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

by Myranda Kalis

  Chapter Nineteen

  From the journals of Myca Vykos:

  The summer lingered long that year. Though the trees slowly changed their colors and just as slowly fell, the rains did not, nor did the frosts come to chill us while we were on the road. Looking back, I see that I noted the unusual weather in my journal, but gave it no other thought, for Ilias did not seem overly disturbed by it, at least not at the start. Drought is natural, after all, and we had had many hard, wet autumns and winters of late; I think he was grateful not to travel soaked to the skin. We slowed most when guesting with our Bulgar cousins, those who wished to curry favor with my sire and me and achieve our aid in their schemes. These Bulgars were evidently willing to swallow their distaste for Byzantines and insisted on the observation of all the formalities, the giving of gifts as a sign of good will between all parties, the blood-feasts of greeting and parting. If nothing else, we were fed well on the blood of slaves purchased in the markets of Sredetz that autumn as we made our way steadily northward.

  We reached the border of Velya’s domain as the last of the leaves fell. There we met the captain of his ghoul-protectors, a Bratovitch bred for at least a little intellect as well as massive size, and a large contingent of guards to guide us to his house….

  Velya the Flayer greeted his guests in the dooryard of his manse, which did not surprise Myca at all. On their last meeting, Velya had clad himself also in the traditions of the clan, playing the gracious and urbane host to the hilt and beyond. There was no reason to doubt that, given the chance, he would not do so again. Velya stood on the shallow stair leading to the door of his house as they rode into the dooryard, accompanied by two contingents of guards and a string of servants leading the baggage animals, surveying them with the sort of majestically paternal air that only he could produce properly, a faintly fond smile playing about the corners of his perfect mouth. And Velya was, indeed, perfect. He wore white, a long dalmatic that shimmered with subtle embroidery at neck and hems over equally snowy hose, his impeccably groomed hair falling to his waist in silver ringlets, his face a mask of hawklike patrician elegance. When he raised his hands in the traditional gesture of greeting, his long, sculptor’s hands glittered with fine silver rings.

  “I give you greetings, my most honored guests, and welcome to my house. I give you welcome, my cousin Myca Vykos syn Draconov. I give you welcome, my old friend Ilias cel Frumos, beloved of the gods. I give you welcome, my Lord Malachite, the Rock of Constantinople.” He bowed, the torches sprinkled about the dooryard scattering reflections from his pale hair and the silver embroidery on his tunic. “Within my walls will you find safety and comfort for so long as you abide with me, this I swear by Earth and Sky, and the Waters of Life and Death. Come…” He rose, his face relaxing in a genial smile. “You have traveled far and I see the weariness on you.”

  Servants came and took their horses, the men of the guard being led away to their own quarters to take a meal and their rest. Myca dismounted slowly, and last, as Ilias and Malachite gathered themselves behind him, waiting for him to make the ritual response to Velya’s greeting. Myca was abruptly sick of tradition and felt his Beast roil, angrily, hungry for blood instead of endless words. He made his most courtly bow to the oldest of his friends and colleagues among the clan and murmured softly, “I give you greetings, my cousin Velya, and accept your gracious hospitality, for which your house is well known.”

  Velya stretched out a hand to him, which Myca accepted, allowing himself to be drawn up the steps. “Come—I was not speaking poetically when I see that you are all weary. A bath awaits you, and a meal. We will speak of what brought you to me later.”

  Velya’s house was neither Byzantine nor anything resembling Roman in its construction. It was low to the ground, one story tall, and did not rise above the lowest branches of the surrounding trees, blending instead among them. Its largest rooms were round more than any other shape, its halls short, its walls and ceiling and floor carefully shaped, sanded, and fitted wood. There was no paint, no stone except around the fireplaces, and no mosaic or other ostentatious ornamentation. Parts of the walls and many of the ceiling support columns were carved in elaborate and fanciful designs, and many were hung with long, woven panels of woolen cloth to keep out the damp. There were no doors, only more fabric hangings, except in the long rectangular bathhouse, to help keep in the heat.

