“Kill, kill, kill,” whispered the shadows.
Iosef did not need the prompting of grief-borne delusions to know what his instincts already told him. The man with the gun turned his aim on Iosef, but Iosef was already leaping through the air. Iosef’s chest stung as he was shot twice, but it did not stop him. The weight of impact threw the man back into the nearest bookshelf. The pistol dropped to the floor with a clatter and was lost in the darkness.
To his credit, Iosef’s opponent tried not to succumb easily. He grabbed a knife from beneath his coat and would have driven it into Iosef’s flesh, but Iosef was not inclined to give him such satisfaction. He grabbed the man by the throat and hoisted him into the air, slowly choking him. The man lashed out with his knife, but Iosef knocked it away with a sweep of his hand.
He expected the others to come at him in defense of their accomplice or at least in pursuit of their unknown task, but they did not. Iosef glanced over his shoulder and saw that the bookstore was empty. Or at least empty as far as he could see. Despite the lamps, it was extremely dark: darker than he remembered it being before the fighting began. But surely that was merely a trick of memory. Had the other attackers fled?
He was answered a moment later by a flicker of movement in the shadows beside him. The steel of a blade stung him in the side, just below his ribs. Glancing down, he saw that a knife had been driven through his waistcoat and into his flesh. But as Iosef grabbed for his new attacker, the man withdrew into the darkness, and Iosef’s hand closed on air.
Confused, Iosef quickly killed the man still in his grasp and dropped the body. He turned and regarded the room, his eyes darting about and his ears straining to catch the slightest hint of danger. He managed to hear scraps of noise scattered around, lurking behind the bookshelves and lingering in the shadows upon creaking floorboards, but everything was muffled like sound underwater.
Another flash of movement made Iosef turn again. Another knife was driven deep into his forearm. Iosef lashed out at the man who had attacked him and felt ribs break beneath his fist. The man gasped in pain. It was a wet, strained sound. But before Iosef could follow up with a second blow, he was stabbed again, this time from behind. The knife tore the back of his neck just under the edge of his collar. It hurt, but it did not manage to sever any of the major blood vessels.
Iosef spun around with inhuman quickness and again found himself facing shadows. A slow panic began to creep over him. What impossibility was this? Three mortal men stabbing at him in the darkness could not possibly be a threat. He had faced far worse countless times before, and though he was often injured, his enemies fell quickly and did not rise again. But now his senses betrayed him? He could not even see or hear or smell the men who came at him clumsily, wielding brute force with little art? It made no sense.
Poison, he realized. The knives must be poisoned.
Not that poison often affected the Living, and never for long when it did, but that was the only explanation. Something had dulled his senses and slowed his reaction time: some vile toxin that his body could not quite resist.
But even that explanation, logical though it was, sounded feeble to him.
His thoughts were broken as another attack came from the shadows, which had grown up all around him until there seemed to be a haze of darkness over his eyes that almost blinded him. He could see the bookstore and its chaotic accouterments of knowledge, but as if through smoked glass.
Iosef backed away into the center of the room, putting distance between himself and the furniture. Part of him hoped that he might fare better if his enemies had no hiding places from which to strike. Another part of him suspected that it would not make a difference.
Steel flashed from the shadows, and more of Iosef’s blood spilled upon the floor. He lashed out again, feeling his first blow land solidly, only to be followed with emptiness. Iosef inhaled once to calm himself and then halted his breathing. There was a pattern to be found, a rhythm that he could adapt to his purposes. His enemies were only men.
And slowly he found the pattern he searched for. He could not detect the men as they lurked in the shadows, though his senses strained to do so. The fleeting rustling of cloth or the creak of floorboards were more a distraction than a help, so he put them from his mind. But in the moment just before a knife was driven into his flesh, Iosef could feel his attacker slip from the shadows. It was all that he required.
When the next strike came, Iosef did not bother to block the attack. Something as small as a knife would not kill him. Instead, he struck with both hands, feeling the satisfying shudder of meat and bone beneath his touch. He almost fancied that he heard a whimper of pain. The next attack came from his flank, and he responded with the same tactic, placing his fists where he was certain the attacker would move in order to strike.
And so it went, Iosef spinning around in a circle to meet each new thrust, amid the twisting shadows and the heady scent of his own blood. He punched and lunged and bled over and over again until it seemed impossible that his mortal attackers were still standing. Eventually the attacks ebbed, his enemies slowed by newfound caution and their own injuries.
Suddenly the darkness receded as Iosef’s mind cleared. His senses, no longer muffled and confused, were almost deafened by the loud thud as two more corpses fell to the floor beside him, their bodies twisted and broken. But Iosef could not take satisfaction in victory, for even in his triumph, he saw that he had failed.
Before him stood the last of the attackers, whose bruised face and limp right arm showed that he too had suffered several of Iosef’s blows. In his left hand the man held a revolver, which he had leveled directly at Iosef’s head, just out of arm’s reach but still close enough that even one of the Living had little hope of escaping a bullet. And while the old could suffer such head trauma and eventually recover, Iosef knew that he was far too young. A bullet through his brain was likely to kill him, just as it would a mortal.
