In the narthex now stood a box about two meters on each side. It was of simple construction but inlayed with magical glyphs made of silver.
“Those who are initiates in the magical arts,” said Mr. Porter, “will recognize this as a crude Box of Protection, normally used to protect those inside from assault on the Ethereal Plane. But it has been reversed: Those inside cannot get out ethereally.
“Baron, Celesta, please join me inside this box. When we are inside, Baron, please move from my sister into your simulacrum.”
“And if he chooses not to?” asked Celesta.
“A fast exorcism,” replied the Lich.
Celesta gasped. “Radi! You need him alive. And you want me alive, I presume!”
“My dear Celesta, use your imagination! I have power over souls. It is my strongest. The Baron has sensed this instinctively, and strenuously avoided confronting me for months.
“Bind the false Baron’s hands behind it,” he ordered Mr. Packer.
The simulacrum allowed itself to be tied and pushed into the Box. Celesta and Mr. Porter followed. As he stood in the open doorway, several Imps on his shoulders and head and more crowding around his feet, the Lich asked the Baron, “Do you want to find out firsthand how wise it was to avoid confronting me? Or will you leave my sister voluntarily?”
“That one has nasty designs, I’m sure. Is it not time for me?” Djinni Saleem asked the Baron.
The sham Baron was never designed to hold a soul, so being in it would be like possessing a piece of furniture. With the restraining collar. Rostov’s soul would be nearly helpless and quite transportable. If the Nazadlan opening ritual needed only his soul, not his body, that would put Mr. Porter close to victory.
But it was also a gamble to let Djinni Saleem fight alone, against not only Mr. Porter but all his Imps and his humans. Anything … just about anything could happen, including the Lich enslaving Saleem as his powerful if reluctant ally. Desperate as the Baron was, he had to silently answer, “Not yet, my friend … not yet. I hope I can soon help you in our fight.”
“You are a cool one, Baron,” replied Saleem.
“Yes, cool,” Rostov told himself. “Remember, Iglacias: Your goal is to distract Mr. Porter. Succeed, and his own little people will take care of him all by themselves. Stay cool.”
But he was not cool.
Then Mr. Porter closed the door of the Box of Protection. Immediately, the Baron raced to the inner parts of Celesta’s mind, thinking of himself as half wood tick and half field mouse. Unaware, her brother roughly undid the straps between Celesta’s wrists and her collar, which he released from her neck. As her wrists lowered and sensation increased, she groaned. With her face between his hands, her brother stared into her eyes and entered her.
A feeling like a deadly thundercloud gathering overhead fell on the Baron’s soul as he searched frantically for lodging points. He forced himself into her memories, he lost his breath in her passions, he stumbled through her habits.
Inexorably, Mr. Porter tracked him down.
The Lich’s power was huge! He seemed everywhere at once, and everywhere his power was greater than the Baron’s. He began systematically closing off parts of Celesta’s mind.
There are places in a lady’s mind that a gentleman possessor does not go. The Baron went there, and Mr. Porter rumbled after.
There are places in the mind where it is dangerous for a possessor to go. The Baron danced lightly past the hazards in one of those, and Mr. Porter trampled after.
There are places in the mind where it is dangerous to the host for a possessor to go. The Baron danced on and rested at the center of one of these, feeling like a swimmer who had barely made it back to shore.
There the Lich caught him, manifesting as a huge hand that wrapped itself around the Baron’s briefly struggling soul, then ripped him out of Celesta’s mind and into the Ethereal Plane. As its cold darkness washed around him, he heard a chilling shriek coming from Celesta. But her brother did not pause. In two more seconds, the wizard was thrust into the simulacrum, and three seconds after that the collar closed around its neck.
Through the counterfeit Baron’s imitation eyes he saw that Celesta had fallen to her knees, convulsing, and her brother was finally stooping to lift her.
Now was the time to attack. “Djinni Saleem, come forth!” the Baron cried aloud. “Our enemies need to hear your gusty song and feel your stormy embrace!”
The Djinni came forth as a singing whirlwind, filling the Box and ripping it apart. As its boards flew, Saleem expanded until the narthex was a whirling vortex of curtains, papers, and even furniture. The Baron ran for a corner and desperately began to free his simulacrum’s hands.
Against a lesser being, the surprise attack would have been devastating, but Mr. Porter had fended it off with supernatural reflex. At the center of the vortex, he seemed easily to resist the wind’s unremitting pounding. Now he laughed coldly.
“You bring a Djinni against me, Baron? A Djinni? Your generosity overwhelms me! Do you know how long we Kalnichovs have been seeking a foothold in the Elemental Plane of Air?
“Imps to me!” he cried. “Every one of you! I want this Djinni!”
