Imajica 01 - The Fifth Dominion

6

Chant's body was discovered the following day by ninety-three-year-old Albert Burke, who found it while looking for his errant mongrel, Kipper. The animal had sniffed from the street what its owner only began to nose as he climbed the stairs, whistling for his hound between curses: the rotting tissue at the top. In the autumn of 1916, Albert had fought for his country at the Somme, sharing trenches with dead companions for days at a time. The sights and smells of death didn't much distress him. Indeed, his sanguine response to his discovery lent color to the story, when it reached the evening news, and assured it of greater coverage than it might otherwise have merited, that focus in turn bringing a penetrating eye to bear on the identity of the dead man. Within a day a portrait of the deceased as he might have looked in life had been produced, and by Wednesday a woman living on a council estate south of the river had identified him as her next-door neighbor, Mr. Chant.

An examination of his flat turned up a second picture, not of Chant's flesh, this time, but of his life. It was the conclusion of the police that the dead man was a practitioner of some obscure religion. It was reported that a small altar dominated his room, decorated with the withered heads of animals that forensics could not identify, its centerpiece an idol of so explicitly sexual a nature no newspaper dared publish a sketch of it, let atone a photograph. The gutter press particularly enjoyed the story, especially as the artifacts had belonged to a man now thought to have been murdered. They editorialized with barely concealed racism on the influx of perverted foreign religions. Between this and stories on Burke of the Somme, Chant's death attracted a lot of column inches. That fact had several consequences. It brought a rash of right-wing attacks on mosques in greater London, it brought a call for the demolition of the estate where Chant had lived, and it brought Dowd up to a certain tower in Highgate, where he was summoned in lieu of his absentee master, Estabrook's brother, Oscar Godolphin.

In the 1780s, when Highgate Hill was so steep and deeply rutted that carriages regularly failed to make the grade and the drive to town was sufficiently dangerous that a wise man went with pistols, a merchant called Thomas Rox-borough had constructed a handsome house on Hornsey Lane, designed for him by one Henry Holland. At that time it had commanded fine views: south all the way to the river; north and west over the lush pastures of the region towards the tiny village of Hampstead. The former view was still available to the tourist, from the bridge that spanned the Archway Road, but Roxborough's fine house had gone, replaced in the late thirties with an anonymous ten-story tower, set back from the street. There was a screen of well-tended trees between tower and road, not sufficiently thick to conceal the building entirely, but enough to render what was already an undistinguished building virtually invisible. The only mail that was delivered there was circulars and official paperwork of one kind or another. There were no tenants, either individuals or businesses. Yet Roxborough Tower was kept well by its owners, who once every month or so gathered in the single room which occupied the top floor of the building, in the name of the man who had owned this plot of land two hundred years before and who had left it to the society he founded. The men and women (eleven in all) who met here and talked for a few hours and went their unremarkable ways were the descendants of the impassioned few Roxborough had gathered around him in the dark days following the failure of the Reconciliation. There was no passion among them now, nor more than a vague comprehension of Roxborough's purpose in forming what he'd called the Society of the Tabula Rasa, or the Clean Slate. But they met anyway, in part because in their early childhood one or other of their parents, usually but not always the father, had taken them aside and told them a great responsibility would fall to them—the carrying forward of a hermetically protected family secret—and in part because the Society looked after its own. Roxborough had been a man of wealth and insight. He'd purchased considerable tracts of land during his lifetime, and the profits that accrued from that investment had ballooned as London grew. The sole recipient of those monies was the Society, though the funds were so ingeniously routed, through companies and agents who were unaware of their place in the system, that nobody who serviced the Society in any capacity whatsoever knew of its existence.

Thus the Tabula Rasa flourished in its peculiar, purposeless way, gathering to talk about the secrets it kept, as Roxborough had decreed, and enjoying the sight of the city from its place on Highgate Hill.

Kuttner Dowd had been here several times, though never when the Society was assembled, as it was tonight. His employer, Oscar Godolphin, was one of the eleven to. whom the flame of Roxborough's intent had been passed, though of all of them surely none was so perfect a hypocrite as Godolphin, who was both a member of a Society committed to the repression of all magical activity, and the employer (Godolphin would have said owner) of a creature summoned by magic in the very year of the tragedy that had brought the Society into being.

