by Sarah Roark
“And now I see odd little tents. No, they aren’t little. They grow as I approach.” Suddenly he hissed and flung one hand up over his face. The other hand nearly let go of the poppet it clutched. Jervais stiffened and moved in.
“What is it?”
“The twin fires…I may not pass through. I am not of the ordu.”
A sorcerous warding, placed by the Telyavs? Or just a native superstition fueled only by the power of collective will? “You can pass through,” he encouraged the Dane. “They cannot stop you. You carry a piece of the chief himself.”
“No,” he moaned.
“You shall pass through.”
“He shall pass through,” the other Tremere chanted as one. It was more than merely verbal support. As they said it, they were also focusing every ounce of their souls upon making the words reality. They needed no prompting as to when to add their strength. That was good Eastern training for you. Excellent.
“Do you hear that, Torgeir? We’re with you.” He bent down. “It’s fine. Our wills are joined. You wield the might of Seven. Now hold Alexander’s echo close to you, and walk through.”
Torgeir nodded and gathered the poppet to his chest. “I hold a portion of your chief,” he intoned to his invisible enemy. “You must let me pass.”
There was a long, tense moment. Suddenly Torgeir began to gasp like a landed fish, and Jervais feared the ward had attacked him after all. But then he managed to say through his gasps, “I’m through,” and a tingle of relief passed through the circle. Jervais took the Dane’s shoulders and steadied him until the whistling breaths calmed and died.
“Good, Torgeir. Come. We may not have much time now, hurry. Find Qarakh.”
“I see him. He shines. By God, I’ve never seen a man so strangely made…”
“Yes.” Jervais gritted his teeth and silently cursed Etrius for not doing as other Tremere masters did and drubbing the use of God out of his pupils, particularly when in circle. “Go to him. You must enter in and find that sliver that was Alexander’s. That is your link and your rudder. You must take hold of his heart.”
“Take hold of his heart,” the other Tremere echoed.
“Show me, my prince.” Torgeir addressed this to the deceased, in student’s Greek. “You must be here. One so ancient never disappears completely into his conqueror. Hiding, perhaps? Mourning?” He licked his lips, cracked and withered from three nights’ fast to ease his spirit’s release. “Or waiting… Waiting for revenge?”
The built-up head of power within the circle changed tenor in less than the space of a mortal heartbeat. Before, it had felt like an unseen mist, drifting easily between them except when driven forward by the workings. Now it crystallized, condensed, sharpened. Olena gripped the sword more tightly. The guardians of the quarters steeled themselves against the onslaught, containing it.
Jervais struggled not to let himself be paralyzed by the unexpected strength of the response. “I… You’ve got it all right, Torgeir. Easy, now. Direct it.”
“Yes.” Torgeir held the poppet forth. Beads of blood appeared on his forehead. “Let me guide you, my prince. Let me lend you the power of my mind, so that I may show you…how much easier it is to destroy from within…”
Qarakh set down his bowl, which a moment before had been full of the blood of mortals drunk on qumis, and wobbled up from his seat in the square of logs and stumps that stood in the middle of his cluster of personal gers. Deverra waited until he had blundered wordlessly away, then picked up the bowl and took it to be washed. Hopefully if he had to call for it again to get more, he wouldn’t bother.
As she handed it to one of the scullions in the kitchen-tents, she felt a stirring at her back. She knew what it was, but said nothing until she was at the threshold of her own ger, where she turned.
“Boyar Osobei. Why do you follow me?”
The slim, elfin-faced Cainite bowed. “I pray that I have not given offense with my clumsiness, madam. But I was hoping to have a word with the great khan tonight.”
“Then you should have followed the great khan,” she said dully.
“The khan, alas, does not seem to be, ah, in the mood to conduct official business.”
“The khan is in the only state he will consent to conduct official business in.”
“Indeed?” Osobei was a diplomat, and as a diplomat disguised both his surprise and his disgust well—but not well enough.
“It’s his way. He says the heart more truly sees the hearts of others when the mind is lulled out of interfering.”
