Dark Ages Clan Novel Tzimisce: Book 13 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Myranda Kalis

  “My lord voivode.” Lady Danika had reached the Hammer of the Tremere and attracted his attention. He glanced over his shoulder at her, nodding curtly in greeting—then he caught sight of Myca and Ilias over his shoulder, and his pale, storm-lit blue eyes narrowed a fraction in visible annoyance. The nimbus of unearthly radiance about him brightened for a moment, a curl of lightning licking out and leaving scorch marks on the palisade and observation platform around him. A tremendous sense of gathering power filled the air between them and Myca took a half step back, pulling Ilias behind him protectively. Ilias’ hand knotted in the back of his dalmatic and they stood, pressed close together, a safe distance away.

  “My Lady Danika, I am glad that you could join me so promptly.” He greeted her cordially, and inclined his head slightly to Myca and Ilias, as well. “Ambassador, koldun, this should be educational for you.” He gestured outward, pointing along the ridge of the mountains opposite their position. Almost on cue, the lightning lit the sky again, outlining the misshapen forms of the approaching gargoyle pack, too quickly for Myca to count precise numbers. An unpleasantly large number of the things, however, a fact he took in during that swift glance. “A dozen, likely a harassment flight—we have been expecting this much for weeks. Some Tremere weather-worker is manipulating the storm outside our little valley to drive them toward us with greater speed than they would otherwise be able to achieve. To get here, all they will have to do is glide on the storm-wind. They will lose that advantage when they cross the rim of the valley, where the winds become mine.”

  A high, thin shriek echoed down the valley. In it, Myca thought he detected an almost human note of frustration. A thin smile of satisfaction curled Ioan’s mouth, and he turned to his enormous lieutenant. “Are the spear-throwers in position?”

  “Yes, my lord voivode.” Vlaszy replied.

  “Excellent. Make certain that they are prepared to throw at my command.” Ioan laid his hands on the top of the palisade wall, and Lady Danika stepped forward, past Lukina, and rested her hand on his. “Lukina, if you would be so good, make certain that no harm comes to the ambassador or the priest of Jarilo. I believe things are about to become rather… intense for them.”

  The sense of gathering power rose higher yet, lifting the hair on the back of Myca’s neck and making Ilias shudder helplessly against his back, a low moan halfway between pleasure and anguish emerging from him. “Oh, Myca… if you could see it… if you could feel it…”

  Ilias edged around him to his side and clung to him, trembling, all the pain and hate and grief erased from his face, his expression one of transcendent ecstasy, his eyes shining brilliant heaven-blue in sympathetic reaction to the magics being woven by Ioan and Danika. Myca could feel the intensity of Ilias’ reaction stirring his own blood, rousing both his senses and his desire. His hunger was suddenly sharp, his fangs lengthening in his jaw swiftly enough that they scraped his own tongue, filling his mouth with the taste of his own blood. A force that was nearly electric leapt between the places their bodies touched. It was all Myca could do to control his sudden, violent need for his lover, the urge to push him up against the palisade wall and take him where they stood. Ilias was not helping on that score. His hands were everywhere, lips nuzzling Myca’s shoulder through his clothing, his own fangs fully extended. Desperately, Myca pulled him close and held him tightly, shivers of magic-born lust shaking them both.

  An earsplitting crack of thunder shook the ground beneath their feet, and the lightning rose around them like a shimmering blue-white curtain, striking from the earth into the low-hanging sky. Shrieks sounded from above as white-hot bolts found their targets, and a rain of dark ash fell across parts of the palisade wall. Archers fired almost directly upward, and they did not fire blindly. The sky above was filled with the rush of dark wings. Some of the creatures were massive, hugely muscled, the damage they were capable of doing brutally obvious. Others were long and slender, sinuous, cutting through the air to strike at the bastion’s defenders like knives flung by the wind. Myca threw himself flat on the walkway and took Ilias down with him, half-covering his lover’s body with his own as a hook-faced monstrosity sliced through the air where they had been standing, screeching as it went. An instant later, a hard-thrown javelin transfixed its misshapen skull, and Lukina was crouched above them, watching it fall.

