This earned him another kick.
Armand heard the sound someone running towards them and yet another new voice said, “Lord Commander. The monks report that the necromantic wards are weakening and request advice on the next stage of the siege.”
“Very well,” Marcellus said. “You, wizard, would be well advised to consider a modicum of cooperation or else your bones may litter this field by morning.”
“Duly noted, Most Holy Bastard,” Armand said, sleep creeping in on him.
A kick struck him in the abdomen, breaking the tenuous self-control that had held back the nausea. He vomited but did not have the energy to pull away from it. The acrid smell filled his nostrils.
The men walked away, leaving Armand alone with his vomit.
“I’m sorry, Armand,” Jean’s voice said.
The necromancer opened his eyes again and looked over at Jean, who was tied to a stake several feet away.
“For what are you sorry?” The necromancer tried to assess the symptoms he was experiencing. The pain in his side possessed an obvious boot-shaped source.
“The Lord Commander thought I was a deserter and questioned me on where I had gone. I tried to keep your existence secret, but they threatened to cut my hand off so I broke.”
“I am disheartened to hear that I am less valuable to you than your hand.” If Armand had struck his head when he fell from the cart, that could explain the headache and nausea.
“But it was my left hand. I do all my favorite stuff with that hand!”
“I am certain that justifies it.” But the burning in his chest was peculiar. It didn’t seem likely, but Armand worried that the priests had implanted some angelic parasite in his chest that would eat away at his soul.
“It’s not like I wanted to betray you. I have three women and six little mouths to feed. If I die, they may have to turn back to the streets.”
“There exist teas that can end simple problems involving unborn children. Perhaps you should consider them the next time some doxy tells you that your seed has taken root.” The necromancer didn’t dare channel much energy this close to the monks. Not only would it alert them to his powers but it was likely to be painful as well. But a small amount of energy might work.
“I don’t know what that means,” Jean said. “But I feel insulted.”
“Let me make it simpler: The next time one of your women tells you that she is with child, find the tallest set of stairs and shove her down it.” His skin itched as he used his magic. Armand hated priests. Tendrils of his magic sunk into his own flesh, and probed towards his heart. The answer he found surprised him.
“That might hurt the child.”
“That is the point, you buffoon!” The arcane nodule lodged next to his heart was necromantic in origin. It was a cage that held someone’s soul. No, not just someone’s. Lucinda’s.
“I take it you don’t like little ones.”
Armand broke off from his examination of the magic to turn towards Jean. “You sold me out to the people who would most want to kill me. It is my greatest hope, should I escape this predicament you have brought me into, that I will hunt down all six of your larvae, boil them alive, render the flesh from their bones, and sell their animated dancing skeletons to traveling carnivals in hopes that every peasant with two coins to rub together will see the fate of your ill-conceived spawn!”
Jean stared, pale-faced, at Armand. He didn’t respond.
“Now leave me alone. I am engaged in other matters.”
Armand took a deep breath and turned back to his arcane examination. The cage that his chest contained appeared to be Lucinda’s phylactery, to which her mind would return should someone destroy her physical form.
Despite her encouragement not to assist, he had brought her soul to her enemies. Having the phylactery bombarded by the monks’ prayers likely weakened her magic. Armand closed his eyes and silently cursed himself for being such a fool.
He gnawed on his lip for a few minutes, pondering what he could do within the limitations he possessed. He whispered a chant, directing his power towards the phylactery.
“Armand?” Lucinda’s voice said. Her voice sounded strained and distant.
“My beloved. It appears that I have been a fool.”
“But brave and loving as well.”
“I imagine all fools are considered brave and loving. But I may have a solution to our predicament. Is it possible for us to combine our power in order to better fight off these zealots?”
Silence. Then, “Perhaps. Give me a few minutes to get something ready.”
Armand waited, drifting close to sleep. He was brought awake by a blinding light and the roar of thunder. The tower had exploded in a ball of green and purple flames. Cries of fear and pain came from the Templars. Armand could almost make out soldiers limping around and clutching wounds received from flames and flying debris.
