by Sarah Roark
Hermann seemed literally unable to speak for a moment. Then, stiffly, he nodded. “Very well, warlock. I acknowledge the boon in the terms you have stated.”
“Then I should start preparing for my journey. Excuse me, meine Herren.” Jervais bowed his way out of Hermann’s tent. As he made for his own tent, he saw Zabor once again, miserable but vigilant still at his “post.” Some of the slaves had crowded up near him to stare. Jervais went up to Zabor and gave him a pitying smile.
Then he ripped the young Pole’s robe open down the front and continued on his way.
Chapter Fifteen
If this was, indeed, the village the smith had meant, then he’d spoken true—it was well and thoroughly plundered. Not a soul stirred in the silent half ring of houses. Even whatever had once sat on top of the wooden post at the mouth of the semicircle (a horse’s skull, the Kur guessed) was ripped away.
Jervais noted, however, that although the huts’ deep thatched roofs nearly reached the ground, not a single bundle of straw had been burned. Unusual behavior for pillagers. And many of the bodies littered about—mostly of elderly folk and children who would have been too small to keep up—bore twin teeth marks eerily clean of blood as well as the more familiar gnawings of scavenger animals. Each body was also missing an ear. In the West no one dared leave such obvious unnatural traces anymore. The dead must disappear, as must the killer, unless he liked the idea of being thrown to the vigilants of the Church as a propitiating sacrifice. Vampiric power must be invisible, the vampires themselves never more than rumors and ghosts. The voivodes of the East were traditionally more blatant, but Qarakh’s raiders had to be making even them uneasy.
“They’ll come,” he said benevolently to Torgeir.
“Maybe.” The Dane rubbed fitfully at his forearms. If Jervais had been in a computational mood, he might have easily calculated where Torgeir would end up halting his mount as some function of maximum distance from maximum number of corpses.
“Their patrol should run right across our tracks,” Jervais continued, gesturing. Since they’d certainly had no wish to inform the Telyavs that they were camped less than a night’s ride away, they’d gone out quite some distance before removing Master Antal’s enchanted horseshoes and doubling back northward. Finding this village had been an accident, not at all a happy one for Torgeir. Still, it seemed an appropriate place to wait. “But if they take too long about it, I’ll send up a witch-light.”
“Perhaps they’ve moved on. You said they were nomads.”
“Even nomads don’t move constantly.”
“Unless they’re suspicious. Perhaps we waited too long.”
“I highly doubt any such luck will be ours. Besides, we needed a few nights to bleach out your robes.”
“Of course.”
“Well, you can hardly fault me. Look at you. You’re bound to make an impression. They’ll more likely forbear killing me to please you than the other way ‘round.”
“Or they might decide to regard me as my fellow Christians always have,” the young magus said icily.
“So long as it’s fear of one sort or another, boy, I’m satisfied.”
A new scent on the breeze caught at Jervais’s sensitive nostrils. A little later, it was followed by a distant thundering and spots of movement on the horizon. The riders came with uncanny speed. As though of one mind, they ranged out across the plain and circled the village, then drew in toward the Tremere. There were eight of them. Jervais’s horse tried to shy; he calmed it as best he could, letting it smell of his wrist in an unspoken promise to feed it later if it would behave now.
That these were Qarakh’s raiders there could be no question. He saw the whites of their vampire eyes glistening under the moonlight, and he heard that their short, slender-legged, bristle-maned and brush-tailed horses went unshod. Their faces weren’t Tartar, or didn’t match the description he’d been given in any case, but their armor was curious. Instead of mail rings, it consisted of many overlapping plates of what looked like hard leather, giving them, to Jervais’s eyes, a certain reptilian cast.
The Kur, who stood with the Tremere, trembled and crowded unwisely close to Jervais’s mount. Jervais toed the slave with his boot. “Tell them we come in peace. Shout it.”