  “If you cannot fight,” she snarled in Myca’s face, “get below!”

  Myca needed no further encouragement. He scrambled to his knees and from there to his feet, crouched below the level of the palisade wall, pulling Ilias with him. They fled down the staircase and found, at its base, an aperture piercing the mountain face. Myca shoved Ilias in ahead of him and threw a glance over his shoulder. The clouds above the fortress were numinous with the radiance of the lightning traps. Against the glare, gargoyles dove and killed, struck and were struck down, blood and ash showering from above. It was the most terrible thing he had seen since the death of Constantinople, and the most freakishly exhilarating. He turned and fled from the sight of it, his blood still pulsing in his head and his veins, afire with the power that had touched him and the desire that waited for him at the far end of the tunnel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  From the journals of Myca Vykos:

  Six more attacks came and went before we departed from Ioan’s bastion. Four of these came strictly by air, gargoyles bearing fire as a weapon, and two came from the ground, enormous wingless beasts that battered at the walls of the fortress and nearly brought them down in several places before being driven back. Each attack was repulsed, in most cases bloodily, by force of arms and sorcery. In each case, Ioan dealt more damage than his forces sustained, protected as they were by the strength of their fortifications and the preparedness ground into them by their commander. Ioan did not at any time, however, take the offensive, preferring to let the gargoyle legions of the Tremere break against him like the tide crashing against a great rock. A few weeks past midsummer, we withdrew from the bastion, Ioan leaving the extremely capable Lady Danika in command of the situation, supported by his left hand, the revenant warrior Vlastimir Vlaszy. We moved more quickly departing than we did coming in, using routes whose existence I had not even suspected while approaching, as speed was very much of the essence. A lull had come in the fighting, but such lulls rarely lasted long in the summer months when war could be made almost freely, unhindered by uncooperative mountain weather. We made Alba Iulia in less than a week, traveling by day in lightproof conveyance once we reached the lower hills.

  When we paused briefly for supplies in Alba Iulia, I found a letter waiting for me from the Prince of Sredetz, Bela Rusenko, responding positively to my request to visit his court. Included was a brief discussion of the customs of his court—the rigorous formality of the Tzimisce did not pertain there, as the prince is a Cappadocian and a follower of the ways of desire. Those customs he kept were few and in no way onerous to his visitors, given the richness of his domain. He did, however, also advise us not to travel overland from Brasov to Sredetz, as there was strife among the Bulgar Tzimisce who dwelt to the north of the city, and he could not guarantee our safety if we approached through those domains. Our Bulgar cousins’ pugnacity was not unknown to Ilias and me. We had spent many hours, safe within the lower halls of Ioan’s bastion, discussing our routes of travel should the Prince of Sredetz extend us welcome. We had already decided, if such permission came, that we would travel by sea from the port of Constanta and sail to the Bulgar port of Varna, and travel overland to the capital from there.

  I left Ilias in Alba Iulia with letters of credit and a generous supply of silver by which to arrange our travel from Brasov to Constanta, and proceeded to Oradea with Ioan and his retinue in tow. We arrived in the waning nights of high summer. The first harvest of ripe grain was being brought in as we crossed through the farmsteads bordering the Great Plain. Symeon, warned of our coming, greeted us gladly and feted Ioan like a prince for a week, apparently very much to the Hammer
of the Tremere’s bemusement. Before I departed Oradea, both parties signed and witnessed the long-debated peace agreement between Lukasz and Rachlav, Symeon had sent forth a call to the allied houses and warlords of the mountains to attend a gathering at Oradea (I was told this request originated with Ioan, who seemed intent on making the most of this opportunity that he could), and the trees highest on the mountains had already begun to turn with the first breath of autumn. When I reached Alba Iulia, I found that Ilias had not been idle in my absence. Not only were our travel arrangements made, but our escort of revenant bodyguards courtesy of my sire were assembled, his own attendants had completed the arrangements necessary in Brasov, and we would be departing from Constanta in six weeks aboard a merchant vessel carrying goods south and whose captain had agreed to take our entire entourage for an astonishingly good price. A letter also awaited me from Malachite, informing me of his intent to meet us in Brasov, having errands of his own to pursue prior to our departure. We did not manage to miss him, as he was very well informed of our movements. Fortunately, the autumn remained dry enough that we made good time reaching Brasov, traveling by both barge along the navigable waterways and by the unpaved traderoads. From there, we reached Constanta with whole nights to spare.