Still writhing his hands behind him, the Baron observed the bizarre contest with dread. Even as all his Imps swarmed Saleem, Mr. Porter orated, trying to soothe and persuade the Djinni, as his hands wove in gestures to support his magically persuasive lies of peace and friendship. After a few seconds it seemed he would succeed; Saleem’s whirlwind and his song both wavered, growing weaker and less deafening.
It was therefore easier to hear as Kristijan screamed “My sister!” and easier for him to hurry through the winds to the forgotten, dying form of Celesta, choking on her own vomit.
Then Mr. Packer and Miss Booles charged forward, knives drawn. Mr. Packer slashed across Mr. Porter’s throat. Miss Booles thrust into Kristijan’s back. Standing away from their victims, the two stood Imp-free, smiling at each other.
But the Lich gurgled only briefly, then put one hand to his throat and continued seducing the Djinni.
Mr. Packer’s smile was replaced by an expression of astonishment. He raised his knife, perhaps with the foolish intention of attacking with it again, quite useless against a Lich.
“A little help here, Mr. Packer,” Miss Booles said to him, as coolly as if she were dealing with a fractious horse. With unnatural vitality, Kristijan Stokowski had turned on her, pinned her wrists with one hand, and was attempting to strangle her with the other. Crisply, Packer stepped over and slit Kristijan’s throat from ear to ear. The man fell to the floor beside Celesta and Miss Booles bent down to retrieve her knife from his back.
“And I was thoroughly enjoying the company of these people at tea!” thought the Baron with a shudder. With a last enormous effort, he freed his hands and cast a spell of Aid for Saleem, hoping to add a few more seconds to the fight, all the time he needed to point to Celesta and say loudly, “Mr. Packer, Miss Booles. Deal with the woman!”
As swiftly as he had dropped his sister to resist the Djinni, Mr. Porter turned from the Djinni and rushed toward his traitorous minions now standing over his dying sister and brother. He threw Mr. Packer so hard against the wall that the Baron heard the crunch of bones breaking. But at the same instant, Miss Booles plunged her knife deep into Celesta’s eye. Then Mr. Porter bent to Miss Booles and there was more bone snapping as he crushed her neck.
By now the Lich’s skin could have been little more than a bone-filled sausage casing, holding together organs pulped by the Djinni’s assault. Yet his vitality seemed unaffected as he once more turned to the vortex whirling on the other side of the narthex, still under attack by Imps.
But he stopped stock still as he heard two voices cry, “Our brother!”
He turned and stared, as the Baron did. Even the Imps attacking the Djinni paused. Celesta and Kristijan’s souls stood, shining pure and resplendent above their bodies from the Ethereal Plane.
“No!” screamed Mr. Porter.
“I trust we have served you well, my brother,” said Kristijan, bowing.
“May Nazadlan soon come!” added his sister with a curtsey.
Mr. Porter again screamed “No!”
The souls of Mr. Packer and Miss Booles had also risen from their bodies. And from out of the earth Dark Guides swarmed, quietly squealing and gibbering. Four at once was a rich harvest, indeed! They took the hands of the dead souls and called them by name.
As the Guides led Celesta and Kristijan down into the shadows, the Lich reached out his hands, moaning, “My sister! My brother!”
Celesta paused, confused. “Will we not see the gates of Nazadlan open?” she asked.
“I was doing this for us!” her undead brother answered. “It would have been we who opened Nazadlan, we who would have gained the dread and respect of all—old and young, true and dark alike. It would have been our names told in tales through history.”
As their Guides kept tugging and Kristijan and Celesta disappeared, their brother sank to his knees.
“How did we ever put up with that dreadful man?” Miss Booles asked Mr. Packer.
“I really couldn’t say,” he answered. Then, looking at the Dark Guides clutching his hands, “Well, no surprise here, eh, Sarah, my dear?”
“I made a good end, Bob: I died with my best dress on!”
They linked arms as their Guides led them away.
Seeing this, the Imps who had been attacking Saleem remembered their own role as Dark Guides. They came to Mr. Porter, murmuring his real name, Radimir Stokowski, and taking his hands. Absently, he brushed them off, lost in his grief for his sister and brother. The Imps persisted, and with each touch, the resolve holding the Lich together seemed to weaken. But still the inner strength of his purpose did not desert him.
Perhaps it was time for more distraction. Not without some real sympathy, thinking of his own young sister, the Baron stood over Mr. Porter and told him, “They are gone.”
“I can get them back! Once the gates are open, I can get them back!”
“You can’t, and you know it. With all the power of Nazadlan, you might get something back, but you would break this world doing it. You would have nothing for them to return to.”
“Not true!”
“So true. Why is it that your father is not here by your side?”
Mr. Porter wailed, “He greets my brother and my sister! He would not listen!”
“Go to him. Go to all of them! Your place is no longer here. You cannot get what you want here. Not now.”
The Lich’s obsession finally snapped. “You are right. I will get what I want there.” As he gave his hands to his Imps, his soul rose up resplendent from his ruined body. “I come, my family,” he said.