  Malachite, perhaps predictably, refused the use of the bath and sauna, instead asking to be escorted to his chamber to refresh himself privately. Nothing, however, could have kept Ilias from the presence of hot water and Myca allowed himself to be drawn along without much struggle. The hot water refreshed him, Ilias tended to his needs rather than the bath servants, and the guest-garments that Velya provided were smooth wine-colored silk embroidered in gold and garnets, a treat to his senses after months of wool and fur. The attendants guided them to the main hall when they were finished and there they found Velya and Malachite already seated in a nest of floor cushions and thickly woven rugs, making polite conversation. Myca was privately convinced that Velya could make polite conversation with anyone, and was faintly amused to see that theory borne out on the somewhat bemused-looking Rock of Constantinople. Malachite had chosen to conceal his true face behind another illusion for the evening, a weathered, middle-aged man, and was responding to questions and idle banter with the air of a man wondering what he’d gotten himself into. Myca entirely understood—Velya was almost disturbingly easy to talk to when he was exerting himself to be social.

  “Ah, there you are,” Velya rose to greet them, and motioned for them to choose the places they most liked, “I was just telling Lord Malachite that, in your absence, your sire has become a man of much industry.”

  “Oh?” Myca inclined a brow, and settled himself amid a nest of riotously colorful pillows, Ilias sinking down beside him and tugging a fur over his legs to keep the warmth of the bath. “It seemed that might be the case as we were departing, I will admit.”

  Velya reseated himself, reclining comfortably against a piece of furniture Myca initially took for wood in the soft lighting but realized, when it moaned softly, was actually a rather erotic sculpture involving at least two ghouls. He resisted with all his might the urge to shoot a glance at Malachite.

  “Yes. He has, evidently, been engaged on two diplomatic fronts—with Jürgen of Magdeburg and our friend Noriz’ vile little brood, if not Noriz himself. It has been most amusing to watch from a safe distance.” Velya’s eyes glittered with an emotion halfway between amusement and malice. “The warlord appears to be finding your sire not particularly easy to deal with, now that he has obtained the aid of allies more useful than Vladimir Rustovitch. I do not expect the pact you spent so much blood on to survive another year and while I grieve for the effort you put into it, the politics of the situation are shifting.”

  “I thought they would,” Myca admitted, coolly. “Jürgen of Magdeburg is accustomed to dictating terms, not being dictated to, and I doubt he thought he would see any consequences from his actions. What does Rustovitch do, while my sire is at work?”

  “Still brooding in his tent, in an even fouler temper than he was before.” Velya laced his fingers together, his mouth set in the thinnest of smiles. “I believe that even Radu—poor, faithful Radu—is getting weary of his everlasting sulk. It has, evidently, gotten worse of late, and we can blame your sire for that, as well.”

  “When we were leaving, Ioan Brancoveanu had just asked my sire to call together an assembly of the voivodes, the leaders of the largest war-bands. I admit I did not think that Rustovitch would attend…?” Myca inclined a brow questioningly.

  “If he did, no word of it reached me. Rumor suggests, however, that under pressure from the inestimable Radu, Rustovitch permitted those voivodes allied under him to attend as they willed and he was most displeased by the large number that so willed.” Velya did not sound entirely gleeful—his personal dignity was too great for that—but his tone made it clear th
at he thought this humiliation no less than Rustovitch’s just desserts. “Ioan Brancoveanu’s forces were swelled quite profitably, and with allies more trustworthy than his own kin.”

  Ilias shifted slightly at Myca’s side, and he glanced down at his lover, finding him, as he often was of late, abstracted in expression, gazing at a point in the middle distance. Myca frowned and slipped an arm about him. Ilias came back to himself with a small start, and smiled reassuringly.

  “Ioan is better placed than he was before then?” Ilias asked, proving that he hadn’t been entirely absent during the conversation.

  “Yes. Ceoris is encircled, and has been since late this summer. He hopes to choke them into submission over this winter, and he may just. The Tremere themselves scorched their own earth closest to the fortress years ago, and unless they are replenishing their supplies from their heathen sorceries…”

  “They may have such sources,” Myca opined, without elaboration.