The man sneered even as he gasped for breath. He had not expected such a hard fight, and he seemed much relieved at holding Iosef at gunpoint.
“Why?” Iosef asked softly.
“Count von Raabe sends his regards, Your Highness,” the man replied, scoffing as he spoke.
Iosef gazed at the man’s finger, watching as the muscles in his hand twitched. He tried to anticipate the shot in a vain hope that he might evade it, all the while knowing he would not.
As he watched his enemy, waiting for the inevitability of death, he saw Mordechai’s corpse rise, partly obscured behind the gunman. Half of Mordechai’s face remained shattered grotesquely by the bullet holes, but his remaining eye glinted in the lamplight. Iosef stared at him, and Mordechai rewarded him with a smile.
In a flash, Mordechai grabbed the gunman from behind, pulling his arm back and throwing his aim away from Iosef. The man cried out, but his cries were quickly silenced as Mordechai tore open his throat and drank deeply of the blood that sprayed from the wound.
Iosef watched in silence, unmoving as Mordechai fed on the dying man. He was grateful for the unexpected reprieve from death, but he had no reason to believe that his good fortune would last. Mordechai was Shashavani. And while he might be a loyalist sojourning in the world, he might just as easily be a Basilisk, one who had turned renegade and been cast into exile. If Mordechai felt it necessary to enforce Iosef’s silence, it would be a hard fight.
Presently, Mordechai dropped the body he held and stretched his back. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he began to wipe the blood from his face until he was more or less clean. The bullet wounds quickly closed, sped along by the recent meal, and as Mordechai blinked a few times, his missing eye reformed and swiveled around to right itself.
“Well,” he said to Iosef.
“Indeed,” Iosef agreed.
“Now we know each other.”
“As only the Living can,” Iosef said.
Mordechai smiled at Iosef. “I am no threat to you, if that is what you fear Brother Iosef. I am simply a wanderer too busy to return home.”
“That is…reassuring,” Iosef told him.
Mordechai knelt beside the body and began searching through the man’s pockets. When he found nothing of interest, he moved on to the next one.
“The question we must now answer,” he said, “is why these men wished to kill you. Or me. Or us perhaps.” He glanced up at Iosef and smiled. “What a nice thought.”
“Isn’t it,” Iosef agreed dryly, phrasing it as a statement rather than a question. “Your recent meal told me that Count von Raabe sends his regards.”
“Is that what he said?” Mordechai mused. “I heard him speak, but I was slightly muddled at the time. I fear I am less experienced with head injuries than some of my friends.”
“Friends?” Iosef asked.
Mordechai dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “Curious that Julius von Raabe would want either of us killed, unless something quite extraordinary has occurred between the two of you.”
Iosef shook his head.
“Hmm.” Mordechai moved on to the third man and made an “Ah!” noise as he pulled a piece of paper from the man’s coat pocket. “This is interesting.… A list of books, all in my collection.”
“They were sent to rob you?” Iosef asked.
“They were sent to kill us and then rob me,” Mordechai said. He read the list and frowned. “An original volume of Kaminski. Not a surprise. Two manuscripts by Algirdas. Fair enough. Ah…but this is odd. Al-Kazani’s account of the rituals in the lands beyond Yugra? Vychegdov’s Hymns to the Zlata Baba? These are Antlered Maiden texts. And the rest?” He held the list out to Iosef as if Iosef would understand the significance of the names. “Half of these texts have nothing to do with Julius’s area of study, and most are more fantasy than scholarship.”
“Not books worth killing over?” Iosef guessed.
“No, not at all,” Mordechai answered. He stood and suddenly he blinked rapidly as a thought came to him. “Of course! I should have realized it!”
“What is it?” Iosef asked.
Mordechai frowned with genuine disappointment and said, “I fear that Julius is a true believer.”
“A true believer? You mean to say that he believes in the Horned Serpent?”
Mordechai nodded. “And he believes in the Antlered Maiden too, at least to the extent that he is willing to kill for a collection of prayers written in her honor. He probably believes that they are one in the same, along with the Black Goat. I see a text by Kiril of Ryazan listed here. He is either a fanatic, or he is a collector with no sense of morality and little fear of the law.”
“One wonders which is the more far-fetched possibility,” Iosef mused.
“Brother Iosef,” Mordechai said, putting a hand on Iosef’s arm, “I suggest that you return to your house at once and make certain that Julius’s madness has not fallen upon your companions as well as on us. If he is simply a mad collector, I suspect that I and my bookstore are the only things in danger. If he is a fanatic.… Well, one wonders what else he intends to do in the name of his horned god. The devout are so very unpredictable at times.”
“What about you?” Iosef asked. He motioned to the dead on the floor. “What about the bodies?”
“I shall attend to them, do not fear,” Mordechai answered cheerfully. “I have had ample time to become familiar with the disposing of corpses.” He frowned and surveyed the bookstore. “Still, I suspect it is no longer safe for me to remain here. A pity, but one becomes accustomed to travel. I think it would be prudent to vacate the city for a few decades. Let my face be forgotten.”