That creature was of course Dowd, whose existence was known to the Society's members but whose origins were not. If it had been, they would never have summoned him here and allowed him access to the hallowed tower. Rather, they would have been bound by Roxborough's edict to destroy him at whatever cost to their bodies, souls, or sanity that might entail. Certainly they had the expertise, or at least the means to gain it. The tower reputedly housed a library of treatises, grimoires, cyclopedias, and symposia second to none, collected by Roxborough and the group of Fifth Dominion magi who'd first supported the attempt at the Reconciliation. One of those men had been Joshua Godolphin, Earl of Bellingham. He and Rox-borough had survived the calamitous events of that midsummer almost two hundred years ago, but most of their dearest friends had not. The story went that after the tragedy Godolphin had retired to his country estate and never again ventured beyond its perimeters. Roxborough, on the other hand, ever the most pragmatic of the group, had within days of the cataclysm secured the occult libraries of his dead colleagues, hiding the thousands of volumes in the cellar of his house where they could, in the words of a letter to the Earl, no longer taint with un-Christian ambition the minds of good men like our dear friends. We must hereafter keep the doing of this damnable magic from our shores. That he had not destroyed the books, but merely locked them away, was testament to some ambiguity in him, however. Despite the horrors he'd seen, and the fierceness of his revulsion, some small part of him retained the fascination that had drawn him, Godolphin, and their fellow experimenters together in the first place.

Dowd shivered with unease as he stood in the plain hallway of the tower, knowing that somewhere nearby was the largest collection of magical writings gathered in one place outside the Vatican, and that among them would be many rituals for the raising and dispatching of creatures like himself. He was not the conventional stuff of which familiars were made, of course. Most were simpering, mindless functionaries, plucked by then- summoners from the In Ovo— the space between the Fifth and the Reconciled Dominions—like lobsters from a restaurant tank. He, on the other hand, had been a professional actor in his time, and fgted for it. It wasn't congenital stupidity that had made him susceptible to human jurisdiction, it was anguish. He'd seen the face of Hapexamendios Himself and, half-crazed by the sight, had been unable to resist the summons, and the binding, when it came. His invoker had of course been Joshua Godolphin, and he'd commanded Dowd to serve his line until the end of time. In fact, Joshua's retirement to the safety of his estate had freed Dowd to wander until the old man's demise, when he was drawn back to offer his services to Joshua's son Nathaniel, only revealing his true nature once he'd made himself indispensable, for fear he was trapped between his bounden duty and the zeal of a Christian.

In fact, Nathaniel had grown into a dissolute of considerable proportions by the time Dowd entered his employ, and could not have cared less what kind of creature Dowd was as long as he procured the right kind of company. And so it had gone on, generation after generation, Dowd changing his face on occasion (a simple trick, or feit) so as to conceal his longevity from the withering human world. But the possibility that one day his double-dealing would be discovered by the Tabula Rasa, and they would search through their library and find some vicious sway to destroy him, never entirely left his calculations: especially now, waiting for the call into their presence.

That call was an hour and a half in coming, during which time he distracted himself thinking about the shows that were opening in the coming week. Theater remained his great love, and there was scarcely a production of any significance he failed to see. On the following Tuesday he had tickets for the much-acclaimed Lear at the National and then, two days later, a seat in the stalls for the revival of Turandot at the Coliseum. Much to look forward to, once this wretched interview was over,

At last the lift hummed into life and one of the Society's younger members, Giles Bloxham, appeared. At forty, Bloxham looked twice that age. It took a kind of genius, Godolphin had once remarked when talking about Bloxham (he liked to report on the absurdities of the Society, particularly when he was in his cups), to look so dissipated and have nothing to regret for it.

"We're ready for you now," Bloxham, said, indicating that Dowd should join him in the lift. "You realize," he said as they ascended, "that if you're ever tempted to breathe a word of what you see here, the Society will eradicate you so quickly and so thoroughly your mother won't even know you existed?"

This overheated threat sounded ludicrous delivered in Bloxham's nasal whine, but Dowd played the chastened functionary. "I perfectly understand," he said.

"It's an extraordinary step," Bloxham continued, "calling anyone who isn't a member to a meeting. But these are extraordinary times. Not that it's any of your business." "Quite so," Dowd said, all innocence. Tonight he'd take their condescension without argument, he thought, more confident by the day that something was coming that would rock this tower to its foundations. When it did, he'd have his revenge.

