by Eric Griffin
His exaggerated, deferential bow to the nearest group of young ladies was greeted with a chorus of generally unkind remarks which seemed to disparage both the strength and authenticity of his alleged scruples.
Rising to the challenge, Talbott’s voice rang briefly above the clamor, giving out the ancient verses in excruciatingly precise meter and anatomic detail. Laughing, he allowed their embarrassed indignation to drown him out.
“Well then. I see you may yet be redeemable,” he capitulated. “Some middle ground then, perhaps, between the faultless saint and Etain’s immodest exploits. How about…”
“Can you give us Aisling’s Tale?” The soft, almost timid, voice cut cleanly through the throng. One of the novices. Talbott turned and smiled warmly. Eva.
He knew them all by voice as well as by sight. He knew who they were. He knew why they came. He knew what this place did to them.
Others had turned as well. Not all betrayed the same compassion. Some regarded the novice’s request with open suspicion and even an edge of hostility. Their thoughts were plain upon their features. Aisling’s Tale. Aisling Sturbridge. The mistress of the house.
These little gatherings of Talbott’s walked a very fine line. In bringing together initiates of the chantry and outsiders, there was always the possibility that something might slip. Something revealing. Something…unfortunate.
“Aisling’s Tale? That’s a peculiar request, now. Let me think.” His eyes probed her face for some hint of what she might be driving at, but he found only a disarmingly childlike curiosity.
“Well, there are, truth be told, not one but many Aisling tales—’Aisling’ meaning something after the manner of a ‘dream quest’ in the old tongue, you understand. The tongue of the bards. No few of the heroes of Erin have stumbled across that wavering line between the waking and the dreaming worlds. And paid dearly for the privilege.”
Eva soaked up this revelation eagerly, but her thoughts were already rushing ahead. She failed to either hear; or heed his warning.
“But is there no tale of a lady named Aisling? A lady of Erin? A lady who danced between the worlds?”
Talbott mumbled something noncommittal and regarded the bottom of his mug contemplatively. Already caught up in her enthusiasm, Eva rushed heedlessly onward.
“One who spoke the words of fire and blood? One who made a pact with death and who lost her only daughter down a dark well?”
Talbott raised an eyebrow at her outburst. “It seems it should be you telling this tale, for in truth, you seem to be far closer to it than I.”
Eva’s face was intent. Her voice was hard. “Is there such a tale?”
An uncomfortable silence had fallen over the room. Talbott let it build, roll slowly like a storm.
“Of course, child,” he soothed. “There is always just such a tale. But that does not mean that I have the full telling of it.”
Disappointment, frustration and embarrassment vied for control of her features.
“What little I do know,” he offered in a conciliatory tone, “I have paid good coin for.” Forty years, he thought, pushing a weathered hand through his hair. Silver, gold. “The knowing has cost me dearly.”
Eva’s elation made clear she had not heard a word he had said. “I will see to it that you are well rewarded for your efforts.”
It was a mistake. She knew it before the words had fallen leadenly into the silent room.
“I think you misunderstand me,” Talbott replied a bit sharply. “It was not my intention to barter the price of the tale. We are not fishwives shouting our wares in the marketplace…”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t…” Eva began, but was cut off abruptly.
“As I was saying, I know some of the telling, but even the slightest knowing has its price. What I do not know is why I should relate it. Why I should put you and these others gathered here at risk.”
Her back was to the room. Her voice was hushed, intent, pitched low so as not to carry. “Oh, Talbott. I have to understand. Have to understand her. Have to understand what she has…what I have become.”
Her face was pressed close to his own. Talbott could see that she was close to tears.
“Be easy, little one,” he whispered, touching her cheek. “You will know.” Still caressing her cheek, he added pointedly, “But you will pay the knowing for all who are gathered here.”
He took her arm and sat her at his feet.
“The Devil’s Toothache,” he called, breaking the silence of the room. “Aaron, grab an indulgent old fool another mug, there’s a good lad.”
Upon a time in County Meadth where the River of Life runs toward the Final Shore—that rocky beach whose secret is that it knows only departures and never returns—a girlchild was born in the crook of a willow tree.
