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

by Sarah Roark

  “What then?” Torgeir paused a moment. “Sacrilege?”

  “Perhaps…”

  “Sacrilege, Dane?” the smith spat. His kindly face had contorted beyond human limits now, twisted with immortal pain and fear. “You are a walking sacrilege. And that piece of brass you hold, to you it is nothing but a talisman to ward off what troubles you.”

  “Shut up,” Torgeir snarled in return. “This talisman is going to send you back to whatever black underworld vomited you up.”

  “Well, if you’re going to do that anyway—” Fidus interrupted.

  Torgeir glared at him. It was a hard glare, rather like one of Jervais’s, and all the more frightening for the reddish tinge his eyes took on in the reflected firelight.

  “If you’re…I mean,” stammered Fidus, “why not just send it back with him?”

  The look on the smith’s face decided Torgeir at once. “Right! Hold him!” As the two of them struggled to keep Aukstakojis’s head still and stood on his feet, Fidus tried to pry his mouth open. When that didn’t work, he brought the handle-end of the tongs down onto the gritted teeth, smashing them in. The smith gave a gurgling scream and dark blood gushed from his lips as Fidus forced the pincer end of the hot tongs down into his throat, then pulled apart the handles so as to drop the coal down into his belly. Meanwhile, Torgeir pushed the cross against the smith’s taut-stretched cheek.

  “Adjuro te, serpens antique, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”

  The knight quickly joined the chant, and even Fidus picked it up in a moment. The smith’s body shook and smoked, giving forth a horrible boggy odor, and then it began to deliquesce in their very hands, first blackening and bloating like an old corpse and then transmuting into a sludge that splashed across them.

  “Ugh! No sign of the coal?”

  “No.” Fidus felt hurriedly around for it in the muck. “No, it’s gone.”

  As he said it, an enormous groan and crack sounded throughout the shed. They turned to gape at the forge. The very earth was giving underneath it, tipping it in, swallowing it up. As it turned over, Torgeir caught sight of the marks that had been etched into it, ancient glyphs of concealment and promises of retribution on the would-be defiler…

  “Out!” he shouted. His companions needed no further urging. They pelted out of the shack just as walls began to fold in on themselves and the fault in the ground parted beneath their very feet. Before they’d even reached the edge of the clearing, the whole thing was already gone as though it had never been. Only a stinking pit remained.

  Telyavel had reclaimed his own.

  Once, as an apprentice, Deverra had been sent to gather the dew of the alchemilla plant and had ended up clinging to the side of an outcropping of rock whence a small growth sprang. Halfway through the preparatory prayer, a section of it collapsed out from under her and she was swung out, fingers desperately entwined in the herb-stems. She made the mistake of looking down in that moment. Her heart fell into the chasm, and for several hours afterward, she wasn’t sure it meant ever to return.

  This felt much the same, except that the chasm was bottomless. And in that one simple, irreversible moment, a battle that was unpleasantly pitched but winnable became a lost cause.

  “Retreat.” She couldn’t make it sound above a croak. Ako had been laid out nearby, a spear stuck in her shoulder, but she was getting up already. Deverra stumbled over to her.

  “Ako. Ako, call retreat.”

  Ako stared at her, aghast. One of the three surviving knights, a big blond, came charging at them. Deverra swiped her arm sideways almost distractedly and a gust of violent wind sent him flying.

  “Call retreat,” she croaked again.

  “Retreat!” The younger vampire’s voice rang out damnably clear. “Retreat!”

  The Saxons heard but didn’t understand the Livonian version of the word. They cried out in astonished fury as their opponents suddenly halved, quartered and then dwindled even further in size, sprouting feathers and rising up into the air.

  Jervais poured a cup of mead into the little cauldron that hung over the hearth fire. He also put in a little mistletoe that he found in a pot. Baghatur watched him with interest.

  “Is it a ritus aquam, master?”

  “Hm?” Jervais looked up. The blood of the farmer’s wife was reviving him, putting a fine warmth in his cheeks, but sharpness of mind hadn’t returned just yet. “No, I just enjoy the smell. Most of the foods that pleased me in life sicken me with their scent, but not mead.”

