by Sarah Roark
The throng of bodiless faces swept forward now. They seemed to shrink from most of the knights, but not from Wigand, whose cross-emblazoned surcoat was now burning to black. They swarmed over him. Still afire, he lumbered over to the brother-knight beside him and fell against his leg, kindling the Cainite flesh as easily as tinder. The knight’s horse cried out and reared. The knight himself fell to the ground. He rose up in a mindless terror and fled, sending the ranks about him into a panic.
Antal ran over to Jervais, Olena in his arms. Jervais took out his ritual knife and stuck it into the ground, cutting a hasty circle around them. Who knew—heathen customs might always ward off heathen ghosts. The wraiths seemed satisfied with the havoc they’d wreaked among the knights, at least for the moment, and flew toward the Tremere once again. They met the boundary Jervais had just drawn, then fell back, but they were soon straining against it, against the membrane of Jervais’s failing will. He could hear Deverra’s throaty, bitter laugh rising through the babble of spirit-voices.
“We’ve got to pull out. She’s devoured her whole damned cult, we can’t fight her like this,” Jervais blurted.
“You’re right,” Antal said calmly. “We can’t.” He put a steadying hand on Jervais’s shoulder. Jervais turned to him with a frown. He opened his mouth to tell Antal that if they both agreed with this assessment then perhaps they should consider acting on it in the near future.
And then it began.
The Hungarian’s touch sent stabbing lances of pain down through Jervais’s chest, threads of ill sensation that sought out his blood in the channel and inflamed it, riled it into a raging tide. Muscle and sinew were suddenly engorged in strength that must be spent, thoughts suddenly abuzz and scattered. The ten thousand petty injuries he’d sustained ever since he’d first rode back into Magdeburg rose up and cried out for retribution. He was in the grip of his Beast. He knew this charm, he’d used it countless times himself—on enemies…
Antal stepped back. “Forgive me, brother. It was necessary. The witch’s powers so exceed our own…you’ve just admitted that yourself.”
Jervais didn’t have to ask what he meant. He could feel it now, what Antal had wakened in him: a strange contagion that rose within him alongside the fury, first mirroring and then outstripping it. It was some insatiable, indescribable evil that battened on his blood and anger and pressed ever harder against the walls of his soul. It cared nothing for its container. When it outgrew him, it would simply explode. Even Deverra’s ghost-mass seemed to sense the presence of something that matched its own malice. It left off its frantic milling and pushing and subsided into a sort of uneasy ground fog. Deverra herself watched the two Tremere with keen puzzlement now, her hands frozen in midair. As for Baghatur, he was thunderstruck, plainly completely unsure where his obedience now lay.
“I hope you don’t think you’re actually going to be rewarded for this.” Jervais closed the distance the other magus tried to put between them. He could barely put two words together through the haze of boiling humors, but it was that important to say something devastating to the Hungarian, that important to tear his throat out. “That they’re ever actually going to let you rest. It will never happen, Antal.”
An unexpected voice—but not an unfamiliar one—sounded in Jervais’s ears then.
Now, now, Jervais. Not Antal. Leave him alone. He’s not the one I sent you to kill.
Jervais froze. As he watched in horror, the bulky shadow of Etrius stepped out from behind a tent and passed around Deverra toward the Tremere, navigating the heap of fallen bo dies and the sea of ghost-faces with suspicious ease.
“You…” Jervais forced his voice to solidify. “You’re not really here. You can’t be.”
No, of course I’m not, the Councilor replied wearily. I’m at Ceoris, just as always. You see me because of the spell. What—surely you didn’t think I was going to leave it all up to you? He smiled nastily, but for all that he looked even more saggy and jowly than usual. You are both my courier and my message. You’re the ritual link.
“Etrius.” It was clearly something Deverra felt rather than actually heard. She bent her wrinkled head to and fro, peering about. Then she hissed. With astonishing speed she snatched up the branch-staff of one of her fallen Telyavs and also drew a bone- knife from her belt. “Kuradi munn…värdjas raisk…
Snake poison and snake blood,” Jervais growled suddenly. “Spiders and scorpions, essences of venom.” I see your colors, Jervais, not a pretty sight. Keep at it. This is exactly what the charm needs. He’d known from the ingredients that it must be unpleasant, but this was worse than even he could have imagined—that the old toad could so callously steal the very things that were most precious to him in all the world, that were his alone, his private hatreds, the vengeance he secretly nursed, and turn them into the vehicle of yet another damned spell.
