by Tim Waggoner
Moments later, shouts of surprise and anger drifted from the battlefield as whatever enchantment the Telyavs had worked took effect.
Qarakh raised his saber barely in time to parry a sword thrust aimed directly at his heart. Alexander moved with a speed and grace beyond anything the Mongol warrior had ever seen. He was hard-pressed to counter the Ventrue’s moves, let alone make any attacks of his own. Worst of all, he had the sense that Alexander was merely toying with him, and that he could move even more swiftly if he wished.
Kill him! his Beast shrieked. Kill him now!
For once, Qarakh would have loved to give in completely to his Beast’s wishes, but even with the additional strength and speed he had gained from Aajav’s sacrifice, he knew he was still no match for his ancient opponent. He could continue fighting as savagely as he could, but he knew it was only a matter of time before Alexander defeated him. Qarakh would survive only as long as Alexander was amused by their sparring match. The moment the Ventrue grew bored, he would deliver Qarakh unto the Final Death.
Qarakh was not dismayed by this knowledge. Part of him thought he deserved to die for his foolish belief in a dream of creating a tribal nation of Cainites in Livonia, and more, for taking the life of his beloved brother and sire. Even so, he was determined to fight on to the last, if for no other reason than to honor Aajav’s memory. But before he could swing his saber at Alexander again, shouts erupted from the combatants around them, both pagans and Christians.
The ground they stood upon—which had already been damp and muddy from last night’s rain—had suddenly grown more so. It continued to liquefy until horses and foot soldiers sank. Mounts whinnied in frustration and fear as they slid into muck up to their bellies. Their riders yanked on the reins and shouted commands for their steeds to pull free from the mire, but the horses were unable to escape.
Those warriors afoot fared just as poorly. The bog swallowed them up to their knees, and the more they struggled, the deeper they sank. Some were in up to their waists, some up to their chests. Of all of the assembled warriors, only Alexander and Qarakh still stood upon solid ground.
The Ventrue glared at Qarakh. “I knew you would never give up witchcraft!”
Qarakh fought to contain his fury. Not at Alexander, but at Deverra and her fellow Telyavs, for surely this was an enchantment of their making.
“I have nothing to do with this,” Qarakh said. “I commanded the Telyavs to stay out of this battle.”
Alexander sneered. “Of course you did.”
“Upon my honor, Ventrue. Besides, this spell is working as much against my people as it is yours.”
Alexander considered this for a moment. “In that case, then, either your sorcerers lost control of their enchantment, or they have turned against you and your entire tribe.”
Qarakh glanced down at the ground beneath their feet. It was difficult to tell, but it looked as if the solid earth extended in a rough circle around them for a radius of fifteen feet or so.
“So what do we do now?” Alexander asked. “Declare a draw and resume our conflict on another night? Or should we combine forces long enough to slay the Telyavs? That way they wouldn’t be able to interfere with us when next we fight.”
Qarakh bared his teeth. “Nothing could ever convince me to ally with you for any reason, Ventrue. I have come to know you too well.”
“Pity, but then I can’t say as I blame you.” Alexander looked around at the knights and pagans trapped in the grayish-brown soup, many of whom continued to try to kill one another, despite the fact that they could barely move.
Qarakh recalled something Grandfather had said during a kuriltai: Cut off the head and the body will die.
“I have a proposition,” Qarakh said.
Alexander turned to him and raised an eyebrow.
“We continue this fight, just the two of us. And whichever one survives shall be declared the victor of this battle.”
“An intriguing notion, as well as an amusing one. But regardless of the outcome, how can we be sure our respective armies will abide by the result?”
“I do not think they will have a choice,” Qarakh said. “For whatever reason, it seems that the two of us are destined to decide the outcome of this battle. Why else would we still be standing on dry ground?”
“Far be it from me to defy destiny.” So saying, Alexander lunged forward and swung his sword in a vicious arc, the blow clearly aimed at Qarakh’s neck.
The Mongol moved to block the strike and then—
—found himself elsewhere.
He stood in a grove of trees draped in shadow, and he no longer held his saber. The sky above was a dull, featureless gray, and the air was still and stagnant. He sniffed and smelled the stink of decaying flesh mingled with the acrid odor of burning wood and the tang of hot metal.
“What sorcery is this?” His voice was muffled by the dead air, almost as if he had spoken the words underwater.
“Mine.” A robed figured emerged from the shadows between two trees. Deverra.
Despite the strangeness of the situation, Qarakh was glad to see her at first, until he remembered: the battlefield… the bog… Alexander… “I do not care what this place is or why you have brought me here. You must send me back at once! I was—”
“About to face Alexander in single combat,” Deverra finished for him. She walked over to Qarakh, reached out and took his hand. He surprised himself by letting her. She smiled. “Who do you think arranged it?”
“Then the bog was created by Telyavic magic.”
Deverra nodded. “It’s a spell we use to help draw water to a farmer’s field in times of drought or famine. We don’t usually try to concentrate so much water in one place, though.”
“Why would you work such an enchantment on the battlefield?”
“Because if I didn’t, the tribe was going to be defeated by Alexander, and you…” She squeezed his hand but didn’t complete the thought, not that she needed to. “It was shown to me.”