The man shouted out something. The riders might or might not have understood it, but at any rate they paid attention. One of them, who wore a fine metal-fitted belt and a bright-colored hat, shouted back.
“Well?” Jervais prodded the Kur.
“He say if you come in peace you can leave in peace. You go or you die.”
“Tell them this. ‘I am unarmed, so you can kill me if you like, though that would be very foolish. I am kin to wise Deverra, and I wish only to bring her word from afar.’”
“No Tremere is ever unarmed,” called a voice in good Latin. A second head appeared behind that of the chief rider; then the rest of the body, which slid down off the horse and came forward. It was a slim, pale, young-looking man. He didn’t wear the strange leather armor borne by the rest, only a simple cloak of weathered green. “But at least I only see two of you. Why have you come really?”
“As I said.” Jervais deliberately loosened his grip on the reins to show himself unafraid. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had word of Mistress Deverra, and I daresay the reverse is true as well.”
“Indeed,” the other replied with a smile. “Nor has Ceoris ever sent us an emissary to visit in person. I must wonder what prompted them to extend us this honor at last.”
“Perhaps it is simply long overdue. But come, your mistress, is she well? May I see her?”
The young Cainite grinned. “I assure you, master, at this point you will see her whether you wish to or not.”
After a long winter night’s ride north and a day’s rest in an abandoned wooden fort, Jervais awoke to find to his very great relief that he and Torgeir hadn’t been murdered in their sleep after all. Indeed, their Telyav guide greeted them with a smile and a cold swig from a silver flask. A second small company of mortal horsemen had joined them during the day, however, two of whom were leading along light gray beasts a hand or two taller than the tarpanas.
“You must change horses now,” the Telyav directed them.
“We must?”
“In this country, master, wizards ride only pale mounts.”
“I see. Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to be one to erode wizardly dignities,” Jervais said amiably, although he gave the horses a good hard sorcerer’s gaze before slinging himself up. The cloaked vampire helped Torgeir up, casting a curious eye upon him in the process but saying nothing.
Some hours later they rode into the pagan camp, preceded by flute and drum. Their guide passed through the twin fires marking the border of the settlement and formally welcomed them in with a bow and a recitation. Jervais felt the ward part uneasily as he rode through, but his attention was immediately drawn away to the odd tents. They were cylindrical up to a certain height and then peaked in a pointed roof, many with spiraling smoke-columns rising from the center. Every tent was oriented exactly the same, the felt-bracketed door always facing due south. They proceeded along an open south-north lane running down the camp’s middle, the one clear area in what otherwise seemed a confusion of clutter.
As they moved inward, the tents also grew wider and grander, until at last they reached such a size that Jervais had no idea at all how they might be moved. From every tent poured mortals, old and young. They crowded around—a sea of heads upon which Jervais felt buoyed forward. He noted with satisfaction that Torgeir (who’d evidently resigned himself to playing the part) elicited many awed gasps as he rode impassively through their midst. True, he also saw several fists raised with thumb between index and middle finger in what had to be some sort of evil-eye gesture, but those were furtive, covert movements.
At the very center of the camp stood the grandest tent of all, festooned with trophies from years of plunder. A large cluster of figures had gathered t
here. Foremost among them was a wizened little woman with bent shoulders, dressed like the other women in the camp, but more elaborately so: a white shift and a red-orange linen overdress, caught with horseshoe-shaped brooches at the shoulders and sides. From her waist hung a multitude of draped beaded strings and woven bands. Her headdress was somewhat like a wimple, but decorated with medallions pinned on it to the left and right of her seamed white face. She carried a long branch-staff that was either freshly cut or else enchanted to remain perpetually green with leaves. Jervais dismounted and came forward to meet her. Torgeir followed suit.
“Master Jervais. Ceoris honors us beyond all expectation,” the crone said, bowing low. She extended her hand. He took it and allowed her to lead him inside, holding open the tent flap for him. Two of the armored riders took up guard posts at the door. Low felt-covered cushions, arranged in a long rectangle, awaited them within the tent. The woman seated herself and her guests on the north side.
