HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

that Julia had read in Lawson’s book—Uriel’s green, Raphael’s
blue, Michael’s red, and Gabriel’s yellow—then left the room
to the candles’ glow. He took a cobalt glass bowl filled with
white sand and, from north to south, began to outline the pattern
that was to become his Tree of Life. Twenty-two paths
grew from the sand that ran through his fingers to the floor. It
sparkled at his feet.
Once finished, he went to a table set with ten golden goblets
and a matching pitcher. He took one in his hand and
poured, filled it with a blood-red cabernet, then set it at the
head of the pattern and spoke that point’s name. Kether. He
did likewise to the ends of each of the branches and certain
cross points, adorning his nearly formed Tree with fruit that
seemed to glow with each setting. Chochmah, Binah, he proceeded
south, Chesed, Geburah, in pairs, right to left,
Tiphareth, beauty at the heart, Netzach, Hod, and finally, the
trunk, Yesod, and Malkuth, the base, the roots.
Sweat ran down the sides of Donald’s face as the room
pulsed with his sorcery. He found himself uncharacteristically
short of breath.
Then, around the perimeter of the room, he faced each of
the canes that had been his quest for two centuries and, one by
one, he placed them between the sephiroth and they became
the branches of the Tree. Twenty-two paths he laid, each near
to bursting with the life it contained from the lives of the ones
it had bled. The sticks sang in his hands and he had to fight the
compulsion to draw on them, to drink, before the ritual was
completed. His ears filled with a sound that rattled his skull and
threatened to breach his pain threshold.
The energies swirled all around him and the sounds began
to reveal themselves as the cries of his victims at the moments
of their deaths. In all his years of planning, in all his experience,
Donald could not have prepared himself for this. His limbs
became leaden, his movements strained. He realized that he
was aging. The ritual was draining him to near death before it
would reanimate him. The process had taken on a life of its
own.
Supporting himself with his sword cane, Donald fought
his way through the flows and eddies to the center of the Tree
where the Tiphareth goblet sat. He called upon the last of his
reserves and drew up on the cane’s head. The sword slid from
its wooden sheath with a satisfying snick. The mage raised it
above the golden cup, point down.
“By these deeds, I claim these lives,” he intoned, “Lachaim
vachaim; from life, to life.”
A movement from the far corner distracted him. He
spared the barest glance towards it and saw the door of the
wardrobe open. To his astonishment, Julia emerged. She had
found his lair, just as she found the book and gone digging, he
now understood, too late. Latent talents. Spikes. Presence.
Julia’s look of defiance turned to horror as she took in the
scene in its totality.
He watched as she began to edge her way towards the
sanctuary door, her eyes never leaving his.
“Julia, wait,” Donald rasped, but she paid no attention.
As Julia sprang and threw open the temple door, Donald
felt the other presence enter his space and knew that Julia had-
n’t figured her way through this alone. She’d had an accomplice
whom he’d underestimated. But they were too late. He plunged
the sword into the goblet and heard, dimly, Jamison’s shout
before the joined elements of cup and blade released every bit
of energy once held by the wands.
Everything exploded, the room alight with an electric blue
haze. Jamison’s words broke through.
“Donald! I can’t let you finish this! It ends now!”
The sorcerer sank to his knees, forces bearing down upon
him, the sword still within the goblet. He felt the years lift from
him, sensed everything in the room with a greater clarity than
he had ever known in his centuries of life.
“There is no end,” he said in a thunderous whisper.
Through the haze he saw Julia stand in front of Jamison.
His daughter walked through his magic, sparks flying, as if it
were a part of her, her own creation. Donald remained transfixed,
fascinated even as he now feared her. In a sort of dream
time, she bent down and reached for the cane-trunk of the
Tree.
“It ends with me.”
The words echoed directly into Donald’s mind. She lifted
the cane, removed it from the Tree.
The Tree shattered. Jamison dove for Julia, but not in time.
The force flattened him and slammed her against the south
wall. Donald heard her gasps, even as he felt the wave of chaos
hit him. Life began to shoot and spark randomly, from cane to
cane, through his body. He watched in mounting awe as each
cane, one by one, split asunder upon the outlines he had drawn,
until the array was strewn with nothing but splinters, the goblets
at each nexus twisted and toppled. Wine ran in red rivulets
upon the once beautiful floor, now cracked and singed.
“Julia!” he called. Her wordless cry struck him down.
His body began to age again, untold years suddenly added
to his already ancient frame. The skin upon his hands sunk to
the bone, dry like parchment. The sword fell from his grasp, his
world imploded.
With his last unnatural breath, Donald Summers cursed
Arthur Lawson’s warning — and his own, inescapable mortality.
n
Alexandra Elizabeth Honigsberg is known for her darkly numinous
romantic-gothic poetry and fiction. Anthologies such as the Dark Destiny
series, Dante's Disciples, New Altars, On Crusade, Angels of
Darkness, and Blood Muse are its literary homes. She is also a professional
musician and a scholar of comparative religions. Her late husband and
collaborator, David Honigsberg, was an author, musician, and rabbi. His
fiction appeared in such anthologies as Elric: Tales of the White Wolf,
The Ultimate Silver Surfer, On Crusade: More Tales of the
Knights Templar, and Bruce Coville’s UFOs. He also wrote a number
of role-playing supplements for Atlas Games and for Hero Games, most
notably Ars Magica: Kabbalah.
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