by Sarah Roark
“Come. You can feed, at least a little.”
“No…” Torgeir stood. He stumbled, dizzy. Fidus held him up. “No, the slaves can’t be recovered yet. I’m all right. God, is everyone drowsing? That’s no good. Let’s wake Jervais and Antal.”
But Hermann had already beaten them to it. In dribs and drabs the Cainites gathered in the middle of the ward-circle, while the mortals around them labored to cut new tent-poles to replace the broken ones.
“The crucial thing,” Olena was saying, one finger held up for emphasis, “the crucial thing is that what Baghatur describes—wood infused with blood for sap—can’t have been made overnight. Perhaps she built the box, or had it built, and trapped the ghost all in the one night between learning of Master Jervais’s approach and his arrival. But the tree itself she must have been feeding for weeks.”
“I’d say more likely months or years,” Baghatur put in, nodding.
“There’s a lovely thought,” Torgeir shuddered as he sat down.
She snorted in reply. “My point is that she’d never expend that kind of effort unless it were good for more than just making the occasional spirit-box. These trees, they must be important to her magic.”
“Yes, she seems to have a real predilection for trees,” Jervais said sourly.
“And if they’re important, she must have more than one. Perhaps next to this one? In an alkas?”
“Perhaps, perhaps.” Jervais felt that some part of his intellect was slowly getting at her meaning, but not the part that was on speaking terms with him at the moment. He busied himself with grating the mushrooms he’d found on the hilltop. As a mortal, he could have simply eaten them to ingest the vis they contained by virtue of having grown at the exact confluence of ley lines. As things were, the process would have to be far more roundabout.
“The box isn’t a very good link to Deverra, as you’ve said, but it’s got to be a marvelous link to the stump it came from, doesn’t it? So we could scry that out instead,” Olena went on impatiently. “Find her sacred grove and do something to it.”
“Ahh. Yes. You’re right. We should find it and hit it hard and fast. They’re certainly doing their best to keep us busy. It’s time we returned the favor.”
“But master,” Zabor stammered, “we’ll have to leave the ward’s protection if we’re to inflict anything really worthwhile on some faraway alkas. And we’re already half starved just from setting it.”
“The former can’t be helped, my boy,” Jervais said, not unsympathetically. “The latter can.”
“But the slaves,” Torgeir protested.
“Were purchased for a single purpose.” He glanced at Hermann, who stiffened. Well, perhaps they’d better leave at least a couple of slaves alive, until the Ventrue could acquire more vessels. He smiled. “Or we might prevail on Herr Hermann to let a few of his men donate. They can make themselves handy for something besides killing cows.”
The Saxon scowled, but then nodded. “If it’ll accomplish anything concrete, master wizard, then do what you must.”
Once again the four quarters of the directions were called and the guardians standing in place. This time, however, it was Torgeir who stood in the East, while Master Antal and Jervais stood in the middle holding the fragments of Deverra’s box—foci and conduits for the combined will of the sodalicium. Antal was adept at raising fire, which had been the initial plan, but he and Jervais both could conjure lightning, so they’d decided in the end to cooperate in that and thus amplify the magic all the more. Olena’s role was to hold and bind in a netting of gold wire the ax that symbolized Perun, Slavic thunder-god, whom Zabor had sworn and the Kur had confirmed was dear to Balts as well. The Tremere would brook no interference from any self-important local deities, particularly any that might be in congress with the Telyavs.
“Perun, Pargnus, Perkunas,” she crooned over and over as she knotted the wire, “warrior and judge, be bound and bearded by our will, arms slackened, eyes drooping, go to sleep and leave the sky masterless…”
“You must rouse, Grandmother,” Jurate whispered. Deverra looked as if she’d slumbered a century and could do so for another. Her recumbent face made Jurate think of a craggy outcropping of rock, not so much defiant of weather as ignorant. And surely she deserved her rest, for she’d been wakeful much of the previous two days readying and casting charms against the invaders. But Jurate couldn’t let her.
“Grandmother, please. There’s an ill cloud.”
