Nice when it stands up,’ she said, studying him.

She handed him the soap and put her hands on his wet shoulders.

He washed her under-developed body gently. He slid his soapy hands over her almost childish breasts and long flat belly. He cupped her small buttocks in his palms, parted her thighs and reached between to stroke her with his fingertips. She smiled with pleasure and stepped back under the spray to wash the suds off.

“Very nice,’ she said as she stepped out of the shower. ‘Dry yourself and get the brandy from the sitting-room. I’ll be in bed.’

Wrapped in big bath towels, warm, clean and relaxed, they lay on the vast round bed together and sipped brandy, Thomas felt good with the anticipation of pleasure to come.

‘Brigit, how long have you been involved in all this?” ‘How long have I been a witch? Since I was thirteen. Why?’

‘You can’t be much more than that now.’

‘I’m nineteen. At least, I will be in August. I’m a Virgo.’

‘I doubt that, What I meant was, how did you get mixed up with it so young?’

‘No need to be prudish, darling. You mean who initiated me - who had me the first time I was the altar? Is that what you mean?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘It bothers you, doesn’t it - the t hought of some man ramming it up a thirteen-year-old virgin. And then six other men afterwards. But it was lovely. So why should you worry about it if I don’t?’

‘Frazer initiated you?’

‘No, it was Lesage. He was the master of the coven when I joined. He was great. But in the end he wasn’t powerful enough to save himself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘About three years ago Frazer came on the scene. Nobody knew anything about him, but he already had his own coven. He suggested to Lesage that the covens ought to be joined together. Lesage agreed straight off, because a double coven can do so much more than a single one.’

‘Where’s Lesage now?’ Thomas asked, wondering if he wanted to hear the answer.

‘He’s dead, of course. After the covens joined together Frazer gave him the chop and made himself the new master. It was a bad time for everybody, but when we saw what power Frazer could call upon, we knew it was right. The things we can achieve now - well, it’s as if we were only playing at it in Lesage’s time.’

‘How did Frazer kill him?’

‘You’d have to ask Frazer that, not me. But believe me darling, you n eed really colossal power to see off somebody like Lesage.’

‘So you all signed on with the new boss because he was Stronger than the old boss?’

‘Not all of us. One of the old coven helped Lesage and got the chop as well. And after Frazer had settled in and taken over Lesage’s house and everything, he got rid of one more because he didn’t trust her. Then he chose new people to make up the numbers. So we’re a double coven again — at least, we are now you’ve joined. We were one short for a while.’

‘This power you talk about - where does it come from?’

Brigit put her glass down and reached out towards him.

‘That’s enough talking. How about some action?’

Thomas took her in his arms. Her hot mouth clung to his, while her hands behind his neck held his head firmly. When she released him he was ready for her.

He unwrapped her fluffy white towel and looked at her thin body. At that moment she appeared to him to b e the most desirable woman he h ad ever known, though part of his mind told him that wasn’t true.

‘Witch,’ he murmured.

Brigit laughed and opened her thighs lasciviously. Lust burned through him like fire and he held her tight They writhed on the broad bed, intertwined like snakes coupling. His sight was a blur of pale skin and sharp-pointed breasts, long hair and scissoring legs. Panting, gasping, groaning, crying out, he was on her, under her, in her, seemingly penetrating in turn her every wet opening until a spine-wrenching orgasm felled them both.

Afterwards they rolled apart and lay still for a long time to recover.

That wasn’t me. She must have put something in the brandy. I’ve never been as violent with a woman as that Enthusiastic, yes, but I was so far gone with her that one of my legs could have been chopped off and I’d never have noticed - just carried on. But what can you put in brandy to produce an effect like that? There aren’t any worthwhile aphrodisiacs, as far as I know. Maybe it’s her - something about her that cuts the strings of sanity.

He was drifting off to sleep when she spoke,

‘You’re not bad at it, Thomas, you know that?’

She should know. She’s been a busy littl e girl these last five or six years.

‘I’m beginning to think of myself as Thomas?’ he said lazily.

‘Why all this business abou t changing names? What’s wrong w ith my own name?’

‘Nothing at all. But we all get a new name at initiation. It’s a sign that your new life is starting then. We take the names of famous witches in the past. Then we’ve something to look up to, to try to be as famous as they were.’

‘I don’t know who I’m named after, so that doesn’t help me. Do you know?’

‘Thomas. There’ve been quite a few Thomases. Frazer named you, so he’s the only one who knows for sure. Mostly we pick our own names. You can ask him.’

Tell me about some of these Thomases.’

‘There was Dr Thomas Blane. He lived in Victorian times. In fact, he was the most powerful witch of his time. Every coven in London accepted him as their master eventually.’

‘Sounds promising. What did he do?’

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Not yet, anyway. Then there was Thomas Dawkins. He was hanged for murder.’

‘Not a very competent witch, by the sound of him.’

‘He was competent enough to see you off, if you’d been around fifty years ago, so don’t sneer. A ritual went wrong, according to the story, and before he got rid of the body, he was arrested.’

‘No way of bewitching the jury?’

‘I’ve told you, you shouldn’t sneer at things you don’t understand.’

‘I won’t. Who are you named after? ‘My grandmother.’

‘Your grandmother, It runs in the family, docs it? What was she famous for?’ ‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’ ‘Tell me, then.’

‘We don’t give secrets away for nothing. We exchange them. You haven’t any to exchange yet,’

‘At this rate I never shall have. Everyone says they want me to learn, but no one offers to teach me.’

‘Silly - you’ve learned something important tonight.’

‘What?’

‘How to protect yourself. You haven’t forgotten already, have you?’

‘You mean the word we said to get rid of the hobgoblins, or whatever they were. No, I haven’t forgotten it. I’ve got a good memory for words and rhythms. I can also remember Frazer’s recital to call them up.’

Brigit turned her head on the pillow to look him in the face.

‘If you remember that, don’t try it out on your own or you’ll be destroyed mentally. You need the protection of a coven to survive that sort of thing, if you invite them. I’m serious, Thomas.’

‘What I don’t understand is how we could be hurt in any way by these unreal monsters that Frazer conjures up. Like the thing I imagined in the night. Frightening, maybe, I won’t deny that. But it’s all nonsense, really. We sat there tonight scaring ourselves with hallucinations. Nothing would have happened to me if I’d got up and walked away.’

‘You’re being dangerously stupid. You experienced something and you still refuse to believe it. If you’d left the circle they would have taken over your mind at once. You wouldn’t have stood a chance. Meg and I would have closed the circle and we’d have driven them off by saying the word. But it would have been the end for you. You’d be raving mad before you got out of the room. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen.’

‘When?’

‘Never mind when. It was a girl called Marie-Louise. We stared into the candle flame and drove them off, and we could all the while hear her screaming behind us and clawing at the door with iter fingernails. I thought I should be sick, just hearing that clawing noise.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘There was nothing anyone could do. She was like an animal. Too dangerous to go near. Two of the men held chairs in front of them and drove her out of the house. She ran off screaming through the streets stark naked till the police picked her up.’

‘That must have worried you - I mean, if they traced her back.’

‘Her mind was gone. She could tell them nothing at all. They never even identified her and she died soon afterwards in an insane asylum, trussed up and drugged.’

‘You’re trying to frighten me.’

‘I’m telling you the simple truth. You’d better believe me.’ Thomas sat up and reached for the brandy bottle. ‘There’s too much terror and death in your ways,’ he said. ‘I’m no more of a coward than the next man, but the last few days have been nothing but nightmares, rotting bodies and tonight’s episode with whatever we thought we were righting. It’s too much, Brigit. I don’t want to know about all that, real or imaginary. It’s like living through a long dope trip gone wrong. It’s not for me. You can keep your spooks and I’ll get on with my own life.’ Brigit sat up on the bed cross-legged.

‘You’re tired,’ she said, ‘and it’s all new to you. Don’t worry about the nasties. We’ll all help you through them and it won’t take long. If I could do it when I was thirteen, I’m sure you can now.’

He shuddered at the thought of a young girl exposed to such experiences. The damage to her personality didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Don’t forget the rewards,’ she said. ‘Anything you want -money, women, position - anything at all. You can have whatever you want.’

‘How?’

‘You’ll find that out very soon. And when you’ve got what you want, then there are the greater rewards you don’t know about yet.’

‘Never a straight answer. Not from you, not from Frazer, not from Esta. Just vague promises. Could it be that we’re just playing psychological games with each other?’

‘Is that what you think? I’ll teach you a different game, then. Put your head in my lap and I’ll show you an old magic I learned from my grandmother. If you remember it afterwards, you can use it.’

His curiosity aroused, Thomas put his head on her bare thighs, his ear against her warm belly.

She sang a four-note song in a language he didn’t know, a monotonous little lullaby. Her fingertips touched his forehead and circled his eyes, touched his lips and drew an invisible pattern on his checks. Her body was swaying in time to the song, her eyes closed.

He thought at first that she was trying to put him to sleep. But then his limp part stirred and a hungry ache grew in his loins. It was as if an electric current ran through his body, making him twitch and shake. He reached up to take Brigit by the shoulders and pull her down beside him. Her eyes were still shut fast, her mouth open and hissing. She twisted and bucked as he scrambled on top of her in a paroxysm of lust. He stabbed into her as if he were ripping an enemy’s belly open with a bayonet. He jerked wildly, out of rational control, until his body exploded and his consciousness was wiped out.

He sank like a stone into a dark well, falling towards the bottom of nothingness. The relief of fading out was like dying and having done with the world’s trouble.

It was light when he woke up again. He was lying on his back, naked and uncovered, feeling chilled, Brigit was asleep beside him, her long hair in tangles. The pale skin of her shoulders and neck was printed with blue bruises and red bite marks.

Did I do that to her? My God, what have I got myself into with these people? They’re all half-mad. Or worse. And they’ll make me like them if I give them a chance. How did I get trapped into this?

Through sex. Esta was the bait. Sex with her was so much more exciting than the amateur affairs I’d had before that I was caught like a fly in a cobweb. And when she talked about the even more exciting pleasures to be had with her group of friends, I was ready for the kill. That body of hers, that’s what it was a bout. Firm and strong as an ath lete, brown from the sun, smooth and hairless, armpits, fleshy mound, gripping legs. A Venus fly-trap.

Only when I got to her friend’s house for the or gy, it wasn’t a bit like the porn -films. I went in like an innocent, expecting to have it with a couple of new women. What an idiot I was. I walked into a jungle full of leeches and offered them my body. They’re hanging on, leeches all over me, sucking the life and sanity out. I’ve got to get rid of them before they drain me dry. But how - when they can do things to my mind so that I imagine the impossible?

He shivered at the memory of the stinking body he had seen in the bathroom. Greenish flesh of the slashed throat. Dried black stain on the floor. He clenched his teeth to fight down a spasm of nausea. Esta had shown him that sight as a warning of what would happen if he annoyed Frazer.

So am I caught for the rest of my life? Or for as long as they have a use for me, which is probably the same thing. Am I Frazer’s slave through fear of the consequences? Brigit’s slave when she wants to enjoy her rape fantasies? Esta’s slave if she chooses?

That bitch Esta! She deliberately built up a feeling for herself in me. Not love, of course. You don’t love a woman who traps you like that. And you don’t love a woman who parts her legs for twelve other men as a kind of family duty. But she has made me feel something for her, and waking up to the facts is painful.

To hell with that kind of talk! She’s a whore and Brigit’s a whore, and so are the rest of the women. The day will come for a settling of accounts with Esta. Though not till I’ve found out how to protect myself from the power she has over me.

Power, where does this power they talk about come from? Not from the chants and words, that’s only their way of concentrating their minds so that they can reach out and link up with the source. That’s what Frazer implied when he talked about setting up mental vibrations. They use the chants to tune their minds, like turning the knob on a car radio to pick up the station you want. So as I’ve been initiated like the rest of them, how is it I haven’t got the same abilities as they have? Do I need practice — is it that simple? Or am I overlooking something?

He cast his mind back to his initiation and the sickening moment when he had stood between Esta’s spread thighs and looked down at her blood-spattered body.

Yes, it happened when I took her. That was the actual moment of initiation. I thought I saw a black light inside my head. And there was something else. There was a feeling that I’d made contact with another mind. Not Esta and not Frazer. It felt too different to be either of them. The impression was of something impossibly big and very purposeful. I might have been hallucinating. But it seemed to penetrate my mind as I penetrated Esta’s body and in some way it directed my actions. It helped me reach out towards it. The will to reach it had to come from me, but it made it easier for me to do so after that.

I touched it at the instant I came into Esta. That was when I saw the black light explode. I dissolved into it. It was so vast and I was so small.

That’s the source of their power. Perhaps it’s no more than a deep-buried part of the subcons cious. I can’t really believe th at it’s external. But if I can understand what that source is, I shall be on equal footing with Frazer and his insane followers. And then I can get free from him.

THE FIRE

It was three days before Frazer called Thomas to another night test. Esta met him at the door, told him to strip and led him upstairs. Frazer’s house was flat-roofed, with a waist-high parapet dividing it from the roofs on either side and from the street. The roof was a much larger area than Thomas expected, and there was no danger of being observed from the road below or from the windows round the square.

There were thirteen present this time, including himself. Apart from Frazer and Esta he could not put names to any of the others, though some of the faces and bodies looked familiar from his initiation. They formed an in ward-facing circle around Frazer and waited for him to begin.

‘We need the combined strength of thirteen of us for tonight’s work,’ Frazer said to Thomas. ‘Do not be afraid of what happens. These friends will support you.’

‘And judge me,’ said Thomas, remembering the time before.

‘And judge whether you are worthy of their trust and respect,’ Frazer corrected him pointedly. ‘Look at them well and remember them.’

Thomas shivered slightly and told himself it was only the cool night air on his uncovered body, Frazer moved round the circle, touching each of them in turn on the chest, and spoke their names for Thomas’s benefit.

‘Giles, Marian, Evin, Joan, Robin, Isabel, Victor, Elspeth, Aleister, Rachel. And Esta, of course.’

Thomas tried to fix their names in his head. Elspeth was small-breasted and broad-hipped, with an angular face. Rachel had black hair. Evin had a fringe of beard to distinguish him. Aleister was moon-faced. Victor was the oldest of them, at least fifty and silver-haired.

Frazer had turned full circle and was facing Thomas again as he stood between Rachel and Esta. In the dim light his stained face appeared half black and half white.

‘Tonight you will see a great marvel. We shall conjure fire out of the sky and bring it down to us. It will not hurt you so long as our thoughts are attuned and our powers combined.

But do not break away from the circle or you will be burnt alive.’

‘I understand,’ said Thomas, wishing that he did.

At a gesture from Frazer they knelt and joined hands. Frazer himself stood upright in the centre and raised his arms towards the night sky. It was a cloudless night, with stars everywhere and the moon about half full.

Frazer’s chest swelled as he took a deep breath and hummed a long clear note. By ones and twos the others joined on exactly the same note, so that the sound grew louder and only Thomas was silent. Esta on his right squeezed his hand to encourage him. He had a good ear for music. He took a breath and joined in with them, listening carefully to make sure he’d hit it right.

The sound from thirteen throats was not unpleasant. As they sustained it, the music acquired an undertone of power and determination that drove all thought out of Thomas’s mind. He was a tuning-fork vibrating, giving back the note that had been struck. He could not have stopped sounding it if he had wanted to - it had taken control of them and was amplifying and sustaining itself.

Up in the sky something was changing. Thomas stared in disbelief. From nowhere, wisps of cloud had materialized and were twisting across the sky as if driven by a strong wind, though on the roof the air was still. Frazer gestured with his raised arms, urging the circle about him to greater effort. The sound they were making swelled in volume as they obeyed him, half-entranced, and the wisps of cloud above them met and coalesced into a patch. The patch, hazy to begin with, became more and more solid, thickening, darkening and still growing in size.

Thomas forced himself to think, though the vibrating sound had nearly blanked out his mind. This is simply not happening, he told himself. It is an utter impossibility. It is an illusion Frazer is creating, a trick of perception.

A rolling black thundercloud had formed. At a sign from Frazer the circle fell silent and waited. Thomas felt Rachel clutch his left hand tightly. It made him feel slightly better to know that someone else shared his apprehension. Or did it? If she knew what was happening and was afraid, then that was good reason for him to be scared speechless.

Frazer dropped his arms to his sides and stood still for a moment or two, visibly gathering his strength. His already straight back seemed to become even straighter, his shoulders back, his black-haired belly pulled in tautly. When he was ready, he raised his arms again, pointing straight into the underhang of the cloud and gave a harsh cry of command, There was an ear-splitting crack of thunder as jagged lightning lanced down towards him.

Thomas gaped in terror as Frazer was bathed in white fire, expecting to sec him shrivel and blacken like burning paper. But he stood unharmed as the fire lapped round him. Then it was gone and the ai r was full of the electric smell of ozone.

In the silence that followed Thomas could hear Rachel’s breath rasping in her throat. He squeezed her hand to let her know she was not alone and she glanced at him for a second before Frazer repeated his cry and the lightning came streaking down to him in roaring noise. Thomas could hardly control his trembling. He doubted whether he could hold out much longer against liis fear, A third time Frazer called down the fire, and this time it licked round the whole circle of kneeling watchers.

Thomas felt the dry flame lick over his skin without burning him. His head was reeling from the noise and the strain. Eyes bulging, he bit his lower lip and willed himself to endure for as long as the others could. He looked down to see white fire wrapping his whole body, while tingling shock ran through his bones.

It was gone, and the night air was cool about him again. Frazer dropped his arms to his sides. His whole body was faintly luminous from a residual glow.

‘Well done,’ he said. His voice sounded oddly high and resonant, not like its usual ring.

‘We are truly great! You did not fail us, Thomas.’

Thomas was in a state of shock, unable to speak. As the circle broke up, he shuffled after them, across the roof and down the stairs. No one spoke as they went down to Frazer’s sitting-room on the ground floor. At the sideboard bearded Evin poured glasses half-full of neat whisky and handed them out to eager hands, Thomas drained his without even tasting it, his mind in a turmoil.

It is completely and definitely impossible. There is no way in which a group of people can influence the weather by wishing. It is an absurdity. As for being struck by lightning and staying untouched, the idea is nonsensical. What I thought happened on the roof just now could not have happened. Yet I am convinccd that it did. Never. To admit the possibility that these people could exercise that sort of power would upset the whole fabric of nature.

‘Your hand,’ said Rachel, touching his arm to get his attention.

‘What?’

‘Your hand. It’s bleeding. I must have done that by digging my nails into you. I know it sounds childish, but I’ve always been scared by thunde r.’

‘Thunder?’

She had bathed in the consuming fire, not for the first time, and she said she was afraid of thunder, Thomas shook his head, trying to make his mind work.

‘Does it hurt?’ she asked. ‘No, I suppose you can’t feel it yet You’re still high on what happened on the roof. It gets everybody like that at first’

She took his hand and licked the blood from the palm,

‘What are you doing?’

‘Healing it for you. I can do that It will be better by tomorrow.’

Thomas stared round the room uncomprehendingly. It was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. Everything was small and far away. Frazer was sitting in his high-backed chair and Esta was leaning close to speak quietly to him. Tiny dolls and a toy chair. The others were standing about the room in twos and threes and though their lips moved, Thomas could hear nothing. Men and women naked as beasts, and he was unaware even that they were naked. After the fire nothing was unusual. Everything upside down. Madness makes sense. Sanity is nonsense.

In the fire a voice had spoken to him, even though he tried to close his mind to the memory.

Rachel came back from speaking to Frazer and he hadn’t noticed her absence. His red-streaked palm was still held out in front of him, as she’d left it after licking it. She put a hand on his arm and led him unresisting out of the room, past Frazer, who smiled knowingly. She helped him down the stairs to the basement.

It was pitch-dark in the room she took him to and yet he could discern her quite clearly. Her whole body and hair were luminous in the darkness. He looked in wonder at his own shining body and limbs,

“Full of fire,’ he said aloud.

His own voice sounded high-pitched and jerky.

‘Well then, nothing in this world is impossible any more if a man can call down lightning and bathe in it as if it were water. I was blind in my ignorance.’

Rachel stood him in the middle of the room and lay on her back at his feet, her arms and legs spread wide like a star-fish. Her pubic hair did not start in a straight line across her belly as is usual, but descended in a wispy line from her navel, broadening out as it went to the full width of her loins and thickening to an imposing black bush. Thomas stared foolishly at it as if it had some significance for him.

Thomas, what did you hear in the fire?’ she asked softly.

‘A voice that spoke to me.’

‘Tell me what it said, this voice.’

‘No, it was for me.’

Tell me. It is important. For your sake.’ ‘Earth, air, fire and water are my creatures and shall be yours,’ he said, halting over the words and their implication. ‘Yes. Say it again.’

He raised his arms out above her without knowing what impelled him to do so, and repeated the words louder.

‘Good,’ said Rachel. ‘Listen carefully now.’

He stared at her glowing body below him. His mind was drawn as tight as a violin string, ready for the bow that would sound its note.

She was saying something in a language he didn’t know. But he understood it. A language from a time when words were short and simple and unambiguous. Words from an early time, when concepts were as rounded and immutable as stones you could pick up and feel the hard shape of, and put down again without changing them. He had an image of the people who spoke this language. Like the guide on the mountain, they wore animal skins and were browned by the weather.

He knew that Rachel was saying that she was the earth. And he was the fire. Earth-woman, sun-man. When the earth calls to the fire, the fire leaps down to the earth.

In the grip of forces beyond himself, Thomas cried out wordlessly as his knees buckled. He toppled forward on to Rachel’s spread body. He penetrated her instantl y, sucked into her by an irresistible power. As the auras of light about then-bodies were jammed together, the luminosity flared into dazzling intensity and triggered off the inner sun-burst of a jolting orgasm. Bodies straining together, they writhed and flopped like speared fish.

When Thomas was in command of himself again he eased himself off Rachel and lay beside her on the floor. For the first time he realized that the floor was of earth. He had a splitting headache, and pressed his fingers to his temples to still the pain. The room was so dark that he couldn’t see his own hand an inch from his eyes. The light had gone from their bodies.

‘What did you do?’ he whispered, his voice shaky.

‘I earthed you,’ Rachel said, and laughed at her own joke.

‘Did it have to be like that?’

‘You were carrying a huge charge. It would have killed you if I hadn’t relieved you of it. You damn nearly killed me with it. You were a walking bomb ready to go off.’

‘How would it have killed me?’

‘It speeds up your metabolism so much that you bum out. You wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of hours like that. How do you feel now?’

‘Weak. And I’ve got a blinding headache.’

‘You’re all right, then. The headache will pass off soon. Do you want to come home with me tonight?’

‘I want to go to bed. You can come home with me if you like, but I’ve had it for tonight, I warn you.’

‘I know that,’ said Rachel’s voice beside him in the darkness. “We both have. After the fire magic you do it once because you must, and once only. It’s instantaneous and totally exhausting. Not even Brigit can get a man going after that.’

‘I know all about her tricks. How often do we have to go through this fire magic?’

‘Only when we need to use it. Not very often. Tonight was just for your benefit. Let me make your head better’

He felt her fingers on his forehead, soothing away the grinding pain.

‘What do you use it for, besides impressing novices?’

‘To call down the fire on somebody else, not on ourselves’

‘Who, for instance?’

‘Anybody who’s getting in the way’

‘And what happens?’

‘What usually happens when somebody’s struck by lightning? They stop bothering us/

His headache was very nearly gone. She was a healer of talent.

It’s a way to murder people, you mean.’ It’s usually put down to accidental death. Death by misadventure. Act of God. You know.’ ‘Does this happen very often?’

‘No, of course not. Sometimes we just use it to burn a house down as a warning. After that we get what we want without any more argument.’

Thomas sat up, his head better.

‘Let’s go, if you’re coming with me,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of this place, and there’s a lot I want to ask you.’

Rachel giggled. An uncomfortable sound in the dark.

‘What makes you think I shall tell you anything?’

‘I don’t know why, but I know that you will. You have to, for some reason. You’ve made something happen between us that I can’t quite grasp, but I have this certain feeling that you’ll do whatever I ask. Come on.’

Without a word, Rachel got up and went with him.

BONE‘S

The ordeal by fire changed Thomas. Peering into his shaving mirror, he thought he could detect a slight deepening of the vertical lines on his face from nose to chin. And a new set to his expression, a perceptible hardening round the eyes and mouth.

These were trivial outward marks of an inner change of real significance. He no longer doubted Frazer’s power and determination, and accepted that the coven commanded forces that he did not understand. He also gained a new assurance. Novice he might be, but unquestionably he was one of them and need not be the least of them for ever, Rachel had answered his questions, truthfully as far as he could tell, and had been grati fyingly submissive to him. She had tried to explain, to the best of her ability, the nature of the bond forged between them by their explosive coupling in the cellar, but he only partly grasped it. For the moment, it was enough that it worked and he had gained a friend.

If he could extend his influence, increase his knowledge and become adept in the coven’s unpleasant mysteries, the time would come when he would be strong enough to break free with impunity and live his own life again. Until that time he must work by stealth, outwardly pliant, inwardly resolved.

At Meg’s invitation he went to visit her on Sunday morning, driving to Hammersmith and across the iron suspension bridge over the Thames in the spring sunshine. It came as no surprise to find that her house was large and elegant, set back from the road, with trees and a white semi-circular gravel drive,

Meg opened the door herself when he rang, and led him through the house to the lawn at the back.

They sat on wickerwork garden chairs while she poured glasses of chilled white wine. Thomas sipped appreciatively and looked her over carefully. He wondered what sort of person she was.

She was the oldest of the thirteen women in the double coven and he put her in her mid-forties. There were tiny lines at the comers of her eyes and the first signs of what eventually would be flabbiness round her neck. Her short fair hair was, he guessed, dyed, remembering the darker colour of her body hair. For all that, she was still an attractive woman. She was wearing a green sleeveless cotton dress that buttoned down the front, and her sandalled feet had pink-painted toenails.

“Will you tell me something?’ Thomas asked, anxious to pursue his enquiries. ‘Which coven did you belong to originally, Frazer’s or Lesage’s?’

‘Don’t you know?’ she asked sharply.

‘Why, no. All I know is that there were two groups once and they joined together. I’m trying to get it straight in my mind.’

Meg put her glass down before answering.

‘I’ll satisfy your curiosity for you, though you may not like what you hear. I was Lesage’s first convert, over twenty years ago. I was his altar when he reached out and touched the source. It was the greatest moment of my life when it responded and the power came flooding into him and me together. When he built up his coven, I was the altar on which he initiated his men followers. It was on my body and through me they were accepted. Do you have any idea of what that means to me?’

She spoke with some feeling. Thomas was wary in his answer,

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘No need to be sorry. I adored Lesage, He was like a god to me when I was young. He showed me the truth. If he had accepted Frazer as master he would be alive today, but th at wasn’t his way.’

‘Winner takes all, is that it?’ said Thomas, struck by her obvious agitation.

‘The stronger takes from the weaker everywhere. It’s like that in life. Frazer was the stronger.’

‘Yes, but I thought that civilization and law were evolved to protect the weak against the strong.’

‘Nonsense, and you know it. Civilization and law were developed by the strong to let them rule the weak without the constant use of force. But make no mistake, the force is always ready in the background if it is needed,’

‘Might is right, it that what you’re saying?’

Meg laughed outright at that.

‘Frazer is master because he is the strongest,’ she said. ‘After him comes Esta, then me, then Robert. There’s not much to choose between the others. They’re all struggling to climb over each other. You’re at the bottom of the pecking order, being the weakest.’

That puts me in my place and disposes of quite a few questions. We are in endless competition with each other, from what you say,’

Meg refilled their glasses.

‘Not quite,’ she said. That would be too destructive. Look at the natural order of things - a developed nation or a tribe of primitives or a herd of wild animals. They live together and cooperate for the good of the group, especially when they are threatened from outside. But inside the group there are the stronger and the weaker, and the stronger get more of what’s going than the others. The strongest one of all will dominate the group and be the leader.’

Thomas leaned back and stretched his legs,

“It’s a beautiful Sunday morning to be sitting in your garden talking sixth-form philosophy. But it’s not what I’m here for, is it?’

‘What an impatient man he is,’ Meg sneered. ‘No time to waste sitting in the sun enjoying himself with a glass of wine. Why rush things? This might be your last day for enjoying anything. Have you thought of that?’

‘I’ve got used to the thought. I don’t forget it, but I don’t let it bother me too much. Otherwise I’d be a gibbering idiot in no time.’

‘You’ve changed since the last time I saw you,’ ‘Have I? How?’ She shrugged.

‘You don’t really trust me, Meg, do you? That’s what’s troubling you. Is it because I was afraid when Frazer called those things into the room?’

‘That’s part of it.’

Tear is a natural human reaction to danger. Surely you were afraid the first time that happened to you.’

‘I’ve never been afraid of anything in my life,’ she said, and Thomas believed her.

‘You’re a remarkable woman. But the fact is that ordinary mortals do feel fear in certain situations. We try to control it, so that we can function.’

‘You’re missing the point. We’re not ordinary mortals, not by a long way. The time will come when we shall each hold the lives of the coven in our hands. If only one breaks, we shall all be dead. And what scared you before will be a picnic compared with what you will have to stand up to then. Before we get that far, I want to be sure that I can trust you with my life.’

‘There’s nothing I can say to that,’ said Thomas.

‘You’ll be afraid, of course, as fear is in your nature. But I want to know that you won’t give way to it and finish us all.’

‘What does Frazer think?’

‘He agrees with me. That’s why you’re here now. I have to decide whether you go any further with us or not. There’s too much involved to make a second mistake.’

‘Like Michael Benton, you mean,’

She said nothing, Thomas sat still, no longer feeling the warmth of the sun on his face. The unspoken threat hung over him, dispersing his new-found confidence like dust before the wind.

Bloody fool I was to think it was going to be that easy to pull the wool over their eyes. They’re going to be probing and spying for months to see if they can catch me out. And if they do, goodnight! How the hell am I going to placate this woman, with her experience?

‘There’s something strange about you scientists,’ said Meg. “You don’t give yourselves wholeheartedly, do you? There’s a core of scepticism and distrust in you that makes it hard to believe in your good faith. The other man was just the same. Maybe it’s your training. Maybe it’s a personality defect that makes you choose science in the first place. It makes you of very little use to us unless we can change you first.’

In his mind Thomas could see vividly the curled-up body of Benton on the floor, bloated and stinking.

‘I have changed,’ he said, with all the conviction he could manage. ‘You said so yourself. I am no longer as sceptical as I was, I give you my word.’

‘Your word means nothing,’ said Meg in a matter-of-fact way. ‘You’d lie to save yourself.’

‘Then what?’

‘We don’t have to rely on your word. Come along,’ He followed her into the house reluctantly, his legs stiff under him. She led him up a handsome staircase to the first floor, and then up narrow twisting stairs to a room under the roof. Thomas stood at the open doorway, looking round in dismay. The room was thickly carpeted in black, the walls and low ceiling painted dull grey. It was empty except for a tall antique cabinet standing against one wall. There were no windows.

On the wall opposite the door was a wooden bracket with three candles. As he lingered in the door, Meg struck a match and lit them.

‘Come in and close the door. You’ve no choice, you know.’ ‘Why you, Meg?’

‘We each have our special abilities. This is mine.’

He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Lit only by the flickering candles, the room seemed smaller and more threatening. As dry-mouthed as a rabbit backed into a dark burrow by a weasel, he witnessed Meg’s brief undressing. She unbuttoned her dress from neck to hem, shrugged it off her shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Off came her bra to expose her heavy breasts, with brown nipples nearly an inch long and areolae the size of his palms. She slid her white briefs under the rotundities of her buttocks and down her legs to stand naked before him,

‘Get your clothes off.’

He experienced a certain embarrassment as he stripped, and was glad that Meg went to the cabinet instead of watching him. Inside, in the deep shadows, he caught a glimpse of something white.

‘Sit on the floor facing the light,’ she instructed, her back to him as she took things from the cabinet.

He sat cross-legged, alarmed and vulnerable. Meg lowered herself to the carpet opposite him, a yard away, and folded her legs into the lotus position with the ease of long practice. In one hand she hold a human skull, in the other a rolled black doth.

Thomas calmed his breathing and straightened his back, as she set the skull on the floor so that its empty eye-holes stared blindly across the space between them. She unrolled the cloth on her lap, revealing about two dozen small white finger-bones.

‘For God’s soke!’ Thomas exclaimed. ‘Are you going to tell my fortune?’

‘You’ll be a disbeliever to the last,’

He said nothing after that. Meg picked up the bones in her cupped hands and whispered to them quietly. Though he strained to hear, Thomas could not catch a word of it. He waited, seeing her rock gentl y backwards and forwards to her whispering.

With a sharp exhalation of breath she threw the bones on to the carpet between them. There was silence while she studied the pattern they made,

‘When is your birthday?’ sue asked, frowning,

“November the first,’

“Here is a scorpion in a ring of fire,’ she said, passing her open hand over the scattered bones. ‘You are a Scorpio, so it means you.’

Not a bad description of my position. Not that it looks anything like that from where I sit. She can say whatever she likes and there’s nothing I can do about it. Throwing the bones is just mumbo-jumbo to get me going. She’ll give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down for something quite different. Something she’s already decided on as the real test. But what?

She gathered up the bones and threw them again. This time she was silent for a long time, looking at them in fierce concentration.

‘Well?’ Thomas queried when be could stand the suspense no longer.

She brushed both hands quickly over the bones to scatter the pattern.

This is to do with our great project,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I can’t tell you about it.’

‘Why not? I seem to be needed for it.’

‘Frazer will tell you himself when the time’s right.’

‘Was it good or bad, what you saw?’

Instead of answering she picked the bones up carefully one by one and threw them again. ‘A man upside-down,’ she said softly. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘A death.’

The omens are not very favourable, it seems,’ said Thomas, trying to keep the scepticism out of his voice. Try again.’

‘I can only cast three times,’ she said, collecting the bones on to the black cloth in which she kept them.

‘What do you make of it, then?’

The readings must be taken together. Be quiet while I think,’ She sat with her eyes closed and her broad face peaceful. In spite of the precarious position he was in, Thomas found his attention straying towards her naked body. In time with her breathing her great breasts rose and fell and the bulge of her belly moved in and out.

And why not? If I’m for the chop I might as well pass what time I’ve got in thoughts of pleasure instead of anxiety about what happens next. And pleasure it would be with her. She’s a big woman, and she’d be a great ride. What am I saying -would be? According to Frazer I’ve been there already on that first night. Only I was so disoriented that I don’t even remember having her, let alone what it was like.

His genitals stirred faintly as he stared into the deep shadow where her thighs joined.

Meg sighed loudly and opened her eyes.

‘There’s something about you I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘The questions have been answered by the bones, but I can’t put the answers together to make sense.’

‘So what happens now?’

There’s another way. Stay where you are.’

She unfolded her legs and went to the cabinet by the wall again. Thomas weighed up the possibility that she suspected that his aims were not those of the group. A death, she had said. Hocus-pocus to frighten him, maybe, but he was certain that his death could be engineered by the group if they turned against him.

Meg knelt beside him with a dark green glass jar in her hand. She pulled out the ornate stopper and sniffed at the contents.

“Lie on your back,’ she said, dipping her fingers into the jar.

He unwound his cramped legs and stretched out on the carpet, his eyes swivelling to see what she was doing. She smeared her fingers over his nipples and he caught an aromatic scent. Familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to it. A pleasant, invigorating scent. A prickly sensation started in his nipples almost at once, and while he was puzzling about the purpose of the unguent, he felt her smear his limp part with it.

In the second or two it took her to stopper the jar and put it down, the sensation had kindled to a throbbing heat and he was painfully erect, Meg lay beside him on the floor and parted her plump thighs to expose the fleshy lips between them. He kneaded her breasts feverishly until the growing heat in his genitals forced him to mount her and pierce deep into her body. At first she lay still and unaffected as he gasped and plunged, then as his excitement approached frenzy she gave voice to a keening noise, timing he r cries to his thrusts. Urged o n by her curious response, he moved faster, his body bathed in sweat as he belaboured her belly.

At the instant of his ejaculation Meg turned her face towards the white skull resting on the carpet an arm’s-length away from her and screamed at the top of her voice: ‘Lesage! Rise, rise!’

In the grip of cold terror that smothered his ecstasy even while his loins were still pumping his semen into her, Thomas looked sideways, half-rising from her body on his arms. Before he could slip away, she had her legs over his buttocks and her arms round his waist, holding him inside her by force.

‘Lesage!’ she screamed again. ‘Rise!’

Above the gleaming skull the air twisted and thickened and took on a shape, Thomas’s heart thumped wildly in his chest as he saw the blurred outline of a man flicker into being. It loomed over him, insubstantial and wavering, but full of menace.

Meg called out from underneath him, her voice shrill with excitement.

‘Lesage - do you still know me?’

Thomas’s neck ached from twisting it to gape up at the figure above him. It was a man in his fifties, hook-nosed, eyes invisible under heavy brows, bulky of body, with a thick mat of hair covering his chest right down to his protruding belly,

‘Meg’ said a voice so distant that Thomas almost thought he had imagined it.

‘Meg - what do you want from me?’

This man I hold,’ she said, tightening her grip on him.

‘Should we accept him into the coven, or should we reject him?

Answer me truthfully.’ There was silence except for the rasping of Thomas’s breath, ‘Answer me! Look into his heart. Quick, while you have time!’

There was still no answer, though Thomas was aware of the unseen eyes boring into him, even while the figure started to fade.

‘Accept him,’ said the distant voice at last.

‘I saw conflict and death in the bones, I must be sure.’

The voice was no more than a whisper from very far away.

‘I know his heart and his mind. Accept him.’

Like twisting smoke from an extinguished candle the figure shrivelled into nothing and only the empty-eyed skull was left on the carpet,

Thomas prised himself loose from Meg as her grip slackened. He sat hunched beside her, arms over his head, shaking and cold. After a while he looked up in surprise, Meg was sobbing;

she was lying on her side, curled up, hands hiding her wet face.

‘Lesage,’ he heard between her sobs, ‘come back to me … please come back.’

Thomas mastered his fear. He put his arms around Meg and tried to comfort her in her grief.

THE CAVE

‘Men and women are small and pitiful creatures,’ said Frazer, his red-marked face intent on Thomas. ‘They claw each other in their despair. They tread each other down in the scramble to keep their own heads above the surface of the cesspool they swim in. They bomb and burn and maim each other with high explosives and napalm. They kill each other with radiation by the hundred thousand. And the day is not very far off when they will kill each other by the million and the hundred million. Disease and starvation carry off even more than wars. The starving black child with the swollen belly and the overfed white with cancer eating his bowels are equally victims,’

‘But wars can be stopped eventually,’ Thomas objected, ‘and in time all diseases will be curable. Politics and medicine have their objectives.’

“What then?’ Frazer asked. “We live for about seventy years in a universe that has existed for countless millions of years already, and will endure for countl ess millions of years after us. The best a man can hope for during his brief life is to make his days as pain-free as possible. Isn’t that so?’

