by Martha Wells
The voice was an old man’s, hoarse and raw, as if he had long suffered from throat afflictions. Or been hanged, Nicholas thought suddenly. That was how Macob had been executed. This was fascinating. Terrifying, but fascinating. The accent was a little off too. It was still recognizably of Ile-Rien and particularly Vienne, but with odd twists in the pronunciation of some of the words. Nicholas hadn’t decided what tack to take, but something in the man’s confident manner made him answer, "Of course. You’re Constant Macob. You know everything."
Macob took another step forward, the iron gray brows drawing together. He hadn’t expected that response.
For a shade he was terribly real, his wrinkled face and rheumy eyes that of a living person. You would think he would have made himself appear young, Nicholas mused, he has either no imagination, or no vanity. The former was a disadvantage for Macob, the latter a disadvantage for Nicholas and in direct contradiction to his theories. Surely only an infinitely vain, self-obsessed man would try to hold on to life like Macob had. But sorcerers had to be artists as well as scholars; Macob couldn’t lack for creativity or he would never have managed to take himself so far.
An indulgent tone in his rusty voice, the necromancer said, "I suppose you want to know my plans."
"I already know them, thank you."
The eyes narrowed, momentarily becoming dark pits, then Macob decided to be amused. "Gabard Ventarin wanted to know."
"Gabard Ventarin has been dust for two hundred years," Nicholas said, politely. "His name is known only to historians."
"A fitting end for him," Macob said, pleased. But there was something unconvincing about the manner in which he said it. Macob couldn’t be too aware of the passage of time. Did he even really believe his executioner was dead?
What could it be like to cling to the world of the living this way? To refuse to move on, to remain chained to vengeance and old hates? You might be lucky if you don’t find out for yourself, a traitor voice whispered, and Nicholas brushed it aside. Macob must live in the ever present now, all past and no future, never changing, never altering in the slightest degree. Never learning from his mistakes. He saw Macob was about to turn away and said quickly, "Why did you kill Doctor Octave?" He already knew the answer but he didn’t intend to ask any questions to which he didn’t already know the answers; this was no time to court surprises.
Macob’s smile was slow and self-satisfied. "He . . . faltered. He became infirm in my purpose so I destroyed him."
It didn’t change Nicholas’s opinion on what had occurred. He still thought the initial scheme had been Octave’s quest for an ideal confidence game and that the spiritualist had participated in Macob’s murders only because he had been forced to it. But it didn’t surprise him that Macob’s perception of events differed from this. He said, "Very wise of you."
Macob’s eyes glinted. "And why shouldn’t I destroy you?"
Ah, now we get to it. Causing terror could be addictive. Nicholas had seen that before in a number of men who had considered themselves masters of Vienne’s criminal underworld. It was a ridiculously exploitable weakness and one Nicholas could diagnose from the first exchange of fake pleasantries. Macob liked to terrify his victims. For all Nicholas knew terror might be necessary to necromantic spells, but he thought the main motive was that Macob had learned to enjoy it. "Since you destroyed Doctor Octave, I would think you in need of more mortal assistance."
"Which you could provide." Macob said it without much evidence of interest.
"For a price." Macob seemed to have an air of preoccupation that Nicholas didn’t like. Not only was it not terribly complimentary to himself but it made him wonder what else was happening in Macob’s little kingdom. Was it Madeline that was drawing the necromancer’s attention, or Ronsarde and Halle, or Arisilde? He needed to do something to regain Macob’s interest. "Despite all your sorcery, essentially you’re just a criminal. A criminal who has been caught. I’m a criminal who has never been caught."
Macob’s head lifted and his eyes returned to Nicholas. "I’ve caught you."
Give him that one or not? Nicholas made a swift mental calculation. I think not. "After I walked into your trap."
There was anger in Macob’s eyes and something of frustration. "I wanted to bring you down here. I wanted to see what you were."
"And you wanted the other sphere."
