Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  “He’s going to make me carry him, isn’t he?”

  “Oh yes.” She confirms, with relish. “He doesn’t do ‘hardship’ and he doesn’t walk anywhere he can get someone else to carry him. And to be fair Lumpy, you’ve been carrying him about for the past hour without even noticing he’s in there so don’t really see it’s a problem for you?”

  I have to protest a little. Won’t do to think they’re too welcome. “Won’t Nan miss him?”

  “He’s still with her too. He’s that sort of a cat.” I look back to the village to see Hemlock sleeping next to Nan as she directs the village children in a bout of apple picking, whilst she sits in a rocking chair outside her cottage.

  Somehow, she’s simultaneously watching us over the top of her stick. Disconcerting old lady and her magical overweight tabby cat.

  Right.

  It’s all coming together. Clem's negotiations are over. She’s negotiated passage and a feline adjustment - cats go free. Might be all animals, bar humans and witches. Her mood is still stormy. There’s a burst of angry French from her towards Ariadne and a vicious jerk of the nose skywards to me, conducted with such righteous indignation that she is lucky the momentum doesn’t send her up through the clouds.

  I have to thank her, but what language to use?

  Choices, choices. My French is reprehensible, a gutter language deserves no great effort. German is probably a no-no from what I read of recent history, and Latin changed so much over time that my ‘either end of the spectrum’ knowledge gives me the option of sounding like the twelve tables or some Tolosan yokel with a head cold.

  Greek? No. Even I have quite the mastery picked up in a dark period. Looking at the snooty witch I decide to show off. I can thank her without her understanding a word of it. And if she thinks I’ve insulted her, mores the pity, for her. Ingratitude is a grave sin amongst the witches.

  Ugaritic it is. A fine language of my youth that I have a certain attachment to. A string of gutturals adeptly adapted to the message I am aiming for streams from my mouth in a torrent of beautiful high status Amorite.

  She mutters something in French about my lack of skill. Either that or she said I am incompetent.

  “I beg your pardon, Madam, I have many failings, but I do have the capacity to engage in effective discourse in a variety of civilised languages.” The strain of the unfamiliar structures on my throat is pleasant, like stretching after a long coach ride, and the connotations of the word I have used for ‘civilised’ amuse me as a linguistic joke at the expense of French.

  “And yet you do not speak French.”

  She replies in perfect hieratic Ugaritic. Using a form of ‘you’ which implies that I am a perfectly adequate Ostler and with an accent that would have done justice to an official of the high court. Leaving me floundering in the mud with a swish of her black rain cloak.

  I watch her walk away, unable for once to come up with a snappy retort in Ugaritic, English or even French.

  “I ain’t saying nothing Lumpy.” Ariadne comments.

  “Silence is a form comment all of itself young lady.” I check my new boots, my hat, adjust the strap on my pocket watch, a fine gift from the witches, and snatch the travelling contract prepared by Aunty Clem from out of the air where she was standing. “Maybe you should consider the merits of blessed silence.”

  “Whatever you say, Lumpy.” Innocent eyes. Bloody witches. “Time to go.”

  11

  Into the World-Woods

  The forest path shifts open with a crack of twig and a whip of branch and our journey begins. Even at the speed provided by our unorthodox travel method I would expect to see no one bar my new travel companions for the next two days. And trees of course. Let us not forget them.

  We make good time. Ariadne is a quick walker, with a light gait, experienced at dodging roots and potholes that seem to single me out.

  For a time we walk in silence. Then as the day wears on the questions begin.

  “So where are we going on this fine and fragrant day Master Vampire? I’m dying to find out what adventures we will be having!”

  How can someone sound both so sincere and so sarcastic at the same time. The girl has a gift. I take it at face value though. “First, a castle. Then, a city. Then we find whoever did this.” I point to the skies in the gaps between the trees. “And then I will remind them it is very rude to destroy modern civilisation without asking my permission.”