‘But surely we have a sense of purpose,’ Thomas answered,

Frazer was sitting in his tall chair, wearing a white caftan with the symbol of an eye embroidered on the front in scarlet. On the floor at his feet sat Esta, leaning against his knees; she was naked and her long hair spilled into his lap. Thomas closed his mind firmly to what they might have been doing before his arrival. Nothing so simple as sex, he was sure of that,

‘Your sense of purpose is an act of self-deception,’ said Frazer. ‘The thought that our existence is meaningless and worthless is too much for sanity to bear. We blind ourselves to the truth. We engross ourselves in careers, families, religious fai ths, politics, humanitaria nism - anything that serves to put an appearance of purpose over the void at which we dare not look. We are like men getting drunk tonight in order to forget that we are being hanged in the morning.’

Thomas shrugged, not knowing what to say. This was an unexpected insight into Frazer’s character.

‘Have I spoken the truth?’ Frazer demanded.

‘As far as it goes It is hard to make sense of the human situation. But then, I’m not a philosopher, I’m a scientist,’

‘Can you make sense of it with science?’

‘No. But it seems to me that scientists and philosophers both agree that there was a First Cause. And if we can get an understanding of what that was, we might be nearer answering your question.’

‘You’ve said nothing. You’re trying to deduce who pushed the first domino over a long time ago, that’s all.’ ‘Yes, What other way is there?’ There is our way, and it leads to the only answer.’ Tell me, then.’ Frazer smiled thinly. .

‘There is no need to tell you. You are following the way with us.’

‘I could do with some guidance, all the same. For instance, if Meg really raised a dead man, which I find very hard to accept, then that indicates some sort of survival after physical death, which would not fit well with your pessimism.’

Thomas was convinced that Meg’s unguent had made him hallucinate and that he had seen nothing objective at all. But he had no intention of saying that to Frazer.

‘We can command the four elements,’ said Frazer. ‘We can command the bodies and minds of men. You have seen and experienced some of this. Yet with all our powers we have never been able to communicate with the dead. There is no authenticated record of anyone ever having done so, even though initiates have tried down the ages. Consequently, we do not believe that there is any form of life after death.’

Thomas was very surprised by what he had heard.

‘So Meg materialized nothing at all?’ he asked. ‘It was only in my mind?’

‘No, you are leaping to the wrong conclusion. Meg materialized a lingering memory. Every cell of a person’s body is permeated by his living essence and personality. Even after the life is gone, a projection of the personality can be conjured out of the de ad parts by those with the skill ‘

‘Are you saying that you can raise an ancient Egyptian from his mummy?’

‘It has been done many times. And learned men of the past from their physical relics. But “raise” is the wrong word. We project. Any part of the body will do, but a skull is particularly good for the purpose since it once contained the brain that housed the persona.’

‘Then that was Lesage’s skull?’

Frazer’s chuckle raised the hair on Thomas’s neck.

‘Lesage is buried in Meg’s garden. She kept his head and hands for use in divining. She boiled away the flesh and cleaned the bones.’

‘What was the purpose of the sexual act?’ Thomas asked, feeling queasy.

‘Sexual tension and release provide psychic power we can direct towards our own uses, as you have seen before. Meg channelled yours into the skull to project the visible personality of Lesage. You created him, not Meg.’

Thomas repressed a shudder.

‘I don’t see how a phantasm of that sort can be of any use in divination,’ he said, ‘You said it was only a memory - a thing of the past. How can it tell the future?’

Frazer stroked Esta’s hair idly.

“No one can see the future, because the future is not shaped,’ he said. ‘Divination is the art of finding the hidden truth which exists now. Meg was asking questions about the present with the bones. And when that was clouded, she used your lust to give Lesage a brief existence in the present.’

‘She was trying to tell the future with the finger-bones, I’m sure.’

‘You misunderstood what she was doing. She was divining the truth about you, trying to see into the recesses of your mind, to understand you. The bones were ambiguous, as they often are, so she summoned a memory from the past into the present.’

It still doesn’t make sense to me. You say you’ve explained it, if s like running an old movie of a dead film-star and trying to talk to the image on the screen. Where are you now, Rudolph Valentino? Can I trust this man?’

‘Not quite like that, I assure you. For those few seconds it was as if Lesage lived again, with the shadow of his powers intact. He was able to read your heart.’

Did he, though? If the projection had understood what is in my mind, which is the nearest exit from the madhouse, he would hardly have told Meg to accept me. No, Frazer is deceiving himself about the situation. And so is Meg.

‘Doubting Thomas is not convinced,’ said Esta quietly. It was the first time she had spoken to him since Thomas hod entered Frazer’s house that evening,

‘Not that,’ said Thomas, recognizing the need for caution. ‘It’s just that I like to follow things through and make sure I’ve grasped them properly.’

‘Good, very good,’ said Frazer. “When we understand things properly we can control them. Retain your curiosity and make it work for you. Now, tell me about your job.’

“My job?’ Thomas repeated, off-balance at the unexpected change of subject.

‘In detail’

‘Well, I got bored with post-graduate research at university ten years ago, and left to join Inter-Con-Chem to work in their laboratories. I got on pretty well and enjoyed being immediately useful. About twelve months ago I was transferred to London to join a team they se t up for a special project,”

‘What project is that?’

‘Nothing very secret about it, I’m afraid. It’s a computerized data retrieval system.’

“Yes, I know that already. Explain what it’s about.’ ‘How did you know that?’

‘I told you once before, we investigated you to make sure you were suitable. I know a great deal about you. Your salary. The name of your team leader. What they say about you in the personnel department files. All trivial, really. Tell me about what you do - why you were moved to London.’

‘You tell me what they say about me in the personnel files first.’

‘Nothing of importance. You’re marked for future promotion in the organization. They expect you to go a long way with them. Now, your turn.’

‘One of the problems in scientific work is the sheer amount of research going on all round the world. It would take the whole of your working time every day just to read the published reports of the work being done in any one specialized field. My field is structural chemistry, as I’m sure you know. There are research projects going on in industry and in universities all round the world in that alone. When you add on the associated branches of chemistry, such as biochemistry, physiology, psychochemistry, to mention a few, you sec how impossible it gets. You could spend years and a lot of money doing a piece of research that has already been done by a team in California or Leningrad, when all you had to do was read their results and apply them to what you are interested in.’

‘I see. You are establishing a kind of library to facilitate future research?’

“That’s right. In its simplest terms the idea is that if you want to know everything so far known about whatever you’re working on - say the use of oestrogens as anabolic agents, to take a relatively unsophisticated example - you look in the catalogue for the code to feed into the system and it gives you the information you want.’

Esta shifted her position slightly, and the sway of her breasts attracted Thomas’s eyes.

‘I can see that to put in the information and keep it up to date must represent a lengthy mechanical labour for scores of assistants,’ said Frazer, ‘but that is hardly the essence of the problem.’

The vital bit is the cataloguing,’ said Thomas. ‘You don’t want to get a month’s reading material every time you press a button. The system has to produce a concise account of the up-to-date state of knowledge on a specific subject, with cross-references to side issues in esse they have any bearing, and an indication of where to look for a more detailed study. The catalogue is a computerized system itself.’

‘How can it be?’

‘We’re working on it with computer people. The system has to work out the code to select the appropriate pieces of information, and either display it on a screen or print it out for taking away.’

Tt seems to me that what you are trying to do is perhaps not so very different from what Meg does,’ said Frazer, and Esta laughed.

‘Yes,’ said Thomas, ‘though she does it without machinery and electronics. But she didn’t conjure her projection out of nothing. She used an energy source and something with the image imprinted on it. That’s an interesting parallel.’

‘Before you persuade yourself that what we do can be explained in scientific or engineering terms,’ said Frazer, ‘let me explain what we are going to do tonight. The others will be here soon.’

‘Which others?” ‘Your ordeals are not yet finished. There are still ten of our circle with whom you have not formed the bond of danger shared and fear conquered. When they arrive, the thirteen of us will undertake a journey that will test your resolution to the limit.’

‘A journey? Where are we going?’

‘We shall journey into death. Our own death.’

‘Then you mean we are going to die and be resurrected? That’s…’ He left it unsaid,

‘Impossible? You should know better by now.’

‘A while ago you told me that there was no life after death. How shall we know we are dead if we cease to exist mentally? And if we don’t cease to exist, we’re not dead.’

‘We shall not die,’ said Frazer in his irritatingly superior way, because then there would be no way back to life for us. What I said was that we shall journey into death. We shall go to the very limits of our power to return. Do you understand the difference?’

‘You are saying that we shall nearly die.’

Esta gave him a smile that chilled him. She knew what was going to happen, and she despised the ignorance on which his suggestion was founded. Obviously it was going to be a bad experience

‘We shall go far beyond the point of death for ordinary humans,’ said Frazer, ‘In that sense we shall be truly dead, not nearly dead.’

‘But if dead is the nothingness and non-existence you believe, how can we experience it? There is nothing to experience.’

‘By virtue of our powers we shall retain the ability to feel and think even after we have passed the point where consciousness and life normally fade out forever. And since, as you rightly say, it is not possible to experience non-being, we shall g ive a pseudo-physical form to it ‘

‘It sounds unpleasant,’ said Thomas, ‘and bloody dangerous.’

‘Both,’ Frazer agreed. ‘It is an ordeal you will not forget. And be clear about this - when the journey starts, there is no way back for you without us. If you panic, we shall do nothing to help you. We shall return without you and you will be dead indeed.’

‘Whose garden will you bury me in?’ Thomas asked wryly. ‘Yours or Meg’s?’ Frazer laughed and patted Esta’s bare shoulder. ‘He’s one of us at heart,’ he said. ‘He won’t fail,’

Esta smiled at Thomas, showing him her white teeth but no goodwill.

When the others began to arrive in twos and threes Thomas studied them closely, trying to memorize names and faces. A few had unusual physical characteristics by which he could remember them u ntil he knew them better - Tanse y’s bright ginger hair, the gaunt greyness of Sado though he could not have been older than forty, Ale tha’s swarthy skin and crinkly hair, suggesting that her ancestry was mixed.

I must get to know them as people. Find out as much as I can from each of them. See if any of them feel, like me, that they want to be free. Double coven, twenty-six, including me. So far I know a little bit about Esta, have talked to Frazer, seen Meg at close quarters, and maybe have an ally in Rachel, if I don’t scare her off by moving too fast. There must be other allies here in this bunch.

None of them said very much as they assembled, not even the women, Thomas noted. They were ill at ease. He caught one or two sidelong glances in his direction, as if he were being blamed for subjecting them to an experience they dreaded. But these are the rank and file, he reminded himself, not the leaders. Neither Frazer nor Esta displayed any apprehension.

When they were all present they undressed at Frazer’s indication. Even this was different. On previous occasions the discarding of clothes had been natural and unselfconscious. This lime it was reluctant and almost furtive, as if they were shedding their defences. There was no unashamed displaying of bodies but a shrinking away from each other. It boded ill for what was to come.

Frazer led them upstairs to the large room. Three candles guttered on the raised slab, filling the room with long shadows as they filed in. The metal bowls in the corners were smoking faintly, giving off an acrid smell that set the teeth on edge. Not the same as when Thomas was initiated.

In total silence they arranged themselves around the stone slab, Esta pointing to the position Thomas should take. He copied the others as they lay down on their backs, feet towards the slab like the spokes of a wheel, men and women alternating. They joined hands. Thomas was between Tansey and Barbara.

Frazer sat hunched between the candles on the slab above them, his arms wrapped round his legs and his head down on his knees. After a long and heavy silence he began to hiss unin telligiblc words, forcing them out in a broken and halting manner, with pauses between,

Thomas felt cold fear in his belly. He didn’t need to understand the words — if they had any conceptual meaning to understand - to know that Frazer was using his vast powers to invoke death.

There was a tingling in his left arm as the joined circle generated its current, through his body and out along his other arm into Barbara. It was not the surging force he had experienced before, but a sluggish trickle, feebly pulsating round the wheel of men and women. Like the blood driven by a dying heart.

His vision blurred, his breathing faltered and stopped. The hard wooden floor beneath his back fell away. His heart was silent and in his dwindling awareness he knew that his brain was dying.

He stood on a desolate beach in a cold, sleeting wind.

They were all there together, huddled round Frazer, naked and shivering. Frazer led them into the wind, following a line of ragged cliffs, stumbling over rocks and shingle. Away to the right a grey sea heaved and swelled, leaving a line of yellow scum and black-sodden weed e ach time a wave drew back hiss ing. Is this death or is it only dying, Thomas wondered as he plodded after the others, head down to keep the wind-driven rain out of his eyes.

They came to a cave in the cliffs, a dark hole with fallen rocks round its mouth. Without hesitating Frazer went into it and the others followed. The entrance was wide and low, making Thomas stoop. He shuffled along in the semi-darkness, bent almost double to avoid cracking his head on the roof. The cave became a tunnel, leading downwards sharply, twisting from side to side. At first there was shingle and sand underfoot, sliding away at each step. Then it ended and Thomas felt bare wet rock under his feet.

The further they went, the lower came the roof, until they were crawling painfully on hands and knees. It came lower still, and they were forced to lie flat and heave themselves along by their fingers and toes, still descending.

They came at last to where they could stand upright again. Thomas looked round and moved closer to the others for support. They had crawled down into an enormous cave underground - cold, wet and with the musty smell of an old grave. Jagged spears of stone grew down from the unseen roof, tinged yellow-green and mouldy pink. Greasy stone fingers taller than a man grew up from the floor.

To the right lay a pool of black water, its surface still and unrippled. In front and to the left, broken ledges of greystreaked rock led away into darkness.

Frazer strode boldly away across the cave, Esta close behind him, picking his way between the tremendous slimy columns. The rest of them followed, strung out in ones and twos, Thomas somewhere in the middle on his own. After a while he realized that they were moving in complete silence. Bare feet on hard rock should be silent, he told liimself, but to be sure he spoke aloud. No sound came from his mouth. Alarmed, he tried shouting at the top of his voice, hoping to raise great resounding echoes. The silence remained unbroken. He could utter no sound, make no noise, not even when he smacked a stone pillar in passing.

The cave stretched on forever. The walls were nowhere in sight, only an infinity of twisted stone upgrowths, still black pools and shadows, rough boulders. His feet were numb from the cold seeping up through the rock floor. His body was racked with spasms of shivering. How long they had been down here he couldn’t guess. Time had no meaning in this place.

The piercing cold was reaching into his bones and sucking the strength out of him. Each step forward was harder than the last. Back hunched, jaws clenched to stop his teeth chattering, he forced his stiffening legs to obey him. If the others could stand it, he could. Even if it killed him. The thought amused him faintly. According to what Frazer had told him, they were all dead already.

He looked up wearily to see Frazer’s and Esta’s backs still retreating before him into the endless gloom.

Where the hell are the others? There were six at least between Frazer and me when we started. Up ahead of me. There was the blonde woman, Barbara. And that thin man with his ribs sticking out, with the strange name. And the half-caste girl. And who else? He couldn’t remember, he was too tired.

Never mind them. Keep moving, that’s all. It’s not possible to be so totally exhausted and still live. And that was a sort of joke too.

His steps were getting slower and slower. The effort of putting one foot in front of the other had become enormous. He shuffled on a little further and then stopped, defeated.

I shall stand here rooted to the spot till I turn into a stalagmite. That’s what death is like. I understand it now.

Up ahead he could just see Esta’s white back in the dark. She had fallen to her knees and couldn’t get up again.

Frazer stopped at last and looked back. Even at a distance through the encompassing gloom, Thomas caught the open-mouthed grin of triumph on his spoiled face.

Frazer was coming back. He pulled Esta to her feet and dragged her towards Thomas. She limped along very slowly at first, but by the time they reached him she could walk alone. The two of them put their ice-cold arms round Thomas’s waist and turned him to face the way he had come. They urged him along roughly. The pain of moving his legs made him scream soundlessly. After a dozen steps the pain dulled to an ache and he was able to hobble along by himself.

As they retraced their steps, they came to each of the others in turn, standing white and frozen where their strength had given out. Frazer and Esta set each one on the way back, forcing them to move. Thomas found he was walking with less effort. His strength was trickling back.

I beat them! All except Esta, and she didn’t get much further than I did. And Frazer - no one beats him. I am not the least amongst them. I’ve proved it.

Frazer pointed to Thomas and then towards a body lying face down in a crevice of black rock. Then he went on with Esta, his reviving followers creeping after him.

It was Tansey, he saw as he knelt beside her, but her ginger hair was dark and lustreless in the dimness. Her body was ice to his touch as he hoisted her out of the crevice she had stumbled into. Her eyes were open, but dull and lifeless. Alarmed, he felt beneath her freezing breast. He could find neither heart-beat nor sign of breathing.

Gone for ever, or is this how we appear when we stop moving?

He picked her up laboriously and struggled on after the others, now some way ahead of him. Wait for me, he shouted, but he could make no sound at all.

If he lost sight of the last pale back ahead of him he would be lost. The prospect terrified him. He hurried as best he could with his burden for what seemed an eternity, gradually falling further behind.

Eventually he came to the cave wall, just in time to see a pair of legs vanishing into a narrow crack behind a boulder. But for that he would never have found it. He sat Tansey with her back to the wall while he recovered from the strain of carrying her so far. There was no way of dragging her through the tunnel that led upwards - it was far too narrow at this end. No one can help anyone else out of here, he saw. You either have the strength to crawl out by yourself or you stay down here. He stared at the cold white body propped against the rock and wondered what to do.

Her breasts are moving - she’s breathing, by God!

He knelt between her sprawled legs and rubbed her face hard until her staring eyes blinked and tried to focus on him. At that moment he could have cried with relief. He took her by the shoulders and shook her until her senses started to return. When he pulled her to her feet and held her upright, her face contorted in agony. Pushing, pulling, supporting her, he made her move around, flexing her limbs, until she could stand without his help.

Thomas was very anxious to be out of the cave. He guided Tansey to the fissure in the wall and watched as she crawled into it inch by inch, painfully slowly. He went in after her, the soles of her feet just ahead of him as they scrambled on their bellies up towards the world above.

THE JEWEL

Thomas found a parking space with some difficulty and strolled across the down-at-heel square to Frazer’s house. Now that the ritual ordeals were finished with and he was accepted, he felt a good deal less troubled. From now on he expected to be learning fast He climbed the broad steps to the front door and rang the bell. Learn how to protect himself from the group, and above all, from Frazer. He had come to the conclusion that there was a strong and unconscious death-wish in all of them, which accounted for their morbid flirtations with destruction and fear. He wanted no part of it. His own will to live was unimpaired so far, and too much contact with the group’s preoccupations might infect him.

It was Esta who opened the door for him. She was in tight blue trousers and a sleeveless short pullover that accentuated her breasts and left her deep-set navel uncovered. Thomas kissed her lightly on the cheek as he went in.

‘Changed your mind about me?’ she asked. “Have you forgiven me then?’

She made forgiven sound sordid, but he ignored it

‘You look marvellous,’ he said. ‘Let’s be friends again.’

“We’ll see,’ she answered in a not very promising tone.

She led him along the passage to the sitting-room. Meg and Robert were side .by side on the long settee talking to Frazer.

‘There you are,’ said Frazer jovially. ‘Sit over there. Give him a drink, Esta.’

‘It was strange to see them sitting chatting with their clothes on. Robert wore a formal dark blue suit and a striped tie . It was the first time Thomas had seen him dressed. The style of the clothes suggested tha t he was important, but discreetl y so. Meg in a flowered summer dress with her hair newly set was the very pattern of a middle-class matron having drinks with a few old friends.

Frazer was all in white - suit, tie, socks even. He looked quite different Drinks and chat. It all looked so normal, until Frazer moved and showed the ruined side of his face. Thomas glanced

round once more and this time he recognized the expression in their eyes. There was nothing normal here. ‘Are there more to join us?’ he asked.

‘No, only us,’ said Frazer. ‘I asked you here because there are things you must now be told. I am going to explain our great project and your part in it.’

This is the inner council then?’

This is no council,’ Frazer answered sharply. ‘You see here the three most powerful members of the coven after myself. They are my dear friends and I consult them on matters of importance, when I think fit. We do not waste our time with such trivialities as councils. We believe in authority based on power.’

Thomas nodded,

The first time we talked,’ he said, ‘after my initiation, you mentioned this project of yours. You wouldn’t tell me what it was. You said that I couldn’t possibly grasp it, or something like that. Ever since then I’ve been wondering what could be of such significance to a group already possessing incredible abilities.’

‘And have you reached any conclusions in your wondering?’ Frazer inquired in his superior manner. ‘Why yes, I think I know what it is.’

‘Impossible! Out of the question! You couldn’t begin to guess at it. Or has somebody disobeyed me and told you? But no one could, their minds are bound on this subject,’

‘No one has told me anything, I’ve been using my brains, that’s all.’

Meg and Esta were looking at him doubtfully. Robert had a mocking smile.

‘WelI now, brother Thomas,’ said Frazer, sareasm in his voice, ‘give us the benefit of your thinking. Describe our great project to us.’

‘You want to live forever. That’s what it’s all about,’

The expression on Frazer’s face told him he had scored a hit.

‘How could you know that?’

‘You told me yourself. Not in so many words, of course. I’d have been blind not to have seen it.’ Frazer’s face was thunderous. ‘Explain,’ he said coldly.

‘After my visit to Meg’s house you told me that she hadn’t raised a ghost, only a residual memory in visible form. When I questioned you further, you said that yon had no belief in any form of life after death. Nor have I, for what that’s worth, but I expect my reasons are different from yours. You gave me your views on the human situation, and pretty chilling they were. In the third ordeal you showed me what death is like - a big empty nothing.’

‘And from that you deduced that our project is to do with life itself?’

‘There’s a bit more than that. I saw how the ones who went down there into the cave reacted to it. They were scared witless. In spite of their amazing abilities, they are frightened of dying. And not just ordinary fear - more like hysteria. That night, after we left here, I went home with Tansey and Barbara and they were both on a crying jag for hours. David was with us he sat on the end of the bed, huddled up getting drunk until he passed out.’

‘While you comforted the women, ch?’ said Robert, grinning lewdly.

‘While I tried to comfort them,’ said Thomas, grimacing at the memory. ‘Once I had seen their reaction to dying and heard Frazer expound the subject of what is man? it didn’t require a lot of brainwork to put a name to the great project’

‘Remarkable,’ said Frazer, in command of himself again. ‘We seem to have made a better choice than we knew in our scientific friend.’

‘Clever,’ said Meg, without much enthusiasm.

‘Congratulations, Thomas,’ said Robert. “You’ve surprised us. You’re just what we need.’

‘Since you have come so far in your thinking,’ said Frazer, ignoring the comments, ‘take us all the way into your confidence. How shall we arrange to live forever?’

‘I haven’t the least idea. I imagine you intend to try some form of treatment to stop the ageing process. There’s a fair amount of research being done on that already. Mostl y with rats, I think. As far as I know it hasn’t got anywhere, but you’d need a biochemist to tell you what’s being done.’

There was a distinct air of malicious triumph about Frazer.

‘Such mighty projects are not solved in laboratories by feeding tame rats. What very pedestrian minds you scientists have! Esta, bring the child in.’

Thomas waited curiously while Esta left the room and came back hand in hand with a girl of eleven or twelve. She had long black hair and was naked.

This is my daughter, Janine,’ said Frazer, relishing Thomas’s discomfort. ‘Janine, this is our new brother, Thomas.’

The child stood in the ring of seated adults and looked at Thomas. He gave her a friendly smile, wondering why she had to be unclothed. Just a littl e trick of Frazer’s to keep him uneasy, he guessed. Under her arm Janine was carrying a large, thin golden-yellow folder,

‘I saw you with Rachel,’ she said, returning his smile in a sly way. “You were both shining in the dark.’

Uncomfortable at the thought of what she might have seen, he asked:

‘Where were you? I didn’t see you.’

‘In the next room. I looked through the spyhole. I always watch when things happen.’ She giggled.

‘Janine is a virgin,’ said Frazer. ‘Girls of her age have great psychic potential. When they are penetrated by a man for the first time, the release of energy is tremendous. It is vital for our project.’.

‘Who’s going to do it?’ Thomas asked in distaste.

‘I shall, of course, as part of the ritual.’

Thomas said nothing, but felt queasy as Janine giggled again. Virgin she may be, he thought morosely, but she’s neither ignorant nor innocent. He kept his eyes firmly on her long face to avoid seeing the hai rless slit between her gawky th ighs,

‘Why, I believe he is shy of looking at your body,’ Frazer said gleefully. ‘He’s not so shy with grown-up females, I promise you. Sit on his knee and show him the book,’

There were muted chuckles from Esta and Meg as the child climbed on to his lap and held the thin book across her thighs for him to see.

This book tells you how to make the Jewel,’ she said, giggling as if it were some inconsequent schoolgirl joke. ‘Do you want me to open it for you?’

‘What does the Jewel do when you’ve made it?’ he countered.

‘It gives its owner …’ she stopped and looked at Frazer, smiling secretly.

It gives power over life and death, time and space,’ he said, his face glowing, ‘The man who wears the Jewel of Life will be a god.’

It sounds like the sort of thing everybody wants,’ Thomas said dryly, and Frazer looked at him bard.

‘Your habit of scoffing could be dangerous,’ he said softly.

‘I wasn’t scoffing. I was suggesting that the contents of this book may be beyond my ability to understand. Otherwise it would have been done before, many times.’

‘Come here, Janine,’ said Frazer, ‘and let him read the book.’

To Thomas’s’relief the child transferred herself to Frazer’s lap, leaving him the yellow folder. He glanced though the pages of ncady handwritten text, not understanding any of it

‘Do not trouble yourself with the first eight sections,’ Frazer directed. ‘They are concerned with the ritual. Look at the ninth section, where it gives the instructions for the physical creation of the Jewel.’

The ninth section consisted of two facing pages of numbers in columns. It made no sense to Thomas at all.

“Where did it come from?’ he asked, feeling that he was being drawn into an elaborate hoax. Life and death, time and space everything about Frazer was ridiculous. Including his malig nancy.

‘What you have there is a translation that has been made from a very old manuscript Its history is instructive.’

‘And might be of some help in deciphering it,’ Thomas encouraged liim.

‘The manuscript from which we made our translation was in the archives of an Italian monastery which was looted during the last war. It was written in church Latin, and an inscription on it says that it was itself a translation made in 1543 of an even earlier manuscript that was disintegrating with age,’

‘A translation from what?’

‘From tenth-century Greek. To an expert easily recognizable and easily placed.’ Thomas shrugged and smiled.

‘None of this means anything to me. You could tell me that you’d copied it from one of the Mesopotamian memorials in the British Museum and I’d believe you. Where it came from is not really important, is it? Only what it says, whatever that might be.’

‘The provenance is of some importance to us’ Frazer insisted, ‘because if we can establish an authentic pedigree, it gives us more confidence in the content itself.’

‘Why not just try it out and see? That’s the easiest test,surely.’

‘You do not know what you are saying. To try out the ritual described in the book is to submit and invite dangers so catastrophic that we must be completely sure that the risk is worth it.’

‘It might go off bang, you mean?’

‘Worse than that. And death is not the most frightening of the penalties for failure.’

Thomas was surprised by that. He had thought that death was the most terrible fate to Frazer. Evidently there was more to know.

‘Do you know the history of the Fourth Crusade?’ Frazer asked,

‘I’ve forgotten what little history they ever taught me at school, I didn’t even know there was a Fourth Crusade. I thought they gave up earlier.’

The Fourth Crusade was the most instructive of all,’ said Frazer. ‘When the Christian army assembled at Venice in 1202 to sail to Palestine and conquer the Christian holy places from the Muslims, they hadn’t enough money to pay their fare. That makes you smile, I see, but I can assure you that it was the simple truth. There they were, soldiers, knights, barons and lords with their horses and armour and pennants, eager to rush down into Palestine and cut every infidel throat in sight, all for the love of Mother Church and the hope of loot. And no money to pay the Venetians to sail them down the Adriatic and across to their objective.’

‘Red faces all round?’

‘And a way out, a deal. The Venetians sailed them to Constantinople, where they had a grudge to settle. Twenty years before, the citizens of Constantinople had murdered a number of Venetian traders in their city because of their sharp practices.’

‘Wait a minute - if Constantinople was a Turkish city, what were the Venetians doing there anyway?’

‘You really have forgotten your history. The Turks captured the city two and a half centuries after the time I am talking about, It was still a Christian city when the Crusaders attacked and captured it in 1204. They gave themselves the pleasure of massacring as many of the male inhabitants as they could lay their hands on and then settled down to an extended orgy of rape and looting.’

‘Very odd things are done in the name of religion,’ Thomas observed. ‘So the original manuscript was there and was taken back to Italy as loot, is that it?’

‘A manuscript was there, certainly, which went back to Italy with the rest of the loot, most of which found its way to Venice. But it was not the original by any means. It was itself a trans lation into the Greek of the time from an earlier text.’

This is like Chinese boxes. Every one you open has another inside it. Tell me about the innermost box of all.’

‘No one knows that. The Constantinople text had been translated from another language. Sado reconstructed the Greek text from the Latin text, and his view is that the earlier version was in an old middle-eastern language. He favours Sumerian.’

Sado, thought Thomas - the youngish man with the lined face and ribs sticking out.

‘He’s our expert on dead languages, is he?’

‘He teaches at London University. He’s famous throughout the world of scholarship.’

‘Well then, we have here a translation into English of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of something else which might have been Sumerian, whatever that was. A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And was the first copy the original?’

There’s no way of knowing.’

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem then,’ said Thomas. ‘How can you be sure that any of it is genuine? It might all be a gigantic fraud by some learned joker of a monk who had not hing better to do with his time.’

‘I know that is is genuine,’ said Frazer heatedly. ‘You fool do you think I would stake my life on it otherwise?’

‘You really believe that it will go off bang if you get it wrong?’

‘The ritual is so similar in parts to rituals of our own that we know it is genuine. But it goes far beyond anything we have ever dared/

‘Your life means a lot to you,’ Thomas pushed him.

‘It means everything! Everything! After coming so far along the way and acquiring such powers, do you think I want to die and be nothing? Do any of us - Robert, Meg, Esta? The uni verse is within our grasp if we are bold enough to reach out and take it!’

Frazer’s voice had risen almost to a scream. He pushed Janine from his lap and she cowered at his feet as he rose, pointing at Thomas with his left hand, his head turned sideways to present the red side of his face in which his wide-open eye gleamed.

‘Frazer!’ Robert called urgendy, ‘don’t harm him - we need him to make the Jewel’

Very slowly Frazer’s arm fell to his side. He sat down again, breathing deeply. Janine scuttled on all fours across the room to hide her face against Meg’s skirt,

‘I am sorry,’ said Thomas, choking back his fright, ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

Esta went to Frazer and smoothed his face with her hands. Thomas waited in silence for her calming touch to take effect. At the sideboard Robert poured drinks and handed them round.

‘We must understand each other, Thomas,’ said Frazer at last, his voice back to normal. ‘I am master here and I will not be treated insolently. Have you forgotten so soon how I punished you for that before?’

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ said Thomas, remembering the humiliating horror that had been sent to him in the night. T have no intention of being insolent, I assure you. May I ask you something about the book?’

Frazer nodded.

‘Has it been tried before, or are we the first?’

‘A sensible question. It has been tried many times over the centuries. There are other copies besides the one I have. And even before th at there were initiates who had an inkling of the way and tried it.”

‘Is it known what results they achieved?’ Thomas posed the question delicately.

‘They paid the price of failure. They vanished from the earth in spectacular cataclysms and unexplained devastations.’

‘All of them?’

‘And their followers, all destroyed by the power they unleashed and could not harness. We do not want that to happen to us .’

Thomas nodded, thinking.

The person who wrote the original,’ he said, ‘and left it for others to read and follow - whoever he was - how could he have known his formula would work without trying it?’

‘He was the greatest initiate who ever lived,’ said Frazer. ‘He was in such accord with the source of life and power that he learned enough to make the thing we call the Jewel. There are legends about him. He made the Jewel himself and lives for ever. And he left instructions for those who could follow them.’ ‘Where does he live for ever?’

“How can I say in which part of the universe he follows his path now?’

‘How long ago did he live on earth and achieve this?’

‘No one knows. Legends can be a few centuries or a few thousand years old. They are passed on by word of mouth, changing a little in the telling. Even when they are written down, changes and uncertainties creep in with each new copying or translation. Like our text. Some of the ritual is very obscure, even to us.’

“We must hope that figures don’t change with the passing of time as words do,’ said Thomas, looking at the pages again. ‘Though they don’t mean much at first sight,’

He looked round the room. Janine was sitting on Meg’s lap, cuddled up to her. Robert and Esta were staring at him with an intensity that worried him.

‘Is there any hint in the text as to what the figures represent?’ he asked.

‘None at all. Each of the sections is self-contained. We thought at first that the figures were a mathematical equation of some sort. We had a mathematician study it, but he could make nothing of it.’

‘Who was that?’

‘His name was Benton. You’ve seen him.”

‘As there is a physical substance involved,’ said Thomas hastily, ‘these figures must represent the different parts that go to make it up and the method of combining them.’

Benton had got as far as learning the secret of the project, he was thinking, and got stuck over the formula. That’s why they killed him: he knew too much and was useless to them.

‘The numbers couldn’t have been chosen at random,’ he went on, ‘because then thcrc would be no way for anyone else but the originator to decipher them. There must be a system involved so that initiates can work it out, and it must be a system that is based on factors that do not change with the passing of centuries.’

‘Your predecessor said much the same thing,’ said Robert, ‘but that line of reasoning didn’t get him very far. Except that he ruled out an astronomical basis, I believe, as the stars appear

to shift their positions over a very long period, I understand.’

‘That rules out my first flash of inspiration,’ said Thomas.

‘Suppose you were set the task today,’ Robert went on. ‘Let’s say you want to write down an important formula so that only trained scientists like yourself can understand it. Bearing in mind it may be read five hundred years from now, or a thousand, for that matter.’

‘Not too difficult, I could do it in diagrammatic form, showing how the molecules bond together.’

‘Yes, but if you only had numbers, not pictures?’

‘Using numbers … I could reduce everything to basic elements and designate them by their atomic weights, for instance. But the man who wro te this formula didn’t know any thing about that.’

‘Why not?’ asked Frazer. ‘Surely atomic theory was discovered by the ancient Greeks?’

‘Only in a philosophical sort of way, not in a practical way. I’m talking about the concepts of modern science.’

‘And we,’ said Frazer, ‘are talking about one who learned enough to achieve godhead. Do you claim to know more than he did?’

It was a question that required no answer.

These figures are not the atomic weights we use,’ said Thomas, running his finger down the page, though the scale has changed more than once since Dalton worked out the first one in 1800 or thereabouts.’

‘How do you weigh an atom?’ Robert asked.

‘You don’t. They’re not really weights, they’re comparative masses. For instance, a molecule of water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one atom of oxygen. If you decompose a pint of water into the two constituent gases and weigh the results, you find that the oxygen you’ve collected weighs eight times as much as the hydrogen. And since you know before you start that you’ve got twice as many hydrogen atoms as oxygen atoms, you can easily see that the one oxygen atom must weigh sixteen times as much as one hydrogen atom. Dalton gave the hydrogen atom the value of 1 and worked out comparative weights for chemical elements in relation to it.’

‘I see,’ said Robert, who seemed to have taken over the conversation now that it had moved away from the paranormal into the practical. ‘But you said this had changed. I would have thought that such relations were fixed for ever,’

‘It’s the basis of measurement that has changed, not the relationships. About 1900 a new scale was worked out, using the oxygen atom as the basis of measurement instead of the hydrogen atom. And then in the 1920s isotopes were discovered, and a new scale appeared alongside the old one to take the new knowledge into account. The whole system was worked out again about 1960 with carbon -16 as the standard. That’s the scale we use now.’

‘Dalton, you said?’ Frazer interrupted. ‘I do not recognize the name. Was he one of us, do you know?”

‘My God, no! He was a Manchester Quaker. A brilliant man, entirely self-taught.’

‘And he could work out this scale of atoms by himself, while the most powerful initiate in earth’s history could not? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Put like that,’ said Thomas, ‘no, I’m not saying that. But these figures are no scale that I know about. And anyway, that seems far too easy. On the other hand ..’

‘What?’ Robert asked quickly.

“You’ve started a train of thought. We need to know what element the writer used as his base, if these figures are a scale. We’re going to need a computer to do the work.’

‘That shouldn’t be a problem for you,’ said Robert.

‘No problem at all. I’ll take the book with me and get to work on it.’

‘Not the whole text,’ said Frazer. ‘We have a separate copy of the ninth section for you. You will not show it to anyone or discuss it outside this room.’

‘That I can promise you. Nobody would believe me.’

‘No need to promise. We are going to put a barrier about your knowledge of our project so that you will not be able to speak of it to outsiders.’

T thought you trusted me,’ said Thomas, alarmed by the prospect of his mind being tampered with.

‘We take no chances in this. Everyone in the coven has submitted to this precaution.’

Thomas could sec no way out of it.

‘A post-hypnotic block,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never actually believed that it works.’

‘Our way is different,’ said Frazer, ‘and it does work, I assure you.’

‘Will it impair my ability to think and work on the project?’

‘It will not affect you in any way at all except that you will not be able to mention the project to anyone but us.’

‘But I have to be able to tell a computer programmer what I want him to do.’

‘You will be able to do that, but you will not be able to tell him what it is for, even if he asks you. Take your clothes off,’

Without a word Thomas stood up and stripped, aware of Janine‘s eyes on him.

‘Kneel and hold the book to your forehead,’ Frazer instructed him.

His vision cut off by the yellow-gold book before his eyes, Thomas sensed rather than saw Esta kneel in front of him. He felt her smooth hands slide lightl y over his chest and down his naked sides, causing his anxiety to fade away almost at once. As she continued her slow stroking a sensation of gentle euphoria welled up in him. Other hands were placed on his shoulders that would be Meg and Robert he guessed through the dreamlike state Esta was inducing.

He half-heard Frazer’s voice speaking somewhere above him and felt a fingertip circle his head and the book pressed to it. Three times round it went. He tried to catch the words but he was so lost in sensuous well-being that the effort was too much. He heard only the ending:

‘… and it shall bind you until I alone break it’

The warm hands were gone from his shoulders,

‘It’s done,’ said Frazer’s voice somewhere in the distance, ‘You can get up now.’

He lowered the book from his face almost reluctantly, like a man waking from a pleasurable dream. Esta was kneeling in front of him, holding his erect penis in her hands. He glanced round the room sharply. The others were back in their seats, smiling at him with faint malice. Janine pointed to his erection and laughed at him.

Thomas scrambled up, shamefaced, and dressed quickly.

