Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  Dark dots on the horizon, focussing into fast moving flying machines speeding in, partially warded by clumsily drawn but powerful arcana. Hugging the shifting ground and moving inexorably towards the line of old Masters.

  The beams from the hill split, refuse to cohere, the General screams at his men.

  “These men and women are strong, they have technology beyond your understanding, and they know war in a way your people never did and never could. You vampires read books. You think and plot, you study the finer intricacies of strategy. You chose to create a council in the image of peace. So many artists and historians, none with any families, who would have thought you’d go for that sort? You never had a family did you?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

  The machines close fast. The beams must attract them.

  “Great minds being as useless as great minds usually are. Learn the three hundred advances and fifty turning movements from the manuals of the Captains of War. Argue and plan elegant turning manoeuvres on paper and run simulations to limit casualties Create a mirror of your paper armies and expect them to fight true masters of that art.”

  My family is d0wn there now. Of course I had a family. They are there. They have a chance. If this were now.

  Another beam of light from high in the west. Subtly different, projected from some hovering thing. Illuminating my children.

  The General sees. Howls in triumph, the machines deploy miniature wings, twist in the air and accelerate.

  Master Serah sees the light and the approaching machines. She calls up all her power and looses it at the General and his soldiers and his machines around the targeting mechanism. In a flash they are turned to columns of stone stuck on that hill forever.

  “Your prey were less well read but more practical, and have a history of fighting against all those horrors that humans can raise without any intervention from you and yours. They bled and died and swamped all those clever strategies and feigns with brute force and courage. They adapted to the arcane by crushing it under their own well-practised mundane brand of destruction.”

  Serah clenches a fist. The light beams flicker out, even the furthest.

  It is too late. The flying machines bore into the last target their spirits knew, leaving a trail of fire and cracks of sound behind them. Time stands still and then with a blast of heat and a blinding detonation I watch my colleagues turned into shadows. The buildings of the city behind them blasted into flinders of glass and bent steel and then evaporate as destruction passes over them.

  It catches the last of the refugee columns maiming and burning and tumbling vehicles top over tail, then…

  I feel empty.

  A moment of blackness and we are sitting in the cottage once more. It is quiet, but not silent and Nan’ Edith is watching me with wise old eyes as is her cat, Hemlock.

  “I think some of the younger ones survived, none of your sort. Goodness even some of dear old Paris is still standing if you wanted to visit, pay your respects. But none of the leaders. There’s been a bit of a ruckus with the adolescents fighting over who gets to be in charge, most of them are quite remarkably rambunctious.”

  “They always are.”

  “Young and blood hungry even the one in charge of Paris now though he’s got a bit of brain in him.” She growls at some memory and plays with a monocle she picks out of her pocket. “The ladies spend a lot of our time trying to keep your deadbeat children at bay, held back from the villages we protect in exchange for a bit of help with home now and then. The Union and Protectorate does the same for its citizens. Sometimes we even cooperate, mores the pity. When they’re not going through one of their funny turns.”

  “Mr. Pole’s a Union man isn’t he?”

  “Mr. Pole is very much a Union man.” Nan confirms, with a yawn that her cat mirrors.

  I begin to ingest the information from Nan’s little demonstration. It’s painful but it gets me a stop closer to where I need to be. “Poor old Serah.” I mutter to myself.

  “Yes. That’s about the size of it. That was the end of it too. Humans struggling to survive, we had our own traumas to deal with,” I’m about to query what she means when Nan holds up a hand to indicate she’s not finished. “The sky’s never got any better even though Clem thought it should. Shows what she knows. Bit of a know-it-all that one.” She continues. “Cities and countries and states were swallowed by the sea and the rain of fire. Starvation took a heap more poor souls before the new crops took, a point for you there Master Albrecht. The Union can say what it wants we know where those came from.”

  “You all seem to have come through it surprisingly well.” I say. “Remarkable generation of witches and humans to get through all that.”

  “We all did things we can’t be proud of and you know what that means for us. We’re not the kindliest clan on earth…” Her voice trails off into mumbling. Her eyes droop and a moment later she starts to snore, quietly.

  “Oh.” I raise my eyebrows at the cat. “I thought that was going somewhere.”

  “Why do you think it isn’t, Master Albrecht?” The cat sits up in her lap and continues. “Nan’s point is that no matter what the right and the wrong of it is, most people blame your lot for the Catastrophe. Know what we know and it all seems a bit unfair. Even the Union goons know there’s something wrong with the narrative, but hey. Vampires eh? Bad types, drink blood. And they did try and take over the world when the sun went out, just like everyone expected.”

  “For your own good…” I caution.

  “No one left to sell that one.” The cat mews plaintively. “It’s all so wonderfully symmetrical. You have always been the best boogeymen. Hiding out in the dark corners of the world with your nasty little plots draining the blood of the living. A hint of the shadows behind you. And if not you, then whom would you suggest?”

  I take a deep breath. “I’m a little behind the times so I don’t have an answer to that.”

  The cat preens.

  “Yet.”

  “Well good luck with that Lumpy. We dug and dug and we never found anything other than Family fingerprints…”

  “Fingerprints?”