The lift door opened, and Bloxham ordered Dowd to follow him. The passages that led to the main suite were stark and uncarpeted; the room he was led into, the same. The drapes were drawn over all the windows; the enormous marble-topped table that dominated the room was lit by overhead lamps, the wash of their light thrown up on the five members, two of them women, sitting around it. To judge by the clutter of bottles, glasses, and overfilled ashtrays, and the brooding, weary faces, they had been debating for many hours. Bloxham poured himself a glass of water and took his place. There was one empty seat: Godolphin's. Dowd was not invited to occupy it but stood at the end of the table, mildly discomfited by the stares of his interrogators. Not one face among them would have been known by the populace at large. Though all of them had descended from families of wealth and influence, these were not public powers. The Society forbade any member to hold office or take as a spouse an individual who might invite or arouse the curiosity of the press. It worked in mystery, for the demise of mystery. Perhaps it was that paradox—more than any other aspect of its nature—which would finally undo it.

At the other end of the table from Dowd, sitting in front of a heap of newspapers doubtless carrying the Burke reports, sat a professorial man in his sixties, white hair oiled to his scalp, Dowd knew his name from Godolphin's description: Hubert Shales, dubbed The Sloth by Oscar. He moved and spoke with the caution of a glass-boned theologian.

"You know why you're here?" he said.

"He knows," Bloxham put in.

"Some problem with Mr. Godolphin?" Dowd ventured.

"He's not here," said one of the women to Dowd's right, her face emaciated beneath a confection of dyed black hair. Alice Tyrwhitt, Dowd guessed. "That's the problem."

"So I see," Dowd said.

"Where the hell is he?" Bloxham demanded.

"He's traveling," Dowd replied. "I don't think he anticipated a meeting."

"Neither did we," said Lionel Wakeman, flushed with the Scotch he'd imbibed, the bottle lying in the crook of his arm.

"Where's he traveling?" Tyrwhitt asked. "It's imperative we find him."

"I'm afraid I don't know," Dowd said. "His business takes him all over the world."

"Anything respectable?" Wakeman slurred.

"He's got a number of investments in Singapore," Dowd replied. "And in India. Would you like me to prepare a dossier? I'm sure he'd be—"

"Bugger the dossier!" Bloxham said. "We want him here! Now!"

"I'm afraid I don't know his precise whereabouts. Somewhere in the Far East."

The severe but not unalluring woman to Wakeman's left now entered the exchange, stabbing her cigarette in the ashtray as she spoke. This could only be Charlotte Feaver: Charlotte the Scarlet, as Oscar called her. She was the last of the Roxborough line, he'd said, unless she found a way to fertilize one of her girlfriends.

"This isn't some damn club he can visit when it fucking well suits him," she said.

"That's right," Wakeman put in. "It's a damn poor show."

Shales picked up one of the newspapers in front of him and pitched it down the table in Dowd's direction.

"I presume you've read about this body they found in Clerkenwell?" he said.

"Yes. I believe so."

Shales paused for several seconds, his sparrow eyes going from one member to another. Whatever he was about to say, its broaching had been debated before Dowd entered.

"We have reason to believe that this man Chant did not originate in this Dominion."

"I'm sorry?" Dowd said, feigning confusion. "1 don't follow. Dominion?"

"Spare us your discretion," Charlotte Feaver said, "You know what we're talking about. Oscar hasn't employed you for twenty-five years and kept his counsel."

"I know very little," Dowd protested.

"But enough to know there's an anniversary imminent," Shales said.

My, my, Dowd thought, they're not as stupid as they look.

"You mean the Reconciliation?" he said.

"That's exactly what I mean. This coming midsummer—"

"Do we have to spell it out?" Bloxham said. "He already knows more than he should."

Shales ignored the interruption and was beginning again when a voice so far unheard, emanating from a bulky figure sitting beyond the reach of the light, broke in. Dowd had been waiting for this man, Matthias McGann, to say his piece. If the Tabula Rasa had a leader, this was he.

"Hubert?" he said. "May I?"

Shales murmured, "Of course."

"Mr. Dowd," said McGann, "I don't doubt that Oscar has been indiscreet. We all have our weaknesses. You must be his. Nobody here blames you for listening. But this Society was created for a very specific purpose and on occasion has been obliged to act with extreme severity in the pursuit of that purpose. I won't go into details. As Giles says, you're already wiser than any of us would like. But believe me, we will silence any and all who put this Dominion at risk."

He leaned forward. His face announced a man of good humor, presently unhappy with his lot.

"Hubert mentioned that an anniversary is imminent. So it is. And forces with an interest in subverting the sanity of this Dominion may be readying themselves to celebrate that anniversary. So far, this"—he pointed to the newspaper—"is the only evidence we'd found of such preparations, but if there are others they will be swiftly terminated by this Society and its agents. Do you understand?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

"This sort of thing is very dangerous," he went on. "People start to investigate. Academics. Esoterics. They start to question, and they start to dream."