  “Perhaps. Or they may be trapped in their own tomb with half the voivodes in the east gathered about them, feeding on their herds and reducing their outer works to smoking rubble. Time will tell.”

  “The gargoyles…” Malachite suggested quietly.

  “Neutralized, at least for the time being, I am told. The winged ones, at least. Lady Danika has been, shall we say, advancing certain aspects of the koldun’s art in intriguing directions of late. A cordon, of some kind, to contain the things, and hold them at a safe distance from the besieging forces.” Velya shrugged slightly, though Myca could sense the depth of his interest, and Ilias’ curiosity sharpening, as well. “My information on that matter is not as complete as it could be, though one of my grandchilder regularly writes me from the camp where she resides.”

  “Ilyana? I always knew she would make a warrior,” Ilias asked, leaning forward slightly.

  “The very same. She begged my permission to run off to war as soon as the chance came to her,” Velya looked and sounded half-bemused, half-regretful. “She trotted off to join two of her cousins with a war-band from Ruthenia. I made her promise to indulge my old man’s fancies and write me so I would know she was not ashes in the wind.”

  “Speaking of cousins, my friend,” Myca cleared his throat slightly. “That is at least part of what brings us to you tonight. If we may…?”

  A soft chime sounded, from somewhere beyond the hanging-covered doors, and a procession of servants entered, bearing bloodletting tools and goblets.

  “No, we may not.” Velya smiled faintly. “Now that I have you in my house, dear cousin, I am going to force you to submit to my old man’s fancies, as well, and leave the business of what brought you here for tomorrow night. Tonight, we will dine, and tell one another stories, and remind ourselves that our existences are not wholly made up of politics and war.”

  Myca nodded shallowly, seeing no graceful way to disagree.

  He lay still, unmoving, and in truth he was not certain that he was able to move. His body felt heavy, inert, almost as though there were a stake through his heart. His thoughts felt strangely disconnected from it, and sensation came to him as though from a great distance. He could not open his eyes. A part of him wanted to shriek and writhe, but he was incapable of doing so, incapable even of mustering all the emotional responses that would have gone into such a display. His mind was curiously empty of coherent chains of thought and he discovered in himself a great difficulty when he tried to concentrate on any of the meandering fragments of ideas wandering through his skull.

  He was cold. The air against his—bare?—skin held an unpleasant damp chill. He lay flat on what felt like a slab of marble, spread with the thinnest of coverings, doing nothing to prevent the cold from invading his flesh. From a great distance, he heard footsteps—two pairs? One? He could not tell—then a door opening and closing, a bolt sliding into place, iron grating on stone. Light spread across his eyelids, staining his field of vision briefly crimson, as the lamp that was its source came to rest nearby. Quiet footfalls—one pair, he could now tell. A hand, cool even to his contact-chilled flesh, rested on his brow and laid there for a moment. Once again, his body resisted any effort to open his eyes, even as a second hand joined the first and began stroking gently over the contours of his face.

  Through the disconnection between his mind and his body, Myca felt himself beginning to change. His skin split and his flesh parted, the bones beneath reshaping themselves under the careful touch of his captor, who caressed the shape he desired from Myca’s flesh with the precision and skill of a master sculptor. Gradually, the slope of his brow changed, the shape of his eye-sockets and the width of his nose, the angle of his cheekbones, the contour and sharpness of his jaw, even his teeth. There was, naturally, a great deal of pain, against which he could not even cry out. His throat refused to tense, his lungs refused to draw air.

  It seemed to go on forever, Myca aware and powerless to resist his captor’s hands, the reshaping of his entire form. Inside himself, he wept and raged, his Beast wholly roused by the agony of his body as his bones and flesh and skin were stretched and twisted and reformed, by the anguish of his helplessness in the face of such an absolute violation of body and self. No amount of Beast-rage or fiercely focused will made it stop, or affected the slightest reversal of the changes in his form. At the last, his captor laced long hands through his hair and drew out its length, spilling it across his throat and breast, nearly to the knees, in a perfectly straight curtain, draping it over him like a garment.

