Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  I laugh. “Very much agreed, Nan’ Edith, I suppose it must have been a couple of hundred years ago now so I can see how it could clutter up your books. I have a neat mind myself.”

  “Bits of it go back a couple of millennia, Master Lump but this one you’ve got the right of.”

  I look again at the old lady before me. There is something very familiar about her eyes. “I think you would know all about that, Nan. I know you! You were there. A little younger but still the same in so many ways.” I pause. “You were called something different back then.”

  She chuckles. “Sounds about right there, Master Albrecht – oh ignore the rules for a moment. I’m too old to keep to the whims of a young missy like our Ariadne. I was called Marianne and I remember you well enough. You brought a team of soldiers and herded out a ghoul colony that was eating the roots of our local grove, and some of our helpers when they went to look.” She looks at me. “You haven’t changed much; not even sure you’ve even changed your clothes from the look of you. Such a grubby old fellow in that black and velveteen. Didn’t Mr. Pole give you something a bit more contemporary to wear?”

  “Real velvet Nan. A little more worn than it was and definitely dustier.” I ruefully rub the sleeves. “Bordering on crunchy. I need to obtain a new jacket soon.”

  “That you do. Not much we could do for that battered old thing. Four hundred years. I would have been as young as that awkward young Ariadne back then. Though a lot more polite to my elders. Old Grams Marjorie didn’t stand for sass believe you me.”

  I nod. Humanity. Even witches. There is so much sadness in seeing the young flourish, decay and die, I had a theory that it’s part of the reason that we mellow with age. You start angry and hungry, but you lose the hunger and it’s difficult to stay angry with them after a certain amount of observation with the clarity our status brings.

  Eventually you realise how much responsibility you have in living on and on to shepherd the children of your children’s children ad infinitum into happy but curtailed lives. To keep them from the Shadows, until you can do no more. “Was it somewhere near Lyon? Leftovers from the Manse near… the old Roman Villa, I had them removed and resettled somewhere more appropriate.”

  At least I think I had them resettled. It’s all a bit hazy.

  “You had a lot of power back then Master Lump.”

  “Didn’t I just?” That was a fine day. I was one of the leading lights in the Family and I used that power to push for us co-operate with humanity and the witches too at every opportunity.

  Brought up a generation of masters with the right natures to support me. Push to friendship with all the elements of the arcane which could understand or be made to understand the concept of bright reason. Very little enthusiasm from some of the old Masters though, stuck in their ways and avoiding any kind of trouble, they thrived in the darkness and spread it every change they could.

  Got further with the Witches than the Fae. I’ll tell you that for nothing.

  And look where all that power got me and my friends.

  Anyway.

  “I suppose you’d want to know what’s gone on since you went away?”

  “I would.” I really would. “Ariadne mentioned a war of some kind? And Mr. Pole…”

  “Maybe better that I show you. The important stuff that still matters. It would be a long tale otherwise and there are some books up on the shelves over there if you want the basics of history since your time. I suspect that you’ll catch up with that when the desire so takes you. So I’ll show you what I know and you can fix it up with what else you can find out on your travels.”

  “Thank you, Nan. That would be particularly helpful as from the state of the world there’s much to be done. And I may have all the time in the world, but I fear that the world may not, given the state of what I’ve seen.” I eat the last of my scone and reach for another. “Anything you know that could help.”

  “Wish we could do more for you. It would be so nice to have things back the way they were. Some of the way anyway. But I don’t know too much myself.” She pauses, peering with rheumy eyes at me. “I can see things sometimes. I can do that for you if you’d like, but as dear old Grams used to say, seeing isn’t understanding. I can’t for the life of me work out why somethings happen the way they do, let alone why. You’ll have to work that out yourself.” A wry smile that crinkles up her face like parchment. “I remember watching tadpoles when I was younger, they got bigger and bigger and then one day a cat fished them out and ate them. No idea why it happened but I could show you.”

  I look dubious.

  “Do you want to see that?” she stares at me quizzically.

  “No thank you Nan. If you could tell me anything you know about the clouds and the war that would be lovely.”

  She sighs. “That was a naughty cat, not like Hemlock here. He’s a good cat, never catches anything he doesn’t kill quick and clean.”

  I wait.

  A short period of cat petting is followed by the main event.

  She yawns and begins to speak. “The clouds. So. Can’t say many people know much about the whole thing and it’s difficult to put it all together from the bits and pieces, what with no one talking much nowadays. The Fae are gone. We speak to the Union a little when we have to, and we listen to the Russians in their forts of misery scattered across the east. No one hears much from the Mericans and I’m none too sure they know anything anyway. Sitting behind their walls and living the life of Reilly. They were prepared. Like that one frog that jumped away even though it was missing a leg…” She tilts her grey head. “Did you notice who I missed out?”

  “Well given you mentioned that there were some of my friends still around the missing group would be the Family, my kind. Johnson-Pole had said…”

  The witch looks at me quizzically. “You mean old Poley?”

