“Symbolon kósmou … tâ ántra … kaì tân enkosmiôn dunámeôn eríthento … oi theológoi…”
Leo Fox was also exhausted. The owl’s voice weakened, Leo’s head slumped, the effort to sustain the shape was too great. But the implacable Madame Olcott told him to persevere and addressed the last shape, which now had also taken on anthropomorphic features. “Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, is that you? What do you know?”
The shape began to hum a tune. Madame Olcott called for silence. The musicians stopped, and the dancers no longer howled, but they continued spinning, though with increasing fatigue.
The shape was singing: “Gentle love, this hour befriends me…”
“It’s you; I recognize you,” Madame Olcott said invitingly. “Speak, tell us where, what…”
The shape said: “Il était nuit…. La tête couverte du voile de lin … j’arrive, je trouve un autel de fer, j’y place le rameau mystérieux…. Oh, je crus descendre dans un abîme … des galeries composées de quartiers de pierre noire … mon voyage souterrain …”
“He’s a fraud, a fraud!” Agliè cried. “Brothers, you all know these words. They’re from the Très Sainte Trinosophie, I wrote it myself; anyone can read it for sixty francs!” He ran to Geo Fox and began shaking him by the arm.
“Stop, you imposter!” Madame Olcott screamed. “You’ll kill him!”
“And what if I do?” Agliè shouted, pulling the medium off the chair.
Geo tried to support himself by clinging to the form he had secreted, but it fell with him and dissolved on the floor. Geo slumped in the sticky matter that he continued to vomit, until he stiffened, lifeless.
“Stop, madman,” Madame Olcott screamed, seizing Agliè. And then, to the other brothers: “Stand fast, my little ones. They must speak still. Khunrath, Khunrath, tell him you are real!”
Leo Fox, to survive, was trying to reabsorb the owl.
Madame Olcott went around behind him and pressed her fingers to his temples, to bend him to her will. The owl, realizing it was about to disappear, turned toward its creator: “Phy, Phy Diabolos,” it muttered, trying to peck his eyes. Leo gave a gurgle, as if his jugular had been severed, and sank to his knees.
The owl disappeared in a revolting muck (“Phiii, phiii,” it went), and into it, choking, the medium also fell, and was still. Madame Olcott, furious, turned to Theo, who was doing his best to hold on: “Speak, Kelley! You hear me?”
But Kelley did not speak. He was trying to detach himself from the medium, who now yelled as if his bowels were being torn. The medium struggled to take back what he had produced, clawing the air. “Kelley, earless Kelley, don’t cheat again,” Madame Olcott cried. Kelley, unable to separate himself from the medium, was now trying to smother him, turning into a kind of chewing gum, from which the last Fox brother was unable to extricate himself.
Theo, too, sank to his knees, choking, entangled in the parasite blob that was devouring him; he rolled and writhed as if enveloped in flame. The thing that had been Kelley covered him like a shroud, then melted, liquefied, leaving Theo on the floor, the drained, gutted mummy of a child embalmed by Salon. At that same moment, the four dancers stopped as one, flailed their arms—drowning men, sinking like stones—then crouched, whined like puppies, and covered their heads with their hands.
Agliè had returned to the ambulatory. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the little handkerchief that adorned his breast pocket, took two deep breaths, and put a white pill in his mouth. Then he called for silence.
“Brother knights. You have seen the cheap tricks this woman inflicts on us. Let us regain our composure and return to my proposal. Give me one hour with the prisoner in private.”
Madame Olcott, oblivious, bent over her mediums, was stricken with an almost human grief. But Pierre, who had followed everything and was still seated on the throne, resumed control of the situation. “Non,” he said. “There is only one means: le sacrifice humain! Give to me the prisoner.”
Galvanized by his energy, the giants of Avalon grabbed Belbo, who had watched the scene in a daze, and thrust him before Pierre, who, with the agility of an acrobat, jumped up, put the chair on the table, and pushed both giants to the center of the choir. He grabbed the wire of the Pendulum as it went by and stopped the sphere, staggering under the recoil.
It took barely an instant. As if the thing had been prearranged—and perhaps, during the confusion, some signals had been exchanged—the giants climbed up on the table and hoisted Belbo onto the chair. One giant wrapped the wire of the Pendulum twice around Belbo’s neck, and the other held the sphere, then set it at the edge of the table.
