As the ghost of Konrad’s footsteps disappeared, the magician pushed back his chair and walked through the stacks of books and other curiosities. He knew what he was looking for, but was in no hurry to reclaim it. The place reeked of lonely death. He waited, fingering the spines of dusty books, and easing them out of the stacks to turn reverently through their brittle pages. Silence settled over the library. Still he waited. The books fascinated him. In more than half of them, the scrawl was unintelligible. In hundreds more the inks, and bloods, had faded, so much so that the words barely stained the page, but the smell as he cracked the spines and opened them was a heady rush of must, decay and genius. It was ambrosia for the hungry magician.
It took a moment to find what he was looking for, a single sheet of yellowed parchment woven out of pressed reeds, slipped inside a mildewed tome of folklore. On it, written in a flaking rust of blood was the incantation Diabolisch Leichnam. Beside it on the shelf lay an elaborately carved six inch-long bone case. Kantor rolled the sheet like a scroll and stuffed it inside the bone case before slipping that, in turn, inside his shirt.
Convinced, finally, that he was alone, Kantor left the stacks. He could have sneaked out, there were ways, but that wouldn’t buy him long enough. He needed the best part of the night, not a few stolen minutes, so he walked towards the stairs.
Before he was even halfway there, a lantern-jawed thug blocked his way, huge ham-hock arms folded across his barrel chest. “I don’t think so.”
Kantor squared up to the man, half his size and no match for the thug’s brawn, he nonetheless knew he had to play the game. There could be no fear. “You aren’t kept around for your depth of thought, though, are you? So move,” he said.
“I said I don’t think so.”
“Let’s put this another way, shall we? Words of one syllable: let me go or die. There, even your thick head should be able to absorb that.”
The thug didn’t seem particularly disturbed by the threat, although the beginnings of a grin played across his lips. He was obviously enjoying the game. “You ain’t going anywhere ’cept back to your cell.”
Slowly and deliberately the magician withdrew the bone scroll case from within the folds of his shirt and pressed it into the guard’s cheek. “Do you know what’s in here? Do you have any idea what this magic is capable of? Well, do you?”
“I’m sure it’s supposed to turn my body inside out, ripping the bones right through my skin and dumping my guts on the floor at your feet, right?”
“Close,” Kantor agreed. Very close indeed.”
“Shame it’s in that little box then isn’t it? I mean, it isn’t a lot of use in there is it? Especially not against my little babies.” The thug tapped the spiral of tattoos on his flexed bicep.
“It’s a game isn’t it? Always a game.”
“More of a dance, I’d say. You want summink I’ve got, I want summink you’ve got. We dance around it for a while, threaten to do unspeakable things to each other, and make a deal that keeps both of us sweet.”
“You’re scum, do you know that?” Kantor was enjoying himself. “Now, believe me, there’s nothing I want to do in the world right now more than I want to rip your innards out in a most spectacular fashion, but I am rather hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
“Cause of the mess, right?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“It’s more than my life’s worth to let you leave, you know that, don’t you?”
Kantor nodded, taking them into the next stage of the dance.
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. All things considered, it’s not your lucky day, is it?”
“Luckier than yours, to my way of thinkin’,” the thug said. He hadn’t flinched so much as an inch since the bone case touched his cheek, not to twitch a smile, nor to sneer his distaste.
“How so?” Kantor asked, genuinely curious.
“Ah, it’s like my old man used to say, a fool and his money are easily parted. Show me your money, fool. You want out, and me, I’m supposed to wait “til I’m relieved, but I reckon I could meet him on the way, for the right incentive.”
That was what it always came down to with the dregs of humanity. Kantor smiled widely, pocketing the scroll case. Not, of course, that he would have wasted the Diabolisch Leichnam on the trollish thug.
“What, pray tell, would you consider the right ‘incentive’?”
