The Grimoire of Yule (The Shadows of Legend Book 1)

by Adam Golden

  The girl, Lila, might have been beautiful if she’d ever been properly fed, or bathed, or cared for in any regard. As it was, the pitiful creature that writhed and twisted on a hemp mat befouled by her own filth was more the desiccated, skeletal remains of a child than the real thing. It was a horror. He’d seen mummified remains in his travels, yet here it was as though the mummies had forgotten to die first.

  Nicholas hobbled to the child’s side as quietly as he could and set a hand on her thin, stringy hair. She was burning up; the heat was almost uncomfortable on his hand. The pain must have been incredible.

  “Shhh . . .” Nicholas ventured softly.

  Pale, senseless eyes snapped open and cast about blindly. “Mother?” the word came out in a hiss so weak that it barely registered to Nicholas at all.

  “Rest child,” he said softly. “It will be over soon, just rest.”

  The girl made a noise that was half a whimper and half a sigh. Nicholas pressed the tip of his black blade over her heart, bent, kissed her burning brow, and pressed the blade home. Thick drops of anguished tears fell on the girl’s still, somehow serene face as Nicholas shuddered with revulsion and grief. He straightened himself after a moment, gave Lila one last look, and turned to leave, moving smoothly, his limp forgotten.

  “Please don’t go.” Nicholas wasn’t sure he’d even heard it at first. But he paused to listen. “Please. Not yet,” came a pained whisper

  The boy he found in the cubicle across from that which had belonged to Lila was not quite as skeletal as she had been, but it was a near thing. He was missing hair in patches, his eyes were sunken hollows in his skull and he lay limp, too weak to do much more than pull in the breath for his plea.

  “Lord Mors . . . please . . . mama said you took her to the underworld. Can I go too? She said . . . said it was pretty. Please lord.”

  Mors

  The delirious child thought he was a pagan death God. Nicholas didn’t know whether to laugh or scream in anguish.

  ‘When you’re barefoot in Hell, all there is for it is to keep on walking.’

  He set his hand softly on the boy’s brow, took a deep breath and swallowed the scream welling inside him.

  “Yes, my son, a pretty place,” he said, silently offering a prayer for the poor creature’s soul “Be still. You’ll see your mamma soon.” The boy sighed, and a smile curved his thin bloodless lips as Nicholas’ knife drank deep a second time.

  —

  A stream of wildly cheering, laughing children burst from the ruined legion hospital scattering joyfully in every direction. They ran, turned cartwheels, and roughhoused. They pulled up wildflowers and wondered at the beauty of the subtle pinks and oranges thrown across the early morning sky by the rising sun, but mostly they chattered liked a flock of furied magpies about the miracle. The Light had come in the night and the pain, the fear, the hunger, all of it was washed away in an instant. They were healed! They were free! The Light was so kind, so gentle, it told them to go, go before the bad things came. Go and be daring, it said. So, they went. They went as fast as they could and even those who noticed the smoke never stopped to wonder about the fires, or noticed the strange horned shadows stalking among the flames, hunting the frantic running healers.

  Under The Masks

  Nicholas staggered as someone unseen growled a string of curses and pushed their way past. Off balance and pulled along by the press of bodies, he collided with a knot of roughly dressed women, each carrying a heavily laden reed basket. As though they shared a single mind, the women glared daggers at him. Mixed as it was with the sounds of hundreds of voices, the creaks and groans of carts, the squawks and grunts of caged chickens and haltered pigs, and the braying of heavily loaded mules, he still heard more than one spitting venom about “fools” and “clumsy oafs”.

  The stoop he adopted to disguise his natural height became an apologetic bow and the act of pulling the hood of his stolen cloak further down his face turned into an repentant knuckling of his forehead.

  The women, unmollified, sniffed disdainfully and turned back to their chattering.

  Nicholas let out a slow, calming breath and let the tide of humanity seeking entrance to the gate pull him along with it.

