by Sarah Roark
“I could try to outwait you.”
“You could.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the Dane blurted. He took a wad of clothes out of the trunk and fairly hurled it onto the bed.
“That’s my boy,” Jervais grinned.
“Hurry up, Fidus.” Jervais indulged in a nice satisfying shove of the boot upon his apprentice’s skinny backside. That was the trouble with war, one always had to be coddling the morale of even the most insignificant foot soldier. It was good to have the luxury of a little unrestrained lording it over again. Fidus stumbled headlong but managed from long practice not to drop his burden. The last saddle-pack was bundled on in short order and Jervais got up on his mount. His rear immediately complained of insufficient convalescence, but he ignored it. Plenty of time for rest in Magdeburg.
“Why the third horse?” Jervais asked the groomsman who stood beside them, gesturing at it. “Ceoris is being unusually generous.”
“Don’t ask the grog,” the mortal man replied. “I’m just told how many to saddle up.”
“It is because I told them that even the Fiends haven’t bred the beast that would take my weight along with yours.” Master Antal stepped down into the courtyard, his ever-meager possessions slung across his shoulder.
Jervais tamped down a bolt of pure dread. “Master Antal! Headed back out to the front?”
“No,” he said, “Brandenburg. To found a chantry, since I am told that now that Jürgen has one, all the Holy Roman princes will be wanting one next. I’m also told it is not twenty leagues distant from Magdeburg.”
“No, no it isn’t…”
“And no Tzimisce. Not sure what I shall do with myself out there. Still, it is an improvement on Bistritz, and I imagine I have you to thank for it. Well?” He secured his pack. “Lead on, Master Jervais. Surely the man with the vastly superior geographical skills should take point. Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”
“And I’m coming too,” Fidus piped up, scurrying to adjust a stirrup strap. “One moment, master. I’ll be right there.”
“Oh, I know you will,” Jervais said, snapping his reins. “I know you both will.”
Etrius, Master of Ceoris, First among Equals, Guardian of the Sleeper, Councilor of Hungary, Silesia, Bohemia, Poland and the Holy Roman Empire for House and Clan Tremere, awoke gasping and sobbing. He sat up slowly, piercing the gloom with his sorcerer’s gaze as though seeking out some hidden enemy. Then he rose and threw on a battered old robe and went to his desk, where an unfinished manuscript sat awaiting him. His pen floated down from its silver inkwell and into his hand. He stared at the diagram he’d been making, wishing there were some further detail he could add, but no, it was done. Now he had to comment upon it, say something wise for the generations of blood-wizards to come. A drop of red enchanted ink fell onto the page as he sat there unmoving. With an irritated noise he touched the nib to the blotch and it sucked the pigment back up, leaving not a smear.
Something wise.
His ward shivered. He grimaced, but then identified the touch and with a silent wave turned the battlement wall of the spell into a curtain light as silk and easier to part. She came in and sat down.
“You sleep no better, do you?” she said at last. She sounded tired. It felt like daylight still outside. He was sorry to have roused her, but she’d always been sensitive to such things.
“No,” he admitted. “No better.”
“The same dream?”
“The same. I have no other dreams, not anymore. It’s just this one, always expanding and expanding. Now it chases me through the Doissetep library too. I could never find my way out of Doissetep when I was alive.”
“Yes, I remember.” She gave the tiniest of smiles. He liked her to smile, but it wasn’t her old smile. That he hadn’t seen in literally ages. “Still, it never catches you, does it?”
“Never yet.”
A long, almost processional silence.
“You did what had to be done,” she said. “I know that doesn’t help. And she knew what path she was choosing. I suppose that doesn’t help either—”
He set his pen down and put his head between his hands. “And next year something else will have to be done, and the year after that.”
“Ingvar.” He winced to hear the pagan name of his birth, but he raised his head.
“Forgive me, Molle.”
“What do you want me to say, Ingvar? I’ll say anything that will help you.”
Another silence.
“Except for that.”
“You don’ t have to say anything. Unless perhaps…you’re in the mood to critique my diagram of the World-Soul.”
She nodded. “Since we’re both awake, nothing would please me more.”
He started to bring his work over to where she could see it, but then stopped midway across the room. His heavy eyelids drooped with sorrow and fatigue. The book sank in his arms, lower and lower, until it threatened to slip through his fingers entirely.
“Keep moving,” she murmured, letting just a hint of maternal firmness enter her tone.
“Keep moving,” he echoed mournfully.
“Yes. It’s all you can do, my brother. Unless you wish our fates to catch up with us at last?”
He sighed. “No. God knows we can’t have that.”
Meerlinda smiled again, or tried to, and reached for the book.
About the Author
Sarah Roark is a professional writer, violinist, teacher and (as should be obvious from the foregoing) masochist. She has worked on a number of White Wolf’s roleplaying products, including various supplements for Vampire: The Masquerade, Dark Ages: Vampire, Dark Ages: Inquisitor and Mummy: The Resurrection. She has also authored the novel Dark Ages: Ravnos and two short stories: “The Prodigal Son” in Penance by Firelight, companion volume to the Dark Ages: Vampire core book, and “What Shelters Them” in Demon: Lucifer’s Shadow. Some of her personal projects can be viewed at the World Lit Only by Fire website (http://www.wyrdsisters.org/), which she co-authors with fellow White Wolf freelancers Myranda Kalis and Janet Trautvetter.
She lives in Sammamish, Washington—beautiful lakeside community and former hunting grounds of Ted Bundy—along with her husband Brett and the world’s two coolest cats.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank her friends, Janet and Myranda, for enduring faithfully as the other two-thirds of the Wyrd Sisters trio; her husband Brett for his patience, love, encouragement and willingness to fetch food; her editor Philippe for his kind words and his criticisms, both equally welcome and valuable; and Guido, Vincent and (again) Myranda, for help with German and Latin (any remaining errors are, of course, the author’s fault and not theirs).