by Sarah Roark
“Somewhat,” Antal lied.
“Well, ideally we need at least two stable locations to scry from. That way there’s something to compare against, and you also have a triangle of points, you see, from which you can use geometry to more accurately compute the distances.”
“What makes you think we’ll have the luxury of one stable location, much less two?” the other magus acidly interrupted. “It’s certainly not a privilege I have often enjoyed.”
“We may not,” Jervais conceded, “which is part of why the most sage Councilor thought your services would be needed. Your ability to think on your feet.”
“Not an ability I would have wished to have to acquire,” Antal sighed.
“Come. I’m sure it’s been an adventure, at least…and your name is famous among young Tremere from Ceoris to Aachen.” Jervais was hoping yet to knock this conversation off track before it went where he feared, but no luck.
“And what good does that do me?” Antal lowered his voice. “Besides perhaps a slightly greater ease in luring the young out to the front to get themselves killed. Hardly rewarding. There’s peril in being too good at something, Master Jervais.”
“Yes, that’s certainly true.”
“Particularly, never being given the chance to prove one’s skill at anything else. Anything less hazardous. Then again, I’m sure magi with more ‘comfortable’ posts also grow discontented with the sameness of things after many decades.”
“Perhaps they do, sometimes. If you’re referring to a specific rumor, Master Antal, you’ll have to do me the favor of letting me know exactly which one—ahh!”
Jervais instinctively clutched at his horse’s neck as the creature tripped and stumbled down onto one knee—nearly causing him to tilt off its back—and then rose limping. Jervais reined it in and dismounted at once.
“Halt! What’s this?” Hermann wove through the apprentices up to the front. “Threw a shoe?”
“Probably, knowing my luck.”
“Let me see.” Hermann examined the bared hoof. “Easy, easy now, old fellow. Master wizard, how the hell have you been sitting this poor beast? Have you been leaning sinister all night or something? A man your size has to sit with some balance.”
“Leaning sinister!” Jervais exclaimed indignantly, though he thought with a slight wince of pain that perhaps he had been a bit, given that his worst sores were on the right flank. A slight chuckle came from the knot of apprentices. Jervais looked murder at them, and whoever it was fell silent.
“See here, it looks like the tip of his back hoof caught the edge of the shoe and flung it off. Someone find it…ah, good, Fidus. Hm. We’ve got spare nails, but I don’t know if our man can reset this. It’s quite bent. We should find a smith.”
“Out in this wilderness?”
“These Samogitians are supposed to be great riders. Surely they shoe their horses. There must be smiths. Have your Kur ask at the next mortal dwelling we pass.”
Jervais privately doubted the slave was capable of such translations yet. He seemed to understand the natives in these parts far better than he had the Prus, but he was learning Saxon slowly. Still, he nodded. “Very well.”
“So the farmer said this…what was the name…”
“Aukstakojis,” Jervais said. The Kur timidly echoed the word, evidently correcting something in Jervais’s pronunciation.
“Bonisagus, it’s worse than Georgian. Anyway. He lives along this path?” Antal peered into the gloomy depths of the wide stand of trees. “In the opposite direction from the village? Looks like a bandit hideout to me.”
“Well, smithies are rather noisy for most neighbors’ tastes…” Jervais said noncommittally. “In fact, I think I’m hearing the ringing now. And look, there’s a glow.”
“Working awfully late,” Hermann frowned.
“A commission for some impatient local potentate, perhaps. Mein Herr, you’re the one insisting that my horse be seen to as soon as possible.”
Leading their mounts single file along the narrow trail, they soon came up on a little lone shack from whose cracks orange furnace fire bled. They studied it a moment. An unmistakable clanging came from within.
“I’ll go in,” Master Antal said, “since I’m accustomed to being in close quarters with fire.”
“No, I’ll go,” Jervais argued, “our Kur understands me best.”
“We’ll all three go in,” Hermann said, determined not to be out-couraged. “And that way we’ll be prepared whatever happens.”