  The door opened again, and a single set of footsteps approached. A voice he did not know spoke. “Is it done?”

  “Yes. The next part is yours, Gregorius.”

  Myca’s heart froze and shattered, for that voice he knew as well as he knew his own. That voice greeted him as he clawed his way from his ritual grave deep in the mountains of his homeland. That voice spoke to him when he rose each night, and before he sought his rest each morning. That voice was the very last he expected to hear.

  Myca woke, a shriek lurking somewhere in the back of his throat, shuddering uncontrollably within himself and still unable to move. The sun had not yet set, and his body was as still and immobile as a statue, a forced immobility that sent his Beast ravening against the confinement. He let it rage itself into exhaustion, having no will to resist it, his emotions raw enough that he had no desire to try to rein them in, thick, cold tears pouring down his cheeks, across the tight seam of his mouth. He wanted to sob, but could not force himself to breathe, even as the feeling returned to his limbs, the weight of daylight fatigue lifting from him. Snuggled close against his back, one arm flung about his waist, Ilias slept on. Moving slowly, for slow motion was all he could manage with the sun still above the horizon, Myca lifted that arm away and sat up carefully. In the corner, one of Velya’s excellent servants, trained to respond to the slightest motion, rose quickly and attended to him.

  “Hot water, and a cloth. Now.” It took all the concentration he could muster to manage the words, clinging fiercely to the edge of the bed, refusing to fall back to sleep.

  The servant returned a moment later with another of its cowled, sexless kind, bearing a lit lamp as well as a basin, a pitcher of hot water, and several cloths. He made use of all of these, bathing his face and neck, shuddering even to touch himself. The second of the two servants offered its neck and wrists, which he refused with a stomach-churning jolt of near-revulsion, and commanded it to seek out its master and crave an audience as soon as could be arranged. As Ilias began to stir, he left the bedchamber for the small study they had been afforded and found the box containing the three journals. In the hall, he met the returning servant, who informed him that the master would see him immediately.

  Velya’s private chambers were in the same wing of his sprawling haven as the guest quarters and so they did not have far to walk, for which Myca was grateful. His concentration was in pieces and his temper was on edge. He feared if he had to speak with or even see more than the bare minimum of othe
rs, he might snap, and lash out violently. He had no desire to give that insult to Velya, who had been his confidante and nearly his friend for longer than anyone else within the clan. It nonetheless nettled him considerably to enter Velya’s private chambers and discover that the man rose looking as pristine as God’s own angels, draped in white, his silver hair an artfully disarranged spill of curls across his shoulders.

  Myca throttled an unworthily snide remark and bowed deeply in greeting, the box held close against his middle. “My lord, I apologize for the preemptory nature of my request, and I thank you greatly for answering it nonetheless.”

  “Oh, ‘my lord,’ is it?” Velya’s tone was richly, deeply amused. “For the love of Earth and Sky, Myca, come in and sit down. You look like you just clawed your way out of your grave again. Have you eaten?”

  “No, my—” He paused, rose from his bow, and at Velya’s gesture joined him in the nest of pillows and furs in which the Flayer reclined with no fewer than three servants, from whom he was dining. “Velya, I am sorry. I slept… very poorly. I think it is my spirit’s way of telling me I have been away from home quite long enough.”

  “It is possible.” Velya eyed him closely, and gestured for one of the servants to attend him. “You do not look yourself, and you have spent more time traveling in the last handful of years than any other of our blood that I know. It would not surprise me if that has finally begun to affect you.”

  A little thrill of mingled fear and anguish rippled through him at those words, and he had to force himself to drink shallowly of the servant’s wrist, swallowing against the urge of his throat to close, the desire of his flesh to feel no contact with another. “It would not surprise me, either. Ilias lectures constantly but… there are some things that I feel that I must do. We were in Sredetz on just such a… mission.”

  “I see.” Velya waved the servants hovering over him away, steepling his long-fingered hands before his breast. “Tell me.”