Macob hesitated, then nodded to Rohan’s sphere, suspended above the corpse. "That one is dying. It was never any good to me. Octave made it work for his ghost talking but it was never good to me." He gave Nicholas a sidelong look. "Not as I am."
As an attempt to elicit information, it was fairly transparent. Not as he is? Not while he’s dead, he means. And is that state likely to change? Nicholas obligingly said, "It must have been one of the first constructed. And Rohan is powerful, but not as powerful as Arisilde." That was as close as he wanted to come to mentioning the others. If they were dead he couldn’t help them, but if they lived, the last thing he wanted to do was direct Macob’s attention toward them.
"You know much of the spheres?"
"No." Macob would know if he made anything up.
"The woman." Macob hesitated. He knew he was betraying himself and it was making him angry. Dangerously angry. His voice was a low ominous growl. "Does she know of the spheres?"
So Madeline was free and causing great consternation. Nicholas smiled. "She knows all that she needs to." Or at least she thinks she does. He added, "I could engage to obtain the missing skull for you. That is the item you’re in need of, isn’t it? The one Octave wanted to question the late Duke of Mondollot concerning? I doubt the Duke’s information would have been helpful; it was surely removed by Gabard Ventarin at the time of your death as a further precaution." He paused. He had Macob’s rapt attention. "It was removed to the palace, was it not?"
"Yes. A trophy." Macob stared at him, the malevolent eyes narrowed. "I know where it is. I can obtain it myself. I would not engage you to do so. I would sooner engage a viper."
Nicholas’s mouth quirked. Constant Macob, necromancer and murderer a hundred times over, thought he was a viper. He was not quite light-headed enough to thank him for the compliment, but said, "That’s a rather unjust assessment in light of your activities, isn’t it?"
"I continued my work," Macob said, but he wasn’t much interested in defending himself, to Nicholas or to anyone else. He was looking at the corpse again, his attention leaving his prisoner. "That is the only thing of importance."
Nicholas frowned. Vanity might not be the key to Macob’s character after all. Was it obsession, instead? With his family dead from a swift and violent plague he had not been able to stop, had he thrown himself into his work until it had achieved such an overwhelming importance that every other consideration fell by the wayside? It would explain a great deal. And it makes him far more difficult to manipulate.
Macob turned back to Nicholas and started to speak, but the necromancer froze suddenly, all motion arrested, his head cocked in a listening attitude. Without another word, he strode toward the door. As he reached the shadow across the opening his form seemed to dissolve and it was impossible to say if he had walked out or vanished into the darkness. Nicholas sat up and awkwardly rolled his torn coat sleeve back to get to the shirt cuff and the lock picks. He tore open the seam of the cuff with his teeth and shook out the picks. This explained Macob’s preoccupation at least. Nicholas might have preferred that Madeline had sought the safety of the surface instead of taking the sphere on some sort of rampage through Macob’s hiding place but he also preferred not to become the central element of the next necromantic spell.
Working the lock picks on his own manacled wrists was difficult, but he had gotten himself out of handcuffs before and the manacles came off with only the sacrifice of some scraped skin. Nicholas stood too quickly and had to steady himself on the crypt wall as the floor swayed and his sight narrowed to a dark tunnel. He rubbed his temples as his vision cleared, thinking th
is could present a problem.
As soon as he could see he stumbled to the plinth and leaned on it. He checked his pistol but it was empty and the extra ammunition he had had in his coat had been removed along with his clasp-knife and anything else that might serve as a weapon. They had left his matches and other articles that might possibly be of use, just not at the moment. He shoved the pistol into his pocket with a muttered oath, then looked up at the sphere, suspended in the net above the corpse. Destroying it would probably be a great disservice to the furtherance of human knowledge, but he wouldn’t leave it for Macob.
There was a sound from the door of the crypt, a soft footstep. Nicholas looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway, pointing a pistol at him. He was a large man, about Nicholas’s age, with greasy dark hair and a ruddy, rough-featured face, his once good frock coat ragged and dirty. One of Doctor Octave’s colleagues, Nicholas thought. There had been two other men besides the driver. Perhaps Macob had taken the rest of the ghouls with him and left only this last human servant to guard his prisoner. He had to be running out of ghouls; there had been a limited number to start with and Arisilde’s sphere seemed to go through them rather quickly.