The crone opened one eye, then summoned the effort for the second. “Ill cloud?” She waited for a moment, smelling, feeling. “Yes, something’s not right.” She hobbled over to the bench of votive deities that sat along the north of the ger. “Why is everyone clamoring for libation except for you, Perkunas? What’s this? The eye of heaven closed?” She raised her hand, restraining an urge to knock the little idol off its perch in most disrespectful fashion. “Telyavel, father, I beg you, don’t drowse alongside the ax man. Rise, take your hammer and come with me. Zvoruna, bitch of the woods, sniff and bay. Call the hunters.” She hurriedly poured out a bowl of mixed mead and beer before them, then added a sprinkle of blood from her fingertip. “Jurate, daughter, help me to the hilltop. Show me this cloud.”
The younger Telyav did as she was bid. From amid the tall grasses, waving in a wind that blew the wrong way, they could clearly see a blackness gathering several miles away—directly over the alkas that held Deverra’s own zaltys-snake, her shrine and shrine-maiden, her trees and seedlings. Rumbles and flashes milled deep within the mass of thunderheads. Blue-white fingers of light streaked down into the leaf-canopy.
“Grandmother!” Jurate exclaimed, afraid that the old woman’s eyes were closing from weariness.
“They came here so much more ignorant of our ways than we were of theirs,” the high priestess murmured. “I was hoping they’d remain so, just a little longer. But perhaps they’re beginning to see.”
“Grandmother, you mustn’t despair!” Jurate pleaded.
Deverra turned to her and stroked her hair. “Despair? Child, I despaired over a hundred years ago. But I will never give up, for our god is with us. Come, help me back down again.”
When they got back into the ger, Deverra said, “We must start a fire and consecrate the ger. And the mirror, that little mirror you were playing with last night, we need it again. Jurate, don’t fear. The power of Seven is a terrible thing indeed when wielded by our old blood. But fortunately, it’s a good deal easier to break than to build.”
Jervais was a little astonished that he and Antal could share an armful of pure lightning between them so easily. Clearly, what Jervais had always regarded as a useful but slightly discomfiting art was a source of outright ecstasy for the Hungarian. He fearlessly let the tiny sparks of illumination play among his teeth, allowed it to set his long dark hair on end until it floated about him like some sort of unholy halo. He must have been one of those damned born weather-witches in life. Jervais refused to let himself be cowed.
“Once again. On my word!” Antal commanded with a wide grin. “Unus, duo, tres, verbum!”
Squeezing their right hands closer to each other, they forced the sphere of blue-white chaos they’d raised together down into the fragments of wood in their left hands. Jervais felt the discharge leave him with a bracing, stinging snap. Exciting as it was to build up, it was always a relief to be rid of it.
“Good!” the Hungarian boomed. “Good! Now another.”
It pained Deverra’s eyes to watch the reflection, but the curse required it. In the polished silver of the ritual mirror, the flames of her hearth-fire leaped high. The one who’d sat out in the moonlight for hours on end chanting, who’d so painstakingly carved his name and sigil into the rim, who’d no doubt spilt blood only recently stolen from another over the metal’s limitless depths, could hardly help but feel those flames. Such ties could no more be denied than could one’s ownership of one’s own body.
Jurate came back into the ger, bow
ing first to request passage from the felt gods of happiness and fortune that guarded the door-flap. “Fire,” she said.
“Yes, fire,” Deverra said, not moving her gaze.
“I mean your trees. Grandmother, the lightning must have struck them, the grove is afire.”
It was hard not to let the fear in the younger Telyav’s voice affect her. One step at a time. No tripping over oneself. That was how Deverra had survived this long. “Only if I can take the sky back I can put out the fire,” she said calmly. “Only if I can break the circle can I take the sky back.”
Flames in the mirror.
Zabor felt it at once. It was as though the globe of lightning in the magi’s hands expanded, flattened and dispersed. Then he could see the flames, and Deverra’s eyes, watery and rheumy but full of malice. She knew exactly what she was doing and exactly how much it hurt. The worst part was that the burning started from within and moved outward, rather than the other way around. It raged in his bones, smoldering and blasting like the cracks of heat in a half-burned log. He half-expected to collapse into a puddle of skin and tallow right there, but somehow he stayed upright.
