The God Tattoo: Untold Tales from the Twilight Reign

by Lloyd, Tom

  The coachman rolled the bundle of bloodied rags over and Gennay felt a scream well up through her body, but no sound escaped her paralysed lips. As the coachman turned away she caught a glimpse of the bundle’s face and the terror in Sarras’ dead eyes, his neck twisted unnaturally.

  Gennay backed away from the sight, ignoring the shouts from somewhere further down the street. But then she stopped and, with dread, looked back across the courtyard at the library entrance. Through the open doorway, the lamp flickered and shadows danced on the wall behind.

  ‘Something he saw? The room was empty, no?’

  Gennay nodded, unable to stop herself glancing at the nowshut door to the reading room. It was late in the evening, but Gennay had insisted on returning to the library after supper and her brother had accompanied her.

  ‘Are you certain it was empty?’ Emin persisted. ‘Did you look inside yourself or were you more intent on Sarras as he fled?’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing as yet, I’m merely wondering if there could have been someone in there to frighten Sarras. You watched him run from the building, it would be natural for your attention to be drawn to the movement of that and miss a small detail of someone staying still.’

  ‘Emin, go and inspect the room yourself, there’s nowhere to hide!’

  ‘Not without help perhaps,’ he countered, ‘but there are ways and means to conceal one’s presence – trickery in addition to magery.’

  Gennay stood and prodded Emin in the chest. ‘And what exactly was he doing in there, this mage? What horrors did he conjure to frighten Sarras so and for what purpose? This is a library, Emin! There’s nothing of value or importance here.’

  ‘Not true, there are books – information. Knowledge is power; this could be someone opposed to the education of the masses or aware of a secret hidden in the books you’ve had copied, unable to get at it without alerting the owner.’

  ‘And risk their interest be declared to the Land at large as a death is investigated? Killings attract attention, Emin, surely you realise that? A man would have to be desperate to go so far – and if that was the case, why was I spared? I know more about the library and its contents than anyone else, why not approach or try to kill me first?’

  Emin ignored his sister’s blossoming anger and sat back on the corner of her desk. ‘Murders that look like accidents aren’t investigated much. Perhaps Sarras’ death was a warning to you, a threat of what could happen. You told me a man approached you in the street a few days ago, asking about the library and wanting to get at its contents.’

  ‘He was a vagrant,’ Gennay interjected, ‘more a ruffian than a mage!’

  The smile turned indulgent. ‘They don’t all wear silks, dear sister; I’ve met mages who are dangerous and hard men.’

  ‘Don’t be such a braggart,’ she snapped. ‘Patronising a few dockside taverns doesn’t make you an expert on the darker side of the Land. You’re a fool for any man who acts the rogue, worse than any simpering girl hoping to find a heart of gold. You’ve always been willing to swallow whatever guff any scarred veteran comes out with, and pay for his beer as you drink it in.’

  Emin was silent a moment and remained sitting. For a moment Gennay saw a flash of anger in his pale blue eyes but then it was gone.

  ‘And you, dear sister, have forgotten I’m not a little boy any longer. I may love a tale of adventure, but I can tell when a man’s lying and – more importantly in the dockside taverns – when he’s going to try and murder me for my purse. I know more about this city than you ever will because of what I hear between the lies – the criminal gangs and worse, whose city of Narkang is unlike yours in every way.’

  He stood abruptly and walked away from the argument. Gennay watched him descend the stair like a cat, with neat, quiet steps. ‘Time to inspect this room that so frightened poor Sarras.’

  ‘Emin, please—’ The words died in her throat as Gennay went to the balcony overlooking the hall.

  Her brother paused mid-step and looked enquiringly up at her. It occurred to Gennay that her brother was dressed in a far more sober manner than usual – as he had been the night he’d frightened off the stranger too. The quality and cut of his clothes were fine, but without adornment beyond a tiny family crest embroidered in black on his grey collar. With his assured smile and a duellist’s poise he looked far more the merchant adventurer he doubtlessly claimed to be in those dockside taverns, rather than the ferociously intelligent noble son he was.

