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

by Myranda Kalis

  In such ways did the bulk of the summer pass. No letter arrived from Basilio, and they found themselves entertaining the prospect of spending another fruitless winter in Sredetz, a possibility none of them particularly looked forward to, each for his own reasons.

  “We should, I think, leave for home now, while the roads are still clear enough to travel and before the worst of the autumn rains settle in,” Myca announced thoughtfully, one night as they sat together in the villa’s small garden, enjoying the warm breeze flowing down off the mountains. Nicolaus had bent his efforts to bringing the garden back to life, watering and weeding it, encouraging healthy new growth. The results sweetly perfumed the air along with the beeswax candles lighting the small table where they sat. “I have already spoken of it to stapân Boleslaus and stapân Vladya—they have told me that they will allow us free passage through their domains and host us, as well, should we desire their hospitality. I can write my colleague Velya from their domains, and I am certain that he, too, would accommodate us in this.”

  “You have given up hope of receiving word from Basilio, then?” Malachite asked, his voice grave.

  “Nearly.” Myca cast a glance at Ilias, who was looking fixedly out into the darkened garden beyond their warm circle of light. “My heart?”

  Ilias came back to himself with a start. “I heard you speaking of Basilio…?”

  “Yes.” Myca wondered at his lover’s distraction, but decided not to inquire of its cause in front of Malachite. “What do you think?”

  “I think Basilio can write us in Brasov as easily as Sredetz, or we could write him again, if you wish.” Ilias replied, frankly. “It may not be worth the effort—he may be ash, or he may be in torpor, or any number of other things could prevent him from replying to your letters. He could have no interest in helping us, for this place cannot but return painful memories to him. We have other avenues we may explore to uncover Nikita’s lineage, which do not rely upon any information he might provide, after all.”

  “Other avenues…?” Malachite echoed, his expression, as always, unreadable.

  “Damek Ruthven.” Ilias answered with a nod, his eyes flicking suddenly off to one side, distracted. He said no more.

  Myca filled in the rest for him. “Damek Ruthven is one of the most renowned genealogists and scholars of the history of our clan. If anyone knows, or can discover, which branch of the lineages Nikita of Sredetz springs from, it would be he.”

  “Have you given any more thought to the theory I proposed in that regard, my Lord Vykos?” Malachite asked, with an odd formality, his hand stealing toward the breast of his tunic and withdrawing from its folds a small object wrapped in a silken cloth.

  Myca stiffened. “No. Nothing we have uncovered thus far has given any evidence that Nikita is a descendant of the Dracon.”

  “Nor has anything we found disproved that possibility,” Malachite countered, laying the object he had drawn forth on the table, and folding open its wrappings, revealing a small, cracked tile. Myca knew what it was, and glanced away, his hands curling into fists against his thighs, fighting against the sudden, violent urge to take the thing up and finish smashing it.

  Ilias, on the other hand, rose to get a better look. “May I…?” At Malachite’s nod, he lifted the painted tile out of its silken nest and examined it closely in the candlelight. “This is his true face? The Dracon?”

  “His true face? I do not know. It is the face that I knew him by, and the face that I will recognize him by, should we ever meet again.” Malachite’s voice was soft, and slightly wistful. If his face could show a true expression, Myca knew that it would be reverent, and he had to force down a renewed surge of temper at that realization.

  “It is not, however, Nikita’s face,” Myca interrupted coolly. “I shall write Damek Ruthven from here, and beg him to send any response to our house in Brasov. I suggest we give Basilio until the end of this month to reply and, in the meantime, we make our preparations for departure. Are we agreed?”

  After a moment more of contemplating the icon, Ilias laid it back in its wrappings and nodded slightly in agreement. Malachite, perhaps recognizing himself outnumbered, nodded as well.

  Basilio’s letter arrived as they were finalizing their travel preparations, in the travel-worn hands of the guardsman who originally carried Myca’s inquiry. Myca, breaking the seal with trembling fingers, found it to be quite satisfyingly thick, given the amount of time it had taken to reach him. In it, Basilio admitted to knowing Nikita when he was a minor priest in the service of the bishop of Varna, and even of being aware that Nikita was a Tzimisce. Nikita himself did not appear to make much of the issue, nor did he abide by most of the common Tzimisce naming customs. He did not give his lineage when introducing himself, nor did he claim the identity of his sire, preferring to rely upon the patronage of his superior to ease the way in social situations. Basilio recalled him as reserved, unless a matter that particularly roused his passions was an issue of discussion. In those cases, he would often speak with great eloquence. All of this confirmed what they already knew, and Myca handed those pages to the eagerly waiting Malachite and Ilias with slowly mounting impatience. If that was all Basilio could tell them, he was prepared to be extremely disappointed.

  The opening paragraph of the last page, however, considerably amended his feelings in that regard.

  “When I owned the villa in which Nikita dwelt, and in which you currently reside, there was one large room on the first floor given over to storage of various items, which Nikita clearly put to that use, as well. There is, however, a second, smaller storage space in the upstairs office, which I personally used to store correspondence of a delicate or private nature. It is inset in the bottom of the cabinet-chest used to store writing materials, which you described to me as yet being in the place I originally left it. The floor beneath the cabinet-chest is false, though cunningly made to resemble the floor otherwise. The space beneath is large enough to hold a small correspondence chest or, perhaps, several smaller items.”

