Melanthrix the Mage

by Robert Reginald

  Widdekin, the eldest surviving son and heir of Zhertán Count Körvö, was an imposing man of some forty years of age. Tall and slim, he bore the unmistakable aura of authority wrapt about him like a cloak, as he strode boldly up the center aisle, looking neither left nor right, a rolled piece of parchment tucked in a leather case under his left arm. On his right side marched his eldest son and heir, Lord Åkos, nineteen years of age, and immediately to his left Lord Tibor, eighteen months junior to his brother; and be­hind him trailed his entourage, a dozen courtiers, advisors, and guards.

  Ten yards in front of the king he bowed, succes­sively, to King Kipriyán, Queen Polyxena, Hereditary Prince Arkády, Patriarch Avraäm, and to the Great Sword of State mounted on the wall behind the throne. Then he pulled out his message, and began reading in a loud, pene­trating voice that carried unto the farthest reaches of the hall:

  “Barnim iii, King of Pommerelia, Overlord of Morënë, Nisyria, Ptolemaïs, and Mährenia, Lord of the Prüffenmark, sends greetings unto his brother, Kyprianos iii King of Kórynthia.

  “Cher Cousin:

  “We were dismayed to receive your com­muniqué of Marymass, in which you did threaten us and our kingdom with force if we did not accede to your unlawful de­mands. We have also been apprised of your alliance with the Duke of Mährenia, a union that threatens the longstanding peace between the three realms.

  “Sirrah, we must tell you that this pro­posed affiliation of family between your son and the Kürbisci heir cannot stand, seeing that it would forever alter in your favor the balance of force in the Teuton­mark.

  “Excepting that one issue, however, we are willing to meet with you on neutral ter­ritory, at a time of your own choosing, to seek some middle place on which our grievances can be settled without war. Let us not go hastily onto the battlefield.

  “I call upon you to heed the words of our ancestor, the great King Tighris of revered memory, who on his deathbed reminded his heirs of the scripture, saying: ‘Blessèd are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ He spoke wisely, my brother, and we would both do well do honor his words.

  “But if you cannot find a place within your heart that cries out for peace, be ad­vised that we will defend our lands, our peoples, and our rights, even unto the last valley and farm, as we have done so rigor­ously in the past, to the great and endur­ing distress of the nobles and the people of Kórynthia. Do not allow the lies of the Forellës to lead you down this unholy path.

  “We entrust this message to our beloved cousin, the Hereditary Count Körvö, another scion of the great House of Tighris, who speaks with our voice, and to whom you may entrust your response.

  “We have spoken.

  “By our hand and under our seal, on the Feastday of Saint Lorenz the Abbot, in this, the xliiird year of our reign.

  Barnimus Tertius Rex.”

  Widdekin rolled up the parchment, put it back in its case with a flourish, and stepped forward with his sons to hand it to the king, who graciously bent down to receive it.

  Suddenly there was a loud shout of “Stop!” and a man rushed forward from the group of courtiers and princes clustered to the left of the throne, brandishing a naked sword.

  Widdekin instinctively jumped back, pulling his son Åkos with him and throwing him to safety off to one side, as the weapon cleaved the spot where they both had just been standing. Chips scattered from the black-and-white tile squares as they were struck by the sword’s tip. The de­fenseless ambassador tried to retreat once more, but tripped over one of his own aides, falling heavily to the floor.

  Lord Tibor pulled a stiletto from his belt and stepped forward to defend his father, waving it in front of him over his sire’s outstretched body.

  “Noooo!” shouted Widdekin, as the heavier blade hewed through the boy’s limb like a branch being trimmed from a tree. The knife went rattling and spinning across the floor, coming to rest against the elegantly encased foot of Antónia Lady Vydór. Tibor’s hand and arm fell to the floor as he collapsed sideways across his father, his blood spurting like a fountain over Widdekin’s disbelieving face.

