The Reckoning

by Alma Katsu

  The ancient monk, it seemed, had refused to follow the others, preferring to stay in his own body (though he did manage to prolong its usefulness, as he confessed to being 125 years old at the time of his capture). When the monks discovered that the acolyte had escaped and couldn’t be found, they fled the abbey in anticipation of their inevitable discovery.

  “And the name of the monk who had developed this spell—was his name Nicodemus?” the physic asked, breathless.

  “I believe that is the name he was known by,” the historian said, nodding in agreement before continuing his story. Only the ancient monk had any knowledge of Nicodemus’s spells and powers, but he refused to divulge any information on the grounds that no good could possibly come of continued interest in the subject, particularly if passed into the wrong hands, and vowed to take the knowledge to his grave.

  “So that’s all there is to the tale,” the treasurer said to the physic, draining the last of the wine, oblivious to the physic’s crestfallen look. “That is probably why this village still has such an interest in the dark arts,” he added, “for we have had in our time such a tantalizingly close brush with it.”

  “I take it the old monk had no relatives survive him,” said the physic, already resigned to having reached another dead end.

  “Actually, his granddaughter still lives in the castle,” the treasurer said offhandedly.

  “A monk with a granddaughter?” the physic asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Well, we’ve already established that he wasn’t a very devout monk, haven’t we?” the treasurer answered. “The man condoned murder and worshipped the devil—or so one presumes; having taken a mistress seems the least of his trespasses. He had a mistress who survived him, and the mistress bore a child, and so on. The girl has the gift of prophecy, they say, as well as a touch of madness. She lives in the very lowest part of the castle, near the dungeons.”

  The physic thanked the treasurer for his time, then quickly made his way to the level underground, past the cold storerooms and the buttery. As he got closer to the dungeons, he went from chamber to chamber with his lantern until he found her. His shadow had barely crossed the cell’s threshold when the woman sat bolt upright as though he’d called out to her by name. “I can feel your intentions from here. You’re here for my grandfather’s secrets,” she said. “Come no closer. I’ll give you what you’re looking for, as you mean to take it anyway, and I feel murder in your heart.”

  The woman was no older than thirty, he figured, and looked as though she’d been raised in the wild. She wore rags and was barefoot, and her ginger hair was matted like the nest of a feral beast.

  “Why do you live in the cellar?” the physic asked, holding a cloth to his nose against the stench from the prisoners’ cells down the hall.

  “I’m safer here, away from the likes of them,” she said, tossing her head in the direction of the upper floors. “I’m mad, or so they prefer to say. In a town obsessed with magical arts, it was preordained that I would be an outcast. They believe I am afflicted by the same evil spirit that was rumored to have possessed my grandfather.”

  She seemed so lucid that the physic thought she might be pretending to be touched to keep the townsfolk at bay. He sensed that a power swept through the room and through her, too, though she seemed to be unable to harness it—to her obvious misfortune. He understood that it would do well to see her as a cautionary example: if you couldn’t control the forces that touched you, they would control you.

  “So you know why I’m here,” he said, pacing outside her door.

  “You want my grandfather’s book,” the woman said, drawing a bound volume from its hiding place in the wall and tentatively wiping a finger across the mildewed wooden cover. “I’ve kept it hidden, as my mother instructed me, all my life. It contains potent magic that neither she nor I have the power inside us to command. But you do.” She slid the book across the floor and it came to rest neatly at his feet, as though it had been waiting for him. “A piece of my grandfather’s advice for you: better to be a sinner than a hypocrite, especially when you’ve no reason to obey the foolish demands of the mob. Don’t forget.” With that, she pressed back into the shadows.

  He thought momentarily about taking her with him. The woman obviously had a born connection to the unseen world and there had to be a utility for that. On the other hand, she wasn’t in control of her gifts, and he wasn’t eager to find out whether he was powerful enough to handle them himself. In any case, his curiosity fell away once he felt the power in those pages as his hand touched the book. He smiled at her with the hungry gratitude of a wolf, tucked the folio under his arm, and left the dungeon for the privacy of his keep, eager to explore this latest acquisition.