  Ilias was, of course, enormously excited and completely intent on regarding the whole affair as the finest of adventures. He had never traveled on a large boat before, or across a body of water larger than a deep lake, and harassed nearly everyone he met, including myself, with questions about the sea. In fact, he had never actually seen the sea before, either, and could sit for hours watching the tide washing up on the moonlit shores around Constanta, completely rapt. He confessed to me that he thought the water spirits of lake and stream and river were much different from the spirits of the sea—even the river-spirits of the Danube and the Tisza, though they flood with great violence nearly every spring, were not so wild as the spirits of the open waves. I can only assume that he is correct in his assessment. Dwelling in the spirit-touched fortress of Ioan Brancoveanu for most of the summer left no sensitivity to their presence rubbed off on me, despite Ilias and Lady Danika both pointing out their workings to me. Perhaps it is a personal defect of some sort. If so, it is not a defect I currently have the time or inclination to fully address. Malachite kept much to himself during this time, his mood melancholic, and even Ilias could not draw him out, though he made the attempt. I thought perhaps that something he had learned on his “errand” had disturbed him in some way, but he refused to speak of it, and it was impossible to press him, as much as I wished to do so.

  We sailed from Constanta with the dawn, Ilias and I resting together in our cabin, inside a thoroughly light-proofed chest-bed lined in heavy felt, with six inches of our grave-earth beneath us. We both took great pains to insure an adequate supply traveled with us, some pounds lining our sleeping chest and several more kept in oiled leather sacks, sewn shut, among the other pieces of baggage. Malachite chose to sleep in a separate, smaller compartment, traveling only with a single body-servant to tend to his needs, a man who had evidently been with him since his time in Ile de France. He persisted withdrawn and curt for the duration of the voyage, speaking to me only when it was unavoidable. I cannot say I found this decision on his part to be wholly disagreeable, as I found myself still entertaining the desire to twist his head off on occasion. The bodyguard slept on deck, with most of the ship’s crew. Ilias’ attendants shared the cabin with us, pretending with great verisimilitude to be the sons of a rich boyar traveling to Sredetz to winter with relatives. Most of them, having the hearty constitutions of revenants and ghouls, adapted to life aboard ship with little difficulty, only minor bouts of sickness and then mostly during rough seas marring the voyage for them. Ilias, on the other hand, suffered almost instantly, and constantly, from the moment we left port.

  I personally did not think it possible for a Cainite to become seasick. Certainly, when I sailed from Constantinople I experienced some discomfort, but it was fleeting, and Symeon assured me that such discomfort was wholly natural and that he himself experienced it, as well. I felt it, as well, when we left Constanta, but it went away just as quickly. Ilias, on the other hand, felt it and kept feeling it, to the point that on some evenings (when we were at the furthest point from land in our journey, it seemed) he not only could not rise, he could not bring himself to feed, either. We emptied half his remaining supply of grave-earth over him, so that he might rest mostly buried, and this gave him some relief from the sickness. He told me that he felt as though the waters themselves were trying to rend the bond between himself and the earth-spirits, to drown him or cast him away, for water in many ways rejects the dead. As we drew closer to land, the illness abated somewhat, and he was able to walk the decks with me after dark, to admire the stars and the moon above the glass-smooth dark sea and to whisper to the wild spirits of the air above the water. He apologized, more than once, for being a burden to me, and I had to hush that foolishness quite vigorously.

  We made port in a little less than a month, the worst of the autumn storms holding off until after we arrived. The journey across the southern reaches of Bulgaria in the autumn rains was more pleasant than I thought it would be, though rather slow going. We arrived in Sredetz three weeks after we made shore.

