The Lazarus Curse

by Darren Craske

  ‘Must not be sad,’ he heard Butter say.

  ‘I… I don’t know what to do, lad,’ said Prometheus. ‘Tell me what to do!’

  ‘Injury is bad, yes?’

  Prometheus could barely answer. ‘Aye, lad. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Prom not dead?’

  ‘No, lad… you saved me,’ said Prometheus.

  Butter smiled, his teeth coated with blood. ‘Good. Then I die not for nothing.’ His body stiffened in Prometheus’s arms. ‘Beforehand… Prom must do favour. Must tell Mr Quaint… tell him I found her.’

  ‘What do you mean, lad? Found who?’

  Summoning all his will, Butter lifted his arm and pointed at the writhing form of Li-Dao at the end of the garden. A large splinter of glass had speared her right through the middle. ‘Shansee.’

  ‘Shansee?’ repeated Prometheus. ‘Butter, lad, you’re making no sense!’

  To the Irishman, perhaps not… but to Li-Dao, moments from death herself, the word seemed to mean everything. ‘Say that name again!’ she cried, yet in a language that was not Chinese and it was certainly not English.

  Prometheus didn’t know if her tears were for her pain, or for some other reason entirely, but he couldn’t care less about her. She wasn’t half as important as the man that lay dying in his arms. ‘Butter, man, tell me! What the hell is a Shansee when it’s at home?’

  ‘Just tell boss, yes?’ he said. ‘Tell boss… that I find Shansee. He will know this meaning.’

  And so did Li-Dao. ‘No… no, this is impossible.’

  Butter swallowed. ‘Impossible, yes… and a long time coming, my child.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘I am here.’ Butter reached out for her. ‘I am sorry… daughter.’

  Li-Dao spat out the blood filling her mouth. ‘After all these years, I never dreamed… ’

  ‘Hush, Shansee,’ mumbled Butter. ‘We found each other… is all that counts.’

  Prometheus could not fully comprehend what either of them were saying, yet his face softened as he finally understood. But it was far too late. The splinter of glass protruded through Li-Dao’s stomach like the sail of a yacht, and Butter’s wounds were too deep. Prometheus cursed the sky. Butter was dying, and all his strength, all his anger… it counted for nothing.

  ‘I’ll tell Cornelius, lad,’ he whispered. ‘I swear.’

  Butter seemed to fade away in Prometheus’s arms, and he laid him down onto the path as if he was made of porcelain. He tugged at Butter’s tunic, straightening out the creases. The Irishman had lost people close to him before, most recently his dwarf lover, Twinkle. But he had been mute then; his grief went unspoken. Behind all his brawn, he was a far more fragile man than he let on.

  As his heavy chest rose and fell, the strongman glared at Li-Dao.

  ‘I don’t care who you are, girl… whether you really are Butter’s kin… for what you just did…I’m going to make sure your last moments are spent in hell.’

  Prometheus grabbed Li-Dao around the throat, pushing her down onto the glass, hearing her stomach tear open. He did not stop pushing until she stopped twitching. He staggered back, his hands shaking uncontrollably. Seeing a lit torch affixed to a long pole, he tore it down. The shadows snatched themselves from the cracks and crevices of the rocks and danced around him like mischievous sprites. He threw the flaming torch onto Li-Dao’s body, igniting the oil that covered her. With the sea of lotus oil swamping the garden, within seconds the fire began to consume everything that it came into contact with.

  ‘This whole place is going up,’ said Prometheus. ‘I’ll not leave you like this, lad.’

  Gathering the lifeless Inuit up into his arms, he carried him back into the palace. Behind him, Cho-zen Li’s sacred lotus garden was devoured by a sea of flames…

  Chapter XXXIX

  The Unfinished Sentence

  Cornelius Quaint dragged Cho-zen Li’s bloated carcass along the hallway, determined to keep him alive. The warlord had momentarily regained consciousness, and guided the conjuror to the lotus garden. Soon they arrived, and Quaint manoeuvred Cho-zen Li up to his feet. He was in desperate need of his rejuvenating oil, and his dead flesh was pleading for an infusion. Quaint snatched open the door, but stopped short of entering. The door handle seemed curiously hot – and then he saw why.

  Flames engulfed the entire garden.

