Dark Ages Clan Novel Tremere: Book 11 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Sarah Roark

  “Then so be it. Go pack. As of this moment, your obedience is to Master Jervais, and I’d better not hear otherwise. Master Antal, let me see you to your quarters. We must talk before you depart.”

  “My heart,” Malgorzata whispered, excitedly slipping her arm into Jervais’s as they walked out, “why on earth didn’t you mention you’d come up with such a marvelous plan? I would never have written all those silly letters.”

  “I wanted it to seem spontaneous, milady,” he smiled.

  “But you could have told me, my heart.”

  “You said you enjoyed my surprises. You did look quite convincingly surprised.”

  “Did I?” She laughed. “Well, good. Better the old bat doesn’t suspect so much. Perhaps he’ll even start to think you’ve gone over to his side. But listen, I already know how we can make the best of this Torgeir while you’ve got him. Now this may seem a little complicated, but you’ll see the sense of it in a moment.”

  He didn’t want to listen at all, but he had to know what he was supposed to do if he was going to figure out later how to prove tragically incapable of it.

  Chapter Eight

  One…

  Himself, of course. For his own strand he selected a bit of green silk, requisitioned from Ceoris’s stores just before their departure. It was deceptively soft and luxurious, but of great tensile strength, capable even of catching arrowheads. He knotted it onto a wire framework of his wizard’s sigil and set it out to catch the light of Scorpio, his birth sign, for three nights in a row. Then he unknotted it again and ran it through a lodestone with a hole in the middle while chanting the proper formulae.

  Two…

  Antal. Jervais didn’t know much about Master Antal, and certainly there wasn’t sufficient trust between them for Jervais to ask for his blood or his sigil. But Jervais could fairly see and smell the blood-soaked battlefield spreading just behind Antal’s grim flat eyes, so he selected a length of sackcloth thread for the Hungarian’s strand. First he dragged it through the ashes of a dead child which he dug up in a churchyard as they headed north through the Saxon country, then he passed it through a cloud of burning sulfur while performing the spoken enchantments.

  Three…

  Torgeir. At least since he had clear seniority over Torgeir—not to mention sole discretion in the matter of Torgeir’s ordeal—he could reasonably demand a few drops of blood with which to anoint Torgeir’s strand. He had Fidus rouse a dyer’s family in Culus in the middle of the night for a length of undyed wool yarn and some good lye to bleach it with. (Fidus reported the dyer’s comment afterward: “If one must choose between accepting the devil’s silver or the devil’s curse, the former is preferable by far.”) Seized with a whim inspired by his sire’s words and his own first impressions, he then bound the pale cord around a rat he’d caught and waited until it had starved. Then he unwrapped it from the desiccated little body and proceeded to make the same incantations as he had with the other threads.

  Four…

  “Of course, I would leap to assist his most august lordship in any way I possibly could,” Regent Karolus said, setting the parchment down rather dangerously near a brazier, “but I’m afraid I simply can’t spare anyone right now.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Jervais made a little moue of concern. “Are the Fiends’ depredations heavy of late?”

  “No, no, it’s not so much that, Master Jervais,” the regent replied uneasily. “It’s that I’m in the crucial stage of a project of great importance to House and Clan.”

  “So I’d heard.”

  “You’d heard?” Immediately the man’s voice sharpened. “Heard from whom?”

  “Why, from your brother regent in Szatmar-Nemeti.”

  “He’s not my brother,” Karolus snapped. He picked the parchment back up.

  “He isn’t?” Jervais returned with an expression of surprise. “He gave me to understand that you’d served apprenticeship together. In any case, we’re all brothers in the Blood…”

  “Yes, yes. I mean that he has never behaved as a brother should to me. I’m sure he had a lot of pretty tales for you, though.”

  “Oh, no, not really.”

  “Ah, you see, he never changes. What did he say?”

  “Just petty little things. Nothing worth your concern.”

  The more he demurred, the more agitated Karolus became. “Tell me what he said about the project. Come, Master Jervais, you’re absolutely transparent. He said something, didn’t he?”