INSIGHTS

Over the next few weeks Thomas put his mind to the riddle he had been set. He had serious doubts as to whether it meant anything at all, and no faith whatsoever in the historical farrago of the Crusaders. But, setting aside his misgivings and assuming that the columns of numbers meant something, the n what one brain had devised, another could interpret He worked at it conscientiously, though he guessed that it would be solved eventually by a flash of intuition, A moment would come when lie would be comparing figures on computer print-outs for the twentieth or thirtieth time and, without any apparent logic, something would impel him to say Let’s try it this way. And the answer he was looking for would be plainly there. If there was an answer.

In the meantime he set out to cultivate the acquaintance of more members of Frazer’s group. Apart from Frazer himself and two or three of the women, the others were no more dian background presences in a jumbled nightmare, hardly discernible as real people. With the ordeals finished, he had time to start getting to know them better - their manner of life, their personalities, their real names. In doing so he came to understan d the close personal relationsh ip they had developed amongst themselves, and to feel something of its attraction. They were like a large family. They rarely agreed with each other and did not even have to like each other. But they knew that they could rely on each other totally. It was more than a blood relationship. It was based on shared experience of dangerous and unnatural events, shared fortune, shared sexuality, and a common interest in a goal he found it impossible to believe in.

He made a start with Victor, the oldest member, by inviting him out to dinner. Victor reversed the invitation and took Thomas to dinner instead at a very expensive restaurant

In appearance Victor was tall, compactly built and surprisingly lithe. His hair was greying so perfectly at the temples th at Thomas suspected the attentions of a good barber. Everything about him, in fact was perfect, and testified to discreet riches. He had a habit of cocking his head to one side as he listened, fixing the speaker intently with his dark brown eyes. During an amusing and gossipy evening over a magnificent meal, Thomas learned casually that Victor was managing director of a finance company. He probed for specifics, but did not get very far. ‘You mean like a merchant bank?’

‘Something like that Though we find it advantageous not to be a merchant bank in the accepted sense of the term’ ‘But you lend money to people?’

‘We provide funds for new developments of various kinds. And special situations. Things like that.’

Thomas gave up. All he was sure of was that Victor was a man of considerable wealth and influence.

Victor explained without embarrassment that he had originally been a member of Lesage’s coven. The other members, he said, were Robert, Piers, David, Mark and Morgan, now dead. The women were Meg, Barbara, Marian, Brigit, Menden and Marie-Louise, also dead.

‘Frazer appeared as if from nowhere,’ he said, ‘dangling before Lesage the bait of a double coven. But as we see so often in business, the proposed merger turned out to be a disguised takeover.’

‘With no golden handshake for the outgoing chief executive,’ said Thomas.

‘Quite so. Winner takes all, that’s the rule, you know. Vae victis, as the old Romans put it. Poor Morgan thr ew in his hand with Lesage and died with him. Marie-Louise was dealt with soon afterwards by Frazer, who doubted her loyalty to him. That was very sad. She was an exquisite creature and unbelievably exciting. You would have liked her very much.’

‘What was Lesage like?’

‘A man of great attainments. He was like a king to us and we were his loyal courtiers. We loved him, though that may seem to you an odd word to describe our attachment to him. Yes, I think I can say that we loved him, in our way. But because be felt secure he became too unguarded and over-trusting.’ ‘Evidently he trusted Frazer too much for his own good’ ‘Yes, but you were not there to appreciate the nuances of the position. Frazer was like a new star flaring into incandescence in the sky. His brilliance completely blotted out the sun we had revolved around for so long.’

‘Frazer is not quite the comfortable man Lesage seems to have been,’ Thomas observed.

‘Indeed not. He has taken us very far by the force of his personality, far beyond what we once thought possible. Through him we have glimpsed the ultimate. But with him you can see the skull beneath the skin, as someone said. The skeleton leers out at you through the flesh at times, so to speak, and you are reminded how driven h e is.’

‘His motivation is not all that hard to fathom.’

Victor looked at him quizzically.

‘Hard or not,’ he said, ‘it would be imprudent to underestimate the strength of his drive. Others have before you, to their cost.’

‘I shall be prudent,’ said Thomas, amused by the word. And then he asked, ‘Where did he get the manuscript?’ ‘What manuscript do you mean?’

‘My mind is bound, so I cannot describe it. But I am sure you know what I mean.’

‘My mind is bound too. But I can tell you that it belonged to Lesage, like everything else. The only thing of his own Frazer introduced, except for his people, was that stone slab in the ritual room. He moved that in when he took over.’

‘He took over because of the manuscript, I would guess.’

‘And your guess would be correct. Frazer found out that Lesage owned it. How he found out I do not know, except that in those days our minds were not bound on the subject. But it was still a closely kept secret. I have always suspected Brigit, tho ugh it is of no conceivable imp ortance now where Frazer got his information from. What a feral child she is, how avid! She was thirteen when she came to us to be initiated, a child with no breasts at all. Not that they have grown much since. But I recall how she revelled in that initiation, as if it were her birthday party.’

‘She’s a good friend of yours?’

‘No, not a friend. When I am with her I feel as if I am nineteen again. But you’ve been with her, of course, and you know what she is capable of. If you will take advice from me, be on your guard even when you take her to bed. She is quite unscrupulous, even with us.’

“Why did you go along with Frazer?’ Thomas asked, not wanting to be diverted into sexual reminiscences. ‘Was he so powerful then that you, Robert, Meg and the others combined couldn’t have stopped him in his tracks if you wanted to?”

‘I am sure we could have done so if we had combined against him then. But we didn’t want to. Frazer made it plain that he wanted to go ahead with the great project far more quickly than Lesage was prepared to move. He wanted the prize now, not in twenty years. That was why we stood back and let him oust Lesage. Look at me - I am over fifty now. I cannot afford to wait another twenty years. I might be dead by then. The others felt the same, except Morgan, even though they are younger.’

‘And except Meg?’

‘Poor Meg has never quite got over her guilt at Lesage’s ending. She was devoted to him. It may be that she didn’t truly realize how far Frazer was prepared to go to become master. Or it may be that she knew in her heart and refused to face it. Whichever it was, she did nothing to support Lesage at the time. I suppose that like most women she wanted to have the best of both worlds, Lesage and Frazer, the old and the new together. But in the end she chose Frazer, though t acitl y.’

Before they parted, mellow with food and wine, Thomas said:

‘Victor, you are a highly civilized and intelligent man. Do you honestly believe this business about the manuscript and the … I can’t say it’

‘I believe it implicitly. In the twenty years I have been a member of the coven I have had unmistakable evidence of what can be achieved. It must be hard for a newcomer to accept the truth, even after what you have seen. Try to hold your disbelief in suspense, and you will find that there is virtually nothing beyond our combined powers. Nothing.’

Victor had charm, but Aleister, moon-faced and pudgy, was scathing about him when Thomas went to see him later in the week.

‘One of the old school,’ he said. ‘He joined a coven when he was young because he wanted two things. Endless sex and endless money. Or maybe the other way round. He’s got both and he’s as happy as a pig. Thirteen women to pick from any time he feels randy, and a fortune stashed away in a Swiss bank. The old lot were all like that.’

Aleister lived in a fiat in the Barbican, high above the ground. Its unwelcoming functional furniture and stark colours reflected his personality well. He affected a blunt no-nonsense manner that at times was insulting.

Thomas sat in a too-large chrome and leather chair while Aleister poured whisky into glasses and announced that he didn’t believe in spoiling it with water. His straw-coloured hair was cut so short that at some angles of the light he looked bald. He sat down opposite Thomas and set up a chess board on the glass table between them.

‘You didn’t approve of the way Lesage ran his coven?’ Thomas asked, noticing Ale ister’s square-ended fingers as he arranged the pieces on the board. The figures were made in unpolished metal and they were naked and indec entl y posed.

‘That’s right. They’d turned witchcraft into a bloody middle-class profession. All the fire and drive came from our coven when we moved in.’

‘But they had the manuscript.’

‘Typical - bloody typical. Old Lesage sat on his backside for years with the key to the final power in his hand. All the time making excuses about not being ready for it yet. It was pathetic. They’d alt gone soft. They didn’t even have the guts to stand up for him when Frazer got rid of him.’

‘One did, I’m told.’

‘One out of the lot! We soon saw him off. I can tell you. Do you want to play black or white?’

The offer was unexpected. Thomas chose white and played a safe king’s pawn opening.

‘And Marie-Louise,’ he prompted Aleistcr. ‘You saw her off too, I understand, in something of a dramatic way.’

His opponent grimaced and said nothing. Notwithstanding his talk of we seeing them off, Thomas was fairly sure that Aleister had no hand in it, being too downscale. He clearly did not want to talk about the manner of Marie-Louise’s seeing off. Perhaps that was too traumatic even for him.

‘Meg is the one who surprises me,’ said Thomas, casting about to get the conversation going again.

‘Soft as the rest of them,’ Aleister declared, ‘scared to lose her big house and her money if she backed the wrong horse. And now she cries over Lesage’s bones. Sickening, really.’

His unorthodox first move on the board threw Thomas into some confusion. While he was trying to see the implications of it, he asked:

‘You don’t rate your colleagues very highly, do you?’ ‘I speak as I find. Now they’ve been integrated into our coven, some of them have come to life, but there’s some who’ll never be more than passengers. They’re along for the ride because there’s no way out after take-off. That’s what it amounts to.”

‘Who are the live ones, besides Robert?’

‘David. And Brigit. Full of guts, that little bitch. One of these days she’ll give Esta a run for her money, mark my words.’

Aleister was well-informed on the ways in which the members of the coven made their living and how they used their powers to achieve material success . Victor, of course, had risen from a nobody in the City to his present commanding height by a succession of brilliant coups based on the manipulation of others. Aletster himself had a large arc hitectural practice specializing in local governme nt work. Brigit, Thomas learned livcd on half a dozen wealthy men outside the coven, for whom she provided her pe culiar services at near-blackmail prices.

‘You mean she’s a posh whore?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be thick. At her level you don’t call it whoring. It’s practically an art-form. And it’s more honest than what Tansey and Barbara get up to, running their escort agency in Sloane Street. Brigit at least uses her own body and talents. All they do is groom poor cows they get from secretarial agencies and send them out to amuse visiting businessmen from Hull.’

‘I get the most curious feeling that in your mind there is a left wing and right wing in the coven,’ said Thomas, making his next move hopefully, totally baffled by the unlikely com bination of pieces on the chess board.

‘That’s rubbish. We don’t have any interest in politics, and you know it. It doesn’t matter who runs the country, we’ll do well out of it. And the day will come when we shan’t need it.’

‘Yes, the wonderful … damn, you know what I mean. It’s like the philosopher’s stone that turns lead into gold, isn’t it?’

Aleister advanced his lewd queen in a move that appeared to Thomas to be suicidal.

‘I’ll tell you one thing old Victor is good for,’ he said. ‘When you’ve made some money, give it to him. He’s bloody good at multiplying it. Meg gave him about ten thousand she got out of Lesage in the old days, and he blew it up into a fortune for her. You haven’t got any money yet, while you’re still in that hole-and-corner job of yours, but when you do get your hands on some, Victor’s the man for you.’

‘What docs Frazer live on?’

‘We each contribute a tenth of what we make. You will too, come quarter day.’

‘I didn’t know about that,’ said Thomas, frowning, ‘I’ll remember.’

‘No need, he’ll remind you.’

‘Is there any secret about his daughter - if she is his daughter. Who’s her mother, one of the women of his original coven?’

‘No. She’s his daughter all right, but not by any of our women. Janine’s mother was some scrubber he poked years ago before he formed his own coven,’

‘You know that, or are you guessing?’

‘Guessing.’

‘We don’t know much about Frazer, do we? Where did he come from, for instance?’

‘He’s never said. Somewhere north, if you want another guess. And you’re in check.’

Thomas looked at the pattern of pieces on the board in dismay. Aleister’s game defied analysis.

‘The far north,’ he said, looking for a way of extricating his king from danger.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The visions I had at the initiation. The scenery and the animals. The visions were to do with Frazer. I’ve never been further north than Glasgow, but I’m sure that the scenery was not in this country. Could he be foreign?’

‘He could be anything you like. Men like him are a long way above nationalities and passports. Are you going to move your king or not?’

‘I’m thinking about it.’

A few moves later, his king secure and his position reasonably stable, Thomas asked:

‘Will Frazer really deflower his own daughter?’ Aleister hooted.

‘Deflower! What a bloody fantastic word! Of course hell do it - it’s part of the ritual. Not getting ladylike and squeamish, are you?”

‘I’ve got the usual social inhibitions about incest and child assault.’

‘Don’t be a fool. What does it matter which man has her first when so many will have her during her lifetime?’ ‘It might matter to her.’

‘If it docs, who better to do it than the most powerful man she will ever know? And by using her body he will achieve mastery over .. I can’t say it but you know what I’m talking about He’s brought her up to understand what a fantastic honour he’ll be doing her. When the time comes she’ll open her legs for him like a kid being given a present You’ll see.’

Thomas advanced a pawn sporting an oversized erection.

‘Check,’ he said. ‘Let’s see you get out of that’

His evening with Aleister was interesting enough, but cordiality was lacking. Aleistcr’s personality was not one that he warmed to. He also had the distinct impression that Aleister had tagged him as a newcomer of limited scope, useful in his way, but devoid of ‘fire and guts’.

Mark confirmed his view of Aleister’s limitations when they met. Without knowing it, he also confirmed some of Aleister’s summing-up of Lesage’s coven.

‘Aleister can be a bit awful at times,’ Mark said. ‘It’s his origins, I suppose. Now and then you can hear the authentic Birmingham whine in his voice, although he’s worked hard to lose it. But, don’t judge the book by its cover. Read it before you make up your mind. Aleister has that terrible hunger gnawing inside him that we almost lost in Lesage’s time.’

They were sitting on the lawn of Mark’s house in Highgate, drinking beer before Sunday lunch. Mark looked so elegantly casual that Thomas felt downright scruffy. Everything about him was smooth and right, a shade too much so. Thomas put his age at about forty.

‘You were satiated with sex and money, that was his verdict,’ he offered.

Mark nodded and smiled.

‘We probably were. Frazer brought us to our senses.’

‘Surely,’ said Thomas, ‘the danger of one kind of satiation has been doubled now that there are thirteen women to choose from. I like sex as much as the next man, but the emphasis on nudity and sexual performance whenever we get together does pall a bit. There’s just so damned much of it.1

‘You haven’t yet understood the significance of the sexual act in all that we do. You still think of sex as a pleasurable private activity. You see women as big dolls to play with in bed. Isn’t that it?’

‘There hasn’t been much pleasure in playing with any of the women so far. They twist it somehow so that you never enjoy it properly. Why do they do that?’

They divert the psychic energy released into useful channels.’

‘That’s what I mean - they distort the purpose of sex.’

‘My dear man, what is the purpose of sex? Answer that and you will quite see what we do. Amongst animals, and no doubt amongst humans in the early stages of evolution and civilization, the single purpose of sex is the procreation of the species. That made it of overwhelming importance to our very remote ancestors. It was the plain duty of every able-bodied male to get as many females pregnant as often as possible, to ensure the continuation of the tribe. But now that we are fully self-aware, the continuation of our own kind is no longer the prime purpose of sexuality. For most people for most of their lives, the sexual act is not intended to lead to conception. It is for pleasure and gratification. The human race has already changed the purpose of sex. Why should it worry you that we have changed it again and use it for purposes of our own in the group? Instead of letting the energy dissipate in pleasurable sensation, we direct it towards our goals. In the rituals, I mean. When we couple privately we let things take their course in the ordinary way.’

‘Maybe you do,’ said Thomas, ‘but even when I go to bed privately with any of the women, I get the feeling that I’m being used.’

Mark smiled his reassuring, professional smile.

‘It’s a question of your point of view,’ he said. “The women of our group are not animated dolls for you to play with. They’ll use you for their own gratification without a second thought. You must look out for yourself. They will take what they want from you in bed and you mu st take what you want from them.’

‘Down with male chauvinism?’

‘Of course. Our women are very strong-minded and integrated personalities. You’ve seen that none of us is married. Obviously there can be no place for husband-wife relationships and parent-child relationships in our lives. We live the life of an extended family. We are all siblings, so to speak, with Frazer as our father-figure.’

The family analogy had occurred to me already.’

‘I’m sure it had.’

Tell me something, though, as you’re the one best qualified to speak on the subject. The intense life of the group is far removed from normal experience. We flout the taboos. Is this good for our mental health?’ The question made Mark laugh.

Tell me, doctor’ he mocked Thomas, ‘am I going out of my mind?’

‘I don’t think that I am going out of my mind,’ said Thomas.

‘Are the rest of us mad, then? Will you catch it from us? Well, you would have to define sanity for me before I answered your question. Sanity is a very elusive concept, as any doctor or lawyer will tell you. But if your question is meant seriously, I’ll try to answer it. If you could sit in my consulting room for a week and listen to my patients going on about their boredom, their frustrations, their inadequacies and their disappointments, you’d begin to see how healthy we are in the group by contrast. Yet you think of my patients as normal and the group as abnormal. But consider, in the group we have no sexual frustrations, no paralysing anxieties, no crippling neuroses, no unfulfilled desires or self-destructive ambitions. And above all we have a purpose. I would say that mentally we are very healthy indeed, wouldn’t you?’

Thomas thought about it, not entirely convinced.

‘You are the one suffering from doubts and anxiety,’ said Mark. ‘Confess it now. Look - you’ve been invited to enter a new life, a life of fulfilment in every way. Yet there are unresolved conflicts in your mind. Who is the healthier then, you or us?’

‘Strange,’ said Thomas, ‘you sound more like a priest than a doctor,’

‘The two functions are not dissimilar. I am both at times.’ ‘What god do you serve when you’re being a priest to your patients?’

The same as I serve when I am a doctor of the mind. As a member of the group, I serve the force that set the galaxies spinning, that makes the amoeba divide. The power in the penis. Life itself. But if you want to know about theology you must talk to Sado. He’s the expert on that’

‘I will,’ said Thomas.

Ask him he did, some time later, when they met for dinner at a down-at-heel Italian restaurant of Sado’s choosing. Here’s one who doesn’t share the general enthusiasm for comfortable l iving, thought Thomas, reading down the badly spelt menu in dismay. He looked up at Sado’s young, yet gaunt face across the table.

‘I’ll leave it to you to order. You know this place.’

‘Good, good. I come here quite often. It’s remarkably cheap, I find. Let me suggest the minestrone and the escalope of vcal And a carafe of their table wine. I’m sure you’ll enjoy that.’

‘It was Mark’s suggestion that I could talk to you,’ said Thomas, bracing himself against the greasy food to come with a large gin and water. ‘Are you and he good friends?’

‘We understand each other very well,’ said Sado, considering his answer. ‘As a matter of fact, we each believe the other to be a bit bogus, which is as good a basis as any for mutual esteem, I suppose.’

‘Why do you believe that?’

‘Mark disputes the objectivity of religious experience, and thinks that my research into it is purposeless and an aberration of the mind.’

‘You’ve lost me already.’

‘In simplified terms, Mark believes that god is within us and I know for a fact that god is outside us.’ “Yes… well, why do you think he’s a fraud?’ ‘Oh, because of his so-called profession.’ ‘You lack faith in doctors?”

‘Not in general, no, no. But Mark has an extensive clientele of well-to-do middle-aged women whose husbands don’t make love to them any more. He is so supportive and reassuring that they worship him. They trot along to Harley Street for their little weekly orgasms and think it well worth the inflated fees he charges them. Perhaps it is.’

‘You mean he physically makes love to them?’

‘Of course not. He specializes in what he chooses to call hypnotherapy. He tranquillizes them and lulls them into a half-sleep and then induces orgasm by words. He is very skilled. Very skilled indeed. The poor things wake up relaxed and sticky and as happy as a bride on her honeymoon.’

‘You sound almost disapproving.’

‘Not a bit, I assure you. We each have our talents and we use them to the limit, and beyond. I am a scholar. Mark is a healer, of sorts. We are closer than brothers because we are members of the same coven.’

‘He calls it a group, I noticed.’

‘He would. That fits in better with his medical concepts. I prefer the old word because it means more’

As the tacky meal was served, Sado expounded the religious basis of the coven’s beliefs. ‘Do you know how religion began?’ he asked. ‘No. Do you?’

‘Naturally. I have studied it all my life. If you look at the earliest societies, from Old and New Stone Age, through the Mesopotamic civilization, the Egyptian and Biblical cultures, to Classical tim es, you will see conclusively th at man’s first concept of god was as the source of fertility.’

‘Simple as that?’

‘Simple, unchallengeable, and all-embracing in implication. God was the unseen power that made animals breed in their seasons and produce more of their kind for the hunters to kill and eat. God was the mysterious power that made a man’s penis stand upright and spit its seed into a woman’s belly so that more children would be born to continue the tribe. God was the invisible power in the sky that sent down rain on the earth to make the crops grow for man’s benefit. Our early forebears had a direct and unambiguous view of the Creator that served humanity well for many thousands of years.’

‘So what happened to foul it up?’

‘Your choice of words is quite apt. With the growing sophistication of society, priests, prophets and philosophers turned away in false shame from the simple vision of God as a spurting penis in the sky. They disguised the old beliefs under the trappings of sham religiosity; they introduced false notions of sin and guilt; they built elaborate theories of fall and redemption, and made themselves aprons of leaves to hide their nakedness.’

Thomas left his soup unfinished. It was mainly soggy bits of cabbage surrounded by scum.

‘Despite the intellectual perversities of the centuries,’ Sado continued, swigging a glass of thin, sour red wine with relish, What was true at the beginning of human history is true today. God is the standing penis, not a plaster figure in a church. God is life. God is orgasm and fertility. And although the truth has been taken away from the masses, we are as dependent on God’s sperm today, when we five in cities and travel the world in jet planes, as our forefathers were when they lived in thatched huts beside their patch of cultivated earth. The real act of worship is copulation, as it always has been.’

‘So back to nature, you mean,’ said Thomas, ‘but it’s far too late in our history to become peasants again, tilling the soil a nd impregnating our wives every year. That’s a dream of the past, I’m surprised that a man of your intelligence should suggest it’

Sado eyed him coldly across the grubby tablecloth.

‘Do me the courtesy of hearing me out before you decide’ he said, ‘I am not advocating a back-to-nature movement, as you put it. I am saying that we should recognize and accept the springs of our being. You understand the difference, I suppose?’

‘Yes, but I thought that Freud and his disciples had taught us to accept the basic drives of our nature. An orgasm a day keeps the neurosis away. That’s Mark’s line of business.’

‘You are as flippant as my students. Now they have surely come to terms with their own nature, I suppose that most of the young have, these days. Copulation is never very far from their minds, and they have none of the crippli ng inhibitions of my generation.

‘You sound like the randy professor of popular legend getting his hand up the girl students’ drawers.’

‘Of course,’ said Sado, not in the least offended. ‘I set new records for myself each academic year. It helps to make teaching worthwhile, you know’

Thomas said nothing and Sado resumed his discourse between mouthfuls of greasy veal. Besides the overwhelming importance of fertility, he explained, humanity had become aware with dawning selfconsciousness of two principles at work in nature and in themselves. Two powers in conflict.’

‘Good and evil, you mean?’ asked Thomas, but Sado brushed the interruption aside impatiently. Good and evil were terms of value judgement from a fixed viewpoint, he declared, with no relevance to reality.

‘Sulphuric acid will bum you, milk will nourish you, but neither substance is good or evil.’ These labels are meaningless,’ he said. ‘Earthquakes, arsenic, locusts, the organism that causes syphilis, tornadoes, puff-adders - where is the good or evil in any of them except from the subjective viewpoint of your personal survival? And as a scientist you must know that whether you survive a few more years, or whether you ever exist at all, has no relevance to the universe. You are without importance in the overall scheme of things. As we each are.’

‘I don’t question any of that,’ said Thomas. ‘I know that reality is amoral. But what follows from that?

‘There is neither good nor evil, only the light and the dark, each trying to overcome the other.’ ‘You’ve lost me again.’

‘Never mind. Just grasp this thought - the principle of darkness created the visible universe to use as a weapon against the principle of light.’

Thomas objected that most religions taught the opposite to that. Sado took him up enthusiastically. Most religions did indeed have it the wrong way round. But in each century and nation there had always been a few who knew the truth and held on to it through the persecution of the established church of the day. Everything made sense when it was understood that the world is the creation of the principle of darkness.

‘Religion is not my line at all,’ said Thomas, wondering if Sado might be unhinged. ‘From where I sit, you seem to have set up two gods after you started with one, and now you’ve declared your allegiance to one of the two.’

‘Man first perceived the god who made this world as the principle of life and growth,’ said Sado, ‘and later on he realized there is another power, not of th is world, not responsible for this world, but in endless conflict with its creator.’

“We don’t deal in gods in my business,’ said Thomas. There are dualistic concepts in science. Matter and anti-matter, for instance, which cancel each other out if they collide’

‘Science is very backward,’ said Sado. ‘You spend your time taking things to pieces, like little machines, looking for what makes them tick. And this will keep scientists occupied until the end of the world because they are on a fool’s errand. Though along the way they sometimes stumble across useful things.’

‘I’m flattered,’ said Thomas, though his irony was wasted. ‘Tell me, in your scheme of things, will the conflict between the light and the dark ever be settled, one way or the other? It sounds like a long struggle, and most scientific evidence suggests that the universe will run down like a clock and stop at some remote time in the future.’

‘By then it will have served its purpose. Or if not, it can be recreated. Again and again, if necessary.’

‘That sounds like the expanding and contracting universe theory that some astronomers put forward.’

‘In their fumbling way even scientists may get a glimmer of the truth,’

Thomas looked op from the miserable food before him and saw the fanatical glow in his companion’s eyes. There was no point in taking the subject any further. Their standpoints were too different, and by his reckoning Sado was a long way out on the fringe. The only part of Sado’s doctrine with which Thomas agreed, though not quite in the way he meant it, was that man’s dream had always been to become a god. But it was a very long-term dream.

The rest of it he dismissed as gibberish.

THE KINDLING

While he was cultivating the men, Thomas did not neglect the women of the coven. He enjoyed their company and their bodies and learned all he could from them. Rachel had become a particular fri end whom he saw often, and Tanse y was also well disposed towards him. The only ones he avoided were Esta and Meg, both of whom disturbed him.

Jenny he liked especially: a long-legged woman, in her middle twenties, with broad cheekbones and a spread of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She had dark brown hair which she wore straight to her shoulders. It was her gentl e manner which attracted him, even though he guessed it hid astounding determination.

He was lying in bed with her one evening when he asked: ‘Something I find surprising is that Frazer does nothing to teach me the business - did he teach you?’ ‘What on earth do you mean?’ ‘How to be a witch. How long have you been one?’ ‘Ages. About five years.’ You were with Lesage , weren’t you?” ‘No, I joined Frazer’s coven.’ ‘Why?’

‘Well, I was about at the end of my tether then. I’d been having a bad time of it and going from one nervous breakdown to another. At least, that’s how it felt. I was living on pills to daze me enough to keep going. You’ve no idea what it’s like to be really at the bottom like that. I was even thinking about doing away with myself. Then I met Frazer and right away I knew that he would sort it out for me.’

‘You fell in love with him, you mean?’

“People like us don’t fall in love. That’s part of the reason why I was in the state I was in. Now I know it doesn’t matter in the coven we have another sort of feeling for each other that’s much stronger and lasts a lot longer.’

‘Didn’t the initiation ceremony shock you - you were only a girl, practically.’

‘I wasn’t a virgin by any means. All the same, sex with a ring of people standing round watching would have made me run away screaming if I hadn’t been so utterly sure that whatever Frazer wanted me to do was absolutely right. You must have felt the same at your initiation.’

‘Not exactly. I felt that it was important but I didn’t understand why. But after that, who taught you the things that you know?’

‘Who taught me?’ she asked. ‘Nobody taught me in the way you mean. I found out what my potential was and developed it. Mark helped me a lot at first. In fact, most of the men did.’

‘In bed, you mean.’

‘In bed and out of bed. What’s the difference?’ ‘But you’re telling me that there was no organized instruction, right?’

Jenny rolled over to lie across his chest. Her long hair touched his checks as her brown eyes came close to his.

‘It’s not like that. We’re not a bible class, you know. We look after ourselves and get what we can from each other. We’ve learned to be takers instead of givers.’

‘Yes, but doesn’t Frazer want his followers to be as strong as possible? To my way of dunking that means teaching them what he knows himself.’

‘Your ways of thinking are still not ours. If Frazer taught us all he knows, we’d be as strong as he is. How would he stay master then? One of us would pull him down, or try to.’

‘He’s only safe while we stay ignorant, is that it?’

‘No, silly. He wants us to get what we can for ourselves, just as lie does. And because he’s so much further on than any of us, hell always stay in the lead.’

Thomas let his hands roam reminiscently over Jenny’s long smooth back.

‘You think he’s still learning too?’ he asked.

‘I know he is. He goes through fantastic experiments. Sometimes he asks one or two of us to help him. Not often, because he chooses different people each time, so nobody gets to know too much about what he’s doing.’

‘What kind of thing does he get up to?’

‘I’ve only helped him once. He wanted me for something I can do. He was trying to trap something into a lead-lined box.’

‘Something living?’

‘I’m not allowed to tell you about that. Anyway, he’s taught you the three most important things of all.’

‘Like what?’

His hands were fondling her round buttocks. Her hips brushed his check,

‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten already,’ she murmured. ‘He showed you how to control disembodied forces, and how to control the element of fire.’

‘Right, that’s two. What was the other?’

‘How to die and come back to life, she said, her face hardening.

‘All right, so I know three important things. How do I go about learning more?’

‘Have you discovered your own talent yet?’

‘My what?’

‘You must have a special talent hidden in you or Frazer would never have accepted you.’

‘I thought I was chosen for my scientific background.’

‘Yes, but that wouldn’t be enough by itself. He must have seen something in you that made you suitable for the coven. Some ability you may not be aware of.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Positive. There are plenty of scientists about. But nobody is ever taken by Frazer without an inborn ability. He can recognize these things in people. Like he did in me.’

‘I know Meg’s talent,’ said Thomas, ‘and Rachel’s. And one of Esta’s, as I’m sure she’s a mine of talents all by herself. What’s yours, Jenny?’

A staring look came into her eyes and her body went rigid in his arms. The bedside radio came on and played music. Thomas looked at it in surprise, and saw that the clock-hands were going round backwards steadily. Then the radio switched itself off and the clock hands stood still.

‘My God! How do you do that?’

Jenny smiled at his perplexity.

‘I think about it very hard and it happens.’

‘Telekinesis, I’ve never believed it possible. Can you move things about?’

‘If I want to.’

‘How large, and how far?’

‘Big enough and far enough and fast enough to hurt you, if I had to.’

That’s amazing. Do it again.’

‘Little things impress you, don’t they? But the big things pass you by because you don’t want to believe them.’

‘Could you teach me how to do it?’

‘No. If you have the ability, you can teach yourself by practice. That’s the only way. There aren’t any short cuts. You must find out what your talent is, and then you’ll be able to make use of it when you learn how to concentrate properly.’

‘What does that mean exactly? It obviously has a greater significance for you than it does for me. What do you mean when you say concentrate!’

‘You have to learn how to screw your mind up so tightly that every bit of energy in you can be used for doing just the one thing you want to do. It’s the opposite of meditation, where you let your mind float loose. Do you sec what I mean?’

‘In a sort of way. Can you show me?’

‘Sit up, then.’

He sat cross-legged on the bed and Jenny knelt behind him.

‘I don’t suppose that moving things is your talent,’ she said. ‘There are very few of us. But we might as well try. You have to start with something small and light. There’s a postcard on your dressing-table. Look at it hard, and will it to move. Use all your strength until you feel as if you’re going to burst. I’ll help you,’

Thomas stared across the room at the picture postcard from his married sister in America and willed it with all his force to move. The sinews of his neck and the veins in his temples stood out with the effort, but nothing happened: the card stayed where it was, tucked into a corner of the mirror. He fought to move it, rigid with sustained trying.

Jenny’s hands clasped his forehead. Her warm body was against him as she knelt close. He could feel her breasts pressed to the back of his head and her belly against his spine.

The postcard fluttered down from the mirror.

‘I did it!’ he gasped.

‘No, I did it through your mind. You haven’t got the talent for that. It must be something else.’

‘Pity,’ he said. ‘It might have been very useful.’

Jenny moved away from him and lay down again.

‘I got a very strong thought from you when I touched you,’ she said,

‘Did you? What was it?’

‘That my body is beautiful and enjoyable.Did you think that?’ Thomas turned to face her.

‘Yes, I did. It came into my mind when you pressed yourself against my back. Did you read my mind?’

She shook her head.

‘I can’t read minds. I tried that years ago when I was developing my own talent But maybe you’re one of those who can send thoughts into other people’s minds. And if you can, maybe you can receive them too.’

There’s no such thing as telepathy,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s been researched for years in universities all over the world. There’s never been anything that couldn’t be explained by a fluke of luck.’

‘According to you there’s no such thing as telekinesis, cither. I don’t know what they do in universities, but I do know for certain that some people can talk to each other without using words. Elspeth can, for one.’

‘Can she? And you think I might be able to?’

‘I don’t know. But you’ll never find out until you try.’

He put his hands on her shoulders and concentrated hard.

‘That’s no problem,’ said Jenny.

‘What’s no problem — what was I thinking?’

‘You were thinking that you would like to have me again now but it’s too soon after the last time and you might not be able to.’

He nodded.

‘No witch ever has that problem,’ she said, running her fingers down his chest ‘You’ve been with Brigit, so you should know.’

‘Her way is a bit devastating I had something more leisurely in mind.’

‘Then I’ll show you another way.’

Two nights later Thomas took Elspeth out to dinner. She was five or six years older than Jenny, and though tall and brown-hatred like her, there was no other resemblance. Elspeth was small-breasted and broad-hipped, long-jawed and long-nosed, in contrast w ith Jenny’s roundness. Not softl y alluring like Jenny, but attractive in a boldly angular style.

Over dinner he asked her why the coven operated alone. As there must be like-minded groups all over London, why did they never link up into a larger organization to pursue their purposes in a bigger way, he inquired.

Elspeth told him that there were so-called covens everywhere. But mostly they were groups of amateurs playing at sexual games and sadism, digging up coffins in deserted graveyards by night and cutting the throats of stray cats; the sort of antics that got reported in the popular Sunday newspapers. Frazer’s coven wanted nothing to do with people like that

Thomas protested that they couldn’t all be fake. It was against commonsense to think that only Frazer’s coven had found the real power.

Elspeth agreed. But one good reason for not linking up, she pointed out, was security. The larger the group, the bigger the risk of being discovered and attracting the attention of the police. In the nature of witchcraft, things were frequently done which were illegal. A small and tightly knit group had little fear of exposure.

‘But bearing in mind the commitment each member makes,’ said Thomas, ‘that seems a thin argument to me,’

‘There’s the strongest of all reasons,’ said Elspeth. ‘When two covens join, there can only be one master. We don’t choose our master by election, you know. Lesage made that mistake; Frazer won’t. Why on earth should he risk anything at all when he is within sight of his ambition? He owns the golden book he took from Lesage. He rules a double coven, He has Janine. It’s only a matter of time before he is the supreme master.’

“What then - Frazer rules the world?’

Elspcth laughed throatily.

‘We shan’t be all that interested in this world when we have the Jewel, except as a place to come back to between journeys, perhaps,’

‘Journeys where?’

‘That’s not for me to tell you, even if I could. My mind is bound, like yours.’

After dinner they went back to Elspeth’s house in Eaton Square. It was expensively furnished in the bleakest of Scandinavian styles, all bare wood and metal. Thomas found it chilling, but the sheer cost of it testified to the use she made of her abilities.

When they were settled with coffee and brandy she surprised him by saying: ‘You can ask me now.’ ‘Ask you what?’

The question that’s been in your mind all evening. The reason you’re here. The question about my talent.’

‘You’ve read my mind!’

‘No, Jenny told me on the phone yesterday.’

Thomas laughed at himself and his own credulity. He must be more careful.

‘Can you read people’s minds, Elspeth?’

It’s not a question of reading minds. I’m not a music-hall act, you know. I can make contact with people’s minds, and we can exchange thoughts.’

‘Show me how you do it.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Jenny thought that I might have some ability in that direction.’

‘So she said. Though it seemed to me that it wasn’t much more than the pair of you in bed together and Jenny guessing that you fancied her when you did. That sounds more like ordinary body-language than thought exchange.’

“You’re right, it could be no more than that. But I’ll never know for sure unless you help me to find out.’

‘That’s true, at least. All right, then, it pleases me to indulge you. Take your clothes off and kneel in front of me.’

‘Is that necessary?’

‘No, but we’re doing this on my terms.’

Thomas shrugged, stripped and knelt in front of her chair, she held both his hands in hers on her lap and stared into his eyes, her long face passive.

He felt rather than heard a whisper inside his head:

‘Thomas do you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t speak. Just think your answer. I hear you, I really do. How do you do it, Elspeth? Long practice. But the ability must be there first. Not many have it.’

‘Have I got it?’

‘You must find out. First learn to concentrate and direct your will. Then try to project your thought into another mind.’

Jenny tried to explain how to concentrate but I didn’t truly grasp what she meant.

‘It is a process that involves your total will and energy. It can’t be described in words. It’s like trying to describe what happens when a flame burns.’

‘But that’s a simple chemical process that can be describe d easily.’

‘Will your scientific words give a living picture of the glory of a leaping flame? You deceive yourself with words, Thomas. I’ll show you how to concentrate. Make your mind fully receptive.’

There was a pause. Her hands gripped his tighter. He saw the pupils of her eyes contract to points, and then his mind was gripped and squeezed brutally. He groaned and struggled to pull away, while the force she was exerting compressed his mind smaller and smaller until he was tottering on the brink of unconsciousness. He groaned again and blacked out.

When he came to he was lying flat on the floor, his head pillowed on Elspeth’s lap. She held a glass to his mouth. He coughed as the brandy trickled down his throat, and felt slightly better, though his head was aching furiously. He looked up into her face as she bent over him.

‘You nearly killed me,’ he muttered.

‘It would take a lot more than that to kill you. Do you understand now how far you have to go before you are capable of the sort of concentration that’s needed?’

‘Does it always feel like that?’

‘Only at the beginning. It’s like any exercise - you have to learn it slowly without hurting yourself. I took you to the point where any talent you had would be released. You have to be able to do that by yourself.’

‘Did anything happen?’

‘I think so. You projected a faint thought into my mind without my help. At least, I think you did. It wasn’t my thought, so it must have been yours.’

‘What was it?’

‘I didn’t understand. You said black hole. Does that mean anything to you?”

The headache was wearing off fast.

‘Why, yes - black hole in space. It’s what happens when gravitational forces overcome sub-atomic forces in a star. The whole thing collapses in on itself with enormous pressure.’

‘That’s what it felt like to you?’

‘Not that so much. I suddenly understood how you were using the pressure of your will to overcome the natural resistance, so that the process became self-inducing after that. Then the forces released were huge.’

