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

by Adam Golden

  “To your oars! Now!” he roared, and then caught the captain’s eye.

  “Dahshur, on Dancer!”

  Prancer, he turned again to seek out the creature, and was brought up short.

  “Vexin?” he asked, stunned.

  His power fled before shock as he came face to face with the Pylae gangster. The cadaverous man’s thin lips curved in a cruel smile as the bronze hilt of his sword punched forward and drove the light from Nicholas.

  Fresh Blood From Old Cuts

  Drip.

  He could barely breathe, the air was thick and stale, and yet sharp. Pulling it into his lungs was an effort, like climbing a mountain of sand, or breathing that sand. It stung his throat and burned his eyes. It hurt. He hurt. He hurt everywhere, a dull, radiating ache of pain which had been given time to settle.

  Drip, drip.

  The air stank of sweetness, cloying and nauseating, like an avalanche of rotting flowers. His stomach twisted as bile rose in his throat and was swallowed again. He felt odd, detached. Adrift. As though he were looking down on himself from outside. The pain and nausea felt far away, more like a memory of something long passed than something real.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  His mind was fractured and confused. He could feel something digging at him, coiling, pressing, burrowing its way through the parts of him that made him him. Some part of him wanted to gibber in panic, another part cheered at the freedom offered by oblivion. Mostly, he felt nothing more or less than a sublime disinterest, a sleepy sort of contentment.

  I may be dying, he thought, rolling the words around through his mind like an interesting flavor he hadn’t experienced before.

  Drip, drip.

  At first, he didn’t even hear the wet, irregular staccato. Once it registered, he tried to dismiss it the same way he dismissed the pain or the panic. Vaguely interesting perhaps, but utterly unimportant. Yet there it was again, insistent. It was a snag on the ragged edge of his consciousness, a burr on the smooth bubble of obscurity that surrounded him. Like an unreachable itch it grew more and more demanding of attention and satisfaction. It wouldn’t be ignored. It dragged at him like an anchor until finally the shield of lethargy around him burst like an overripe fruit.

  A foggy kind of awareness rushed at him, and a tidal wave of sensation crashed against the raw wound that was his mind, and he flinched. A static of creaks and groans harmonized with distant sounding wet crashes and splashes that threatened to drive him mad. The rough hardness beneath him writhed and rocked, swaying crazily and without ever pausing for a moment. He clamped useless, eyes closed, and forced the thick poisonous air through his battered lungs slowly, desperately clawing for control.

  Ship.

  The word burst through the harried maelstrom of thoughts and he clung to it like a raft. Yes. A ship. He had been on a ship, he was on a ship now. That was what those sounds meant. The biting pressure at his wrists and the metallic tinkling as he shifted meant something as well, and it was nothing good.

  Manacles.

  He was a prisoner. That was why he hurt, why he couldn’t move.

  A crimson flash exploded before his eyes, and Nicholas screamed. Something sharp bit into his forearm. Man, or beast? He didn’t know, but whatever it was bit deep and tore as it went. He felt it scrape bone, felt the warm wet run of blood.

  Nicholas pulled at the chains, and he tried to thrash. Nothing. He screamed. If it were some animal, maybe he could frighten it. Desperate, numb fingers traced the chain between his wrists until they found the heavy iron ring set into the wood between his legs. He yanked and jerked, twisted and pulled. He might as well have tried to lift the ship. His muscles were water. Breath came in faster gasps as unthinking terror rose in him.

  He cried out again as the unseen predator tore a gash in his thigh. A rasping sibilant hiss sounded beside his ear, and Nicholas flinched as he tried to hold in the ragged sobs that strained to tear free.

  Real understanding still eluded him, hovering just out of reach, but he grasped enough to know dread. He threw his pitiful strength against the bonds that held him, thrashing and snarling wildly for a few fevered moments before the burst of terror-born vigor was spent and he was left panting impotently.

  A soft, breathy whisper froze Nicholas solid. It sounded pleased, it sounded like laughter.

  “You used to shine like the sun.” The words had a soft, crumbling sound, like a breeze through dry leaves, punctuated by the same sharp hiss he’d heard before.