  The rows of lotus plants were destroyed. Not a single one remained. The cylinder at the end of the garden was just an iron shell, the glass shattered beyond repair and its contents gone. Smoke trails were rising from the charred remains of an unidentified body. At the sight, Cho-zen Li collapsed, and Quaint was forced to brace his immensity as best he could.

  ‘What…what has happened here?’ Cho-zen Li asked, his voice frail.

  Quaint steadied him, and took a closer look at the smoking body spread-eagled in the shards of glass. It was a female, and for an awful moment he thought it was Ruby, until he saw a pair of golden daggers still clenched in the woman’s hands.

  ‘It is gone,’ Cho-zen Li whispered. ‘All of it… nothing but ash.’

  ‘You can replant them,’ said Quaint. ‘Can’t you?’

  Cho-zen Li shook his head. ‘Not in time.’

  ‘But if you don’t replenish yourself, you’ll die!’

  ‘I am dead already, Cornelius… but yes… without the oil, I have no way to repair myself. My end will come swiftly now.’ Cho-zen Li pulled back his robe’s sleeve and inspected his forearm. A dark stain tinged the edges of the decayed flesh where Quaint had bitten him. As he watched, the stain began to grow, and then came the pain. The warlord’s black fingernails clawed at his skin, and with every scrape, pieces of dead flesh fell to the ground. Quaint watched Cho-zen Li fall apart. Disintegrating right in front of his eyes.

  ‘No! Damn you, not yet!’

  ‘Nothing… can stop it,’ wheezed Cho-zen Li. ‘I have cheated death for too long.’

  ‘Cho-zen Li, tell me the truth!’ Quaint pleaded. ‘Help me understand. What does the watch mean?’

  ‘Did you never… look inside it?’

  ‘Yes! It’s a Lunameter. As I said, it measures the phases of the moon! Why, what of it? Why is the moon significant to anything?’ Quaint demanded.

  ‘You saw… the inscription inside the fascia?’ asked Cho-zen Li.

  ‘I saw it, but couldn’t read it. My father told me that it said “Fortune and Family”… his personal motto, the two things that meant the most to him.’

  ‘It says nothing of the sort.’ Cho-zen Li laughed, the act forcing him to cough violently. ‘Your father… knew what it meant… what I was trying to warn him about.’

  ‘And that was?’ asked Quaint.

  ‘The name of his killer,’ whispered Cho-zen Li, as his trunk-like legs gave way.

  Quaint dropped to his knees to catch him as best he could despite the clay cast on his arm. His eyes searched the Chinaman’s face for answers. This revelation was quite beyond anything that he’d expected to find when he set out on this voyage, and now he was desperate to decipher it. The only problem was that his hope was dying just as quickly as Cho-zen Li was.

  ‘What did the inscription say?’

  Cho-zen Li smiled, seemingly amused by his fate. ‘It says “Beware the fifth phase of the moon”… but by that time it was too late.’

  Quaint frowned. ‘The fifth phase of the moon? What the hell does that mean? How can that possibly be a warning about his killer’s name?’ He scratched frantically at his jaw, jostling his thoughts into cohesion. ‘Wait… if I know my astronomy correctly, the fifth phase of the moon is the full moon, right?’

  Cho-zen Li looked down at his rapidly decomposing arm. Chunks of grey flesh crumbled away, and only a stubby bone remained intact. No muscle or tissue, just bone. ‘Augustus knew his killer… yet still he could do nothing to stop him. He was… too powerful.’

  Quaint was almost afraid to ask, ‘Who was?’

  Cho-zen Li slid from Quaint’s
lap and onto the stone. Where his face had touched the conjuror’s lap was a stain of grey-white ash. Without the lotus oil to restore him, two hundred years of Cho-zen Li’s life were catching up with him quickly.

  ‘Damn you, Cho-zen Li, tell me his damn name!’ Quaint roared.

  Cho-zen Li’s body began to collapse. Slowly at first, but then his dissolution increased pace. His huge thighs shrunk, leaving an ashen residue upon the ground, and the cheeks of his bloated face became sunken and drawn. Quaint grabbed at the one hand that was left, the flesh and bone crumbling to dust between his fingers.

  ‘I want his name, Cho-zen Li!’

