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

by Myranda Kalis

  It was raining, and the grassy hill was slick with water and mud; Ilias slid several times and nearly fell more than once. But there was an appropriately dense grove of trees at the bottom of the hill next to a chuckling, high-running stream, and he had wanted to sit in that place since they arrived. Now, he wanted to go there because he needed the peace and the closeness of the earth, of tall trees standing over him as he worked. The ground beneath the trees was covered in fallen leaves and treacherous with roots, obliging him to move slowly, and his candle-lamp flickered in the rain and breeze as he drew the items he wanted out of his box. He closed the box, which more often than not doubled as his altar when he was on the move, and laid a white cloth over its wooden top, on which he set the candle lamp, a small bone-hafted knife, and a pottery bowl. From within his tunic, he drew out a small leather pouch he had worn on a thong around his neck since they left Sarmizegetusa, and emptied its contents into the bowl.

  Nine pinches of his own grave earth showered out. Nestled among them was a tiny seed, deep crimson in color like the seed of a pomegranate, which Ilias had found clinging to his clothing after his encounter with the god-tree in Damek Ruthven’s mountainside temple.

  He knew a gift when he saw one, and also knew that then had not been time to use it.

  Taking a deep, unnecessary breath, he unsheathed his knife, its sharp copper blade glinting, and sliced open his palm. He willed his hand to bleed until the liquid filled his hand, and poured it slowly into the bowl, watching as it soaked into the earth and bathed the seed. Aloud, he whispered, “My lord, I know who you are. I know your name. I know you as I know my own blood, as I know my own bone. You flow in my veins with the Waters of Life and Death, my flesh is yours and your flesh is my own.”

  The seed shivered and, to Ilias’ eye, seemed to grow, drawing his blood into itself.

  “My lord… who is called the Shaper… I know that you were trying to warn me of the danger that we would face. I fear that the danger is here, and that I am not its equal.” Ilias swallowed with some difficulty. “I beg you, guide my hand.”

  He took the seed in his still-bloody hand and swallowed it. Deep within himself, within his blood and flesh, he felt something stir.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The monastery outside of Brasov was completely dark and still when they arrived—which, considering the hour that they did so, would not have been unusual for an ordinary monastery but was certainly out of order here. A messenger had been sent some time ago to order preparations for their arrival. Myca knew that they should be expected, and a night watch should have awaited them. Instead, the lamps outside the door were darkened, and no bustle of efficient Obertus monks and servants issued forth to greet them, or even open the doors. Fortunately for his temper, no one insisted on belaboring the obvious. They simply dismounted and allowed Myca to confer quietly with the captain of their guards.

  A contingent of the guards remained outside with the Cainites, their weapons at the ready, while the remainder separated into groups and began trying the various entrances into the monastery itself. The front doors were, naturally, barred from the inside and none of the windows were large enough to admit a full-grown man, even if they weren’t shuttered tightly against the weather. Myca watched for a moment, then turned to rejoin the others, who were standing watchfully themselves, tense and silent, even Ilias.

  “Something is amiss,” Myca informed them quietly.

  “In what way, Lord Vykos?” Markus Musa

  Giovanni asked, fingering his several chains thoughtfully. “And is there any manner in which I may be of assistance?”

  “Someone should have been awake to greet us.” Myca replied, tersely. “That the monastery is barred against us is more than slightly odd.” He paused, and considered. “Would it be possible, Lord Giovanni, to ask the spirits at your command to enter the monastery and determine the cause of this problem?”

  Ilias shifted slightly, but made no objection to this request. He had been quiet for the last several nights, withdrawn thoughtfully into himself, but not sullen. He spoke when spoken to, but did not begin conversations, as was his usual wont. Myca wanted to ask him what troubled him, or what he was thinking of, but the process of making certain all the arrangements for their return to Oradea were in order consumed most of his time.

  “It is possible. I would just require a moment of privacy. I must, of course, concentrate.” The necromancer bowed slightly and, at Myca’s gesture, stepped away from the others, taking only his servant with him.

