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

by Myranda Kalis

  The necromancer greeted them gravely, with a deep bow. He had dispensed with his usual selection of gauds for the ritual, clad in a somber black tunic and hose, his only adornment the chains he wore openly now on his chest, the links thick and heavy and hung with carved bits of bone and braided loops of hair. “My lord prince, Symeon of Constantinople and Oradea. My lords Vykos and Malachite.”

  “Lord Giovanni.” Symeon bowed precisely, the corpse-lights striking fire from the gilt embroidery about his throat and cuffs. “I trust all has met with your satisfaction.”

  “Indeed, my lord prince, it has.” Markus could not resist the urge to offer his most ingratiating smile, as well.

  “Excellent.” Symeon half-turned and nodded curtly to his seneschal, standing framed in the door, her expression so bland, her body language so perfectly correct, it practically shouted her disapproval aloud. She shut the doors carefully and, beyond them, they all heard her clear, crisp voice addressing the guards stationed there.

  Markus Musa Giovanni arranged them in a loose semi-circle around the outer edge of his summoning circle, the best to watch the show, Symeon in the center, with Myca and Malachite flanking him on either side.

  “I warn you, my lord prince, my lords, that some of what you see and feel may be disturbing, but it will not be able to do you any harm. The circle will hold the shade, whichever one is able to appear, contained within its bounds. It will speak through my servant, and will be compelled to answer whatever questions you put to it, and answer them truthfully. I must, for the time being, ask your silence.”

  He received it. The ritual began simply, without drama or fanfare, no chanting or mumbling or gratuitous displays of perversity, such as Myca’s imagination, at least, had been providing vivid examples. The room, already none too brightly lit, perceptibly darkened. Already none too warm, it cooled so sharply that Myca felt it through layers of embroidery-stiffened silk. The unfortunate mortal in the center of the circle, barefoot and bare armed, shivered and the breath escaped him in visible puffs of frost. Out of the corner of his eye, Myca watched the necromancer feed the first of the letters into the brazier, releasing a breath of foul-smelling smoke as it was consumed instantly, the coals flaring icy blue as they did their work.

  The cloud of foul black smoke hovered for a moment over the brazier, remaining almost unnaturally coherent, swirling and eddying in the draft of spectral cold that rose from the brazier. Then, in shreds and tendrils, it was drawn toward the circle, its substance sucked away and bound, rotating counter-clockwise, visibly agitated. Within the circle, the necromancer’s ghoul shuddered and twitched convulsively, his eyes widening. Then, without warning, the smoky vapor surged inward, towards him, enveloping him, forcing its way past his clenched teeth, up his nose. The ghoul, shuddering and convulsing, fell to his knees, tearing his hair and clawing at his face, a low keening wail emerging from his throat. Malachite almost stepped across the circle, moved to bring the suffering creature some sort of aid, only to be held back by Symeon’s restraining hand.

  “The spirit is… eager.” Markus Musa Giovanni observed, blandly, in an effort to mask his own surprise. “It wishes to be heard.”

  That was patently obvious. The ghoul thrashed and convulsed in the middle of the circle, babbling in at least two separate voices, as the spirit strove to take his body and use it as its mouthpiece. Finally, his struggles ceased and he lay still, panting for air. After a moment, even those struggles ended and his simply lay, staring blankly at the ceiling above him.

  Then he shrieked.

  It was a sound that transcended mortality. No purely human throat could have made it. Contained within it was a blend of tangled emotions—rage and hate, and a vast black despair. Myca knew, instinctively, that had there been no circle protecting them from its force, no subtle web of necromantic bindings, it would have flayed their souls open and broken their minds.

  Markus Musa Giovanni raised his own voice, shouting over the din, “Be silent!”

  Silence was so abrupt and so immediate that Myca’s ears rang with the sudden absence of sound.

  “Rise.” The necromancer’s voice brooked no defiance.