There are words that should be had about the importance of remaining in position in ritual until instructed to take leave of it.
“Right. That was good, but let’s send off one more to be sure.” Jervais’s voice seemed to float in from far away. Zabor thought of saying something, but between the effort of holding the South and the effort of enduring the pain, his mouth wouldn’t open. One more, he could hold through for one more.
Your sire had the wrong idea, didn’t he? Scrubbing floors and dumping corpses, those aren’t humiliations. You’re a bright lad. You know when you’ve truly failed. There are spells, Zabor, where a broken quarter will kill everyone participating. Entities who can steal your soul if you break eye contact. What did you think it would be like to become magus? All power, no pain? This is why you’re still Fourth Circle after all these years, not because of your smart mouth. Everyone else stood fast. Everyone else did their duty. And they know it. They know now that you’re the weak link, that you are more dangerous to them than the enemy. They’ll kill you themselves before they let you lose us this war. And I shall not stop them.
He clamped his jaw shut, but a groan escaped nonetheless. He was melting, running like wax. Something dripped onto his cheeks.
“Very good. On my word…make ready. On my word. Unus.”
“Master Antal, something’s wrong with Fire—with the South, Zabor.”
“I know. Hold your quarters, all of you. Zabor, we can’t lose Fire. Not with this spell. Hold them! On my word now. Unus.”
An odd, frightening calm settled over him. He would hold, yes.
“Duo. Tres.”
The mirror-flames hissed as they devoured his innards, his heart. One especially bright and beautiful flame appeared before him. No, this was his hand, aflame in truth. Now they would all see he was worthy.
“Verbum!”
“Done!”
“Torgeir, the quarters! Now!”
Zabor thought he said the words for South as soon as Torgeir had finished East, but he wasn’t sure. He was thinking them, anyway. Syllables he knew as well as his own name. He had no idea how he came to be looking at the stars, no idea whether it was someone’s cloak or simply the end of all earthly sense that blotted those stars out almost immediately afterward. But he heard voices for a few moments more, most shouting or dithering, only one close by and intelligible.
“Good lad,” it said. The voice was Antal’s, and it was hoarse. “Good soldier.”
It was not the benediction he needed where he was going, but as it was the only one he had, he clutched it to his soul and rose on his own ashes into the new dark.
“I can choose another alkas and make it mine. I could do it tomorrow, if I weren’t promised to other tasks.” Deverra handed Bernalt a cup of blood that steamed in the cold air. “It’s the Samogitians who must grieve. Those trees won’t grow back for many years. Each holy place that dies leaves behind an empty space for the Cross to fill.”
Bernalt nodded, but said nothing. He had to concentrate. He’d offered to spare her the exhausting task of taking the winds back one by one, turning them around so that the fire that now raged through her alkas would not spread down to the camp or the rest of the plain.
Tears streamed down Jurate’s face. She was new in the blood and had never met her southern cousins before. She was shocked at how casually they could blaspheme.
“And all this time I thought they coveted our lands, our power,” she said.
“No,” Deverra said ruefully. “Once, they might have. When they were living men with living magic, and pure self-interest forced them to husband the vis-flows. But now they take what they need from human blood, and everything else is secondary.”
“But humankind itself cannot survive without the holy places…” The young Telyav blinked. “Surely they know that.”
“You seek reason where there is none, daughter. These,” she gestured toward the horizon, “are the fruits of fear and desperation. It no longer matters to them what they do or don’t know. They forgot wisdom once, long ago, and may never remember it again.”
“We must kill them, Grandmother,” she said. “Kill them all, now. This cannot be allowed.”
“Don’t lose your head, Jurate. Hate tonight, call down the god’s curses on them, then put it aside. Tomorrow we’ll need your cunning, not your passion. But their sodalicium is broken, at least.” Bernalt glanced over at that. “Yes. Seven have become six. Now we can go to them, and nothing they erect will be able to stand against our assault.”