“I see. Then I have erred. Forgive me.” One thing she had to say for Osobei, and indeed all the Tzimisce she’d met—they submitted to the demands of courtly etiquette with uncommon grace. Though she looked old enough to be his grandmother, he might well be her elder in actuality, yet he readily lowered his eyes to her in formalized shame.
“You haven’t erred,” she corrected him. “You can speak to me. The Telyavs and Qarakh’s riders are as one.”
He kept his eyes downward. “Yes, so the khan himself has said, madam.”
“Then why do you hesitate? I’m not ignorant of what your Rustovitch feels toward us. We’re thieves of the Blood, are we not? Has he not sworn to take back what he believes to have been stolen from his clan?”
“In his eyes,” Osobei answered, now raising his glance once more, “you are still Tremere. Yes.”
If he was hoping for some guilty reaction, she wasn’t about to oblige him. “You’ve seen enough of us now to know how we fashion our existence, boyar. We’ve not been Tremere for over a century.”
He shrugged elegantly. “A century is but a day’s sleep to the voivode, madam.”
“Then perhaps the voivode should sleep now, and hope things will be more to his liking when he wakes,” the old woman said archly. “If that is all, boyar, I must tend to the needs of my people.”
“Madam, it is my hope that the voivode will soon be prevailed upon to make the alliance that serves our best interests.” His smooth words stopped her retreat.
“And you believe that this alliance is in his best interests?” she asked him.
“With whom else should he join?” Osobei replied. “With one of Jürgen’s Germanic rivals? They hunger for our land no less than Jürgen himself. With the Arpad? They are constitutionally unreliable. They betrayed Jürgen when he most needed them and would gladly do the same to my voivode. As for the other voivodes, they’re already theoretically our allies, and we’ve seen how well they hold up to their obligations.”
“And what about the Obertus? They are Tzimisce, are they not?”
“We are not yet precisely sure of that, madam,” he said dryly. “What I do know is that their goals are not our goals. But your people and ours do share a common agenda. To keep the White Christ out of those few remaining lands where he does not yet rule, and to crush the Saxon Ventrue before they have time to think of formally banding with Ceoris.”
“Ah, but if you truly believed that, boyar, then you wouldn’t begrudge speaking with me. If you really want to know what I think…”
“I am indeed most eager for your opinions, madam.”
“I think you’re hoping that we are only allies of convenience for the khan, and that if you offer him the services of the Tzimisce koldun-priests, he’ll decide that one magic-worker is as good as another and break faith with us. Then Rustovitch would be spared the embarrassment of finding himself sharing ranks with those he considers Usurpers, and the Telyavs could more easily be crushed alongside the spawn of Ceoris.”
Evidently he was not at all used to being so accused to his face. It took him a moment to recover enough to speak.
“You talk,” he said at last, “like a woman who believes she does not need any allies at all.”
“No, I talk like a woman who knows better than to believe I can have any.” She smiled bitterly. Tiny crystals of snow landed on her face and did not melt. “Many will parley with us, cajole us, but no one will truly stand with
us in the end, because what we have become is an abomination in the eyes of the whole world. Do you pretend that my khan will be received joyously as a brother-king in the halls of the voivodes? To you he’s fit only to be a loyal war-hound. Many of his own blood reject him simply for being Mongol, or for aspiring to create something larger and more enduring than anything they’ve made. Ceoris hates me, yet your master regards me as one of its talons nevertheless. The Christians would wipe us out because we are pagan, and many mortals would exterminate us because we are vampyri. I am under no illusions.”
“And if the great khan should feel differently, and wish to ally with us?”
“Then I will not fight him. I may permit you to use us, boyar, but never to divide us…”
She trailed off to a halt.
“Do you smell that?”
He glanced around. “What?”
“Fire—”
A vast dread lodged itself in her, shook her frail bones. Somewhere a boundary had been trespassed. The sense of alien intrusion was no less immediate and absolute than it would have been if Osobei had put his hand between her legs. But which boundary? She began making her way through the encampment, rising slightly on her toes as though that would really help her see better. Osobei fell into step beside her, his expression more curious than concerned.