  ‘Please?’ Emin echoed. When she said nothing more he gave her a small nod, acknowledging her unvoiced concerns. ‘Trust me, Gennay, I don’t frighten so easily as Sarras – I’ll walk calmly away from whatever horror is lurking within.’

  Without waiting for a response, Emin crossed the hall and yanked the door open. He took a half-step inside before stopping dead and gasping. Gennay felt her breath catch but in the next instance she saw the total lack of fear on her brother’s face.

  ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ she demanded.

  Emin cocked his head in a non-committal way she recognised easily enough.

  ‘Emin, a man died here, show a little more respect than you do the rest of the Land. When I do find out which of my friends you’re chasing after, I’ll be sure to tell them the story of when you got your head stuck in the banisters.’

  ‘Feel free, it makes me seem loveable.’ He smiled and stepped to one side so she could join him at the entrance to the reading room. ‘Well, here we are, face to face with the horror of your untidiness.’

  She looked inside. The room was as she’d left it, a small packing crate of books still on the floor under the desk and perhaps two dozen on the shelves on either side, with a handful more scattered over the table top.

  Gennay took a tentative step forward before a surge of exasperation washed away the last of her fears. She marched in, Emin following close behind, and started to collect the books from the table.

  ‘I don’t know who keeps leaving them like this. It must be the foreman, or one of the workmen looking at the illustrations.’

  Emin rounded the table, nudging one book so he could inspect the gilt lettering on the spine before reaching the far end where another had been left open. He inspected the page and turned it over to look at the leather cover.

  ‘Then your workmen have strange tastes,’ he announced, holding it up for Gennay to see. ‘This is one of Father’s – well, the copy he had made for the library.’

  ‘Not so strange really. That page it’s at, the plate’s very striking. Most likely they were just leafing through and lingered on an image they liked.’

  ‘Aryn Bwr’s return to Keriabral?’ Emin looked doubtful for a while as he inspected the page. ‘Seems an odd one to linger on. If memory serves there are several of Zhia and Araia Vukotic that a labourer might find more interesting.’

  Gennay raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh really? And might those be the ones where the artist is said to have used local prostitutes as the models for the heretics? Honestly, Emin.’

  He flicked past a dozen pages until alighting on one illustration. ‘Ah, Zhia, my first love!’

  ‘Don’t be so disgusting!’

  ‘Hah, well none of your friends could ever match up to her,’ he said and raised the picture for Gennay to see. She looked away with a snort which only added to the young man’s glee. ‘Brilliant and beautiful – monster or not, I’d like to meet her before I died.’ Emin laughed. ‘At least – a decent length of time before I die, not just a few moments! Araia I just feel sorry for.’

  ‘Sorry for her? She’s a heretic, cursed to be an immortal vampire for her crimes against the Gods! How can you feel sorry for that?’

  Emin returned the book to its original page, his face serious once more. ‘A heretic yes, but not one whose share of the blame should have been equal. The five Vukotic children all received the same punishment for their crimes, but Araia and Feneyaz merely followed their brilliant
siblings. They were the most remarkable family ever to have lived; the two lesser children would have had little option but to follow where the others led.’

  ‘They still had a choice!’ Gennay protested, her irritation as much with Emin perusing the pages while talking as much as what he was saying.

  ‘Perhaps, but how much of one we’ll never know. The pressure to follow their family and the orders of their king must have been immense.’

  He hesitated and picked the book up to bring it closer. Gennay saw Emin’s lips move slightly as he re-read some words, then looked up at her.

  ‘Who copied these?’

  ‘This one? It must have been the monks out at Dastern Monastery, they did all the copying of Father’s religious works.’ She frowned at his expression, aware Emin was rarely so intent and serious on any subject. ‘Why, what’s wrong?’