  The ghost-ridden ghoul rose, crawling first to his knees and then to his feet, struggling not to stand in the flesh’s customary hunch, fighting for the dignity of an unbent spine, a commanding posture. It did not quite succeed. The ghost’s image shone from within, the ghoul’s flesh nearly translucent as water, their features overlaying each other in a weird interplay of light and shadow. Myca’s eye followed the pattern and he gasped aloud at the image that drew itself in his mind’s eye. Symeon’s hand caught his wrist, as well. Myca froze in place, fighting the flesh-crawling revulsion he suddenly felt at his sire’s touch and the urge to jerk himself away from it.

  “Name yourself, shade.” Markus addressed the thing directly and without fear, armed about with his own protections and means of compulsion.

  A low death-rattle laugh emerged from the ghoul. “Name myself? That whelp there already knows my name.”

  Markus worked a complicated gesture with his free hand, and the spirit howled, bloody froth pouring down the ghoul’s chin. “Name yourself.”

  “Filth! Perversion!” The ghost frothed for a moment longer, enraged and agonized, but yielded just the same. “How thin the blood of the Dracon has become, not to recognize its own. I am Nikita, Nikita of Sredetz, childe of Zdravka, childe of the one called the Dracon, may the earth refuse his blood and the air his ashes!”

  Now it was Symeon’s turn to react, taking a half step backwards, shock coming and going across his face. “What?”

  The shade of Nikita of Sredetz turned a baleful, night-black eye on the prince of Oradea, a sneer curling its lips. “Surely you did not believe that your line alone sprang from the lust of the first prince of the blood? Our grandsire was not as profligate as Noriz, who sowed the seed of his blood far and wide and with anything that would hold still long enough to let him, but he was more whore than saint, little Symeon of Constantinople. You yourself should know that well enough.”

  Symeon hissed between suddenly bared fangs, and Myca found himself clinging to his sire’s elbow, as a token preventative measure, at least. He was relatively certain that if Symeon really wished to cross the circle and wring that ghoul’s neck, he would, and Myca would offer all the deterrence of a cobweb. He also discovered, within himself, a certain lack of surprise.

  Distantly, he heard himself speak. “How long have you been dead, Nikita of Sredetz? How did you die?”

  The shade howled again, reaching up to harrow its borrowed face again. “How long? What is time to the timeless dead? In the thrice-tenth kingdom, nights are forever and days are eternal. Days or decades, they are the same to me, now, and neither ends.” It wailed, its teeth grinding, and more bloody froth flowed down the ghoul’s chin. “How? I lived, and then I did not. There is no how.”

  “Who then?” Malachite asked sharply. “By whose hand did you meet your final death?”

  The ghost was silent for so long, Myca was privately certain that the bindings had failed and he would not answer at all. Then, in an icy hiss, it whispered, “You think I would not know how I died, but who killed me? Fools. Fools. As though you would not rejoice at my destruction, no matter whose hand was responsible. Self-righteous fools.”

  Myca ignored the slurs and turned to Markus Musa Giovanni. “Is what it says true? Could it truly have no memory of how it died, or what slew it?”

  “It is not impossible.” The necromancer replied, in the tone of a man most definitely hedging his bets. “I have seen such things, when the death was brutal enough, that the spirit-remnants have no clear recollection of their final moments. But the death must have been a terrible thing—or possibly inflicted by one whose power was so great the force of their will to keep such things unknown extended beyond even fleshly death, to scar forever the soul of the victim.”

  “Very well.” Symeon said quietly, at Myca’s inquiring
glance. “If it cannot tell us that in specific, we have little further use for this thing. Do as you will, Lord Giovanni.”

  Markus Musa Giovanni bowed deeply in response.