  “Pretty much what I thought. Other than the first bit and a little of the second.” She skips past to grab an apple which she bites into with relish, talking through a mulch of peel and flesh. “I’m all with you on the third though. Be nice to get back home sometime soon, have a nice bowl of boxtys and a cuppa with the family, look up and see some blue sky and a bit of raincloud without a tentacle trailing out of it. “

  “Yes,”

  “Wouldn’t have thought that would have been too appealin’ you to be straight with you Lumpy.” Crunch, masticate, swallow. “Sun and all that malarkey.”

  “Older you get the less those things bother you young lady, and I’m very old indeed. Barely even need to eat.” Pointed look at her messy apple consumption.

  “Glad to hear that Lumpy. Clem reckoned you were just taking me along as a snack, but I told her old Lumpy’s not like that. He’s honourable, will sort all this nastiness out and get me and Hemlock here back in time for tea.” She drops the core and kicks it off into the undergrowth.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “Soonish, anyhow.”

  “Is that even a word?” I heft my cat-filled sack, rough to the touch, laden with claws and teeth, and pick up the pace. The eternal cat, the veritable essence of cat in a bag. If Ariadne has time for apple-eating she has time to improve her walking pace.

  We walk the foretold path. Ariadne follows, whistling a happy little tune that begins to put my teeth on edge. I give her a look. People have withered into dust at one of my looks.

  “Don’t mind me,” she smiles.

  It continues as we walk and acquires lyrics. Something modern like the music at Nan’s. A promise to never give the listener up, or let them down. The sentiments are cloying.

  “Do you have to do that?” I grumble. “This might be an extended journey – the castle is just on the edge of your forest paths and your whistling is extremely distracting. And you singing is what’s the old term? Tuneless.” I squawk like a parrot. There’s a hiss of irritation from the trees and the path narrows and twists.

  She tuts. “Well that explains why Aunty Clem looked like a compost heap after the negotiations. Trees would have loved that noise.”

  “I wouldn’t have made it but for…”

  “You’d have been running around in the woods till the ash fell out of the air all by itself ya’ idiot. And as to the quality of me singing, that’s part of the charm my cheery old fangy. I sing, it makes me happy. It’s… intrinsic.” She warms to the subject. “Elemental. Couldn’t deny it if I tried on a fine day like this. Sort of like with you.”

  “Explain.”

  “If I asked you to stop drinking the blood and mangling yer’ French like a three-year-old eatin’ a ‘nana would you do it?”

  I sigh. The second point is indisputable. “Your point is well taken.”

  We walk for a time. I turn my thoughts to what is to come to blot out the medley of cacophony which steps light behind me. The path has returned to its natural breadth. Is it possible the trees like the witch’s singing?

  Or maybe it’s more of a warning that we’re coming through. There is other life here. I can sense it watching us. Watch out, there’s a vampire about!

  Further distraction follows as the path veers further East.A shuffling in my bag as weight shifts followed by a liquid chomping sound mixed with crunching and contented brrs. “He’s eating the supplies, isn’t he?”

  “Oh yes. But you don’t need them. Why do you think you’re carrying him? Or you were given supplies?”

 
“Blasted cat.”

  12

  The Woods at Night

  This is my first journey in the world woods. Time passes strangely here and my teeth itch. The woods are not happy that I walk these paths. Something about me is familiar and the trees do not like it. There are voices whispering, though Ariadne seems not to notice. Maybe they’re muttering special little threats for my attention.

  Bark on, little dogs. There is little you could do to me, even here. My own ghosts are with me at all times and shield me from horrors of others’ devising.

  Then there’s the way time works. We left in goodly time in the morning at the Witches’ Hamlet and we seem to have barely travelled any distance, however the afternoon has passed and even evening is rapidly departing. I try to estimate the passing of time by the movement of the clouds but they move erratically, as if they are snapshots of the sky pulled from different moments, pieced together like the mosaic of some perfect day.