Jervais studied those around him. But for their cloaks, dyed in various woodsman’s shades from green to rust, the Telyavs looked much like the mortals of the region. Jervais saw one face, but only one, that looked foreign to him, a dark-haired Cainite man of indeterminate age. He read among them colors of uncertainty, fear, resentment perhaps. Nothing he wasn’t perfectly used to seeing during any visit of an official nature.
“May we offer you refreshment, Master Jervais?” the old woman asked.
“Of course. We’d be delighted.”
She stood again and waved over one of the mortal servants who stood waiting around the tent’s perimeter. The man engaged in a moment’s anxious consultation with her, then hurried off. She smiled at Torgeir. “He asks me if you are the beloved of Giltine, Mother Death; or a slogutis, a nightmare; or perhaps the love-child of Ausrine and Menulis—Evening Star and Moon. I thought Giltine the most appropriate answer, but please don’t take it as an aspersion on your character, my friend.”
He simply bowed in reply. Jervais frowned but did not reprove him.
“I regret that this may take a little longer than expected. He won’t wish to choose wrongly.” She turned back to Jervais with a coolly arched eyebrow. “But of course we won’t make his lordship wait for that…”
“No, no,” Jervais said hastily. “We should all dine together as brothers and sisters, it’s only right.”
“Indeed.”
“Forgive my rudeness, milady, but—will Mistress Deverra be joining us this evening?”
“Mistress Deverra has already joined you, milord,” she answered with another dignified if labored courtesy. “But perhaps she has disappointed expectations. If so, I fear I can offer little remedy.”
Jervais took a moment to realize what she was saying, then another moment to absorb it. “Not a single disappointment thus far, milady. However, if you’re saying that you are she, then the description I was given was…not quite correct.”
“Correct it might well have been, but alas, likely outdated.” She arranged herself once more on the cushion. “Sometimes our Art is not only demanding, but cruel.”
“It seems so,” Jervais murmured. “I would certainly call any Art cruel that demanded of a woman her youthful beauty. My apologies if I’ve unwittingly pained you, mistress.”
“There’s no need, milord. For my part, I call it a bargain to pay heavily for that which is priceless. And now the age of my face more closely matches the age of my heart, at least. A lesson in truth.”
“Ah, one of those. I’ve never liked those.”
She chuckled. “Nor have I. But this land would teach me wisdom in spite of myself. And the land of Hungary, how does it treat our brethren?”
“I actually haven’t been spending much time in Hungary of late, but from what I can tell, the usual climate prevails.”
“Ah, then you’re not here to recruit for the front.”
“Recruit?” Jervais surveyed the assemblage with amusement. Most of them were staring at him now. He could just imagine what they’d been told to expect, and here was this round, jovial character trading dry witticisms with their matriarch. “Bonisagus’s beard, no. It seems Ceoris feels it’s become rather out of touch with your efforts here, that’s all. I understand a few letters were sent which never received an answer…but perhaps they went astray.”
“Yes, they must have. I should certainly never wish to worry Ceoris. We’re probably not as easy to reach as other branches of the House and Clan.”
“Quite true. An interesting mode of existence,” Jervais nodded. “I can’t help feeling a bit surprised by it, however. I hadn’t thought the tribes of the Baltic were nomads.”
“They aren’t,” she said simply.
“Indeed, the style of the tents, and the armor of your riders,” he went on, feigning knowledge he didn’t begin to possess, “actually reminds me more of reports of the Tartars.”
Her face fell into more severe lines. “Well, there’s good enough reason for that, Master Jervais. Much of this region is traditionally claimed by the voivodes, as you know, and any who would resist them find it necessary to make common cause. Some time ago we did exactly that with a group of Gangrel who wandered here from the Orient. It’s not easy, but I do find that being migratory has its advantages. It’s safer to stay on the move, and there are so few towns of any size in these parts. In this way, we avoid taxing any one area for too long.”