  A ball of ice cold lead weighed in the fugitive Bishop’s stomach as he grew closer to the great portal. The walls were higher than he recalled, and the gate was attended by four imperial soldiers, all in burnished armor and holding long spears. Those steel spear heads seemed especially sharp, and the bored, sweeping gazes of the soldiers seemed searching and all too knowing to Nicholas. This was no country village or out of the way town where one had only rumor and suspicion to contend with. This was Byzantium, the greatest city in the region, soon to become the seat of the Empire. Within a year this place would be the home of the Emperor himself, some even said he meant to rename the place after himself. Byzantium or Constantinople, whatever it was called, for Nicholas and his companions it was the center of the spider’s web. There would be those who knew his face here, those who knew him, and knew of the events at Nicaea. Things would have to be handled delicately. If they bungled here they would almost certainly die, and no amount of money, influence, or tricks of his art would save them.

  He looked back over his shoulder and scanned the crowd until he spotted Tulio’s grim face packed among a bustling knot of dockworkers. His old friend’s wounds were gone, as though they’d never been. The final Mending Nicholas had performed before they’d fled Agelaus’ hospital washed away every trace of injury. In body, Tulio was fitter and healthier than a man ten years his junior, and yet somehow his old friend still seemed drawn and colorless. There was a raggedness to the man’s face, as though he’d aged years in the last few days, and his inexplicable volatility hadn’t eased at all. If anything, he’d become even more withdrawn and prickly. When their eyes met, Nicholas saw a faint grimace pass the other man’s features before turning to a flat, almost challenging stare. What was his problem?

  He ground his teeth in irritation as he broke eye contact. There was nothing to be done for it now. Once they’d entered the city and he’d slipped into his banker, they’d find somewhere private and then he and Tulio would have this, whatever it was, out.

  The Bishop turned to look over his other shoulder and gasped. An icy tendril of alarm slid down his spine, he only managed to keep from crying out by clamping his teeth down with an audible click.

  Twenty yards behind and to his left Prancer stood among the milling crowd, superficially blending in but definitely, if faintly, wrong to an eye that knew to look. The revenant was too still, too sturdy, like a statue swathed in fabric. The crowd seemed to feel the wrongness and broke around him, unconsciously shying away so that there was a subtle island of null space around the creature. Worse, Prancer’s hood had slid back so that when Nicholas turned to look he was greeted with a peak of the undead thing’s pale, maggot-white visage. Protruding, startled eyes filled with blood, and the lurid angry red burns and bruising under the heavy hangman’s rope that still adorned the thing’s neck stood out for any who cared to see. How had no one seen?

  The bishop hastily gripped the hilt of the black knife at the small of his back. His silent command hit the creature like the crack of a whip, but it had as much effect as if he’d slapped a stone wall. Regardless, gloved hands yanked the edge of the hood back into its place and something in the monster’s baring suddenly seemed diffident. Good. After the series of calamities beginning at Pylae, Nicholas refused to separate the group again, though with the ever-present threat of discovery from Prancer, and Tulio’s newfound attitude, the Bishop thought perhaps he might have been better served if he’d gone on his own.

  As the inexorable flow of people and goods grew closer to the gate, Nicholas kept his head down, doing his best to melt into the sea of faces. Up ahead a woman cried out as something heavy toppled over with a splintering crash that brought Nicholas’ head up. In the middle of the lane, up near the gate, a large, heavy barrow
that seemed to have been loaded with apples and pears lay on its side, its contents spread all over the road. A tall, spare man in the rough homespun garb of a farmer, presumably the cart’s owner, seemed to be trying in vain to both right the cart and gather his wares before too much was trampled on or scooped up by the milling throng. The little tableau held no interest for Nicholas, but what he saw beyond the scrambling farmer and his overturned cart definitely did.

  He was close enough to make out the scene at the gate, and what he saw made his stomach clench. As each traveler approached the gate, one of the soldiers, their officer by the insignia he wore, peered at every face and then looked down at a piece of fresh parchment in his hand. Where hood, hat, or cowl obscured, they were roughly pulled away and every face was searched.