The thug made a show of scratching his scalp and furrowing his brow, as if lost in thought. His eyes lit up, as if he had just stumbled upon the idea: “Shillings’
“Because there’s a vast supply of coin down here, I suppose? Something else, perhaps? Something I might actually have?”
“Ah but you’ve got ’em, ain’t ya? Show me your money,” the thug grinned, rubbing thumb and forefinger together. “S’all about money. You pay me, I do you a favour. It’s the way of the world.”
Nevin Kantor wanted, for just a moment, to flatten the leering fool all across the wall. Instead, he matched the thug’s grin.
“Indeed. Well, you know, I might have something to interest you.” The magician slipped a carnelian-studded ring from his finger and palmed it. He noticed the way the gem drew the thug’s eye. “Perhaps we can come to some sort of accommodation? Let’s say out tonight, back when you change shifts tomorrow? No one any the wiser that I’ve wandered. How much might such an accommodation cost?”
The thug shook his head. “Cost? That pretty ring you’ve just hidden, but it’s impossible, you know that don’t ya? You’ll never get away with it. The Hamaya’ll sniff you out, and you’ll be banged up in a proper cell without your precious books before you can say Johannes Eisblume.”
“Let’s just say it is a risk I’m willing to take. So, do we have a deal?”
“It’s your funeral.”
“So, we have a deal?”
“Aye, we have a deal.” The thug held his meaty hand out. Kantor pressed the ring into it and closed his fingers, making a fist.
“Sunrise,” the thug said. That’s when I’m back. I’ll be less than a quarter of an hour late, but not much less. Make sure you’re back and tucked up in your cell or I’ll be forced to hunt you down and break you into tiny pieces of bone and gristle. You wouldn’t want that, now would ya?”
“As much as I wouldn’t want to take all the fun out of your life, I think we’ll try to avoid that little scenario, eh?” the magician said, turning on his heel and walking back towards the discarded skin.
Circumstance had turned Nevin Kantor into an expert at biding his time.
Drakenhof was a warren of disused rooms and desolate corridors that spread out like cavernous fingers into the mountain beneath the castle itself. Deep in these, Kantor had claimed his own room, utterly remarkable in every way, except one: to the casual passer-by, the room did not exist. The magician had woven a glyph around the doorframe masking it from casual discovery. Someone would have to know about the room to find it. It was a small security, but even a tiny bit of privacy was better than none.
Kantor paced the room.
A woman lay bound and gagged in the centre of the room. He had taken her from the slave pens. She wouldn’t be missed, and even if she was, people would simply assume that one of the vampires had grown hungry. That was the beauty of having a ready supply of fresh meat.
“Oh, do stop whimpering, girl. You’re driving me up the damned wall.”
The woman kicked and writhed, fighting against her bonds. She had woken a few minutes earlier, before he had finished preparing the incantation. Kantor walked into the centre of the bloody pentagram daubed on the stone floor and clubbed her across the side of the face with his fist.
“The more you fight the worse it will be for you, I promise you that.”
Doing his best to ignore her moans, the magician set tallow candles on the points of the pentagram, sealing them with melted wax to the stone so that they wouldn’t topple during the ceremony itself.
He drew a second summoning circle f
or himself, pinning it out with silver thread to ensure that it remained unbroken. He harboured no illusions about the nature of the sorcery he was dabbling in. Diabolisch Leichnam, the diabolical corpse, was old magic, dating back, he believed, to the court of Neferata. It was magic of the blackest nature. In the common Reikspiel, it was known as The Vessel, an incantation capable of stripping the soul from the flesh, leaving behind an empty vessel capable of being occupied by a cuckoo, a lost spirit. It was, in a manner of speaking, a way for the necromancer to prepare a host to accept his own essence, should the need arise.
It was a fallback, an ace in the hole as the gamblers liked to call it. Kantor wasn’t fond of risks and most certainly wasn’t a gambler by design. The answer lay in strategy, in careful planning and forethought. It was possible to pre-empt an enemy’s actions if you knew him well enough. The secret was to know your enemy, and armed with that knowledge, to minimise potential failings long before they became a problem.
