54.Magic That was Rusty
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POOR-SPIRITED, over-easy-going Ninzian sat upon the stone bench, an outcast now in his own garden: and he thought for a while about the pitiless miracles with which this Holmendis had harried the fairies and the elves and the salamanders and the trolls and the calcars and the succubæ and all the other amiable iniquities of Poictesme; and about the saint’s devastating crusades against moral laxity and free-thinking and the curt conclusions which he had made with his ropes and his fires to the existence of mere heresy. It seemed uncomfortably likely that in dealing with a devil this violent and untactful Holmendis would go to even greater lengths, and would cast off all compunction, if somehow Ninzian could not get the better of him.
So Ninzian decided to stay upon the safe side of accident, by destroying the fellow out of hand. Ninzian took from his pocket the stone ematille, and he broke off a branch from a rose-bush. With the flowering rose branch Ninzian traced a largish circle about his sleek person, saying, “I infernalize unto myself the circumferenceof nine feet about me.” Here the sign of Sargatanet was repeated by him thrice. Then Ninzian went on, “From the east, Glavrab; from the west, Garron; from the north—”
He paused. He scratched his head. The boreal word of power was Cabinet or Cabochon or Capricorn or something of that kind, he knew: but what it was exactly was exactly what Ninzian had forgotten. He would have to try something else.
Ninzian therefore turned to the overthrowing of Holmendis by cold and by heat. Ninzian said:
“I invoke thee who art in the empty wind, terrible, invisible, all-potent contriver of destruction and bringer of desolation. I upraise before thee that rod from which proceeds the life abhorrent to thee. I invoke thee through thy veritable name, in virtue of which thou canst not refuse to hear,—Joerbet-Jopaker-beth-Jobolchoseth—”
But there he gave it up. That dreadful, jaw-cracking obscene appellation had, Ninzian recollected, eleven more sections: but in bewildered Ninzian’s mind they were all jumbled and muddled and hopelessly confused.
After that a rather troubled High Bailiff rearranged his clothing; and he now tried to get in touch with Nebiros, the Field-Marshal and Inspector General of Hell. But again Ninzian was in his magic deplorably rusty.
“Agla, Tagla, Malthon, Oarios—” he rattled off,handily enough,—and once more he bogged in an appalling stretch of unrememberably difficult words. Black magic was not an accomplishment in which you could stay expert without continual practice; and Ninzian had regrettably neglected all infernal arts for the last five centuries and over.
So in this desperate pinch he turned perforce to a simple abecedary conjuration such as mere wizards used; and the High Bailiff of Upper Ardra said, rather shame-facedly, “Prince Lucifer, most dreadful master of all the Revolted Spirits, I entreat thee to favor me in the adjuration which I address to thy mighty minister, Lucifugé Rofocalé, being desirous to make a pact with him—”
And Ninzian got through this invocation at least, quite nicely, though he a trifle bungled the concluding words from the Grand Clavicle.
This conjuration, however, worked a bit too well. For instead of the hoped-for appearance of genial old Lucifugé Rofocalé endurably disinfected of his usual odor, now came to Ninzian, from among the sweet-smelling rose-bushes, the appearance of a proud gentleman in gold and sable: and a rather perturbed Ninzian bowed very low before his liege-lord, Lucifer, Prince over all the Fallen Angels.