“Where will you go?”
“A friend tells me that America is quite nice at the moment,” Mordechai said. He shrugged. “Honestly, these things decide themselves most of the time. Perhaps I should take a walk beyond the Urals, see if there truly is something in these stories.”
“Do you believe you will find anything?” Iosef asked.
“Doubtful,” Mordechai said, “but I have always enjoyed brisk walks.” He smiled and pointed toward the door. “Now then, off you go, young man. I have corpses to attend to, and you have a family that might still be in danger.”
Understanding the wisdom in Mordechai’s words, Iosef went to the door, but before he departed he looked back and asked:
“What if your fears are mistaken? What if there is no danger, and this was all just about some old books?”
Mordechai chuckled. “Then by all means, come back. These old books will not organize themselves, and I could do with another set of hands.” He grew serious again. “But mark my words, Iosef: this is not about old books, and your family is in danger.”
Iosef nodded and hurried from the bookstore, knowing with all certainty that Mordechai was right. As he hurried down the street in search of a passing cab, Iosef felt his hand in his pocket, his fingertips tracing the lines of the amulet as the night’s gentle breeze tickled his cheeks and whispered:
“Sophio, Sophio, Sophio.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Varanus opened her eyes and sat up slowly, overwhelmed by a sense of apprehension that she could not quite explain. Something was terribly wrong, but she did not know what.
She found herself reclining on a long bench at the far end of a broad stone balcony. She stood and slowly approached the railing. Below her, she saw a quiet reading room filled with books and tables and robed scholars busy with their work. Across the room, a pair of tall windows were shielded against the day by heavy curtains, which blotted out all but a halo of sunlight that flickered around their edges.
The place was familiar. She knew it, though that familiarity did not comfort her for a reason she did not remember. But this was home: the Shashavani castle. Everything was as it should be. The scholars were studying; the sunlight was kept at bay. She should be at peace. What troubled her?
“A pleasant sight,” murmured a voice beside her.
Varanus looked and saw a tall, bearded man looming over her, his dark hair woven through with gray. His was a kind face, warm and grandfatherly.
“Father Vaclav,” Varanus said, startled by the sight of him. “I thought you were.…”
Her voice trailed off. She could not quite bring herself to speak her thoughts.
“You thought I was dead,” Vaclav answered.
“Yes.” Varanus looked at him for a few moments before looking away again. “I suppose I was mistaken.”
“So it seems,” Vaclav agreed.
“It was so vivid,” Varanus told him. “We were here.” She paused and shivered at the memory. “We were here. We were fighting. And then you were killed by Thoros of Yerevan. He.…”
“He cut my head from my body,” Vaclav said.
Varanus’s heart fell. She sighed and looked down. “You’re not real, are you?” she asked.
Vaclav laid a hand on her back and smiled. “I am as real as you believe me to be.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is an answer, Doctor,” Vaclav replied, his tone deeply amused. “It is simply not the answer you wanted.”
Varanus looked around and asked, “Are you a ghost? None of the others seem to see you.”
“You are a woman of science,” Vaclav said. “Tell me: do ghosts exist?”
Varanus paused and looked around again, this time more thoroughly, searching for Korbinian. But she did not see him anywhere. A pity. She could have asked Vaclav if he saw her dead fiancé now or if Korbinian could see Vaclav.
“I am not yet certain,” she said, her voice more distant than intended. She quickly rallied herself and looked back at Vaclav. “I had a curious dream while I slept.”
“Oh?”
“I dreamed that I was in Prague. It was very vivid, and yet
I can barely remember it now.”
“But you are certain it was Prague?” Vaclav asked.
Varanus thought for a moment to be certain of her memories. Finally she nodded. “Yes, that part was very clear. I remember the castle, the Old Town, the view of the river. I dined with my son near Wenceslas Square.”
Vaclav sighed sadly. He rested his arms on the railing and leaned forward, gazing across the reading room at the sun-rimmed curtains.
“It saddens me that you were not able to visit my homeland until after my death,” he told her. “I would like to have shown it to you myself, though it has been many years since last I was there, and I fear it must be very different from how I remember it.”
“It was very beautiful,” Varanus told him.
Vaclav nodded, his smile tinged with longing. “Yes, it was.”
“It was so vivid,” Varanus said, pressing a hand to her temple in the effort to remember, “but now it is like a haze, like a sunrise viewed through fog.”
There was a pause.
“Have you ever been to Prague before?” Vaclav asked.
“No.…” Varanus frowned. “No, never.”
“Then how do you know what it looks like?”
Varanus exhaled as she felt her heart sink. Suddenly things made sense. She placed her head in her hands and sighed. She had not dreamed of Prague.
“This is the dream.”
“Is it?” Vaclav mused. He smiled at her. “Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed that he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he did not know whether he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that it was Zhuang Zhou.”
“Neither of us is a butterfly,” Varanus said.
A Sojourn in Bohemia Page 20