‘I hope you know what you’re talking about, because I don’t.’

Thomas got to his feet slowly and reached for his clothes.

‘Don’t bother,’ said Elspeth, ‘I’ll take mine off.’

With the understanding he had received from her, Thomas began to develop his latent power. It was intensely painful at first, but he kept at it, like an athlete determined to beat the four-minute mile. Eventually he reached the point where he could project thoughts into the minds of others.

He did his practising away from the coven, using the people he worked with at Inter-Con-Chem. He found that they would accept as their own ideas which he planted in their minds and, as his ability expanded, he e xperimented with influencing the ir actions. In the beginning it was only with unimportant things, but his goal was to learn how to control them.

For some time he was only able to nudge them along a path they might have taken by themselves if it had occurred to them, or into courses of action to which they had no personal aversion. It would be interesting, he considered, to attempt to develop his power strongly enough to force people into actions which were contrary to their natural instincts or beliefs.

There was a colleague at work whom he heartily disliked. Could he impel him to resign his job, for instance? Or could he get himself promoted to a better job at a higher salary?

The departmental head had a pretty secretary, a young newly married woman. Thomas began to concentrate his experiments on her. It would be a real test to try to get her to come to his flat and lie down for him.

In hard sessions that left him dizzy and exhausted, Thomas forced his innate ability to bud and blossom fast. The girl, Rosalie, began to smile at him in a slight ly puzzled way when they passed each other in a corridor or office. She was accepting as her own the warm feelings towards him which he was planting surreptitiously. The day came when Thomas succeeded in concentrating and directing his will at her so strongly that when he walked into her office at midday and asked her to come home with him, she agreed.

She had a pretty face and body, but sex play with her was tame after his experiences with the women of the coven. Penetrating her, with her full consent, was the trophy of achievement he was after, and obtained.

Back at work afterwards, she went into a crying hysteria of guilt in the middle of the afternoon and walked out of the office without giving any reason. That was a bad moment for Thomas, but he managed to turn it into a further triumph. The man he disliked was transferred away from London by the department head, into whose mind Thomas had insinuated the thought that Rosalie’s abrupt, fi nal and inexplicable departure w as somehow linked to the other man’s actions.

The morality of what he was doing no longer concerned Thomas. His interest in the potential of his ability was kindled, and he now saw his course as a series of scientific experiments, neither good nor bad.

ROBERTS WAY

Thomas was sliding comfortably into sleep when the telephone rang. He ignored it and waited for it to stop. When it persisted he sat up and looked at the bedside clock: it was nearly one in the morning. He padded across the room on bare feet, not bothering to switch the light on, half-expecting the ringing to cut off before he reached the sitting-room, ‘Yes?’

Esta’s voice answered him. She spoke quickly and urgently. Thomas, something has happened. We are meeting at Frazer’s house right away. Get going,’ ‘What’s happened?’

‘You’ll find out when you get here. Is anyone with you?’ ‘Yes, Aletha.’

‘Bring her with you. And get a move on.’

She hung up without another word, and Thomas went back to the bedroom wondering what it was all about. The last thing be wanted to do was drive halfway across London to join in one of Frazer’s unpleasant meetings.

Aletha was asleep. And so she should be, he reflected vainly, He switched on the light and sat on the bed beside her. She mumbled and turned her face away from the light. Thomas smoothed her tangled hair and kissed her on the cheek, and her arms crept up round his neck.

‘Yes,’ she murmured, her eyes still closed.

‘Aletha, wake up. We’ve got problems,’

Her jet-black eyes opened slowly and focused on bis face. She guided his hands to her bare breasts.

‘Let’s do it again,’ she said.

‘Listen - Esta just phoned. There’s something going on we’re wanted round at Frazer’s right away.’ She was fully awake instantl y at that. ‘Did she say what?’

‘No, but it sounded urgent. What could it be?’ Aletha pushed him away from her and scrambled out of bed. ‘We’d better hurry,’ she said. ‘Get your clothes on, man.’ Thomas ran his hand down the length of her coffee-coloured body to the crinkly mat of black hair that spread from the fork of her thighs halfway up to her navel. It had been an entertaining evening - like the Kama Sutra come to life.

‘Come on,’ she said impatiently, pushing his hand away. ‘No time for fooling around now if Frazer wants us.’

Thomas pulled on a pair of faded demins and a roll neck sweater and went to the kitchen to make coffee. When he came back with two flowered mugs, Aletha had her dress on and was combing her long hair into a pony-tail in front of his mirror.

‘Sounds bad,’ she said, taking one of the mugs. ‘How bad can it be?’

‘Bad in ways you don’t even know about. When Frazer calls people out in the middle of the night, that’s real trouble.’ ‘You’re a diviner - can’t you tell?’

Aktha set her coffee down and closed her eyes. Her broad, wide-mouthed face was wiped clean of expression for a second or two, then she gasped and looked at Thomas fearfully.

‘Someone going to hurt us,’ she said. ‘I can’t see who, but I see danger like never before. Let’s go now.’

There was still plenty of traffic about as Thomas drove up to Hyde Park Corner and turned into Park Lane. Normal people, he thought, going to their pleasant normal homes after a pleasant normal evening out. What the hell am I going to? Danger, disaster? What has become of my life since I became involved with these people?

Aletha sensed his mood. She put a friendly hand on his thigh and said, ‘Don’t worry too much. We’re pretty tough when we all get together. Somebody threatens us, we’ll make him sorry he ever lived to suck his mother’s titty.’

There was a taxi being paid off outside Frazer’s house as Thomas parked. Marian, Piers and Jenny were standing on the pavement. They all went in together, to find a dozen others assembled in the sitting-room in an anxious buzz of conversation. Esta was there, but not Frazer.

‘What’s going on?’ Thomas asked, touching her arm,

‘Explanations when everyone’s here,’ she answered. ‘Help yourself to drinks.’ Then with a sardonic twist to her mouth she added, ‘Did I spoil your fun with Aletha? I hope she hasn’t worn you out. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.’

Thomas shrugged and thought bitch, and went to the sideboard for a drink. If Frazer’s planning any sex capers for tonight, he thought, it’s going to take a lot of magic to get me interested again.

With a glass of brandy in his hand he circulated slowly, saying hello to people and listening to their speculations on why they had been sent for. Most of them were dressed as casually as he was, suggesting that they had been called out of bed. But Victor was in white tie and tails, with the insignia of an eminent order on a ribbon round his neck. What establishment function had he been attending, Thomas wondered. One or two of th e women wore long dresses. Elspe th was in the dark green velvet she had worn the night Thomas had first visited her home and discovered his potential. Brigit wore what he thought of as expensive disco g ear - a completely backless, al most frontless wisp of shimmering black that exposed most of her adolescent body.

More people arrived. Large as the room was, it was now full, Thomas’s watch said 1.40, Surely they were all here by now? It wasn’t likely that Esta had called him first; he wasn’t that important. He tried to count heads but gave up when he saw how the little groups changed and moved.

Meg was sitting in one of the armchairs, silent and serious, Thomas squeezed through to her and kissed her cheek, and she looked at him without expression.

‘Meg, do you know what this is about?’

‘I know the beginning. I can guess the rest,’

‘So tell me what you know.’

‘Frazer will do the telling, not me. L-ook, we’re going up now.’

Esta was at the door and those nearest her were filing out. Meg picked up a box from beside her feet and stood up.

‘Let me take that for you,’ Thomas offered.

It was like an old-fashioned hat-box, made of green leather, brass studded, and with a carrying-strap.

‘No,’ she said flatly.

He followed her out of the door and upstairs. In the dimness of the big room Frazer was sitting cross-legged on the raised stone slab. The others were forming a circle round him.

Man, woman, man, woman, thought Thomas, looking for a suitable place to insert himself. Something was wrong with the other side of the circle - there were three women together. With Frazer in the middle and Esta in the circle, that would make a difference, but we’re still short, he thought. Before he had time to work it out, Frazer gestured for them to sit on the floor.

When he spoke there was a ragged edge in his voice.

‘Listen most carefully to what I have to say,’ he began. ‘We have been betrayed by one of our own.’

The exclamations of dismay made him pause for a moment. He went on.

‘I was out this evening. The first time I have been out of this house for many months. I went because Robert called me with startling news. He said that he had been secretl y watching Thomas and had discovered that he was lying to us, Thomas has deciphered his part of the text of the golden book and has kept silent about it for his own purpose. Sit down, Thomas!’

His voice stung like a whip. Thomas subsided, muttering protests. All eyes were turned to him, and he could feel the thrust of suspicion and hostility directed at him. What the hell is going on, he wondered.

‘I went to meet Robert so that we could confront Thomas together,’ Frazer continued, ‘but Robert was not at home when I got there. There was this note waiting for me instead.’

He held up a piece of paper for them to see.

‘Listen to Robert’s words and judge him. In his own handwriting it says ‘I have Janine.’ Nothing else. I hurried back here as fast as I could. In the hall I found my housekeeper in a deep trance, Janine was gone.’

There were cries of anger and amazement from the circle. Some of the men half rose and sat down again at Frazer’s gesture,

‘Thomas,’ he said, his voice as cold as the caves of death, ‘Stand up now. Answer truthfully. Your life is in the balance. What do you know of this?’

‘Nothing,’ said Thomas, determined not to panic, ‘Whatever Robert may have done, I know nothing about it. I have been with Aletha all evening.’

‘That’s the truth,’ she supported him, ‘We’ve been together since around eight.’

‘Then why should Robert use your name if you are not involved?’ Frazer hissed at him.

‘Because he knows that nothing less than a threat to the project would get you out of this house,’ Thomas reasoned. “He wanted you away while he took the child, though I don’t know why he should want her.’

‘You don’t know,’ said Frazer, ‘but I do. Sit down, Thomas. We will talk again later about how far you have got with the interpretation of the ninth section of the text. I do not hold you responsible for my daughter’s abduction.’

‘I assure you that I had no part or knowledge of any such thing.’

‘I know that, otherwise at this moment you would be screaming in agony on the floor and praying for death. What we must do at once is to get her back and punish Robert. We must find them quickly, wherever they are hidden. Bring the bowl, David. Undress, everyone.’

As they obeyed, Thomas muttered to Aletha next to him in the circle, ‘I don’t get it. Why should Robert want to kidnap the child?’

‘She is a key part of the ritual of the Jewel,’ she answered, rolling her tights down her brown legs. ‘But what does he hope to gain?’ ‘How do I know?’ ‘Hurry!’ Frazer commanded.

The circle reassembled, naked and squatting on the hard wooden floor. David sat cross-legged at the foot of the stone slab with a large metal bowl in front of him. It was filled with a liquid that shone silver and black by turns in the flickering light. Mercury, Thomas said to himself.

‘What’s he doing?’ he whispered to Alctha.

‘Hush - he’s going to sec where Robert’s gone hiding.’

They linked hands round the circle,

‘Concentrate,’ Frazer ordered. ‘Hold the image of Robert in your minds and project it at David.’

Thomas tried to create a mental picture of Robert. Heavy jowls with a permanent shadow of beard, hard eyes, smooth brown hair. Robert as he last saw him, in a dark business suit and a Guards tie. Robert as he first saw him, naked, thick-bodied, hairy of chest and back.

David crouched over his bowl of quicksilver, staring intently into it, swaying under the impact of the thought-stream directed towards him from all sides.

‘Can you see Robert?’ Frazer demanded.

The picture won’t clear. He’s put a barrier round himself.’

‘Then break through it. He is one and we are many,’

David grunted with effort, sweat trickling down his face, Thomas watched in fascination, wondering how it worked. What was the basis for what they were trying to do - see at a distance without electronic circuitry? It defied imagination.

A beam of brilliant white light flashed upwards from the bowl into David’s staring eyes. He screamed and fell backwards.

‘Break the circle!’ Frazer shouted.

They released hands instantly. David was rolling about, hands pressed to his face, crying out. Rachel and Esta got up and went to him. Thomas saw Esta calm him by stroking his chest and belly until Rachel could pull his hands away from his face. She wet her fingers in her mouth and touched them to his eyes.

Thomas was not at all sceptical about Rachel’s talent. After she had licked the blood from his palm on the night of the lightning, there had been no trace of a scratch or even a scar on his hand the next day.

‘How is he?’ Frazer asked in impatience. ‘Can he go on?’

‘His eyes are badly burned,’ said Rachel. ‘I can heal him, but he’ll be blind for a day or so.’

‘Take him up and put him to bed, then. We must go on without him. There is no time to lose. Meg - did you bring what I asked?’

“Yes, but I don’t like the idea.’

‘I don’t care what you like. Choose someone and take him into the dark room. And hurry up!’

Meg picked up her leather box and walked round the circle to Evin. She held out her hand to him and he got up reluctantly. As they left the room together, Thomas leaned towards Aletha, bursting with questions.

‘Can anyone operate the bowl, or only David?’

‘We all learn to. David’s best, though. Mark’s pretty good, but nobody else is going to risk it after that.’

‘What happened? Did Robert strike back?’

‘He’s watching us,’ she whispered. He bounced our strength right back at us. Fantastic! Never saw that done before.’

‘I didn’t know Robert was so powerful,’

‘Nor me, man. I’m scared.’

Thomas ran his hand gently down her long bare back to soothe her.

“What are Meg and Evin doing upstairs? Are they raising Lesage?’

‘Sure. Look at Frazer - he’s scared too.’ ‘Of Robert?’

‘No, of Lesage,’ she said in a faint whisper. ‘But he’s dead. He can’t hurt Frazer.’

‘How would you feel if Meg was raising somebody who hated you?’

‘But it’s only a memory-projection, not a ghost.’

‘Whatever you say. For me it’s a ghost. How can you tell what strength it might get from hate when it sees where it is: in its own house that was taken away from it with its life? Would you risk it?’

Frazer’s eyes turned to them as if he had overheard their exchanges. Thomas sat silent, visualizing what was happening up above in the room with the circular design on the floor. Meg on her back with her fleshy thighs parted for Evin to pierce her and energize the memory locked into the bone of Lesage’s skull. He shuddered. He was very glad Meg hadn’t chosen him to go with her.

Esta was trying to quieten Frazer’s visible agitation. Her palms were against his cheeks. As his eyes closed slowly, Thomas seized the chance to speak to Ale tha again.

‘Why Evin? Is he a close friend of Meg’s?’

Aletha smiled lewdly.

‘She took him because he’s so quick about it. He can do it in thirty seconds when he puts his mind to it. He’s some kind of freak, I tell you.’

‘But they’ve been gone for ages.’

‘So they’re trying more than once. That Evin’s fast and often. Bang, bang, whoosh. Then get his breath back and he’s up again, bang, bang.’

Thomas found the thought repulsive and asked no more questions. After a while Meg came back, trading Evin behind her. The whispering round the circle hushed as she stood in front of Frazer.

‘Well?’

‘Nothing,’ said Meg, ‘He wouldn’t answer.’ ‘Then try again!’ Frazer burst out. ‘We have. He laughed at us.’

‘Then take two or three men with you and keep on trying. I’ve got to know where Robert is.’

‘It’s no good, Frazer. We’ve done it three times. He won’t help you.’

‘Then make him!’

Meg’s voice hardened.

‘Come with me yourself,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Lesage will answer your questions when he sees you lying on me.’

Frazer’s hand flew up to strike her across the face, but he thought better of it and breathed out noisily. . How much this means to him, Thomas was thinking. Any threat to his project enrages him to the point where he hardly knows what he’s doing. That could be useful to know - the way to make him lose control.

‘Frazer, I have a suggestion,’ said Giles, standing up.

‘What is it?’

‘Since two attempts to trace Robert have failed, why not try the way of insufflation?’

‘We have no one here suitable,’ said Frazer curtly.

“What about your housekeeper? She is not one of us.’

‘Why, yes, the idea is a good one. Esta, bring her here.’

In all the times he had been to Frazer’s house, Thomas had seen no housekeeper. He had no reason to inquire into Frazer’s domestic arrangements. But obviously someone was required to look after the little girl, prepare food and clean up. Not one of us, Giles had said. Thomas wondered what sort of person Frazer would trust to keep house for him and say nothing about the extraordinary gatherings there. It could only be someone over whom he had total domination, Frazer was himself again. He addressed his followers with his normal confidence.

‘Brothers and sisters, few of you can ever have seen the work we shall perform. It is a very old way of uncovering hidden things and not much used now. The silver bowl is usually much better. But placed as we are, we must use whatever lies to our hand.’

He had their complete attention as he explained what he was going to do.

“We shall take someone whose fate is of no importance and use her to find Robert for us. More accurately, we shall use her to find Janine, and that will give us Robert, who is with her. He will defend himself, of cour se, and try to hit back, but th is time we shall not be his target.’

The girl Esta led into the room was Chinese, small, frail and certainly less than twenty. An au pair from Hong Kong, Thomas guessed, a cold chill of fear in his belly. She was wear ing pale green pyjamas. Evidently Esta had roused her from sleep.

‘Mary,’ said Frazer, speaking slowly, ‘tell these people what you told me before. What happened when I went out?’

The name was incongruous, Thomas thought. What was Frazer proposing to do?

Mary stared without curiosity round the circle of naked men and women. She was quite clearly under Frazer’s complete control. She spoke in a toneless voice, almost as if she were hypnotized.

‘Doorbell ring after you go out. I keep door on chain like you say and look. A firewheel on doorstep as big as a man. Then you wake me up.’

‘What’s a firewheel?’ Thomas whispered to Aletha.

‘It’s an energy pattern. Robert give it out to dazzle her mind. Soon as she let him in he’d step up the razzle-dazzle to knock her out. It does something to your brain, like making you have a fit.’

Frazer pointed to three of the women near him. Help Esta to hold her,’ he said.

‘Let me!’ said Brigit, who had not been included. ‘I want to sec. Please, Frazer.’

‘Very well. I’m sure you will enjoy it. We won’t need you, Elspeth.’

Thomas watched in great apprehension as the four women removed Mary’s pyjamas and lifted her thin body on to the stone slab beside Frazer. She made no resistance.

‘Concentrate on Janine,’ Frazer instructed the circle, ‘and project your image towards Mary.’

They joined hands once more. Mary lay still on the slab, gripped tightly by the women, as Frazer brought his red and white face down to hers and breathed into her open mouth for some time, as if he were giving her the kiss of life.

Thomas held Janine’s sly face and childish body in his thoughts. The only time he had seen her she had been undressed. He could not picture her othe rwise.

Frazer looked up.

‘Hold her tight now while I question her. Concentrate, all of you.’

The tingling sensation was flowing through Thomas’s arms and body, in from his left, out to his right. Janine, Janine, he murmured under his breath, to aid his concentration.

‘Mary,’ said Frazer, ‘find Janine, She has been taken away, but you can find her and tell me where she is.’

The girl began to moan and twitch in acute discomfort,

‘Yes, I know that he’s there with her,’ said Frazer. ‘He took her away. He will try to hurt you, Mary. Be quick, before he does. Where is Janine ?’

Mary’s back arched and she struggled to free herself from the hands holding her down. She burst into a high-pitched babble of English and Chinese, totally incomprehensible. Thomas stared in horror. They were not hurting her and yet her suffering was obvious.

Anxiously, Frazer clamped her head in his hands and breathed into her open mouth again, muffling her cries.

‘Mary - where is Janine?’ he demanded, straightening up.

The only answer was a continuous shrill screaming as Mary thrashed from side to side and tried to wrench away from the restraining hands. In disbelief Thomas saw that her thin body was streaked with bloody weals. Stop if! he shouted inside his head, knowing that nothing he could do would stop them. He tried to close his eyes to shut out what was happening, but found he could not.

Frazer tried twice more to question her but she was too far gone to even hear his voice. The women holding her were straining hard to keep her on the stone, sweat running down their backs.

It ended abruptly. Mary lay limp under their hands, Frazer put his hand over her tiny breast to feel for her heart-beat and scowled.

‘Dead,’ he announced in disgust. ‘Robert was too strong for us. Your suggestion was useless, Giles.’

Mary’s head had fallen to one side so that she seemed to be staring at Thomas with blank, open eyes. Blood and spittle had trickled from the corner of her mouth into her long black hair.

Thomas pulled his hands away from the women on either side of him and covered his face. How will I ever get away from this madman, he thought miserably. No life is of any concern to him except his own. David blinded, Meg abused, this girl tormented and dead. He uses people. Everything is subordinated to his insane lust to dominate. Men and women need to live in hope, not fear. Otherwise they are nothing. 1 shall never be free until Frazer is dead.

THE STORM

Baffled, Frazer was like a wounded bull in the ring, standing off by himself, head lowered to charge anything that moved. He glared round his circle of followers, muttering to himself. The white side of his face was pale as death, making an even more grotesque contrast with the blemished side. No one spoke as he looked from Meg to Esta, from Evin to Giles.

‘Mark,’ he said at last, ‘you pretend to understand people’s minds. That’s your profession, isn’t it?’

Mark said nothing.

‘Tell me this, then. Why is Robert behaving in this way? Has he lost his senses?’

‘I doubt it,’ Mark answered cautiously. ‘I thought I knew him as well as one can ever know anyone, Robert has always seemed to me a very practical man. He th inks things through before he makes decisions. I am sure that he has a practical motive for what he has done. A motive of gain for himself.’

Frazer eyed him sullenly,

‘What can he hope to gain by taking Janine away? Answer that.’

‘We don’t know his intentions,’ said Mark, ‘but he must believe that he can escape the penalty for his actions.’

‘Impossible! He knows me. He knows that I shall hunt him down, however long it takes. The rest of my life, if need be.’

‘Yes,’ said Mark, without inflection.

Frazer stared at him round-eyed in sudden realization.

‘That’s it!’ he shouted, ‘He wants to destroy me. It’s my life he’s after. I’ll smash him into the ground!’

Thomas felt physically sick as Frazer raved on about what he would do to Robert. Where was the sardonic master now? When Esta tried to calm him by laying on her hands, he pushed her away so roughly that she lost her balance and fell. She stayed where she had fallen, tense and still, hardly daring to breathe.

Fear and tension were making Thomas angry. ‘Frazer,’ he said sharply, ‘explain something to me.’ The mad eyes pinpointed him as a target.

‘What shall I explain?’

‘As I understand it, we must know about Robert’s intentions before we can counteract them.’

‘His intention is to become master of the coven, you fool!’

‘With our combined powers, why don’t we destroy him, wherever he is? It would be no great problem after that to trace Janine.’

‘Save me from idiots!’ exclaimed Frazer, half-choked with rage. ‘We can’t destroy him because he will have taken the precaution of having Janine close by him. If we exert our powers we shall destroy her as well.’

Thomas ignored the childish insults and persevered with his questions.

‘How can Robert destroy you, Frazer? You are stronger than he is, and you have us to support you. Janine must be the key. Is there some way he can use her against you?’

‘Blind foolsl’ Frazer bellowed. ‘Blind and useless! Only Thomas has seen the truth.’

Not really, you red-faced lunatic, thought Thomas. Everyone in this room knows far more than I do. They’ve all known the answer ever since we arrived, I feel it, but they’re too damned frightened to speak up,

‘What is special about Janine, Thomas?’ Frazer asked, looking at him under half-closed eyelids. ‘Use that brilliant mind of yours - shame these dolts!’

‘Special? Why, you told me yourself that when young virgins are penetrated for the first time they release tremendous psychic energy.’

There was a total hush in the room, as if everyone had stopped breathing. Thomas guessed that he was on the verge of triggering off a destructive blast of rage from Frazer, but he was too deep in to turn back.

‘I am only a novice, but it seems possible that Robert may know of some ritual in which he can use Janine and use the energy against you.’

Frazer squatted like a toad on his stone slab. The hatred he was emanating was almost a visible aura about him.

‘You know all the rituals,’ Thomas went on, ‘so you must know how to ward off this threat.’

The silence that followed his words was one of the most frightening experiences of his life. The sour reek of fear was in the room. Thomas was aware from it that he had said the wrong thing. Whatever it was that Robert could use Janine for, there was no answer to it. When he could stand the uncertainty no longer, Thomas held out his arms towards Frazer and said, ‘Frazer, you are the master here. Tell us what to do.’ Frazer breathed in noisily and stirred.

“You have guessed the truth’ he said. He sounded tired. ‘There is such a ritual. Robert could use Janine for it. He hasn’t done so yet, so he must see some advantage in holding the threat over me. I suppose he wants to keep Janine for the great project. But he’ll use her if it’s his life or mine.’

‘Then we must find him,’ said Thomas, briskly. ‘Are there any other ways we haven’t tried yet?’

Frazer hopped down from the stone and stood in front of Thomas. He touched his forehead with his thumb and leaned down to bring their faces close together.

‘In the breath is life,’ he said. You have shown yourself worthy. Open your mouth, Thomas. You will find him for me.’

Thomas’s eyes flickered towards the dead girl lying on the slab. Frazer guessed his thought and laughed contemptuously.

‘I gave her the power to see. It was Robert who killed her. You need not be afraid.’

There was no escape. Thomas opened his mouth and Frazer blew into it A sensation of coldness took him. Not bodily coldness, but a curious coldness inside his head.

He was standing on a crisply-shining snowfield, just below the mountain peak. The fur-wrapped guide took his arm and pulled him towards the rock face above them.

‘… and the rest will stay with me to meet any threat, though it is not likely,’ Frazer was saying. He was back in the middle of the circle, giving orders with a semblance of confidence again.

Thomas blinked.

What’s going on? What have I missed?

‘In threes,’ Frazer said. ‘Stay together or hell pick you off one by one. Immobilize him and come back at once.’

He strode out of the room, and about half the assembly picked up their scattered clothes and went with him. Thomas looked round blankly, not understanding. The dozen left in the big room were grouping themselves in threes, one man and two women.

‘You go with Tansey and Aletha,’ Meg instructed him. ‘Go on, sit over there with them.’ ‘Where are we going?’

There’s no time for explanations now. Just get going.’

He sat on the floor with the two women, holding hands so that they formed a small circle, their bare feet touching in the middle.

‘What..?’ he began again, and stopped. Without being told, he knew. He understood a lot of things now that Frazer had breathed into his mouth.

The members of the coven were inseparably linked at a level below, or perhaps above, the conscious. It took place at initiation. Joining meant being joined together. Robert might absent himself physically from the coven and eve n act against it. But while he l ived there was a link he could not break. He could pull away as far as he liked, but he was on the end of an unbreakable tether. They could find him by it and haul him back. Except that what they intended was horribly dangerous to all of them and very much a last resort.

The coven had a shared area of psychic experience, for want of a better word. Thomas found he grasped the concept perfectly, though he could not put it into words adequately. They could descend, or as cend, wh ichever it was, into this shared landscape and make contact with each other there. That was what Frazer had told them to do.

Not all of them, though. Looking at the four triads sitting on the floor in silent preparation, Thomas saw that the ones being sent to searc h were mainly Lesage’s former followers. Fraz er had kept his own people with him. That was an indication of where his trust lay, if he trusted anyone. Robert had been one of Lesage’s.

We’re all bloody expendable, thought Thomas, but some of us are more expendable than others. And I am the most expendable of the lot.

Aletha tugged his arm to get his attention. He knew what to do without being told. The three of them knelt and pressed their bodies tightly together, their arms round each other’s waists. The pairs of breasts were squashed against him as they huddled tighter until their foreheads touched.

He was staring into one blue eye of Tansey and one dark brown eye of Aletha at very close quarters. It was dizzying. They synchronized their breathing and together whispered words Thomas didn’t know he knew until then.

The floor seemed to turn over beneath them and they slid into a hostile world.

They stood up, clutching each other hard, staggering under the force of the gale that was tearing at them. Aletha’s long hair whipped across Thomas’s face and made him release her to move out of range. He hung on to ginger-haired Tansey.

‘Which way?’ he shouted over the noise of the wind and the rain.

The women looked round helplessly. They were standing on a wide expanse of muddy lawn between two tall concrete buildings. Overhead the sky was nearly black from the turmoil of thick clouds hurtling before the storm. With no thought but to find shelter, Thomas dragged his companions towards the nearest building.

They were walking straight into the wind over the squelching turf underfoot. A solitary ornamental tree ahead of them fell in slow motion. The earth bubbled and swelled round its foot, the roots burst upwards above ground as the gale forced it over crazily. As the trunk fell, a heavy and leafless branch splintered off and came skittering across the grass towards them, Thomas pulled the women out of the way as it flailed past.

They crouched under the lee of the building, slightly sheltered from the gale.

‘We’ve got to get out of the wind,’ Thomas bawled. ‘Can you see a door?’

It was a tall square building, dark-windowed and featureless. Aletha was peering about fearfully, sensing danger. She pointed upwards and screamed a warning as something big and black came hurtling down at them. They flung themselves aside in different directions an instant before it smashed into the asphalt where they had been huddled together.

Full length on the ground, Thomas looked round warily. It was a window-cleaner’s cradle that had broken loose from the top of the building. The impact had shattered it into a tangle of splintered planks and twisted iron. It would have killed them if it had landed on them, no doubt about that.

And what a coincidence, Thomas thought, that it should break free right above us. Or that we should be standing right underneath it. Or that the wind should have driven that branch straight at us.

There was a door further along the building. He got up and stumbled towards it, to find it securely locked. Beating his fists against it brought no response from inside. He made his way back to the wreckage, the wind almost tearing him off his feet. Aletha was sitting on the ground, her long sodden hair plastered to her back, Tansey was feeling the dark girl’s knee carefully.

He had to put his mouth close to Tansey’s ear to make himself heard over the noise. ‘Is it bad?”

Tansey shrugged, not even trying to answer.

The door’s locked but there’s a window we can break.’

He took a jagged-ended iron bar a foot long from the broken cradle and made for the dark window. By the time Tansey had got Aletha to her feet and helped her hobble along the side of the building, he had smashed the thick glass and hoisted himself up on the sill.

‘Push her up,’ he shouted, ‘and mind your feet on the broken glass inside.’

Between them they got Aletha inside, and Tansey scrambled over the window-sill after her. It was so dark that they could gain littie impression of the place they were in, except that it felt very large. But at least they could talk again, out of the wind.

“This is not what I expected,’ said Thomas. ‘Where do you suppose we are?’

‘We know where we are,’ said Tansey, ‘but it’s all changed since last time.’

‘Changed how?’

‘It was peaceful and beautiful. Tlierc was a park with trees and flowers round a lake with swans. And a big house with lawns and statues and peacocks,’

‘Are you sure we’re in the same place?’

‘It’s all different now because Robert is trying to hurt us. He’s turned it against us and it’s gone ugly. He won’t let us stay in case we find him.’,

‘Where are the others?’ Thomas asked. ‘There were three other groups besides us.’

‘They’re here somewhere,’ said Tansey, ‘but we’ll never find them now. You don’t know how big this place is. It’s bigger than the whole world, I think.’

‘If it’s that big, how can we find Robert?’

The women looked at him blankly.

‘Frazer only sent us because he got desperate,’ said Aletha. ‘He knows what the chances are and he don’t care. It’s our necks, not his.’

‘But we’re in a mental world,’ said Thomas. ‘At least, that’s one way to describe it. Yet we seem to have bodies and move in a physical landscape. Can we really be hurt?’

‘You wouldn’t ask that if it was your knee got twisted,’ said Aletha,

He nodded, understanding the situation. Tlieir minds were projecting body images because there was no other way in which they could interpret what was happening to them. Apparent injury to the body image was in fact injury to the mind. They could be hurt, maimed and killed. And Robert was manipulating the seeming environment to do just that to them.

The immediate need was to protect themselves from Robert’s hostility, and perhaps to find him, though that appeared less desirable now and very uncertain.

Outside, the wind rose to a new height of fury. The building was swaying, doors and windows raiding.

‘We can’t stay here,’ said Tansey, touching his arm. ‘It feels as if it’s all going to fall down on us in a minute.’

‘It is,’ said Aletha, ‘I know it is. Get us out of here, Thomas.’

‘It’s worse outside,’ he answered. ‘We’ll be blown about like rag dolls. Think for a minute - could Robert be in this building with us?’

‘No, he’s not that close,’ said Aletha. ‘I’d feel him.’ ‘He’s in the direction the storm is coming from,’ Thomas reasoned.

Both women nodded reluctantly.

‘Come on then, we’ll go that way as far as we can-I’ll go first.’

He led the way slowly across the dim room they were in, holding the iron bar in front of him for obstructions. Behind him Aletha limped along with her arm round Tansey’s neck. Eventually he found a wall, felt along it to a door and led the way into a kind of foyer with grey-painted walls and a concrete floor. Opposite was the way out of the building, a glazed double door straining inwards from the pressure of the gale.

As he approached it, the lock burst and the doors flew inwards, almost hitting him full on. The glass smashed and rained down as the doors smacked against the walls.

‘He’ll kill us!’ Tansey screamed. ‘Let’s go back, Thomas.’

‘We’re going on,’ he shouted. ‘Stay close behind me.’

As they stepped out into the open the force of the wind nearly threw them off their feet. Slowly, bent double, they shuffled along the side of the building to the comer and turned into the full blast Aletha fell to her knees, crying, and Tansey stumbled over her.

Thomas hauled them to their feet, an arm round each, and kept them moving forward. The driven rain stung their faces and bodies and made them keep their heads well down to protect their eyes.

They were inching along a black roadway between rows of gaunt concrete buildings on stilts, a sort of municipal wasteland. Through the shriek of the wind they could hear the sound of splintering glass and heavy objects smashing against each other. A very far cry, Thomas thought, from the gardens and parkland that had been the coven in accord. Presumably this insubstantial world could deteriorate much further if several members of the coven banded together against the others. To what, though? A stinking shanty town sinking into mud? A desert of sand and rock? What was the ultimate?

One thing was sure - the storm was getting worse, and that made Thomas think. He was almost carrying the two women. They had given up. Only his determination dragged them onwards with him.

He pulled them down behind the shelter of a flight of bare concrete steps that led up to the entrance of the building on their right.

‘We must be close to him,’ he shouted, putting his head close to theirs. ‘The Rale’s Retting stronger the further we go. Robert’s down this road somewhere, maybe in one of these buildings.’

Aletha nodded witlessly, and then put her arms round Tansey and hid her face against her breasts.

‘Stay here,’ he told them. ‘I’ll see if I can get to him,’

He edged out into the full blast, clutching his iron bar. Staying close to the building, he forced his way forward step by step. The wind was plucking and tearing at him like a living thing,

I’ll get you, Robert. And when I do, a top on the head with this will quieten you down while I think what to do next.

As if in reply to his threat, a huge gust knocked him off his feet and sent him rolling helplessly along the wet road. He saw the edge of the concrete steps coming towards him. His skull would crack against it like an egg. He threw his arms out wide and braced his muscles. Then he was lying still, inches from the step.

There was nothing to be done. Robert was too strong. On hands and knees lie crawled round the steps to where the women were huddled. He still held the useless iron bar. In futile anger he knelt upright and hurled it down the road to where he suspected Robert was hiding. It sailed through t he turbulent air for no more th an four or five yards before it clattered to the roadway and came rolling back before the wind until the steps halted it,

‘It’s no good!‘ he shouted to the women, ‘he’s far too much for me alone. Let’s get out of here.’

They were so bemused by the uproar that he had to push them into position and get their faces close to his own. Their dulled eyes stared into his and the hurl of the gale was cut off abruptly as the giddy sensation twisted through them.

They were in the quiet dimness of the big room in Frazer’s house. Thomas got to his feet unsteadily and shook his companions by the shoulders until they were aware of their sur roundings.

They were alone in the big room. Even the Chinese girl’s body had been taken from the slab, Thomas felt cold and tired. He found his clothes on the floor and put them on. Watching the women dress, he saw that Aletha had a big dark bruise on her right knee and down the side of her leg.

Downstairs they found the rest of the coven in the sitting-room, many of them sitting sprawled on the floor, all of them looking tired and worried. Brigit was asleep with her head in Mark’s lap and her mouth open. The clock on the mantlepiece said twenty to five, and it was getting light outside.

When Thomas followed Tansey and Aletha into the room Frazer started up from his carved wooden chair, but the gleam in his eyes faded as he saw Thomas’s face.

‘So you’ve failed me too,’ he said.

THE PARLEY

About six o’clock Meg sent some of the women to the kitchen to make coffee for everyone. Frazer was lost in apathy, curled up in his chair, his knees up to his chest and the red side of his face hidden. He had not spoken since Thomas came into the room, and while his eyes were open, he did not seem to be taking anything in.

Thomas was sitting on the floor by Victor, their backs against a bookcase. Victor’s evening clothes looked crumpled, and there was a smear of cigar ash down his white shirt-front.

‘What’s going to happen, do you think?’ Thomas asked him quietly,

Victor turned his head to give him a bleak stare. Fatigue and fear made him look his years. ‘How do I know? Robert has the initiative. It’s his move.’ ‘Do you think he will use Janine against Frazer?’ Victor shivered.

‘I’m getting old,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that I can cope with this,’

‘What is there for us to cope with?’ Thomas probed. ‘Frazer is the one who is threatened. If Robert intends to become master, he will need the rest of us.’

‘You simply don’t understand. If Robert performs the ritual, Frazer will die very nastily, I don’t want to watch it,’

‘This ritual - how does it work? Robert has to take the ctuld’s virginity, I suppose. Then what?’

Victor looked fearfully at Frazer and then whispered so softly that Thomas had to lean close to catch the words.

‘As soon as he ejaculates into her he withdraws and pushes a long thin knife into her vagina. He rips her open up to the breastbone and pulls out her entrails and heart. He recites the words and names Frazer. The heart must beat at least once in his hand to make the ritual effective.’

‘God Almighty! Do you think Robert could do it?’

‘Yes,’ said Victor with conviction.

‘Have you ever seen it done?’

‘Never! No one here has, except Frazer perhaps.’

‘It seems to me that if Robert ha d that in mind, he’d have done it by now. There’s got to be a reason for this delay.’

‘The reason may be no more than to make Frazer suffer. Have you considered that? He has some affection for the child, after all. It must hurt him to contemplate the possibility of her death in that manner, apart from the fear of his own death.’

‘I sec what you mean,’ said Thomas. ‘He looks like a worn-out horse waiting to go into the slaugh ter-house. Is there anything we can do?”

“We’ve tried everything we can. We’re waiting for Robert to show his hand.’

‘Can’t Esta help him? She’s got that talent with her hands.’

“He’s too withdrawn for anyone to reach him.’

So suffer, you bastard. For all your threats and bullying, somebody’s cut you down to size. I bet everybody here feels the same about it as I do. You may be terrifying when you’re on top, but you cut a pretty poor figure when your back’s against the wall.

I’m sure Victor’s got it wrong. He’s projecting his own feelings and motives on to Robert. But commonsense says that Robert would have disposed of Frazer hours ago if that’s all he has in mind. He couldn’t know that we would fail to locate him and neutralize him. He was taking a chance. He must be wearing Frazer down before making his move. I hear the rattle of cups, thank God - I need some hot coffee.