“At least we’ve crippled her power by ruining the alkas,” Jervais reminded them. He opened up a little leather folder, set it on the ground, took out the tiny brush and the vial and began carefully to sweep a bit of Zabor’s ash into it.
“For the love of God, warlock, what are you doing?” Wigand cried out. Jervais squinted up at his and Hermann’s scandalized faces, then he turned to look at the other Tremere, who stood no less aghast. “What any war-commander does,” he answered, returning to his work. “Conserving armaments.”
“Carrion-vulture!”
“What is done with the sainted bodies of dead Christian knights in the Holy Land, meine Herren? That is, when they’re not just left to rot.”
“Well,” Wigand began, frowning, “when possible, the remains are conveyed home—”
“What, a hundred stinking corpses on a great sailing cog?” Jervais looked up again.
“No. No, it is necessary, because of the long journey—”
“They’re cut up and boiled, aren’t they?” he interrupted dourly. “To extract the skeletons?”
Hermann snorted and turned away. Wigand didn’t speak again.
“Surely you don’t need all of him,” Miklos said hesitantly. “We could save the rest and have…have a memorial when we get back.”
“If we get back.” Jervais got up. “Do as you wish, lad.”
The apprentices hurried to gather up the rest of the remains in a box, as though afraid Jervais would change his mind.
“Quite a little family we’ve got going,” Jervais murmured to Antal. The Hungarian sat sharpening his ritual dagger.
“Each of them is wondering who will mourn him if he falls.” Antal glanced at him. “Have you never considered that?”
“No. I already know no one will mourn me.” He paused. Something in Antal’s eyes made him uneasy. “This time he held. He did as you taught. And we gained a victory. Brother, this is why you’re here.”
“I know why I’m here.”
“But do you understand what’s at stake?”
Antal pretended to be absorbed in studying his edge, but he was pondering a safe reply. Jervais knew that look intimately. “War is war,” he said at last.
“No. It’s not the Hungarian war. Do you understand why all our lives aren’t too high a price for Ceoris to pay for th
is?”
“Am I your student now, Master Jervais—one you feel needs lessoning?”
“I do not want, at this late stage, to doubt your devotion to our enterprise.”
Antal literally gritted his teeth for a moment, then he shook his head. “Our Art is all we have to survive on, all we have to barter with. No one else must possess it. No one who doesn’t give sole allegiance to Ceoris. Rest assured, if I understand anything, I understand that.”
Jervais reached into his robe, brought out a wine-dark band of disparate threads braided and knotted together, and showed it to Antal. One thread had been burned to a char. No trace of it remained but a black smudge upon its neighbors.
Antal shrugged. “Nothing to be done about it,” he said.
“Not so. Fidus! Bring your skinny arse over here! My dear boy,” Jervais said, putting a hand on his student’s shoulder as he arrived. “The time’s come at last.”
“The time, master?” Fidus blinked at both of them.
“You’ve waited so long to make Fourth Circle. Well, here it is. Go purify yourself. We begin the ceremony first thing tomorrow night.”
“But…but you said my geometry had to improve first, and my—”
“We all have to get through this first, my lad, or the only geometry that shall concern you is the concentric circles of the Inferno. What’s the matter? I thought you’d be pleased. Off with you!”
“Ah, how stupid of me,” Antal said as he watched the apprentice scamper away. “I forgot about Fidus. Of course. One thread’s as good as another.”
“The important thing is the weave,” Jervais answered quietly. Antal chose his times and places abominably. And to think he fancied himself a potential vis-master.
“I daresay the one who holds your thread thinks so. Perhaps I shall be there to see if you still agree on the night it is cut.”
“If you’re lucky, I suppose.” Jervais felt the pique rising in him. He admitted it to himself, allowed it to smolder. Antal might despise his own role in affairs, but plainly he, like everyone else, despised Jervais’s even more: to say what must be said, to dispense with the unnecessary and to deal with realities as they presented themselves. The knights wanted an unstained holy cause. The apprentices wanted to believe in their own importance. Now Antal wanted permission to wallow in self-loathing. In a court setting, indulging such whims was Jervais’s entire modus operandi, but here, it was a luxury he simply couldn’t allow, and they would all hate him for it.