  Nicholas was suddenly glad of the slim rations he and Tulio had been forced to endure these last weeks. He was sure if there had been anything in his stomach to throw up it would be all over his boots now. He knew what face was on the soldier’s paper, knew it as surely as a foretelling, but what could he do?

  He cast about for anything at all. He stumbled again as people behind him collided with his back, he’d stopped moving but there was nowhere to go. The group was too tightly packed to slip free without raising a clamor. That would point him out like a beacon fire, if he could win free at all. Someone jostled him roughly again and Nicholas found his hand coiled tightly around the hilt of his black knife.

  ‘Push me again, just once,’ the animal inside him snarled, and the Bishop, appalled at the thought, forced his hand from the knife, though not without great difficulty.

  He was no street tough, lashing out with violence because of a slight or an annoyance. He didn’t kill for offense like some wild brute. He was a priest, a man of God! All that he’d done had been done to help him better serve people like these here. It was! Fear had him by the throat, that was the cause. It must be. The terror bubbling inside him like a boiling cauldron had spilled over and he’d lashed out, or nearly had anyway.

  Up ahead, the farmer had righted his barrow, gathered what there was left to gather of his wares, and the speed of the progression to the gate picked up once again. Nicholas pulled a collar that had grown too tight away from his throat as his eyes swung frantically in every direction, searching for any trace of a way out. Nothing. There were less than a dozen people between himself and what he was sure would be instant detainment and escort to a cell. If there was any saving grace at all, it was that if that officer had his picture, he likely knew who he was and people of his station were unlikely to be killed out of hand. He would be taken, probably none too gently, but taken and held for interview by a magistrate and then likely a trial. If he couldn’t escape being taken, he must prepare to defend himself in other ways.

  Nicholas was still formulating the words he planned to say to the magistrate, still tweaking and ordering the explanations he meant to deliver and the crimes he meant to hurl at Arius’ feet when he was stopped in his shuffling by a spear cast in his path.

  “Name.” The demand came out with all the grace of a bear’s growl and brought Nicholas’ head around as though he’d been slapped.

  The man holding the damning bit of parchment was a thick, wide, bluff-seeming sort who looked carved of weather-worn stone. He wore the insignia of a junior officer and the perpetual sour glare of a man performing a dirty task which he wanted over as quickly as possible.

  “Come on, come on. Maybe you’ve got all day but I don’t,” the officer growled as he wrenched the hood off Nicholas’ head roughly.

  The Bishop tensed, awaiting the exclamation of recognition that had to come and the rush of soldiers that would follow. He caught a glimpse of the image on the paper and all hopes that it would be a muddy, unclear depiction were dashed to pieces. Even the momentary peek he’d seen had been damningly, obviously him. He had his hands together and half raised in surrender before he realized that the clamor he’d expected still hadn’t come. Another second oozed by, still no alarm. Nicholas didn’t understand it. He met the officer’s bored, surly gaze with what must have been slacked-jawed wonderment. The soldier’s eyes slid once more from the paper to his face and back and offered a contemptuous flick of his fingers.

  “On your way. Well? Go on, move!” the soldier barked, exasperated at the fool before him.

  Nicholas staggered through the gate in a haze of shock and wonder. What just happened? How? It was a miracle! He’d seen the drawing; his own reflection didn’t capture his likeness any better. Surely a week of travel dirt and an untrimmed beard were not enough to disguise him so completely? Perhaps the officer’s eyes began to fail him? He did have the look of a veteran, an old soldier on his last post before pension no doubt. A flood of nervous exhilaration pounded through Nicholas’ veins. He’d been sure it was over. Sure he was caught and then he’d . . . His joy turned to ashes in his mouth. In all his concern about himself, he’d overlooked the next most obvious calamity threatening them.

  Prancer!

  Perhaps the officer’s vision was poor enough to miss identifying Nicholas as himself. That was possible, but unless he, and everyone else within viewing distance were struck blind, Prancer’s monstrous and unnatural nature would be plain the second the creature’s cowl was thrown back.