  There was more, but Myca hardly cared. He shoved the last page of the letter into Ilias’ hands and hurried to the storage cabinet, long since divested of any writing materials, tearing open the door. An exclamation of mingled surprise and dismay escaped Malachite as he knelt in front of it, feeling along the edges of the floor inside the chest, searching. His fingers came down on a slightly raised segment, and he pressed down hard on it. The pressure-switch triggered, and the entire piece of the false floor came loose from its moorings. Hands trembling with excitement, he pulled it out and laid it aside, feeling about in the space beneath, and encountered a small wooden box. He lifted it out with care, using its handles, and set it down on the floor before them. A series of three metal plates were inset on the lid, marked around the edge with symbols, and Myca whispered, “It is the same sort of lock that Nikita used on the correspondence chest the knights found in the monastery.”

  “Can you open it again?” Ilias asked, fetching another candle.

  “Give me a moment.”

  Myca worked silently. The original lock was as much a puzzle as anything else, predicated on the ability to recognize a pattern, and this was no different. Within the hour, the tumblers clicked into place and the cunning mechanism opened, revealing three small folios bound in leather, the pages of the finest and thinnest vellum. Each took a book and, with a certain air of ceremony, opened it.

  “I do not recognize the language.” Malachite admitted it first. “It… is not Greek.”

  Myca struggled for a moment with his pride, then nodded shallowly in agreement. “Neither do I. Nor is the alphabet familiar—the letters are not Greek or Cyrillic. Nor Latin. Ilias?”

  “It… almost reminds me of the tongue that my sire taught me to use…” Ilias paused and looked up from his folio. “It almost resembles the spirit-tongue—the language used to evoke them in word, spoken and written. The letters are similar, see?” He pointed out a line on the page he had opened to. “I
would swear that is the letter for ‘fire’… but it is not quite the same.”

  “Is it the same hand,” Malachite asked suddenly, “as the one that wrote Nikita’s letters and other documents?”

  Nicolaus was hurriedly summoned and sent back downstairs to retrieve one of Nikita’s writing chests, and Myca’s, as well. A quick comparison showed them that the hand that wrote Nikita’s letters was different from the writer of these journals, and Myca compared the books against Basilio’s letter as well. There were no similarities.

  “Though Basilio may have used a scribe,” Myca admitted.

  “Yes, but he also said that he took all of the private documents he had stored there when he went into exile.” Ilias pointed out, exchanging a glance with Malachite. “What reason would he have to lie on that matter?”

  A dozen reasons leapt immediately to mind, but Myca also found sufficient reason to reject them all. “These must belong to Nikita, then, and he did not wish them to be found. He did not care about the correspondence and the other documents downstairs. Had he, he would have left it carefully guarded, or would have stored it elsewhere or destroyed it.”

  “He probably expected to return.” Malachite pointed out.

  “Perhaps.” Myca closed his book, and replaced it in the chest. Malachite and Ilias handed back theirs, as well, and Myca closed the lid, spinning the lock back into place. “Ilias, could Nikita be a koldun—a koldun like Ioan, who conceals his true power for some advantage greater than the honor it would bring to his name?”

  Ilias did not look at all startled by that question. “I thought that it might be so, but I had no proof, and could find none in any of my own investigations. But since this place is not truly Nikita’s home, that proof would not lie here at all, particularly if he were trying to conceal the truth of himself. This place has no strong spirits bound to it, after all, and no signs of any great magic lingering around it.”

  Myca nodded and rose, the chest held carefully between his hands. “I think I wish to consult with someone wiser than us all in that regard. I believe that we shall, indeed, pay a call on my friend Velya.”

  Interlude

  I did not hate Antonius as much as he hated me.

  I tell myself this every night when I wake and, for a short time at least, I can make myself believe it, and the ache of his absence eases.

  I did not want to kill Antonius. Had I thought for a moment that there could ever be peace between us, I would have stayed my hand and persuaded Michael to mercy, as well.

  I tell myself this every morning before I sleep, but it does me little good. Regret is a pernicious emotion. I almost envy those who can excise it from their hearts and suffer not from those things they must do to survive. And I know that it was survival—my own survival, the survival of my childer, the survival of all that I built in Constantinople—that was at stake when we chose to destroy Antonius. I know this, and it does not help. The knowledge that Antonius would have destroyed me, destroyed the Dream to deny me, had we not destroyed him first is not a soothing balm upon my grief.