  “Well.” Jervais rubbed at his beard. “Well, to be honest, he did try to convince me to bring some of his ‘concerns’ about it to Ceoris. His most serious charge was that in forty years, your research hasn’t produced a single innovation of clear, immediate and practical use to either the blood war or the clan at large.” Granted, the regent in Szatmar-Nemeti had only gone so far because Jervais had gently encouraged his first tentative slanders, but Karolus hardly needed to know that.

  “No immediate use!” Karolus spluttered. His lips, the last trace of color left in his vampire face, went livid. He picked up a silver bell from a little rack of bells and rang it vigorously. “No practical application! Why, if it weren’t for my research both we and Szatmar would have been overrun decades ago, and he knows it!”

  A Cainite of rather Turkish-looking features, tall and well built but carrying himself with the slight stoop of a devoted scribe, entered the room and made a hasty bow.

  “Yes, master?”

  “Master Jervais, this is Baghatur Kazharin. He is at your service for the scourging of the traitors in Livonia.”

  Baghatur ducked his head, probably more to cover his astonishment than to signal submission.

  “Oh, no, this won’t do, Master Karolus,” Jervais protested. “I certainly don’t wish to discomfit you at such an important juncture. There surely must be other chantries with Tremere to spare…”

  “What good does it do me to have all my juniors here, if you return to Ceoris with nothing to contradict my treacherous brother’s accounting of me?” Karolus cried. “No, I insist. I promise you, you will see with your own eyes the ‘immediate’ and ‘practical’ use of my work. Baghatur has been a most attentive apprentice, and he has recently attained the Fourth Circle, which I hope will suffice for your purposes. He won’t disappoint. There, perhaps that will put an end to this nonsense once and for all! If so, I’ll consider it well worth the hardship.”

  “Well, since you do insist. I thank you, Master Regent.” Jervais smiled slightly. As he turned, he noticed a large, wide parchment pasted flat upon the wall and secured with tiny nails along the edges, and moved closer to it. “Is this a ley-line survey?”

  Karolus nodded and came to join him. “Yes, for a hundred leagues in either direction. Within the circle is the area surveyed in person, the rest done by scrying.”

  Jervais touched a little blue figure of a house, labeled in neat letters. “And these are the chantries?”

  “Of course.”

  Jervais plucked his letter out of Karolus’s hand and peered at it. Six names were listed on it for this portion of the route. He looked again at the map. Seven little blue houses.

  Six names. Seven houses. Etrius had left one out. Etrius was not a forgetful sort.

  Jervais chose a fine linen for Baghatur’s thread. Over a few different conversations with the apprentice, he was able to glean a little about him: chiefly that he was a Khazar Jew (no doubt Hermann would be overjoyed), the chantry’s resident copyist, a worshiper at the shrine of Avicenna and a fanatic for his teacher’s theory of alchemy. The last, at least, seemed sufficiently heartfelt to serve as an anchor. And so after anointing the thread with a few drops of Baghatur’s blood, he passed the thread through dirt, smoke, water and—very quickly afterward—fire. Then for good measure he recited the first verse of the Shma, the only Hebrew he knew aside from the few terms necessary to get through Ceoris’s Latin translation of the Sepher Yetzirah.

  Five…

>   “Yes, yes, plainly this is very important to the most reverend Councilor.” Regent Laszlo glanced aimlessly at the letter. “And I won’t dispute Ceoris’s wise judgment in the matter of the Telyavs. But surely you’ve already noticed that it’s we here in Hungary who must draw regular reinforcements from west and north…not vice versa. You’ll have more luck with the chantries in Silesia and Poland.”

  “Do you really think so?” Jervais asked mildly.

  “Well.” Laszlo’s lips gave an ironic twitch. “Perhaps not.”

  “You didn’t finish reading.”

  “Did I need to? I think I’ve made myself clear.” Laszlo must be very old, very entrenched or both. Of their whole band he seemed to think only Antal worthy of respect, though since Jervais was nominal head, he granted him the polite minimums at least.

  “Look at the list,” Jervais urged.

  Laszlo did so. He frowned. “I’m not on the list.”

