Fortune’s Fool

I met Ettore the first day of class. Months had passed as I tried to convince my parents to send me to Italy for a year of university. Tuscany called, and I had landed myself a place at the Università degli Studi di Firenze. I didn’t plan to blow the opportunity taking too many classes. But I had to take some.

Ettore spoke English better than I did Italian. For some reason he didn’t irritate the hell out of me and he managed to look past my Wisconsin accent. He didn’t even make any short jokes. That wouldn’t stop me from killing him later.

“Marco,” he said after the dullest PoliSci class I’d ever taken, about some Renaissance guy, Niccolò Somebody-or-Other, “come to the villa this weekend. I have people for you to meet.”

“It’s Marcus,” I told him for the umpteenth time. “What people?”

I’d known Ettore for a couple of weeks by then. He’d never mentioned these people before. Suspicion lurked behind my eyes as I followed him down a cobbled street. He ignored me and ordered a latte at the quaint outdoor café he’d picked. A nice enough place; at once public and private.

“Interesting people,” he said, eyes watching the waitress sashay off. “You’ll like them, and I think they’ll like you. They always want to meet new people. Fortune is smiling on you today, trust me.”

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table and steepling my fingers. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Don’t you trust me, Marco?” he grinned.

“No.”

He laughed deeply from his well fortified gut. “No, you wouldn’t. I don’t think you trust anyone. That’s something they’ll like about you. My friends appreciate their privacy. Your lips are tighter than your wallet.”

“Yeah. Who bought you that first edition of the Divine Comedy, again?”

Ettore waved the comment away, a fresh cigarette between his fingers. The waitress brought his latte and looked at me, well groomed eyebrow arched. I shook my head in dismissal. Ettore sipped and I waited, drumming my fingers on the table. Ettore liked to savor his coffee.

“So, you’ll come?” he asked finally.

“Sure, what the hell.”

“Hell. Yes, something like that.”

#

Etorre’s family villa occupied the nicer part of a Tuscany hillside. Nice, but not as nice as some of my family’s holdings. My father’s uncles still held original Faustus land out there. His parents were away for the weekend. Big surprise.

“Welcome, Marco,” he said, gesturing widely to the large building as we got out of his Ferrari. I grunted at him and pulled my leather jacket close against the autumn wind. Still, it beat winter in Milwaukee. Etorre grinned and led us inside.

“Throw your coat anywhere,” he said, dropping his on a centuries old table before walking down the hallway. Something had shifted in his voice. He sounded like someone used to giving orders, a side of Etorre I’d never seen before. I dropped my jacket on his and followed.

“When will these ‘friends’ of yours get here?”

“They’re already here.”

I hadn’t seen any other cars in the parking lot he called a driveway.

“This way. They’re waiting for you. They don’t like to wait.”

“Am I supposed to be scared? What is this, some kind of fraternity hazing? I’m not interested in that shit, Ettore.”

“Nothing like that,” he said. “I promise this will interest you. Now come.” That last an order. I almost walked out. I could probably have hotwired the Ferrari if necessary. But something stopped me. Something in the way he stood, the way he spoke. He didn’t sound like Ettore. An improvement, really.

I followed the new and improved Ettore through the villa’s maze-like interior. Whoever designed this place had read too much Lovecraft.

“Where the hell are we going?” I asked.

“Up,” he said, pointing towards the ceiling.

“We already passed the stairs.”

He shook his head and kept walking. We stopped in the library. Good taste in literature is a mark of intelligence, or so my father said. Genius glared at me from that collection. I looked over the spines of thousands of books, many of them hundreds of years old.

“Is that a first edition of –”

“Yes. Don’t touch anything; you’ll get fingerprints everywhere. This way.”

What way? I turned to look.

“It’s a secret passageway,” I said.

I’ve kept them waiting? He stepped into the passage before I could say anything. I followed with a shrug no one saw.

