The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,6
interfered with. We are at war with forces that do not believe in wizardry, that hate our government, and that seek to destroy us. Believe me, this protection is needed.”
“If you say so.” Rhion settled back into the leather seat cushions and watched the landscape whisk by, the occasional silted meadows and crumbling barns among the dark trees speaking of a time when the countryside had been prosperous and well tended.
“It was the war,” von Rath explained, when Rhion asked about it. “We were defeated in the war...”
“We were betrayed,” Baldur put in, twisting around in the front seat where he sat next to the driver. “Betrayed by C-Communists and Jews who had wormed their way like maggots into the government while true men were fighting. All lost their money, except the Jews. That’s why the Nazi Party appeared, with the SS as its adamantine spearhead, to save the German race from the muck into which it had been dragged and to lead it to its d-destiny.”
Poincelles’ dark eyes gleamed with malice. “And I suppose slitting the throats of most of its original members was a part of the Party’s destiny?”
“That’s a lie!” Baldur snapped, his fat cheeks mottling red. Since leaving the meadow he had been increasingly jittery, the restlessness of his weak brown eyes behind their thick glasses and of his twitchy, curiously shapely hands confirming Rhion’s earlier suspicions that the boy was addicted to some kind of drug. “And anyway they were traitors to the Party and h-h-homosexuals...”
“All—what was it? Nearly a thousand?—of them?”
“I think now is not the time for a discussion of the Party’s internal politics,” von Rath said with quiet smoothness. “I doubt there is a government in the world that did not go through its formative upheavals. I trust, Rhion, that this expedition has not proved too tiring for you?”
Poincelles sneered, but settled back without argument and applied himself to fouling the air with another cigar. His fingernails, Rhion noticed not for the first time, were long and dirty and filed to points, his fingers stained yellow with nicotine. Gall, throughout the discussion, had merely stared ahead of him, perched again upon the little jump seat. Though, as far as Rhion could ascertain, neither Gall nor Baldur were actual members of the SS, both wore the close-fitting black trousers and clay-colored uniform shirts of the Order, a garb that was less than flattering to the lumbering boy. Poincelles retained civilian clothes—in this case a pair of rather loud tweed trousers and a tweed jacket, reeking of cigar smoke and old sweat.
“I’m tired, yes, but I think that will pass.” Rhion turned to look up at the young Captain beside him. “The ritual of meditation we’ve been doing in the mornings helps; all week I’ve felt my strength coming back.”
The gray eyes changed, losing their coldness. “Eric—Major Hagen—had used the morning ritual for years, since he was a youth at school.” His soft, steady voice still echoed with the grief of loss, a grief as sharp, Rhion knew, as his own mourning for Jaldis. Was it Gyzan the Archer who had said Perhaps the ending of all dreams is death...?
“That was what first brought us together, years ago—the dawn opening of the ways to power. I had the Crowley texts and was looking for those that had been his sources—I was only sixteen, and terrified that the masters at the Academy would find out I was interested in such matters. A bookseller in Brandenberg gave me Eric’s name. He was living in the most awful garret while he pursued his studies...” He shook his head, his mouth quirking a little as he recalled the young student he had known, the haunted, conscientious little cadet he had himself been... “He was the only one who understood, the only one I could talk to about that which was within me—that which I knew had to be true.”
Then he laughed a little, like a sudden flash of sun on frost-hard December earth. “I remember the winter night in that garret of his when we first contacted Jaldis. It was a few days before Christmas and freezing cold. I had to be on the train home the next morning, to a true old Prussian Christmas with every aunt and uncle and cousin I possessed. With the drugs we were using to project our minds into the Void, I still can’t imagine why we didn’t kill ourselves...”
The car slowed as it swung into the shadows of the road cut,