  “They were all so impressed, so fawning.” Another sharp intake of air. “Brilliant, blessed, genius! What would they say of you now?”

  His attacker’s unseen blade flicked out again, and Nicholas felt a shallow rent open on the side of his neck.

  “Chained, shit-spattered, quivering like a leaf and snarling like an animal, the great prodigy!” A peel of high, cackling laughter that was never born of any sane mind filled the gloom and made Nicholas shiver.

  “Who . . . who is that?” He meant it as a demand, but what issued from Nicholas’ throat was a pitiful squeaking plea that sickened him.

  “Hark! The mighty maneuverer speaks!” The voice, so thick with malice and derision, was louder now, stronger with the force of its inexplicable hatred.

  A faint, sickly-orange light flared, and Nicholas’ head shot up, searching for the source, for anything he could cling to. He couldn’t make it out. The chain that held his wrists held him tightly against the floor, and he couldn’t rise enough to see.

  “Please . . .” he tried again. “Whatever ill I have done you—”

  Another sharp sting laid his cheek open and Nicholas shrieked.

  “Anything for the little prince.” The words weren’t loudly said, but they cut cleanly through both Nicholas’ plea and his screams.

  “Everything for you! Nothing else matters. No one else!”

  Nicholas’ fingernails bit into his palms unnoticed, his teeth drew blood from his lips and he felt nothing. The shock was too total, whatever was left of his mind tried to flee from it, to deny it, it couldn’t be. That voice, beneath the hate, under the madness, he knew that voice. He knew it as well as he knew his own. “Tulio?”

  Another long sharp intake of breath sounded and there was silence.

  “I am here, Master.” The words came in the calm measured bass that Nicholas had known most of his life. Without a trace of the mad cruelty that had been there just moments before.

  The orange light flared as Nicholas was about to entreat his friend again, to ask him why. A flurry of jagged shadows danced across the wooden ceiling and his head spun madly. He gulped fetid air and pressed himself harder against the floor, trying to anchor himself and stop the spinning. It worked, to a point.

  There was a shuffling rustle close by.

  Nicholas turned his head to follow and found Tulio sitting at his side.

  The captive sorcerer barely stifled the scream that bubbled up as he took in the sight of his oldest friend.

  The other man had been torn to ribbons. Dozens of long ragged cuts gaped and oozed on his face and neck, as though he’d been mauled by some great clawed monster. Strips of flesh seemed to have been flayed from him, peeled off his naked arms and torso. Wet bone showed through where whole chunks of flesh had been scooped away. The cheek had been gashed open on his left side, nearly to his ear, giving the look of a ghastly half smile that exposed tendons, muscles, and back teeth. Matted bits of hair and chunks of flesh clung to the raw bloody mess that extended from the top of his head to just above his brow there the flesh seemed to have been roughly torn away.

  His oldest friend’s right eye held the chained wizard in a terrible thrall. He couldn’t make himself look away. The bloody, unblinking orb swung and bobbed with every movement, dangling against Tulio’s cheek by a fibrous bloody cord of nerves, and with each movement it gave a wet squelch as it settled against the cheek again.

  Nicholas cinched his eyes closed, struggling against what they’d shown him
. His head spun, he gulped and spasmed, trying to fight it down, and then he turned his face away and vomited violently, spraying the decking with every bit of bile his stomach could produce.

  “By . . .” he tried, his stomach lurched and he wretched again. “By God,” he gasped, “who has done this to you?”

  “Who?” The word came out as though he’d never heard it before, as though he were trying to puzzle out its meaning. “Who.” There was a sharpness there now, an edge of the madness he’d heard before. “Who?”

  A rain of blood, spittle, and God knew what else pelted Nicholas’ face as the shattered remnant of the man who had been his brother shot forward, looming inches above his face.

  “You ask that?” the monstrous visage roared. “You? You. You!”

