smell of smoke. The smell of burning pitch. They were coming up from the cellar. They were coming down from above.
“Run, there is no time to save anything.” Up the stairs to the roof.
Black hooded figures heaving their torches through the doorways, the fire roaring in the rooms below, exploding the windows, boiling up the stairway. All the paintings were burning.
“To the roof, Armand. Come!”
Creatures like ourselves in these dark garments! Others like ourselves. The Master scattered them in all directions as he raced up the stairway, bones cracking as they struck the ceiling and the walls.
“Blasphemer, heretic!” the alien voices roared. The arms caught Armand and held him, and above at the very top of the stairway the Master turned back for him:
“Armand! Trust your strength. Come!”
But they were swarming behind the Master. They were surrounding him. For each one hurled into the plaster, three more appeared, until fifty torches were plunged into the Master’s velvet garments, his long red sleeves, his white hair. The fire roared up to the ceiling as it consumed him, making of him a living torch, even as with flaming arms he defended himself, igniting his attackers as they threw the blazing torches like firewood at his feet.
But Armand was being borne down and away, out of the burning house, with the screaming mortal apprentices. And over the water and away from Venice, amid cries and wailing, in the belly of a vessel as terrifying as the slave ship, to an open clearing under the night sky.
“Blasphemer, blasphemer!” The bonfire growing, and the chain of hooded figures around it, and the chant rising and rising, “Into the fire.”
“No, don’t do it to me, no!”
And as he watched, petrified, he saw brought towards the pyre the mortal apprentices, his brothers, his only brothers, roaring in panic as they were hurled upwards and over into the flames.
“No . . . stop this, they’re innocent! For the love of God, stop, innocent! . . . ” He was screaming, but now his time had come. They were lifting him as he struggled, and he was flung up and up to fall down into the blast.
“Master, help me!” Then all words giving way to one wailing cry.
Thrashing, screaming, mad.
But he had been taken out of it. Snatched back into life. And he lay on the ground looking at the sky. The flames licked the stars, it seemed, but he was far away from them, and couldn’t even feel the heat anymore. He could smell his burnt clothing and his burnt hair. The pain in his face and hands was the worst and the blood was leaking out of him and he could scarcely move his lips . . .
“ . . . All thy Master’s vain works destroyed, all the vain creations which he made among mortals with his Dark Powers, images of angels and saints and living mortals! Wilt thou, too, be destroyed? Or serve Satan? Make thy choice. Thou hast tasted the fire, and the fire waits for thee, hungry for thee. Hell waits for thee. Wilt thou make thy choice?”
“ . . . yes . . . ”
“ . . . to serve Satan as he is meant to be served.”
“Yes . . . ”
“ . . . That all things of the world are vanity, and thou shalt never use thy Dark Powers for any mortal vanity, not to paint, not to create music, not to dance, nor to recite for the amusement of mortals but only and forever in the service of Satan, thy Dark Powers to seduce and to terrify and to destroy, only to destroy . . . ”
“Yes . . . ”
“ . . . consecrated to thy one and only master, Satan, Satan forever, always and forever . . . to serve thy true master in darkness and pain and in suffering, to surrender thy mind and thy heart . . . ”
“Yes.”
“And to keep from thy brethren in Satan no secret, to yield all knowledge of the blasphemer and his burden . . . ” Silence.
“To yield all knowledge of the burden, child! Come now, the flames wait.”
“I do not understand you . . . ”
“Those Who Must Be Kept. Tell.”
“Tell what? I do not know anything, except that I do not wish to suffer. I am so afraid.”
“The truth, Child of Darkness. Where are they? Where are Those Who Must Be Kept?”
“I do not know. Look into my mind if you have that same power. There is