  Cho-zen Li’s shrivelled flesh was taut to his skull, and tears formed across his cheeks. ‘Once you know his name… you might learn why your father had to die.’

  Quaint clenched his fists. ‘I don’t care! I want to know… I need to know!’

  ‘And what will you do… when you find him?’ asked Cho-zen Li.

  ‘Do you really have to ask?’

  Cho-zen Li grinned, his teeth crumbling in their gums. Miraculously, he found the strength to lift his partially formed hand to beckon Quaint closer. ‘Remus.’

  Quaint watched the insides of the Chinaman’s mouth decay. ‘Remus who?’

  ‘His name… is Adolfo Remus. And he killed your father.’

  ‘And where can I find him?’

  ‘Rome,’ whispered Cho-zen Li. ‘Within the Hades Consortium’s hive.’

  Those were Cho-zen Li’s final words before he turned to dust.

  ‘The Hades Consortium,’ whispered Quaint. ‘Why does everything lead back to them?’

  Chapter XL

  The Dying Day

  Cornelius Quaint was still sat in the same position almost an hour later, a pile of ash the only evidence of the man that had just torn his world apart. He left the garden smouldering behind him and made his way back into the palace. For all his twisted logic, Cho-zen Li was a man much like himself. A man willing to face whatever fate threw at him and never flinch. He could hold a mirror to Cho-zen Li and see much of himself in the reflection. The conjuror had been given answers, but in their place, so many more questions.

  Who was this Remus?

  Why did the Hades Consortium murder his parents?

  He kept on walking, knowing that with every step he was closer to finding out. His broken arm itched beneath its cast, and his wounds ganged up on him to hamper his exit from the palace. As he trudged slowly through the passageways and down the stairs, his heart lifted as he spotted some familiar faces waiting for him at the mouth of the mine. He took a mental register as he approached them.

  Ruby.

  Yin.

  Yang.

  Prometheus.

  There was someone missing. He did not have to guess. He did not have to ask. He did not have to lift the blanket that covered the small body in the centre of the troupe. Quaint’s legs barely had the strength to keep him upright, let alone propel him. It was like walking close to a fire; he knew that the flames would cause him pain, but still he couldn’t resist their pull. He stumbled over to Butter’s body and folded onto his knees. At that moment, he felt much like Cho-zen Li at the end. It was like feeling great chunks of himself break off and drift away. He did not have the strength of will to hold himself together. Reaching underneath the blanket for Butter’s hand, Quaint lifted it to his cheek, hoping to feel the Inuit’s warmth one last time.

  It was already cold.

  Ruby came over and stroked his back. ‘Mr Q… we’re so sorry. Butter meant a lot to you… to us all.’ She just about finished the sentence before her voice broke.

  ‘He died with a smile on his face,’ Prometheus said. ‘I was with him… at the end. I held him in my arms and felt him go. But even staring death in the face… he was still smiling.’

  ‘How very much like him,’ Quaint said.

  ‘Listen, I know this isn’t the right moment, but I need a word. It’s important.’

  ‘More important than this?’ Quaint asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ nodded Prometheus. ‘His last words were meant for you.’

  Ruby, Yin and Yang watched as Prometheus led Quaint away from the mine’s entrance, and soon they were engrossed in a deeply private conversation.

  ‘I wonder what that’s all about,’ said Yang.

  ‘I wouldn’t even like to guess what Butter’s last words would be,’ said Ruby.

  ‘A confession?’ Yin asked.

  ‘What would he have to confess?’ Ruby asked. ‘He was the most saintly person I know. It’s so sad.’

  ‘He was a special person, for sure,’ mumbled Yin. ‘I never once saw any anger in him, despite what he must have been going through. It’s unbelievable, really… that someone could live with so much pain but still keep on smiling.’

  Ruby looked up. ‘Pain? What pain?’

  ‘Have you not heard the story about when the boss found him?’ Yang asked. ‘It was in Greenland, ten or so years back, if I recall. Butter came home after a hunting expedition, his arms laden with walrus meat for his family, and stopped in his tracks as he saw a trail of blood leading to his log cabin. That’s odd, he thought, perhaps a seal or something had escaped from one of his traps and headed for somewhere warm.’