  As the assailant raised his arm to strike a final fatal blow against the ambassador and his son, Prince Arkády grabbed a spear from the left hand of a nearby guard, and in one smooth motion, and without any conscious attempt to aim the weapon, launched it down the aisle at the broad back of the attacker. There was a noticeable thud that echoed dully throughout the hall. Time seemed to stop as the bloody greatsword remained poised at its highest arc for one long moment. Then it clattered noisily to the tile, bouncing several times, and the killer dropped wordlessly across the tumbled bodies of his victims, dead as he hit the floor, his heavy weight driving the protruding spearhead deep into Lord Tibor’s back. Lady Vydór daintily bent down, retrieved the stiletto, wrapped it in a napkin, and tucked it up her sleeve.

  Arkády immediately took charge.

  “Nicky!” he shouted, “remove the king and queen to their chambers, and take some guards with you.

  “Captain Fösse! Seal the hall: no one may leave without being searched.

  “Zack! Find the king’s physician. We need him right now.”

  Then the prince ran to the bloody mess piled in front of him, but was stopped by the outstretched swords and knives of the Hereditary Count’s retainers.

  “Let him be,” came the faint voice of Widdekin from underneath the pile, and the guards backed off.

  Arkády and his brother Prince Kiríll mentally probed the bodies, quickly determining that both the as­sailant and the boy were already dead. They lifted the heavy body of the assassin to one side, gently disengaging it from the younger man’s lifeless corpse.

  “My God,” said Kiríll, “it’s Dolph!”

  Little echoes of horror skipped their way from per­son to person down the hall, like pale moths fluttering fu­tilely against a windowpane.

  “I felt their spirits being welcomed into Heaven,” said Widdekin. “The man didn’t know what he was do­ing. In his mind’s eye he saw me holding a poisoned blade and thought he was protecting his king. Oh dear God! My boy, my poor luckless boy. Whatever shall I tell his mother?”

  Tears began furrowing down his cheeks as he gath­ered the body to his bosom, and rocked back and forth in his grief.

  “Whatever shall I tell my dear Ivana?”

  A scream added to the chaos as a woman pushed her way through the milling crowd. Arkády saw his Aunt Teréza crying and tearing at her garments as she ran for­ward, and stepped to intercept her.

  “Dolphie!” she wailed. “My son, my little son, what have they done to you? Arkásha, why have you taken my boy from me? Ezzö! Oh God, I think he’s dead. Ezzzööö!” she screamed again, and collapsed unconscious into Arkády’s arms.

  When a pale King Humfried came rushing up, Arkády had him take his mother to her rooms.

  Metropolitan Timotheos offered to administer the last rites, his aide hovering at his side. To the Hereditary Count, he merely asked, “May I?” and when Widdekin nodded his head, quietly and reverently began his office. He mo­tioned Athanasios to do the same with Prince Adolphos.

  There was a moment when the stark horror of the scene threatened to overwhelm Arkády’s tightly-guarded emo­tions. He realized suddenly that he had just murdered his first cousin, that that same cousin had just violated the holy sanctity of the embassy. Had the world gone utterly mad? The prince walled such notions away in one corner of his mind, willing himself to continue functioning in spite of what had just happened. He would deal with the conse­quences later.

  Arkadios took Fra Jánisar Cantárian aside when he finally arrived.

  “There’s nothing more you can do for these two,” he said, “but there’s something you can do for me. I want to know why Dolph acted as he did. Find a Psairothi who’s experienced in necroprobing, and have him search through the count’s mind, looking for anything out of the ordinary. This is wholly unlike the man. He had no imagination, inde
ed, scarcely any wits at all. He was harmless. What happened to make him a murderer and vi­olator of truces? I want some answers. Preferably by this afternoon,” he added.

  “Highness, I don’t think it can be accomplished that quickly,” said the doctor.

  “Try!” the prince thundered.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll have a report ready for this after­noon’s council meeting,” Jánisar said.