But you do seem to make the most of the time you’ve got, Jervais thought, recalling the depopulated village. “Fascinating, milady. And these Eastern Gangrel, do they have a leader of their own, or do they call you mistress as the mortals do?”
“They have a leader, but I regret you’ve missed him for this visit. Nor am I precisely sure when he will return. He’s close about his comings and goings, like most of his blood.”
“Ah. A pity my timing proves so ill,” Jervais said, scouring his voice clean of every trace of delight. He hoped she wasn’t watching his halo, although he was doing his best to keep it suppressed in any case. “But perhaps there’s a second-in-command to whom your ladyship would be kind enough to introduce me?”
“I am the second-in-command, so to speak. Just as my magi and apprentices are instructed to obey Qarakh in my absence, so the riders look to me when he is gone.”
“Then the alliance must be a very close one.”
“It pleases the mortals to have both a high priestess and a war-chief. Orb and scepter. It encourages their trust.”
“Their trust or their worship?”
“I see the most august Lord Councilor has been preaching to you,” she said imperturbably. “He doesn’t distinguish between Cainites demanding worship as gods, and Cainites leading the worship of the gods. But he is a Christian, and he distrusts all other faiths. I have always understood that. Still, I hope you can explain to him that we haven’t forced upon the mortals a cult of ourselves. They believe as they always have.”
“That may be the part that the august Councilor has the most trouble with,” Jervais pointed out. He was very glad the knights weren’t with him. He glanced quickly at Torgeir; the boy didn’t look offended, at least. Good. He would likely uncover more information if they could avoid insulting her bizarre religion for at least a little while.
“Well, as an official of Ceoris, you must surely know his mind on the subject,” she said with a tiny, keen smile.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare pretend to that particular expertise. But you’re saying, then, that this god of yours…”
“Telyavel.”
“Yes, Telyavel. That he was always a god of these parts.”
“He has always been exactly as he is, milord, which is to say, he’s many things. He is a god of cunning, who brought the secret of metalcraft from the Underworld and used it to forge the sun-crown. He thus straddles the worlds of man, god and devil, death, darkness and secrets, hope and light.”
“A most excellent deity for Tremere, then.”
“Indeed. If you credit such superstitions,�
�� she said. He decided to change the subject.
“Since you move around so much, how can you be establishing chantries, which is, I’m given to understand, the task you were originally charged with?”
“If I may be forgiven the audacity of correcting milord…” He had to envy her. Even buckled under the weight of sudden unnatural age, she sat like a queen. Her dignity seemed completely unstudied, and she’d mastered the art of asking pardon without seeming timid. “It was primarily to research certain unplumbed aspects of the new Art that we were sent to Livonia. We were also asked to establish chantries as seemed fit. But what is a chantry, milord? Is it wood and stone? Or is it the souls that dwell within those walls, and the common purpose they share?”
“Then you’re saying there are other groups of your…branch, elsewhere in these lands.”
“Yes, there are. However, where precisely they are at any time, even I cannot say.”
“Then how do you reach each other in times of need?”
“With difficulty, sometimes. This is strange country, Master Jervais. You’ll find that what would be considered wisdom elsewhere is foolishness here, and the reverse.”
A likely story. Well, she was suspicious, clearly. She was shading truths in a way that contradicted what he’d learned elsewhere. His informants, for instance, had been quite sure that Qarakh was the only Tartar (Gangrel or otherwise) to be found anywhere in Livonia, but here was Deverra, implying that there’d been a whole band of them. She was trying to minimize the idea that Qarakh and Qarakh alone had had such a profound effect on the culture of his tribe—that so much depended on him. And now she claimed that any number of Telyavs was lurking out there but she had no way of knowing exactly where, which was quite simply nonsense. No maga her age would lack such means.