  “Precisely, Master Regent.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because you’re not on it.”

  It took a moment, but the light dawned. “Ah.”

  “Perhaps if I explained that I am Malgorzata’s eldest childe, that would dispel some of the mystery.”

  “Yes. Yes, it would. And he is sending you to take care of the Telyavs, is he?”

  “He is indeed, but you see with what support.”

  “True. So, are you meant to fail outright, I wonder, or are you meant to die after having first battered the Telyavs to the point where a second assault will succeed?”

  The latter possibility hadn’t occurred to Jervais.

  It was certainly perfectly likely.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I must assume that your gaining any sort of personal glory out of the affair would, in any case, annoy his lordship greatly.”

  “That is the safest of all assumptions, Master Laszlo.”

  Laszlo smiled a knife-thin smile. “In that case, you may have my youngest apprentice, Miklos. He’s only Fifth Circle, alas, and I confess was brought in more for his skill at arms and tactics than his aptitude in the Art…”

  “Fifth Circle will do quite well, Master Regent, and we’ll need good tacticians.” Jervais bowed low.

  It didn’t take much observation of Miklos—who despite his robes had about him the look of a squire just one advantageous ancestor short of knighthood—to determine that a thick sturdy hemp thread would suit him best. Jervais had Hermann cut the length of it with his sword. If the Saxon thought it an odd request that he should hack at a defenseless bit of fiber while shouting a lusty battle-cry, he didn’t bother to say so. Jervais also noticed that Miklos proudly wore a necklace strung with several yellowed fangs, and that led him to dig out from a trunk one of two Tzimisce skulls he always carried about. He then temporarily dubbed the skull “Rustovitch,” and used the hemp thread to jerk its fangs viciously from their sockets.

  Six…

  “Well, I’m always honored at his lordship’s demonstrations of trust, and would normally hasten to do as he asks,” Regent Albizellus said. “But this is the fourth time in a decade he’s asked us to hand over one of our own. Surely it’s someone else’s turn. Apprentices don’t just pop up in the chantry garden each spring.”

  “Believe me,” Jervais assured him, “I have some idea what goes into the training of magi-to-be, Master Albizellus, and I do sympathize.”

  Albizellus looked rather surprised at this quick acquiescence, and indeed dismayed. So that was it—he was perfectly prepared to give up a student (perhaps he kept an unusually large crop of them about just for such occasions), but wanted it to be understood as a real favor. Jervais did not allow himself to smile.

  “Is…is it really that dire?” The regent fumbled his way back onto the conversational path.

  Jervais knew he’d already landed his fish, but he had no objection to providing the necessary diplomacies. He grimaced. “Master Albizellus, his lordship fears the very worst of these Telyavs. Not only have they almost completely cut themselves off from the clan’s obedience, they may have thrown in their lot with our enemies. They may even be allied with the Fiends, or on the verge of doing so. We must act now, before all is lost.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, I suppose if our assistance is needed that badly, I can answer the call one more time.”

  “Ceoris thanks you, Master Albizellus, for your constancy.”

  “Not at all, Master Jervais. Zabor!”

  To Jervais’s astonishment, a head popped up from behind one of the library tables. It had a thatch of disheveled brown hair, and was attached to a youthful body whose left hand held a woebegone scrub cloth.

  “Zabor.” Albizellus didn’t await a response or a bow. “You’re going to Livonia.”

  “Of course,” the apprentice said flatly.

  “Forgive me, Master Regent,” Jervais broke in. “But I must not have made myself fully clear. My recruits must be of at least the Fourth Circle in order to participate in the rituals I’ll require.”

  “Zabor is Fourth Circle,” Albizellus smiled.

  And yet he’s made to wash the floors still…not a good sign.

  “You won’t mind a bit of a trip, will you?” he asked the apprentice.

  “No, master. It should be my honor to take part in something so important.” He glanced ironically at the rag in his hand.

  “Zabor isn’t the most docile student I’ve ever had,” Albizellus put in pleasantly, “but I don’t doubt one of your experience can keep him in line easily enough. And perhaps this is just the sort of schooling the lad needs.”