Qarakh wanted to ask by whom, but instead he asked, “Why did you leave the camp?” Why did you leave me?
“If you were to defeat Alexander, there were certain preparations that needed to be made. That is why I have brought your spirit here, to the Grove of Shadows.”
Qarakh’s eyes had adjusted to the dimness of the grove—though if he was a spirit here, then he didn’t have physical eyes that needed to adjust, did he?—and he could more clearly make out the trees around them. They were not trees of wood, but instead formed of intertwining coils of intestines and other organs, splintered lengths of bleached bone and sharp-edged leaves that appeared to have been made from blue-gray steel. He looked down at the ground and saw it was formed not of earth, but rather taut skin inlaid with runes of metal that resembled intricate tattoos. Beneath his feet, he felt a slight rise and fall, and he realized that the ground was breathing.
Despite his earlier assertion to himself that he would not, he asked, “Where is this place?”
“As I said, the Grove of Shadows. I have brought you here to talk to someone. Someone who can help you defeat Alexander.”
This was disconcerting but not wholly unheard of. Deverra was a shaman and part of the shaman’s lot was to travel the spirit realms. Still, this charnel grove felt wrong to Qarakh.
“But what is happening to my body while my spirit is here? Is it not defenseless against Alexander?”
“This is a place of the soul and the mind. No time shall pass in the physical world while you are here.”
Qarakh didn’t see how such a thing was possible, but if Deverra said it was so, then he believed her. “Take me to this person I am to meet, then.”
There was a sadness in Deverra’s eyes as she nodded. She led him by the hand deeper into the Grove.
They walked without stopping for what seemed at once a period of days and only a few moments, moving across the breathing ground and between the meat, bone and metal trees. Eventually Qarakh became aware of two sepa
rate and distinct sounds: a hammer clanging on an anvil and the susurration of waves breaking upon a shore. And then he saw a pinpoint of light in the distance, a yellowish orange glow that grew larger as they approached, until Qarakh could see that it was the light from a fire. He was mildly surprised to find that he felt no aversion to the flames. Evidently his spirit did not possess the same undead weaknesses as his body. He wondered if it also lacked his physical strengths.
He realized something then. Not only hadn’t his Beast made itself known since Deverra had brought him here, he couldn’t sense it at all. For the first time in years, he was free. It was an exhilarating sensation, and he nearly laughed out loud from the joy of it.
They drew close to the fire. A man stood next to it, bent over an iron anvil mounted upon an old tree stump. He held something steady with a pair of tongs, bringing his hammer down upon the object in a regular rhythm.
ka-KLANG! ka-KLANG! ka-KLANG!
This smith wore only a leather apron and thick cloth pants. No gloves to protect his hands, no shoes or boots upon his feet. As they reached the anvil, the smith looked up, and Qarakh found himself staring at his mirror image.
“Welcome, Qarakh of Mongolia, my good and faithful son.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The voice was Qarakh’s as well, though the words and manner were not.
“Why do you wear my shape?”
“Because I do not have one of my own? Because I prefer to put my guests at ease by showing them a visage they find comforting? Or perhaps I wish instead to unsettle them. Choose whichever answer you like. All are equally valid.”
“Valid, perhaps. But are they all correct?”
The smith smiled but did not answer. He returned to pounding a lump of metal he held with a pair of iron tongs. The lump was beginning to take form, but Qarakh didn’t recognize what it was in the process of becoming.
The smith frowned then. “This one is being stubborn.”
He picked up the shapeless lump and thrust the tongs into the fire. A tiny shriek of agony came from within the flames, and the smith withdrew the metal, which now glowed orange-red, though it had been inside the fire for only a moment. The smith then placed the lump back on the anvil.
“He still has a little bit of life left inside him, I think.” The smith lifted his hammer high and brought it down swiftly. This time the metal screamed when the hammer struck it, and a thin stream of crimson shot forth from one end, bringing the scent of blood to Qarakh’s nostrils. The blood ran along almost imperceptible furrows in the surface of the anvil—furrows that either Qarakh hadn’t noticed before or which had only just appeared. The blood trickled over the side and fell through the air like a small red waterfall, only to vanish down a hole dug into the earth (into the skin, and it wasn’t a hole, but rather an orifice) next to the anvil.
“Where does the blood go?” Qarakh asked. The scent of blood didn’t stir any appetite within him, but that was because here, if only in this place, he was not a Cainite, but only Qarakh.
“Out to the ocean, of course,” the smith said, and then continued hammering the metal.
Qarakh heard the shush of waves, and for some reason, he envisioned a vast sea of blood.
The metal made no more sounds now, which seemed to please the smith. “Much better!” He worked the metal more easily, and soon a definite shape began to take form: a leaf.
The smith smiled and held it up for their inspection. “How does it look?”
“Like all the others,” Qarakh said.
The smith grinned with Qarakh’s mouth. “Excellent!” He relaxed his grip on the tongs and released the metal leaf, but instead of falling, it was taken by a sudden gust of wind and borne away, tumbling end over end into the darkness, presumably to end up on one of the trees here in the Grove of Shadows.