  Symeon rested his hand on his childe’s shoulder, as the necromancer began the process of peeling Nikita’s ghost from the flesh of his ghoul and binding it to the reliquary prepared for it. “I think, Myca, that it is well past time we discovered for certain what you have captive in Brasov.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From the journals of Myca Vykos:

  We departed Oradea in the midst of the autumn rains, and made what time we could on the wet and muddy roads. We left in haste, and traveled with a large contingent of szlachta, the creations of my sire, and an equal number of revenant guardsmen whose appearance was such that they could at least pass for human. Symeon himself could not travel with us, which pleased him not at all, but neither could he abandon his duties as the Prince of Oradea and head of the Obertus Order, even for a mission as urgent as ours. The necromancer, Markus Musa Giovanni, also accompanied us, having successfully argued to Symeon that his abilities might yet be of some use. Malachite was of the opinion that the Giovanni would now stick to him like a burr to his saddlecloth, and would have followed us with or without Symeon’s permission. I cannot say that he is incorrect. The man was extraordinarily forceful about not being left behind, and beneath his bluster, I sensed a genuine emotion, a sensation close to fear or pain, that Malachite might escape him again. Ilias agreed, loath though he was to spend more time with the necromancer than was strictly necessary, and prevailing reproachful as he was about the treatment of Nikita’s ghost.

  Ilias was also not entirely surprised to learn that Nikita was dead—I think he suspected, even before I did, that our prisoner was not Nikita at all….

  The party retraced its path along the entirely overland route between Oradea and Brasov, racing against the onset of winter. Ilias bespoke the wind-spirits regularly now, Myca noticed, and was of the opinion that the winter, when it arrived, would be a harsh one. The balance of powers between the warring sorcerers in the mountains of the south had shifted again, and there would be no long, dry cold this year. The folk of the towns and villages they passed through were of a similar mind, and were loath to sell them supplies this late in the season. Consequently, they made heavy use of the Obertus monasteries that lined their route, and the stores those monasteries kept.

  It was in one of those monasteries, as they approached Brasov late in the autumn, that they received the last piece of the puzzle.

  “A letter? From whom?” Myca asked, looking up from the journal in which he was scratching out his thoughts, and turning a sharp eye on the master of the tiny Obertus priory outside of Sibiu.

  “My lord, the messenger did not say, nor would he accept our hospitality.” The prior was, much like Father Aron, an ancient Obertus revenant, a transplanted Greek. “He left only the message, and the instruction that it should be yielded to you alone.”

  In his hands he held the hardened leather case in which the letter had arrived and offered it silently. Myca exchanged a glance with Ilias, who sat quietly on the bed they shared, working at a tiny bone disk with tools of copper, and accepted the case, nodding dismissal. The prior, who seemed to have some genuine piety about him, fled without a backward glance.

  Myca opened the case and drew out the letter, which was by no means a slender missive, sealed in ribbon and a crimson wax medallion, the sight of which sent a surge of excitement through him. Ilias rose and came to his side.

  “Velya’s arms,” Ilias observed, as Myca cracked the seal, his tone carefully neutral. “He could have written to Oradea—it’s not as though your sire would have said anything of it, not now.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. My sire, as you might have noticed, has not quite shed all of his prejudices just yet,” Myca replied dryly. “It is just as well that he sent it here—I do not doubt that he scattered these on our route home, knowing one would likely meet us. There is probably one in Brasov, as well.”

  Ilias nodded silently, keeping his counsel to himself, as he often did these nights. Myca frowned slightly at it, and opened the letter, Ilias leaning forward to read over his shoulder.

  The pages of Velya’s letter, and the translated extract of the journals, fell to the surface of the desk. For a long moment neither said anything, as they digested what they had just read, then Ilias leaned forward and plucked the extract from the pile of loose pages with a shaking hand.

  “I love and I hate—” Ilias breathed out raggedly. “The Dracon himself. The first prince of the blood. This cannot be, Myca. No power at my command could bind him.

  Myca shook his head slowly. “I do not understand it, either, my heart. But…”

  “No. Listen to me.” Ilias’ hand dug into his shoulder. “This is madness, Myca. It cannot be. I do not know what game Velya is playing with this but I fear what will come of it.” Myca turned to face his lover and found his face a mask of conflicted emotions. “Myca, I should have told you this before. I learned it in Sarmizegetusa, but I did not know what to do, or how to say it.”