That’s true, the Etrius-shadow acknowledged. It was all yours to begin with, Jervais. I put nothing into you that wasn’t there already. But you know you haven’t got the skill to direct this safely, and I do. Now let me in before it kills you.
Never. He’d conceded so much already, playing jester to court ladies, groveling before contemptuous princes, lying, smiling, the vehicle for everyone’s intrigues, slogging from one corner of the earth to another, finally abandoning even his sire and grandsire; all for the sake of hanging on one more night, of surviving long enough to prove Tremere alone knew what. There had to be an end at last. There had to be a limit. Didn’t there?
Pressing. Squeezing. The Councilor’s voice was directly in his head now. It chuckled. Sign of the scorpion. And scorpion in truth: hard, venomous, cringing, willing to lie in wait under a rock for however long it takes. The lore also holds that sometimes the scorpion will sting itself to death to spite a surrounding enemy. Is that how you’d have it, Jervais? Like Deverra? Or will you try for me? You could. Make up your mind. You’ve got to sting someone. Ah, how well I chose. In fact, you’re almost too good a subject. Master Antal tells me he’s had to calm you down several times for fear you’d accidentally set yourself off.
Antal doubtless wasn’t hearing this mental converse, but he threw Jervais a half-anxious, half-guilty look. Deverra brought her staff and knife together with a clack, and her ghosts flocked to her once more, muttering, humming. Once again she seemed far larger than her wracked frame should have permitted, full to bursting with injured pride.
No wonder Etrius found Jervais to be the perfect counter.
The Councilor, or the thought of the Councilor, had come to stand behind him. Yes. Comfort your shriveled soul with that if you like. Loathsome as you are, I needed you. In fact, I find myself needing your ilk more and more all the time.
“Perhaps I am the cloth out of which Tremere are now cut, then,” Jervais murmured in a kind of bitter triumph.
Yes, perhaps you are. Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
The old sorcerer reached out again, and this time Jervais opened the portals of his will and mind to him. Once again, that masterful touch invaded him, gently pushing aside the various instinctive resistances that rose to meet it. It found the painfully burgeoning gland of maleficium and began to squeeze. For a moment he felt more pure malevolence than he could ever remember feeling in over a century and a half of existence. Then, on their own, his arms lifted and glided in gestures of summoning and conduction. He was astonished at how effortlessly his muscles and joints could move, how mathematically perfect the dimensions of each shape. One exceedingly unwelcome revelation that came to him as a result of this was that Etrius could have done Jervais’s job at Ceoris at least three times as well as Jervais himself.
And then it all came pouring out of him in a flood of black bile. It came through his mouth and ears and nose, from the tear-ducts of his eyes (which promptly swelled almost shut in protest); through his fingertips and his toe-tips. So much of it, and so virulent. He felt perversely proud of his output. He’d been holding back for such a very long time, an
d so few had realized it. Well, Etrius had, obviously.
Deverra chanted rapidly. Her ghosts rushed forward to meet the onslaught and drove it backward, causing a massive roiling between them like the collision of storm fronts. His poison-muck threw out spits and gobbets. Wherever they touched, a voice shrieked in agony and a face withered down to a skull and then faded. Yet some of the shades fought their way through. One opened its mouth and latched onto Jervais’s wrist with its spectral fangs. He cried out, but hadn’t enough mastery of his body to do anything further; a moment later his other hand reached over and squeezed the thing, sending gout after gout into it until it was well and truly dissolved. Then it forced the other interlopers back into the mass and began pushing the whole thing outward, moving the border of the contest slowly but surely back in Deverra’s direction. She shouted and redoubled her gesticulations, but the tide had turned against her for good now.