#

Half a dozen members of the Society of the Black Cube reclined comfortably in the hidden apartment. They looked nothing like cultists. A woman, maybe in her fifties, with steely hair and a thousand dollar wardrobe, sat apart from the rest. Boredom plastered itself over her dead, expressionless face. She looked past Ettore when we crested the top step. Something in her eyes froze me in place. I could barely struggle against whatever held me.

“Let him go, Carlina,” one of the men said, my Italian good enough to understand that much. The woman blinked dull black eyes at me and I could move again.

“What the hell?” I demanded, receiving laughter for an answer. Awesome.

“She doesn’t mean anything by it, Marco,” Ettore whispered in my ear. “Be polite; Carlina’s in charge tonight. Do nothing to upset her.” I’d never heard urgency in his voice like that before. I could smell him sweating.

“Come, sit with me, Marco,” the woman said in accented English.

“It’s Marcus,” I said, not moving even a step. Everyone froze, surprised eyes shifting between me and the woman. Her blank face curved into a rough semblance of a smile and everyone relaxed.

“My apologies. Come, sit with me, Marc.”

“Only my friends call me Marc.” Tension filled the room again before she brushed it away.

“Marcus, then.” She gestured to an empty chair, all expression dying on her face. Ettore pushed me towards her and I sat. “Ettore has told me much about you. What has he told you about us?”

“That you don’t like waiting.”

Her lips didn’t as much as twitch towards a smile. “And?”

“And nothing.”

“Then why are you here? Do you normally travel this far to meet with complete strangers? How would you escape if we were bad people?”

“Are you bad people?”

“That depends on whom you ask. We are people with purpose. From what Ettore tells me, you would do well to join us.”

“I’m not interested in any cult shit,” I said, standing. “I’m out of here, Ettore.”

“No, you’re not,” the woman said. Brushing her left thumb over the back of my hand, she muttered something beneath her breath.  Every muscle in my body froze in place. I’d have screamed in pain if I were able. This time, I couldn’t even struggle.

“We’re not a ‘cult,’ Marco. We are the Black Cube. You were brought to our attention some time ago. We believe you have potential. I’m here to offer you power. In return you will offer us loyalty and obedience. A fair trade.”

Her thumb brushed my hand and I could move again. I slumped into the chair.

“How did you do that?” I asked. Fear could wait.

“Magic.” This woman had power, and I wanted it.

#

The Society of the Black Cube styled themselves sorcerers. Real sorcery makes their magic look like a birthday party magician’s tricks. I didn’t know that then. They had other novices, of course. Four of them, besides me, were under Carlina’s tutelage. Three were useless brainsucks, barely able to wipe their own asses. They were also richer than me, which though hardly impossible still took some doing. It also explained their presence. I ignored them.

The fourth, Ilario, needed watching, in an “I don’t want to get knifed in the spleen” sort of way. I’d already seen him sharpening an unpleasant-looking dagger in my general direction. No one discouraged rivalries between novices.

I spent my days in school. Carlina picked the classes and somehow got my schedule changed a month into the term. Turned out political science wasn’t anywhere nearly as boring as I’d thought. With the new classes I wouldn’t see Ettore again until the night he died.

In the evenings I learned from Carlina, spending the weekends at her compound. She taught thoroughly and expected much from her students. Mistakes were met with immediate and memorable correction. I still have scars from those days.

“Roll the ‘r’ more,” she directed.

I nodded and tried again. “Obtempera bene monentibus . . . .” The rattan stick cracked against my shoulders, pitching me forward with nauseating pain. Ilario grinned boyishly and pronounced the Latin spell perfectly. Ironically, six years later he’d end up my first client. He may have been an asshole, but his money spent just as good and his target ended up just as dead.

“Marco,” Carlina said, “practice. Ilario, dinner.” Ilario grinned again and padded off on habitually bare feet. A shout came from the direction of his room seconds later. Carlina flashed me an apprising look and turned towards the door. A limping Ilario appeared in the doorway at the same time. Blood dripped from his left foot. In his hand he held a small children’s jack. Barbed spikes replaced the usually rounded tips.