Jervais knocked heavily on the open door’s frame before walking in, for all the good it likely did. The two other Cainites and the Kur, whom he’d collected with an imperious glance, followed. Inside, Jervais’s eyes tried unsuccessfully to adjust to the light, and his skin felt rimed in frost compared to the heat of the forge. Before the flames, a thin crooked silhouette undulated in the rhythmic motion of hammering.
“Smith,” he called. “Smith!” Then he looked at the Kur, who translated. The smith looked up, gave his project—it looked like a knife-tang—one more whack and set it aside. He came forward. He was a small man (small everywhere except for his great shoulders, anyway) but wore a huge bristling beard and mustache.
He spoke. The Kur translated: “He say welcome fine sirs.”
Jervais said, “Tell him we have a thrown shoe and will pay him well to fix it right now.”
“Saxon merchants?” the smith spoke up, in that tongue. “Saxon merchants always pay well, sir. Always hurrying.” He gave a funny little bow and smiled. “I fix shoe for you. Please give…”
Jervais handed it over. The little man examined it, running his fingers over it.
“You do quite a trade,” Hermann remarked. “Look at all these stirrups. And they’re not all built the same way. You have two different kinds.”
“Every rider does not wish the same,” the smith replied.
“True. But these are perfectly ordinary, and then these here are the sturdiest and heaviest I’ve ever seen. Look at the great flat plate on the bottom. You could stand all night in these.”
“Save us from such a fate,” Jervais exclaimed.
“I highly doubt they’re for Saxon merchants…but I trust their purchasers pay well nonetheless?” Hermann stood and moved closer to the smith, who didn’t seem to realize he was supposed to feel menaced.
“Those riders? They not pay at all,” he answered cheerily. “They come at night on the backs of tarpanas, wild forest horse, and their eyes bright like moonlight, and they say if I give thin no-good wares then they will tear down my forge. So I think I should work.”
Jervais and Hermann exchanged a look.
“Sounds frightful. These riders, what do they call themselves?” Jervais asked conversationally.
“The men call their leaders darkhan. I know no other word. But they are very strange. I know they are not of my people, because Samogitians only ride zemaitukai…” He gestured toward the assortment of more ordinary-looking stirrups. “And also some of them look very strange to me.”
“Are they bandits? If we wanted to avoid them, how should we steer clear?”
“If they want you, they find you I think.” The little man shrugged. “Twelve leagues north of here, they enslave whole village. Last week, that was. But Samogitians kill you too, if they see black cross of White Christ on you.” He smirked at Hermann.
“Let them try,” Hermann said imperturbably.
The smith put the horseshoe in to start heating and went back to working the bellows.
“Time to start looking for our first spot, I suppose,” Jervais said quietly to Antal in Magyar.
“Yes,” Antal murmured back. “Except now we’ve got to find a spot where they aren’t.”
“Well, these are real horsemen apparently. They’re not going to go taking any long walks. We stay away from the churned-up ground, we should be able to stay away from them.”
“Yes, but if they’re that skilled, they’ll see our tracks, and know right
away that Herr Pious there has got a great hulking Friesian shod with the nail heads sticking out so as to kill people all the deader, and so on and so forth.” The Hungarian chewed a bit on the end of his beard and then a thought seemed to seize him. “Tell the man he’s got some more shoes to fix. My old master had a spell to lighten a man’s tread. I think I can adapt it. One mark on each, and a bit of blood while the iron is hot.”
“Re-shoe twenty horses? But that’ll take a couple of nights, at least. Be practical—” Jervais protested.
“Yes, re-shoe them all,” Antal interrupted. “Practical? Think about it. Do you really want them finding us first, or the reverse? Let’s at least try it on Hermann’s and see if it works.”
“And what about the carts?”
“If the horseshoes work, I can figure out something with the carts.”
“We’ve got more work for you,” Jervais shouted to Aukstakojis, “and more coin.”
“Work with coin much better than work without,” the smith shouted back with a huge grin.
Chapter Thirteen
Hermann pushed into the tent. “Our scout’s back from Riga,” he announced.