She doesn’t know when she’s beaten. She never concedes…the bitch. The spark of loathing that this thought touched off in him seemed to give sudden amplification to his magic (Etrius’s magic). The bilious wave was suddenly twice as large, dwarfing everything, blotting out his sight. He heard and felt, but did not see, it surround and engulf the Telyav priestess, snuffing out her power like a candlewick and then falling upon her flesh. He heard her scream.
He heard the final curse of her lips, as well, two words in Latin: “Sicut fecisti.” As you have done.
He did not know whether she meant himself, Etrius, Jürgen or possibly the whole world.
And then the blackness evaporated. He had sovereignty over his legs again an instant later, and they buckled. Deverra lay before him, sprawled across the bodies of her devotees. The knights stood behind him, dismounted now. Herr Wigand and the other wounded knight had vanished, probably for all eternity, but at least it seemed no others of the Black Cross had died while his attention was elsewhere.
And his brother Tremere were at his side.
“I know you’ll hate me forever,” the Hungarian said. He spoke quickly, seemingly knowing how unwise it was to speak at all. “But I will not hate you. I can’t. Not after—”
“Shut up, for the love of God.” Oh, to have had a drop of venom left for Antal. Jervais tried to get up, groaned, then shook his head. “Hurry. Take this packet…it must be sprinkled on her, or she’ll rot away completely. After all this, we will have something to take back to Ceoris.”
“Yes.” Antal rose and took the parchment envelope from Jervais’s trembling fingers, beckoning for Baghatur to follow. “Yes, we will, by Tremere.”
Epilogue
The smoke was all the more acrid for the remnants of curing powder that clung to the wasted corpse’s skin. A pole and rope had been required to make her sit up properly on the horse’s back, and her face had been nearly unrecognizable even before the torch was lowered. Still, Jervais had taken the precaution of lopping off her left hand and presenting it to Etrius as evidence, so that the suspicious old Swede could analyze it to his heart’s content. And she was dressed well for the occasion. All her queenly heathen ornaments would doubtless outlast her, but not, alas, the fine linen.
The three Councilors sat where he had directed them, at one end of the courtyard in their places of honor. Etrius stone-faced; Meerlinda, Lady Councilor of the British Isles, outwardly calm and serene; Goratrix had put his sleeve over his nose to block out the fumes. Malgorzata and Curaferrum stood attendance on their respective masters.
“Novel, Master Jervais,” Meerlinda remarked questioningly.
“It’s a Baltic custom, madame,” Jervais said with a bow. “She would have wanted it so, I’m sure.” Gazing at the climbing bonfire, he added silently, She’d have appreciated the irony, at least. She sacrificed to her gods, now I sacrifice to mine.
“My grandchilde has always been a sentimental sort,” Goratrix said from behind his sleeve.
“Not too sentimental to get the job done,” Etrius remarked grudgingly. “Or mostly done, anyway. There might yet be survivors lurking out in that wilderness, mightn’t there?”
“I’d be surprised if there weren’t, milord,” Jervais replied. “But their queen is dead, their sacred pact with their god violated. They shan’t regain his favor before the crusade annihilates the last of them.”
“And of course Prince Jürgen plans to renew the crusade fully, now that Qarakh is crippled.”
“Of course. And your lordship willing, I and Brother Hermann and Brother Landric will all be there to ensure that it remains a priority of his.”
“Beg pardon?” Goratrix’s eyes lit at that and moved from his archrival’s face back to Jervais’s. He lowered the sleeve. Malgorzata stirred too, but thank Bonisagus it wasn’t her place to add to this particular conversation. Jervais did not look at her.
“Master Jervais has asked for a transfer to Magdeburg, to head up the new chantry there.” Etrius shrugged his round shoulders. “But…”
“Magdeburg?” Goratrix gave Jervais what was evidently meant to be a friendly, teasing smile. “Not la belle France? Speaking that gravel-mouthed tongue all night every night, and not a decent woman in view?”
“Since I’ve spent all these years working to establish a relationship between our clan and his Highness of Magdeburg, milord,” Jervais answered stoically, “it would seem folly not to pursue it now that it’s finally achieved. I truly believe it to be the best service I could presently render to House and Clan.”