  “I see,” Baghatur said, though it was plain he didn’t really. He went to the window. “We’re not going back to camp tonight, I take it?”

  “No. We’re meeting the knights at the lake, just west of the Telyav camp.”

  “Not Herr Hermann,” the Khazar frowned, confused.

  “No, he and those with him stay at our camp. They could never join us in time anyway. It may be that they’ll have the privilege of meeting the fresh edge of Deverra’s wrath when she learns what we’ve done. Or possibly poor little Fidus and Torgeir will actually earn that honor. But I think it more likely she’ll run to ground among her mortals and plot something we mustn’t let her finish plotting. Therefore, we march on them tonight with Herr Wigand and the rest. Never give Tremere time to think, my boy.”

  “You’ve said they’re not Tremere, master.”

  “True. Nevertheless.”

  “Is that our hill, way over there?”

  Jervais pushed himself out of the chair and came to look out of the window across the broad marshy plain. “Yes, indeed. And a new flare of red from atop it. Good.”

  “Now we leave?”

  “Well, let me see.” He took out the signal-stone again. Much of him was hoping (even though it would be bad news indeed) that it wouldn’t light anytime soon. As he held it, however, the etched lines of the Greek letter upon it came to life, glittering. Out at the forge Torgeir was tracing alpha, which was quite appropriate considering that the forge-fire had been the start of a covenant. How much more appropriate, then, that Jervais should be here shepherding the quickening of omega.

  “Yes. Now we leave.”

  It took their demoralized little flock what seemed like forever to make it back to the ordu, flying against the wind. Deverra was glad to see that the very last of Qarakh’s riders was now gone at least, vanished into the deep, welcoming night of Samogitia. Perhaps it would be kind to them.

  Bernalt and Jurate were already running to her even as she shook off the bird shape.

  “Grandmother! Back already? What happened?” They pressed around her. The closeness nauseated her unaccountably. She waved them off. Ako began to keen over Valdur, whom she’d had to carry all the way back. He was still in his hawk body, and did not move. Deverra shushed her by placing a shaking hand on her head.

  “Everyone,” Deverra managed. “Mortal and vampire. I need everyone together. Call everyone.”

  “At the place of sacrifice? Deverra?” Bernalt took hold of her and lifted up her chin. At the sight of the blood tears tracking down the seamed channels of her aged face, his own face went slack with shock.

  “No. No, just here.”

  “Are they coming?” he asked her.

  “Yes, they’re coming.”

  There was a moment’s pregnant silence.

  “Very well,” he said. He helped her to the door of her tent, then went to obey.

  But Jurate tagged alongside her, stricken. “Grandmother. Something is very wrong! Tell me what it is!”

  Deverra said nothing. She went to one of her chests and opened it.

  “We’re going to fight, aren’t we?” the younger Telyav pursued. “We’re going to stop them at last?”

  “They’ll never stop.” She pinned on her white apron, then brought out her bracelets and slid them onto her arms. “They stop at nothing.”

  “You said that you’d never stop, not while Telyavel was with us.”

  “Yes,” she said, “exactly
. I have endured through these long years of hardship only because I trusted in him, in the land that bore me, in the gods of this good earth… I knew they at least would never betray me, no matter what I’d become. Jurate, the last time I called upon Father Telyavel, he gave Qarakh the very power of the moist black earth, so that Alexander would fall to his fangs. He asked my beauty of me in return for the miracle, but he did it, and the enemy army was confounded. Nothing they did availed them. This time—well, there is nothing I haven’t offered him these past few weeks—”

  “Then we’ll pray with you! All together, our voices as one! Let us spill the sweetest blood before him! He can’t ignore us then.”

  “Yes, he can. He can do as he likes. He is a god.” She cast the rising bitterness out of her voice as best she could. “And the Tremere have blasphemed against him in every way possible, and I could not stop them, and he did not. Or perhaps he cannot. It’s over, my daughter.”

  Jurate was fighting her own tears now. “We should have called the others here. From Prussia and Estonia.”