  “What do you think it is?” Malachite asked, in an undertone, once the necromancer had departed. Even his illusory face was creased in undisguised concern.

  “I cannot yet guess.” Myca glanced at Ilias, bundled inside an oiled leather cloak to keep out the damp. “The wards are still in place?”

  “Yes.” There was no hesitation in the koldun’s tone or manner, but Myca felt a low tremor of alarm nonetheless. “I have no explanation, Myca. It could be almost anything. For all we know, an illness might have struck.”

  Myca nodded slightly, unconvinced, but having nothing better of his own to add. A call rose, from somewhere beyond the circle of torchlight in which they stood, and in a moment, the captain of the guardsmen approached, bowing deeply. “Lord Vykos, the door leading into the refectory from the garden is unbarred and unguarded. Do you wish us to investigate?”

  “Bide a moment. Keep your men outside until Lord Giovanni returns.” The captain bowed a second time and retreated to issue orders to his men. “Lord Malachite, perhaps you should…”

  The Rock of Constantinople was already at his baggage, extracting his little-seen sword from its oilcloth wrappings and belting it about his waist. Ilias, standing his head bowed in the depths of his hood, appeared to be murmuring softly to himself, perhaps interrogating the spirits. Myca thought it best not to disturb him and simply waited, measuring the tension among the men and controlling the slow but steady rise of his own alarm. After a moment, Markus Musa Giovanni rejoined their circle. He did not bow, and the expression beneath his beard was struggling for neutrality and failing to achieve it.

  “My Lord Vykos, I fear that something has gone quite drastically more than amiss.”

  There was not a single living thing within the monastery walls.

  Myca was silently stunned. The monastery had, from all appearances, not been assaulted or otherwise invaded. There were no signs of violent struggle, nor was the place an abattoir. No blood or fire stained the walls or the floor. No bodies littered the rooms. It was simply empty, its hearths cold, its braziers unlit, its halls untenanted. All of the pallets in the monks’ dormitory were made, as though they had all risen for the first of the morning’s devotions and then never lay down again. The refectory was in perfect order but for the lingering stench of perishable supplies long since gone to rot. Clothing set for washing and mending still sat in the laundry. In the scriptorium, half a king’s ransom in ink and paints for the illuminations had gone dry for want of their containers being closed. Documents were still spread out on the desks and, in some cases, showed that their writers had ceased working in mid-sentence, mid-word.

  The lower floors were similarly abandoned. None of Ilias’ servants remained, their quarters cold and empty as tombs. Ilias took the news far better than Myca would have thought. He neither raged nor grieved, but Myca supposed there would be time for that later. The koldun instead took a handful of men down to the lowest room in the monastery to confirm that the wards were still intact and “Nikita” still imprisoned. Above, the ghosts bound by Markus Musa Giovanni’s will continued exploring rooms and the men began lighting lamps and candles, setting a fire burning to chase away the chill damp that had invaded the walls, and continued searching for any sign of the monastery’s missing inhabitants. Myca and Malachite assisted them, as best they could, searching for clues invisible to mortal eyes or beyond the range of all mortal senses entirely. There was, however, nothing to be found, even the old, we
ll-worn sensations of daily habitation thinned and faded, like a painting rinsed again and again with water.

  “I do not like this at all,” Myca finally admitted, with some difficulty, giving voice to his unease as the three Cainites stood together in the monastery refectory.

  “No more than I.” Malachite agreed, grimly. “Where is Ilias? It does not take that long to climb the stairs.”

  “He is coming,” Markus Musa Giovanni said quietly, speaking for the first time in several moments, the abstraction that came over him when he spoke to his own spirits fading. “He is in the long hall with the men—”

  The refectory door opened, and Ilias’ bodyguards entered ahead of him, one of them carrying his dripping cloak and hanging it by the fireplace to dry. Ilias approached slowly, his hands tucked into the long sleeves of his tunic, his face an inscrutable mask. When he spoke, his voice was pitched low, so that none of the mortals present could hear it. “The wards are broken. Nikita is no longer imprisoned.” He withdrew his hand from his sleeve, pouring a long stream of ash from his palm. “And I believe that I have found the monks and my servants.”