  “I’m having some issues with people and names it seems, but the… first man who spoke to me after I awoke, the man in the vehicle with me when I was rescued, he told me that my kind, or at least those like me, were gone. I suppose that must be a lie.”

  I take a bite of scone. “Though he also told me this was Ireland and it was 2050 and that his name was Johnson. Or Pole, Or… oh this scone is truly delicious Nan’ Edith!” and it was. Small pleasures and all that.

  “Aunty Claudette baked them when she heard you would be arriving. She’ll like that. She’s inordinately proud of her baking, has all the shows saved up” she lifts her head. “Claudette! Claudette! The Vampire Master says that your scones are delicious…”

  The music muffles much of the response which seems to boil down to “be quiet you old clot, the baby is sleeping” but my French is not great.

  Stupid language. Mumbled slurry Latin. Mumbled slurry. Mumble mumble Loi, Roi, Loire, per foy. Not as bad as modern Greek though. I have a personal dislike for the deterioration in that language.

  Nan Edith nods sagely. “Yes, the baby is sleeping. It is 2065 or 75 though or thereabouts, by their calendar. Time’s got a bit messy of late. And I suppose if you’re being pedantic your kind is extinct as you masters were always a bit different from the run of the mill blood suckers. I think you’re the only master still around.”

  Good to hear that my friend is not a liar, he has an honest face. I nod sagely. “With patience comes glimpses and I think we’re making progress Nan.”

  “Hold a moment dear. There’s a good bit coming up”

  “The music?”

  “The music.” She rocks back in her chair and starts tapping her feet.

  We listen to Nan’s sound machine for a while, a mix of music I recognise from contemporary composers, some of whom were of my kind which I am quick to point out to general indifference from Nan Edith, and some slightly more cacophonous concoctions that I have no real liking for but to which Nan Edith is tapping her foot more vigorously.

  Her cat rises up and down in time to the beat as the old witch appears to have forgotten to end the telekin
etic barrier holding it and the associated pillow two inches above her lap.

  We are quite the pair.

  The fire crackles, food is consumed, the sounds from outside of playing children turn to sounds of supper and then to preparations for bed. Including I assume well-brushed teeth chaperoned by Ariadne. What light there is dies away as the parasols outside are extinguished with a whispered word. I can no longer see anything outside the window other than a single flame lamp, so dark is the night.

  It reminds me of my tomb.

  7

  Oh, Paris

  The old witch looks up as this ultimate light flickers and dies, extinguished as the last of the young witches and children drop into a deep assisted sleep. Then she turns off the music with sharp tap of her finger. In the silence and dark she settles the cat down on her seat and she is suddenly taller, less bent by the turn of years, more powerful than she has appeared up till then, or at least more focussed. If pressed I’d guess that a hundred mortal years have dropped away from her frame in the silent darkness.

  Witches are more than they seem. Particularly the old ones.

  She stands by the shadowed window through which darkness creeps in a strange mirror of the light. I do not like the effect, as it triggers old memories. Her reflection is as she was back when I knew her first, watching that handsome face twist with horror as the graves were dug.

  “Oh now you I do remember Master Vampire. You’re difficult to forget, such a lot of good intentions and, well. We all thought you were naïve even back at the Manse. How many of your own did you lose dealing with that nest of misbegotten ghouls?”

  “I don’t think of them as lost, rather…” I consider the terminology I should use. “Fallen on the field of honour.”

  Nan shakes her head. “You could have burnt away the whole lot of them with a gesture or dropped them with a word. What is it with you and appearances? The other Masters weren’t like that. Fixed but reliable, no nonsense. You seem to quite like your little demonstrations.”

  “It’s how people learn, and you must admit I did make an impression,” I offer a winning smile which bounces off this strange, powerful old being without leaving a mark.

  “Yes. Impression, maybe not then one you intended but definitely an impression. And your people followed you then, and then followed you in your folly even after you were gone. They kept following your path to its bitter end and now here we are in the dark and the cold.”

  “I can assure you dear lady, that this is not my…”

  She moves faster than I can see shifting to stand face to face so that now I can smell the herbs on her breath and feel the power of her mind. A terrible old lady with teeth longer than mine and eyes of fire. “You want to know about the clouds, about the war? A natural corollary of your path Master Lump. It is fitting that you should be allowed to see where your ideals and your silly methods got your kind.”

  She claps her hands in front of my face, there is a freezing blast and the world around us shatters into a million fragments that dance and then reform into a vision of the past. No, not just a vision. That would be too simple for such a powerful witch. I can smell war, taste it. Its acrid gunpowder stink, the sweet smell of blood. Feel the icy cold of the air as and the sting of snow flurries whipping past us.

  The clouds above shift and seethe with with unformed power and there are monsters within that hiss the secrets of dead men to each other.

  The witch and I are floating just below the clouds looking down on a mighty city of metal and steel and glass. From this height I recognise it as Paris, but it is much changed since my time. My point of reference is the Cathedral, but it is burnt and a ruin with broken scaffolding as if repairs had started but then been abandoned.