Dark as a battle raven she was and straight as a pin. In her mouth was the language of beasts and she could talk before ever she learned to cry. Her eye was milky with the witchsight and in her thumbs she had wisdom—wisdom enough to know that a willow tree was no proper place for a young lady of promise and ambition.
Well, that’s where they found her and after she piped up and greeted them so civilly, they could hardly leave her there—complaining to the very beasts of the field of the cruel turn they had played her—so they took her home. And they called her name Aisling, for it seemed to them that she must be of the fair folk.
How much trouble, after all, could one small girlchild be? To her credit, she might well pine away for her home under the hills until there was nothing left of her but bare knucklebones. Yes, she did run a bit toward the puny side and wasn’t likely to last long enough to prove much of a bother.
But on the day of Aisling’s birth, a ringing began in the Devil’s ear that would give him no peace.
Now they say that Devil, he never sleeps, but a body still cannot properly enjoy the misfortune of one’s neighbor with a ringing in the head. For the better part of the morning, he stormed about, distracted, neglectful of his duties. The wailing of the Afflicted went largely unnoticed, much to their collective chagrin. This further indignity spurred them to even greater fervor and soon their ill-humor rubbed off on even the Unrepentant, doing little to improve their devil-may-care attitude. Even the masses of the Well-Intentioned queued up just outside the Gate could sense the change come over the Infernal City.
Well before midday it became clear that something must be done. The Major and Minor Calamities took council and decided to appoint a deputation. With all appropriate dragging of feet and gnashing of teeth, the foremost of the Wretched was dispatched to learn what ailed their master.
As might well be expected, what most ailed the master at that very moment was having his well-earned sulk intruded upon. He immediately elevated the poor Wretch to ranks of the Unquestioningly Obedient, conferring upon him all the torments and tribulations associated with that lofty status, and making a rather pointed suggestion as to where his unwelcomed guest might now go. Even so, the master got little satisfaction from the small cruelty.
“Fresh air,” he said aloud, for in Hell there is no thought that remains unvoiced. You could always spot the newcomers among the Host of the Damned. Their thoughts tumbled off the tongue, betraying the words muttered in the same breath. They were ever saying things like, “But sir, it was not my fault, you pig-headed spawn of a, damn, I’m for it now. What I mean to say is. Sir. What I mean to say, SIR, is.” By that point it was best to just give up and take what was coming to you. You’d get it anyway, in the end. It was the nature of the place. It was Hell. You got used to it.
“That’s just the thing to put me right. A walk down pasture. And a drop of drink to clear the head. Ouiskey. Water of Life.”
“The very thing, if it please your Underlordship to notice me.”
The Sycophants had had quite some time to master the art of seamlessly smoothing word and thought together. All time, in fact.
“Ouiskey. Water of Life,” The master mused. “That was one of my
own inventions, you know. Still remember as if it were yesterday. So I says to Yourman above, this was back when we were on more civil terms, ‘Breath of Life?’ says I. ‘What’re they ever going to do with Breath of Life? You can’t very well keep it in the cupboard against chill winter nights, or carry it at your hip to bolster the flagging spirit. And the poor wigglies, what will they do without a decent public house at least, to keep the mind off the fundamental unfairness of it all? No, water’s yourman.’”
A babble of earnest voices vied for his attention.
“Would that I could have been there to take part of the, to take part in that glorious achievement.”
“Called ’em wigglies to His face! I dare say.”
“I’d wager that pitched Him into a right rage. Why it’s a wonder He didn’t haul back and knock you clear out of…oh dear.”
There was the briefest of pauses while the strict hierarchy of the Infernal Court readjusted itself with all the swiftness and subtlety of a sprung bear trap. The next moment it was as if the unfortunate courtier had never been.
“Stupid,” chorused the Staters of the Painfully Obvious, making two distinct words of it. “Stew Pit.”
“Silence!” yourman the Devil calls. And Silence, she answers his calling. The Host of the Damned kind of edges away sideways, uncomfortable at her passing.
Now they say Sin has an only son and his name is Death. And he is rightful heir to the Kingdom of Man. And all must come at last to pay him homage.
But that Devil, he also has his Pride. A lone daughter, the apple of his eye. And he named her Silence. And when even Death has passed, she follows after.