  Myca was very much of a mind to order everyone out of the monastery, down the hill to the chapter house outside of Brasov, and then have the place leveled. If he could have accomplished it safely in the time they had and with the force at his command he would have done so. He was forced to settle for ordering the men, all the men, inside to perform a thorough search of every room in the monastery, supported by the reconnaissance efforts of the necromancer’s ghosts. Neither effort found any trace of Nikita and with the dawn now approaching swiftly, he was forced to accept the one option he wished to avoid—sheltering in the abandoned monastery by day.

  The four Cainites made the best of the situation that they could. Rather than sleep in separate chambers, the oriel room was made ready with bedding and pillows, pallets laid out and the entire structure, above and below, heavily guarded. Myca, not at all comforted by these precautions, paced the halls until the nearness of sunrise forced him to seek the oriel room and his pallet, pulled close to Ilias’ own. Malachite and Markus Musa Giovanni were already abed with their servants close by them. Ilias sat cross-legged and awake, awaiting his return, serenely composed despite the many oddities of the night. Myca found that tranquility soothing almost in spite of himself, shedding his shoes and cloak, and laying down beneath the mass of furs and coverlets that Ilias had prepared in his absence. His lover curled close against him, arm across his belly, head resting on his shoulder, and Myca drew comfort from the closeness, as well, nuzzling the copper-blonde hair brushing his chin.

  For a moment, they lay together in companionable silence. Then, Myca whispered the question that had gnawed at the back of his thoughts all night. “How did he break the wards without you feeling it?”

  A moment more of silence passed before Ilias made his reply, his tone thoughtful. “I do not know. I should have felt it immediately. The spirits should have spoken to me at once, unless they were commanded otherwise. That is not impossible.” Softly. “If he is truly the Dracon, it is not outside of his power to do so, were he somehow freed physically, but any physical breach of the wards would have warned me, as well. It is a puzzle, my flower.”

  “Too many puzzles,” Myca muttered, and drew Ilias closer. “My sire will not be pleased to learn that we have lost him, if, indeed, he is even lost. But it seems likely. None of the men, nor the ghosts, found any trace of him.”

  “And the spirits could tell me nothing.” Ilias murmured sleepily.

  “We should have acted sooner.” Myca stared blankly up at the shadowed ceiling far above, trying to think of how he would phrase it in the letter he would have to write.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps we have done all that we could do.” Ilias reached up and brushed Myca’s eyes closed gently. “Sleep, my love. We will think of what to do next in the evening.”

  Myca pressed a kiss into his lover’s palm. “As you wish.”

  He walked between columns of blue marble. To his right was the sea—a vast dark expanse he could hear and smell more than see, the waves crashing against the breakwater dozens of feet below, the salt-breeze stinging his eyes, catching in the unbound spill of his hair, the trailing lengths of his clothing. To his right was a garden, full of rare and wonderful night-blooming plants, scattered with statues and fountains, crossed by gravel paths and lush expanses of well-tended grass. It was a beautiful place, serene and elegant in the manner that all of Byzantium was elegant, gracefully designed and pleasing to all of the senses, not just the eyes.

  He wished to appreciate all of those beauties for their own value, but his efforts to shorten his stride were half-hearted at best. He was, after all, not walking for his own pleasure. He was, again, about to enter into the presence of the most beautiful thing in Constantinople: the lover from whom he had been long parted, and to whose arms he had only lately returned…

  This is not real, Myca told himself within his dream.

  This is not real. This never happened.