  The cat glances over at the library’s shelves. “You might want to get a bit of reading done. If you found out who did this I think there’ll be a line the size of the queue at the bakery on fresh bread day waiting to smash their head in. If you don’t then… We’ll all keep our fairy tales instead and stick with the on where the dark dwelling monsters blot out the sun and the Russians crush them underfoot and die heroically in the process?”

  I replay the sight of my family disappearing into dust. “A happy ending of sorts.”

  “You don’t even get the credit for what you did do. Food chain would have been all messed up without the strains your lot created. Armies that stopped the Russians crushing everything? They weren’t a happy lot by then, yet…” The Cat somehow manages to look dubious with a twitch of whisker and a twist of furry head. “Suspicious isn’t it? Bit of a mystery? All ready to go?”

  “I am nothing is not a truth seeker.” I reply, “once I have the truth I’ll pass it on. And I will have the truth of this. Dying does not get you off the hook if you’ve done something terrible.”

  The cat appraises me with green eyes. “You’re a little different from what I expected Alberecht. We’d like to know what you find out. For the history books at this point.”

  “I intend to do better than that.” I gesture upwards. “I have some small skill in the arcane arts.”

  The cat loses interest in me, stretches out with a bow of its back and outstretched paws, and heads off to hunt.

  “Nothing is good enough. No one gets what they deserve.”

  A very cat comment. Silence descends again. I ponder for a time in the quiet comfort of the witch’s home.

  After an hour or so, the old witch awakes, stretches, bent again with age and with a twinkle in her rheumy eyes. “Well deary I hope you learnt something
from that.”

  I watch her, trying to make out any hint of the powerful thing that must lurk somewhere deep inside this delightful old lady. “Very helpful Nan.”

  She picks herself up with a wince, and hobbles to the door. Knees cracking arthritically. “Happy I could help. Now. Arrangements. You’re welcome to stay here for the night if you wish, I don’t think you sleep so if you want to do a little digging of your own through the books, you’re very welcome. Some good books up there. Or so I hear. I may even read one someday. Writing’s a bit squirrelly given my eyesight.”

  She tosses the monocle in the air conspiratorially. I decide not to question why.

  At the door she stops. “When you decide to leave you just go ask Aunty Clem for a path to wherever you choose. Not the Home Islands, ah… Britain. That’s off limits now. Ireland too. That’s gone. Stay clear of Russia. Very bad place. Other than that, the world’s your oyster.” She cackles. “There are small mercies in the way things are now, no one can tell us what to do anymore, no Fae blocking doors or the like and that means a lot to a witch.”

  I thank her and the door closes gently, the old witch pads her way upstairs, argues with a querulous Raven, and falls asleep.

  I settle down to stare out into the night with a couple of history books from the shelf for company. Flicking through them there is nothing really new. Wars, destruction, weapons and horrors. A slight increase in death tolls, a larger scale of unpleasantness. Progress as pain.

  I follow this with a pair of atlases to assess the damage to the world. A pre catastrophe world map is much as I expect, the outlines familiar. Post catastrophe? Little detail, but what there is shows a world where the lands bordering the Pacific appear to have been nibbled by enormous mice, and for some unknowable reason the Florida peninsula is now a hollow ring around an ocean trench.

  There’s a primitively type-set chapbook of poorly plotted riddles whose answers somehow fit into word grids, which has glued itself to the back of the New Atlas due to a jammy intervention. I try a couple and groan at the clumsiness of the allusions which seem to be trying to provide more information than would easily fit into such a constricting format.

  Sound idea, poor execution.

  I balance the book on top of a cupboard to keep it out of eye line of more easily insulted readers.

  8

  Victorian Johnson

  Both sleep and meaningful entertainment being denied to me an old friend arrives to keep me company. Johnson the Elder. The one still forever in my tomb. He stands outside the window to the cottage in the dark, a pale figure, gaunt by entropy’s hand, the stake that ended him still buried in his chest.

  He glows faintly, the corpse light illuminating the trees behind him and casting shadows off into the night woods.

  “Feeling guilty?” His voice is as it was when he lived. A rich deep baritone, of the coastal south of the United States. “Why?”

  “Difficult not to feel that way. My friends, my Family. The world has suffered greatly and to be frank, these have not been my best days. Why couldn’t they have gone with plan nine if they had to use any?”

  “The one with the ferrets and the firelighters?” A raised eyebrow.

  “Um. No.” I wrack my brains, for any such plan. “Are you sure that was one of mine?”

  “It was a joke. You were never good at seeing what was in front of your face, Albie.”

  Seeing poor old Johnson like this makes my heart ache. “I’m sorry. Was it bad?”

  “All the way through bad to pretty damn horrible. They did me last, so I got to see them take out the others before that old shit-kicker jammed a three-foot stake into my heart.” He taps the spectral echo of the wooden life-ender with a wry grin.

  “And you say I shouldn’t feel guilty!”

  “I said it was up to you, feel guilty if that’s your fancy. Permission granted. Guilt is a luxury the living and the sorta living get.” He waves a hand at the trees, fingers flaking away and then taking form at rest. “Not me. I’ve got this and the dark.”