  As soon as Athanasios had finished annointing the dead assassin’s lifeless body, the physician corralled several guards, who took the corpus away.

  Ambassador Widdekin had finally staggered to his feet, being helped by his eldest son, Count Åkos. The Hereditary Count’s green-and-silver tunic was covered with rusty brown blotches. He had aged ten years in an hour.

  “He’d just turned eighteen,” Widdekin said, gazing down at the body of his younger son. “He attained his majority three weeks ago, and begged me to take him along. Whyever did I listen?”

  He struggled to regain his composure, and then said to the prince: “We will return to the Lorette and await your response there. We sail in the morning, whether or not we receive one.”

  Then he turned away.

  “Ambassador...,” said Arkády.

  “Enough!” spat the emissary, his rings flaring in re­action. “Enough, please! You have all done enough! We take our leave, o King-to-Be. Would that we had never come.”

  He led his small group of retainers down the hall, carrying the body of the lad with them, daring anyone to interfere with their right to depart. Across the boy’s chest flopped the severed arm that his father had retrieved. On either side the crowds of courtiers shrank back from the bloody ensemble as it passed by.

  There was nothing more to be done but to order a mass said for the repose of the souls of the recently de­ceased, and to make way for the washerwomen to clean the sticky mess off the floor before it had a chance thoroughly to dry.

  The Archpriest Athanasios watched in shocked si­lence as the laborers began their rough, dirty work, drop­ping to their knees next to large wooden buckets filled with cold water, and scrub, scrub, scrubbing at the tiles with their stiffly-bristled brushes to remove the deeply-em­bedded stains, assuming almost a prayerful posture in their work, backs bent far forward, faces close to the floor, never complaining, never ceasing, until the task was finally completed. One of them crossed herself as she moved to a new patch of blood.

  Why, this is God’s work, he suddenly realized. These women are closer to salvation than I. They reach for Heaven’s Gate through their uncomplaining labor. They do what must be done in God’s Holy Name.

  The revelation stunned him even more than the hor­rifying events of the past hour.

  What am I doing that even comes close to this? he wondered. Why am I...?

  “Athanasios!” came the command, “I need you.”

  The priest shivered himself free of his thoughts, sighed once, and then straightened his back.

  “Yes, Metropolitan,” he responded. “I’m coming, Your Grace.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “WILL IT BE WAR?

  WILL IT BE PEACE?”

  “God’s breath, what in the seven circles of Hell happened here!” raged the king in council, which had been expanded with this meeting to include the Forellës. Even the guards in the corridor could hear him through the walls.

  “Whatever possessed Dolph to do something like this? Arkásha?”

  The prince stood up, motioning the rest of the room to silence.

  “Sire, I’ll have a detailed report for you later this afternoon, before this council ends. I ordered an immedi­ate death-probe of Prince Adolphos, and I hope we’ll find it instructive.

  “However, before we proceed further,” he said, “we need to draft a response to King Barnim’s letter. That’s why this session was originally called, and despite the tragedy that occurred this morning, we still must frame a reply. Ambassador Widdekin sails at the third hour of the morrow.”

  Lord Gorázd agreed.

  “Sire,” he said, “we need your guidance on this is­sue. Say the word. Will it be war? Will it be peace?”

  Ezzö, Count of Bolémia and late King of Pommere­lia, then asked to be heard.

  “Sire,” he said with a catch in his voice, blinking back the tears streaming from his hollow eyes, “I have lost a good son today. Your dear sister Teréza bore me five sweet children, three boys and two girls, and now all are gone but one. Adolphos was never the smartest of my children, but he was the dearest of them to me. Never once did he harm a soul until today.”

  He turned to the hereditary prince.

  “I can’t blame you, Prince Arkády, for what you had to do. No one must violate the sanctity of the em­bassy, and my poor Dolph, well, he had to be stopped.”

  He breathed deeply to regain his composure.