  Myca reached up and took Ilias hand, caressing his palm gently. “Speak. I am listening, my heart. There is nothing you cannot tell me.”

  Ilias shook his head slightly, but continued. “I know this will hurt you, my flower. That is why I did not speak of it before. I know the friendship between you and the Flayer, who was your first mentor within the clan. I fear, I fear very greatly, that he has used you ill and may be using you yet. Velya the Flayer is a childe of Triglav, whom your grandsire destroyed, and whose kin your sire warred against for decades before he chose you.”

  Myca forced his grip to relax when he heard Ilias’ bones creak beneath its force, and his lover caught his breath. “Blood feud, then.” Softly. “You think this is some… contrivance… of Velya’s, then?”

  “The best lies and the subtlest manipulations have truths at their core. Velya is not a fool, and he knows that you would not succumb to pure deceit.” He reached out and caressed Myca’s cheek. “I fear you have been the object of his malice in other ways, as well, but I cannot prove it. I suspect that he has been trying, in ways great and small, to turn you against your bloodkin and use you against them. He may even have been attempting it when he brought us together.”

  “I do not know what to believe.” Myca replied, softly. “Velya is not the only one seeking the destruction of the Dracon. Before I left Constantinople for the final time, I was approached by an emissary of a powerful western Cainite—the Bishop Ambrosio Luis Monçada. Have you heard of him?” Ilias shook his head slightly. “He is a Lasombra, and extremely influential within his clan. The current pretender to the rule of Constantinople is little more than his lapdog. Bishop Monçada offered me concessions, his personal support for the establishment of Obertus monasteries in the west, in return for my effort to locate and destroy my grandsire. I agreed to his offer.”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  Myca smiled wryly. “Of course I am serious. I agreed because I had no intention of following through on my end of this little bargain, but maintaining contact with Monçada gave me a useful insight into the political machinations of the man himself, and many of his allies—and his enemies. It allowed me to learn what I needed to know to choose my own position, should I ever become engaged on the political field of the west. It also taught me that my grandsire, and what he is capable of accomplishing, is feared more widely than I had previously guessed. Otherwise? Monçada is a fool and, like many of his kind, seems to think of our kind as short-sighted barbarians, easy to manipulate with honeyed words and promises of eventual support.”

  “The Lasombra,” Ilias observed, acidly, “have ever reached for more than was within their grasp, and have never lacked in arrogance. He honestly thought you would murder your own kin for his favor?”

  “Yes. And it strikes me now that the murder of my kin—the murders that they have commi
tted and the death that others seek to bring to them—may lie behind a great many things that have gone on of late.” Myca traced the lines on Ilias’ palm thoughtfully. “I do not know what we will find when we reach Brasov, my heart. Do you think the wards are intact?”

  “I cannot feel them. We are still too far from home.” Ilias admitted. “But I would know were they broken, I am certain of that.”

  “Very well, then. We will continue as we planned. We will secure Nikita, or whoever he truly is, and bring him back with us to Oradea.” Myca pressed a kiss to Ilias’ palm. “I do not know how much of any of our fears are true, and how much is simply fear. I thank you for speaking to me. I know that was not easy for you, or you would have spoken before. Whatever is happening, or has happened, we will find the truth of it, and deal with it together. Are we agreed in this?”

  “Yes, my flower.” Ilias closed his fingers around his lover’s own. “Yes, we are.”

  Myca had no love of Malachite, but if there was no love, there was at least respect. He went to bring Velya’s letter to the Nosferatu and ask for his thoughts on the matter, hoping to avoid the necromancer if at all possible. Neither Myca nor Ilias thought he would be willing to settle for the binding of the ghost of Nikita of Sredetz when he felt himself still commissioned, with profit yet to be gained from his journey. Ilias pled a task of his own that required completion and then, when Myca had gone, he gathered up his small box of ritual gear and stole outside.