"I could see how that would be dangerous," Dowd said.

"Don't smarm, you smug little bastard," Bloxham burst out. "We all know what you and Godolphin have been doing. Tell him, Hubert!"

"I've traced some artifacts of... nonterrestrial origin... that came my way. The trail, as it were, leads back to Oscar Godolphin."

"We don't know that," Lionel put in. "These buggers lie."

"I'm satisfied Godolphin's guilty," Alice Tyrwhitt said. "And this one with him."

"I protest," Dowd said.

"You've been dealing in magic," Bloxham hollered. "Admit it!" He rose and slammed the table. "Admit it!"

"Sit down, Giles," McGann said.

"Look at him," Bloxham went on, jabbing his thumb in Dowd's direction. "He's guilty as hell."

"I said sit down," McGann replied, raising his voice ever so slightly. Cowed, Bloxham sat. "You're not on trial here," McGann said to Dowd. "It's Godolphin we want."

"So find him," Feaver said.

"And when you do," Shales said, "tell him I've got a few items he may recognize."

The table fell silent. Several heads turned in Matthias McGann's direction. "I think that's it," he said. "Unless you have any remarks to make?"

"I don't believe so," Dowd replied.

"Then you may go."

Dowd took his leave without further exchange, escorted as far as the lift by Charlotte Feaver and left to make the descent alone. They were better informed than he'd imagined, but they were some way from guessing the truth. He turned over passages of the interview as he drove back to Regent's Park Road, committing them to memory for later recitation. Wakeman's drunken irrelevancies; Shales's indiscretion; McGann, smooth as a velvet scabbard. He'd repeat it all for Godolphin's edification, especially the cross-questioning about the absentee's whereabouts.

Somewhere in the East, Dowd had said. East Yzordder-rex, maybe, in the Kesparates built close to the harbor where Oscar liked to bargain for contraband brought back from Hakaridek or the islands. Whether he was there or some other place, Dowd had no way of fetching him back. He would come when he would come, and the Tabula Rasa would have to bide its time, though the longer he was away the more the likelihood grew of one of their number voicing the suspicion some of them surely nurtured: that Godolphin's dealings in talismans and wantons were only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps they even suspected he took trips.

He wasn't the only Fifther who'd jaunte4 between Dominions, of course. There were many routes from Earth to the Reconciled Dominions, some safer than others but all used at one time or another, and not always by magicians. Poets had found their way over (and sometimes back, to tell the tale); so had a good number of priests over the centuries, and hermits, meditating on their essence so hard the In Ovo enveloped them and spat them into another world. Any soul despairing or inspired enough could get access. But few in Dowd's experience had made such a commonplace of it as Godolphin.

These were dangerous times for such jaunts, both here and there. The Reconciled Dominions had been under the control of Yzordderrex's Autarch for over a century, and every time Godolphin returned from a trip he had new signs of unrest to report. From the margins of the First Dominion to Patashoqua and its satellite cities in the Fourth, voices were raised to stir rebellion. There was as yet no consensus on how best to overcome the Autarch's tyranny, only a simmering unrest which regularly erupted in riots or strikes, the leaders of such mutinies invariably found and executed. In fact, on occasion the Autarch's suppressions had been more Draconian still. Entire communities had been destroyed in the name of the Yzordderrexian Empire: tribes and small nations deprived of their gods, their lands, and their right to procreate, others, simply eradicated by pogroms the Autarch personally supervised. But none of these horrors had dissuaded Godolphin from traveling in the Reconciled Dominions. Perhaps tonight's events would, however, at least until the Society's suspicions had been allayed.

Tiresome as it was, Dowd knew he had no choice as to where he went tonight: to the Godolphin estate and the folly in its deserted grounds which was Oscar's departure place. There he would wait, like a dog grown lonely at its master's absence, until Godolphin's return. Oscar was not the only one who would have to muster some excuses in the near future; so would he. Killing Chant had seemed like a wise maneuver at the time—and, of course, an agreeable diversion on a night without a show to go to—but Dowd hadn't predicted the furor it would cause. With hindsight, that had been naive. England loved murder, preferably with diagrams. And he'd been unlucky, what with the ubiquitous Mr. Burke of the Somme and a low quota of political scandals conspiring to make Chant posthumously famous. He would have to be prepared for Godolphin's wrath. But hopefully it would be subsumed in the larger anxiety of the Society's suspicions. Godolphin would need Dowd to help him calm these suspicions, and a man who needed his dog knew not to kick it too hard.