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the other. "Eeeuw!" She looked back at Talieos, who wore a sweet smile.
The center of the room was clear. On the heavy wooden floor a circle had been
painted with green, red, yellow, blue, and black paint The geometric figure
painted inside the cir-
cle had ten points, each of a different color.
"
That's the decagram," Talteos said. "It will be your work center."
"I thought the pentagram was the magical symbol."
Talieos snorted. "A common but anthropocentric misconception. The pentagram
became popular because a man, with arms and legs spread, could imitate one.
Hermetic philosophers who thought the universe circled
Man Ae way the sun circled the earth found this profound and significant."
"The sun doesn't circle the earth-'1
"So true. Nor the universe Man." Talieos dieted across the floor, his hooves
tapping loudly, He pointed to the deca-
gram. The unicursal decagram, however, represents each of the possible
emanations between the world of Knowledge and the worid of the Unknowable
Infinite."
Minerva twitched an eyebrnw upward. "How fascinating that the Unknowable
Infinite is reachable by such an easy number as ten."
Talieos frowned at her. "Even the Unknowable Infinite is within the reach of
the true seeker. As you will discover."
He pulled a black robe off a coathook and handed it to
Minerva. "Wear this. It is fitting garb for a seeker and future magus such as
yourself,"
She struggled her way into tlie garment with difficulty.
MINERVA WAKES 109
The robe draped down to the floor, the hem crumpled on the wood to form
several folds of cloth around her feet. The sleeves enveloped her hands. They
dangled well past her fin-
gertips. The cowl hung over her face hot and scratchy and uncomfortable- The
robe must have been worn by a man seven feet tall, she thought.
"Don't you have one smaller?"
Talieos gaped at her as though she had suggested profan-
ing a temple. "Have one smaller? Are you kidding? That is the Sacred Robe of
Exarp. There aren't two of them."
The robe was wool coarsely woven, scratchy, hot, and heavy. Minerva felt like
she was wearing a bedspread and not a good one, either. "How am I supposed to
do magic with this on?" How am I supposed to mow with it on? she wondered.
Talieos sighed. "You have to suffer a lot to do magic. That is just the way it
works. If you want your lads back, you're going to have to wear the
robe unless . . ." He gave her a sideways glance and said, "No . . ."
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Minerva hated games, and she had no time for coyness.
"Unless whaty she snapped.
"Well, magic done skyclad is even more powerful than magic done wearing the
mystical Robe of Exarp."
"Skyclad. Sfa/clad?" Minerva didn't recognize the term, but she didn't like
the sound of it.
"Nude." Talieos gave her a hopeful little grin.
Her instincts were right on the money, she decided. "I'll suffer." She rolled
the scratchy sleeves up all the way to her
elbows, then reached down and tucked a portion of the front hem under the
robe's heavy rope belt. She brushed the cowl back with a quick swipe of her
hand.
"There. See? This will do just fine."
Talleos seemed to have been stricken by a fit of coughing.
She watched him lean, shoulders heaving, against a rack of skulls. He gasped
and choked, and his face turned duskier than usual.
"Are you all right?" she asked, concerned. She walked toward him, but he waved
her off.
"Fine " he croaked. " Water " and he clattered out of the room.
110 Hofly Lisle
When he came back in, he looked much better. "Choked on some dust or
something," he told her. His color was stiB
high. "Okay!" He gave her a bright smile. "Lets get to work on the magic. Take
a seat in the middle of the decagram."
While Minerva sat on the hard floor, Talleos puBed a huge book out of me
bookcase, propped it on a carved book-
stand, flipped to the first page, and began to read.
"'The beginning of magic is the beginning of the com-
prehension of the Manifest and the Unmanifest, the corporeal and the
incorporeal, and the flow of the ions of time and not-time through the river
of die Eternal Is.
Within the spin of the single atom, the magus finds con-
tained all secrets and all miracles of every facet of existence.
And the harnessing of the powers of that atom is within the reach of me
dedicated seeker. Above aB, the seeker must strive for purity of intention,
purity of thought, and purity of
being.
"'To attain the purity required of the magus, the seeker
must reach within and find a personal and internally consis-
tent meaning for each of the thousand spoken names of
God. The first of these names is Ke-Seh-Haveh-Kalla, which means . . .'"
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Minerva felt her eyes beginning to glaze over. This was the way to do magic,
was it? Oh, God. Her kids lives and her own depended on her ability to learn
this stuff?
It felt like chemistry class all over again. She'd hated
chemistry.
""The second name of God is Gur-Gesh-Hegonokrisve-
domio, which . . .'"
Dam/I, you stinking pig, she thought, ; hope to heU
you're as miserable and as scared as lam right now.
"Gooff, I really don't know what happened. ... No ...
No some kids found her while they were out playing. . . .
No, not my lads; the police are still looking for them..., Not yet. The police
have tapped the phone lines there weren't any ransom notes that anyone could
find. . . . No, I guess the/ll be doing the ah the au-au-autopsy ... today..."
MINERVA WAKES 111
"No ... I'm all right now. . . . Thank you. I appreciate that a leave of
absence would help a lot.... I'd I'd really rather not talk anymore right
now."
All morning. The goddamned phone hadn't stopped. Peo-
ple telling him how sony they were; people telling him he was a miserable
bastard and the police were going to find out what he did; friends of
Minerva's who wanted to com-
miserate with him; friends of his who didn't know what to say.
Minerva was right there in front of him, right on the other side of the
fucking mirror. He couldn't touch her, he couldn't hear her, he couldn't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]