  Odio et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. A Roman poet whose work Antonius despised wrote those words. ‘I love and I hate. You ask me why this is so; I do not know, but I feel it, and it torments me.’ The essence of the bond between us, though I know why I loved him and hated him. He was the incarnation of something that did not exist within myself—solidity, permanence, unyielding, unbending, the bedrock foundation, the strength of mountains. I was drawn to that strength. I wanted to feel it, folded around me like guardian wings, held before me like a shield between myself and the world, wound through me, protecting me from the weaknesses of my own flesh and spirit. By that same token, he was also something that I despised, not only solid but hard, uncompassionate, not only unyielding but unchanging, the enemy of change, who preferred stasis except when violent change served him better. Not only strong, but vicious in his strength, cruel when his protection was rejected, or not wanted. He would have smothered me in his strength, had I surrendered completely to the hold he had upon my soul. He would have remade me in his own image, and I cannot even say that I would have fought him with all my strength. Change is, after all, my nature, my deepest failing, and to please him, to know that he was pleased with me, I might very well have surrendered all I am to his desire.

  The history of Constantinople and of the Dream that we built together claims that we were lovers, we three, but that is not wholly true. Michael was the center of gravity around which both Antonius and I turned, the object of both our affections, very much to his own delight. Michael loved Antonius. They were lovers for centuries before my angel and I ever met, and the bonds between them were deep. Michael loved me, and to this night I do not know, even for my own peace, why he chose me. A part of me thinks that he decided to love me solely to craft a balance to Antonius within his own being—order, of course, requiring chaos to be complete, and Michael always being exquisitely aware of the aesthetic pleasures to be found in such a union of polar opposites. Antonius, I think, did not perceive the matter in quite that light. I do not doubt his rage, the hurt and betrayal of a man who had found his happiness in the arms of a perfect love, only to have that love offer himself to another. Antonius never forgave me for the part of Michael’s heart that I possessed, no matter how small that part might have been, and he was never the lover to me that others have romantically thought him to be.

  Except once.

  Once, and only once, did he touch me as a lover, and that night is branded into my soul as though by fire. I knew, when Antonius unleashed his image-breakers, his Iconoclasts, on the Empire that it was not the icons, nor the power of the monasteries, nor the ancient tradition of the blood-cults that he truly wished to break, but me. It was me that he wished to see shattered at his feet, me whose bones he wished to feel break beneath his hands, me whose blood he wish to see flow and whose flesh he wished to see burnt to ash. Antonius never loved me, but I knew then that his hatred of me had overwhelmed his love of Michael and his love of the Dream. I knew… and I knew that if I did nothing, if I made no gesture, that he would destroy all he had helped build rather than suffer me to live at peace within it.

  For three nights, I went to his haven, and craved entry. For three nights, he refused to see me. On the fourth night, I did not ask the permission of his guardians but walked past them, and commanded them to hold their places. I found him in his study, his very proper Roman study, screened off from the rest of his haven, its walls painted with a murals of Michael—Michael as he showed himself in Rome, clad in robes of white and gold, Michael as he showed himself in Constantinople, all gleaming golden flesh and snow-pale wings. He was alone, and I closed the screen behind me, that we might speak privately. We did not speak. We argued. I cannot, in fact, remember a time when a conversation between us did not devolve into an argument, and this was no exception. I do not remember the words we spoke to one another, but they were cruel, and most of them were true.

  He struck me, harder than I have ever been struck before, by anything or anyone, and in that I include my sire, who was not above physical violence when properly enraged. I fell back against the painted wall, stunned, my head reeling and the taste of my own blood filling my mouth. When my vision cleared, Antonius stood less than an arm’s length from me. He looked appalled, possibly even with himself, and was staring at his hand, my blood smeared across his knuckles. I recall being surprised that his hands were shaking so violently. His face was marble-white and his pale eyes were wild with emotion, his mouth held in a trembling line and the nostrils of his fine, sharp nose flaring. He lifted his hand to his lips, and licked my blood away. I was transfixed, watching the tip of his tongue moving across his own skin. A tremor ran through us both, and then he was on me, his hands striking me across the face, battering me to my knees with his strength, bearing me to the floor. He crushed both my wrists and tore my hair forcing my head back. He licked the blood from my
face, from my lips, ripped the silks from my body.

  He took me there on the floor, and I wanted it, I wanted him, I wanted him to claim me at last, by force if he needed it that way, to give us both what we had desired, and denied ourselves, for so long. His eyes were hot with mingled lust and loathing, I could feel his raw and naked want, his hatred and his desire, in every touch. He pleasured me so completely that I could have died that night and felt my existence complete; I surrendered myself to him utterly, let him pour himself inside me and twist the whole of my being to suit his needs, gave all that I was capable of giving. At the height of it, at the instant when our souls and flesh became molten and blended wholly with one another, as the ecstasy of our union sang through us, I cried aloud my love for him, and knew that it was true.

  It did not matter.

  I did not hate Antonius as greatly as he hated me, and Antonius did not love me, at all, before that night or after it, even as he held me sobbing in his arms, even as I understood how Michael felt when they lay together.

  I love him. I will always love him. I loved him as he crumbled to dust, and I will love him until the world itself follows him into darkness. Perhaps, one night, I will follow him, will be permitted to follow him, and know peace from the grief that has lived in my heart, in the deepest places of my soul, since the morning he met his death.

  I should not have let it happen.

  Part Three

  Dragon’s Breath

  “Omnia mutantur, nos et mutantur in illis.”

  (All things are subject to change, and we change them.)

  —Anonymous