“And fairer words than that could hardly be spoken,” Meerlinda said kindly.
“Well, you’ve certainly spent long enough trying , I suppose.” Goratrix squinted as the wind changed and sent flecks of Deverra’s ash winging into all their eyes. Jervais hadn’t yet learned how to read minds, but there were times he thought he nearly had it, such as right now. He could decipher his grandsire perfectly. The old rascal was furiously thinking it through and nearing the realization that he had no way to stop this. He had nothing left to threaten or bargain with, nothing left to fetter Jervais with, not even his daughter-in-Blood Malgorzata. The dawning look of disbelief on both their faces was the dawn of a moment’s utter, transcendent joy in Jervais’s starved little heart.
“Still,” Etrius said dourly, “I’m not sure we can do without our vis-master.”
“Oh, there must be others in the clan who could fulfill those duties, milord,” Meerlinda pointed out. Out of the corner of his eye, Jervais couldn’t help noticing Antal’s back straighten and lengthen another couple of inches. “It’s clear to me that your vis-master possesses the soul of an adventurer. If his ambitions have outgrown Ceoris, then so be it. To keep him here when he yearns to be elsewhere would accomplish nothing more than to make of our illustrious High Chantry a cage…and we all know how dangerous caged beasts can become. Do we not?”
From the way Etrius shifted, Jervais had no doubt that she was giving him some deadly serious advice despite her light, courtly tone.
“Yes, milady, we do,” he acknowledged. “Very well. It’s not an unreasonable request. And in so doing, as Master Jervais points out, he’ll certainly be helping to secure the more western portions of my region.” He laid no particular stress on the word my, but Goratrix snorted regardless.
Meerlinda nodded. “Exactly. Congratulations, Master Jervais.” Her Ladyship looked directly at Jervais then, blue English eyes locking with his for just one instant.
Careful, those eyes said. You are away, but not free. They darted upward, toward the pillar of flame and soot behind him. Even she was not quite patient enough. And she waited a century.
I can be patient, he answered.
Can you? The lower lids, caught forever in the only barely marred smoothness of not-quite middle age, puckered in a hint of a smile. I shall be watching to see.
Very well, milady. At least he didn’t have to ask her to leave his mind; her whisper-touch departed on its own. He glanced down now, wincing, at his wrist where Deverra’s ghost had seized it. The tracery of dark green
that colored the vein there had still not faded, nor had the pain. In fact, he might not be imagining that it had spread. He could always ask her ladyship to take a look at it. Or even Etrius. Doubtless they could help, although it would mean giving up his hard-won, all-too-fleeting leverage before he’d even had a decent chance to enjoy it.
No, not free, never free. The game never ended, did it? Very well.
“You certainly have a way with the dramatic,” Torgeir remarked. One by one, the albino carefully took his travel-beaten books out of the chest and put them back onto the shelf.
“My dear young friend,” Jervais said, “a thaumaturge who is not also a dramaturge is more than half a fool. There, one nugget of wisdom, gratis.”
“Nothing’s gratis with you. You must want something. Perhaps you’re here to gloat over how after all this, you’re still going to declare that I didn’t perform my ordeal to satisfaction.”
“Oh, nonsense,” the older Tremere exclaimed. “There’s no possible reason why I would do any such thing. Well. Only one possible reason.”
Torgeir stopped unpacking. “Yes, and?”
“You see, Master Antal seems determined to hook my old post, despite the fact that he isn’t even remotely qualified for it. Actually, I’d planned to nominate Olena.”
“Who’s no more qualified.” The pale eyes did not blink.
“Nor less qualified.”
“I see. A personal matter.”
Jervais shrugged. “Unfortunately, I’ve reason to believe his lordship is hardly going to take any criticism of Master Antal that I might offer seriously. You, however, are one of his favored students.”
“And if I refuse to disparage Master Antal in my report, and he winds up vis-master, then you’ll declare my ordeal null. In front of Lord Councilors Goratrix and Meerlinda, and Malgorzata too.”
“I’m pleased our close association has brought us to understand each other so well.” Jervais stretched out his shoulders and leaned against the doorframe.