  SEVENTEEN

  MAINE

  When the sky was half lit by dawn, Adair pulled the vehicle to the side of the road. With light enough now to see, he leaned over the seat and drew the coat away from Jonathan’s face, hoping to find that a major transformation had transpired in the past few hours.

  Jonathan’s skin was at least a few shades closer to a normal hue, and the stink had mostly dissipated; having the windows down during the drive had done much good in that respect. However, Jonathan did not appear healthy. His appearance reminded Adair in no small measure of victims of the Black Death, his pleasing face distorted by swelling, and purplish blooms peeking from the open collar of his shirt.

  Adair didn’t realize until then just how badly he’d wanted this gambit to work, and work perfectly. Raising the dead was hard enough; restoring a body to its original state, when its original state had been absolute perfection, was probably impossible. While there was a chance Jonathan would improve, Adair decided to prepare mentally for failure and resolved to view this as an experiment, a chance to observe in the hope of doing better the next time he tried to raise the dead, should he ever attempt this spell again. In his heart, however, he felt the ache of disappointment.

  Adair was staring at Jonathan, wondering if he’d ever regain consciousness, when his eyes popped open.

  “Have you been awake long?” Adair tried to hide his surprise and delight to see Jonathan’s corpse shudder to life.

  “I don’t know. Am I conscious now? This is not a dream?” The voice was Jonathan’s, but it sounded as though it came from far away.

  “Can you move?”

  Jonathan floundered, finally using the back of the seat to push himself upright. It pained Adair to see him so crippled, to see that once flawless physical specimen now ruined. His stomach clenched, for he wasn’t totally without pity.

  “It’s like putting on a suit of clothes you haven’t worn in a while. I never thought I’d feel like this again—made of flesh and bone,” Jonathan remarked. And correspondingly he moved in a strange, disjointed fashion, as though his skeleton had been put back together differently and he had yet to figure out how this new system worked. As he sorted himself out, he continued to grumble at Adair. “Why did you bring me back? It’s an obscene thing to do to a man who has made his peace with this world.”

  Adair couldn’t argue with him on that point as he, too, felt he might have crossed a line, though he would not admit this to Jonathan. “I have need of you: I have unfinished business with you and Lanore. But first, I want to know how you ended up in the grave. It must’ve been by Lanore’s own hand, for it could not have happened any other way, and yet, I wouldn’t have imagined she’d ever let you go. Did you drive her to kill you? You must’ve done something very horrible indeed to make her wish to be rid of you.”

  A flash of anger cleared the fog from Jonathan’s eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. She didn’t end my life out of anger. She did it because I asked her to. I was tired of living. I’m sure even you’ve felt this way at some point. I thought I was hurt beyond caring”—he shook his head ruefully at his folly—“and wanted to escape as quickly as possible. I went to Lanny and begged her to help me. She fought me like the devil, but in the end she gave in. Is that wh
at you wanted to hear?”

  Despite the regret in Jonathan’s voice, Adair was struck by the selfishness of his act, to ask someone who loved him dearly to end his life. What had compelled her to agree? Was it because of her boundless love for him, or her guilt for having made him immortal against his will? In either case, it was an untenable position to be put in, and still she had not denied him.

  “Not so fast. I want you to tell me everything. You asked her to end your life, but why did you wish to leave her? Had you tired of her after two centuries of companionship?”

  “Tired of her? No, you’ve got it wrong. We were together for only a few years, right after we’d escaped from you. . . . I saw from the start that it was no good between us and could never be. She wanted more from me than I could give her. My presence only made her miserable, so I thought it would be best for her if I left. We’ve been apart ever since. I only sought her out again because I needed her to release me. And, to my shame, I bullied her into letting me go.”