Only a fool went into a fight blind.
One by one, he lit the candles. The flames guttered slightly as he began to speak, although no natural wind stirred. Excitement flooded Kantor’s veins as he embraced the touch of Shyish.
The woman’s eyes flared with terror. She was screaming behind her gag, but not even as much as a whisper made it through. Her back arched as she struggled to roll herself out of the bloody pentagram. It was useless of course, he had seen to it that she wouldn’t be leaving the circle until he was ready to carry her empty shell out.
Kantor raised his hands in supplication, forming the words of the incantation with precision.
The light flared and almost failed, the black wind surging around the tallow candles. The sulphurous reek of brimstone filled the air, sickly sweet and cloying. It burned at the back of his throat, making it difficult to shape the words.
He sank to his knees, refusing to misshape even a syllable, threw his head back and forced the sealing line of the incantation through his lips. The skin of his hands, spreading up his arms, glowed darkly, the black wind seeping out of his veins and staining his skin.
Then the candles died.
He stopped mid-word, his heart hammering in his chest.
You dare, mortal?
He had no way of knowing if the question was in his imagination or if it was real, in the room with him.
The next line of the incantation, what was it? His mind was blank. No, not blank, filled with fear. He had to reach behind the fear, had to find the words he had spent so long memorising. There was nothing but darkness. Black.
He stared in horror at the daemon manifesting before him, drawing substance out of the air itself to make itself whole. The thing was like nothing he had ever seen: silver horns, one complete, one broken down to a stump, skin like the stone wall behind it, mould and rot shrivelling around its empty eyes, teeth like tombstones, chipped and broken and breath like brimstone.
It reached out for him, but couldn’t pass beyond the barrier formed by the silver thread. The urge to run was almost irresistible, almost.
Kantor closed his eyes. Still he could see it, blazing in his minds eye.
He licked his lips.
The next word…
The next…
The last:
“Cadaver!” The word dripped from his tongue like venom. A triumphant grin split the necromancer’s face.
He opened his eyes.
The daemon, half-materialised, matched the grin.
This marks you, magician. You are aware of that, are you not? This marks your soul indelibly. You are mine now, my tool to wield.
“Giving on both sides, daemon—you are mine. That is the pact of bonding, is it not?” He was shaking, adrenaline coursing through his body. He could taste the power in the air. It thrilled through him. He was alive with it.
Until I sever it, yes. Then I will feed, although there is barely enough flesh on your bones to make a decent meal. Your soul however, your soul is fat and corrupt, deliciously so.
“And you will feed, essence of the winds, I have seen to that. Take her, not her flesh mind, only her soul. You can gorge yourself on her sweet meat at another time.”
The daemon fed, stripping the woman’s soul from her flesh, even as she screamed for her life, begging, whimpering and finally falling silent, lifeless, in the centre of the pentagram.
Come claim the flesh, magician, the daemon goaded, spiritual residue dribbling down its chin. It licked its talons clean, slurping up the drool with glee.
Instinctively, Nevin Kantor took a step forwards. The daemon couldn’t help itself: in hunger, its eyes darted to the silver thread. Kantor drew up sharply, his toe less than a finger’s width from breaching the protective circle.
Ahhh almost too easy, magician.
“But not quite. The woman is gone yes?”
No trace of her essence is left within the shell.
“Good, then your work here is done, essence of the winds, begone.” He clapped his hands and was alone with the corpse of the dead woman at his feet, the stink of brimstone strong in the air.
He had to work quickly now to bind the empty vessel to him so that it would withstand the onslaught of decay and corruption that had already begun to set in with the banishment of the host’s immortal soul.
Soon, he would have a place to flee, should his master’s schemes fail.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bring out your Dead
THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL, ALTDORF
The birth of the New Year
The wolf entered the capital at dusk.
