by F. G. Cottam
So it was that a woman named Alabaster Swift became my friend. She was an assistant to the alchemist, Jakob Slee. She was principally what you would call a chemist. She was very clever and gifted at this craft. I sensed that she was unhappy, which, once we knew each other well enough, she did confirm. She felt compromised, sullied almost, by the use of magic. Her inclination was to pure science rather than to the bastard trickery of Slee’s tradition. An opinion such as hers was heresy there and I felt flattered that she trusted me with it.
She was the lover then of the courtier, Sebastian Dray. He was and remains a skilled and powerful politician. My world is autocratic and the king capricious, whimsical and often simply cruel. But he trusts Dray and relies on his talents as he relies on the gifts of very few men. Dray’s achievement in remaining influential cannot be over-stressed. It is the measure of his brilliance and ability to read more shrewdly than anyone the moods of his monarch.
Dray is a handsome man, charismatic and charming and sometimes even kind. Mine is a harsh and spiteful world and it takes more courage to show kindness there than you would easily comprehend. No distinction is made between kindness and weakness, certainly not at court. But Dray has the courage and the confidence to indulge it. They were a good match, Dray and Alabaster. She was considered very fortunate to find favour with such a man. She was nobly born and beautiful. He was civilized.
When he was in counsel in the evening at his home, or in the company of great men, and this was often; it was her habit to spend that time in his library. He has amassed one of the great libraries of the world. Many of his books are priceless. He owns volumes of which there are said to be only the one copy existing. His library is half secret, played down in its magnificence, lest it incur the envy of the king. I do not think this is a very likely eventuality. The king is not much interested in books.
Of principle interest to Alabaster were the volumes on the subject of science. Dray is much more interested in poetry and history and art, and she found the section of the library devoted to science to be a chaotic jumble of spell books, alchemical tracts, formulae, principles of physics and general theorizing. She decided that she would catalogue it, bringing some order to the chaos and learning what she could of its contents at the same time.
Thus did she stumble upon what she very quickly realized was the laboratory notebook of Hieronymus Slee. Two things occurred to her immediately. The first was that the contents of this elderly volume were so secret that merely to read it would be a capital offence. The second was that Dray was unaware of its presence. It must have been bought in a job lot of old papers only carelessly examined. He was far too cautious a man to have something so sensitive stored on an open shelf.
Alabaster studied it. She could not help herself. Her scientific curiosity was too great to allow her to do otherwise, and she thought the risk of discovery slight. She had found something only she knew still existed in the world.
Slee was a magician by birthright, choice and obligation. But he was also something else, Alabaster discovered. He was what earth would call a virologist. And at this aspect of his discipline, he was nothing short of a genius. She found his formula for the plague bacillus. She found the vaccine he had formulated, a simple yeast variant baked into Endrimor’s bread to prevent the spread of the pestilence to our world. It was chilling, she told me, to see them described in the hand of their creator.
There was something else, though, some virus he was working on that seemed to have a very specific genus. In the notes, Slee claimed success for it. It confused Alabaster. It killed by encouraging body temperature to a level the host would find intolerable, but it seemed to be predicated on the assumption that the host would be cold-blooded. She stared at the formulae until the scrawled figures and symbols swam before her eyes. Then she turned the page. And she saw a precise anatomical sketch of a parasite on which dissection had been performed.
There were to be two plagues, Adam. There was the one de Morey was sent to avenge. And there was the one intended to wipe out the legion of parasites on which the count of Sarth depended for his protection. That is the real reason the count was so anxious to assist your ancestor. It was not friendship. His spies at court had told him about what Slee was working on. Or someone from Slee’s laboratory had boasted in a tavern and the rumour had spread north. What can’t be denied is that when de Morey killed Slee, he stopped this pestilence before it began.
It was Alabaster’s belief, in her phrase, that Slee only had the skill to transmit the formula from the page to the petrie dish. When he died, the disease he created to all intents and purposes died with him. Certainly it was never used.