  ‘It wasn’t until he stepped inside that he realised that his wife and daughter were missing,’ continued Yin. ‘And the blood was not leading to his house… it was leading from it. Butter went out into the blizzard following the trail, and his wife was still alive when he found her… but not for long. She died in his arms.’

  Ruby gasped, slapping her hand to her mouth. ‘That… that’s horrible.’

  ‘Inflamed by his rage, Butter leapt upon the men responsible, but there were too many of them, and he was outnumbered,’ continued Yang, picking up the grisly tale’s reins. ‘The men were part of a slaver crew, apparently. They took Butter’s daughter onto their ship and he never saw her again. He would have died that day, had Mr Quaint not been exploring the area at the time. He found Butter in the snow and saved his life.’

  ‘The boss swore to Butter that he would find his daughter,’ completed Yin. ‘Even if he had to lift up every stone upon the face of the earth, and no matter what crawled out from under it, he would reunite Butter with her. But the world is a big place and I don’t think that Butter ever dreamed it would happen… and now it never will.’

  ‘Oh, Butter… why did you never tell me? You poor soul.’ Ruby rubbed her wrists under her eyes, wiping away her tears. ‘In all the time I’ve known him, I didn’t have a clue that he’d been through so much. It certainly makes you look at him differently when you know… especially considering what Destine said.’

  Yin and Yang urged her to continue.

  ‘It was a couple of years ago now. One night on the train I couldn’t sleep. I was thirsty, so I went along to the galley. I spotted Destine taking to Butter over in a corner of the carriage, but I don’t think they saw me. It looked like a private discussion, and I didn’t want to pry, but I couldn’t help overhearing what Destine said… and I remember thinking at the time how strange it was. Now it makes even less sense.’

  ‘So?’ asked Yin. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Don’t keep us in suspense, Rubes!’ said Yang.

  ‘Well, I’ll try to remember the gist of it.’ Ruby looked down at the ground, sparking the flames of memory. ‘It was such a long time ago but it was something like, “You and your daughter are lost, but you shall be found on your dying day.”’ Ruby shrugged the recollection away. ‘Like I said…it was strange. Destine’s premonitions are usually pretty accurate, but I guess even she can make mistakes.’

  Chapter XLI

  The Embers of War

  As he exited the mouth of Q’in Mountain with the remainder of his band, as well as a few of the slaves who had pitched in to help in the battle, Makoi’s heart sank. He saw the blanket-shrouded bundle laid out and fixed to two long branches like a stretcher and knew instantly that something wa
s amiss. Striding over to Quaint, he clamped his hand on his shoulder as the conjuror explained.

  ‘I am sorry, Cornelius,’ said Makoi. ‘Good souls like Butter are few and far between in this world. It is always a shame when we lose one. Please do not think me tactless… but there is a sacred place in Xia X’ian where we remember all our loved ones. My wife rests there, along with many others from the village. It is secluded, and very peaceful. I would be honoured if you would consider it for Butter’s resting place.’

  Quaint’s breath was taken. ‘To be honest I haven’t given it much thought. We should take him back to England, really. There will be a lot of people in my circus who would want to say goodbye. But we’re a long way from home…and Butter deserves his rest. Thanks for the offer, Makoi.’

  ‘That name seems no longer necessary, does it?’ Makoi slowly removed his golden mask, displaying his true face. ‘With Cho-zen Li gone, so is the threat to my family, and I shall hide behind this mask no more. It is time that I went back to only living one life.’

  Ruby’s and Prometheus’s mouths fell open at the sight.

  ‘It’s him!’ gasped Ruby.

  ‘Who?’ asked Yin.

  ‘The blacksmith!’ gasped Prometheus.

  ‘Who?’ asked Yang,

  ‘Han-Lo!’ said Ruby. ‘But… how come he’s dressed up like Makoi?’

  The following morning came all too swiftly for Cornelius Quaint’s liking. He had managed to contain his emotions during the long walk back to Xia X’ian, but he had not slept at all throughout the night. Now that the ceremony was on hand, he could feel his resolve weaken.

  The memorial garden was just as Han-Lo had described it: peaceful and secluded. Just how Butter would have preferred it. Birds sang constantly in the surrounding trees, and the occasional breeze scattered pink blossom across the grass. There were many marbles stones and statues scattered around, almost too many to count, and for the first time Quaint realised just how many lives Cho-zen Li had destroyed.