Jerek moved silently, with the grace of a predator, through the darkening streets. It felt like so long ago that he had last walked amongst the living, like a man. It was a lifetime ago.
The denizens of the city lived with new caution, casting suspicious glances back over their shoulders as they walked from shadow to deeper shadow, doorway to alley to doorway, expecting at any moment the claws and teeth of death to drag them down and revel in the slaughter of their flesh. Von Carstein’s war had carved this new world.
They had no idea that the wolf could dress in human clothing, that the monster could walk unnoticed in their midst, looking for all the world just like any one of them. He did not enjoy the deception.
Jerek pushed open the door to the Crooked Crone and walked into the taproom.
No one turned to stare. No one cried, “Fiend!”
Licking his lips, the wolf called over a serving girl and ordered a pint of the house brew.
He handed her a bruised shilling and took a seat by the fire, tempted by the warmth.
Jerek didn’t know where to begin. By rights, in the wake of Pieter’s spectacular failure at Nuln, he should have returned to Drakenhof. He hadn’t. He had come to Altdorf, city of spires, in search of von Carstein’s signet ring. It had become an obsession, a disease. To his way of thinking, if he could find it, so could anyone else, and he couldn’t allow them to. That meant he had to find it, and he had to destroy it.
Only it wasn’t that easy.
The last glimmer of humanity in the wolf might have wanted to shatter the promise of dominion that the ring offered, but that was nothing against the hunger of the damned beast within him. The beast craved it. Inheritance: the word gnawed away at him. Like hunger, it saturated his corpse. He wanted it destroyed, yet all the while, he hungered for it.
The beast was growing more powerful by the day, demanding its right to eternity.
Soon it would be impossible to deny, and then he would be forever damned.
He warmed himself by the fire.
The taproom of the Crooked Crone was busy, women with easy smiles worked the long tables, while men with loose purse strings spent their shillings and pfennigs as if they believed that tomorrow wouldn’t come, and who could blame them in these uncertain times? Let them take their pleasure when and where they could.
Men, deep in their cups, hunched over a rickety table playing knucklebones. They cursed, money changed hands,
they rolled, cursed some more and more money moved across the table. Win some, lose some, the drinkers didn’t seem to care. They laughed, talked of life and love, and pulled occasionally at the serving girl’s skirts as she wove a path around them, Jerek sat awhile, enjoying the easy camaraderie.
Constellations of conversation moved around him. He closed his eyes and let them all wash over him. Still, he heard snippets. The shadow of the vampires hung heavy over the city. Much of the talk had moved on from the evils of war and its depravations, and grown more introverted and personal. Few had forgotten the butchery at the Sigmarites’ cathedral. Those horrors were somehow more real now, given the years between the war and the fall of Vlad von Carstein at the hand of Wilhelm III.
It was amazing how humanity coped with tragedy. They could brush aside the devastation of thousands, in sympathy for the tragedy of a few. In that way, they were much like the other creatures of nature, the pack animals that put the welfare of the pack ahead of their own. Tens of thousands had died under the choking hold of the Vampire Count, through starvation and privation, rather than to more ruthless killers like steel and talons.
The conversations barely even remembered the sacrifice of the Grand Theogonist. The priests themselves might have sought to canonise the man, but the commoners had already begun to forget his sacrifice. That was another miracle of humanity, short memories.
How many years was it since he had stood on the city walls, defiant? Surely not long enough for his bravery to have become as nothing?
Jerek found himself thinking of humanity in terms of the beast that he had become, not the man he was. Years had passed, more years than many would care to remember. They hadn’t forgotten. They had become removed from it. Other tragedies had befallen their lives, and gradually von Carstein had become a monster consigned to a dark time. That was the final miracle of mankind, the ability to move on.
Of course, this last miracle was as much a curse, forced on them by the fleeting nature of their lives. This second life had framed his perspective in ways he would never have been able to understand before.
[Von Carstein 02] - Dominion Page 21