Jervais and Antal looked up from the map they were making. “Ah? And did he bring word?”
“He did better than that.” The knight stepped aside to let another Cainite in the Black Cross habit pass by. “This is Brother Wigand. He and a handful of survivors have been holding out up north.”
“Qarakh and his tribe are no longer in Livonia,” Wigand said. “They’re much closer than you think. They’ve been driven south—not, alas, by our efforts but by sheer press of mortal conversion. But now they’re among even wilder pagans than before. If they get a chance to recruit many Samogitians and Lithuanians, it will go very badly for you.”
“A pleasure to meet you as well!” Jervais exclaimed. “You seem like exactly the sort of source we’ve been looking for. Come in, come in, my dear sir.” Antal refused to give up his seat; Jervais scoffed at him and offered up his own chair instead. “Actually, we already know Qarakh’s riders are here, but there’s something else you might be able to tell us. Now I understand from the reports that made it back that Alexander and Qarakh faced each other alone.”
The knight arranged himself in the chair. “Yes,” he said. “That is true. But not by choice—not by our choice, that is. We were all trapped by a bog that suddenly opened up under our feet. All of us except for Qarakh and Alexander. Perhaps Qarakh did it using some beastly art, such as others of his kind use to sink themselves into the earth during the day. Myself, I think it was his witches. I was lucky. Only my legs were swallowed, and I managed to dig myself out with my sword, but…not in time to save anyone else.”
“Yes, yes,” Jervais said excitedly. “That is—it’s very good to know that. It corroborates what our talebearers in Saxony said. But they escaped in the opposite manner—sank into the mire completely and so, alas, ended up missing the last of the single combat. Qarakh slew Alexander all alone, then?”
“Yes.”
“And how was it done? The killing strike? Was it a sword blow?”
“No indeed,” Wigand snorted as if the very notion were ridiculous. “That creature? He assumed the wolf’s skin and devoured first our general’s leg and then his throat, letting the gore stream from his maw like the animal he is.”
“He drained him to the dregs, then.”
Wigand looked him directly in the eye. “If you are asking me, sorcerer, whether Qarakh stole the ancient’s soul, whether Qarakh committed that vileness known among our kind as diablerie, then the answer is yes.”
Jervais’s eyes lit so fiercely at that that everyone in the room drew back alarmed. “Then we have him!” he blurted, slamming the palm of his hand on the trestle table.
Several moments of stunned silence followed.
“What in our Savior’s sweet name is the blackguard talking about?” Hermann directed this to Antal, who shrugged.
“Not sure,” the Hungarian said. “Certainly, to commit the diablerie on one so powerful can have terrible consequences for the defiler. But we have no control over Qarakh’s pains. That is, lacking something of the ancient himself…and surely Alexander must long since be scattered to the four winds.”
“Not all of him, Master Antal,” Jervais said grandly. “Look…”
He reached into his purse and set a coin out on the table, ringing it like a banker upon a banker’s counter. It sang like metal but appeared black as a lump of coal. Antal left off his drawing, set his pen in its well and came over to examine it.
“Malgorzata’s coin.”
“Malgorzata’s spell,” Jervais corrected for the benefit of their bemused audience. “And certainly one of her handier ones. This particular coin I fashioned. It holds a small portion of the ancient’s blood, locked up in the prison of the metal, but I should be able to extract it again.”
“We could mix it with molten wax and form a figure. Inscribe it with his name in Greek.”
“Yes, and dress it with this.” Jervais went over to one of his chests, touched his tongue to the lock and whispered into the keyhole, then unlocked it. He brought forth a tiny strip of white bloodstained cloth and laid it next to the coin.
“Fashion it into a tabard, yes.”
“With his arms embroidered on. Vair, on a pale purpure, a laurel wreath or.” Jervais mocked a herald’s pompous tone. “I daresay Olena can embroider, can’t she?”
“Pardon me, scholars,” Hermann interrupted. “I hate to break up your plotting since you seem so eager to get about it. But I’m not sure I understand just what you mean to do. Alexander is dead—his soul devoured.”