“I hope you don’t mind if I continue to work as we speak,” the smith said.
On top of the anvil—which had been empty a moment ago—now rested a small, naked man, no more than a foot long. He was alive, and he looked around in terror and confusion. The homunculus tried to sit up, but before he could, the smith grabbed him with the tongs, crushing the tiny man’s rib cage, and plunged him into the fire. The man screamed and screamed and when the smith removed the tongs from the flames, they now held a hot piece of metal ready to be shaped. The smith put the metal on the anvil and began pounding on it, steaming blood squirting out with each hammer blow, running along the furrows and falling into the orifice below.
Qarakh turned to Deverra for guidance, but though she gave him a sympathetic look, she said nothing. He sensed that she was restraining herself from saying anything—perhaps because she was not permitted to.
Qarakh was on his own, so he asked the next logical question. “Who are you?”
The smith continued to work the once human metal as he answered. “I have been known by many names in the past and will doubtless be known by many more in the future, but that hardly answers your question, does it? In Livonia, I am known as Telyavel, Protector of the Dead as well as the Maker of Things.”
Qarakh was not certain that he believed he was truly speaking with a god, though whatever the smith was, he was obviously a being of great power. “I do not see how the two go together.”
The smith finished the new leaf and released it to the air. Another homunculus appeared on the anvil, this one a naked obese woman, and he snatched her up with the tongs. She screamed as she went into the fire, and the process continued as before.
“Why not?” the smith said as he worked. “Life and death, creation and destruction have always been linked. Without Making, there can be no Unmaking, and therefore no Re making. You surely understand this.”
Qarakh wasn’t certain, but he thought he did. Mongols believed that the body contained three souls: the suld soul, which merged with nature after death, the ami soul and the suns soul, both of which reincarnated into a new human form. If Qarakh understood the smith correctly, he was reincarnating the souls of the dead, using them as raw material to create the metallic leaves, whatever they were.
“Why do you wish to help me defeat Alexander?”
The smith looked up from his work and smiled. “Because it is well past time to Unmake that one. Besides which, he threatens my children, and what father can stand by when his offspring are in danger?”
“What must I do?”
The smith finished his latest leaf and gave it to the wind to carry away. The anvil remained empty then, and he set both the tongs and the hammer down. “Not much.” He reached into a pocket of his apron and brought forth a handful of soil. “All you have to do is swallow this.”
“It is… dirt?”
“Livonian soil,” the smith said. “If you eat it, you shall be bonded to the land, and as long as you remain in direct physical contact with it, you shall be able to draw upon my power for short periods of time.”
Qarakh eyed the dirt skeptically. “Will this enchantment give me enough strength to defeat Alexander?”
“Even your body is only capable of containing a minute fraction of my power, but it should be enough to give you a fighting chance against the Ventrue.”
Qarakh turned his hand palm up, and the smith gently deposited the soil into it, then shook off the last few remaining bits. Qarakh felt no special power contained within the earth; it felt like dirt and nothing more. He lifted it to his face and sniffed it. Smelled like dirt, too.
He then looked into the smith’s eyes and was shocked to see they contained swirls of stars set against fields of utter darkness—just like the eyes of the strange Cainite Qarakh had encountered outside of the monastery.
“There must be a price,” Qarakh said. “Such power does not come free.”
“True.” The smith glanced at Deverra before returning his gaze to Qarakh. “For you, the price is simple, though you may be unwilling to pay it. As I said, once you swallow that soil, you will be bound to the land. This means that you shall be unable to leave Liv
onia except for short lengths of time, and no matter how many centuries you live, you will always be forced to return in order to replenish your strength. If you do not, you will grow weaker and weaker until you eventually meet the Final Death. This will last so long as my bond with your priestess does.”
Once again, Qarakh looked at the soil in his hand as he thought about what the smith had told him. To be bound to one place would mean giving up the freedom to roam whenever and wherever he wished. No longer would he be able to follow the path of the nomad. No longer would he truly be Qarakh.
“You must ask yourself one final question,” the smith said. “How badly do you wish to defeat your enemy?”
“You mean, how badly do I wish to protect my tribe.” Qarakh looked to Deverra. “As well as the Telyavs.”
The smith shrugged. “Rephrase the question however you like; it remains essentially the same. You know the price—are you willing to pay it?”
Deverra’s expression was unreadable, and Qarakh knew she was trying to keep from influencing his choice one way or another. But in the end, there really was no choice. He had already allowed Aajav to offer his life so that he could defeat Alexander, but the additional strength he had received from his brother had not been enough to counter the Ventrue’s power. There was only one way Alexander was going to be stopped.
Qarakh brought the soil to his mouth and began eating.
Deverra watched as Qarakh became a phantom and then vanished. She knew his spirit had returned to its body upon the battlefield to resume the fight against Alexander.
“It is done,” the smith said. Instead of Qarakh, the being now resembled a red-headed woman garbed in a brown robe. “And now, my daughter, it is time for you to pay your half of the price.”
“Yes.” She did not know precisely what that price might be, only that it would be high indeed.
The smith smiled and reached for Deverra with slender, feminine hands.