  “No. I’m more glad than ever that we didn’t.”

  “And what about…him?” She almost said his name, but wisely decided against it at the last.

  One of Deverra’s tears fell onto her apron, sullying it with red. She made no move to wipe it away. “They won’t find him, because I alone know where he rests.”

  Bernalt entered. He was already changed into his ceremonial robe. “They’re coming,” he said quietly. “All of them. Living and unliving.”

  Deverra picked up her ax and followed him back out, with Jurate on her heels. The crowd was indeed gathering. There in the center of what had so recently been a large, rowdy encampment, they looked few and meager indeed. “What did you tell them?” she murmured to Bernalt.

  “Nothing. It would only be an insult.”

  “Grandmother, you can’t do this!” Jurate turned to her fellow priest. “Bernalt, make her see.”

  “She does see,” the Frank said heavily. “I see too, Jurate. You don’t, only because you’ve never been to Ceoris.”

  “And she shall never go to Ceoris,” Deverra said.

  “No. As fascinating a subject for study as I’m sure they’d find her…” Bernalt laid a hand on Jurate’s shoulder. She shuddered. She’d never seen him look so sad before. Then he let her go again.

  “You’re going to wait for them, I presume?” he asked Deverra. She nodded. “Promise me that you’ll kill Jervais bani Tremere.”

  “I’ll kill as many of them as I can,” she said. “If no others, though, then Jervais bani Tremere for certain.”

  He nodded and got down on his knees before her. “Then I will be first to offer my strength.”

  She nodded again, kissed him on the forehead and either cheek, and then bit into his neck.

  Jurate tottered back on deadened feet, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the spectacle of Deverra, drinking down the salt of her oldest surviving compatriot. As she watched, the old woman dropped Bernalt’s unconscious body to the ground, hefted her ax and chopped his neck through. Oluksna came forward next. Then Ako, still cradling Valdurhawk in her hands, and then a sad-faced mortal youth…

  Jurate’s nerve snapped completely then. She bolted. Deverra didn’t move to stop her, didn’t even look up from her work. One of the priests of Bernalt’s group seized her arm as she ran by, though, holding her fast with his undead strength. Their gazes met and they had the entire argument with their eyes: life and death, honor and hope. Then, just as suddenly, he let her go.

  She knew she was committing a sacrilege, but she didn’t care. Let Telyavel strike her down if it was not his will that one, at least, should escape to give warning. Let his hammer fall.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Wigand reined in his horse. “You said there were dozens of tents in the enemy camp, Master Tremere,” he exclaimed, frowning.

  “Hush,” Jervais said desperately. There had been dozens. Now he could see only a handful, and the perimeter fires were out, but that wasn’t the trouble.

  “What?”

  “Smell,” Antal hissed.

  “Smell what?” Then the wind changed, and even Ventrue noses couldn’t miss it. Wigand grimaced. “Almighty God…what’s going on over there?”

  Jervais whirled on him. “I don’t know. Shut up, idiot!”

  Wigand gripped his sword, but something in the warlock’s face warned him.

  “I can’t see,” Antal whispered.

  “Nor I. The tents are in the way. Herr Wigand, if your mortals must carry torches, can they at least stay back?” Jervais pondered. “Perhaps… perhaps if we circle ‘round, quietly…”

  “We’ve got to go in sometime,” the Hungarian reminded him grimly.

  “I know, but…” The protest died on his lips. Antal was right. Whatever it was that froze the air and set it ringing at a shrill, nigh-inaudible pitch—whatever drowned them in the reek of blood, whatever sent the vermin running and slithering through the grass past their mounts’ pawing feet—it was his bounden duty on pain of treason to meet it. “Well, let’s circle round as we go.”

  “Children.” Antal gathered Olena and Baghatur with a glance. “Our horses will do us no further good, I think.”

  The four Tremere dismounted. Antal joined hands with the apprentices, then looked at Jervais. “Together, Master Jervais. Always together.”