Then they heard the first scream.
She broke into a stumbling run. The scream was immediately joined by others. They came from near the warriors’ gers. She smelled plenty of roasting meat, horse-sweat and qumis, but the rising scent of vampire blood quickly threatened to overwhelm them all.
From the campfire protruded the lower half of someone Deverra was sure she should recognize. Qarakh stood in the center of a knot of his Cainite soldiers. Long earth-colored claws extended from the tips of his hands and also from his feet, shredding through his soft leather boots. As she watched, he bodily picked one Cainite up and threw him a good ten yards. Another he seized by the throat, then he snapped the man’s spine over his knee and began to drink lustily from the outstretched neck.
In the intimacy of the circle, it was impossible not to know the moment something had gone wrong. Jervais felt it before he saw the change in Torgeir’s faraway gaze. The others did too.
“We have to get him out,” he said quickly. “Olena, help me bring him out.”
Olena laid a long-nailed hand on the Dane’s shoulder and began to chant in Latin, calling Torgeir’s name and bidding him return to her, his anchor, and also to his flesh. Jervais added his own words to hers. At once the young magus’s inert body leaped into animation. He was on his feet, white teeth flashing, curling his lips in a wild snarl.
“Ho!” cried Master Antal. A military note came into his voice at once. “Dismiss the circle now! East, South, West, North!” Rapidly he began speaking his quarter’s words of revocation.
Jervais fumbled for the wooden dagger at his belt. Olena crouched as Torgeir bore down upon her, thrusting up the ritual sword so that its length was buried deep in his belly. He howled but couldn’t pull himself off the blade. Jervais, trying to measure Torgeir’s back for his blow, found himself splattered with a shower of Cainite blood, which woke his senses like a trumpet blast. The blade protruding from Torgeir’s back waved hazardously as he and Olena struggled. Then Torgeir pushed past Olena, the sword still in him, and charged toward Zabor—who chose the better part of valor and dodged aside, breaking his quarter prematurely and scattering the circle’s energy into a hundred wounded, wasted fragments. Antal shouted at him, too late. The beast was on the loose.
They all stood there for several moments, dazed from the wrenching blow of the spell’s sudden end, then Antal lurched away to follow Torgeir, and the others fell in behind him. There was no need to ask where he would go.
“Qarakh!” Deverra shouted, but the Mongol didn’t hear. One of the soldiers, no doubt shocked beyond reason, grasped his lolling comrade and tried vainly to pull him out of Qarakh’s raptor grip.
“No!” she shouted again. “Don’t touch him, you’re only provoking him! Back away slowly!”
They understood her tone, if not her logic, and obeyed. Qarakh clutched his prey and would not lift his lips from the streaming throat, but he lifted his eyes at least. In his stare she could see no recognition, no human thought at all, only the awareness of a threat nearby.
“Qarakh.” Many times, as witch-priestess, she’d had to bury her fear so that a sullen spirit would not taste it. This was no different. “Qarakh, you must put him down now. You are tired, you are sad—you need to rest, my khan.”
He gazed blankly at her. His mouth opened and dribbled gibberish. She could make nothing of it at first. Then one word went by that she understood. The phrases themselves were disjointed nonsense—as though he realized he was being addressed and should respond, yet had forgotten how. But the language was one her old master had long ago made her study.
Greek. Holy gods…
What was the word? “Softly,” she whispered to him in the best Greek she possessed. “Softly. It will be all right.” She moved closer to him. He watched her warily, suckling the wound once more, as she took one step, two, three. Four was evidently one too many. He lunged for her, throwing the crumbling body of his clansman aside. She screamed. The other soldiers catapulted themselves onto him, weighing him down. He gave a roar and began flinging them off.