“I wondered where that had gotten off to,” I said without looking up. “What were you doing with that? It’s dangerous if you lose track of it, you know.”

Ilario grunted something ungentlemanly. From the corner of my eye I saw him rear back to throw the caltrop at me.

“Abimegh servo mihi,” I muttered, tracing the glyph of the spirit Abimegh on the floor. I’d been building up the spell for half an hour. The ‘r’ rolled perfectly. The spell took hold and Ilario stopped in mid throw. Panic showed in otherwise motionless eyes. I stood and took the jack from his raised hand. “You should see someone about that foot,” I told him, “just in case there’s any rust on this,” I waved the jack in front of him.

“May I be excused?” I asked Carlina, a look of innocence spackled on my face.

Carlina regarded me, her face no more lifelike than a month ago. I found her impossible to read, which made trying to predict her rewards and punishment useless. Sweat formed on my brow while I waited.

“Go have dinner Marco,” she said at last. “You,” she continued, almost spitting the word at the statue-like Ilario, “see me when you’re capable.”

My clothing barely brushed the frozen man as I left. I considered knocking him over but preferred to leave the childishness to the trust fund kids bankrolling the Black Cube. I saw one of them sneaking into statue-boy’s room as I headed to dinner. It just wasn’t Ilario’s night. The poor dear. Later, I found out they’d expelled Ilario from the Society that same night. Once he could move again, anyway. Funny how that ended up saving his life.

#

Carlina deemed me “ready” by the beginning of my second term at university. She refused to say ready for what.

“Meet us at here at one,” Carlina said, handing me directions. The clock on my cell phone already read eighteen hundred. I had a long wait until one. I’d spend most of it trying to get to the middle of nowhere she directed me towards. The full moon shined prettily during the drive, but I could have done without the cliffs and one-lane roads. I left the rental car a mile and a half from the destination. I took not breaking my neck on the way there as one of my trials.

The ruins of the ancient palazzo to which Carlina had sent me were enormous and riddled with invisible pitfalls and failing architecture. I stepped over the broken form of one of the more stupid of my fellow novices twenty feet in. Half an hour passed while I tried to read the convoluted directions I’d been given, navigate the maze of a falling building and locate the no doubt crumbling stairs I’d been told to find. All by the glow of a glove box flashlight. Maybe I should have learned a night vision spell.

To my surprise, when I found them, the stairs weren’t crumbling. Instead they’d been rebuilt, with steel supports drilled into a new, reinforced wall to act as a railing. As good as my little flashlight worked, it still only illuminated four or five feet ahead. The stairs went considerably farther. I descended, the temperature rising with every step.

“You’re on time,” a surprised voice greeted me at the bottom of the winding stairs.

Torches lit the giant domed room. Their orange and yellow light sent obscene shadows flickering against barren stone walls, rendering my flashlight obsolete. Some large object, easily five feet high and wide, squatted at the back of the room. Light actually seemed to get absorbed into its too black covering.

“Of course I’m on time,” I said, tearing my gaze from that strange something. My Italian had gotten a lot better in the last few months.

A half-dozen women and men occupied the underground amphitheatre. They all wore identical uniforms: off-white trousers with a matching, tunic-y top. The torchlight reflected at odd angles from their clothing, like it didn’t want to shine on them any more than it did on whatever hid beneath the cloth. Different symbols, I recognized only a few, decorated their sleeves. Signs of rank. The Society gave knowledge, and power, but slowly, like they were hoarding what they knew. Learn a bit, go up in rank, get a bit more handed to you, rinse and repeat. That’s not what I had signed up for.

“Okay, I’m here,” I told Carlina, “now what?”

I caught the blue cotton bag she threw at my head and opened it. The pants and tunic inside held no decorations. Novices didn’t get symbols of power. I didn’t see any place to change, so I stripped then and there. Nudity has never bothered me much; mine or anyone else’s. The new garments fit perfectly.

“Let’s do this,” the man who “greeted” me said, orange light reflecting from his bald head. A murmur went around the room and people moved to stations marked by nothing at all.