  Jervais nodded and added his own hand. He and Antal murmured words of protection, words to unweave enemy curses. The others repeated them as best they could. If only Zabor were here to add his strength in this particular art—well, never mind that. Wigand and the other knights looked uneasy, but they too had little choice but to do their duty by God and Jürgen. They followed along, still mounted, as the wizards crept through the abandoned grounds toward the remaining tents. Jervais had positioned himself on the left so as to keep one hand free for calling lightning; Antal was on the right, a flickering tongue of bale-fire readied in his free hand.

  The only tiny stir of sound seemed to come from behind the tents rather than within them. All else was silent. There were no clamoring voices, no horse- skulls on pikes, no rows upon rows of dwellings perfectly aligned with the four winds now. Some signs of habitation remained, and nature wouldn’t erase them for months: holes from tent-poles, worn patches of ground marking traffic, flat yellowed grass where floor-planking had lain, remnants of fire pits. A people’s unintentional memorial to itself, Jervais thought. Then he came upon the gap between the tents at last and saw how apt that description was.

  There were dozens of them. An almost visible miasma of blood-stench hung above them—a thing that should have roused the newcomers’ hunger in an instant, but for the sheer magnitude of the atrocity. Mortal bodies and moldering Cainite frames lay beside each other, sometimes on top of each other, equal at least in death.

  Deverra looked up. She pulled the ax, with some difficulty, from the head of the man it was buried in.

  “Getting dull, the blade,” she said. She staggered a little. The old woman and her visitors regarded each other.

  “They’re gone. Qarakh’s riders,” Jervais managed at last.

  She brushed a red-matted lock of hair out of her eyes. “I told them to flee. Your fight is not with them.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet is good enough for most these nights. As for the children of Telyavel, we have no wish to outlive either our faith or our covenant with our god. But perhaps he will grant me this one last kindness: that I will have the honor of ending my own existence, after having first sent your souls to him in apology…”

  “Now!” Antal shouted hoarsely. He threw his handful of bale-fire at her. It hissed and died yards short, as did the levin bolt Jervais tried to fling. And suddenly the miasma around Deverra was visible. It turned smoky, then began to bubble and seethe. Faces appeared within it, moaning and shouting—faces with tiny pinpricks of light for eyes and gnashing, ghostly teeth. Jervais realized a mo
ment later that he’d seen some of these faces before.

  They belonged to the corpses that lay right in front of him. Deverra’s Telyavs were dead, but not departed. They surrounded her now, cloaking her in the very stuff of Hades. As many as they were, they moved in perfect unity, as though one mind had absolute command of them—which, given the circumstances, was very likely the case. She lifted her hands and brought them together in a gathering gesture. They churned around her, through her, cycling from ground to sky like a waterwheel.

  Jervais barely had time to gasp out the first phrase of the Pater Noster before the stream of unhallowed souls descended on him. He was no Hermann, nor even a Torgeir. The words in Latin couldn’t quite stop the languor of the grave from stealing through his flesh, thickening his tongue and numbing his limbs. Shreds of thought and passion that didn’t belong to him brushed against the edges of his awareness and would have intruded, if he weren’t a magus of experience and skilled at defending his mind from just such assaults.

  And then it had passed through. His drooping eyelids snapped back open. He realized that he no longer had Olena’s hand, and he reached for it, but too late. The younger Tremere’s eyes had gone distant. She turned back toward the knights, her hands full of eldritch flame.

  Jervais yelled and grabbed her legs, knocking her down. Even as she fell her bale-fire streaked out like an arrow. Herr Wigand, foremost among the knights as usual, caught it full in the chest. He screamed and half fell, half leaped out of the saddle. Antal was beside Jervais in that instant. In the next instant, the Hungarian had the wooden dagger off Jervais’s belt. He plunged it into Olena’s back. She roared hideously and tried to struggle up to standing. Antal clung to her, swearing. Almost too quickly to see, he jerked out the dagger and tried again. This time he struck true. Olena collapsed.

  “Back! Back!” Jervais gasped to Baghatur. Baghatur stood agape, and for a moment Jervais feared the ghosts had him too, but no, the lad was simply horrified. He came around enough after a moment to let Jervais drag him away from Deverra, Jervais gamely praying all the while just in case it helped.