  Albizellus also informed Jervais before he left that Zabor excelled in tearing apart the enchantments of others. And so Jervais selected for Zabor a length of nettle-yarn—stinging nettle, shirts of which the Slavs trusted to repel demons, dragons and lightning—and flicked it with drops of Zabor’s blood and also a bit of solution of green vitriol. He then shielded the yarn by winding a thin wool yarn around it (the last thing he wanted was for Zabor’s destructiveness to make naked contact with the threads of his fellows) and finished with the usual incantations.

  Seven.

  “Not to dispute his lordship’s decisions, because that’s the very furthest thing from my mind…” Regent Walenty frowned. “But were you really dispatched from Ceoris one Tremere short of a sodalicium? That hardly makes sense.”

  Jervais let his throat close over the gruel-thin draught of mortal blood he’d taken from the goblet Walenty handed him, then forced it down before replying. “Not one short, I’m afraid. My cohort was mostly assembled from the chantries along my route, from the regents whose names you see there.”

  “Ah. I see. But forgive me, I’m still confused. My understanding was that the Telyavs have done exactly as they pleased for well over a century now, and I hadn’t thought the situation substantially changed. Why the sudden urgency? And if it is so urgent, then why must you go from chantry to chantry with cap in hand in order to fill out your ranks?”

  “The ways of the Council are mysterious.” Jervais was not, by now, feeling inclined to share the details of how precisely the situation with the Telyavs had changed.

  There was a faint knock on the warded study door. Walenty looked irritated, but called, “Yes? What is it?”

  A dark-eyed woman, modestly veiled, entered and curtsied low. Jervais’s spirits rose slightly. Perhaps the goblet had been a stopgap while more appropriate refreshment was located. But then the regent gestured for her to rise. “Yes, Olena?”

  “I’m afraid Pawel’s just made a rather large mess of his exercise this evening, master.”

  His eyes widened. “How large a mess?”

  “I…well, I think you’d better see, master…”

  “Weren’t you supposed to be supervising him?” he snapped. “Oh, very—forgive me, Master Jervais. I’ll be back shortly, I hope.” He stalked out, robes flapping behind.

  Olena hurried up to Jervais. “Unorthodox, I know,”
she half whispered, “but there was no other way I could speak to you. He was determined to keep me busy all night.”

  “To speak to me?” Jervais returned, mystified.

  “I’ve finished my Circles,” she interrupted him. “I finished them more quickly than any other apprentice he’s ever had. I finished them over twenty years ago, but he keeps saying no new regencies have opened up. That isn’t true, is it?”

  “I—” He stammered. “That is, I suppose it’s unlikely that no new regencies have opened up in either Silesia or Poland, but I can’t help you against your own regent.”

  “But you can. You’re Master Jervais of Ceoris, and you’re on a mission for the clan, aren’t you? I need a chance to demonstrate my ability—to someone besides him. Otherwise I’ll be teaching his apprentices until the Fiends finally turn him to ash…” From the way she gritted her teeth, he imagined that arranging for exactly that would soon be no more out of the question than arranging an accident for Pawel. “Just one chance, that’s all I ask. Please.” She threw a look over her shoulder, and then hurried over to the door. “Please.”

  When Walenty returned a little while later, Jervais said casually, “I see that you don’t have the aversion most of our colleagues profess for sharing the Art with the fair sex.”

  “I begin to wish I had,” the regent sniffed. “I tell you, Master Jervais, the virtues of the Blood simply move too sluggishly through the female vessel. Nor are the powers of discipline and concentration what one should hope for, as you’ve just seen—our most sage and immortal Lady Councilor in England excepted, of course.”

  “And, of course, my own sire.”

  Walenty’s jaw dropped, but he recovered fairly quickly. “Yes, yes, of course. An eminent exception.”

  “Well, in that case, perhaps it would be mutually beneficial if I were to take her off your hands? You would have the room to introduce another male apprentice, and all I really need now is one more Cainite body to fill out the last place in the sodalicium. She is Fourth Circle, at least?”