The present count is much more powerful than his ancestor. Selective breeding has made the parasites less the ghoulish, leech-like creatures they were then, than true and formidable monsters in his service. He owes earth a great debt of gratitude. It is my belief that now is the moment to make him honour it. Earth has always had allies on Endrimor. I am the proof, an ally of earth when I am from there myself. The count of Sarth could be your greatest ally in your moment of greatest need.
You should appeal to him personally. Without the bravery and fortitude of the great knight whose blood and name you share, he would never have been born. Petition him. He owes you his life.
My Love to You,
Delilah
Adam read the letter aloud. McGuire was the first to speak when he had finished it. ‘The parasite bacillus could not have been ready. Either that or it was not fully formulated. If it had been, they would have unleashed it.’
‘The present count of Sarth is not to know that,’ Grayling said. ‘For all he knows, it is complete and intact and highly virulent. It gives us a lot of leverage.’
‘You don’t have it,’ Adam said. ‘It exists only as a formula in a laboratory log from the Middle Ages on a shelf somewhere in Sebastian Dray’s library. And I don‘t see the need for leverage, as you call it. Why threaten the count? Why blackmail him into becoming our ally? Why not just do as Delilah suggests and petition him?’
‘Appeal to his better nature, you mean?’ Grayling’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.
‘If you had seen one of his parasites, you would not imagine him generally very charitable,’ said McGuire.
‘I agree with Adam,’ said Jane. ‘The parasites have been bred to engage in a guerilla war that his family has been forced to fight for centuries. If you want a guard dog, you don’t buy a poodle. He’s been practical. He’s followed the family tradition. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a sadistic or dishonourable man.’
Grayling looked at Adam. ‘You can appeal to his sense of obligation, his integrity, if you wish. It might work. If it doesn’t, then threaten him with the pestilence. Regard it as the ace up your sleeve.’
‘Me?’
‘Well of course you, Adam. Or would you rather stay here and wait for Maul to come back and pull you apart at his leisure?’
He had told Jane and the professor about his confrontation at his father’s funeral. By now he expected that McGuire would also know about it. The sense that they were all being toyed with had only been increased by Jane’s account of her meeting in London with her sister. Delilah’s letter, the information it contained, presented the opportunity to do something positive, to act rather than to react all the time to events. He should welcome it, he thought. But there was one serious objection.
‘I don’t speak the language,’ he said.
McGuire laughed out loud at that. ‘You’ll probably be devoured before you get an opportunity to speak,’ he said. ‘The niceties of linguistic protocol are unlikely to be required.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Jane said. ‘The doctor here speaks it and I’m good at languages. He can give me the rudiments. We’ll do a crash course. When do we go? Where do we go to get there?’
Grayling said, ‘There’s a gateway in the high Alps, above the monastery which contained the atlas in which your father found the de Morey deposition
.’
‘That’s right,’ Adam said. ‘They were coded and you said you broke the code.’
Grayling nodded. ‘It means that the gateway has not been used since medieval times, so it will not be guarded, even if it is still known about there.’
‘Do we know where it will bring us out?’ Jane asked.
‘Further north than south, I believe. That’s a practical advantage. But you will need luck, both of you, to succeed in this mission. It is vastly more dangerous than anything either of you have ever done in your lives.’
‘I’d like to talk to Jane about this privately,’ Adam said.
‘You won’t talk me out of going,’ she said.
‘I know that.’
They crossed the road and walked the length of the pier. It was a bright autumn afternoon, the sea vibrant under a blue sky, the air cool with a candyfloss tang, the Wurlitzer music so exuberant it almost sounded funny. They went into one of the coffee places they had not tried before, one free of sinister associations.
‘Did you really not sleep with Delilah Crane?’
‘We kissed.’
‘I bloody knew something had gone on.’
‘It was just a kiss.’
‘With the Siren of Rotterdam, I don’t think there’s any such thing.’