  So they had not been together, happily enjoying each other’s company, laughing at the cruel trick they’d perpetrated against him, as Adair had feared. And while he was pleased to find out that Lanny had not been in Jonathan’s bed all this time, it also pained him—irrationally, contradictorily—to learn that Jonathan had deserted her. The agony she must’ve felt at losing him. She must’ve been inconsolable, living with the pain of his rejection all these years. How she must’ve doubted herself every day, doubted that anyone would love her. For he’d known these doubts, in his own way, after she’d betrayed him. He’d sat in darkness and wondered for the first time if he was so monstrous as to be unlovable. The evidence seemed undeniable.

  Instead of being pleased to hear of her suffering, Adair was surprised to find he was angry with Jonathan for hurting the woman he loved. How dare this self-absorbed popinjay, this undeserving jackass, treat her this way? It was the height of ingratitude: Jonathan could search the world and never find someone who would love him as truly and completely as Lanny had. How arrogant of him to think so little of her devotion! Adair, his skull ready to explode with rage, fought the urge to lunge at the man he’d just resurrected and break his neck.

  It made no sense, and yet it was undeniable: Adair loved Lanny so much that he couldn’t bear to think of her hurt, no matter the reason. When he’d calmed down enough to speak, he fixed Jonathan with a stare and said, “How did she ever fall in love with you? I shall never understand it. . . . Of all the men she could’ve had, why did she pick someone as selfish and unfeeling as you?”

  But Jonathan was not insulted. “Do you expect me to disagree?” he asked grimly. “I’d known since we were children that she was wrong to love me. But at the same time I never asked for it, either. She gave her love to me, Adair; she laid it at my feet and hoped that I’d reciprocate. And I’ll tell you this: it wasn’t easy, knowing I didn’t love her the same way.”

  “And yet, you managed to take her to your bed—”

  “It was what she wanted, but I felt guilty every time we were together! Eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t live with the guilt any longer, and I left her.” Jonathan’s voice, which had been thin and ethereal, thickened with regret.

  To his great surprise, pity surged through Adair. Pity for his rival, a man who’d tossed Lanny’s love away, and still didn’t seem to realize what he’d given up, or the folly of his arrogance. Was it possible that the defect was in Jonathan? Adair wondered. Did the man have no need to be close to another living soul? Too, he felt pity for Lanore, who—Adair realized with a sinking heart—would never stop loving Jonathan, even in death. And he felt pity for himself, for he’d never felt more alone.

  “It might please you to know why I went to Lanny,” Jonathan said, hesitating for another second before giving in with a sigh. “You might say I got my comeuppance. You see, I fell in love with a woman, only to lose her. As you know, three years, five years, it’s like the blink of an eye to us. I’d only just begun to know what love was and then she was gone, killed in a car accident. I went crazy with grief and somehow got it in my head that we would be reunited in the hereafter. I was in so much pain. . . . I wanted to believe there was a way to fix things, to get what I wanted.”

  “And were you reunited with this woman?”

  Jonathan turned away. “It didn’t work out that way.”

  Good, Adair thought. There was justice in the universe after all; no soul deserved happiness less. “And what did you find in the afterlife?”

  Jonathan only shook his head. “I can’t seem to remember anything concrete about the beyond. It’s strange: when I try to remember, any thoughts that come to me break up right away, like mist. It’s as though memories can’t cross over to this side. They might return to me with time. . . . But all those questions about the afterlife: that’s not the real reason you brought me back, is it? You want to go after Lanny; you’re looking for revenge. I won’t help you.”

  Adair fought to remain nonplussed, not to vent his frustration through violence right away. “What a gallant corpse you make, for being such a cad in life. Your scruples don’t extend to me, though, do they? She had your help to trap me, if I’m not mistaken. You must’ve helped brick up that wall. I’m entitled to seek vengeance from you as much as from her.”

  Jonathan did not wither at this accusation. “Lanny had her reasons for stopping you. She was trying to protect me, for one. She told me that you had tricked everyone into thinking you were the peasant boy, this victim, when you weren’t. She knew you were the horrible monster of your own story.”