  Sredetz reminded Myca of a smaller, humbler, more thoroughly Slavic imitation of Constantinople, an opinion he kept firmly to himself. The local Cainites, those that had survived through a half-dozen changes of rulership and upheavals both great and small, were a proud and somewhat insular lot, as quick as a Tzimisce warlord looking for a reason to fight when it came to taking offense, capable of extracting insult from even the blandest remarks when it suited them to do so. Myca learned this early on, and learned to tread and speak softly around those with the quickest tempers. His Byzantine “origins” were not necessarily a mark in his favor here, at least among those who carried grudges left over from their mortal days, and lingering resentment against the “Byzantine yoke” hid in the oddest places. Ilias had more fortune when dealing with the local Cainites, having an almost magical knack for loosening tongues and soothing hard feelings. It did not hurt his position at all that a substantial number of the city’s residents followed the same moral paths as he and his lover, and they ungrudgingly acknowledged Ilias as priest and teacher of the ways of desire, and, somewhat more grudgingly, Myca as his apprentice on that way. Malachite dealt with the situation by making himself invisible, even to Myca and Ilias, who had difficulty keeping track of his activities on a night-to-night basis. He was, evidently, going out of his way to avoid contact with most of the high-blooded Cainite residents of Sredetz, seeking converse with others of his own kind, disappearing for whole weeks at a stretch, apparently traveling about the region as best he could.

  Bela Rusenko, the prince, was a walker of the paths of desire himself, but a particularly eccentric species thereof, a reclusive and unsocial scholar who rarely interacted with either the residents of his city or the visitors that he periodically received. He held court infrequently, accepted guests with little fanfare, and delegated the majority of the social tasks of his position to his childe, the Lord Ladislav. Ladislav followed the same moral codes as Rusenko, but unlike his sire, was relatively gregarious and substantially more approachable. He conducted most of the night-to-night business of the domain with the aid of his childe, the Lady Erika. Both proved themselves invaluable to Myca during the early stages of the investigation in Sredetz, offering advice and assistance. Myca was certain he was incurring a massive debt to both of them, but hardly cared. Neither had been resident in Sredetz during Nikita’s brief reign there as heretical bishop. Neither, for that matter, had Bela Rusenko himself. They did, however, know who among the current residents of the city and who among the locals in the countryside had been present during those years, and who might have reason to know Nikita somewhat personally.

  Ladislav also answered Myca’s request to take possession of Nikita�
��s haven, which, they discovered, had sat empty but well tended since the Archbishop of Nod’s departure on his tour of the heretical dominions. Nikita had, apparently, left behind no ghouls and no childer, which was itself unusual. Most Tzimisce who wished to leave their personal domains secure behind them made extensive use of both. The caretaker of Nikita’s house was a revenant, as were the man’s wife and three sons, but they were also either appallingly ignorant of the power running in their veins, or else deliberately tampered with in such a way as to render them ignorant. Their loyalty to Nikita was absolute, ground into them with such permanence that even the harshest questioning could not dilute or break it. All five now dwelt in a room in the basement and provided most of the sustenance for the Cainites of the household, being useless for anything else, as they would not speak of their previous master and could not be trusted.

  Nikita’s house lay in the oldest part of the city, the section once known as Serdica by the tribe that originally dwelt there, and as Triaditsa by the Romans, where most of the wealthiest citizens still dwelt. A mock Roman villa of two stories with numerous pseudo-Byzantine architectural embellishments, it was more than sufficient for Myca’s purposes, and Ladislav was quite willing to let him have uncontested use of it. None of the locals wanted it, seeming to believe the place of ill aspect, considering the fates that had befallen its last two owners: the former Prince Basilio, driven into exile, and the Archbishop of Nod, apparently vanished off the face of the earth. Myca spent most of the late autumn and early winter tearing the place apart, while Ilias circulated among the locals, collecting gossip and engaging in subtle interrogations. Periodically, Malachite himself would appear at the villa, bearing news and rumors culled from the gutters, and the results of his interrogations of the region’s low-blooded heretics. No new leader had arisen to replace Nikita. There did not appear to be sufficient organization intact, even here in the heartland of the Cainite Heresy, for such a political act to occur. The Nosferatu, whose detestation of the Cainite Heresy was both personal and deeply ingrained, did not bother to hide his satisfaction with that development. He did not, however, have any more success than Myca or Ilias in uncovering any details of Nikita’s origin.