Adam thought Delilah was by now probably dead, her corpse lying at the bottom of the harbour with her tongue half-digested in its stomach, a remote and pitiful distance beyond seducing anyone. He looked out of the window behind him, in the direction of the doctor’s flat on the promenade. ‘Did you notice they weren’t exactly queuing up themselves for this vital mission?’
Jane picked up her tea and blew on its surface. ‘McGuire’s too doddery for the physical stuff. But I’ve got a theory about that.’
‘Go on.’
‘The conflict is kept secret. The thinking is that we’d lose heart if it was generally known about, so it’s all hushed up and deliberately misinterpreted.’
‘Thus the Great Lie.’
‘Exactly that, but a network of people are in on it. They were probably recruited the way McGuire was.’
‘Then there’s the dynastic element, which is how Grayling became involved.’
‘There must be some international, orchestrated campaign, like there was at Sarajevo,’ Jane said.
‘Sarajevo failed.’
‘I know, but just the same. There will be a network of people like McGuire and Grayling globally. There must be. They will be planning strategies to lessen the damage to international relations Martin and his three apocalyptic pals are doing. I think Grayling wouldn’t think of going himself because he’s too important. I doubt he’s thought of as dispensable.’
‘He was important enough to try to kill in Canterbury,’ Adam said. ‘They were keeping tabs on him.’ He rubbed his tender arm. ‘That said, I was important enough to merit a personal introduction to Proctor Maul.’
She smiled at him. ‘Yes, Adam, you’re very important. Is that what you wanted to tell me in private?’
He looked at her. She was very beautiful in the sunlight through the café’s picture windows. He thought the love he had for her infinitely rare and precious. He did not want anything to happen that would stop her looking at him in the way she was at that moment, and yet he thought he was about to jeopardize completely the tender feelings that she had for him.
Quietly, he said, ‘When we cross, Jane, I will not be deterred. If Bloor tries to stop me, I will kill him. That is not rhetoric. It will be ugly. I don’t want you to think of me as someone with blood on his hands. It will ruin what we have between us. For that reason if for no other, I’d rather you didn’t come.’
‘You won’t be deterred. Neither will I.’
‘It isn’t about you being a woman. I’ve no objection in principle to women going to war if that’s their choice.’
‘I know that.’ She looked down at her hands, linked in her lap below the table surface. ‘When I went to see my sister, I noticed some discoloration on her face. It stretched from her cheekbone to her ear. It had been very skilfully concealed with make-up, but I saw it. I asked her if Bloor hit her.’
‘How did she reply?’
‘She said that though she was improving, she was not perfect. She was a work in progress, and she needed occasional chastisement.’
‘Has he done anything else?’
‘I didn’t ask. I didn’t have the stomach.’ She raised her eyes to look at him directly. ‘Remember your father’s old saying about chance?’
‘They all say it. I’m getting sick of hearing it.’
‘You were born for this, Adam. And if you have to kill to succeed in it, then that’s what you have to do. It won’t make me feel about you any differently at all. We didn’t pick this fight, but we can’t afford to lose it.’
Jane was given her crash course in the language. Adam brushed up on his fencing technique against Grayling. It felt odd initially, naked, not to fence in a mask. He was also wary at first about the thrust and parry of the contest with weapons keen and edged. He adjusted quickly. By any objective standard, Grayling was very good. Adam, though, was infinitely better.
‘Why can’t I take a gun?’
‘If they catch you with a gun they will kill you straight away.’
‘That’s the whole point of the gun. It will prevent them from killing me.’
‘Start leaving bodies lying around with bullet holes in them and they will hunt you down before you get anywhere near the count’s domain. Kill them with a sword thrust and anyone could have done it. Swords are not just less conspicuous there than automatic pistols; they are a great deal quieter.’
‘People actually go about there armed with swords?’
‘Of course not. Don’t be bloody silly. You will take the doctor’s cane. If anyone looks at it suspiciously—’
‘Stab them.’
