“Look, I don’t want to talk about Maharet,” I said. “There’s time enough for that. I want to talk about Memnoch. If you keep from me what you know of Memnoch—.”

I sat up in the chair. I planted both feet on the floor as if I were prepared to rise and attack somebody but this didn’t mean anything. “Who was Memnoch?”

“Why use the past tense?” asked Gremt. “You don’t think he’s hovering near you, quite ready again to sweep you up into his imaginary worlds?”

“He can’t,” I said. “He’s tried. He’s tried for years.”

They were skeptical.

“Every spellbinder has a signature,” I said. “Once I learn to recognize that signature, I become immune. They can’t make it happen to me after that.” I studied them individually. “Centuries ago, Armand would seek to sweep me up in his spells. I learned to recognize them instantly.” I waited but they volunteered nothing. “I want to know what you know of Memnoch,” I said. “You said his name!” I said to Gremt. “I would not have asked, not now, not until much later on, when we had come to know one another, all of us, and love one another. I would not have presumed. But you said his name, and you know what this means to me. What do you know of him?”

Magnus roused himself, brightening and glancing at his companions.

“He’s an evil spirit,” said Magnus. “He believes all the things he said to you. He fed off your fear of God and the Devil. He is greedy. Long aeons ago he fell in love with the religions of human beings; he dwells now in great purgatorial realms of his own making, seducing the lost earthbound souls of dead believers, sustained by their faith in those systems….”

“You do recall,” I said, “that he claimed to teach love and forgiveness in his purgatorial Hell.”

“Of course,” said Magnus, “and he provides abundant images of those souls who have learned his lessons well ascending to Heaven. But nobody ascends from his domain. He is not of God. He is not of Hell. He’s a spirit. And into his maw go the unwary, those longing to be judged and punished.”

I sighed. I sat back in the chair. None of it was surprising, yet to hear it confirmed at last, that was something.

“Think of the great Catholic theologians of the twentieth century,” said Magnus. “They are poets of their own intoxicating belief systems. They swim in an atmosphere of vintage theologies, and weave new and airy systems for themselves wholly detached from the real world, the flesh-and-blood world—.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“Well, think of Memnoch as being like that. Think of Memnoch as finding in religion a great creative milieu in which he could define himself!”