Chapter #17The Sorcerer's Two-Headed Apprentice by: Seuzz   Luckily, Blackwell has left the Libras up in the workroom at the house. You start to take it down to the library but then think better of it; if he should happen to come home and catch you, he will be in less of a temper if he doesn't find you poring over that treasure. So instead you perch on the cabinet with some paper and carefully copy out all the sigils you can. Your interest is piqued when you notice that the book appears to be damaged. Most of the pages will not open, and the last readable page has had its entire bottom half torn out; the next page, visible where the gap is, shows only a blurry script that hurts your eyes to look at. You wonder if Blackwell has put some kind of protection on the book to prevent your snooping into it, since the available spells cover all and only those he has already shown you how to perform.
Down in the library you make a face at the cyclops vampire-monkey and set up a little research stack. The main book is the grimoire on golems, but you also fetch down one book you know of, De Essentia that, though highly advanced, may yield some clues about magical essences and how they interact with golems. You pile up a few more books nearby, and tuck the copied sigils out of sight in a pile of scrap. Then, one at a time, you take them out to study closely.
You have spent enough time now with Blackwell that you are able to tease out the meaning of each elements in each sigil, even those he has not explained, and to see how they lock together. You are soon overcome with admiration for the skill that their author displayed. It is not enough that each sigilistic element has its own meaning and function; or that they are arranged so that their actions flow into each other. They interlock with each other so that some sigils operate simultaneously and in concert with each other, yielding more powerful and complex sigils over and above their elements, and these follow on each other in chains of actions that operate on an entirely different level from the elemental chains. They are almost like independent melodies that nonetheless coincide to form progressions of even more powerful chords.
But comprehension and admiration are still not the same as mastery. You doodle out variations and transformations over and over again, and you are still not able to advance beyond a basic understanding of how the spells you already know actually work. You only begin to advance after you start consulting the grimoire and the book on essences. In the former a detailed search finally turns up a new basic sigil that Blackwell had not taught you, the one for formless matter: materia. It seems familiar, so you search again through the mask sigils and discover that it is hidden, like an acrostic, inside the spell that creates a golem, as a final complex of transformations. Following up on a hunch you then search De Essentia, and easily find the sigil for essence on the frontispiece as a decoration. You find it again inside the spell that binds a golem-shell to a mask, also hidden as a transformation sequence. Slowly, laboriously, you take apart the full sigil associated with that spell, studying each complex transformation, and are thunderstruck to find that the final transformation state takes the form of a fusion of the essentia and materia sigils. An entanglement of bare form and unrealized essence: of course that is what a golem would be!
Excitedly, you rush back up to the workroom to check the Libras again for any further clues, but are sidetracked by an odor from your room. Ugh, the remnants of last night's bout of nocturnal pleasure. You make a face and detour to sweep up the sheets so you can put them in the wash. You have the copied sigil for the golem-mask spell in your hand, and lacking a better a place to put it as you fold up the bedspread you set it in the middle of the mattress.
At first you think there must be a draft in the room, for the sheet suddenly begins to flutter, and then flies up into the air. You reach out to catch it, but it eludes your grasp. Slowly, horribly, it dawns on you that it is not caught in any current of air; it is fluttering madly through the air of its own power, until it begins to bump into the ceiling. You manage to chase it into a corner, and then, leaping from the edge of the bed, you snag it.
It jerks in your hand like a living thing until you take it firmly by its edges in both your hands. The white paper has darkened to brown, and the sigil marks writhe on the page. Breathing heavily, you sit on the edge of the bed to study it. You feel a prickle on the back of your neck, and slowly turn to look: the stain you'd left on the sheets is completely gone.
Somehow, your semen has been absorbed into the paper and brought it to life.
Two thing occur to you, almost simultaneously. The first is that in soaking up that ... that essential fluid of yours, the page has acted almost exactly like a mask that has been placed on the Libras sigil when you are executing a spell. The spell only calls for hair, but of course it could use most any matter drawn from your body, and semen would likely be even more powerful than hair. The second realization, which nearly leaves you swallowing your own tongue, is that this copy is not a dead thing but a live sigil.
And that should not be. Blackwell had emphasized that only the sigils in the book should be alive, because its author had bound them into the book; the copy, being dead, should be no more capable of transmutation than any other bit of regular matter. Does Blackwell know this? Has he been lying to you? You doubt it. You briefly have the urge to telephone Blackwell, to tell him of this discovery of yours.
And then you abruptly change your mind. No. This will be your little secret. It will free you from relying on the book, and you'll be able to craft any number of spells from the Libras while Blackwell thinks it is safe from your grasp.
Back in the library you consign the wayward sigil to a fire bowl—a little invention of yours that lets you turn paper into air, thus destroying any magical scraps that would be dangerous to leave lying around—and do a lot of hard thinking.
* * * * *
"I wanna go get a burger," you tell Blackwell shortly after "Will Prescott" has shown up for his putative two-hour work shift.
He looks at you over his glasses. "By all means. Will you ask your other self to oblige by fetching them? I could use one myself."
"Sure, but I wanna go with him." Blackwell looks at you carefully. "He called me this afternoon, said he was having some trouble at school. I wanted to talk to him about what to do."
Blackwell leans back. "You could always just press his mask to your own face, and impart your advice that way."
"I'm not sure my advice is for the best," you say, improvising quickly. "Two heads are better than one. If we talk about it, maybe it'll be better than if I just tell him what to do."
Blackwell continues to regard you evenly, then shrugs and turns back to his own book. You and your twin dash out to the car, him as "Prescott" and you as Jared.
At the drive-in you slouch down into the well of the truck and pull off the Jared mask. You then twitch the Prescott mask off the other, exposing the unconscious David Kirkham. He doesn't wake during the time it takes you to plant your memories into the mask and return it to his face.
"Well, haven't we— I mean, you been the clever little scholar," it says peevishly. "By the way, you know, I am having trouble at school."
"I don't know why the Kirkham golem isn't being affected by the curse," you tell it brusquely, for of course you have picked up its memories as well. "Do your best to avoid it."
"Can't you go school and let me work in the library tomorrow?"
"Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?"
"Because it won't make a difference but will still piss you off," he and you chant in unison. It gives you the finger.
"Draw me a golem-mask sigil," you order it, but it has already anticipated your request by hauling out a school notebook. The burgers arrive and start to grow cold while he's working, but when it's done you spit on the paper and are satisfied to see that the sigil is dead. You'd been pretty sure it would be, as golems, no matter who they are imitating, are unable to perform any kind of magic. That will make things safe.
"Copy out the sigils and study them tonight—"
"I know! I know!" he says as he starts up the truck with a roar. "We'll talk tomorrow." He grins. "Two heads are better than one. Two cocks are better than one." He grabs his crotch.
"Let's just pray two assholes don't turn out to be dirtier than one," you snap.
* * * * *
These "consultations" continue all week, as you shift the mask back and forth during its afternoon visits when Blackwell's back is turned. By Friday you are ecstatic at your progress, and on the progress to come. You meet your twin at the gate. "Awesome news! Blackwell's going out of town this weekend. We'll have the run of the place!"
"More research," your replacement says glumly. "I'd rather use the time to finally take care of that rogue golem."   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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