“Get over here, Marco,” Carlina hissed. I moved my ass like my life depended on it. Baldy’s glare suggested it did.

Carlina stood me before the covered thing at the back of the room and backed away. Two of the less ornately decorated sorcerers removed the cloth, revealing a large black stone. That soul-sucking darkness hadn’t come from the cloth at all. The Cube pulled light from everything around it. I watched the color seeped away from the sorcerers at its side, granting them both a deathly pallor.

“Tonight you become a full member of the Society, Marco,” Baldy said, I’d never learn his real name. He came to stand beside me, towering above my relatively short form. “Or you will if the Master approves.”

No one had mentioned any “Master” before.

“Come, Marco, feel our true power. Control over hell itself.” At Baldy’s cue the others set into motion. The two beside the stone began to draw a large circle around it with scarlet chalk. Once finished, they began scrawling Latin around the circle, lips fluttering in synchronized chant. I rubbed at my eyes when the words began to flicker with their own illumination.

“Trick of the light,” I muttered. I’d never seen magic like this before. Baldy laughed, clapping me hard on the back.

From some hidden place two other sorcerers produced swords; long, narrow, sharp. As the circle makers finished, the sword bearers began their work. Again lips moved in chant and long blades swept deadly circuits around their wielders. Impossibly, black fire slowly rose from the letters at their feet.

“It’s almost time, Marco,” Baldy said. “We’re killing two birds with one stone tonight. No, not you, boy. You’re too valuable, or you will be. No, we’ll get you bound to us and remove a longstanding thorn in our side.”

“You waited for me to do that? You shouldn’t have.” Baldy’s ham-sized hand caught me across the cheek in a swift backhand. Stars exploded before my eyes.

“I like you, Marco, but shut up.” He took more time to regain his composure than I did. I marked him down several points for having lost it in the first place. “As you’ll learn,” he eventually continued, “certain operations require the right timing. We can initiate someone whenever, but death magic must be performed at the right time. That time is now.”

At the word Carlina produced a large, leather-bound book. It looked ancient. Even older than the palazzo. One of the lesser sorcerers brought out a tall wooden lectern and set it before the circle. Carlina reverently placed the tome on the stand’s carved surface. She lifted her hand from the age-worn cover and it opened. An unfelt wind whipped at the pages, turning them back and forth, the dry parchments crackling as they moved. After a moment they stopped and settled to reveal the convoluted lines of a demonic signature. The top of the page held a single, gold-lettered name: Alastor.

“Recite,” Carlina ordered.

“Alastor. Nemesis and executioner, Azazel of the mountains. Hatred, destruction, demon of vengeance,” I said.

“Good,” she nodded. “Tonight, if the Master desires, we will bind hell’s executioner to you for eternity and you, by the authority of Pact of the Arcanum, will command it to destroy our enemy.” She handed me a folded piece of paper. “When the time comes, read this.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Just your good fortune,” Baldy answered. Like me, no signs of rank decorated his clothing. That didn’t seem to affect his obvious authority. He reached out a beefy hand and shoved me aside. Carlina nimbly stepped from his path.

I had not seen the practice of demonology before, with its words of power and symbols of command. When the Hellmouth opened its ivory teeth gnashed in the void and sounds of torment and grotesque delight echoed upward from some place indescribably Below. Then the twelve foot demon manifested above the great, light sucking Cube. The Hellmouth closed in a silent roar. The demon’s roar wasn’t nearly as quiet.

Never before had I witnessed power like that. An actual demon, here to obey them. Me. Whatever. Sure, they did it the hard way, but I didn’t know that, then.

The “Master” seemingly approved of the Society’s plan because the demon Alastor dutifully scrawled its signature on a fresh sheet of parchment for me. Surprisingly, it looked happy to hand over its power for what seemed like nothing in return.

The demon smirked at me, rotten fangs somehow gleaming in the Cube’s negating light.

“You’ll come to me eventually, boy,” it said in accentless English. “They all do. You‘ve just bet your soul on power and you’ve already lost. The revenge you seek isn’t even your own. Pathetic. Now, read your little scrap and tell me whom I’m to destroy. As though I don’t already know.”