  He didn’t speak for a while but stared at the wall, obviously trawling his memory. At last he did speak, but when he did Emin sounded uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘I may be mistaken; it’s been a while since I read this . . .’

  ‘Emin what is it?’ Gennay demanded. ‘Stop being cagey, I’ve never once seen you incorrectly recall anything you were interested in so tell me what’s wrong.’

  He nodded, still looking distant. ‘Aryn Bwr’s return to Keriabral – the page this was left opened at. “As the ghost hour began, the great heretic returned to his fortress of Keriabral to find it fallen to siege. What once were mortal men now feasted upon the dead and desecrated the gardens of his beautiful fastness; the children of Larat and Veren suckled upon the marrow of his queen’s bones.”

  ‘Those lines aren’t in the original, I’m sure of it. The breaking of Keriabral was a celebrated victory – a heroic sacrifice by the Yeetatchen who knew Aryn Bwr would soon return and they needed to destroy his greatest castle before he wiped them out.’

  Gennay took the book from him. ‘And this isn’t in Father’s copy?’

  ‘I’m certain of it, the lines have been inserted – but what monk would do so? The implications are, well, significant to the reader’s impression, especially considering the crimes committed by Aryn Bwr’s forces during the war.’

  As Emin spoke, Gennay scanned the page and then turned to the next, looking those lines over as she did. She frowned and turned back, then switched between the two quickly.

  ‘This page has more lines, the script is cramped. It looks like a new page with the adapted text inserted into the book.’

  Emin began to look around the room rather more carefully than he had before, inspecting each shelf individually and even the table itself. ‘Strange it was this book open at this page, when Sarras took such fright he ran out into the street and under a carriage. More than strange, that’s a coincidence I don’t care for.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  He bent to look at the underside and legs of the table. ‘I don’t know,’ Emin said eventually, not appearing to have found anything of interest. ‘Perhaps this is simply some monk angry at the Gods and inserting heresy into this text by way of revenge.’

  ‘But you don’t believe it.’

  Gennay closed the book and tucked it under her arm, clearly intending to inspect it further and see if there were any other passages she would need to have removed.

  ‘So what then? Some daemon creeping its way out of the Dark Place to irritate me? Frankly, they’d do a better job by rearranging my index system.’

  As though defeated, Emin slumped down into one of the reading room’s chairs. He looked puzzled and perturbed and, for perhaps the first time in her life, Gennay saw him properly confused about what was happening around him, but instead of cheering her up the sight just rekindled her own buried anxiety.

  The worry of the past week caught up with her again and seemed to add gloom to the already dim room. Under the weight of it her limbs felt sluggish and weak; she joined Emin in sitting and the pair remained silent for a long while.

  ‘If this was the work of some bitter monk, he’s a petty man even by the standards of his profession,’ Emin announced at last, ‘and it still doesn’t account for Sarras. If it was a complete coincidence, the two circumstances meeting like this, it means we know nearly nothing about either – yet if they are linked somehow, the link entirely eludes me.’

  ‘Sarras saw,’ Gennay said quietly, ‘or thought he saw, a ghost. No, don’t look at me like that, I’ve not gone mad. This past week has seen more than a few strange happenings, I’ve felt a presence on several occasions and heard what I’ve put down to rats more than once. Though he denies it, I’m sure Bewen has experienced something out of the ordinary—’

  ‘Bewen experiences life through a bottle of whatever he can get his hands on,’ Emin interrupted. ‘He’s hardly a reliable witness.’

  ‘And how about me? Do I meet your standards of reliability or do you think me just some foolish, over-excitable girl?’

  Emin bristled at the accusation. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. Have I ever treated you that way? Ghosts are rare in the Land, far more so than most people believe, but rats are rather more common. Anyone working here late will hear strange noises, man or woman, so a drunk’s confirmation is no confirmation at all.’

  ‘What about a man so frightened he bolted from the building with no thought to his own safety, nor mine?’

  Emin had no answer for that and his frown only deepened. He looked his sister up and down, then reached into his tunic and pulled a silver chain from underneath it. ‘Here, take this.’