  The word was hurled like a stone from a ballista and it struck Nicholas with as much force, too. He wanted to deny it, of course he hadn’t done this. He could never do this. He would never do this, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “It was you. Always you.” The voice was calm again, but strained, as though whatever remained of the Tulio he’d known was struggling against whatever had overtaken him. “Everything for you. My life. My soul! Snatched away and thrown at your feet like some cheap trinket, and you took it as no more than your due!”

  “Tulio, I . . .” The words were ripped from his flesh.

  The greasy pale light had dimmed. Nicholas could barely make out the ruined flesh puzzle that hung before him.

  “Pa? Are you alright? Pa, wake up!”

  Nicholas shuddered as Tulio’s voice broke and became higher, like that of a girl, or a child.

  “Pa.” At first Nicholas didn’t recognize the sound that followed, and then he realized Tulio was sobbing.

  The other man had moved away, but the sound of his muffled wailing found Nicholas through the smoky gloom.

  “She took him, took me, she took everything!” The anguish in that voice hit the sorcerer like a slap. “I never even fought, I just forgot him!”

  The fog burned away, and terrible clarity struck like a hammer blow between Nicholas’ eyes. The pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t even realized was there clicked into place and Nicholas knew, to his horror, he understood.

  Fulvia.

  “Mother,” he muttered.

  In a blink, Tulio was on him, the other man’s bulk settled down on his chest with a thud that drove the air from his lungs.

  “Yesss! Mother! Dear Mother!” he hissed, his one remaining eye bright with the fire of insanity. “Gave you everything, destroyed everything. Took everything, my family, my mind, she gave it all to you, like a feast day treat!”

  There were tears in Nicholas’ eyes now, terror beat inside him like a drum but the horror of what had been done to his friend, to his only friend, threatened to undo him. “Tulio . . . I never knew. You must believe—” he begged.

  “Oh, of course you didn’t,” Tulio roared, throwing flayed limbs about wildly, spraying gore everywhere. “You never looked! You didn’t want to see! Too busy plotting, too busy scheming. Worse than she was! Worse! Mother, for all her faults, for all her evil, she at least knew what she was!”

  “No!” Nicholas screamed, or tried to scream. It came out a weak, sour croak. “No. No! I love you.”

  “Love?” The ruined specter atop of him sneered. “Love?” he paused, rocking and quivering violently atop Nicholas, a considering sort of look twisting his pulped, gruesome face. “Maybe you thought it so,” he allowed after a time. “Maybe you’re so diseased, so polluted by her that you genuinely thought that, but it was never so. I was your tool, Nikki, your weapon. I remember Nicholas. I remember every foul deed done in service to a duty that was never mine. Fulvia may have taken my soul from me, brother, but it was you that shredded it. You that cast it into the filth, not her.”

  The point of Tulio’s weapon pressed, unseen, against Nicholas’ stomach. Twisting gently as though Tulio meant to bore a hole through him. “The atrocities I have done in your name hang around my neck like millstones,” he said softly. “Oceans of innocent blood stain me! I thought I could never be clean. Never, never . . .”

  Tulio’s squat, heavy frame ground down on Nicholas’ ribs as the other man rocked, excitedly muttering, “Never . . . never . . .” over and over. His ruined right eye bobbed and slapped at his cheek with every movement while his good left eye blazed, staring at Nicholas, though the captive couldn’t have said what it actually saw.

  “A way!” the broken man exclaimed making Nicholas jump. “Found it! The spirit, Bishop, spirit!” He grinned, and Nicholas thought the hosts of Hell itself would recoil from the sight.

  “You know the words, Nikki. Spirit!” the other man said excited, manic. “The spirit is willing; the flesh is weak! We never stood a chance, anchored down by this . . . this . . . filth!” he said, shaking his sliced and gouged forearm over Nicholas’ face, spraying the other man with gore again.

  “It came to me after Byzantium, like a vision!” The mad fire in Tulio’s remaining eye made Nicholas want to gibber in terror. “We can escape, Nikki. Both of us! Cut away the anchors! We can climb out of the muck! All we must do is shed our weakness. I’ve made a start already, it’s so freeing, Nikki.”

  Sweet Jesus! Nicholas thought. He’s going to skin me alive!

  “None of that now!” Tulio roared.

