Johannes Cabal The Necromancer Read Free Page A

clause, that sort of thing. My notes indicate that was your idea.”

    “I believed my soul was irrelevant to my researches, so I determined to see what empirical differences there were between the soulful and the soulless, which is to say, me. I was wrong to believe in its irrelevancy. The interference caused by its absence, I can no longer countenance.”

    Ratuth Slabuth leaned forward, interested. “Interference?” he asked. “What sort of interference?”

    “Not to be obtuse, your interference,” replied Cabal, pointing at Satan.

    Satan tapped his chest in surprise. “My interference?”

    “Constant interruptions. Stupid games. Interference. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

    For a moment Satan didn’t seem to. Then the great brow cleared and he nodded. “Your soullessness must be attracting avatars of mine. Fancy that.”

    Cabal, apparently, did not fancy that at all. “Especially an irritating little man with a big beard. But it goes further than that. The spiritual vacuum within me is actually causing freak results in my experiments. I cannot perform the same procedure twice in full confidence that I will see the same results. I’ve wasted years trying to locate the problem. Now that I have, I’m here to rectify things.”

    It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

    As a scientist, Cabal preferred to work in scientific absolutes wherever possible. The lack of a soul, however, was a quantifiable hindrance in as much as it lent his researches a variable percentile of veracity and therefore rendered them 100 per cent useless. This was a scientist’s cavil, a good rational reason. Johannes Cabal had no trouble accepting it and expressing it.

    But there was something else. Something deeper and very, very well hidden. Given Satan’s legendary ability to worm out secrets, Cabal could not afford to give him the faintest whiff of this other truth, for he knew Satan would worry at it like a dog with a rag. Cabal didn’t intend to let that happen; it was his business, and his alone. So he focussed on the scientific and the quantifiable and did not allow even a tremor of this other, this greater truth into his voice.

    Satan was studying the contract. “You sold your soul to gain an insight into necromancy in the first place. If I were to give you your soul back, I would want that in return. That would invalidate the whole scheme, perhaps?”

    “I need that knowledge,” said Cabal. “That is non-negotiable.”

    Satan smiled. “That’s that, then. You can’t eat your cake and have it, too, Johannes. Sorry and all that.”

    For a long minute Cabal glared at Satan. Satan continued to smile, twiddled his thumbs, and awaited developments. He wasn’t disappointed.

    “I’ll … ” Cabal paused. It was as if he were dealing with an alien concept. “I’ll…” He coughed. “I’ll make you … a … wager.” He stopped, uncertain if he’d used the right term. “I believe that you have a reputation for accepting … wagers. I should like to make one.”

    Satan waited, but there was no further clarification. Finally, he leaned forward and said, “Fine. Wagers, yes, that’s good. I like them. What’s your wager?” Cabal was clearly stumped. “Not something you’ve ever done before, hmm? Never mind, shall I suggest one?”

    He allowed Cabal’s continued silence to become slightly embarrassing before taking it for assent. “Now, as I’ve already said, I can’t start giving souls back willy-nilly or else I’ll never hear the end of it. There’d be a queue from here to Tartarus of ne’er-do-wells whinging and whining and wringing their hands, and I get enough of that at the best of times. So you must appreciate that it can’t be anything easy. Pour décourager les autres. You follow me so far?”

    “I understand.”

    “Excellent. So what I propose is that you must replace your soul in my little collection … ”

    “You just want another soul?”

    “… a hundred