The man’s eyes were lifeless, dull, but the pistol didn’t waver. Nicholas said, "I’m no good to him dead." That wasn’t quite true, but this man didn’t look as if he had access to all his faculties.
He motioned with the pistol, indicating that Nicholas move away from the bier. The corpse was obviously important to Macob; he had gone to a deal of trouble to obtain it and the missing skull still obviously worried him. While there was madness in the necromancer’s method, it didn’t rule him. He had reasons for everything he did. Not what one would call "good" reasons, perhaps, but reasons nonetheless, Nicholas thought, obeying the man’s gesture and backing away toward the wall.
Nicholas reached the wall and turning suddenly, stretched up and grabbed one of the torches. The man’s reflexes were slow, doubtless the result of whatever Macob had done to him to secure his obedience; he was just raising the pistol to fire when the torch landed on the corpse. The rags of rotted clothing caught immediately.
There was an instant of hesitation, then the man ran for the bier. He dragged the torch out, dropping it on the ground, then beat at the burning clothing, oblivious to anything else. Moving forward, Nicholas picked up a broken paving stone from the floor. The man turned just as he was within reach and brought up the pistol. Nicholas grabbed his wrist to turn the weapon away from him and they grappled.
Nicholas lost his grip on the stone, trying to keep the pistol from pointing toward his head. The man wasn’t inhumanly strong but he fought like an automaton with no concern for his own safety. Nicholas managed to swing him around, driving him back against the wall of the crypt, when there was a shriek of rage from somewhere above their heads.
No, Macob hadn’t taken all the ghouls with him. A quick glance upward showed Nicholas two of the creatures were climbing through the crack in the dome and scrabbling headfirst down the wall. He wrenched an arm free and punched the man in the jaw, knocking his head sharply back and sending him sprawling. He heard the pistol strike the floor somewhere but the ghouls were almost on him and there was no time to look for it. He bolted for the door out of the crypt.
Once out in the half-light he ran past the dais and plunged into the maze of passages between the crypts, with no time to get his bearings. The ghouls moved too fast and he only had a few moments head start at best.
He could hear them behind him, careening into walls, screaming in high unearthly voices with all too human rage. He ran down between a row of crypts and saw an open passage into the rock wall. It wasn’t until he had plunged into it and found himself in near total darkness that he realized he was too far down in the cave for this to be part of the catacomb and that he had hared off into totally unknown territory.
He couldn’t go back now. He kept running, stumbling over half-seen obstructions along the ground, bouncing into walls, knowing that if he fell they would be on him in seconds. He saw a darker pool of shadow across the passage in front of him and knew it might be a hole in the ground. There were claws scrabbling on the rock behind him and he jumped wildly, not pausing to judge the distance or gather himself.
He hit the far side, lost his grip on slick stone and slid down. He caught the edge of the fissure, his feet finding purchase on a slope littered with loose pebbles and rock chips. The suddenness of it took his breath away; he hadn’t really believed it was a hole until he felt the empty cold air beneath him instead of solid earth. The ghouls were screaming almost directly over his head, so he released his tenuous hold on the edge and let himself slide down.
The ghouls had tried to attack Madeline again and the sphere had destroyed them. The things had come after her only reluctantly, as if they had been driven to it. Since then she had had no sensation of being followed.
She was almost ready to sob with relief when she found a tunnel that led upward. The slope was steep so she made a sling for the sphere out of her scarf and tied it around her neck. Makeshift and none too secure, it still freed both her arms and made climbing the upward passage much easier.
She came out above the cave with the standing crypts again on a reasonably whole section of the walkway, her legs sore from the steep climb. The entrance to the catacomb should be over to the right, above the balcony, if she had her bearings. She could see flickering firelight, greasy in the bad air, showing between the cracks in the walls of the large crypt in the center. What is Macob doing in there? she wondered. No, don’t think of it, just go while you can. The sphere didn’t make her invulnerable.