Isabel, incongruously dressed for the time of day in an electric-blue long dress, was bringing in a tray of cups. Thomas was weary to the bone and his head was aching. It had been a long night. How much longer would they be there?

Isabel dropped the tray with a mighty crash and pointed to the curtains that covered the bay window and blotted out most of the early morning light. Against the dark material a hazy patch of grey hovered in the air, seven or eight feet above the floor.

In silence they watched it become more distinct and grow larger. By the time it was two feet across it was unmistakably a face. It was misty and wavering, but it was Robert’s face, wide-jawed and heavy-eyed. Frazer stared at it like a condemned man watching the hangman sidle up to him.

Thomas closed his eyes. He could still see the face behind his closed eyelids. That meant it was a mental phenomenon, not a physical manifestation. He opened his eyes as the lips of the oversized image parted. ‘Frazer,’ it seemed to say.

It was a distant and insubstantial sound, more like the rustl e of dead leaves than Robert’s ordinary baritone.

‘What is it you want?’ Frazer said quickly. His voice was shrill with anxiety,

‘I offer you a bargain,’ it whispered, ‘something you want for something I want.’

‘You’ve got Janine. What else do you want from me?’

A malicious smile twitched across the unreal face,

‘Yes, I’ve got Janine here with me. We’re somewhere you can’t find us. She’s been very useful to me, your daughter.’

‘What do you mean? What have you done to her?’

‘I’ve been exploring her mind. She knows far more about you than I guessed. It’s been very interesting.’

‘Have you harmed her? Tell me the truth.”

‘I’ve been very gentle with her, so far.’

‘What do you want for her?’

‘Nothing.’

‘But you said …’

Frazer trailed off into silence as the smoky image of a face smiled again.

‘You always were slow-witted,’ it breathed, ‘I offered you something you w anted. I didn’t offer you Janine .’ ‘What then?’

‘Your life. You want that, don’t you?’

Thomas closed his eyes once more and watched the image of Robert’s face form against the inside of his eyelids. Robert must be speaking to them through their shared psychic area. It was not unlike the way in which Thomas had learned to project a thought into someone else’s mind, but on a much more impressive scale. The skill and sheer energy needed for it must be massive.

‘Why should you offer me my life?” Frazer asked, stung by the accusation of slow-wittedness into using his reasoning powers. ‘You have made yoursel f my enemy. There can be no for giveness for what you have done. You know that. So your offer docs not make sense.’

‘Only because you fail to understand the situation. In a short time from now, your life and what you do with it will be of no interest to me. I shall be far beyond your reach.’

‘There is no place on this earth you can hide where I will not find you.’

The wavering image chuckled faintl y.

‘Will you follow me down the corridors of time? Can you pursue me through the reaches of the universe?’

The Jewel!’ Frazer croaked. ‘You have it! No - you’re lying. There’s no way in which you could have made it by yourself.’

‘I shall have it very soon. After that you may do as you please.’

Frazer’s mood was changing. A craftiness edged into his tone:

‘You’ve got Janine already, but there’s something else you need for the Jewel. What is it?’

‘Yes, I have her, and I shall use her to des troy you unless you agree to wh at I want. Don’t try to bargain, Frazer, you’re in no position to do so.’

‘You need Janine for the ritual, of course. If you use her against me, you won’t have her for that. I wonder how strong your position is.’

‘I don’t need Janine for the ritual. All I need is a virgin. I can take any schoolgirl off the street and use her. You know that very well. You’re in a corner, Frazer. You’ve nothing to bargain with.’

‘Then why are you talking to me now? I’ve got something here you want. Why haven’t you token it, like you did Janine?’

‘I had to take the girl first to neutralize you. With her in my hands, you will do whatever I want’

‘So what do you want?”

‘AH that a man hath will he give for his life,’ Robert’s face mocked. ‘Can you place the saying? No, I don’t suppose you can. But that’s you, isn’t it - a man bargaining for his life and ready to give anything for it. If I told you to cut Esta’s tits off and e at them raw, you’d do it in front of everybody to save yourself. How does it feel to have the rope round your neck and hear the trapdoor creaking under your feet?’

The look of blind hatred on Frazer’s face brought a distant shout of laughter from the shifting image. Then as Frazer began to mutter words of power, it spoke again:

‘Before you do anything stupid, let me tell you what’s happening here, Frazer. I have stripped Janine and tied her firmly down with her legs apart. The knife is ready beside her. If you force me, I can be in her and gut her and say the words inside a minute. You will be dead before you can harm me.’

Of course, Thomas thought, while Robert is manifesting himself to us in this way, he is at risk. We could locate him and immobilize him very easily with any of the techniques we were trying earlier. This is a parley under a flag of truce, so to speak, the flag of truce being Janine.

He glanced round the intent faces watching the exchange. If they combined and struck now, Robert would be done for. But they would do nothing without a direct order from Frazer. Suppose Robert carried out his threat and got rid of Frazer then what? Would they accept Robert as master of the coven, if that’s what he was after? All this talk of the Jewel was the purest nonsense.

He looked at their faces, trying to fathom their expressions. Meg, Evin, Esta, Aleister, Brigit, Rachel. Masks hiding thoughts they dare not express. They all worshipped naked power: Robert was demonstrating that he possessed it.

‘All right,’ said Frazer. ‘You win, take whatever you want.’

Thomas caught quickly suppressed sighs around the room at Frazer’s concession of defeat. Barely concealed contempt peeped at the beaten master from the corners of eyes. Esta was staring open-mouthed at him.

‘Say it again,’ Robert’s great grey face whispered, ‘I like to hear it,’

Take whatever you want!’ Frazer shouted. ‘I want Thomas.’

They were all looking at him. Thomas got to his feet, wondering if he had mis heard. The look on Frazer’s face told him that he had not.

‘Why me?’ he asked.

That need not concern you now,’

It concerns me,’ said Frazer. ‘Why do you want him — to make t he Jewel for you? Does he know h ow?’ ‘He will know very soon.’

Frazer stood up and stretched his arms out towards Thomas in a gesture that frightened him, palms down and Angers splayed,

‘I could wipe his mind blank now. Then what use would he be to you, Robert?’

‘None at all. And I should then wipe you completely blank for ever.’

Then you would have neither Janine nor Thomas. You’d have lost the gamble. You need them both, don’t you?’

‘I can find another girl outside any school and take her, and another scientist outside any college. Where will you find another life?’

Frazer dropped his arms to his sides.

‘Take him, then. He’s yours.’

‘To hell with that!’ said Thomas. ‘Don’t I get a say in this?’ ‘If you refuse to go,’ said Frazer, ‘I shall kill you here and now.’

Thomas scowled. He had no more choice than Frazer had. Robert’s image was speaking again:

‘If you follow him, I shall conclude that you have broken our agreement and I shall start the death ritual at once. Nor are you to watch him in the bowl. You are all to stay there together until midday. After that you can do as you please. Understood?’

Frazer nodded.

‘Go home, Thomas,’ said Robert’s face. ‘Wait for me there.’

The smokey image broke up as Robert withdrew the power that had sustained it. In seconds it was gone without a trace.

Frazer sprang into action at once. Without a word spoken he arranged seven of his followers in a circle around himself and Thomas, facing outwards with their hands joined.

‘We have set up a zone of silence,’ he said to Thomas. ‘Robert can’t hear or see anything inside it.’

Thomas found that he understood.

‘Do you know how to make the Jewel of Life?’ Frazer demanded, his dark brown eyes intent on Thomas, ‘No.’

‘Don’t lie to me! Why else should Robert want you?’

“He’s assuming too much. He’s a layman, after all, not a scientist. I have found one possible way of interpreting the figures you gave me. The last computer print-out was quite encouraging, in a way. It nearly fitted. But there’s a mountain of work still to be done before I can be even half sure about it,’

‘You should have told me where you had got to.’

‘I got the print-out yesterday morning. I wanted another day or two to work on the figures. You wouldn’t thank me for raising false hopes.’

‘Robert’s been watching you in the bowl. You must have given him the impression that you’d found the answer, for him to behave as he has. Perhaps his intuition told him you were on the right path. What can he do with what you have so far?’

“Nothing at all.’

‘He thinks otherwise, and he has staked his life on it. That’s how certain he is. So don’t try to deceive me - or yourself.’

‘Unless Robert has information I do not possess, he can do nothing with what I have so far beyond assembling arbitrary amounts of a number of chemicals. Nothing will come of that, I’m positive.’

“What kind of chemicals?’

‘Elements.’

‘How many of them?’

‘Eight, I make it. But there’s a basic problem. If my present reading of the figures is correct, one of the required substances doesn’t exist.’

‘Explain.’

‘It would take quite a time to explain. You don’t understand chemistr y, and neither does Robert. That ‘s why he’s jumping the gun.’

‘He’s given himself till midday,’ said Frazer thoughtfully. ‘That’s only about five hours.’

‘Then he’s a bloody fool. It might take a lifetime’s work to get those figures to mean anything real. All I’ve got is a correlation, and that’s a tricky thing. Plenty of scientists have come unstuck over chance correlations,’

Frazer was silent for a while, studying Thomas’s face,

‘I do not pretend to understand you,’ he said, ‘but there is no choice. Go to him. Keep him busy. Explain whatever he wants to know in the lengthiest and most tedious detail. Distract his attention. Play for time,’

‘Why - what can you do?’

‘There are ways of finding you. To stand us off he needs to be undisturbed so that he can concentrate all his energies. Don’t let this happen. Above all, stay alive as long as possible. Your link with us is cut when you die and we can’t find you then, or him.’

‘Yon think Robert intends to kill me?’

‘When he has what he wants from you, what use are you? You will be a danger to him then.’ ‘Throw away after use, right?’

‘Your continuing existence is in your own hands. We can’t move before midday.’

‘Do you think he is waiting for me in my flat?’

‘No, of course not. He’s hidden away somewhere with

Janine. Hell make his wishes known to you. Now you must go before he becomes suspicious of the delay, if he is watching.’

Frazer clapped his hands and the circle about them broke up.

‘Goodbye,’ said Thomas, with malice. I’ll give your love to your daughter when I see her.’

The white side of Frazer’s face flushed crimson, but he said nothing.

PRISONERS

Thomas woke very slowly. He was lying on his back looking up at a low ceiling of white plaster and black wooden beams. Through a small latticed window to his left he could sec the sky. It was getting dark outside, which seemed wrong, though he couldn’t think why at first. Then he realized. It couldn’t be getting dark because it was still early morning.

His head was muzzy. When it cleared a fraction he tried to sit up and found that he couldn’t move. He lay still, fumbling with the question of where he was, but it was too much for him. He was totally confused. He called out and his voice sounded blurred.

He heard footsteps, the clink of a door-latch. A man’s face looked down at him. ‘Coming to at last?’

Thomas screwed up his eyes to focus on the face. It was unshaven and lined with fatigue.

‘I’m Robert, you fool,’ the man said in sudden anger. ‘Wake yourself up - I’m going to need you very soon.’

‘Can’t move,’ said Thomas, shakily, ‘What happened?’

“You can’t move because you’re tied down. I’ll give you twenty minutes to pull yourself together and then I want action. You’re not hurt, so get your brain working.’ He switched the light on as he went out of the room.

Robert. He says he’s Robert. Hong on to that thought. I was with Frazer and the others and Robert went off on his own and we looked for him. Janine was with him. Now why?

Aletha’s legs were gripping me round the waist as I went up her and I could feel her heels drumming on my backside. No, that’s something different, nothing to do with Robert. But it’s very important, only I can’t think why. Why is it important to remember having Aletha?

I was standing at the window in the sitting-room holding the telephone, and Robert said he could see me. David’s eyes were burnt and Rachel had to heal them. Is that port of it? Yes, it was Robert who burnt him. And the little Chinese girl with the thin body. I was driving a long the motorway talking to Ale tha.

There was a gale and I was blown over. Where was that? Doesn’t matter, but I know Tansey was with me, and Aletha. That wasn’t the motorway, though. Which happened first? Did I crash the car? It’s all to do with Robert somehow, if I could put it together. He said I was tied down. Why would he do that? I went back to my flat from Frazer’s, that’s right. There was nobody with me and the phone rung, I stood looking out of the window while I answered it.

The flat was empty when I got there. I looked in the bedroom and in the kitchen in case he was there. The bed was rumpled up from rolling around with Aletha. I was so tired I wanted to get in it and sleep all day. There was nobody in the kitchen, because I made coffee and tipped a slug of brandy into it to keep me going. The bottle was in the bedroom. I poured brandy over Aletha and licked it off.

No, that must have been before, because I was alone and it was early morning. The phone rang. I must have been waiting for Robert. Yes, he said get in your car and drive out of London on the M4. I can see you, he said, so don’t try anything funny. You’re wearing a light blue sweater and you’ve got a cup in your left hand. I couldn’t see him anywhere, but he could see me.

Frazer made me strip and kneel down while he drew a circle round my head and the yellow book. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone then except the people who’d been touching me at the time. I couldn’t tell the computer people what it was about, only give them instructions. Robert said bring all your papers with you. Yes, it’s coming back now. When Frazer put the barrier round my head I woke up with an erection and Esta was holding it Robert was there. That’s why he said bring your papers.

One mile past the airport turn-off, leave the car on the side of the motorway and start walking away from London, and don’t try anything funny like getting in touch with Frazer. They’ll find my car pnrked there and come looking for me.

Janine was giggling and pointing when she saw Esta holding my hard-on. She’s sly, that child, and I don’t like her. She knows too much for her age. Robert’s got her now unless he’s killed her to stop Frazer, He’s got me as well, and he’ll probably kill me when I’ve told him all he wants. Unless Frazer gets here first.

I didn’t contact Frazer. I left the car on the hard shoulder and walked west It was a nice morning and the sun was shining. I projected my thoughts at Aletha to let her know where I was. Now why did I choose her instead of Elspeth, who can transfer thoughts like me? I felt she would be most receptive, for some reason. If she got my message, she passed it on to Frazer. He told me to play for time.

I walked for about half an hour along the side of the motorway with the traffic roaring past before a white Mercedes pulled in ahead of me. It was Robert and lie looked terrible. Strong he may be, but fighting us off all night had really taken it out of him. He looked ten years older, and drained. I got in the front scat with him and he drove off very fast. Have you brought all the papers, he wanted to know. I showed him my briefcase, and he told me to put it on the back seat. There was a bundle under a tartan rug on the floor at the back and it moved. I lifted one side and there was Janine, naked and trussed like a chicken for the oven, gagged and blindfolded.

I turned back to Robert to protest and he wasn’t there behind the wheel. There was a wheel of cold fire, spiralling round crazily. Then I woke up here.

What was it Frazer said about the firewheel? Robert used it to knock the Chinese girl out when he kidnapped Janine. No, it was Aletha who told me. It’s an energy pattern that triggers off some sort of electrical short-circuit in your brain and knocks you out cold. It’s bloody effective. I must have been out senseless for ten or twelve hours.

With his memory assembled into a coherent pattern and his mind working clearly again, Thomas lay thinking about Robert and his act of rebellion. What sort of man was he? To the world at large, a successful businessman. To the coven, their second most powerful male. To himself? The answer to that was surely the key to his actions. Thomas examined the question carefully.

When Robert came back he carried under his arm the thick wad of papers from Thomas’s briefcase. In the other hand he held a long knife with a curving blade and a sharp point. He pushed a chair up to the bedside and sat down.

‘Time for our talk. I’ve been through your papers a dozen times and I’ve got a glimmering of what it’s about If I think that you’re lying to me I shall slice bits off you with this knife until you start making sense again. Right?’

Thomas turned his head to look at him. It was hard to reconcile this haggard figure in a scruffy grey sweater with the full-fleshed and dapper Robert of the past

‘You’re killing yourself,’ he said. ‘You can’t fight the whole coven non-stop. You look awful.’

‘I’m all right. Start talking.’

The knife blade rested lightly on Thomas’s cheek.

Why the knife, when he can hurt me a hundred times worse with his mental powers? It’s because he’s dropping with exhaustion and wants to save what strength he has left. That’s useful to know. He’s going to nod off sooner or later.

‘There’s no need to threaten me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’

‘Get on with it, then.’

‘It’s going to take some time because it’s complicated and it’s very technical. I want to go to the lavatory and I need a drink. Let me up and I’ll co-operate.’

‘You’re safer where you are.’

‘I won’t try to escape. I give you my word.’

Talk!’

He took hold of Thomas’s right earlobe.

‘I saw a beggar out in the East once,’ he said, almost conversationally. ‘He’d lost both his ears. Looked very odd, I can tell you. And I once saw a man whose nose had gone. That’s really ugly.’

‘Robert, cut out the bogeyman stuff. This is not that sort of a situation.’

“What sort of situation would you say it is?’

‘You’ve seen my papers. It took a lot of computer time to get that far. Do you think I can explain it to you in ten seconds?’

A sharp pain stung his earlobe, and then he felt the wetness of blood trickling on his neck. Robert chuckled.

“What were you saying?’

Thomas fought down his panic and spoke calmly.

The text divides into two parts,’ he said. ‘I think the first part may be a list of elements, though there are complexities you couldn’t even guess at. And the second part has to be the method of combining them, though I’ve only the faintest of clues to follow on that. Let me up and I’ll go through the papers with you and explain them in terms you will understand.’

‘Did you make any kind of contact with Frazer after leaving your flat?’

There was no point. The link is always there between all of us.’

‘There’s a way of nullifying it for a time. In this house you can try for as long as you like to project your thoughts I know you can do that, you see - but you won’t get through to anyone outside. And they can’t find you here. So if you’re hoping to be rescued, forget about it’

“There’s nothing for you to be afraid of, then, is there? So let me up and I’ll tell you all I know.’

‘If you try anything stupid, I shall disable you very painfully. You will still be able to talk, but that’s all. You’ll certainly never be able to stand up or walk again.’

The knife sawed through the bonds that held his wrists to the frame of the bed. He lay still while Robert cut his ankles loose, then sat up slowly and rubbed his wrists. His watch had been removed, and his shoes.

‘Where’s the bathroom?’

His legs were shaky when he stood up. Robert was watching him closely.

‘End of the passage. Leave the door open while you’re in there.’

He shuffled down the narrow passage, Robert following one long step behind him holding the knife at waist level.

A converted farm cottage. Robert’s weekend retreat in the country - or one of them. Damn sure it’s not one that the coven knows about And it’s not in the west of England, even though we started off westwards along the motorway from London. Wrong style of building for the West Country. We’re somewhere in the Midlands. He must have turned north off the motorway after knocking me out

The cut on his ear wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Just a straight gash across the lobe. Deep though. It might need a couple of stitches. He splashed it with cold water to stop the bleeding and found a tin of sticking plasters in the bathroom cabinet.

Just a gesture to scare me, I wonder if he’d have the nerve for full-scale torture if I resisted? It would take a lot of guts to carve a man’s nose off while he was screaming at the top of his voice, Robert’s near the end of his tether now, so he might crack under that sort of stress. His plans haven’t worked out us neatl y as he thought they would. I don’t suppose he planned to have me out cold from early morning to evening. That’s cost him a lot of time. He overdid it in the car, and then couldn’t revive me when we arrived here,

Thomas closed his eyes for a second and let his mind explore the barrier Robert had put round the house. He was careful not to disturb it in case any thought came in from outside and warned Robert.

‘Let’s have that drink and get to work,’ he suggested. ‘Downstairs?’

Robert stalked him back along the passage and down the narrow oak staircase. The whole ground floor of the cottage had been opened up into a fair-sized sitting-room. Thomas treated himself to a large whisky from a decanter on the sideboard.

‘That’s better. If you’ve got any coffee handy we can make a start.’

‘In the kitchen.’

The kitchen was a modern addition to the cottage. It gleamed with fitted cupboards and stainless steel.

‘Good. We need a big table to spread the papers on. This will do well.’

He helped himself to coffee from the percolator and sat down at the kitchen table. After a momentary hesitation Robert sat opposite him and put the papers between them.

“You’re overdoing the eagerness,’ Robert said. “You think you’re going to blind me with scientific hocus-pocus. I’ve warned you what I shall do.’

‘I know all that, and I’ve no intention of misleading you. Let me explain my point of view and you’ll sec why,’

‘I’d rather have you explain these papers.’

‘It’s part of it. That golden book you’re all so secretive about is a fraud.’

‘What?’

Robert’s mouth turned down in a scowl.

‘It’s a fake. I don’t care what Frazer says about ancient rituals and looted monasteries end Crusaders raping teenagers in Constantinople. The plain fact is that the part of the text I was given must have been put together sometime in the last fifty years.’

‘Why must it?’

‘Because the scientific concepts it is based on are no older than that.’

‘Is that your only reason for doubting it?’

‘What better reason is there? I refuse to believe that this document was written centuries ago. It couldn’t have been. So as it’s a hoax, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t explain it to you. The idea in it is quite interesting.’

“What you believe is neither here nor there. Get on with the explanation, and I’ll decide.’

‘As you wish. But before we go any further, I want your word that you will not harm me afterwards.’

‘You’re in no position to bargain with me.’

‘AH the some, I’m going to try, I’d like to know your intentions towards me after I’ve explained this,’ and he prodded the loose papers between them with his forefinger,

‘You might as well know now as later,’ said Robert, speaking slowly and totally unconvincingly, ‘I shall need you to make the Jewel of Life for me. If you work with me you’ll be safe and well rewarded.’

‘Even after I’ve told you it’s a hoax?’

‘I know that it is real. Your belief doesn’t matter.’

‘How shall I be rewarded?’

‘You will have your life.’

‘I expected more.’

Robert moved bis hand so that the long knife caught the overhead light and gleamed.

‘You know what death is like,’ he said. ‘You’ve been down there and felt the cold and emptiness. Compared with that, isn’t your life a wonderful reward for working with me?’

Thomas shivered as he remembered the silent cave. Life seeping out of him with each step across the rocky floor; Tansey lying cold and stiff where she had fallen, her bright ginger hair turned dark and lustreless.

‘I’ll work for you, Robert,’ he said.

‘Very glib.’

‘No, I’ll tell you why. When I first joined the coven I was puzzled by the attitude of the people who’d originally belonged to Lesage’s coven. You were one of them. I couldn’t understand why you’d let Frazer walk in and take over. To me that seemed like gross disloyalty. But Meg explained it to me.’

‘And who more suitable than Meg to explain it!’

‘She made me see that the strong overcomes the weak, disguise it how we will. Frazer was the stronger. He took what he wanted from Lesage. This is the natural order of things.’

‘You must have been pretty green if you needed that explained,’ said Robert,

‘Maybe, The point is that Frazer took over from Lesage. On the basis of the past twenty-four hours, it seems likely that you are going to take over from Frazer. So I’m your man, just as the others will be too.’

Robert stared at him from bloodshot eyes.

‘You’re not a good liar, brother Thomas. Not that it matters. Start telling me about the Jewel,’

‘All right. Do you know anything about structural chemistry?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I’ll keep it simple, even if I have to over-simplify at times. I won’t bother you with ad the false starts I made. But this last one begins to look interesting. Now as you see, the numbers on the original sheet Frazer gave me are continuous - just an unbroken succession of apparently random figures. Obviously they need dividing into chunks, to give us a chain of separate numbers. Well, you can do that all sorts of ways, and I did, You can take them in twos, in threes, in fours, and so on.’

‘You said you’d not bother with the false starts.’

‘Sorry. Eventually I divided them as you see on this sheet and played about with the result in various ways. Taking alternate groups, you find that mathematically they produce two intertwined spirals. I’ve drawn it out on graph paper here. Sec what I mean? Now, if you take the points where the two spirals cross, you’ve got a third set of figures. Right?’

Robert nodded, his eyes half-closed with weariness.

‘These figures you get by doing so can be regarded as the approximate numerical equivalents of the atomic numbers of various elements.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I expect you’ve forgotten whatever chemistry they taught you at school, but in nature every possible substance there is, is made up of combinations of a limited number of elements like iron and copper and hydrogen and sulphur.”

‘That I remember.’

‘Good. Elements are made up of atoms. You can picture an atom as a nucleus surrounded by a number of particles called electrons whizzing round it. The nucleus itself contains particles ca lled protons. The atom of each e lement has a characteristic number of protons in its nucleus, and that is called its atomic number. Hydrogen has one proton in its nucleus and one electron racing round it, so its atomic number is one. Carbon has six protons, oxygen has eight, and so on. Get me?’

“So your list of numbers gives you the list of elements you need to make the Jewel?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. These imaginary points where the imaginary spirals cross give us seven natural elements and one joker.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s one number that doesn’t correspond to any known clement, if I’ve got it right. But the chances are that this proves I’ve got it wrong.’

‘You mean something that doesn’t exist?’ Robert asked with deep suspicion.

‘Look, the elements run from hydrogen with an atomic number of one up to uranium, with an atomic number of ninety-two. It has been possible in laboratories to artificially produce elements with numbers up to one hundred and six. Quite recently a team of American scientists came across traces of three ultra-heavy elements no one had thought could pos sibly exist. But the one indicated at the end of the list we’ve got here is even heavier than anything so far made or found.’

‘All the same, it either does exist somewhere or it can be made in a laboratory. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Maybe. But whichever way you tackled it, you’d need some very expensive equipment and a team of outstanding people. And even then there’s no guarantee. So you see the problem. Or part of it, at least.’

‘How would you go about it?’

Thomas sighed.

‘It would cost a fortune to even try,’ he said, ‘Have you got a fortune to spend?’

‘Yes, I have access to more money than you could spend in a lifetime of experiments.’

‘That’s a start. But let me explain a bit more of the problem before you get too enthusiastic. I said a minute ago that you could picture the atom as nucleus with electrons circling round it, but it’s more complicated than that. Electrons don’t have fixed orbits like planets round the sun.’

‘I don’t follow you at all.’

‘Visualize the nucleus as surrounded by shells. The first shell encloses the nucleus itself, the second shell encloses the first, and so on outwards. Right? The electrons move in paths called orbitals in these shells. And there are some fairly fixed and ascertained rules to take into account.’

‘Like what?’

‘There’s only one orbital in the first shell, there are four in the second, nine in the third, and so on. You square the number each time, you see,’

‘I see. Your atoms are getting bigger and bigger as you add more shells with electrons in them.’

‘Actually, no. All atoms are about the same size. They get heavier, not bigger.’

‘I don’t understand that at all.’

‘It doesn’t matter for the moment. Just take it as a fact while I get to the important bit. Each of the orbitals in the shells can contain not more than two electrons. So the third shell out, if a particular atom has a third shell, can contain up to eighteen electrons. Got it?’

‘Skip the sums and come to the point,’ said Robert.

‘The point is this - we have the atomic number of the joker. So we know how many protons we want in its nucleus and how many electrons we want in the shells round it. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have something called the periodic tables in chemistry. Without boring you with detail, this enables us to classify the characteristics of any element by the number of electrons in its outermost shell. So we can make some predictions about the artificial element we are trying to make.’

‘That’s interesting!’ said Robert, his attention caught, ‘What will it be like?’

‘It will be metallic. It will be very heavy. It will most probably be radioactive. With proper precautions that doesn’t matter. The biggest problem we face down this road is that the joker we are after is going to be highly unstable.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that it will exist for only a few microseconds.’

That can’t be true! You’re lying to me.’

‘I promise you that I’m not. I can show you the figures if you like, but you won’t understand. Take my word for it, the amount of time we would have to get it to react with the rest of the pudding would be very short indeed.’

‘Pudding - what do you mean?’

‘The mixture of the other seven elements in the recipe. Look, here’s the list. I can imagine no way of combining these elements in any meaningful way. We can’t just melt them together in a pot, stir it round and let it fuse because one of the elements is a gas. A method has to be devised to hold the whole lot in gaseous form - which means high temperatures - while the joker is created inside it all for a spli t second, and then sec what hap pens. No wonder Frazer said that people who tried it before ended up in spectacular devastation. This is the sort of experiment th at blows the laboratory to kingdom come if it goes wrong.’

‘But if it goes right, you control space and time.’

‘I’m not disposed to argue that with you, Robert. The project itself is daunting enough for me. There’s still something about it that I’ve missed, I can feel it nagging at me.’

‘What?’

‘If the author of this text merely wanted to indicate a number of elements, he could have done so more plainly. The fact that one of them doesn’t exist in nature would have been enough to put people off trying. I haven’t grasped the point of the intertwined spirals. It means something important, I’m sure of it.’

‘To mystify the uninitiated,’ said Robert. ‘No more than that.’

‘Maybe,’ said Thomas, ‘Anyway, here’s another problem for you. How do you propose to put us outside Frazer’s reach while I get on with the project? He won’t give up now that you’ve got Janine and me. That circle of salt and iron filings round the house is a very temporary barrier. You can’t hope to do that round a large-scale laboratory with a particle accelerator, which is what we’re going to need. And there’ll be dozens of people coming and going the whole time. And it may take years,’

‘How do you know what barrier I have put round the house?’

It had come to Thomas quite naturally, as if he had always known. Such devices were a small part of the knowledge Frazer had breathed into him.

‘The point is,’ said Thomas, seeing he had made a mistake, ‘we can’t hope to be left alone to work on the project while Frazer is chasing us.’

Robert nodded dully.

‘I shall kill him. I have no choice. I thought you knew enough to make the Jewel right away. I didn’t know what was involved.’

‘Will you use Janine to do it? Do you know the ritual?’ Robert stared at the knife in his hand. ‘I know it,’ he whispered. ‘I have seen it performed,’ “When, for God’s sake?’

‘When Frazer destroyed Lesage. I assisted him.’ Poor Lesage, thought Thomas. He never stood a chance with Robert teamed up with Frazer. Meg must have suspected all along. Or more likely she knew for certain, as she had the power to summon the faded memory of Lesage from his bones and question it.

‘You first,’ said Robert, ‘and then I shall get rid of him for good.1

‘But you need me!’

‘You’ve told me all you know. I have your papers. I only need a scientist, and they’re ten a penny. I don’t need you and I don’t trust you.’

As Thomas stared across the table at him, Robert seemed to dissolve into a coloured spiral of cold fire. Instantly Thomas closed his eyes to prevent himself from being stunned again and butchered like an unconscious pig. In the same moment, he stood up fast, his hands holding the underside of the kitchen table, and heaved it up and over.

Eyes tight closed, he heard the crash of Robert” falling over backwards in his chair. He risked a flickering glance. Robert was on the floor with the table upside down on him. Thomas jumped and came down on both feet as heavily as he could on the underside of the table, to knock the breath out of Robert. He heard the chair crack and splinter and pitched forward, off balance. He could hear Robert groaning. The energy pattern had gone. Thomas heaved the table away to reveal Robert’s grey face smeared with blood from his broken nose. Before the dazed eyes could find him, he punched Robert as hard as he could on the jaw.

Robert’s head rolled sideways, eyes shut Thomas hit him again, to make sure that he was out.

At once he sent out a call for help, knowing he could get through the barrier.

‘Aletha Where are you? I’ve knocked him out. Can you hear me?’

‘I hear you, Thomas. Take it easy, man, we’re on our way. Can’t be far. But I don’t know where I am.’

‘Don’t matter. We been moving north up the M1 and we going to turn off left soon. We’ll find you soon enough. What sort of place are you in?’

‘Look for a country cottage, set back a bit from the road, down a winding lane. It’s got a thatched roof and whitewashed walls. Two trees in front of it. How long will you be?’

‘How do I know? When we turn off the motorway we’ll keep riding round till we know we’re going towards you.’

‘What shall I do about Robert? He’ll come round before long.’

‘Wait while I ask Frazer.’

Thomas waited, eying Robert anxiously for signs of returning consciousness,

‘Frazer says bind him and wait for us. You got Janine safe?’

‘Bind him how? Tying him up won’t hold him, even if I had anything to tie him with. He’s too strong for that.’

‘Don’t be silly — put the sign of binding on him and you’ll be safe till we get there.

The what? I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Yes, you do. Think, man. Tau the sign of binding. Draw it on him.’

Thomas reflected for a moment. Of course he knew. It was one of many items of useful information Frazer had instilled into him before the fruitless hunt in the windstorm He knelt beside Robert, dipped the thumb of his left hand in the blood oozing from Robert’s nose and drew the sign on his lips and eyes, a nd then on his forehead, saying aloud each time the words that would bind him. To make sure, he pulled Robert’s arms across his chest so that his wrists crossed, and bound them together with the same red-smeared sign and words. And then his ankles.

Thomas sat back on his haunches and looked at his work carefully. Robert couldn’t get up because his ankles were crossed and bound, couldn’t use his arms, couldn’t open his mouth to spea k any words of power, couldn’t produce visible energy patterns to stun because his eyes had to be open for that. And hopefully the sticky mark on his forehead would stop him using his mental powers.

It looked safe enough. Though how to be sure with a man of Robert’s abilities? In the last twenty-four hours he had demonstrated powers of a magnitude that had taken even Frazer by surprise. Thomas stopped trying to think logically for a moment and let the deep inner knowledge inside him well up. Yes, Robert was safely bound.

Leaving the overturned table and chairs, Thomas went into the sitting-room to pour himself a drink. There was nothing to do except wait for Frazer to find him. He drained his glass and put it down. There was Janine, of course. He might as well turn her loose.

He found her upstairs in one of the bedrooms, naked and spread-eagled on the bed, her wrists and ankles attached with leather thongs to its four corners. She screwed up her eyes as he switched on the light and looked fearfully at him. She had been crying and the tears had dried on her face.

‘It’s all right, Janine, you’re safe now,’ he said as he sat beside her to free her wrists. Her hands were white and bloodless.

She began to cry. Whether it was relief at seeing him or the pain of returning circulation, be didn’t know. He chafed her hands to get the blood stirring. There were dark red marks round her wrists where the thongs had bitten in. Robert had taken no chances and had not been gentle.

Turning to tackle the knots round her ankles he saw a stain on the bedcover between her widely parted thighs where she had wet herself, from fear or from being tied up too long.

As soon as she was free she flung herself into his arms in a storm of sobbing, her face pressed hard against his shoulder. He patted her back gently. In spite of the apparent precocity, he realized, she was only a scared and badly treated child.

Her first words disillusioned him:

‘Have you killed Robert?’

“No, I knocked him out. Frazer will be here soon. Put your clothes on and come downstairs, and I’ll make you a hot drink.’ ‘He left my clothes behind. I was in bed.’ ‘Alt right, we’ll find something to wrap round you.3 Ale tha’s thought broke urgently into his mind: ‘Is Janine safe? Frazer wants to know. She’s quite safe. I’m with her now, ’

‘I don’t need anything,’ said Janine. ‘I never wear clothes at home, only when I go out in the street.’

‘Please yourself. Do you want to wash?’

‘I’m glad you didn’t kill Robert,’ she said, smiling at him, ‘Do it now while I watch you.’

APPRAISALS

Thomas sat hunched on a chair in the kitchen with his back to Robert. Now that the excitement was over and all he had to do was wait, his mood had changed drastically. He was feeling miserable and trapped, and angry with himself. In due course Frazer would arrive and Robert would die in some cruel way, of that he was sure. The responsibility would be his.

In the sitting-room Janine was listening to dance music on the radio. He had sent her in there after she had poured a cup of scalding milk over Robert’s face as he lay helpless and then stamped on his genitals with her heel. Like her father, Janine was not the forgiving sort.

Thomas wanted no part in Robert’s death, but he could see no way out. It was out of the question to free him and put him in his car before Frazer got too close. Stupid, in fact. Robert would promise anything to be unbound. And then he would turn on him without a qualm, disable or kill him and use Janine to stop Frazer.

Bloody well trapped, both of us. Two flies in a sticky cobweb, waiting for the spider to sidle down and suck us both dry. No use moaning about it. I’ll have to sec it through. At least Frazer should be grateful to me.

Interesting why Robert’s barrier round the house didn’t work The search party had been on the way from the first moment I woke up and started to think, even though I didn’t realize that I was contacting them. Because Aletha and I were at it the night before and with all that’s been going on since, neither of us have had time to take a bath. We’re each carrying the other’s traces. With a physical link like that, no barrier Robert could put up would stop us communicating. How the hell it works I don’t know, but it docs.

That Kama Sutra night with her seems a very long time ago, though it’s only twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours of fear and anxiety. The memory has dimmed a bit, that’s for sure. Like a faded old pornographic photo. Aletha’s body arc hing up on head and heels, pushing her brown-skinned belly up at me. Much better way of passing an evening than this.

He thought about Aletha for a while. A child of London dockland, accidentally fathered by a sailor on a half-Jamaican, half-Welsh mother who made a living by picking up seamen in pubs. Brought up in the East End streets and then in a local authority home until she was old enough to run away to Liver pool to follow her mother’s trade. Hundreds, thousands maybe, of men had handled and used her body until Frazer had encountered her and recognized her latent ability. Now she had everything she had ever wanted - money, clothes, powerful friends, security.

She was better off in many ways when she was hawking it round the pubs and cheap clubs, Thomas thought. At least she was human then. Or was she? What’s so human about lying on your back a dozen times a day for sweaty drunks to ram it up you?

Who am I to judge her? Or to judge any of them? What have I ever done that’s so marvellous? Thirty-four years old and I’ve achieved nothing of significance. Never managed to keep a girl-friend more than six month s, never got close enough to any woman to want to marry her. There’s something in my character, or maybe something lacking, that stops me from completing whatever I want to achieve. I’m going to spend my life fretting about being second rate.

Frazer picked me well. He knew his man. There is a pattern that runs right through the coven. A pattern of disappointment and frustration. Immersion in the life of the coven releases them from it. Release from the constraints of mediocrity or worse by contact with the formidable power the coven can deploy. Almost like being converted to religion, old-style, and finding release from your guilt and sin in the love of God, as they used to preach.

Take Marian. Born in a drab road of council houses in Lewisham. Married at seventeen, divorced at twenty. Her husband got drunk at weekends and beat her because she refused to let him have anal intercourse with her. By her standards it was dirty and wrong. So before her twenty-first birthday she was a failed wife in an ingrown world where there was no place for failed wives. She got a job as a waitress in a Wimpey bar and lived in a bed-sit, having casual affairs with chance men.

Now, fifteen years on, she lives in a style of luxury unimaginable to her family. Her pampered body radiates health and sensuality, and she delights in showing herself naked when the coven meets. She hasn’t a demanding husband to frighten her with his beery Friday night aggression, but thirteen enthusiastic men at her call whenever she chooses. And she chooses nearly every night of the week.

She took her revenge on her ex-husband as soon as she acquired the ability to do so. She sent a night-visitor to him to do what he had done to her. An unseen force in the dark that woke him by rolling him face-down on the bed and crushing him under its humping weight until he ejaculated in terror into his pyjamas. Night after night he suffered the dread of it, until his mind gave way and he was committed to a mental home. After that she sent the visitor only once a year, on their wedding anniversary.