I opened the paper, squinting to read the cramped handwriting in the torchlight.

“Antonio –”

The sound of pounding footsteps, maybe dozens of them, tore the rest of the name from my lips, drowning my words in chaos.

“He’s here!” Ettore yelled; the first of the mob of sorcerers to make it down the stairs. Flashes of fire and the buzz of electricity reflected off the stone walls behind him. Baldy hurriedly organized a defense, placing his subordinates in a tight semi-circle before the steps. The sound of killing spells echoed through the amphitheatre.

“Say the name,” Carlina hissed. “Say it! That monster will destroy us all.”

“Better hurry, meat sack,” the demon said. “She’s not talking about me. The Demiurge is coming.”

“What the hell is a Demiurge?”

Everyone around me panicked, even Carlina, their training in patience and punishment having failed them. I shook my head and I let the fear pass over and through me. Fear can wait in the presence of real power.

“That would be me,” a quiet voice answered. Everyone froze for a moment as it whispered through the room.

“Uh oh, too late now,” the demon grinned. “I guess you’ll be the one who got away, boy. I’d have you in a few years, but you won’t live that long, now. I think I’ll be going.” At a gesture the Hellmouth yawned open and the demon’s form vaporized. I watched the brackish mist sink back down to whatever pit it had come from as death descended from above.

Lightning flashed and thunder shook the room, landing me on my ass. I looked to the stairs. No mountain of power stalked us. Instead an old man stood half-way down the steps, a walking stick grasped in his right hand. Reds and golds highlighted his perfectly clean suit and wisps of snowy hair bobbed around his head with each step. His face carried a map of wrinkles. That old man caused all this terror? Really? He’d blow over in a light breeze.

Then he raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.

“Olprge!” he thundered.

A jagged twist of blue light flashed to life at his fingertips and lightning rained down on us. The bolts had come from his outstretched hand! While the panicked sorcerers scattered and fled, I managed to get to my feet. I needed a better look.

Baldy appeared from nowhere. “Get over there and help us, boy,” he snarled. A violent shove sent me past the broken defensive circle, right to the feet of the miniature Olympian on the steps.

I stared up and the ancient man. His gray eyes flicked down to me and his lips twitched in something vaguely smile-like.

“Run, child,” he said. “Run and let Mother Night spare you a few seconds more.”

“What are you?”

“A sorcerer. A real sorcerer, that is. These worms aren’t worthy of the title. If you won’t run, at least arm yourself. It’s more sporting that way.”

I threw my best spell at him, one that should have stopped his heart. He flicked it away with a negligent gesture.

“Amusing.”

“Shut up and kill me already,” I said. “You’re going to anyway. Get it over with or the suspense will finish me first.”

He raised his left hand, spoke a Word and the lightning came. That I didn’t have a smoking hole in my chest a second later almost shocked me to death. The old man would have gotten a laugh out of that.

“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back for you. Last.” The man’s hand worked a strange design in the air. That sign flashed indigo at a softly spoken Word and my body ceased to be my own. My little trick on Ilario hadn’t come close to this. Even Carlina lacked this kind of power. So I waited. I didn’t have a choice.

The man called they called the Demiurge wreaked an awful and final slaughter on the Society. He brushed Carlina’s deadliest spells away like so much lint from his impeccable suit and Baldy died in a pool of his own fear-induced urine. How did I ever think I’d find power there?

The butchery took less than twenty minutes. I learned more in that short time than during the months with the Black Cube. Finished, the Demiurge strolled back to me, walking stick clicking against the floor in one hand as he hauled along a struggling cultist with the other.

“One of you is going to die tonight,” the old man said, dropping Ettore before me. “Choose.”

“Marco, mio fratello,” Ettore pleaded, “we’re like family. Don’t you love me like a brother?”

Suddenly able to move, I cocked my head at the groveling man. “You should know this already, Ettore: it’s better to be feared than loved. And my name is Marcus.”

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