  I stand watching his familiar face for a while. Strong jaw, scars from old knife fights across his forehead and his left cheek, bright eyes now sunken into his skull. A good dependable man in a fracas, a dab hand at a game of chance and skill. Loved playing cards. A trick of maths made him all but unbeatable.

  “Did you want to ask me anything or were you just gonna stare?”

  “Do you know who did this?”

  “Yeah. I do.” Johnson smiles with those tombstone teeth of his. “Can’t tell you though. Keep looking. It’s important.”

  “That’s… bordering on unhelpful. Good to know that it’s a person though. Thanks Johnson.”

  “Any time man. Don’t sweat it. You’ll get there in the end.”

  I pounce. “Was that a prediction my goodly deceased fellow?”

  He wrinkles his nose, “No, nothing like that, but we knew each other pretty good back in the day, you’re one of the good ones, long as you can keep that cheese-wire brain of yours on track. You’ll work this out, like you worked out that wasn’t a chariot up there above the clouds.”

  “What would the horses use for traction? Or the wheels come to that?” I smile. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

  “There’s limits though, hombre. Even when you do find the gent who pulled this down I’m not sure what you can do about it. Things happen and they can’t unhappen. You know that. Sort of like how I ended up.” His smile returns. “Me and Helene and Crouch and old pencil neck with his stupid snails. Well, you and all your powers couldn’t stop that and you were in the room where it happened. This? Long time ago, and set in stone. Likewise, you can call up a ghost of a ghost, and we can chat about the old days, but you can’t make me live and so I can’t help you like I’d want to. Some things are too far gone.”

  “What a distressing thought.” Without redress there will only be vengeance and I am much too old to be motivated by anything so petty. “I will still endeavour my damndest to make this right.”

  “I know you will, Albie. Kinda your thing.” He mimes tilting a lance. The implication being that there’s a windmill somewhere in the vicinity. Then he shivers, his edges fraying and his shadow shimmering across the trees. “It’s cold out here you know. They’re still waiting back there.”

  “I’m sorry.” I think back to Nan’s words. “We were right, weren’t we? Cooperation and progress? Light against the dark?”

  Johnson is fading away. The dead never stay long. In point of fact they never used to stay at all. I vaguely remember that the dead were truly dead once. Then as the years passed there were shadows at the corner of my vision, a little longer and they were talking and I began to welcome the visits from long departed friends.

  When you have as much past as I, it is comforting to have something of it present in your darkest moments.

  I have my theories on the cause. The best was that it was some kind of tuning process whereby an eternal being would align with the life-songs of those nearest and dearest them. My fellow masters never seemed convinced, and there had been some muttering.

  “Were we right? I couldn’t say man. It was a pretty fun ride and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Say hi to my family when you meet him or them. If you meet him. Or has that happened? Will it happen?” A ghostly shiver. “What’s past is past.”

  And then he is gone, and I wait till dawn before I replace the books and go out into the waking village to find Aunty Clementine, the witch who arranged our passage from the ambush to the Village.

  She is waiting for me by the river.

  There is something off about her. She reminds me too much of the avian witches of the east in their dark plumage scratching at pale skin. The self same as who had stood by that General as he murdered my children.

  A fitting enough pastime for them. They are reputed child eaters and purveyors of unnatural powers that result in a metamorphosis over time. A change that fell on them when they chose to stand
by the Czar and discovered new sources of power at the instigation of those long lost.

  I suspect Aunty Clem to be French which would also fit the archetype. One of their national heroes was Gilles De Rais after all.

  A little unpleasantness to end this chapter will be bearable. I have benefited greatly from my time here, and I am now settled in my intent to right the wrongs done. In order to do so I will collect my resources and using those powers I make this world as close to what it was as it can be made, pace Johnson.

  And I will find out who stood with me in my trial and who stood against me and I will find someway to repay both in their own coin. I owe that to Johnson and my former friends.

  Clem waits. The day is dawning. It all starts today.

  9

  A Collective of Blotches

  Agent Stevens is a hefty lump of a man who smells of cigarettes and molasses. Where he gets his tobacco in the current world is a source of confusion for the younger members of the MDR Agent pool, and when asked directly he simply draws a circle in the air with a stubby finger.

  There’s a constant rumble of argument over whether it means something or if he’s just an enormous troll. Current balance points towards under bridge dwelling troll-dom.

  He possesses a red slash for a mouth whose ends seem to go halfway around his head.

  When he laughs, he resembles a joyful flip-lid bin. That great gape of a mouth sits below a snub nose and close-set grey eyes which currently scan across a sorry bunch of bee-stung Protectorate guards and their grouchy MDR liaison.

  Glittering with malicious humour.

  Just because he and Pole are old friends doesn’t mean that Stevens isn’t allowed a little levity at the absurdity of the situation in part brought about by his friend.

  Stevens launches his first good-natured barb the moment he sees him. “That looks uncomfortable Pole old buddy. What did the damage?” He indicates the angry raised welts on the Agent’s face and hands.