  Nicholas tried to hang back around the inside of the gate, but the press of people was no better inside than out and the insistent shoves of the soldiers on guard kept everyone milling forward.

  He managed to catch Tulio’s eye once more and gestured as urgently as he could without making a spectacle of himself. The manservant looked back over his shoulder toward Prancer and then back to Nicholas. The Bishop saw understanding bloom in his friend’s eyes, and just for a fraction of a second there was something else. Pleasure? Why? No time. There was no time.

  Nicholas banished his friend’s apparent madness from his mind and thought furiously. What could he do? In the crowd before the gate, one of the dockworkers in the knot of men that Tulio had joined suddenly bellowed and through a wild haymaker at the man to his right.

  “Get off my damned foot!” he yelled as the other man bounced back toward him, held on his feet by the press of those around them.

  Nicholas felt the grin on his lips before the plan was even formed and leaked out in muttered syllables without the need to recall them. The old Greek cadences came out in what would have sounded like a series of short wheezes to any interested enough to listen “Eris, bring your clash and clamor. Discord, sow your seed. Mother of Strife and Disharmony, let your wrath be freed.”

  Inside his cloak, Nicholas’ right hand was cupped and, as the spell took form, he felt the weight of the invisible point of power settle there. With as minute a throwing motion as he could manage, the sorcerer cast the unseeable globe of force out into the waiting throng of travelers, and then turned and walked deeper into the city before he found a discreet place to lean, wait and, watch.

  —

  At the gate, the man who’d thrown a punch at his fellow, roared again, and this time took the other man by the throat.

  “I won’t tell you again!” he screamed, red faced.

  This time the other man would have none of being bullied and drove the hard side of his open hand into the other’s throat.

  “How ‘bout that? Huh?” he yelled back as the choking man dropped, sputtering to the ground, before another of the party, obviously a friend of the choking man, sent him to the ground with a hard right hand of his own.

  The falling man crashed into others, and people were jostled, baskets were upset, both travelers and goods littered the cobbles. Explosions of angry curses, injured cries, shoves, and thrown fits radiated outward from the two men like the expanding ripple from a tossed stone in a once calm pond.

  “My washing!” one young farm wife cried, face twisted and ugly with rage as she set to kicking the man who’d knocked it from her arms as he fell.

  “Look out, you!” an old wagon driver called, lashing th
ose around his team with the long goad he used to keep the animals moving.

  A group of four or five people afoot pulled the driver from his bench and set to kicking him savagely as they screamed abuse down at him. In the space of a minute the area before Byzantium’s western gate had devolved into a wild melee. Friends and family members erupted into violent brawls as usually unnoticed sleights and old petty grievances came to the surface, fresh and magnified by Nicholas’ discord charm. Strangers without the slightest cause set on those closest to them with senseless abandon, each convinced they were righting what suddenly seemed like grievous and unforgivable offences.

  The legionary officer at the gate bellowed like an enraged bull, screaming for order. He laid about with a truncheon he produced from somewhere, but with little effect. Another moment more and he blared an order and led his small command of armored spearmen into the fray, smashing down resistance where he met it, and he met it everywhere.

  The second the gate was free of its guard, Nicholas’ hand closed about his black knife’s hilt again. Another silent command struck Prancer, and the revenant moved quick, sure-footed toward the abandoned portal. Maddened humans, who had the bad luck to find themselves in the creature’s path, flew in every direction, cast aside like wheat chaff in a spring gale.

  —

  Tulio and Prancer joined Nicholas where he waited, the old bishop wearing a slight, relieved smile that his plan had worked. A smile that melted into a sour grimace at Tulio’s first words to him.

  “Well, don’t we just bring joy wherever we land?” the old manservant sneered in a low bitter voice.

  “That’s enough!” The words burst from Nicholas like a whip crack, his tolerance shredded by the constant assault of bitter glances and caustic comments from the man he relied on more than anyone.

  “What is it? What is your problem, Tulio?” the Bishop demanded, careless of the congested street or the gawking public. “Where does this ill temper and animosity come from all of a sudden?”