Or Sado, gaunt at forty from the nervous rage inside him. Ribs sticking out, thin-shanked. No amount of food would put flesh on his bones. A man desperate for the knowledge and certainty of God in a society where religion had lost its meaning. He should have lived earlier. He could have been a desert hermit, whipping himself into salvation: St Sado Stylites. Or a crusader on horseback gutting Moslems with the blade of his spear as he slogged towards Jerusalem. Or even a black-coated evangelist preaching repentance or damnation to the Victorian poor. What sermons they would have been, laden with grisly detail of the torments to come for those who paid him no heed.

Sado had found the only god he could. He had achieved communion with him in the only way tiiat worked for him, between Esta’s splayed thigh s. Spurter in the sky, maker of the world. According to Sado. He was secure in the knowledge of God now and his oneness was with him.

Or look at Barbara. Small, blonde, little-breasted. Narcissistic to the point of imbalance. Depilated, smooth, slight, she could almost be mistaken for a girl of twelve until you looked into her knowing eyes. She worshipped her body, rubbed creams and lotions into it, had it massaged twice a week, treated it in steam baths and sauna baths, went to the hairdresser every morning, to the manicurist twice a week It had been utterly impossible for her to establish a relationship with a man, except as a cosseted doll kept as a plaything. And with all her faults, she was too intelligent to be satisfied with that. Through the coven she had what she wanted. Enough money to lavish on her body, and enough men to worship it when she summoned them. Though the sex act meant little to her in itself; it was the foreplay that she craved, the part where the man showed his physical appreciation of her. She let him complete the act as a reward for the first part.

And she had established permanent relations. Not with just one man, but with thirteen of them.

And vain Mark, led into cynicism by his own early brilliance. He believed nothing and valued nothing, not even his own skills as a doctor. An empty husk, like a tree still standing but soft and rotten inside. A candidate for suicide until the coven put guts back into him by giving him belief and purpose beyond the reach of even his cynicism. When Mark first experienced the fire magic and coupled explosively afterwards with Meg, he had wept hysterically through the whole night until exhaustion put him to sleep. They were tears of joy at being released from the intellectual shell that was stifling him to death.

Always the same pattern, thought Thomas. Frustration and disappointment. Then the initiation and a new life beginning. Dark-haired Rachel, who now had the gift of healing. Her husband had left her when their child was born with a deformed spine and died. Jenny, Isabel, Piers, Ran.

Yes, particularly Ran, who embarrassed his parents by being expelled from Winchester for smoking cannabis and pushing it. And then shamed them by being sent down from Oxford for stealing money. Ran had experimented with almost every form of rebellion he could devise — drugs, petty crime, an arc hist politics, drink, civil disorder. His fife was a se arc h for authority to kick against. After Oxford he had shacked up with a gang of runaway black teenagers in a hovel in Brixton, fathered two or three babies and caught gonorrhoea. Then he m arc hed with protest groups and punched and kicked policemen trying to contain the m arc h, until eventually they downed him and dragged him away to the waiting van. That got him three months in prison.

Out again, he organized a squatters’ takeover of empty houses and preached revolution against the system until they were forcibly evicted by the police. Nearly thirty years old, and still a teenage rebel against his father and his father’s world. Esta found him one night in the scruffy gardens in the square outside Frazer’s house. He was out cold and badly beaten up, though he could never remember who did it afterwards. She revived him enough to get him into the house for Frazer to inspect. He was initiated a few days later, after Rachel had healed him.

Within the coven Ran was able to resolve his conflict. At initiation he encountered the one authority he could wholeheartedly embrace and serve. Though he hadn’t known at the time, he was the replacement for Morgan, who had lost his life supporting Lesage. Not that it mattered. Ran found his haven. His way of life since then was that of a pop-star almost. Gaudy clothes, fast foreign cars, an apartment full of electronic gimmickry. He supported his conspicuously free-spending style by means of elaborate swindling, mainly of foreign banks in London, using the mental powers he had learned to develop. In this he was still getting his own back on his father’s world, and enjoying it.

Not the same path as Aleister took, but the same motivation in large degree. Aleister was the bright boy from the back streets of nowhere. Hungry for success and recognition, afraid that he wouldn’t make it on his own. A likely mental breakdown case. He sneered at Victor for turning witchcraft into a comfortable profession, but he’d done the same thing himself without realizing it. He was another Victor, twenty years younger and from a less promising background. He’d used the coven as another man might use freemasonry as a means of promoting his career, and had drawn from it the power to inflate his business far beyond the possible limits of his own ability. Alone, he would be no more than a disgruntled employee in an arc hitect’s office, capable, surly and unpromotable. But with the abilities he’d gained to offer unorthodox rewards for co-operation and dispose of opposition in curious ways, he had built up a large enterprise of his own. Just the same way as Victor had smoothly manipulated his way to the top in the world of finance. No doubt about it, Aleiste r is Victor’s spiritual son, though both would deny it furiously.

Esta too - the same story of early despair leading to a momentous decision. She had grown up in boarding-schools away from her parents, her father being in the army, stationed abroad. She saw her parents once a year in the summer holidays, wherever they happened to be: Kuala Lumpur, Germany, Malta, Hong Kong. She worked hard at her books, having little else in her life, and went on to university. And there she became pregnant by a member of the faculty, a man fifteen years older than herself. He paid for the abortion to keep himself out of trouble. After that she dropped out of university and drifted around London until she fell in love with another man, even older than the first. She lived with him for over a year until another pregnancy and another abortion scared him away.

Inside that strong body, thought Thomas, shaped by years of outdoor games at school, there was a little girl looking for the father she never had at the right time. She found him in Frazer, either because of his own inner strength or because of the confidence that flowed into her through him.

With that security she could treat other men as she wished. She could dominate them, not depend on them. When she and Thomas had first met and she was preparing him without his knowledge, for entrance into the coven, it was she who took the lead, even in lovemaking. She had decided when and where and how, and he had gone along with this unfamiliar reversal of roles, to his own surprise. It was Esta who straddled him, on bed, chair or floor, to excite him at her own pace and drain him when she was ready. It was the same in the communal sex that followed the rituals. Esta chose her men and did what she wished to them, not the other way round. Except with Frazer. When he pointed to her, she went to him and lay down for him as meekly as Tansey or Joan.

Apart from the orgies, where he had no choice, Thomas had not been with Esta since his initiation. Nor did he intend to be.

All the members of the coven were casualties, he saw. They were crippled emotionally by other people’s manipulation in their formative years, or by their own inadequacies. Fodder for social workers, prisons and mental hospitals. Fugitives who had found a strange sanctuary. Losers who had become winners by doing the unthinkable.

Could Frazer himself be understood in the same terms? His childhood must surely have been made miserable by the awful red birthmark on his face. It was not hard to imagine the taunts and nicknames that other children would have used to hurt him. When adolescence and sexual awareness impelled him towards the company of girls, he must have endured agonies of frustration and humiliation. He had a good firm body and a handsome face - seen from one side. But when he turned and showed the disfigured side - he surely learned a great deal about rejection.

But was that enough to explain his drive for power, his ruthlessness, his contempt for others? Even for his own followers.

Though Thomas had developed friendship with some of them and a tolerance for the rest, he could feel nothing but loathing for Frazer.

This power of his, which is no more than to say this areane knowledge of his - is it real in any way at all or is it a paranoic delusion? I can understand control of the mind to some extent. After all, induced hallucination and post-hypnotic suggestion are established medical facts. Thought-transference seems far more dubious. I think I was communicating mentally with Aletha an hour ago. Maybe I wa s only talking to myself silentl y. But when she arrives in due course, that will appear to prove that we did communicate. Yet will it convince me?

Why do I find it easy to accept that we can control minds, which I have done myself, and hard to accept that we might be able to control events in the physical world? I am not being logical about this. And always in my thoughts is the possibility that Frazer could be deceiving me and the others. Or by controlling our minds he could be making us deceive ourselves for his own purposes, I must subtract my hostility towards Frazer from the equation if I am ever to get to the answer.

I know that a beam of electrons aimed at a distant piece of equipment will switch it on and cause it to perform its programmed functions. I understand remote control of rockets and satellites by radio. Then why shouldn’t a thought wave, if there is such a thing, exert a physical effect? I saw Jenny switch on my radio by willing it. And still I am in doubt. Who knows better than I do that all matter is composed of atoms which are no more than particles of pure energy in balance? Including people and their bodies and their brains. If thought is a form of energy, why then should it nor be able to exert an effect at a distance on those other forms of energy which we perceive as people or objects?

I am just rationalizing. It has little importance what I believe about Frazer or the coven since I can be controlled by him. Only death can break the link and release me from that. And as I have no intention of dying, Frazer has to go, Robert has shown the way. It’s a pity he muffed it. But he has sown the seed. The possibility of offloading Frazer will be in all their minds now. He has very few friends. Perhaps in time it might be possible to get another attempt going to depose him, whatever that involves.

Robert will be dead. Meg can be persuaded to stay neutral, I think. Esta and Aleister are the two most likely to pu t their heads on the chopping-block for Frazer. They would have to be dealt with first, in some way.

This is the first time in my life I have felt strongly enough about anything to plan a revolution. They’ve taught me a lot, my brothers and sisters.

THE SINGING

It was after midnight when two can rolled quietly down the lane and stopped outside the cottage. Thomas stood up and stretched his cramped limbs. Janine went skipping out to meet them, calling ‘Frazer, Frazer!’

Esta came in first, while the others waited outside in the parked cars. She glanced at Thomas without speaking and stooped over Robert on the floor to check that he was bound safely. Her tight trousers over full buttocks inspired in Thomas a mighty urge to send her flying across the room with a running kick. He restrained himself until she went outside to report, then vented his feelings by kicking the chair he had been sitting on.

When Frazer came into the kitchen he was in ferocious good humour. He was dressed in black: sweater, trousers, shoes.

‘Well done, Thomas,’ he crowed. ‘You have deserved well of me, and I shall reward you. Now, I must have a talk with our friend here. Go and wait with the others until I am ready. Close the door behind you.’

In the sitting-room Thomas found six of them, helping themselves to drinks. Janine was sitting on Esta’s lap, chattering away happily. They gathered round him, eager to hear his story. They were all members of Frazer’s or iginal coven, he noted - Aleiste r and Sado; Esta and Aletha; Elspeth and Jenny. Since Robert’s defecti on, it was clear that Frazer no longer trusted any of the members of Lesage’s coven. Thomas’s mind registered the possibilities of that. Divide them against each other. Sow disunity. It might work. In the meantime, how far could he go in splitting this little band? It was worth trying.

‘How’s your knee, Aletha?’ he asked casually.

‘Fine, man. Rachel fixed it.’

She hoisted up her skirt to show him a long expanse of gleaming, dark-skinned leg.

‘I said knee, not thigh,’ he joked.

‘Sure you did, but I thought I’d treat you to a look. It’s all yours, any time you say.’ ‘As soon as we’re out of here and have some time to ourselves,

I’ll take you up on that. If it wasn’t for you and me, none of us would have got out of this mess. The rest of them sat back and waited while we took the risks. Right?’

‘Rubbish!’ said Aleister. “We were all in it together. Don’t start getting cocky - you’re still only a novice.’

‘Where were you when Aletha and Tansey and I went down to find Robert and he nearly broke Aletha’s leg?’ Thomas asked, ‘Right,’ said Aletha. ‘You weren’t there, man. Thomas and I went. You were sitting on your pimply arse drinking whisky. Wasn’t much together from you then.’

Aleister glowered at her for a moment, then turned and went out of the room. Esta slid Janine off her lap and looked at Thomas,

‘You sound very tense,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. Just reaction, I suppose. Robert came damned near to killing me before I got him. Why did Frazer send you in first? Did he think that Robert had set a trap for him?’

She said nothing. He probed again.

‘Suppose it had been a trap. What would Robert have done to you when he saw you coming tlirough that door? Something very nasty, I’ll bet.’

Esta’s face reddened but she stayed silent. Jenny answered for her.

‘It’s not for you to question what Frazer decides, Thomas.’ ‘No, it’s not. But it wasn’t me who was pushed in first to see if the roof would fall in on me. It was Esta. I wondered how she

felt about it.’

‘Well, it wasn’t a very nice thing to do,’ said Jenny, ‘but he has to be careful. Still, he could have sent one of the men. It didn’t have to be Esta.’

Thomas was concentrating on spreading an aura of unease through the room. Not a beamed thought at any one person, but a diffused edginess that would affect all of them, as it had Aleth a. Sado reacted next.

‘Let’s have none of that man and woman nonsense,’ he said to Jenny, speaking quite sharply, ‘We make no such distinctions. We are all equally servants of the master, without regard to the arrangement of our sexual parts.’

‘If that’s the way you see it,’ Aletha answered him, ‘then next time you feel horny, you ring one of the men, not me. If the arrangement of sexual parts don’t mean anything to you, then it don’t matter what hole you stuff it up.’

Thomas stepped up his output, pleased with the effect he was causing. He imagined waves of irritation broadcasting out from him, filling the room, reflecting back from the walls, engulfing the little group of people.

‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ said Sado testily, ‘as you very well know. You are wilfully misunderstanding me. Shall I put it in simpler terms for you?’

‘Too stupid to understand you, am I?’ Aletha flared. ‘Only thing I’m good for is opening my legs for a genius like you! You keep away from me, you measly bag of bones, ‘cause the next time you try sticking it up me, I swear to God I’ll break it off for you!’

Esta moved in to calm the quarrel, but was helpless against the disorder Thomas was spreading. Jenny came to the aid of Aletha against Sado, who was reduced to a ngry spluttering. Elspeth mistakenly tried to explain what Sado had meant and made things worse.

‘You stay out of this, flat-tits!’ Aletha snarled, making Jenny giggle.

‘Don’t yon dare talk to me like that, you black bitch!’ Elspeth shouted.

They would come to blows in a while, thought Thomas, delighted with the proof of his ability to stir up strife. Small beginnings, but promising. He cut off the vibrations instantly as the kitchen door opened and Frazer strode into the hubbub.

‘Be quiet!’ he shouted at them, like a teacher quelling a noisy class of children. ‘I leave you for five minutes and you start to scream at each other.’

His eye caught Thomas, the only one not flushed and angry.

‘What is going on here, Thomas?’

‘Just a misunderstanding. We’re all a bit tired and jumpy.’ Frazer glared round the set faces. ‘Where’s Aleister?’ He went out.’

‘I’ll find him,’ Esta said quickly, and left the room. ‘Thomas, what was the fuss about? I want to know.’ ‘Nothing much. We were discussing the equality or otherwise of men and women.’

Frazer stared at him in disbelief.

‘Quite correct,’ said Sado, “but some tempers became heated and the discussion became personal,’

‘Stupid fools! After the danger we have passed through, if we are through it, you stand here like idiots bickering over some rubbish I do not even understand .’

Aletha tried to intervene) but he silenced her with a scowl.

‘Don’t you understand? A terrible thing has happened to the coven. One of its most powerful members turned against us and tried to harm us. Thanks to Thomas we have him and we shall punish him for what he did. But the loss to us is tremendous. Robert is no novice. He was next to me in the coven.’

That brought a snort from Esta, who had returned with Aleister. Thomas projected a feeling of anger into her mind at being slighted in front of the others. She took a step forward, fists clenched. Frazer faced her down before she spoke, but Thomas spread the anger to the others. There were shufflings and mutterings. Frazer looked astonished.

Well now, thought Thomas, it looks as if a rebellion may well be on the cards. If I can get the most trusted followers, including Esta, to stand up to him like this, the re’s hope. It would be even easier with some of the others. Once I could push them to the point of offloading him, I might get away in the scrimmage.

‘Listen to me,’ said Frazer, ‘Robert must die for his treachery. Calm yourselves. While he lives we are in danger. Collect your powers. There is a hard task in front of us still, but there is a reward at the end of it.’

They were quiet again, though still hostile

‘I have probed Robert’s mind as far as I can, to get at the truth about his actions. He thought Thomas had the secret of making the Jewel. He intended to force Thomas to make it for him and use Janine to draw down the power into it. He also had deep motives of revenge against me. He has fed his hatred secretly for years.’

‘He told you that?’ Thomas asked in surprise.

‘He had no choice. You bound him well. Is what you told him about the complications of the physical elements of the Jewel true, or were you feeding him lies and playing for time?’

‘I told him the truth because I knew there was nothing he could do with the information. The problems are real.’

‘I see. But at least we know the way to follow?’

‘We know the way, and it’s a damnably difficult one.’

“What else would you expect?’ asked Frazer, raising his arms sideways, palms uppermost, almost as if he were praying ‘The power over life and death, time and space, is not given to casual seekers. Only to the dedicated who will pursue truth through utmost danger.’

As there was nothing to be said on that subject, Thomas asked, ‘What are you going to do about Robert?”

‘Kill him, of course. We shall rid ourselves of a danger and we shall use him to our advantage.”

‘What does that mean?’

‘We shall eat him up and all have a part of him.’ What?’

Frazer smiled in his irritatingly superior manner.

‘You were thinking we would torture him to death? Cut off his testicles? Skin him alive? Draw his intestine out through his anus? Gouge his eyes out with a kitchen fork? Is that the sort of thing you had in mind, Thomas?’

‘I wondered what you had in mind. You’re not seriously suggesting that we should carve him up and eat him like cannibals, are you?’

The others were grinning at his discomfort. Frazer laughed.

‘We are not interested in his body, only in his essence. We shall share that between us. If you like to picture it as a kind of cannibal feast, you may do so.”

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘You will, I promise. Aleister - what’s behind the house?’

There’s an old orchard that belongs to the cottage, and then open fields. There’s no sign of another house anywhere that I can sec.’

‘Good. I want to be outside for this, not shut up in a room. Out under the immensity of the sky we shall bring retribution to our one-time friend who chose to become our enemy. Strip, and we will begin. Jenny, you tell Thomas what we are going to do so that he can join in. He deserves a portion for capturing Robert.’

Arms wrestled sweaters over heads, fingers unzipped flies. Shoes were discarded, socks and underwear peeled off. Jenny spoke over her shoulder to Thomas as he unclipped he r bra for her.

‘Sometimes it is called singing to death. What we do, you see, is to charm the living essence out of him and absorb it. It nourishes your mind and makes you stronger.’

Her breasts dangled loosely as she bent over to roll her tights down her legs.

‘What living essence?’ Thomas asked. ‘Do you mean his soul, or what?’

‘There’s no such thing, you know that. His life force, that’s what I mean. The essence that makes the difference between being alive and being dead. Damn, these tights are laddered already!’

Her round buttocks bobbed in front of him as she slid off her yellow briefs,

‘It sounds very strange and unpleasant,’ he objected.

‘No, it’s very pleasant. For us, I mean, not for him.’

He stood awkwardly naked as she turned to face him.

‘You must have read tales of natives eating their enemies to absorb their courage,’ she said, putting her hands on his hips in a friendly manner. ‘They were nearly right. We can shore Robert’s courage and his knowledge and all the rest of turn that matters without the nonsen se of actually eating bits of h is body. You’ll understand what I mean when it starts.’

She smiled at him, showing her teeth. Pretty, freckle-nosed, twenty-six-year-old Jenny, If she had been able to resist her stepfather’s attentions ten years ago, or cope with her mother’s jealousy, she would not be here explaining these murderous rites, Thomas thought. At this time of night she would have been fussing over baby feeds in a suburban home of her own, most likely, trying not to disturb a sleeping husband. But that was another world, A parallel world maybe, but with no way of ever reaching it any more for Jenny, or any other member of the coven.

Thomas had an affection for Jenny that was warmer than friendliness. However tainted the circumstances, she never failed to preserve a gentleness that he found appealing. Not that he was dec eived about her. Under the gentl e surface her drives were as dangerous as Esta’s or Brigit’s. Gentle Jenny was about to participate in a murder, and the expectation did not disturb her calm.

He smiled back at her. His eyes moved down the pleasing slopes of her body to the smooth-shaven slit between her legs.

‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘it will be very nice’

She took his hand and pressed it lightly for a moment to her lower hps, then turned away. He followed her into the kitchen in time to see Aleister and Sado pick up Robert and haul him out through the back door. Sado naked well deserved Aletha’s contemptuous description of bag of bones. His ribs were visible enough to be counted clear across the kitchen. The contrast with Aleister’s me atiness of f ace and body was faintly comical.

But there was unguessed strength in Sado’s sharp-elbowed arms and nobbly-spined back. He had Robert by the shoulders and was carrying him easily, though Robert was a solidly built man.

Outside in the orchard they sat Robert on the ground, his back propped against an old apple tree. It was a warm summer night and although the moon was well down in the sky towards setting, there was enough light to see by. The four couples, including Thomas, arranged themselves in a semi-circle facing Robert, cross-legged on the thin grass. There was silence for a while as they prepared their minds.

Looking around his companions in the dim moonlight, Thomas could see gloating anticipation. There was an impression of tongues moistening lips. Robert’s face was rigidly blank under the dried blood binding marks. Sprawled limply against the tree in his rumpled clothes, he looked more like a big discarded puppet than a living man.

When he was ready Frazer breathed in deeply, inflating his chest to the full, and sang a short phrase, not loud but very clear. Its five notes had an insistent percussive quality. He repeated it and the others joined in, turning his solo into a chorus. After a while, not knowing what else to do, Thomas sang it with them, the same phrase over and over again. The words, if they were words, meant nothing to him, but he could feel their destructive quality.

Robert lay without sign of life or movement. Was he perhaps dead already? After the battering he had taken from Thomas and the shock of Janine ‘s viciousness, the questioning by Frazer might have been too much. Where was Janine, anyway? Looking covertly round, Thomas caught the pale gleam of skin in the dark, half hidden by a tree some yards away. She was watching what they were doing. Sly child who peeped through spyholes at men and women in the paroxysms of copulation. Gawky twelve-year-old who lurked behind trees to sec a man being put to death. After her childhood so far and the adolescence her father planned for her, she would grow up to be a person to fear.

Very cautiously, Thomas put out a mental feeler to touch Robert’s mind and see if there was any spark of life there still. How he did it, he couldn’t explain even to himself, but he knew that he had the ability. He expected to find darkness and silence. Or at best a semi-conscious sinking towards oblivion.

Robert’s mind was a blaze of fear and hatred bordering on insanity. But he felt the contact and clutched at it

‘Thomas! Save me from this and I’ll do anything you ask. You can have everything I own. Please!’

‘What can I do, Robert? There are too many of them. They’d only kill me too. I’d help you if I could, believe me.’

‘Please, please…I don’t want to die like this. I know 1 tried t o harm you, but I would never h ave done this to you, I swear. You’ve got to help me!’

‘How? Tell me how.’

‘I don’t know … stop the singing somehow..’

‘I don’t know how to, Robert, There are seven of them to one.’

Robert sobbed silently with fear. Tears welled from under his closed eyelids and glinted down his drawn cheeks. It was too much for Thomas to share. He broke the mental link and withdrew miserably into himself. The singing beat at his ears like the striking of a drum.

They were moving in for the kill, too engrossed to observe him as he stared open-mouthed at them. Jenny was leaning forward eagerly, her hands curled in her lap like claws to rip and tear. Aletha was swaying like a mottled snake, unhinging its jaws to swallow a crushed rat. Thomas winced, remembering his sexual encounters with both of the m.

Sado was like a mantis reaching out to eat the head of an insect in its grasp. And pig-faced Aleister, eyes glazed, had spittle running down his chin. Esta was making pawing motions with her hands, for all the world like a cat with its claws into a fluttering bird. Elspeth was clutching her small breasts in concentration, round-eyed as an owl about to sink its hooked beak into a twitching field-mouse.

In the middle of them Frazer was a mangy wolf with wet, yellow fangs, sidling towards its prey on its belly.

Thomas forced himself to go back into Robert’s mind. It was like the time he had gone back to look at a cat he had accidentally run over in the street and found it still writhing in broken-backed agony.

Robert, there’s no way of saving you from them. They are too strong for me. Is there any way I can help you to die quickly?

Robert was past fear. All Thomas could find was a murderous hatred of Frazer, He recoiled from the intensity of it, controlled himself and asked the question again.

No, you do not have the power. But promise me one thing and I will give you the most valuable thing in the world. What shall I prom ise?

Promise me you will kill Frazer as soon as you get a chance. Promise!

I give you my word, Robert, If ever I get the chance, I will do it.

Good, very good. Now listen carefully. When the moment comes, I will give myself to you. Do you understand? You must swallow me quickly. I’ll make it easy for you. Let them get nothing. Then you will have my knowledge and with it you can finish Frazer . Make him suffer for what he h as done to me. Get ready now - leave me!

Confused, Thomas withdrew from Robert’s mind and waited. The singing was climbing towards a nasty climax, louder and more hostile. And Thomas perceived the scene in a new way. Robert against the tree and the semi-circle facing him, yes. But Robert was also a pulsating ball of pale blue light surrounded by other spheres of light that pressed against it, flattening and distorting themselves as they squeezed close. Like phagocytes in the bloodstream eating bacteria, he thought.

The surrounding spheres were vibrating in time with each other and pouring out a dark, greasy exudate that was peeling the outer skin from their victim. That would be the singing, he reasoned, or rather the mental vibrations set up by the singing. When the skin bursts, they’ll be through into the soft core, like maggots burrowing into a dead sheep.

Get ready, Robert had said. Thomas concentrated hard until he became aware of himself as another globe of blue light. He pressed himself to the flaking skin that was Robert’s only defence and was hustl ed about by the greedy predators swarming over it.

The barrier peeled away in strips and tatters, like skin from a sunburned back. The others jostled and tore at the exposed essence, swallowing little bits of it, Thomas made his mind receptive and Robert launched himself at him with his fading strength. The intense blue core of his being merged with the globe of light that was Thomas, while the pack fought each other for the outer shreds they had torn from him.

The vision of lights vanished and Thomas swayed backwards, almost falling over, hands pressed to his head, dazed by what had slithered into his mind and was dissolving there.

When he opened his eyes again Robert’s body still lay like a bundle of old clothes against the apple tree, but there was a difference. Something had gone out of him. Even in the dimness he looked dead. The rest were sitting in silence, digesting what they had snatched. The new thoughts and knowledge in Thomas’s mind amazed him as he examined them, much as he would have sorted information into a filing cabinet. Robert’s personality had gone for ever, but everything he had known lived on.

When Frazer spoke, he sounded disappointed.

‘There was nothing of him,’ he grumbled.

T didn’t get anything at all,’ Aleister complained.

‘I did,’ said Elspeth, “though only a bit. What happened?’

‘Stupid Robert,’ said Frazer, ‘He wasted his life force in fighting us all last night. He must have been nearly dead when we started singing He was only a husk. What a waste!’

RESURRECTION

They were back in London by eight in the morning. The cottage had been tidied up to leave no trace that anyone but its owner had been there. Robert’s body was left in the orchard, carefully arranged, the binding marks wiped off. Sooner or later he would be found, and an examination would establish that he had died of cardiac arrest after falling over a tree root and breaking his nose. Papers in the cottage would identify him as a London businessman. A se arc h of his Albany home would uncover nothing that might lead inquisitive policemen to the coven. The inquiries would stop and that would be the end of Robert.

Thomas was dropped off by Aleister at Oxford Circus and took a taxi to his flat in Victoria. He was dog-tired, unshaven and grubby from the events of the past day and a half.

After Robert’s death there had been the ritual coupling in the orchard. He had taken all four of the women, leaving Esta till last. There was a new confidence in him, springing from his secret. The whole of Robert’s formidable knowledge was his to use. Jenny first, and that was enjoyable. Then Aletha, and the gratitude he felt towards her for her part in rescuing him had made him want to make sure that she enjoyed it. He had made her wail and thrash about in ecstasy under the trees. After that, Elspeth had thrown herself upon him avidly. Finally Esta, and that was a mechanical ritual. She was sweaty from the embraces of Frazer and Sado. With her there was no question of enjoyment, he simply performed what was expected of him.

Frying eggs and bacon for breakfast, he wondered for the hundredth or more time where the sexual potency came from that fired participants in the rituals. The only certainty was that he always had a hearty appetite afterwards.

Sex activity depended on hormones, he seemed to recall. And hormone release into the bloodstream was governed by some sort of brain activity. That sounded a bit vague, but it was a start. Perhaps a doctor could explain it better to him: an endocrinologist, perhaps. Or Mark might be a good starting point. He was a doctor. But what triggered off the brain activity that led to the heightening of physical prowess? That was the part that really mattered.

At nine o’clock he telephoned Inter-Con-Chem to make excuses for his absence, and then went to bed. He fell asleep at once, oblivious of the traffic noises outside.

It was evening when he woke up and he was hungry again. He went out to a steak house for dinner, and over the meal mulled over the half-formed thoughts that had been troubling his sleep in dream form all day. Something was wrong. He felt it, but he couldn’t put a name to it. Even though Robert was gone, there was danger around. The awareness of it came up from deep inside him. It was to do with Meg, of that he was reasonably sure.

Without telephoning first, he drove to her house and left his car a good quarter-mile away. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt the need for caution. Meg was surprised to see him when she opened the door.

‘Meg,’ he said hurriedly, ‘are you alone?”

“Why?’

‘I want to talk to you. Let me in. It’s urgent.’ She led him into her elegant rosewood and cream sitting-room.

‘You know what happened last night?’ he asked, sitting down.

‘Esta phoned round this morning to let us all know.’

She said it unemotionally, just stating a fact.

It wasn’t nice, believe me,’ said Thomas.

Meg said nothing. She was sitting opposite him, a coffee table between them. She had not offered him a drink and she was not making him welcome.

‘Robert had gone right over the edge, you know,’ said Thomas. ‘He was not of sound mind when I was with him. But at the end he was very frightened, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, in a way.’

‘I can’t make you out,’ said Meg, tight-lipped. ‘Have you come here for sympathy or just to gloat?’

‘I’m here to talk seriously to you about how things s tand now.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘Yes, you do. What you mean is that you don’t trust me.’ ‘No, I don’t. So out you go. I feel like being alone tonight,’ ‘I’m not going until I get what I came for.’

She laughed artificially.

‘Don’t tell me you came here tonight for sex! I’m not in the mood. It may be against protocol to turn down a coven member in need, but that’s the way it is. Ring Brigit - she’ll drop her pants for you any time if she’s at home. Use my phone.’

‘You know damn well that’s not what I meant. Give me your hands.’

‘What?’ she said, taken by surprise.

He held his hands out to her over the low table, palms up.

‘Put your hands on mine, Meg.’

After a moment or two of hesitation she did as he said. He grasped her fleshy palms and short fingers tightly, engulfing her in a wave of warm feeling while he made contact with her mind. Meg knew what he was about at once and closed her mind tightly against him, like a squeamish girl clamping her thighs together to stop prying male fingers. Thomas called to her wordlessly.

Meg, Meg, don’t be frightened. We need each other’s help.

Leave me alone.

You’re in danger. Can’t you see that? That’s my business.

She tried to pull her hands away but he held on fiercely.

Frazer thinks you put Robert up to what he did. He’ll try to hurt you.

Why are you doing this? Is it supposed to impress me?

No, but he might be watching you in the bowl, and for all I know he can overhear spoken words. I’ve put my neck on the block by coming here. But I wanted to prove my good faith.

No one is watching us. I can always tell.

Are you sure, Meg?

Certain. Nobody is watching us.

You accept the possibility that Frazer might want to watch you?

I understand my position better than you do, brother Thomas.

Then you know that you need help. He’s too much for you on your own.

I’d need more help than you can give me. What use would you be? He’d tread on you like a cockroach without even noticing that you were there.

Meg, listen. I know more than you think. Open your mind and let me in, and you will see for yourself.

The sustained lapping of friendly sensation was softening her, though she was not aware of the source.

No tricks, then, master Thomas, or I’ll make you sorry. I’m much stronger tha n you are, don’t forget. You’re still only a novice.

What can you lose, then?

She raised her mental barrier cautiously, ready to slam it down again at the first hint of danger. Thomas moved into her mind very slowly so as not to startle her. He felt her amazement ripple through him as she saw in his mind the way in which Robert had chosen to die.

For Thomas it was no surprise to learn that Meg and Robert had talked many times about getting rid of Frazer, but she had not known in advance of his lone attempt. But if Frazer had really examined Robert’s thoughts when he had him helpless, he would in all probability conclude that she had been part of a plot against him.

Thomas probed delicately through the layers of her mind and personality, all laid bare to him. There was a superficial layer of Frazer and below that a much thicker layer of Robert, built up during the years of their association. Underlying that was a solid core of Lesage , the foundation of her inner life. The injury she had done to herself in betraying him was plainly visible.

When he knew ad he needed to know about her, and had let her see enough of himself to convince her, he eased away slowly. Her hands were clutching his now, and her eyes stared fixedly into his.

She blinked and shivered pleasurably.

‘It’s years since I did that with anyone,’ she said aloud.

‘Do you trust me now?’

She nodded.

“Will you let me help you?’

‘Nobody else can. I understand you now. You are Lesage‘s instrument. That’s why he said we should accept you, even though the finger-bones spelled trouble. He knew what was in your mind when we raised him. He chose you, not Frazer. Do you see that?’

‘I guessed later on. I didn’t know at the time.’

They released hands and sat looking at each other fondly, more in accord than if they were lovers.

‘To do Lesage’s work I will give you everying I have,’ said Meg, ‘even my life.’

‘It’s your life I’m here to save. Have you any idea what Frazer will do?”

‘He’ll get rid of me. There’s a dozen ways at least I think he’ll do it tonight’

‘So do I. That’s why I came.’

‘Thank you, Thomas.’

It occurred to him that she was the first member of the coven ever to thank him for any tiling.

‘What can he do that you can’t cope with on your own?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been thinking about that all day since Esta rang. There was something in her voice that told me I was in trouble, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.’

‘So what did you decide?’

‘It’s hard to say. There’s the lightning, of course, but he can’t do that on his own; it needs at least seven people, and I’m sure he couldn’t get that many to help him against me. It will be somethin g he can do on his own, or with Esta to help him.’

They might be doing it right now.’

‘Do you want to find out?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You know how to use the bowl.’

They went up to the top floor and into the bare, dark room with the antique cabinet that held Lesage‘s skull. This time Thomas was not frightened as Meg lit the three candles on the wall and closed the door. He took the heavy bowl of mercury from the cabinet for her, and set it in the middle of the floor while she undressed.

There was no need for him to strip. He sat opposite her on the floor, the bowl between them, while she pressed her fingertips to her temples in concentration.

In his early encounters with Meg he had seen her as an overweight, middle-aged woman to whom he was not physically attracted. Since their brief merging of minds he saw her in a different way. The breasts he once thought ungainly had become opulent. Her meaty thighs were pillows of pleasure. The horizontal crease of flesh across her belly as she bent over looked endearingly comfortable.

He cut off his train of thought sharply. Meg must have planted this feeling for her in him when their minds embraced. She would use him for her own purposes if he let her. He must use her, not be used.

‘Look!’ she whispered.

On the surface of the silvery liquid she had conjured a tiny clear picture. Thomas leaned over the bowl to stare intendy. From above he was looking down on Esta lying naked on her back on a black-sheeted bed. A fat man with short hair lay half across her, nuzzling her breasts.

‘Who’s he?’ Thomas asked.

‘I don’t know.’

The man shifted his bulk to slide his lips and tongue down Esta’s body, like a snail leaving a slimy track. Abruptly he looked over his shoulder so that they saw him full face. Meg passed her hand quickly over the bowl and the picture vanished.

‘He knew he was being watched,’ she said. Tie must be one of us.’

‘Who could he be?’

‘I’ve never seen him before. They’re not in Esta’s bedroom.’

Thomas agreed. He had been home with Esta more than once in their early days, and remembered well enough what her bed looked like.

‘Frazer must have sent her to that man for some reason,’ said Meg, ‘but I can’t imagine why.’

‘At least we know that she’s not helping Frazer tonight. Let’s see what Aleister’s doing.’

She concentrated again, staring into the bowl until a picture started to form, then swept it away instantly.

‘What’s the matter?’ Thomas asked.

‘He’s with Frazer. I had to stop because Frazer can tell when he’s being watched.’

“Did you see anything at all?’

There wasn’t time. I think Aleister is driving a car and Frazer’s sitting beside him, but I may be wrong.’

‘Whatever they’re about, it must be important to Frazer to make him leave his house. The last time he did that he lost Janine.’

‘He won’t be caught that way twice,’ Meg assured him. ‘Do you want me to look?’ He nodded and waited.

The scene Meg conjured this time was a child’s bedroom, though not an ordinary one. For toys there was a shelf of squat and ugly dolls, hand-carved in wood and shiny from age and handling. Above it was a shelf of large old books, mostly leather-bound, stacked higgledy-piggledy. Janine was in bed asleep and with her, arms protectively about her, lay Brigit,

‘When Frazer goes out on business and Esta is off getting laid, Brigit minds the baby,’ said Thomas. ‘He trusts her more than I thought.’

‘But he relies on Esta far more. It must be incredibly important to him to send her to that man while he’s out himself.’

‘And vice-versa, I don’t like it’

Meg wiped the picture away.

‘I can only watch the bowl,’ she said. ‘I can see what people are doing, but I can’t hear what they say. David’s the only one who can do that, and not always then. But you can reach into minds. Can you read Aleister?’

‘Yes, but he’ll know,’ said Thomas, unhappily. ‘Still, let’s see how near I can get without his knowing.’

He undressed quickly and sat with his hands over his eyes as an aid to concentration. He visualized Aleistcr, round-faced and pudgy, and squeezed out a mental feeler, se arc hing for him. He found him halfway across London, and saw at once that by penetrating his mind he would alert him. Hesitantly he made the lightest of fleeting contacts and pulled away before Aleister had time to become aware of him.

He opened his eyes and sat for a moment analyzing his impressions.

‘All I got was a strong emotion,’ he said, ‘mostly fear. He’s afraid of what he’s helping Frazer to do. And at the same time there’s a sickly pleasure that he’s been chosen to help with whatever it is.’

Meg glanced over her shoulder at the cabinet by the wall.

‘Lesage can’t help us,’ said Thomas, guessing her thought ‘We’re on our own.’

‘It may be the last time I ever see him.’

Thomas stood up and dressed.

‘Put your clothes on, Meg. There’s something very unpleasant on the way and we want to be ready for it. Have you any means of protection?’

T can make a circle that will keep some things out, but I don’t think it will help tonight. Frazer is sure to over-reach me.’

‘Do it, anyway.’

She padded naked across the thick carpet, fat breasts wobbling, to the cabinet. Thomas watched, fascinated, as she took a canvas bag of coarse salt and used it to draw a big circle on the floor, about twelve feet across, with both of them inside it. At various points round the perimeter she distributed Lesage’s finger-bones and dried herbs, whispering words over them that set up an unseen barrier. When it was finished she put her clothes on and they sat facing each other in the closed circle. ‘What time is it?’ Meg asked.

‘Nearly twelve. Why? Is midnight the proper time for manifestations?’

‘No, Frazer attacks people about three in the morning. He thinks that’s the best time to catch them asleep or off-guard. It’s to 1o with your vitality being at its lowest about then.’