She crept along the broken remains of the walkway, ducking to stay below what was left of the balustrade and moving slowly, despite her fear. As she drew closer to the place where she was certain the walkway met the catacomb, she saw something strange in the quality of light. After a moment her eyes found the glow of another torch, burning at the entrance of a crypt on this side of the cave.
She kept moving but that torch worried her. She reached the ruined balcony and saw with relief the entrance to the catacomb appeared unguarded by revenants. A few steps up and she would be in it and running back toward the sewer. She hesitated. The ghouls didn’t need torchlight. In fact, she rather thought they were afraid of fire, from what Nicholas had said. Firelight meant people.
Her hands were clammy and her back hurt from the fall and she didn’t particularly want to die down here. But if Nicholas hadn’t gotten away it might be him. Muttering under her breath, she carefully found her way past the broken arch that lay across the balcony and back onto the walkway.
The crypt with the torch was closer but there was an impediment. Part of the walkway had collapsed entirely, leaving a gap of a few feet. She was able to get a handhold on an overhang and step easily across, but it would not make for a quick getaway.
The walkway curved and she pressed herself as closely against the wall as she could. She could see the front of the crypt now. A large part of the pitched roof had collapsed but there were still statues of helmeted pikemen on either side of the intact doorway. The torch was jammed into a loose chink above the door and she could see the mortar and stones had been knocked out of it, leaving an opening into the crypt. More evidence: if the ghouls had wanted in they could have climbed the wall; they had no need to open the crypt’s door.
Speaking of ghouls. . . . There were at least three of them, like bundles of dry rags and bones, seated in front of that gaping doorway. They weren’t moving or making any sound and she would have missed them entirely if she hadn’t been certain they were there somewhere. They looked like unstrung puppets, cast aside until they were wanted again.
She edged along the wall, cautiously. She could see down into the crypt itself now, but it was deep in shadow and the torch had dazzled her eyes somewhat, so the ghost-lichen’s light was negligible. Staring hard, she thought she could discern movement inside. Then a form leaned across the s
haft of firelight falling through the open door and Madeline’s heart leapt. It was Doctor Halle.
That’s all I needed to know. Moving back until she was above the doorway and the guardian ghouls, she studied the edge of the walkway. The wall had crumbled here so if she was quick and sure-footed she could leap down to the flat spot there, and then to the floor of the cave. Not so hard. Not as hard as hanging in that flying harness in The Nymphs. She moved to the edge and readied herself, then hesitated.
What if she got them killed? Would it be more sensible to flee up the catacomb and bring help? Before she could decide, her foot dislodged a pebble and it struck the rocks below with a loud crack. All three of the ghouls reacted as one, their heads whipping around and the glazed, glaring eyes staring straight at her.
To hell with it, Madeline thought. She clutched the sphere tightly and leapt.
Being more used to humans who fled from them, her attack caught them by surprise. As she landed on the cave floor they started back from her but she could already feel the sphere shaking. When the light burst from it an instant later, she turned her head away and shut her eyes tightly to keep from losing her night-sight.
The light faded and she looked back to see three heaps of bones, scattered as the ghouls had started to flee. No, four heaps of bones; there had been a fourth one against the wall of the adjoining crypt that she hadn’t seen.
She stepped forward into the doorway, whispering, "Doctor Halle?"
"Good God, it’s you," his voice answered reassuringly.
She stepped back and pulled the torch free, holding it so she could see the inside of the crypt.
Ronsarde lay on the ground, his head pillowed on a folded coat. His face was still and sallow, his eyes sunken back in his head. The wrinkles and age lines were brought out in high relief; she hadn’t realized before that he was so old. Halle was kneeling next to him. Their clothes were torn and filthy and Halle’s face was bruised but he didn’t look as badly injured as Ronsarde.