Grayling raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Lean on it. Walk as though you are afflicted with lameness and a slight limp.’
McGuire told them something about the customs and landscape. The first thing they would notice, he said, was that there were very few people abroad. Travel was not encouraged. Settlements were scarce. Most of the population of the south lived in the hovels, a sort of vast shanty town spreading outwards in the hinterland beyond the walls of the city of Salabra. There were several hundred thousand slum dwellers, despite the frequent and savage culls carried out on them. There were no ethnic distinctions, just strict caste divisions between those born noble and the peasantry.
‘Maul’s complexion is that of a Native American,’ Adam said.
‘The pigment is applied. It’s a decorative thing, like the facial tattoo.’
‘So he possesses a certain amount of personal vanity.’
‘Presumably so,’ McGuire said. ‘He was immaculately attired when you saw him. But I don’t think his vanity is a weakness that’s going to assist you in a fight with Proctor Maul.’
‘Cheers,’ Adam said. ‘You have a real gift for positive thinking.’
The civilian population lived with only the most rudimentary technologies. There was no electricity. Their homes were lit by candles and heated by fires fuelled with wood. The more prosperous had gas lanterns. A volatile gas could be harvested from natural toxic marshes to the west of where the hovels petered into scrubland. This fuelled the vehicles the king’s army was equipped with. By earth standards these vehicles were almost comically crude, but they sufficed because civilians were obliged to rely on horse-drawn transportation. The soldiers were also trained in the use of rifles and artillery pieces, but did not have routine access to weapons except in time of war.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Jane said, when McGuire informed them of this. ‘The king fears a coup.’
‘I don’t think fear is an emotion the Crimson King has ever felt,’ McGuire said carefully. ‘But he is cautious and distrustful and suspicious of everyone.’
‘The army is quite small numerically,’
Grayling said. ‘You must remember that the king has Jakob Slee and Slee’s magic, and he is anything but reluctant to use sorcery against his enemies.’
Far less was known about the count of Sarth’s domain to the north. There was reason to believe it had expanded, Grayling said. Aerial reconnaissance was not possible. There was no aviation. It might be possible to rig a hot air balloon. But a Vorp would certainly bring it down. The forest in that part of Endrimor was in places impenetrable. It was believed that cities thrived under the count’s patronage, but no one from earth had ever visited them.
Jane said, ‘Could you not send spies?’
Grayling and McGuire looked at one another. Grayling said, ‘Until I broke the atlas code there were only two gateway locations known to us. There was the one off the coast of Scandinavia and the one in the Aegean that puts you in the Miasmic Sea. The former was hazardous. The latter was deadly.’
‘You cracked the code a quarter of a century ago,’ Adam said. ‘You must have sent people.’
‘We did,’ Grayling said. ‘But no one we sent north ever returned.’
‘It sounds a very small and parochial world,’ Adam said.
‘It is the same size as ours physically,’ McGuire said. ‘But most of it is ocean. There is only the one land mass, so in a sense it is small. But it is also a much stranger and more exotic place than earth. Spells that somehow soured or were corrupted account for the Miasmic Sea and the parasites, we think. And the wildlife there is best avoided. Predators have thrived on a civilian population prevented from being able adequately to defend itself. The animals are deadly and strange. The people are cowed. The hovels teem with filth and hopelessness. The sea grows daily more poisonous. The rulers are capricious and cruel.’
Jane and Adam, listening, nodded as one.
‘Try to come back safe.’
The weather in the high Alps was harsh. In one way that was a blessing. Adam did not like heights. Jane had actually climbed and abseiled. She had done some bouldering in Colorado and even some free climbing and was an experienced off-piste skier. Grayling, who led them, had become a crack rock climber at school and an expert mountaineer in his army days. Adam was just grateful that he could not see how far they could fall in the blizzard they struggled through, walking upwards with the deliberation inflicted upon them by the crampons they all wore.