‘We’vc got a long wait if he runs to form,’ said Thomas, easily. ‘Open your mind for me again.’

To tell you the truth, as I expect to be dead before morning, I’d rather open my legs for you one last time.’

‘You’re not going to die. Do as I say. There’s plenty of time for leg-parting when we’re out of danger.’

He reached out mentally to touch her, and she made no resistance.

You’re not even afraid, Meg. I wish I could say the same.

I can feel your fear, Thomas, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve always known you were a fearful man. But your will to survive overrides it. You’ll never panic, ho wever afraid you get. Your mind will keep on working to find a way out of danger. I feel almost safe with you, which is rid iculous, because Frazer is so powerful th at neither of us will ever be safe again.

One step at a time. Let’s get through tonight before we think about tomorrow’s problems. Tell me about Lesage.

There’s no need. You are inside my mind, you can see for yourself how I felt about him.

You know that Robert and Brigit helped Frazer to kill him?

I know it now that you’ve let me see inside your mind. I’ve always suspected it.

Brigit was only a pawn, not much more than a schoolgirl at the time. But Robert was Lesage’s right-hand man, and he actually assisted Frazer in the death ritual. How could you stay friends with them if you suspected that?

You know the answer. I had no choice. None of us have. We may secretly loathe and fear each other, but we are joined in a way that can’t be broken.

Time passed as Thomas and Meg communicated wordlessly. He made a slow study of her experience and knowledge of witchcraft, and learned many things which he could use. She made no objection at all and asked for nothing in return.

It was the sound of a car on the gravel below that made them break off, contact. They heard footsteps outside, more than one person. Then the click of car doors closing.

Meg shuddered, and then sat still and expressionless.

The car moved away, out of the drive into the road. It accelerated away and was gone,

‘They’ve left something for you outside,’ said Thomas aloud. ‘Is the front door locked?’

‘What difference does it make?’

Through the silent house they heard the splintering of the door being forced. It must be a physical creature to be deli vered by car, Thomas reasoned, and to break down doors. He had expected something on an entirely different plane of being. Frazer was being very tricky indeed.

He heard another door crash open somewhere downstairs. The visitor was searching for Meg in the ground-floor rooms. Then it would move up to the bedrooms, and finally up the attic stairs to the windowle ss room under the roof where they were waiting.

The bleakness of Meg’s face made him wince,

‘You won’t be hurt,’ she said, ‘as long as you don’t get in the way. It only wants me.’

‘What is it?’

‘Don’t you know yet?’

Tell me!’

She looked at the door. Thomas heard a heavy shuffling outside, and the door was flung open so violently that it smacked against the wall and rebounded, hiding what was outside for another moment. But the stench came in. Thomas gagged on the stomach-turning, maggot-crawling bad meat smell. The door slammed open again as Frazer’s executioner shouldered through.

In the months since Thomas had seen Benton’s corpse curled up on the bathroom floor with its throat cut, it had decomposed much further. Pyjamas once soaked in blood and sweat had dried hard to the swollen torso and limbs. The face was a caricature, mouth banging open to show a thick black tongue, dead eyes squinting out from beneath sagging lids.

It located Meg and moved clumsily towards her, its pulpy hands groping before it With his teeth clenched to stop himself from vomiting, Thomas saw it shuffle through the protective circle without even knowing it was there. Meg scrambled away sideways until she was backed up against the wall. Frazer’s messenger paused, moving its head slowly from side to side.

It has to see, Thomas realized. He was crouched on his knees in the circle, only a yard away from the stinking thing.

He scooped up the heavy bowl of mercury they had used earlier and threw it into the squashy face looming over him. His mind screamed out a command boiling hot.

The creature raised its hand jerkily to its face and rubbed at its eyes. Gasping fr om the sudden energy drain on h im to raise the temperature of the mercury, Thomas backed away carefully. He reached out for Meg’s mind.

How do I stop it, Meg?

You can’t hurt it. It’s dead, it doesn’t feel pain. The only way is to destroy the body so it can’t be used. Look - I’ve blinded it! That won’t stop it.

Arms held out stiffly before it, Benton’s body was lurching forward again on its bore, blackened feet. Its eyes were milky white, like the protruding eyes of a boiled fish.

Sick with repulsion, Thomas tried to make contact with its mind. He found no mind at all in the dead carcase. There was a dark emptiness, and in it an impersonal drive to kill Meg. A fragment of Frazer’s hatred had been planted in the silent brain to control its rotting muscles until the mission it had been given was completed. It was a machine, programmed to do just one job.

The thing was listening, head turned to one side, trying to locate Meg. She was pressed to the wall, motionless, hardly daring to breathe. Thomas clicked his fingers loudly. The head turned towards him for a moment, then away again.

It could distinguish its quarry from others, even blind. The fragment of Frazer’s will that powered it had been irrevocably imprinted with Meg’s physical characteristics. It would recognize her and grope its way to her even in a crowd of thousands.

Thomas saw that there was only one way. He must master it. The body was a machine being used by the thing Frazer bad planted in it. If he couldn’t destroy the machine, he must tackle its energy source.

Cold sweat glued his shirt to his back. He reached in mentally and grappled with the impersonal spark that activated the flyblown corpse. It was stronger than he had thought. Like trying to bend an iron bar with his hands. He gasped w ith effort as he strained at it making Frazer’s creature sway from side to side as it resisted him.

Slowly, very slowly, Benton’s body turned awkwardly to face the door and took one step towards it.

Meg sighed in disbelief. It caught the sound and halted. Thomas glared furiously at her and forced it towards the door again. He had it under control now. Wiping the trickling sweat from his face with his sleeve, he concentrated his whole mind on keeping it moving. He dare not let it out of his sight, being unsure how far away he could control it. He followed it out of the room, four steps behind, and down the stairs.

On the ground floor, just inside the broken-locked front door, there was a renewed tussle of wills as he eased his grip for a second and the dead man swayed round to face him.

When he had the malevolent splinter of purpose tight in his grasp again he drove the shambling visitor out of the house and along the gravel to the street. Four steps behind, he made it walk unsteadily along the pavement towards Hammersmith Bridge, nearly half a mile away.

It was the longest walk of his life. As they passed the street lamps, the glaring yellow light made the prisoner in front of him even more ugly. One corner of his mind was worrying at the problem of what to do if a car came past and the driver saw the creature lurching along the pavement. But at that time of morning the two of them had the road to themselves.

He walked it out to the middle of the bridge and made it clamber over the walkway parapet, confident now of his hold over it. The long walk along the deserted road had given him time to investigate what it was that he was controlling. Using all his powers, he stifled the driving force in the creature with the thought that Meg was dead. At once the now tenantless body went slack-limbed and pitched down towards the river below. He heard the splash as it went under. The tide was running downstream fast and he did not see anything come up again.

Worn out by the struggle, he plodded back slowly to Meg’s house. He found her face down on her bed, crying quietly. He lay down beside her and tried to calm his jangling nerves, and after a while Meg wiped her eyes.

Thank you, Thomas. I’ll be your slave for life.”

1 don’t want slaves, I want friends,’

‘You’ll never have a better one than me, then,’

‘Meg - how the hell can Frazer activate a body that’s been lying rotting for months and give it a sense of purpose? I found out how it worked, but not how he did it.’

‘In theory I know how it’s done, but that’s all. I don’t know the ritual. And I don’t want to know,’

‘I need a drink. A large one.’

She went downstairs to get it, leaving him to think. When she came back with a bottle of whisky and two glasses, he asked:

‘How soon will Frazer know you’re still alive?’

‘As soon as he checks. He’ll look into his bowl before long. I’m surprised he hasn’t already,’

‘You must get out of here right away to somewhere safe,’

‘There is nowhere safe from him,’

‘There’s one place - Robert’s cottage. He put a barrier round it. If you were there, Frazer couldn’t find you through the bowl or any other way. He’d think you were dead.’

‘But you got through the barrier to guide Frazer there.’

‘Only because I’d been with Aletha the night before. I could get through to her from inside,’

“Where is this place?’

He described the route as best he could from his recollection of the return journey in Evin’s car.

Take my car,’ he said, remembering that she didn’t own one. ‘Get there fast and stay inside the barrier. There’s plenty of food in the freezer. I know the telephone number, and I’ll ring you as often as I can, I’m going to need your help very soon, I think,’

On the way out to his car he remembered.

‘Meg - Robert’s body is out in the orchard behind the cottage. Will that worry you?’

‘I’m glad he’s dead. He can lie there and rot into the ground for all I care You be careful, Thomas, you know what Frazer is capable of. You’re the only real friend I’ve got, and I don’t want anything to happen to you,’

‘Nor do I,’ he said, with feeling.

He settled her in his car, pointed out the various knobs and switches, then kissed her,

‘If I have to trust anyone,’ he said, ‘who do you think I should trust?’

‘Miriden,’ she said, ‘and David.’

‘Rachel?’

‘You know her better than I do.’

‘Why Miriden?’ he asked.

‘She’s been watching us all the time in her bowl. I asked her to do that, so there’d be someone who knew the truth about tonight. That was before I knew you would turn up.’

‘I knew she was watching,’ said Thomas, ‘because it was in your mind when we made contact. You told me a lie about nobody watching us when I asked. I can see why, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll go and sec Miriden tomorrow.’

Meg drove off in an uncertain grating of gears. Thomas went to look for on all-night taxi to take him home.

THE RAPE

Thomas lay on the settee in his living-room, unable to sleep and unwilling to go to bed. The shock of his encounter with Frazer’s emissary was affecting him badly now that it was all ove r. At intervals his hands would start to tremble and his teeth chatte r. The radio was playing sugary music from an all-night French station. A drink from the whisky bottle would calm him for a while, then the shudders would get him again.

About four it began to get light. He lay watching the window, feeling better as the black turned to grey. When it was full day he switched off the lights, finished the bottle and fell asleep by degrees.

He dreamed. He saw the clammy body looming over him again, and this time he grappled with it hand to hand. Bits of its stale flesh broke off in his hands. His fist went right through its chest into sticky black lung tissue. He woke himself up by shouting, rolled off the settee, banged his elbow on the floor and retched from the bile rising up into his mouth.

Outside he could hear the ordinary traffic noises. He curled up again and drifted back to sleep. This time he only dozed fitfully, starting awake each time his legs jerked involuntarily. When the whisky wore oil he woke up fully. He had a scaring headache and felt sick, and it was an effort to raise an arm to look at his watch. Just after ten, and the sun was streaming in through the windows. The night bogies had gone, his distress was purely physical.

He telephoned Inter-Con-Chem to explain that he was still unwell, then took a cold shower and shaved. Three aspirins, and he sat in his kitchen drinking cup after cup of sweet tea while he thought about his next move.

The recollection of Esta letting the fat man enjoy her body worried him. It could only mean that Frazer was recruiting again. With Robert dead, another man was needed to make up the double coven. And another woman, if Frazer believed that Meg was dead. But finding a replacement wasn’t so urgent that Esta had to be sent out the very next night after Robert’s death. Particularly a night when Frazer could have used her assistance in getting rid of Meg. The fat man had to be very special in some way and, according to Meg, he was a witch already.

The whole set-up bothered Thomas badly. There must be something he had missed. Something important. Like the significance of the spiral in the numbers of the Jewel. It had to be more than deliberate mystification. The computer might come up with the answer to that one. But Esta had the answer to the other.

Was she at home? Had she stayed the night with the fat matt, or had she left him after he had done all that he wanted to? At some time she would have to report to Frazer on the outcome of her errand. She might be with him at that moment.

For the first time Thomas regretted that he had not provided himself with a bowl of quicksilver. He had no idea how the others made it work, but he was certain he could do the same; he had that from Robert and from Meg. He would order a quantity of mercury from a chemical supply house and buy a suitable metal bowl. But that was no help right now.

Why mercury, he wondered? It was one of the heavier metals, between gold and lead in the periodic tables. Atomic weight 201. Atomic number 80. Eighty electrons orbiting a nucleus of eighty protons. There had to be something about its physical structure that made it possible for specific me ntal vibrations to transmit th rough it and produce an image on its surface.

He grunted and shook his head. What he was suggesting to himself was totally unscientific and manifestly absurd. And yet he’d seen it work. For th at matter there was nothing scientific about Frazer’s messenger last night. Dead men do not get up and walk. But he had seen it with his own eyes. And even caught an inkling of how it was done.

Mercury was next to gold in the table of atomic numbers. That much was scientific fact. The alchemists of the Middle Ages had sensed a proximity between the two, and set up countless experiments to find a way of turning mercury into gold, without knowing anything at all about the structure of atoms.

I wonder, he said aloud.

Was gold near enough to mercury to work like it? A difference of one electron in orbit. It was worth a try. He ransacked his flat for anything made of gold. And there it was on the mantl epiece - a gold-plated trophy amongst the other trophies of his past sporting prowess. He fetched a duster from the kitchen and polished the small cup to a bright gleam.

The words engraved on it made him grin: the name of his school and the year. He could remember the sense of pride he had felt when the headmaster presented it to him. He was seventeen, and had beaten six others outright in the boxing ring to win it. At that moment it ha d been worth the bruises and the swollen lip. If old Blanchard could guess th e use to which he was no w putting it!

Naked, he sat cross-legged on the floor with the cup standing on the coffee table, its blank side towards him. Staring at it, he narrowed down his field of awareness until his entire world was a few square inches of bright curved metal. He visualized Esta and projected the thought at the cup. Dim shadows stirred across the gold. Encouraged, he channelled his concentration yet tighter. The shadows formed into a blurred picture.

Gold was a poor substitute for mercury, he realized. The figure he saw was like a moving reflection in a distorting mirror, not the clear image of the mercury bowl. But he could, recognize it as Esta.

She was lying in a bath, foam piled high on the water. The fleur-de-lys pattern on the wall tiles told him that she was at home.

He let the picture fade out and sat thinking. His conclusion was that she had stayed all night with the fat man and just arrived home. What would she do next, after she had soaked away the dried sweat of her encounter?

He made more tea end drank it while he let twenty minutes pass. Then he looked again and got a shadowy glimpse of Esta in bed. Her own bed. Presumably she had reported to Frazer by telephone, and was going to sleep off the exertions of last night, Thomas dressed quickly, went down to where he parked his car, remembered that Meg had it and found a cruising taxi. On the way across central London to Kensington he weighed up the risks of what he was attempting. But with Meg in hiding, his own situation was precarious already. If Frazer found her and learned of his part in saving her, he was lost anyway.

He paid off the taxi outside the Commonwealth Institute and walked the rest of the way. Esta lived in a newish maisonette, one of a row, just off the main road. He knew the layout and was sure he could get in. On the street level there was a front door under a little porch and an up-and-over garage door. He glanced up and down the short street. No one in sight. Esta never bothered to lock her garage. He lifted the door and was in, alongside her bright red Mini

He lowered the door noiselessly and stood still until his eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness. On the left side of the garage was a door that led into the passage between the front door and the stairs. It had a simple lock that had been loose on his last visit. He pushed at the door cautiously and it gave a little. The look hadn’t been repaired.

Thomas put his shoulder to the door near the post and used his weight against it in a controlled thrust. There was a small sound of splinterin g wood as screws were torn out, and he almost fell into the passage as the door swung open.

At the foot of the stairs he stood listening for a long minute. There was no movement above. He took his shoes off and climbed the stairs very carefully. A quick look into the living-room and kitchen: both were empty. The bedroom and bathroom were on the floor above. He went up slowly, sc arcely breathing.

Esta had left the bedroom door half open. She makes it easy, he thought. I should be a thief and she should have a fortune in jewels lying about for the taking! She’s over-confident and careless because she knows she can deal with anyone as ordinary as a break-and-entry man.

He could hear her breathing as she slept. On the small landing at the top of the stairs he took off all his clothes and left them strewn on the floor. He eased the bedroom door open without a sound and went in, his bare feet silent on the carpet. The curtains were drawn across and the room was dim.

Esta was sleeping on her back, her long hair tied in a ribbon. Thomas stood at her side and let his mind reach out to touch her sleeping mind gently. She was beset by menacing dreams. It was as if he stood in a dark and empty cinema, watching confused images on a silent screen. He felt her anxiety without being affected by it.

Bloated pinkish-grey masses ballooned up, trying to squash her between them. They broke apart like cells dividing, grew, coalesced, always threatening to fill the screen completely but never quite managing it. There was always a tiny segment of unfilled space between the globes, a small corner in which she could escape suffocation.

Thomas eased away. The dream was the result of her sexual submission to the fat man. Obviously she had not enjoyed it. The passive role frightened her.

For Thomas’s immediate purpose Esta had to be awake and aware of what he intended. In one quick movement he whipped the bedclothes away and knelt over her. He sat down hard on her belly, gripping her sides with his knees. Her eyes opened, she took in the scene and heaved upwards to unseat him, but Thomas held her down with his weight. Her hands snatched at his exposed genitals to twist him loose and he caught her wrists and pinned them to the pillow on either side of her head.

Her body arched between his clamped thighs as he brought his face down towards hers until their eyes were only a hand’s breadth apart. Esta made no attempt to scream or cry out, but her luminous eyes dilated with fear as she realized too late that his purpose was not simple physical rape.

Thomas bored into her mind with all his strength. She resisted furiously, clenching her mind tight as a fist and hitting back with it to hurt him. He knew he was tackling a dangerous opponent, but his powers had been so mightily expanded by what he absorbed from Robert in the orchard that he was confident that he was more than equal to her. He rammed his way ruthlessly into her mind, overwhelming her with naked strength, until he was too far in for her to dislodge him. Her fight ended abruptly. She lay trembling beneath him, eyes wide open and unfocused, completely exposed to him.

He ransacked her recent memory for the information he wanted. The fat man’s name was Geraint. He was master of a coven in south London. Frazer had approached him some time ago with the suggestion that they should merge their covens. A triple coven would have staggering potential, and it was also necessary for the ritual of the Jewel, according to the text.

Geraint liked the idea. He sow himself as master of the triple coven and owner of the golden book, if he could manage to dispose of Frazer,

Esta’s part was to set the trap. She went to Geraint to persuade him that she would help him to get rid of Frazer as soon as the covens were joined. To show her good faith she had taken him hair-cuttings supposed to be Frazer’s and had made her body available to him. She didn’t know whose hair Frazer had given her, but thought it was probably Robert’s, cut after his death.

She believed that Geraint had taken the bait in spite of an awkward moment when he thought he was being watched.

Frazer’s plan was to get rid of Geraint as soon as the two covens became one, Esta and Aleister assisting him. Geraint’s followers would be left with no choice then but to stay with Frazer. The joining of the covens and Geraint’s quick demise were planned for the next week, at Frazer’s house.

Thomas shrank momentarily from the prospect of Frazer having the combined power of three dozen witches to manipulate. He would be three short of the triple coven, with Ge raint dead, Robert dead and Meg supposed dead, but three recruits would not be all that hard to find between them.

Now that he had the information he was after, Thomas began a slow and thorough exploration of Esta’s mind. Her attitude towards men, formed by the unhappiness of her experiences with them. Her frustration at not being able to sustain a lasting relationship. Her sense of rejection except as a sex toy.

She had hidden from herself her deep-seated need for a man to love and protect her, and had determined that men were to be despised and used for her own ends. But underneath the protective shield of hostility, back through the self-destructive love-affairs of the past, there was a ten-year-old Esta crying herself to sleep because she felt herself abandoned by her father.

Her feelings towards Frazer were based largely on gratitude, Thomas observed. Frazer was the only man she had known about whom she could be totally certain that he would not one day vanish from her life and leave her alone again. And he was more powerful than she was. He was able to command her.

It was a complicated relationship on her side. It had been satisfactory as a resolution of her needs for some years, but now it was flawed and she was trying to conceal the flaw from herself.

Thomas filled her mind with the memory that sickened her. Frazer, white-faced and afraid for his life, turning in baffled rage on his own followers, the night Robert had taken Janine. Frazer showing he was ready to sacrifice all of them for his own safety. Frazer weak and frightened.

Now that she had seen him like that, Esta no longer accepted him unreservedly as her master. He was blurring into the father who had failed her, the lover who had backed away. She wanted to be free of him. Unwittingly he had put into her hands the means of escape. On his instructions she had told Geraint that she would help him to oust Frazer and be master of the triple coven. A simple double-cross she could turn into a much more complicated double-cross by helping Geraint in earnest. She had not yet fully resolved to do so, but the thought was there in her mind. If Geraint had been a more attractive person and a more considerate lover, she would have made up her mind already.

Thomas examined her knowledge of witchcraft. It was six years since Frazer had found her drifting and initiated her into his original coven. The memory of the rite was very clear in her mind. The feel of the cold slab under her bare back. Frazer Standing between her thighs, lunging sharply into her. The explosion of black light and the heightened awareness afterwards.

Frazer had recognized her potential and her strong intelligence. He had kept her close to him, and she had learned as much in a few years as some of the others had in twenty. Thomas studied all she knew, piece by piece. Much of it overlapped what he had got from Robert, but some of it was new to him. He fixed it carefully in hi s memory. Robert, Meg and Esta h ad been the inner council of the cove n, however vehemently Frazer ha d denied it. All their knowledge was combined in Thomas now. He was nearly ready for Frazer.

First, Esta must change sides. Thomas wanted her consent and her active support, not merely her knowledge. Pillaging her mind, he had seen that her feelings about himself were jumbled. She had started by despising him because she had been able to trick him into accepting initiation by the attraction of her body. She regarded him as a useful fool who could be led by his erection, as a bull is led by a ring through its nose. But a dim half-respect had flickered in her when she saw the way he stood up to Frazer on the night of the kidnapping.

Thomas built on what he found. He expanded the faint respect she felt until it filled her mind. He showed her the picture from her own memory of himself standing up boldly while Frazer crouched in fear of his life on his yellowish stone slab. And then he made her imagine Frazer lying smashed and dead on the floor. He boosted her mingled feelings of revulsion, admiration and relief.

Last of all, he enacted in her mind a scene of lovemaking between him and her. Not lustful, not dominating, not mechanistic, but warmly affectionate. He made her picture herself spread out comfortably beneath him, her arms r ound his neck, accepting him ple asurably. He played the scene for a long time, to impress it deeply, flooding her with waves of friendliness and trusting intimacy. He was setting up a pair-bond she would find it very difficult to break. When he felt sure about it, he triggered off her orgasm.

Her body heaved and squirmed ecstatically. He withdrew from her mind and unseated himself from astride her. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, watching as she shuddered, her knees drawn up and apart.

When she was calm again she turned to face him.

‘Thomas,’ she said, in a puzzled way.

He put his arms round her and she cuddled close to him,

‘You’ve changed,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand what’s happened to you.’

‘I haven’t changed. I’ve learned.’

Even as he said it he knew it was untrue. He had changed significantly. Or perhaps he had developed. He had been a victim, but had become a predator in order to survive. He fully intended to use Esta as she had used him.

‘You have,’ she said, softiy, ‘and so have I. Somehow I feel right with you.’

He stroked her hair and released it from its ribbon. He made love to her slowly and carefully, recreating with their bodies the scene he had played out in her mind. The physical act was much quicker than the mental one. Esta’s already sensitized body responded eagerly to the manipulation of his fingers. She was soon on her back again, legs splayed, urging him to mount her. Thomas’s body outran his mind under the stimulus of her first real surrender to him. He plunged headlong towards a triumphant climax, relishing her gasps and moans of acceptance.

When their convulsions faded he knew that he had consolidated his hold on her. Esta was his creature for as long as she believed him to be stronger than Frazer.

THE KILL

Esta trusted no one at all in the coven. It was only her newly acquired confidence in Thomas that took her with him that evening to Rachel’s, and Rachel herself had been none too easy to persuade on the telephone that her house should be the meeting place. She guessed that something was wrong and was reluctant to become involved. Thomas chose her home for two good reasons, By agreeing, she was accepting a commitment in advance. And, most necessary for his purpose, she had a large garden.

When he arrived, David and Miriden were already there. David hod agreed to come with very little questioning. Miriden had accepted readily. But both of them fell silent and wary when they saw that he had Esta with him. She was the last person they expected.

Rachel bustled about getting drinks for them and playing the hostess until the silence got to her, when she sat down and looked at Thomas. They were all watching him, waiting for him to show his hand. Thomas drained his glass and set it down. He glanced round his little circle, painfully aware that his life would shortly depend on their goodwill.

Dark-haired Rachel, her full lips pressed tightly together as she fidgeted beside Thomas on the settee. Esta sitting straight-backed and deliberately still, her face a blank mask. David’s thin intelligent face apprehensive, his eyes still red-rimmed and sore but healing fast. Miriden seemed the calmest of the m, maybe because she knew more. But her wide-apart pale blue eyes turned away from his direct gaze.

‘Are we being watched?’ Thomas asked.

David and Miriden both shook their heads.

‘Are you sure? It’s important’

David nodded and Miriden said yes.

‘I rely on you two. If we are overlooked at any time, tell me at once.’

‘What’s all this?’ Rachel demanded. ‘What’s so important about it? I mean, we are not doing anything that shouldn’t be watched, are we?’

She looked worried. Thomas put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. From Esta’s mind he had learned the technique of calming agitation by physical contact, Rachel smiled back at him.

‘Esta is going to tell us what Frazer did to Meg,’ he said.

‘He killed her last night,’ said Esta.

‘But why?’ Rachel asked. “Why should he do that?’

‘He was sure that she had helped Robert against him. He didn’t believe that Robert was tough enough to go it alone,’ Esta explained.

‘He was wrong about Meg,’ Thomas added, ‘and he was wrong about Robert, Robert was more than equal to what he planned. He only lost because he was greedy. If he had used Janine to destroy Frazer he could have taken over the coven. But he wanted to save Janine for the other ritual. He fell between two stools. Do you know how Frazer killed Meg, Esta?’

‘No, I didn’t help him. You know where I was last night. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘Miriden, you were watching Meg last night because she asked you to. She wanted a witness. What did you see in the bowl?’

‘Frazer took Benton’s body to Meg’s house. It was in the car boot, wrapped in a blanket. Frazer was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t know I was watching him. Or maybe he knew he was being watched and didn’t care . I saw him and Ale ister lift it out and put it on the ground and unwind it. Frazer went through the ritual there in the dark. He breathed life into the body and it got to its feet, all black and rotten. He pointed to the door and spoke to it and it walked through the locked door. He sent that horrible thing to rip her to pieces.’

‘I’m going to be sick!’ Rachel moaned.

She had a hand to her mouth and she was heaving. Thomas put his arms round her quickly and calmed her.

‘Get her some brandy,’ he said to Esta. ‘Easy, Rachel, you’ll feel better in a minute.’

Her teeth chattered against the rim of the glass before she was in control of herself again.

‘You didn’t tell me that,’ Esta said to Thomas accusingly. ‘I didn’t realize how awful it was. There’s no doubt in my mind at all - Frazer has gone mad. This business with Robert has pushed him right over the edge. Once suspicion gets a grip on him, nobody will be safe - he’ll see plots and conspiracies everywhere. We’ve got to stop him before he does away with all of us, one after another.’

David, Miriden and Rachel looked at her in wonder.

‘You say that?’ Miriden asked.

‘I see it clearer than any of you because I know him better. Robert took a chance and lost and paid for it. But not Meg. She did nothing against Frazer. But he thought she did. It will be my turn next. And then you.’

‘There’s something else you should know,’ said Thomas, gauging reactions as he proceeded. ‘It may be our turn sooner than you think. Tell them about the fat man, Esta.’

‘Frazer’s been having secret meetings with the master of a coven in Dulwich. They’ve agreed to join covens. Frazer said it was to make a triple coven for the project, but I’m not so sure now. Maybe it’s to replace those of us he doesn’t trust any more.’

‘Has this man agreed to accept Frazer as master?’ Rachel asked.

‘He pretends he has, but his intention is to dispose of Frazer. I’ve promised to help him, on Frazer’s orders.’

‘You’ve met him then. What’s he like?’

Esta screwed up her face in an expression of disgust

‘Esta’s promise to help him is part of Frazer’s plan,’ Thomas put in. ‘He intends to kill this Geraint, as you’d expect, and take over his people.’

Miriden shivered.

‘We’ve been through this before,’ she said. ‘Other people will get hurt, just like last time.’

They sat in silence for a while, busy with their own dismaying thoughts.

‘You got us here, Thomas,’ David said at last, blinking his watering eyes. ‘What do you want to do?’

The furtive way he said it displeased Thomas. The women had huddled in close like fearful plotters against a tyrant. He leaned back and radiated waves of confidence at them. He made himself a lighthouse of hope shining through the darkness they felt pressing in on them. He held out his hands, palms upwards, and they all reached out to hold on to him. Their uneasiness faded slowly, until they were looking at him in almost childlike trust.

He had them now. They were his to use. Without speaking, he told them through their minds that Meg was still alive and in a safe place.

‘It’s true!’ Miriden exclaimed aloud, ‘I saw it all in the bowl He saved her from that thing.’

She leaned forward to kiss the hand she and Esta were holding.

Frazer can be stopped, Thomas told them wordlessly, we must stop him before he tries again with another of us.

It was too hard to go on reaching four minds at the same time. Thomas went back to words.

The four of us can do it, and do it quickly. There’s no time to go looking for more helpers. And we don’t know who we can trust.’

‘What can we do?’ Rachel asked. “What do you have in mind?’

‘It’s quite simple,’ he assured them. ‘We can use his own plans against him. We’ll dispose of Gcraint and let his coven think that Frazer did it. They’ll go after him at once, you know that.’

‘That’s good,’ said Rachel. ‘That’s what we’ll do.’

The others agreed immediately, relieved that they were not being asked to move directly against their master.

“How shall we do it?’ David asked. ‘Do you know how powerful this man is?’

‘He’s very powerful,’ Esta answered. T conned him into giving me a demonstration, for Frazer’s benefit.’

‘Then how are we to do it?’ said David, in some agitation.

‘Listen to me,’ said Thomas, ‘and stop frightening yourselves. We are more than a match for Geraint, I give you my word. Do you trust me?’

They were still gripping his hands, drawing comfort from him.

‘Yes,’ said David.

‘Esta?’

‘You know I do. I don’t have to tell you.’ ‘Rachel?’

‘Anything you say, Thomas. I trust you. I always have.’ ‘Miriden?’

‘Yes … though I don’t know why I should.’ ‘Do you need to know why?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter. I think you know what you’re doing.’ ‘Right then, clothes off, everyone, and out into the garden with me.’

He gave them no time for self-doubt or second thoughts. They stripped quickly, caught up in his mood of action and eager to see what he was going to do. At th at moment they would have followed him blindly over the edge of a cliff. Which, he reflected, might be just what they were about to do.

It was raining outside. They followed him into the middle of Rachel’s lawn, the grass wet and cold under their bare feet. The sky was overcast and dark.

Thomas stood firmly, feet apart, facing south.

‘Kneel round me,’ he instructed them. ‘Put your arms round my waist and thighs. Support me. Be ready to put all your strength into me when I tell you.’

Their wet arms closed round him, their bodies pressed close to his legs. Esta’s face was against his belly, Miriden’s cheek against his back. Rachel clung to his left thigh, her loose breasts either side of it, her face turned up towards him. David was on his right, holding him tightl y by the waist. In the darkness he was a white pillar buttressed on all sides, four-square and solid.

Ignoring the rain trickling down his face and body, Thomas concentrated his thoughts and sent out a long mental probe, feeling for Geraint but careful not to touch him. After a moment or two he found him, across the other side of London. To make contact with his mind would be to warn him. There was someone with Geraint, someone he was talking to. Thomas pulled away and paused. He had no qualms about what he was going to do to the fat man, but it was no part of his intention that any of his people should suffer with him.

No point in worrying’ about that, he decided. There was too much at stake to hesitate. Right or wrong, he was going ahead. Bystanders must take their chance along with participants. No one was innocent who was in close conversation with Geraint,

He forced himself to breathe deeply and regularly, inflating his chest, gathering his strength. He thought back to the night of his second ordeal, the night of fire on Frazer’s roof. When he was sure he had it right, he raised his face to the sky and hummed the long clear note Frazer had used.

‘No, Thomas, don’t!’ Rachel cried out. ‘There aren’t enough of us here for that. You’ll kill us all!’

He put his hand on her wet hair to calm her. After a while her voice joined in with his, and then the others took it up. The note rose loud and ringing through the rain, like the vibrati on of a tuning-fork. It was too dark to see what was happening in the sky, but Thomas knew that the clouds above him were thickening up into a thunder-head. Against all sense, logic and experience, he knew it was happening.

The note had become self-sustaining, a call that summoned the clouds, set them in turmoil to build up their electrical potential to colossal proportions. Thomas could feel it above him, the swirling power he had called, ready for discharge. He must command it before its instability brought it down on his own head in a torrent of destruction.

‘Ready!’ he gasped to the four clutching him in terror. ‘Take a deep breath and put your strength into me. Now I’

He raised his arm and pointed at the black cloud he knew must be above him. In his mind he held a clear image of Geraint as he had seen him in Meg’s bowl. He shouted the word of command that Frazer had used.

Jagged white fire leaped down towards him and Thomas instantly dropped his arm to shoulder level, pointing to where he knew Geraint was.

In a tearing crash of thunder he saw the lightning deflected in its course, away from himself and his huddled group, to strike miles away to the south.

At once his mind probed for Geraint. This time there was no need for caution. The lightning had struck Geraint full force and burnt him out. Most of his brain was wisps of shrivelled tissue. He was deeply and irreversibly unconscious, and the dregs of his life were ebbing away fast.

Thomas looked out through Geraint’s wide open but sightless eyes. He saw the smoking hole in the ceiling where the bolt had torn through. The armchair he sat in was burning and its stuffing was given off a thick black smoke. On the singed rug at his feet lay a woman in yellow satin trousers. She was naked above the waist. There was a fiery scorchmark from below her car, across her neck and chest, down to her right breast. She looked dead, but then her fingers trembled and her eyes fluttered open.

Thomas went into her mind. She was in deep shock, unable to understand what was happening to her. Through her eyes he looked up from the floor at Geraint sprawled in his burning chair, his head charred black above the mass of his swollen body in its smouldering clothes.

The woman’s name was Rienza. In her dazed mind Thomas created an image she would never forget - Frazer’s face, crimson-blemished on one side, lips drawn back to show his teeth in a grin of malice.

I am Frazer, he said in her mind. I have destroyed your master. I mill destroy you all one by one.

He impressed the words deeply on her so that she would remember them when the shock wore off. Hurriedly he riffled through her memory for the names of the other members of her coven, their abilities and anything else of use to him.

She was incapable of movement by herself. Controlling her mind, Thomas forced her to her feet shakily as flames licked up from the rug. He guided her out of the room and across a hall and used her fumbling hands to open the outside door. One last impulse sent her staggering out, to collapse in the garden.

Thomas went back into Geraint’s shattered mind. The fat man sat unmoving in his blazing armchair, feeling nothing as his skin blackened and flaked away. Thomas watched the last flicker of life die in him. In the shredded remnants of his brain the re was the darkness and emptiness of death. Outside, roaring flames were consuming his gross body and his house.

It was a wonderful relief to be back in the rain on Rachel’s lawn, feeling the cold drops sliding down his body.

‘It’s donel’ he shouted in triumph. ‘We’ve done it!’

THE BARGAIN

It was just after eleven the next morning when Thomas parked his rented car outside Robert’s cottage. The place looked deserted, with curtains drawn at all the windows facing the road. There was no sign of his own car, which Meg had taken,

‘Are you sure she’s here?’ Miriden asked doubtfully, ‘Frazer might have got her on the way,’

‘Stay here while I check.’

He had to cross Robert’s barrier first. It was well hidden. Robert had dug a circle round the house, inches deep, laid his mixture of salt and iron in it and filled it up carefully. Grass and flowers had done the rest. To the casual observer there was nothing to be seen.

Thomas could feel exactly where it was. Once inside it he could explore the house mentally without going through the door.

Meg was upstairs, he saw, crouching silently in the bedroom, made apprehensive by the approaching car.

Meg, it’s me. Come down and open the door. There’s som eone with you. Who is it? Miride n. We’ve a lot to tell you.

He heard movement in the house, footsteps on the stairs, then the door was unlocked, Meg put her arms round him and hugged him to her. Miriden joined them and the women kissed each other.

‘Why have you brought this?’ Meg asked, taking from Miriden the green leather box that housed Lesage’s skull.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Thomas. ‘Make some coffee while I explain what’s been happening. We’ve been on our way since eight without a stop.’

They sat in the kitchen where Robert had been bound, while Thomas told Meg of his conquest of Esta and the death of Geraint.

‘My God, you don’t believe in doing things by halves, do you?’ said Meg, pouring coffee for them. ‘What’s your next step?’

‘I sent Esta and Rachel to Dulwich this morning to find the 196 woman who was hurt with Gera int, She’s in hospital there. They’ll get in touch with her coven through her and explain that Frazer killed Geraint. The woman will back them up, because that’s what she believes.’

‘And you think they’ll have a go at Frazer?’

‘Yes, I do. Esta will tell them she was planning to help Geraint take over but Frazer moved too fast for her. It will all sound quite convincing. Rachel will heal Rie nza to show her good faith. And Esta will offer to help the coven get Frazer. By nightfall he should have his hands full.’

‘I hope it works.’

‘It’s now or never, Meg. There are so many of us missing that Frazer is bound to suspect som ething, if he hasn’t already.’ ‘We’re on thin ice’

‘It’s so damned thin that it’s cracking already, Frazer will be looking for Esta today. Her only chance is with Geraint ‘s coven.’

‘What about David?”

‘He’s taking Brigit out for the day. That way we can keep an eye on her, and being with her is cover for him.’

‘You haven’t said much, Miriden,’ Meg observed. ‘What do you think about it all?’

‘I’m terrified, if you want the truth, There are six of us, counting you. Six to take on Frazer and the rest of the coven. I’m not very optimistic about our chances.’

‘Still, you came here with Thomas.’

‘I must be mad.’

‘Tell the truth. We’ve known each other long enough for that,’

‘Ever since Thomas joined us I’ve had this different feeling about Frazer. I don’t know why. I’ve come to see what a monster he is. I let myself be carried along before, I suppose, without bothering too much about some of the things he made us do. After al l, I was enjoying my life. Now I don’t. It’s gone bad. You know I’m not sentimental about people. We all use them to our own advantage. But the way Frazer used us that night when Robert had Janine turned me right off him. He made it obvious that we were certainly not brothers and sisters in the coven any more, if we ever had been. We were just things to be used up. You know what I mean. We were throw-aways.’

‘We always were,’ said Meg, ‘only we never faced it.’

Miriden was extremely agitated.

To think I worshipped that man once,’ she said, ‘and that was because he rescued me from being a throw-away. He was a great solid rock I could lean on. I wasn’t just a thing to be groped and poked and sent home in a taxi. I was a real person. And then he destroyed it all for me.’

Thomas was listening to Miriden’s mounting hysteria with interest. Tiierc was still much he needed to know about Frazer’s hold over his followers.

Meg put her arm round Miriden’s shoulders.