  Nicholas hadn’t realized he’d started chanting softly under his breath. He wasn’t even aware of what incantation it was. Anything, anything that could offer him some hope.

  “Can’t you smell it, Nikki?” the ghoul asked through another manic tittering cackle. “Don’t you recognize it? I prepared it for you enough times.”

  The ruin of his brother rocked on him, watched expectantly and crowed in triumph when he saw recognition dawn on Nicholas’ face. The smell, that sickly sweet smoky tang in the air . . .

  “Hazel bark, mistletoe, and dried poppy, in a bronze brazier,” Tulio said, still giggling. “How many times did I mix this for you for some trance or other? I used a bit more of the poppy than usual this time. That’s why you’re dizzy, having trouble focusing.”

  Once his attention had been brought to it, Nicholas recognized the stink of the pungent smoke immediately, and a hopeless wail leaked from him. A strong practitioner could do almost anything with time and training, and focus, but if he couldn’t focus . . .

  “I knew you’d resist. I knew you’d have trouble letting go. That’s why I sent your monster overboard, it’s why I helped these pirates capture you. I’m going to save you, Nikki. I’m going to save us both!”

  “Tulio, please,” Nicholas gasped through the horror that clutched at his throat like a fist. He felt the press of a sharp metal edge against the outside of his right hand and lost himself in screaming as it sliced.

  “Stop! Please, oh . . . stop!!” He was sniveling now, writhing as much as he could, chained and held by the other man’s bulk.

  “Shhhh,” the mad ghost of his friend soothed as though he were a child frightened of shadows, and while he did that, the force pressing down on the knife Nicholas couldn’t see increased, biting into the flesh of the tops of his fingers.

  The sound was that of a cleaver through a tough carrot. A muted thunk was all there was to mark the separation of Nicholas’ fingers from his hand. He barely even felt it aside from the initial sharp sting. Tears ran down his face as Tulio laughed his mad laugh and sprayed his captive with new waves of blood and spittle. This was how he would end? Butchered by a lunatic in the stinking hold of a ship? This was the end of all of his work, all of his influence and power had come to this?

  “I loved you,” the voice startled him before he realized it was his own, not the sniveling begging whimper he’d come to think of as his, but his own true voice, calm, cultured, measured. The voice of a man who was listened to, respected. “I loved you more than I have ever loved another person,” he said, voice heavy with sadness. “You were my brother, I would have done anything for you. Given
anything for you, but my brother is lost, as dead as if you’d put that knife in your heart at the start.”

  Anger rose in Nicholas and sadness turned to scorn as he sneered up into the stunned creature’s ruined face.

  “You’re not saving anyone!” he spat. “You’ve mutilated yourself, and now you would butcher me and call it salvation. It isn’t, it’s madness and bloodlust. Bloodlust that was always there!”

  Tulio shook his head, spraying gore in great arcs as he denied Nicholas’ charges.

  “You called yourself my tool,” the chained man said. “So be it, but you were a tool well-suited to the work! Look how you revel in the carnage about you. Look! See the slaughter you’ve designed all on your own.”

  Tulio quivered and spasmed in his silent denials for a moment, and then he became eerily still, and an expansive sigh flowed out of him, filling the little chamber of horrors.

  “I had hoped . . .” the ruin of a man said, genuine sadness showing in the remnants of his once proud face. “I should have known. I’m sorry, Nikki. You cannot be saved. Even Hell would spit out a soul as damned as yours . . . as ours. There is only one way left.”

  Tulio’s frayed right arm lifted, and Nicholas felt his breath catch. There in his oldest friend’s blood-slick fist was a wickedly curved talon of midnight-black steel and horn. A weapon that had offered him hope and strength so often, but now radiated menace and promised doom. Nicholas’ dagger, as soon as his eyes settled on it he knew what was to come, and all the fear and dread he’d known to this point was a candle beside the sun in comparison to the horror that writhed within him now.

  Tulio set the sharp tip of the knife against his former master’s heart and leaned over it, pressing in close to Nicholas’ face. “You can spend eternity with your demon. Justice, if there can be any such for you.”