And then the power came, flowing into him as though a pitcher had been upended over his head. He felt awake and alive, filled with energy. With it came a sense of Lucinda’s presence.
He looked down at his wrists and watched as the ropes binding them moldered and rotted away to nothing. Violet energy coursed around him as he stood up. The aura expanded into a bonfire of necrotic power, lashing out and tearing through the scattered armies of the church. Their flesh withered and their eyes blossomed into flame before they crumbled to ash.
In the midst of all this, Armand found Lord Commander Marcellus. The Templar was trying to rally his scattered knights and drafted peasants. Armand was surprised to realize he was looking down at the knight from a great height, buoyed up by a pillar of dark flame.
The leader of the Templars looked up at Armand with fury in his eyes.
“What sort of monster are you?”
“Monster?” Armand asked. His voice sounded distant and tinny. “I am but a man in love.”
“Oh, Armand,” Lucinda’s voice whispered in his ear. “That is so sweet of you.”
“You are in love? What, with that thing from the tower?!” the knight demanded.
Armand noticed a Templar run up and attempt to strike at him with a sword. The man touched the aura and exploded into black flame. Armand would have to ask Lucinda how to do that trick.
“That woman,” Armand corrected, “Is the light of my life, and a better person than you could contrive to be.” The necromancer paused, hesitating before he said the words on his lips. But he knew in his heart that they were true. “There is no limit to what I would do for her, and I hope to spend the rest of my days with her.”
The knight screwed up his face and threw his sword at Armand. A hand pushed Armand out of the blade’s path, but it still raked along side his thigh. The pain was distant but still present. The aura about him flared out and consumed the knight commander, reducing him to ash.
“I have to admit I was surprised at your proclamation to the Templar,” Lucinda said in his ear. “Does this mean you’re comfortable living with me?”
Armand smiled and said, “Yes, I think it does. Chamberpots, ham and all. If nothing else, I won’t run off on any more ‘heroic’ acts. I also imagine this is the closest I will get to making vows in a church.”
“Trying to make an honest woman out of me?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
LEGACY
S.M. Williams
[This story is a follow-up to “Ricky and the Elder Gods,” which appeared in Arcane Sampler.]
J.T. pulled up outside the old farmhouse and shut off the engine of her pickup, then sat for a few minutes, looking out through the windshield at the orange wash of dusk on the wood siding.
“Goddamn, I hate this place,” she muttered, and shoved the door open with a creak.
The early snows that had fallen a while back had melted, leaving mud behind that squelched under her boots. She wondered why no one had ever bothered to pave the driveway, what with all the additions that had been made to the old place in the last dozen years or so t
hat had turned the old farmhouse into a rambling estate. All of its inhabitants had been too old-fashioned, she guessed.
She sighed, and reached into the bed of her truck to open the box there and haul out her tools. By the time she’d finished clumping up the splintery steps to the porch, the door had opened, revealing a small, nervous-looking man in khaki slacks and a sweater.
“You must be Jane,” he said with a jittery smile, holding out his hand. The motion revealed a small tattoo of a blue candle with a red flame on his wrist just above the thumb.
“J.T.,” she said, giving the hand a shake.
The smile faltered a bit, and she knew that if he ever addressed her again it would be “Jane” that came out of his mouth. His eyes had taken on a fixed expression as he saw the stud in her nose and ring in one eyebrow, and her hair, with its streak of blue dye. It looked like he hadn’t been briefed.
“Yes, well, thank you so much for coming on such short notice,” he said. “It is difficult to get someone to come out at all on a Sunday evening, of course, and naturally Ms. Tacy prefers not to bring in outsiders in any event.”
“Yeah, well, don’t thank me too much. I plan on charging about three times my normal rate.”
The man chuckled, as if he thought she was joking, then stepped aside to let her past.