“Exactly,” Jervais said triumphantly. “And where did that soul go? Into the belly of the beast.”
“Into Qarakh.”
“Who,” the warlock finished, “is due for a terrible bout of indigestion.”
“Here, Fidus,” Olena said, tossing him the scrap. “Master Jervais said to embroider it like a tabard. Vair, on a pale purpure, a laurel wreath or.”
“But…but I don’t embroider,” he stammered.
“Neither do I,” she said curtly. “But don’t worry. I’ll let you know if you’ve made a mistake.”
Master Antal went about calling the quarters as though it were a life-or-death business, which, to be fair, it could be often enough. He started in the North and invoked the power of Uriel, archangel of death and the realm of Earth, drawing the proper sigil in the bowl of dirt with the tip of his wand and then bringing its power up to form its portion of the warding circle. He then moved Miklos into position there and again traced the same sigil on Miklos’s chest, naming him the watchman of the North. Then he moved to the West, where Gabriel ruled, again “drawing” in the bowl of water that lay in that quarter and raising its power. He placed Baghatur in the West. In the South lay Michael, archangel of Fire, and a cone of incense in whose smoke Antal traced the necessary sign; Zabor assumed his appointed place there. Then Antal finished by consecrating himself to Air, to the East and to Raphael, and took up that position. Olena, Torgeir and Jervais stood in the circle’s center.
“The creature of wax,” Jervais murmured.
Miklos brought it forth from a fold of his ritual robe. “Molded by my hands,” he said. He passed the poppet to Torgeir, who took it to Baghatur.
Baghatur took a little silver implement and carefully pricked tiny dots for eyes and gouged out a gaping mouth, then articulated a suggestion of fingers and toes. “Carved by my hands,” he said.
Torgeir now handed the poppet to Zabor, who just as carefully inscribed ALEXANDROS into the poppet’s chest. “Marked by name by my hands,” he said.
Torgeir gave the poppet to Antal, who took two tiny snake-fangs and inserted them into the poppet’s open mouth. “Marked by Caine by my hands,” he said.
Torgeir then passed the poppet to Olena, who slid the little white tabard over its head and belted a tiny leather cinch around its waist. “Clad by
my hands,” she said.
Now Jervais took the poppet. “Creature of wax,” he intoned, “I anoint thee and name thee Alexander, sometime of Paris, childe of the Ventrue patriarch and great-grandchilde of Caine who was cast out.” He dabbed blots of dark blood onto its forehead, hands, feet, heart and groin.
“Alexander thou art.”
“Alexander thou art,” the other six repeated.
“Alexander thou shalt remain.”
“Alexander thou shalt remain.”
In his hands, the poppet seemed to grow ice-cold, leaching the vital force from his skin wherever it touched. To his mystical sight, it grew a thin, guttering halo of colors, shifting randomly for want of a guiding intelligence. There was no mind there, only essence, and even that was fragmentary.
“Not much of him left,” he said softly to Torgeir. “But you’ll make him stronger. Take him now and feed him. Three drops to make him yours.”
Torgeir shuddered a little as the thing touched him, but he did as instructed. Biting into the pad of his thumb, he dropped one drop after another into the poppet’s wide, hungry mouth.
“I bind thee once, Alexander, in my blood and will. I bind thee twice, Alexander, in my blood and will. Thrice I bind thee now, Alexander, in my blood and will, and thou art mine to command.”
Let’s hope so, a distant and unwizardly corner of Jervais’s mind whispered, but he pushed the thought aside. It could only hurt the working. He guided Torgeir (whose awareness was already gone elsewhere) to a seat cross-legged on the floor. Olena took up the ritual sword that marked her as guardian of his body and anchor of his soul for the duration of the spell, holding it before her in an attitude of utmost vigilance.
“Can you see him?” he whispered to Torgeir. “Where are you?”
“I…I’m following the thread. Things are blurry…I’m flying over the ground.”
“Which way is the moon?”
“That…that way.”
“North-northwest,” Jervais muttered, committing the direction to memory.