  Gennay did so. The chain was nothing remarkable, strong and simple, but from it hung two very different charms. The first she recognised; a finely-worked charm with Death’s bee symbol in the centre, made for a finer chain than the one Emin wore it on. The second was made of iron and simpler, consisting of three long horse-shoe nails bound together with wire, their points curled back on themselves to form hoops at the end.

  ‘What’s this second?’

  ‘A witch’s charm, for warding off malign spirits.’

  She put it down. ‘Are you mocking me?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Emin insisted, his face serious. ‘If there’s any mocking to be done, it would be of me. This is what I’ve worn whenever I’ve been following the drummer boys, trying to see spirits flee their path. Ghosts should fear Death’s symbol and anything bolder should hesitate before a witch’s blessing.’

  ‘You expect me to wear it?’

  He shrugged, the hint of a smile returning to his face. ‘I expect you to be sensible. We don’t know what’s happened here, but it doesn’t hurt to take precautions in case it is something supernatural. At the moment all I can think of is to rule out possibilities. If a ghost or spirit is on the table, so to speak, these charms should either ward it off or tell us answers lie elsewhere.’

  ‘Why don’t we have the library exorcised while we’re about it?’ Gennay said sharply.

  Emin’s smile widened. ‘Exactly my thoughts – it can’t hurt now, can it?’

  To Gennay’s astonishment her brother was true to his word. When they returned to the library in the grainy morning light, a tall, black-robed priest of Death was waiting for them at the courtyard gate. He cut an ominous figure, motionless with his hood up and not a scrap of flesh exposed to the pale sun. Against the clean new stone of the wall he echoed his forbidding God even more than usual.

  ‘Unmen Karanei,’ Emin said, greeting the man warmly after he bowed to kiss the large oval ring bearing Death’s rune the unmen proffered.

  Gennay did the same and received a nod in response, but it was to Emin that the priest finally spoke. ‘Master Thonal, a pleasure as always.’

  As Emin led them into the courtyard, the priest slipped his hood back and revealed a face quite incongruous with his soft, educated voice. Gennay suspected he wasn’t a Penitent of Death by the man’s robe – most penitents raised to the level of unmen retained a sign of their impious past – but Karanei had a soldier’s face.

  H
is grey-shot hair was trimmed and neat and his cheeks freshly shaven, so there was no disguising the two parallel scars that ran up from jaw to crown up the left side of his head. One cut crossed his ear and left a neat diagonal line on it, the other had sliced off the very top corner – Gennay had seen similar injuries before but never so neatly side-by-side.

  ‘Karanei is an unusual sort of priest,’ Emin explained, seeing Gennay’s surprise. ‘We’re fortunate he is in the city, he really is the very best at what he does.’

  ‘What he does?’ she echoed, the fatigue of the last few days meaning she took a moment to understand. ‘You’re a daemon-hunter?’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t a bear that did this to me,’ Karanei said sternly, indicating his scars.

  Despite Emin’s obvious amusement at the scene, Karanei looked impassive, either bored with continually explaining himself or just uncaring of what Gennay thought.

  ‘Is that even sanctioned by the cult these days? Emin, this is ridiculous. If news of this gets out the library could be ruined by gossip before it’s even opened!’

  ‘You suspect there’s a ghost or malign spirit in the building?’ Karanei demanded. ‘Yes? Well, then you want an exorcism. How do you think that’s done? An ordained priest bears Death’s touch and can pray and conduct rituals which may drive off whatever’s there, but may do nothing whatsoever.

  ‘If you want to be sure, find someone with a spark of magic – that way they know what they’re dealing with, can add some force if necessary, and discover whether they were successful. There’s always the possibility that you just piss the spirit off and it tries to claw your head off, so maybe being able to handle a more physical confrontation would be a good idea too.’

  ‘And what are we paying you for these intangible services?’ Gennay demanded, refusing to be cowed by some unsmiling renegade priest.