“Plumbing ain’t exactly my specialty anyway,” J.T. said. “Might not be able to help out.”
“Ms. Tacy assures me that you are most handy,” he replied.
J.T. snorted. “I’ll bet she did.” She was sure Ms. Tacy had managed to make it sound even more patronizing than he had, too.
“So, in the basement, right?” she said.
“Yes, I can show you the—”
“Used to fucking live down there,” J.T. muttered, starting past him.
“Oh, of course,” the man said faintly.
“Temperance, do come in and say hello,” came a powerful voice from down the hall just as she reached the basement door.
“Damn it,” murmured J.T., pausing with her hand on the doorknob. “Need to get your hot water flowing again, Ms. Tacy,” she said more loudly, still standing at the door.
“Nonsense, Temperance. You have a moment to say hello to an old woman,” Ms. Tacy replied, her voice taking on an edge that made the hairs on the back of J.T.’s neck stand up. She dropped the tool bag and turned to head down the hall a few steps to the great room, a high-ceilinged chamber that looked like someone had puked doilies all over it, now that Ms. Tacy owned the place. Ms. Tacy herself was installed in one of the room’s massive chairs, all three or four hundred pounds of her, in a dress like a flower-print tent. She looked old, but not anywhere near as old as she actually was. Not old enough to have known J.T.’s grandmother. But she had, and it was the reason the old woman called her by her middle name, since that was who J.T. had gotten the name from.
A large, thick-necked man in a turtleneck with a big pistol in a shoulder holster stood behind Ms. Tacy, hands crossed behind his back.
“You’ve met Mr. Rowan, I see,” Ms. Tacy said. J.T. glanced back to see that the nervous man had trailed her in.
“That his name, is it?” J.T. asked. Ms. Tacy glanced over her shoulder at Rowan, her piggy little eyes taking on a flinty look for just a second, and J.T. regretted what she’d said. She didn’t have anything against the guy, and she expected she’d just let him in for some trouble. Ms. Tacy was a stickler for etiquette, and wasn’t going to take kindly to her assistant forgetting to introduce himself. J.T. glanced over at the big guy, and Ms. Tacy smiled. Smiles never seemed to work quite right for the old woman—they tended to send warning signals up their target’s brainstem.
“This is Mr. Wood,” she said. “One of our local colleagues, here helping us out while I await staff from Boston.” Mr. Wood nodded fractionally, still expressionless. Back in the day, J.T. had known all her “local colleagues,” but after an attempt to get free of the Society she’d gotten a bit out of the loop.
“Howdy,” she said.
“Please, sit,” Ms. Tacy said. J.T. sighed and shucked off her coat before sitting. Ms. Tacy pursed her lips at the tattoos covering J.T.’s left arm, surrounding the little blue candle on her wrist in a futile attempt to deny it. Ms. Tacy had known about the tats, of course, but everything was a fucking show with this woman.
“You look so much like your grandmother, when you choose to have blonde hair,” Ms. Tacy said. “But for a few… modifications.”
“Uh huh,” J.T. replied.
“How have you been, Temperance?”
“I been just peachy, Ms. Tacy,” J.T. replied. “Had a little excitement a while back, but you know about that.”
“Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” Ms. Tacy asked, making a gesture that encompassed the room. She bared her teeth. “I do so value your opinion, as one who spent much of her youth here.”
J.T. glanced around, taking in the knick-knacks and lace scattered all over the room.
“It’s an improvement, I guess,” she said. “Never liked it before.”
Ms. Tacy heaved a sigh, which was an impressive sight.
“You didn’t enjoy yourself here, as a girl, did you?” she said. “I regret that you could not have spent more of your time with me. Upstate New York is so dreary, isn't it?”
“I still live around here,” J.T. said.
“Yes, but dear, you were in prison for much of the time you’ve lived here—you hardly had a choice,” Ms. Tacy replied. “And I’m sure you derive a great deal of satisfaction from your trailer. But I meant that the area holds few charms for a young girl. Not like the hustle and bustle of Boston, or my place on the coast.”