Bramanti rushed to this makeshift gallows, flashing with majesty in his scarlet cloak, and chanted: “Exorcizo igitur te per Pentagrammaton, et in nomine Tetragrammaton, per Alfa et Omega qui sunt in spiritu Azoth. Saddai, Adonai, Jotchavah, Eieazereie! Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Anael. Fluat Udor per spiritum Eloim! Maneat Terra per Adam Iot-Cavah! Per Samael Zebaoth et in nomine Eloim Gibor, veni Adramelech! Vade retro Lilith!”
Belbo stood straight on the chair, the wire around his neck. The giants no longer had to restrain him. If he took one step in any direction, he would fall from that shaky perch, and the noose, tightening, would strangle him.
“Fools!” Agliè shouted. “How will we put it back on its axis now?” He was concerned for the safety of the Pendulum.
Bramanti smiled. “Do not worry, Count. We are not mixing your dyes here. This is the Pendulum, as They conceived it. It will know where to go. And to convince a Force to act, there is nothing better than a human sacrifice.”
Until that moment, Belbo had trembled. But now I saw him relax. He looked at the audience, I will not say with confidence, but with curiosity. I believe that, hearing the argument between the two adversaries, seeing before him the contorted bodies of the mediums, the dervishes still jerking and moaning to the side, the rumpled vestments of the dignitaries, Belbo recovered his most genuine gift: his sense of the ridiculous.
I believe that at that moment he decided not to allow himself to be frightened anymore. Perhaps his elevated position gave him a sense of superiority, as if he were watching, from a stage, that gathering of lunatics locked in a Grand Guignol feud, and at the sides, almost to the entrance, the little monsters, now uninterested in the action, nudging each other and giggling, like Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo.
He only turned an anxious eye toward Lorenza, as the giants again grasped her arms. Jolted, she came to her senses. She began crying.
Perhaps Belbo was reluctant to let her witness his emotion, or perhaps he decided instead that this was the only way he could show his contempt for that crowd, but he held himself erect, head high, chest bared, hands bound behind his back, like a man who had never known fear.
Calmed by Belbo’s calm, resigned to the interruption of the Pendulum, but still eager to know the secret after a lifetime’s search (or many lifetimes), and also in order to regain control over his followers, Agliè addressed him again: “Come, Belbo, make up your mind. As you can see, you are in a situation that, to say the least, is awkward. Stop this playacting.”
Belbo didn’t answer. He looked away, as if politely to avoid overhearing a conversation he had chanced upon.
Agliè insisted, conciliatory, paternal: “I understand your irritation, your reserve. How it must revolt you to confide an intimate and precious secret to a rabble that has just offered such an unedifying spectacle! Very well, you may confide your secret to me alone, whispering it in my ear. Now I will have you taken down, and I know you will tell me a word, a single word.”
Belbo said: “You think so?”
Then Agliè changed his tone. I saw him imperious as never before, sacerdotal, hieratic. He spoke as if he had on one of the Egyptian vestments worn by his colleagues. But the note was false; he seemed to be parodying those whom he had always treated with indulgent commiseration. At the same time, he spoke with the full assumption of his authority. For some purpose of his own—because this couldn’t have been unintentional—he was introducing an element of melodrama. If he was acting, he acted well: Belbo seemed unaware of any deception, listening to Agliè as if he had expected nothing else from him.
“Now you will speak,” Agliè said. “You will speak, and you will join this great game. If you remain silent, you are lost. If you speak, you will share in the victory. For truly I say this to you: This night you and I and all of us are in Hod, the Sefirah of splendor, majesty, and glory; Hod, which governs ritual and ceremonial magic; Hod, the moment when the curtain of eternity is parted. I have dreamed of this moment for centuries. You will speak, and you will join the only ones who will be entitled, after your revelation, to declare themselves Masters of the World. Humble yourself, and you will be exalted. You will speak because I order you to speak, and my words efficiunt quod figurant!”
And Belbo, now invincible, said, “Ma gavte la nata…”
Agliè, even if he was expecting a refusal, blanched at the insult.
“What did he say?” Pierre asked, hysterical.
“He will not speak,” Agliè roughly translated. He lifted his arms in