  Surely there must be some practical use for this.

  As the shadows lengthen I notice Ariadne has stopped singing and she also looks upwards. I cast a glance her way and she pipes up. “One of the things I love about these forest journeys Lumpy.” Ariadne holds up a hand. “Quiet though. Don’t want them to notice.”

  “What?”

  She uncurls a finger to point to where she’s looking. There are breaks in the cover of leaves and through them it is just possible to make out stars, glittering in the pitch black of a clear sky.

  I am stopped in my tracks. “What the?”

  Ariadne smiles as she looks up and points. “I dunno Lumpy, but it’s a thing here. Nan says it’s because we’re walking through times when there are actual forests in the places we’re walkin’ over. So that means it’s the past most likely, as there’s no trees here now.”

  “I had thought the trees moved.” We did a study on it. Even had a few survivors who described the experience. Definite movement.

  “No, that would be daft.” She chuckles, “Walking trees? You’re quite the funny man Lumpy. Though they do move on occasion if they don’t like the company. But enough about that. Drink up them stars, not many opportunities in the world outside.”

  She’s right. The glistening lights up there make my cold dead heart warm with joy.

  Goodness.

  I hadn’t realised I’d missed the stars this much until now. The dark of my tomb in a frozen moment, oppressive and close. Pressing in on me as I lay helpless counting the grooves under my nails. The shifting red-tinged light of the now since I escaped gnawing at my sanity, an endless oppression of twilight broken only by claws and wings and teeth. The clarity of the blue-black sky is cleansing. Utterly remarkable. The cold twinkle of the stars above is like a draught of cold water to my soul.

  “It’ll be gone soon” Ariadne says, ruefully. “The things that live here will close us off from it once we start to get closer to the end of the paths. I don’t think we’re supposed to see them anymore, trees being trees and that.” She gives a wistful smile that makes her look almost childlike “I know that Nan says it’s the past we’re walking through, but wouldn’t it be grand if part of it’s the future and one day we all can look up and see the sky once again?”

  I nod. “That’s the aim dear girl. May even travel to those stars once we’ve addressed the issues here on Earth. That was another of my plans. Initial attempts were a little disappointing. A couple of minor stumbling blocks that I blame on the technology of the time, and the specific frailties of my volunteer explorers.” Rest their souls. My own get, always willing to try new things.

  “Eh?”

  “Sunlight seems to get brighter the further up you travel. And the rate of ascent…”

  Her stomach rumbles. “Yeah. It does that. Silly Vampire, not sure if you think too much or too little.”

  “I ask myself that question sometimes. It is possible I do both.”

  “Was that why your mates buried you alive and destroyed the evidence of where they did it?.”

  “That too is possible.”

  “Poor old Lumpy.” There’s a rumble from the witch’s stomach. “Hmm, I could go for a snack.”

  I smile and pass her a bread wrap having carefully avoided the swipe of claws as my hand entered the bag. “Cheese? I think.”

  “Thanks.” The leaves and branches rustle as they close above us, I see tiny red eyes and sharp multi-jointed fingers weaving them together. I swear there’s a wag of an insectile claw as the last thread is drawn.

  “pissoffvampire.”

  I glare upwards.

  “Whatcha glaring at?” Asks Ariadne.

  “Oh. Nothing dear girl. And you were right, the stars are gone now I’m afraid.” The moment catches and a long lost section of my memories flares. “An awful shame, she used to adore the stars.” Whoever she was.

  Ariadne gives me a look. “Okay. Well. It’ll be back. This is a long journey after all.” She takes a bite from her snack. “And ah, that’s humous, Lumpster. But it’s good anyway. Window on the future up there. We’re going to win!”

  We continue our journey.

  The future. I haven’t the heart to tell her that I recognised the pattern of stars from my youth.