“Yeah. Sure,” J.T. replied, running a hand through her hair and remembering the time when she’d been about twelve, and the thing that had crawled out of the ocean to rear up on hind legs and pound on Ms. Tacy’s door in the night. “Look—” She broke off at a thump from down the hall, and what sounded like a muffled cry.
“Would you like something to drink, dear?” Ms. Tacy asked.
“What the fuck was that?” J.T. said.
“Don’t concern yourself with it,” Ms. Tacy replied. “Simply that unpleasant man who caused you so much trouble a few weeks ago.”
“Jesus, you’ve still got him here?”
“I am still trying to decide on a permanent arrangement, with my own affairs in so much disorder.”
“But… Christ, he’d lost most of a leg,” J.T. said.
“We are quite capable of providing medical attention,” Ms. Tacy said archly. That was true enough. The Society even had its own looney bin, out in Wyoming, which was where J.T.’s mother lived.
“He was meddling where he should not have been, Temperance,” Ms. Tacy said, her voice suddenly cold enough to run a chill down J.T.’s spine. “I’ve already discovered much about how he learned what he did. I intend to have it all.”
J.T. shook her head and stood. “Ms. Tacy, I’m going to see if I can fix your hot water heater, then I’m getting the fuck out of here,” she said. “Let you get back to whatever you’re doing.”
Ms. Tacy smiled like a wolf.
“Of course, Temperance. We shall each do what we have chosen as our life’s work. I will find answers, and you will fix appliances.”
J.T. responded with her own smile that got nowhere near her eyes, and spun on her heel. She increased the estimate for what she was going to charge the old rhino as she stalked toward the basement door.
She didn’t even realize that Rowan had followed her until she was halfway down the stairs.
“You here to hold my wrenches or something?” she asked over her shoulder.
Rowan began to stutter something, and she cut him off. “Never mind, I wouldn’t want to hang out with that old bitch right now either, if I were you.”
She reached the bottom of the steps and turned to start down the hallway. Back when she’d first come to live in this house, when her mother had seen too much and g
one crazy, the whole basement had been open, with a concrete floor and cinder block walls. A few years on, Dr. Pitcher, who’d owned the place at the time, had finished the basement and moved her down into it.
The door to her old room was open, and she glanced in as she went by. It looked pretty much like she’d left it, when she’d finally had enough and headed west. Of course, she’d only gotten as far as Rochester before getting into a disagreement involving a tire iron and getting tossed into prison. That had probably saved her life, given how the Society generally dealt with people who tried to leave. In prison, she’d been out of the way long enough for everyone to cool down.
That didn’t explain why they’d left her room untouched, though—same bed, same dresser, same creepy portrait of some guy whose face wasn’t quite proportioned right. She shook her head and moved on to the utility room, the only area still lacking paint on the walls and carpeting on the floor. She flicked on the light, and the small casement windows high up on one wall turned shiny black. Night had fallen while she was chatting with Ms. Tacy.
“I suppose you know this whole area quite well,” Rowan said from the doorway.
“Yeah,” J.T. replied, looking at the wall of pipes and wiring, hands on hips. “Fucking furnace kicking on next door used to keep me up at night.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rowan said, as if it had somehow been his fault. In truth, it hadn’t even been the furnace that really kept her up—it had been the whispering sounds almost below the level of hearing, and the strange, sick feeling of the place. That was all gone now, but the basement still made her skin crawl. One way or another, she was going to get out of here fast—either by fixing the hot water or giving up on it.
“So you got no hot water at all?” she asked.
“A bit,” Rowan replied. “Just not enough. We have so many people here, you see—Ms. Tacy, myself, Mr. Wood, the doctor when he comes by, and of course…” he trailed off.
“So you let Ricky take showers, do ya?” J.T. asked, crouching at the base of the hot water heater. “Not afraid he’ll make a break for it?”
Arcane Page 23