  “I know she had discovered my secret. She told me, right before she tricked me. She is a clever one. Too clever a girl for you, Jonathan. Perhaps too clever for me,” Adair acknowledged.

  “She said you planned to swap our souls, that you wanted to take my body, and that’s why she had to stop you. The ironic thing is I would’ve happily given you this body, Adair,” Jonathan said, almost laughing, leaving no doubt as to his sincerity. “You have no idea how sick I’d become of all the attention, the fawning. Being touched, stared at, chased. When you are attractive, people think you’re a public commodity, like a piece of art or a statue. I was always on display. If you’d asked, I’d have switched places with you in an instant.”

  For once, Adair was at a complete loss for words.

  “That’s why you brought me back from the dead, isn’t it? You thought you’d use my body to trick Lanny into coming back to you.” Jonathan’s smile was lopsided and macabre, like that of a rotting jack-o’-lantern. “I imagine you might be thinking twice about that plan now. Are you disappointed with the way I’ve turned out? Take this body if you want it. It can’t be very appealing, but you’re welcome to it. Take it and set my soul free.”

  In the course of a few moments it seemed that Jonathan had gained the upper hand. How had this happened? How had a man just brought back from the dead been able to set him back on his heels? It was very unsettling. “So much for your noble intentions,” Adair said defensively. “You’re ready to let Lanore fend for herself once you’ve got an easy way out. Is it because you are anxious to return to the arms of the queen of the underworld? Is this another case of a woman being fascinated with the magnificent Jonathan St. Andrew? Doesn’t it ever get old?”

  “I have no choice in the matter. And if she was ‘fascinated’ with me, as you say, it was due in no small part to you.”

  “Me?”

  Jonathan touched his arm. “The tattoo—that’s how I came to her attention. She knew the design. It meant something to her.”

  Adair thought of the original tattoo, the one on his back, which he’d had reproduced crudely on Jonathan’s arm. He needed mirrors to view it, and it had grown indistinct as the ink bled into his skin with time. He’d wanted to assume the design was meaningless, nothing more than a Roma scribble the peasant boy had etched into his skin for amusement, but he saw now that he’d been whistling in the dark: it had greater meaning,
which he’d intuited all along. It was that intuition that had driven him to have Jonathan marked in the first place, many years ago.

  “So it was not your handsome face that drew the attention of this woman but the tattoo. . . . And, pray, what did she say? What did it mean to her?”

  Jonathan shifted his misshapen face away from Adair. “As I said, as long as you threaten Lanny, I have nothing to tell you. You’ll get nothing more from me.”

  “As luck would have it, I don’t require your cooperation, Jonathan, not really. All I need is your presence.” Adair turned back to face the steering wheel but couldn’t keep his eyes from the rearview mirror and the unsettling sight therein. “For now, all I need you to do is finish setting into flesh, you emperor of worms, and we’ll see if we can’t put you to further use.”

  Adair wondered if Jonathan’s body would ever return to its original state. Even if it did, he wasn’t sure he wished to move his soul into it, take it up as a hermit crab appropriates a new shell. The mechanics of taking on the body—there he had no concerns. He knew that he could execute that spell properly, for he’d done it once already—only once, but it was burned into his memory forever, for it had been a singular experience. The thrill of wielding such otherworldly power was not one he was likely to forget.

  HUNGARIAN TERRITORY, 1358

  With the old heretical monk’s book secured, the physic took it back to his keep and set about finding the spell he desired. First, he had to puzzle over the writing, which was in the archaic Romanian of the old monk’s time. Once he could make sense of the words, he was distracted by the range of the collection, for this told him how capable the sect had been at magic. He chuckled over a couple of the spells in which the approach was wrong or the execution inelegant, and anyone with common sense should’ve been able to think of a better way to accomplish the task. And he wondered about the usefulness of other spells. A few seemed pointless, more trouble than they were worth.