  He threw back his head and cried out aloud, bloody tears of joy running down his cheeks. Beneath him, his lover’s back arched, pressing their bodies more closely together, palely glowing hands clutching at his thighs. He sat astride his lover’s loins, their flesh united, rocking slowly on his knees, wringing every sensation he could from the places their bodies touched, stroking his hands across his lover’s chest and belly. When they were together in this way, they both remembered what it was to live and love, to burn with desire and quench that desire in another’s flesh, before the more divine union of the blood. Heated from within by a wild passion, he strove to make his lover scream, to cry out, and, finally, cry out he did—moaning a name, his own name.

  That is not my name, Myca told himself within the dream. This is not me, though I feel his touch burning me still. I was not the lover of…

  Michael the Patriarch. Michael the Archangel. Michael, in whom the Dream was made flesh. They lay together afterward, bodies entwined, flesh and blood still singing with ecstasy. Michael’s golden head lay on his breast, Michael’s hand cupped his loins and caressed his belly, making him quiver with renewed desire. Michael’s fangs pierced his throat and exalted him with passion that was truly divine. Michael’s flesh entered and claimed his own, and Michael’s thoughts spilled into his mind through the bonds of blood and desire between them.

  “You wear his face, though you are not him—your spirit, even reshaped as it is to please me, is your own still. You are not him…” The Patriarch, the angel, whispered gently into his mind. “But there is much of him in you, I see that, at least. They chose well, did my faithful Gregorius Dimites and your sire Symeon, when they chose to gift you with his form and his aspect, and send you to me, as a gift of their love. And you… you are worthy for your own sake, for you alone have come to spend my last nights with me, and give to me the comfort that the one who came before me never knew. To you, I shall give what no one else shall ever possess. To you, I give my Dream.”

  Myca woke, suddenly and completely, as many things became clear.

  He remembered.

  He remembered the night that his sire had summoned him to a house outside of the Obertus mother-house in lost Constantinople. He remembered their conversation, and feeding on a servant whose blood was thick and sweet with a substance he did not recognize. He remembered falling into his sire’s arms, and being carried to a room, where he was stripped bare and reshaped into another’s image. He remembered the maddening voice of the Muse, Gregorius Dimites, speaking in his thoughts, twisting his mind, striving to obliterate his identity and leave him with only one thought, one truth: that he was the Dracon, returned to the city in its darkest hour, returned to give aid and comfort to his failing lover. He remembered the nights of passion spent in the arms of the Patriarch—and remembered, in the end, that the Patriarch knew him for who he was…

  Knew him for who he was…

  And used him, nonetheless. />
  He wanted to scream. A gentle hand touched his hair, stroked loose strands back from his face, soothed him silently.

  “It seems,” the voice belonging to the hand said quietly, an unfamiliar lilt to each word, “that many of us have been wearing faces not our own of late. Is that not so, my childe?”

  Myca opened his eyes.

  The Archbishop of Nod knelt in the center of the oriel room, unmoving and unspeaking, a lamp burning on the bare floor next to him. On either side of him lay a servant—the necromancer’s servant, his head twisted at a decidedly unnatural angle, an expression of perfect peace etched onto his face, and Malachite’s servant, who had evidently perished with a good deal less equanimity. Markus Musa Giovanni himself crouched against the far wall, clutching his chains. Malachite stood opposite him, sword in hand, and visibly unwilling to use it. Myca sat up quickly and cast a glance at Ilias—and found himself staring at a stranger in his lover’s clothing.

  A certain undeniable physical resemblance joined the silent Archbishop and the sorcerer kneeling peacefully at Myca’s side. They were both dark of hair and dark of eyes, fine-boned and graceful. The sorcerer had the long-fingered hands of an artist and his face a more than vaguely feral cast, sharp chinned and high-cheeked, his auburn eyes angular. The Archbishop of Nod had the perfect beauty of Malachite’s icon if not its fair coloring, the interplay of shadows and light over his features lending them an air of depthless weary melancholy. Before Myca’s eyes, he bowed his forehead to the floor, once, and rose again to his knees, his voice soft but resonant in its reply. “You are… not wrong, my sire.”