She muttered and drew herself into herself, calling for spirits of the air. She didn’t have time to sweet-talk. She simply promised to summon them a storm, a storm of great violence in which they could dance for hours, if they would come to her now and do as she bid. Eagerly they brushed past her and seized hold of Qarakh, then lifted him from the ground until he was hovering in midair like a bee. Some of the fight went out of him as his feet left the ground, but he continued to writhe and spit and struggle against those who were still latched onto him. His face had begun to stretch, change shape. If he moved to wolf-shape now, in the grip of such rage, there was no telling when he would come back. She hurriedly fetched an arrow out of one of the soldiers’ quivers.
“Hold him still if you can!” She opened up his coat and, with a prayer to Dievas, struck with every ounce of strength blood could give her. Her prayer was heard. The shaft slid through, splintering in her hand as it went, but at least one shard must have pierced his heart since he shuddered once and then went completely stiff.
Imploring the spirits to bear him down gently, she and the soldiers laid him on the ground. His face was frozen in a rictus of hatred that she could hardly bear to look at.
“What happened?” she asked quietly, glancing toward the half-corpse at the fire.
“He came at us with an evil gleam in his eyes, and didn’t seem to understand a word we said to him. Kasim tried to fend him off with a burning brand, but that only made him angry.”
“Yes…” It was worthless to point out the folly of such a course to them—they’d now seen it with their own eyes. Fire was a fine tool for driving off Cainites who were still in their right minds, but once the Beast had already emerged, there was no telling how it might respond to a flame thrust in its face.
I don’t understand it. He was drunk, yes, but not to any extraordinary degree. And now the Greek…
There was one way she might gain some understanding, if there was still anything of Qarakh to be reached right now. She gazed deep into his eyes—he had no choice, couldn’t turn his head or even shut his eyelids.
Qarakh? Her thoughts reached out tentatively for his. My khan?
There. An echo, heartbreakingly weak. My shaman, his eyes answered. Who is dead? Are there dead?
Yes, there are dead. She felt tears threatening to start, and ordered them angrily back. His own riders whom he loved as kin. I don’t yet know who. I will find out, but do you truly wish to be told now?
Perhaps not.
I will release you in a moment, I promise.
No! He couldn’t move, but she thought she felt the barest shiver
through his clothes. No, you must not—it’s not safe, my witch. I don’t have the mastery of it.
What is happening? Is he—
Shh. I do not know. There is…something, that is sure. And it draws not only on my own strength, but on the power of the god. It wakes the wolf in my soul and bids it raven.
Do you think you can master it, my khan?
I must. I will try. I do not think I can kill it, but perhaps I make it…understand, given time.
Time?
You must give me time. The voice had grown paper-thin. You must be father as well as mother to the tribe.
No, no. Don’t do this to me. The last two words of this desperate thought were out before she could stop them. Something’s coming still. There’s danger. We’ll need you.
You do not need one more thing to worry about. And now, sharing company mind to mind, she could feel the accumulated pain that she’d guessed at, but not seen, in these recent months. Let us face facts, my shaman. Neither of us has been the same since Alexander, and since the god’s burning touch. My change has simply been less obvious. I will return when I can be a help to you, and not a burden.
She wanted to plead with him, but he was the wrong one to importune. She wanted to plead with Telyavel, but if the god hadn’t stretched out his hand to help Qarakh yet, he must have decided by whatever mysterious reasoning gods employed that it wasn’t right to do so. In that moment she would even have pleaded with their dead enemy Alexander, if there’d been anything there to plead with besides a mad, mindless fragment.
She held him close. I will guard you, she thought fiercely, as faithfully as you guarded your blood-brother those many years. You will rise again, my khan.
But he had descended too completely to respond, perhaps even to hear.
“No,” Jervais said brusquely to the babbling, gesticulating slave. “Yes, I know what you want. You want to burn your friend’s body. I’m telling you no. No fire. What you may do is dig. Dig, you know, dig?” Something caught at the hem of his robe. He looked down. The Esth woman who held the corpse and keened over it had reached out to wrap her free hand around his leg, leaving a red streak on his ritual robe. He stepped back. “Zabor! See if you can make these people understand that I realize perfectly well what they’re asking, I just haven’t the first intention of giving it to them.”