  Judging by the fires only about a third of the city appears to be inhabited and there are refugee columns hurrying to the South, departing shanty towns of wood and tin stretched out along the frozen Seine. Vehicles drive along arterial roads past overturned compatriots through snowfall adulterated with tiny red runes unpicked from departed lives.

  Pedestrians swaddled in coats and shelter in the lee of the vehicles crawling along. The vehicles slip and crush some in the panic and men in gendarme uniforms armed with glowing batons and gripping blue-light torches through thread-bare gloves try to bring order to the pell-mell retreat.

  The reason for the panic is clear. An army of monstrous armoured boxes on endless tracks that push through the snow at speed accompanied by men in armoured suits bearing the old Russian battleflag march and ski towards the city from the north and east, moving faster than seems possible. Recognisably related to the Protectorate Crawlers the vehicles are simultaneously more primitive and yet more dangerous, bearing long cannon and repeating rifle mounts. Protective runes scrawled in blood cover the….

  “Tanks” says Nan.

  “Whose are the vehicles. Who are we fighting?”

  “Russians.”

  My eyes widen. Russians fighting my people and winning. I should never have left.

  Hidden sensors direct short sharp beams of light from the ‘tanks’ at blurs of motion thrown out of launchers hidden amongst the ruins of the suburbs around Paris. Where they intersect there is a short blast of flame that fizzles out of existence and the turrets whir around and direct a heavy fire at the source of any such attacks which have the stench of desperation to them. Throwing pebbles at a storm.

  A group of soldiers, more lightly equipped than the Russians, are breaking and dying as they are driven back into the city by the bursts of fire and explosions from the vehicles and their supporting infantry.

  For all their apparent success the Russians seem to be in a mortal hurry. Charging forward without regard for their own casualties. I look closer through the plates and blood scrawled sigils and see they are starving in their armour, men who have not eaten for a week except what they have snatched from the broken hands of the defending armies in their pell-mell advance.

  The reason again becomes clear with additional observation. Behind them arcane power flares, the clouds are being pulled down and the Earth itself pushed up in a display of mastery which makes me gasp at its audacity. Agreements are made and prices are paid in the blink of an eye. Runes form on the cold earth and where the clouds dip down to catch one of the vehicles or a cluster of men, they are gone, a splash of blood or a pile of disarticulated body parts tossed out into the air attracting more of the monsters as the clouds spiral back up.

  She points to the edge of the city and hisses, her words strained. The recreation must be taking its toll. “Your kind. Your kind.”

  But I don’t need the old witch to be able to see this. Before the city are a group of a dozen Masters arrayed in a fine example of the Stygian circle from the Trimegistus. I recognise them, one and all. A few unexpected faces but sympathisers from my lonely fight to work with humanity in improving the world, philosophers and poets and architects who I had been proud to call brothers and sisters.

  My old enemies are pointedly absent.

  Maybe my revenge, rather I mean justice, has been handled by my get.

  “I am not going to enjoy what follows, am I?”

  “No.”

  My wonderful children and siblings are using every power they have in an attempt to stop the mad onrush of soldiers and vehicles from the east; and more admirably screen the broken ruins of their armies and people as they flee south. Buying minutes and seconds for their charges.

  “It is not just what you see. Your kin drew down the clouds on to Russia, and there they remain. Russia was killed in this war, but its armies marched for vengeance.”

  The impact the Masters are having is impressive, and bordering on inventive. Corpses rise from the churned earth to claw at Russian soldiers and pull them down screaming into its embrace, gaping chasms open before the advancing force to swallow vehicles whole and then close, crushing the metal like bugs under boots.

  Fires erupt and burn them, the blood freezes in their veins and li
mbs and joints snap, everything and anything that can be used against the Russians is used against them.

  But they do not stop. The crawlers shrug off all but the cloud strikes or instant destruction, I can smell the nature of the protection shielding these armoured monsters. Captives by the thousands have been sacrificed to provide crude but effective protection against the arcane. The techniques are… ancient. They are familiar and pull at my mind making me think of ziggurats and molochs.

  And just behind the line of tanks and men protected in their deathly armours, is the brain of the operation. A grizzled Russian General burdened with unutterable hatred is standing on a new raised hill surrounded by a group of dark robed eastern witches, troopers bustling around him, directing a strange vehicle whose beam is focussing on the circle of Masters opposing his army.

  He is shouting instructions in fast Russian and the beams of focussed light begin to pull tighter and tighter, though something resists, dispersing the lights in rainbow bursts.

  I don’t understand this. This is new. “What are they doing? What are they trying to do here?”

  The Witch looks at me again, eyes empty sockets and teeth gnashing together. I doubt this is an attempt to scare me, but rather a sign of the difficulty of holding this vision of the past together.

  “This is the end of your dream Master Albrecht. When the cataclysm hit, and the volcanoes closed the skies to us, your people tried to help as you had said they should, but when have the prey truly wanted the help of the predators that hunt them? The Russians had powerful watchmen and when your people’s plans to prevent their intervention failed, they struck back hard here and, in the east…”