  I don’t want to remember this. This must be the wood’s way of working through its inability to do me physical harm.

  My mind wanders to that time, when I am young and rich and powerful. A man of substance, a son of the King, retainers follow me in garments of linen. I look up at the same stars I see the woods with others around me, a woman, children and consider an offer from a man from the North. I seek her counsel and the comfort of her presence.

  The world is changing. Waves of raiders burn the settlements by the seas and march inland. Our farmers can no longer meet tithe, and starve. Our horses are too weak to pull the chariots.

  The visitor offers me power, I impale him a powerful upward thrust of my bronze-tipped ash spear. A killing blow, but he just laughs and slides himself off, leaving the offer hanging along with my jaw.

  I look about at the city below me, fortified behind cyclopean walls built by my grandfather’s father. The drought cannot hurt the stone yet the defenders are weak with hunger. Drought and fire, death and disease stalk my people. If the raiders come with their iron swords our city will fall.

  I speak to the woman who is concerned with the offer made, counting the stars on her fingers. The children dance and play under the stars amongst olive groves and fat grapes hang from trees in bunches. Watered from our pit wells.

  “They say I am important to them.”

  “You are more important to us.”

  Far away down in a valley clothed in withered vegetation and dying crops, priests from the temples chant imprecations to the Gods and carefully tended fires char sacrifices. Offerings to release us from this dilemma but to which the Gods have turned a blind eye for months.

  On the other side of the mountains, cities burn, and the invaders destroy everything. This offer is all we have.

  “But I cannot protect you, the chariot horses are dying, our men can barely bend a bow, if they come in war we cannot stop them and the other cities burn, the Wannax cowers in his fortress and his men fall like sheathes of wheat. The crops fail. If I accept the change I will be as they are and strong enough to protect you, and all our people. We can take what we need from the east, wait out this curse,” I gesture to the smoke rising in the distance. “If I do not we burn like the others.”

  “There are always the ships. The Great Kings of the East…”

  “Leave our people behind, the refugees? There are too many for us to take and where would we go? The Nesili strike south seeking the same nourishment we do and find nothing.”

  “If everything collapses we will still have the night skies and the Gods love us.”

  I shake my head and look up. I do not think the Gods are listening.

  The woman is beautiful in white robes with greying black hair scented with fragrant oils and has w
isdom lines around her deep brown eyes. I wish I remembered her name.

  The memories fade back into the grey mist of my present, only the pain of loss remains.

  “Lumpy?”

  I am stood in a clearing in a wood with a witch and a cat. The clouds above us, beyond the canopy, are red. This is the present once more. Or some time in the distant future.

  “I’m fine.” Curt, I instantly regret my rudeness.

  “K.” She sweeps on down the dirt track with its roots that grasp at me and not at her.

  There are things watching me from the woods again though they do not speak. I will ignore them. They have hurt me enough for now.

  13

  Three Across

  Nan sits at her desk under the neatly vaulted thatch roof of her cottage. She is peering gingerly at the books she has selected from the ‘special reserve’ she keeps up in her ‘thinking room’ and trying to use them to decipher the side notes that Grams' Marjorie has left in the book of great contracts.

  If the lost Master says he wants to help out with the state the world’s in, it’s sensible to do a little checking up. Particularly when there are so many Coven mistresses who saw fit to comment on him in the big book.

  She is also carefully crossing out the clauses relating to Master Albrecht as she goes, with a ruler and ballpoint pen. It helps her make sure she’s getting every last bit, after all you don’t want to find that you owe someone something just because you forgot to cross it out.

  The book is very unforgiving on that.

  In her reading she has found a total of five comments from Marjorie, including the one she noticed on her first read through when they were deciding whether they needed to rescue the idiot, and if so how.

  It’s only five amongst several hundred others left by Coven leaders going all the way back to the Bronze Age. Most of whom were inveterate gossips, so she’s discounting anything other than Marjorie’s little notes.