  “Oh, he must have gone mad. He was possessed by Shaitán, or, more to the point, swayed by the devil’s agents, those papal-loving Walküri. The Cæsarists con­tinue to persecute our people in Vorpommern, denying them the right to have their masses sung in Greek and for­bidding them their own clergy, and sending their Romanish priests and agents eastward into Kórynthia itself. All of you know this. The Holy Roman Cæsar was once content with the lands south of the German River in the west, and the Ister in the East. Now he wants it all.

  “Cousin, I demand my vengeance! I demand a restoration of the old faith! I call for jihad!”

  Murmers of approval trickled ’round the room. These men of action were sick of the senseless attacks that had been nibbling away at the realm, were tired of the La­tinist incursions into the east, and were determined to do something about them. King Kipriyán’s eyes darted quickly back and forth across the table, measuring this lord’s mind or that.

  Finally, the king looked at his eldest son.

  “What say you, Arkásha?”

  The prince rubbed his short beard, trying to find some way to slow the rush of events.

  “We have no proof, sire,” he said, “absolutely none, concerning the origin of these crimes against your person. We don’t know who caused them, or why. We should first determine something definite about the attacks before taking action. And you lose nothing, father, by agreeing to meet with King Barnim.”

  Prince Nikolaí stood up, his cheeks flushed.

  “For once I must disagree with you, brother,” he said. “Whether or not the Walküri are responsible for this particular outrage, they’ve certainly given us more than their share of evil over the years. Maybe they’re these Dark-Haired Men we keep hearing about.”

  The councilors laughed.

  “I say it’s time we put an end to the sons of Walküre, once and for all. Let’s clear out the lot of them, and install some responsible orthodox kings in their place.

  “I too call for jihad,” Nikolaí said.

  “And the rest of you?” asked the king.

  Metropolitan Timotheos, sitting in the place of Pa­triarch Avraäm, lifted his hand.

  “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that I must raise my voice in support of Prince Arkády.”

  There were groans from around the table.

  “Hear me, my lords. I bear no love for the House of Walküre or their Romanish ways. I know the crimes of which they’ve been accused, and I agree that they’ve over­stepped the bounds on too many occasions, persecuting, torturing, and killing thousands of innocent people whose only crime was their orthodox faith.

  “But I too urge caution. Unlike the rest of you, I served in the last war with Pommerelia, fighting alongside King Makáry, Hereditary Prince Néstor, King Karlomán, King Ezzö the Elder, and Prince Kazimir, and participating in every major battle of that conflict. I was there, which is something no one else in this room can claim. And I saw all of those men, and many others be­sides, die horrible deaths.

  “Even after we had killed King Michael of Pom­merelia, even after it seemed that we had won it all, the enemy rallied behind this very same King Barnim and
drove us back. Do not think for a mo­ment that this will be a romp in the countryside. Our forces are very closely matched. We could still be fighting there a decade from now. We should wait.”

  Comments were also heard from others in the room, all of them supporting war.

  “Very well, I think I’ve heard enough,” the king said, cutting off further debate. “This is my judgment, sieurs. For their crimes against God and the true faith, for their crimes against Kórynthia, for their crimes against my house, we call the jihad against the Walküre. Let the word go forth to every town and dale, that the fighting men of the kingdom shall gather together at each castle and forti­fied place by the middle of April in this our xlist year of reign, thence to gather at our fortress of Myláßgorod no later than the middle of the month following.

  “Let the metropolitans bless our soldiers, let the pa­triarch bless the king and court, and may God smile upon our great enterprise.

  “This is the word of Kyprianos iii King of Kóryn­thia. Let it be recorded.”

  Thirty-five fists beat as one upon the council table, shaking the panes of glass in their frames, as Athanasios marked the words down in the Great Register.

  “Jihad!” they shouted.

  “Jihad!” echoed the king.

  “Jihad!” confirmed Metropolitan Timotheos, acting for the ailing patriarch.

  Lord Gorázd motioned for silence.