‘Don’t let it upset you,’ she said, ‘it’s best to know the truth.’

‘Upset! My God, I’m upset! I’ve done things for that man you wouldn’t believe. And enjoyed doing them.’

“We’ve all sampled his peculiar ways in bed. That’s nothing to fret over.’

‘I don’t mean sex. That’s never bothered me. I mean those experiments I helped him with. I can’t believe it now, but it happened, my God it happened, and I helped him.’

Thomas touched Miriden’s mind and recoiled at once from the memory he found here. A thin pubescent boy with his trousers down round his knees. Miriden teasing him with her fingers as she coaxed him to take off his clothes. In the background, Frazer waiting for the right moment.

Miriden broke off her tirade to look at Thomas incredulously.

“You were inside my head then,’ she said.

Thomas put his palms on her cheeks and calmed her down.

‘How many boys altogether?’

‘Four, before he got it right.’

‘What was it for?’

‘He never really told me. He said he wanted to reconstruct something. Or maybe he was trying to reconstruct somebody. He always sent me away when I’d done what he wanted and the boys were unconscious. I think he killed them. There were always surgeon’s knives about and empty jars.’

She began to cry.

‘You are not responsible for what you did under the influence of that man,’ said Thomas, dipping into her mind again.

Ego absolvo te, Miriden. There is no penance.

‘Thank you, Thomas,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I knew you would help me when I watched you driving that maggoty thing away from Meg.’

‘I’m no St George. I helped her so that she would help me. I want to be free from that red-faced madman.’

There’s five of us feel the same way to our knowledge,’ said Miriden, ‘and more if we have time to talk to them.’

‘Our time’s running out. We’ve got tonight and that’s about it’

‘But you’ve got Geraint’s coven working for you,’ she reminded him. ‘With Esta and Rachel to back them up, they’ll finish him.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Thomas. ‘Geraint couldn’t save himself from a few of us last night His coven can’t be very strong.’

‘But there’s no protection against the li ghtning,’ Miriden objected.

‘There is. We’ve all stood on Frazer’s roof and seen him call down the fire and let it play harmlessly about us.’

“What are you telling me?’ Miriden asked. “What’s going to happen to us if Geraint’s coven can’t finish Frazer? He’ll know we’re involved.’

‘They are a diversion to give us a chance.’

‘Us? Six of us, you mean?’

Frazer, being a coward about his own safety, will shout for help when Geraint’s coven hit him,’ Thomas explained. ‘Esta will be with them. Rachel will not, she will be keeping Sado busy. David will be taking care of Brig it. I want Meg to look after Ale ister. And I want you to be with Aletha. That way, we’ve put out of action the four people he will want I’m not worried about any of the others.’

‘You mean that you are going to take on Frazer yourself?’

“You’ve guessed it’

‘He’ll kill you,’ said Miriden flady.

‘Maybe he will and maybe he won’t. But I want no more of him.’

‘You’re as mad as he is!’

‘Miriden, stop talking like a child,’ said Meg. ‘A minute ago you wanted Thomas to save you. Now you’ve got to prove it. Did you expect a joyride? He’s not asking much from you.’

‘He saved your life. He hasn’t done much for me so far, and I’ve already helped him kill a man I’ve never even met. I think he owes me something.’

‘Let’s put some cards on the table,’ Thomas interrupted. “No sham, no reservations. What do you want from me, Maiden?”

‘I want to be safe to enjoy my life the way I want to live it.

The way I was living it before all this started, before Robert turned everything upside down,’

That’s reasonable, You’ve got a very comfortable l ife. All the money you can spend, friends, lovers, good looks, an attractive body. And all that is hanging by a thread. Frazer can take it away from you whenever he wants.’

‘Kill me, you mean.’

‘Or worse. Suppose he were to cripple your mind. He can do that without even exerting himself. Then where are you? Powers gone, money gone, lovers gone. Can y ou imagine spending the next th irty years of your life in a public asylum? Bedraggled, half-insane, forgotten. Drifting down bare corridors from a ward crowded with poor demented women to a day-room full of shabby furniture. Eating slops, prodded and pried into by uncomprehend ing doctors. Growing old and grey-ha ired and blowsy.’

Miriden stared at him in stark terror.

‘I will give you safety,’ he went on, ‘safety to enjoy your life to the full. You are a sensuous woman. You like to cosset your body and put fine clothes on it. You like men to fondle it and give you pleasure. I promise you all this. All I want is a little help when we go back to London.’

‘What do you want me to do?” she asked in a small voice, ‘I want you to divert Aletha so that she doesn’t help Frazer .’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. You’ve been a witch far longer than she has . You must be able to confuse her and keep her busy.’

‘You can do that,’ Meg encouraged her. ‘Her mind’s full of superstition from her childhood. It can’t be too difficult to entrance her in unreality.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Miriden, sounding confident.

‘Good,’ said Thomas. ‘How do you feel about taking on Aleister, Meg?’

‘You sprang that one on me, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I’ll do it with pleasure. I’ll make the bastard squirm for helping Frazer.’

‘Make him suffer all you like, but don’t ruin him completely unless you have to. With Frazer out of the way he could be very useful.”

‘You’re not the same man who joined us six months ago,’ said Miriden. ‘I can see you now at your initiation, like a sheep ish schoolboy. And when we came up out of the cave you were stupid with fear. Now you’re making arrangements and giving orders as if you’d been the master of a coven for years. What changed you?’

‘Frazer. I found out that I’m not a born follower, as I once thought. But there’s no time for that now. We’ve got things to do before we start the drive back. And that reminds me, where’s my car, Meg?’

‘Hidden in an old barn down the road.’

‘Before we go, I want to raise Lesage.’

‘I knew that when I saw Miriden with the box. You want his advice?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Get your questions ready first. You’d only have time for two or three at the most,’

‘I’ve been dunking about that. When we think we see Lesage , we must be experiencing the effects of a resonance pattern.’

“You can give it any scientific name you like. It makes no difference. I see Lesage and speak to him, and he answers me.’

‘It does make a difference. What I think may be happening is this - you channel the energy generated by your partner’s sexual release towards the skull. In some way I do not understand this energy excites the skull into producing a resonance pattern. Like hitting a gong with a stick and getting a note from its vibrations. The note doesn’t fade at once. It lingers for a while as the metal of the gong vibrates. Just as the impression of Lesage lingers for a little while.’

‘I don’t see where this is getting us.’

‘You’ll see in a minute. We are not hitting the skull with a stick to produce an audible vibration, but with some sort of beamed mental energy. The impact releases a stored memory of a personali ty, visual, audible and apparentl y with some self-awareness.’

‘I still don’t see what you’re getting at.’

‘Well, bear with me for a bit longer. It seems to me unlikely that this resonance pattern, if that’s what it is, could be generated at bone-cell level. More probably it’s happening at mol ecular level, or even at atomic level.’

‘Does it matter, as long as it works?’

There’s enormous energy inside atoms. If we could make the process self-sustaining, the Lesage impression wouldn’t fade away so fast. We could hold it steady while we had a long conversation with it.’

Meg gripped his arm.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, though I don’t know if it will work until we try. In theory it could. We might be able to start a chain reaction that would keep the Lesage impression in existence. Of course, the skull would be slowly consumed as its mass was converted into energy.’

‘You mean that there would be nothing left eventually?’

‘That’s what I mean. Though eventually is a very long time.’

Meg was still holding his arm.

‘There’s always a price to be paid,’ she said.

Thomas nodded.

‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘If I’m right, that what we think we see as Lesage is purely a mental impression, then it has no learning capacity and it has no post-mortem memory.’

‘That can’t be true. He remembers me.’

‘He knew you in his lifetime, that’s why. But not me. Think of a talking picture projected on a screen. It can’t change, however many times you project it. I have experienced the projection, but the projection hasn’t experienced me. Do you see what I mean?’

‘I think so, but why is that important?’

‘To you it’s not, to me it is. There is no reason at all why the Lesage manifestation should want anything to do with me.’

‘I’ll do everything I can to persuade him, I promise you.’

‘Let’s get started then. Where is the best place?”

‘Somewhere quiet where we shan’t be disturbed by any outside noise. And not too much light. The back bedroom will do.’

Thomas and Miriden followed her upstairs to the room where Janine had been held prisoner. Meg drew the curtains and Thomas pushed the bed up against the wall to make more room. In the half-darkness the three of them undressed and threw their clothes on to the bed. Meg took the white skull from its box with loving care and set it on the grey carpet.

‘Did you bring the unguent?’ she asked.

‘There were so many bottles and jars in your cabinet that I didn’t know which it was.’

‘It speeds things up, that’s all. We can manage without it Lie down.’

‘I want to watch the process from outside,’ said Thomas, ‘otherwise I shall not be able to understand it and control it’ Meg looked at him in surprise.

‘What you require is orgasmic energy,’ he said. ‘How it is generated doesn’t matter. Use Miriden.’

‘Use me, is it?’ said Miriden, half-frowning. She cupped her long breasts in her hands and held them towards him. ‘Use me yourself, then.’

‘If I do that I shall be too much involved. Meg, you understand what I mean.’

‘So does she,’ said Meg. ‘Get down on the floor, Miriden, we’re wasting time.’

Miriden shrugged and lay down on the carpet, legs apart, one foot on either side of the skull. From where he sat on the bed Thomas was looking the length of her fleshy body, from the parting in her straw-coloured hair, down between her flat-nippled breasts to the wispy patch at the base of her belly. Meg knelt beside her and felt between her thighs. Thomas closed his eyes and silently framed an incantation that would keep him aloof from the sexuality of the scene enacted below him.

Incantation? Where did I learn that, one part of his mind questioned as the words unfolded. Robert, Meg, Esta? A useful thing to know if, say, Brigit were weaving one of her aphrodisiac spells. It’s a complete counter to it.

The words enfolded him like petals, isolating him from distraction. He opened his eyes and watched unmoved. The two naked women seemed very far away, small and unimportant. Like people seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The active one was using both hands to stimulate the other. The passive one was rolling her head slowly from side to side on the floor and whimpering.

“Lesage, arise!’ he heard. The words served the purpose of channelling the thoughts of the active partner and to direct the energy the other one was about to release.

The passive puppet’s ecstatic wail was overlaid by the other woman’s urgent call to Lesage. The air above the tiny distant skull thickened into shape. Thomas cast o ff the protective cocoon that ha d surrounded him as the form of Lesage materialized, hook-nosed and pot-bellied.

Instantly he tried for mental contact with it. But there was nothing there where the image stood. As he had guessed, the impression of Lesage was inside his own mind. He traced the energy waves from Miriden to the skull. Where they impinged on it, there was an interaction taking place as immaterial as a gravitational field changing a distant orbit across an infinity of space. But he could feel what was happening.

The field was collapsing in on itself and the orbit was reverting to its former path as Miriden’s throes faded. Without knowing what he was doing, Thomas reached into the structure of the white bone with his mind, and found the point where Miriden’s pinpoint of energy fragmented matter into ripples of greater energy that created the Lesage manifestation. He enclosed interaction point in a force field of his own making. Unable to escape and disperse itself, the last fleeting spark exploded into a searing blaze. Or so it seemed to him, groping about in the lattice of molecules that composed the skull.

Thomas withdrew into himself to see if he had achieved what he wanted. Beyond Meg’s broad back, rearing over her, the imagined form of Lesage stood ghostly above his own relic Miriden was propped on her elbows to stare at it in wonder, still displaying her parts to it. The chain reaction had been set off and the Lesage figure stayed in being.

Thomas slid off the bed and moved forward to stand beside Meg, his hand on her bare shoulder.

Lesage, do you know me? he asked soundlessly.

There was no point in speaking aloud to something which existed only in his own mind and the women’s.

No.

‘Meg, tell him who I am and what I want to do,’ he said, shaking her gently out of her rapt contemplation,

‘Thomas wants to kill Frazer,’ she said,

An echo of laughter, cynical and despising.

‘A great deal has happened,’ Thomas said aloud, for Meg’s benefit. ‘Frazer has killed Robert and tried to kill Meg. He is mad and dangerous.’

He was always mad and dangerous. I found out too late.

‘Please help Thomas,’ Meg pleaded, ‘Do it for me.’

What did you do for me when I most needed you?

Meg put her hands to her face and sobbed wildly.

‘That wasn’t necessary,’ Thomas hit back angrily. ‘She still loves you though you’ve been dead for years.’

What use is her love to me now? What use was it ever?

Thomas knelt beside Meg and put his arms round her protectively.

‘He never had any feelings when he was alive,’ said Mirid en. ‘Make a bargain with him. It’s the only way.’

‘Look after Meg, then.’

Miriden sat up and took Meg in her arms as Thomas got to his feet to confront the imagined figure.

Tell me what you want, Lesage, and I’ll tell you what I want.

I know what you want and you know what I want.

Don’t get clever with me, Thomas responded pugnaciously, or I’ll snuff you out like a candle. I can, you know.

Very well. You want my help to destroy Frazer, But you know the way already, so why do you ask me?

Not the way he did it to you, said Thomas, communing silently so that the women wo uld not overhear the exchange. I w on’t use a child’s life to end his.

Nothing else is so sure. Every other way risks your own life. That one does not.

It’s my life to risk. And there are worse things than dying.

How far advanced are you, Thomas?

I know all that Robert knew, all that Esta knows, all that Meg knows. And more. I understand the Jewel formula. Do you? Can you make it?

Yes, though it would take time and money. A lot of each.

You are young enough to have time. I can instruct you where to get all the money you need.

Unless I can get rid of Frazer I shall have no time at alt because I shall be dead. I see that you are still interested in the Jewel.

The man who possesses it controls time and space, life and death.

How does that help you?

I want to live again in the flesh.

I thought you might. In all fairness I must tell you that I have no faith in the power of this so-called Jewel of Life to raise the dead. Or to perform any of the other miracles you attribute to it.

You say you know how to make it. What do you make it from?

Eight elements ranging up a scale. Seven of them I can buy anywhere, one of them I have to make.

Then if you know that much you must know that the Jewel has the property of distorting space-time around it. Within its aura marvels can be performed that are not possible in the ordinary world with its mundane natural laws.

I assumed that it was an effect of that sort. Even so, I do not believe that it will bring you back to life.

There are many things which you may not believe which are nevertheless true, Th omas. I am dead, and yet you are speaking to me. Who woul d believe that?

No, Lesage is dead. The living Lesage who took his pleasure with these two women has gone forever. The pattern that formed his mind was wiped clean when his brain died. His body has rotted away in the earth, I am not talking to Lesage. I am experiencing a residual memory in a bone cell.

You are taunting me! I can live again. The residual memory, as you call it, can be implanted in another living body. A young and strong body. I will help you choose it.

So you’ve told me what I want and what you want. Is it a bargain?

‘Is he to be trusted, Meg?’ Lesage seemed to say aloud.

She had stopped crying.

‘I’d trust him with my life,’ she said.

‘How easily women persuade themselves to trust men who show them any kindness.’ Meg said nothing to Lesage’s sneer.

‘You exist only in our minds,’ said Thomas, ‘and being in my mind you know whether or not you can trust me. Why ask Meg?’

‘I can see what you want me to see. Meg knows you.’

‘Tell me what I want to know,’ said Thomas. ‘My life depends on it. And so does your future, if you are to have one.’

Send the women away. This is not for them,

‘Go downstairs, please,’ Thomas instructed them. ‘I’ll be down later.’

‘Let me stay,’ Meg said,

‘Downstairs,’ Thomas repeated.

The women collected their clothes from the bed and left.

Give me your word that you will bring me back to life if you succeed against Fraser.

You have my word, Thomas promised. If it is within my power I will bring you back to life. But I warn you th at I don’t believe it to be possible.

The bargain is agreed, then. Open your mind and accept me fully into it so that everything I ever knew becomes a part o f you.

He had not expected that He hesitated. Was it safe to let Lesage fully into his mind? Not Lesage , he reminded himself, a memory of him. After a moment’s reflection he decided that there was no way in which it could harm him. Robert’s knowledge had been absorbed, along with his living essence. So this could be absorbed. And with the Lesage memory there was no living essence, even.

Thomas opened his mind and let the impatient impression of Lesage permeate it completely.

‘Thomas!’

He roused himself to find Meg shaking his arm. The skull watched him from empty eye-sockets, but the figure of Lesage was gone.

“What’s the matter?’ he asked her blankly..

‘It’s been so long. We got worried. Are you all right?’

‘What do you mean, long?’

‘It’s been well over an hour since we left you. Where’s Lesage? Yon said he wouldn’t fade out.’

Thomas sat down on the bed. His back and legs ached from standing motionless for so long.

‘He kept his word,’ he said slowly. ‘He gave me all his knowledge. There are unbelievable things in my mind that weren’t there before.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He tricked mc. He’s inside me. He wanted to live again. He will have a kind of pseudo-life through me until I can carry out my part of the bargain and give him a new body.’

‘But I want him in his old body! How shall I know him if he looks different?’

‘One problem at a time, Meg. I need to think. Go down and make something to eat before we leave. I’ll be down in a while,’

After she had gone he tried to come to grips with his new condition.

I am legion, he thought. There are two other minds inside mine now. I let them in for the sake of what they could give mc. And there is always a price to be paid, as Meg said. They will try to change mc to suit their own ends.

I am legion - where the hell did I get that expression from? It’s not mine.

THE RECKONING

Frazer’s house was in darkness. On the steps up to the front door, Thomas stopped to wipe his clammy palms on a handkerchief.

If I hesitate now, he thought, I shall never have the pluck to go in. I’m a grown man. I may not be master of my fate, but I’m damned if I’ll be terrorized any more by a lunatic.

The door swung open as he pushed it. Frazer always left it unlocked when he expected visitors. If everything was going to plan, he was expecting Esta, Brigit, Aleister and maybe others -Well, he’s got me instead, Thomas said to himself, and grinned.

He left the front door open so that the tight from the street lamps could penetrate into the hall. He went a step or two inside and very gingerly probed the house with a mental feeler to find out who was there. The basement and ground floor were empty. Frazer was upstairs in the big room where the coven met. He was alone, and yet not alone. Thomas was unable t o analyse the impression. Janine was in her bedroom on the top floor, emanating waves of childish fright.

It took him less than a second to scan the house from basement to roof, and even that was too long. While his mind was open and receptive a stinking flood lapped over him, he fell to his knees, choking and retching. It was like drowning in thick sludge. His mouth was full of greasy excreta. It was up his nostrils, in his ears, under his eyelids. He gasped for air and lumpy slime slid down his throat. The floor beneath him seemed to have melted away and he was sinking down into a bottomless cesspit.

Forcing his mind to close in on itself was as agonizing as clenching an arthritic hand. He pawed the air in his pain, but gradually he blocked out the force that was killing him. When he was sure it was shut out he recited under his breath the incantation that enclosed him in a web of safety. Now he could breathe again. He stood up shakily and leaned against the wall. It took some time for his racing heart to calm down and his body to stop trembling.

Did Frazer do that? No, he doesn’t know I’m here yet. And he wouldn’t leave a trap like that for the friends he expects to walk into. That was Geraint’s coven blasting at him with all they’ve got. I’m walking straight into their flak. Much more of that, and they’ll finish me before I even get up the stairs.

The sickening taste was still lingering in his mouth but he felt stronger. He went up the stairs quietly. The landing was in darkness. Not ordinary darkness where there is no light, but a positive darkness that coiled and wreathed about him as he moved. He clamped his mind tighter shut and muttered under his breath every protective formula he could find in his memory. The house was full of lethal forces unleashed by Ger aint’s people. He could feel the menace all about him, touching him, plucking at him, groping for the smallest chink in his life-sustaining shell.

He could hear a voice chanting behind the closed double doors that led into the big room. That would be Frazer warding off the visitations sent to harm him.

The stifling air about Thomas cleared. Esta’s voice spoke inside his head, telling him to go on.

They’re watching me in their bowl, he thought It’s like a bloody TV drama for them.

There was a bellow of victory through the closed doors, Frazer thought he had warded off the attack by himself. He would strike back at once, if he was still able to.

Thomas felt in the dark for the door-knob and went in. He found Frazer sitting cross-legged and naked on the stone slab raised up in the middle of the room. The only illumination came from a ring of stubby black candles set around him on the slab. As Thomas approached cautiously, Frazer turned his head to look at him over his shoulder, showing him the red-marked side of his face.

He looked exhausted, eyes sunk into his head and face drawn. Sweat glinted in the candle-light, and Thomas could smell it six feet away.

‘You’ve come too late,’ said Frazer. ‘I’ve beaten them single-handed. But you’re in time to assist me in paying them back. By morning every last one of them will be begging for the mercy of death. That I swear,’

‘Who has attacked you?’ Thomas asked, edging round the slab to face him.

“Who? All of them! Not one has answered my call except you. They’re all in it - Esta, Brigit, Aleister, Sado - every one of them. They want to replace me as master. Me! I knew there was more to it when Robert took Janine. Meg was behind that, so I got rid of her. I should have guessed that the rest of them were involv ed when they couldn’t get Janine back for me. You were the only one who did anything for me. They didn’t bother to include you in their plotting because you are too much of a novice.’

His voice was rising hysterically.

‘I shall cripple their minds and block their puny powers. I will bloat their bellies with corrosion and put white maggots in their living flesh. I will send a messenger with an iron-hooked part to rape and sodomise them and tear out their guts in bloody shreds…’

‘Frazer!’

They will beg to die but 1 shall keep them alive in agony while I stand over them laughing and piss in their faces …’ ‘Frazer!’ Thomas shouted. “What…what did you say?’

‘You are mad. You are a dangerous animal that has to be put down.’

‘Ah, you are one of them,’ said Frazer, dropping his voice to a confidential whisper. ‘Even the novice has been sucked into the plotting, has he? Before I destroy you, tell me why you came here. Did they send you to see if they had beaten me? Are you that simple? Did you think to find me dead?’

‘I came here to get rid of you for good.’

‘You?’ Frazer laughed. ‘They sent you to kill me?’

‘No one sent me. I came here of my own choosing.’

‘Then you made a stupid choice.’

As he spoke, Frazer produced the whirling energy pattern which Robert had used to stun. A great Catherine wheel of reds and blues and yellows swirled and pulsed where Frazer was sitting. Thomas did not flinch away this time, but instantly he set up a counter-pattern that neutralized it. Frazer’s dizzy colours flickered out, leaving him staring open-mouthed.

Thomas projected a mental blast of pure aggression at him while he was off-guard. Frazer was knocked over backwards, whimpering and clasping his hands to his head to still his jangling brain. But as Thomas moved in closer for a second try, Frazer was up on h is hands and knees, spitting fury l ike an injured alley-cat.

“Learned a trick or two, have you?’ he croaked. “Well, well I was going to finish you quickly, but now you’ll suffer like the Others.’

“You’re all rant and threat,’ said Thomas. ‘Let’s see what you can do besides blather.’

Frazer rose to his feet. Standing on the table-height slab he loomed over Thomas as he spread his arms wide and spoke. Down in the seemingly endless resources of his memory, or Robert’s memory, or Lesage’s memory, Thomas recognized the words and their intention. He smiled.

A thing the size of a football, with dozens of flailing arms a yard long, materialized from nowhere and jumped at him. He heard the hooks and claws that studded the length of its arms rattl e on the wooden floor as it took off. If it caught him it would fasten on to him and rip the flesh from his bones in minutes.

With the inner powers at his command, Thomas batted it back to Frazer. For an instant he staggered in its grasp while its arms tore at him. Then he dematerialized it,

Blood trickled down Frazer’s body from torn skin. And that, Thomas reminded himself, was not a real thing at all, if real means anything here. It was a mental phenomenon he made me visualize by visualizing it himself. It’s his mind that was clawed by his own creation, and his body reflects the hurt.

‘You cannot harm me,’ said Frazer. ‘I am destined for immortality.’

“You can still bleed like anyone else,’ Thomas retorted.

He was thinking fast. In the same way as he had bounced Frazer’s attack back at him, so Frazer could bounce anything he threw. That being so, the defender seemed to be in the better position, assuming roughly equal abilities on both sides. It was a stand-off. Would Frazer reach the same conclusion?

He had his answer at once He was standing in a nine-sided box of mirror glass. His own image, front and back, stretched away into infinity, whichever way he turned. He reeled dizzily for a moment and then calmed himself.

Frazer was laughing at him. The sound came from all around him, greatly magnified and echoing,

‘There’s a puzzle for you, brother Thomas! Let me see you break out of that.’

It was a neat trap. There was no mirror, except in his mind. Frazer had put a barrier round him. If he used his power to break out, the harrier would reflect it back on him, as the mirrors seemed to reflect his image bac k at him. Frazer was inviting h im to commit suicide unawares.

There had to be an answer, Lesage, Robert - what do I do?

Time was the answer. It took a lot of energy to maintain that barrier. Frazer was already tired out from his long struggle to save himself from Ge raint’s coven. He would hot be able to keep up such a prodigal expense of energy for very long.

But how do I know what he’s doing out there in the meantime? He might be cooking up something ve ry unpleasant for me on the oth er side of that mirror.

Not very likely. It needs intense concentration to keep that barrier in being. If his concentration slips, you can break through at once. Be ready, the effort must be draining him.

The mirror box wavered, became transparent, vanished. Frazer still stood on his slab, encircled by smoking candles. His chest was heaving, his legs shaking with exhaustion. Like a rabid dog backed into a corner, Thomas thought, waiting for the shot-gun blast that will finish him.

Don’t underestimate him, said a voice in his head. Get him into a rage and make him use up his last reserves of strength. Then you’ll have him.

‘I didn’t think much of your puzzle, Frazer. And I don’t think much of you. This is the end of your crazy dream of life everlasting. You’re going down into th at cold cave you showed me, and this time you’re not coming back. When you’re d ead I shall burn your body and ti p the ashes down the lavatory. There’ll be nothing left of you at all, not even a toenail for Meg to produce a wraith from.’

Frazer’s sweat-streaked face went purple. His lips worked soundlessly, and the room exploded about Thomas, Without the least idea of how he was protecting himself, Thomas stood fast in a shield of his own creation, compelling himself not to cringe away from the insensate forces clawing and smashing at it to get through to him. He was in total darkness, deafened by the roaring noise: like a man clinging to a tiny ledge on a sheer rock-face, buffeted by a storm of heart-stopping savagery.

The effort of maintaining his shield was telling on Thomas in a very short space of time. Think what it’s doing to Frazer, he told himself. It’s a straight endurance test now - which of us is going to collapse first.

The hurtling onslaught rose to a peak of violence, faltered and died away. In the flickering candle-light he saw Frazer tottering above him on the slab. At once Thomas lashed out with a killing mental blast and Frazer went down like a sawn-through tree and lay still.

His legs rubbery beneath him, Thomas went to the slab and raised Frazer’s head by the hair to stare into his face. The eyes were rolled up, only the whites showing. There was a smear of blood on one corner of the mouth. There was no sign of breathing.

Cut his throat to make sure. The knife is under the slab in a box.

Before Thomas could act upon the suggestion he heard faint music from outside the room, a sweet thread of melody that soothed and delighted his shocked senses. He turned to face the door in time to sec a woman come in. The struggle with Frazer sank from his mind as he stared in amazement at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Or had ever imagined.

There were no possible words in any language to describe her. Her face, her hair, her naked body were miracles of texture and proportion. She envoked such a clutter of half-remembered images and emotions that he was overwhelmed. Every woman he had ever loved, every woman he had ever desired - she was all of that in one. The overload in his brain built up fast as she came towards him. Her fragrance staggered his senses. He was hard erect inside his trousers. No man could look at her and not be.

‘You have won, Thomas. All that he had is yours now.’ ‘You were his?’ he stammered. ‘I am yours now, if you want me.’

If he wanted her! He wanted her as he had never wanted any woman in his life before.

Feedback, said a voice in his head. He ignored it ‘Who are you?’ he asked her. ‘Give me any name you like.’

Feedback, the voice repeated more urgently. Thomas was lost in a fathoms-deep dream of sensuality.

‘Are you real?’ he asked huskily.

‘As real as you are. Touch me and see.’

Touch that beautiful flesh. First with his fingertips. Then with his open palms, over the curves and dips of that astonishing body. And then with his lips. Touch her, touch her …

Thomas was on the edge of premature ejaculation without knowing it.

Amplified feedback, the unheeded voice shouted in his head as he stretched out his trembling hand to touch her.

It made him pause for a second, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a small movement on the stone slab. Frazer was twitching.

Not dead! Instinctively Thomas jumped away from the woman holding out her arms in welcome to him.

She screeched like an owl and flung herself at him. She was no longer young and beautiful, she was incredibly old and vicious, A shrunken hag, not above four feet tall, skinny, wrinkled arms, legs like sticks. Flaps of empty skin hanging from her chest down to her pot belly. A shag of coarse grey hair half-covering her shrunken parts.

She was at him like a wild animal in a flurry of dirty hair and fingernails like claws ripping at him, bare horny feet kicking at his groins and belly. The impetus of her rush carried him over backwards, and they rolled over on the floor together as he tried to beat her off.

‘Want me, do you?’ she was shrieking at him. I saw it standing up in your britches. You’re going to have me now all right!’

The shield protected his mind, not his body. And this creature was made of flesh and bone. For her size and apparent age she was strong beyond belief. She sat on him as he struggled to get up off his back, one hard and dirty foot under his chin, forcing his head back, while her stringy hands wrenched at his zip to expose his genitals.

‘I’ll have you!’ she squealed. ‘I’ll have that meat of yours up me and I’ll suck the life out of you through it!’

Almost physically sick as he struggled with her, Thomas realized how he had been tricked. While Frazer lay stunned, this thing had looked into his mind and taken all the images and memories of desire there and fed them back to him. He had fleshed her ugliness with every female trait that had ever excited him.

With a back-wrenching heave he threw her off, scrambled up and kicked her halfway across the room squawking.

Frazer’s great-great-grandam, said the voice in his head. Dead these hundred years. Frazer inherited one of her feet pickled in spirit. He reconstructed her body from it and breathed a semblance of life into his creation.

That was why Frazer seemed alone and yet not alone when Thomas had scanned the house. This grotesque thing had partly registered on his mind, but not as a living person.

He could deal with it now that he knew what it was. As it came scrabbling back at him on all fours, he plucked out of it the life-urge Frazer had implanted in it. It collapsed instantl y and melted into a smelly dark yellow pool of slime that spread slowly out on the floor. All except the preserved left foot: it lay there intact, blackened flesh shrinking away from the protruding ankle-bone.

It must be burnt, Thomas thought. And pure salt sprinkled over the sticky pool to take away the taint.

No time to worry about that now. He swung round to see Frazer getting unsteadily to his feet.

‘You’ve destroyed Ryka … it took me two years. I’ll make her again with your flesh and bones …’

Thomas was sick of the endless battle with Frazer. Why wouldn’t the bastard die and stay dead?

‘So that’s the filth that spawned you,’ he said.

An idea stirred. His own, or one of the others sharing his mind? Frazer’s daughter was upstairs in her room, awake and frightened. Frazer had woven a spell of safety about her to preserve her from the onslaught of Geraint’s coven. But it was an easy thing for Thomas to pierce it and make her see Benton ‘s rotted body lumbering blindly towards her with groping hands.

Her screams distracted Frazer in his exhausted state. He glanced upwards, his mind reaching out to calm her, Thomas stepped in close and slammed his left fist into Fra zcr’s kneecap, at shoulder height as he stood on the raised slab. The leg buckled, and Thomas followed up with a right cross to the same knee, Frazer pitched off-balance, his leg useless, and fell sideways.

With a mighty effort, Thomas caught him by the neck and thigh, held him for an instant while he half-turned and brought him crashing down backwards across the edge of the stone slab. Frazer screamed.

Before Thomas could step clear, Frazer’s arms were round him in a bear-hug, pinning his arms to his sides, squeezing the breath out of him, pulling their faces close together,

‘My back… it’s broken …’ Frazer mumbled.

Below the waist his body hung limp, but his arms were still strong and the madness was plain to see in his eyes.

‘I can be mended,’ he gasped, ‘but not you..,’ Thomas spat into Frazer’s open mouth, holding a word of power in his mind. Frazer’s lips writhed and blackened, his tongue protruded. Gagging sounds came from his th roat as corrosion bit into it. But his arms were like iron bands round Thomas.

Be careful, be careful, a voice hissed in Thomas’s head. Frazer’s eyes were going dull as his life oozed away. Thomas waited, preserving his remaining strength. In a little while the arms would loosen. Not even Frazer’s will could make his body obey him after death. And this time he was dying Die, you bastard! Die and let me free!

Frazer’s eyes fluttered. His ruined mouth moved silendy. Too late, Thomas realized what he was at. The room spun around them and slid away into nothing. They were out of the world, out of the gal axy itself.

Locked together by Frazer’s grip, they hung for a moment in the unimaginable reaches of black space, where distant island universes were only specks of light in the everlasting darkness. And then everything was gone. They were outside space and time, in uncreated nothing.

Thomas sensed the presence of something that frightened him more than anything he had ever known, frightened him more than he thought anyone could be frightened. He perceived it as blacker than black itself, though that meant nothing where there were no colours. It radiated darkness, and that meant nothing cither. It was too large for the mind to comprehend, or perhaps too small, because there was no dimension outside of space. Only one thing was sure in his mind — it would absorb them both, as an ocean absorbs a single raindrop.

If I believed in God or the devil, he babbled to himself, then I’ve met one of them.

In unalloyed terror, he broke free at last from Frazer’s weakening hold and pushed him towards the thing. If towards could have any meaning where there was no direction.

‘I offer you this life!’ he screamed, trying to save himself.

He saw Frazer disappearing bit by bit. One leg was gone, then the hip and half his side, so that the guts trailed out. Half his chest, an arm, most of his face. And still his other hand was clenching and unclenching, though he made no sound. How could he, Thomas remembered, his throat had been eaten away by corrosive.

The offering of Frazer’s life was not enough. Thomas knew that as the last of the damaged body vanished into the darkness of non-being. There was a promise to be made. In despair he made it, the words pouring out.

‘I am Thomas. I will serve you for all of my life!’

The blackness permeated him utterly, every cell of his body and brain, all the interstices of his mind. Was this absorption and final death?

I am thinking, so I must still exist. Cogito ergo sum.

In his mind was a spiral. He understood the equation that produced it. The spiral equation at the root of created matter. It was so simple that he couldn’t think why he hadn’t found it before. It was the spiral formula for the Jewel of Life.

He was sprawled across Frazer on the floor. He got to his feet slowly, pulling himself up by the edge of the stone slab.

I’m alive. It let me go. It told me the key.

He was exhausted. He wanted to go downstairs to the sitting-room and knock himself out with whisky and collapse on the settee. But a voice in his mind insisted that there was a ritual to be performed. It was important and it had to be done at once as a safeguard. The ritual for the death of a master.

Groaning aloud, he hoisted Frazer’s limp body up onto the slab and spread out the arms and legs like a star-fish. Only one of the black candles was still burning. The rest had been knocked over during the struggle.

He lit them and set them in a ring about Frazer, What did he have to do next? Images rose up in his weary mind. Underneath the slab, on the floor, he would find a cabinet where the implements for all the rituals were kept.

He fumbled the ivory-inlaid ebony cabinet open and selected a short-bladed knife with a bone handle and a small hammer. Its egg-shaped head was made of polished stone, set into a haft of dark red wood.

He stood at Frazer’s head, raised the hammer to his lips and kissed it, murmuring the appropriate words as they bubbled up into his mind. He tapped three times on Frazer’s forehead with the stone head, calling his name aloud each time.

‘Frazer… Frazer… Frazer.’

There was no response of any kind. Frazer was dead.

He moved round the stone slab to stand between Frazer’s parted legs. He was sweating at the thought of what he had to do, but there was no choice. As if in a trance, he reached forward to take Frazer’s soft genitals in his left hand and pulled hard towards himself while he sliced through the flesh with the sharp knife.

He held up the bloody trophy, raised his eyes from the gaping wound he had made between Frazer’s thighs to stare at the crimson-blotched face. He spoke the words that came to him.

“Your life is ended. Your power is cut off. You are nothing.’ For a second the black light was all around him. This time it was not menacing.

‘You are my beloved son and I am well pleased,’ said a voice in his head.

Then it was gone and he was alone in the candle-light with the mutilated body. He fainted.

When he came to, he was lying on his side on the floor, cramped and cold. There was something sticky in his hand. He looked and remembered. The stained knife lay beside him. He dropped the blood-caked flesh and wiped his hand on the wooden floor.

He heard footsteps and voices on the stairs. How long had he been out? It felt like a long time. His exhaustion was gone. Strength was flooding through his body with each beat of his heart.

He got to his feet and faced the door.

Esta came in first. There was an air of pride in the way she walked, her naked and sun-tanned body almost bronze in the candle-light. Behind her was Meg, pulling Aleister along by the wrist. Even in the dim light the scratches and bruises on his body and thighs were very visible. She had carried out her promise to pay him back, and he looked subdued. After them came Miriden and Aletha, hand in hand. Straw-coloured hair and pallid white skin contrasted with black hair and swarthy skin, pink-tipped breasts w ith brown-tipped breasts. Meride n’s broad mouth was smiling. Aletha’s eyes were downcast. Then David, urging along Brigit with one palm on her bare and lean rump. As she entered, Brigit gave Thomas a calculating look that he understood perfectly.

Watch out for yourself, Esta, he thought, littie Brigit intends to become queen of the coven. She will serve me well to get her way.

Rachel and Sado came in together. Rachel’s long, soft breasts were swaying from side to side as she strode confidently in, grinning at Thomas. Gaunt-ribbed Sado trailed half a pace behind her, eyeing her fleshiness in new-found appreciation.

Then the others, two by two. Giles with Marian, her nipples rouged and her slit smooth-shaven for the occasion. Evin with Joan, who looked slightly worried by the change in the coven’s fortunes. Robin and Isabel, Victor with broad-hipped Elspeth. Deferential Mark with Jenny. Piers with ginger-haired Tansey. Long-maned Ran with Barbara, whose head only reached his chest.

They filed round the room, forming a circle. And after them came more couples. The woman who had been burned with Geraint, Rienza, the scorchmark almost faded from her body since Rachel’s ministrations. A black-bearded man walked beside her. Then the rest of Geraint’s coven, five more pairs in their nakedness.

The room was very full when the circle was complete. Three short of a triple coven, thought Thomas.

One short, said a voice in his head. Robert is here. Lesage is here. And upstairs is Janine, ready for initiation when you choose, to make your triple coven.

Esta was beside him, unbuttoning his shirt. He let her strip him while the circle watched silendy. She knelt in front of him.

‘Master,’ she said, her voice humble and adoring.

Round the room his followers shouted in acclamation:

‘Master!’

Hostibus victis civibus salvus re placida pacibus perfectis bello exstincto re bene gesta integro exercitu et praesidiis re bene nos luppiter iuvisti clique alii omnes caclipotentes eas vobis habe o grates atque ago quia probe sum ultus meum inimicum

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