It was always a terrible moment when Silence entered the Halls of Hell. Pain-wracked visages wordlessly mouthed cries, curses, entreaties. Talon, scourge and hot iron bit soundlessly into yielding flesh. The sound of each and every shuffling footstep, creaking joint, rasping breath, magnified to the power of countless millions of lost souls crammed into every fissure, niche, and crevice—all gone suddenly, completely, and hauntingly still.
It was not just the absence of sound; it was its utter negation. All that took place in her presence had an eerie, unreal feel about it. It was as if all the torments of the Legions of the Dead were a sad sort of pantomime. A ritual act whose meaning had become obscure, lost long ago.
The Devil, he smiles warmly. “Take my hand, child. I’ve a fierce stabbing pain in the head and it’s put me in foul temper. I’ve taken a kenning to have a walk down pasture, take a drop of drink and overlook the wigglies, for I fear they’re again up to no good, if this ringing in my ear is any indication. And it usually is. And they usually are.”
Silence, she says nothing, just takes her father by the arm and leads him from his hall.
Talbott’s listeners were so lost in his strange tale that no one had noticed the silent woman—stern, dark, straight as a pin—who had slipped into the chamber. The Great Portal sighed contentedly closed behind her and she wrapped herself in its familiar, comforting shadow.
Patient as death, she began marshalling her forces—words of fire and of blood. She drew them up into bristly phalanxes, she deployed them in centuries stretching across the field of vision.
She rallied her champions and prepared to defend her home, her past.
Friday, 23 July 1999, 10:25 PM
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
“Excellent, Aaron. You have done well. Your preparations are impeccable. Please proceed.” Foley gestured absently toward the cleared patch of floor at the room’s center and turned away. Until very recently, this space had been as heaped with arcane paraphernalia as the rest of his cramped sanctum.
To all appearances, the room’s new arrangement was the result of a fastidious application of blasting powder.
He is insane, Aaron thought. Dangerously insane. Cautiously, he gathered up the items he had so carefully arranged on the sideboard for Foley’s inspection. He can’t be serious about going through with this.
For weeks, Aaron had endured the smug glances, the knowing chuckles, the too-familiar touches of his superior. Each of the hundred tiny gestures had been calculated to convey the same unsettling message—I know your secret.
Aaron cursed himself for a fool. It had happened that night of the Stalking of the Koldun. The entire chantry had gathered to enact the stalking ritual. At its center, Sturbridge plunged into the very heart of the nightmare, New York’s mystic landscape—the Dragon’s Graveyard. And they had followed.
He could still recall the vivid towers of pitted steel and sizzling neon rising above him on all sides. He could feel the teasing hint of the familiar behind the rambling procession of bus stops, tenements and yellow police tape. It was almost the city he knew.
But something fundamental had been changed. That was why Sturbridge had brought them there—so that they could see with their own eyes the changes that had been wrought. Ripples from a single stone dropped upwards into the River of Night.
The alterations were subtle but sweeping. The other was patiently reshaping the city in its own image. Aaron had thought the anomalous element that had been introduced into his beloved city was the Koldun—the Tzimisce sorcerer. The very word seemed to whisper of blasphemous secrets and unholy predations. It was a breath straight from the grave of the Old Country. It was a word of power, a name to conjure with.
The mere mention of the cult of sorcerous fiends conjured up images of moonless nights centuries distant, nights when Aaron’s forbears had hunted (and been hunted in turn) among the blasted crags of the Carpathians. The Tremere had gone to great lengths to distance themselves from such recollections.
Aaron could remember the first caress of the Koldun’s dark sorcery. He remembered Sturbridge going down under the enemy assault. He remembered the sick feeling in his withered stomach as he found himself involuntarily rushing to her aid—as if just reaching her would be the culmination of all his decades of unlife, of his strivings, of his sacrifices. Damn her.
And then he was at her side. And she touched him. She knew him. She smiled.
Damn it, he hated that smile. It was a smile she reserved for meetings upon thresholds. She would take your hand and give you that smile, and you knew with unshakable certainty that she had contrived this entire improbable gathering just to steal this one sympathetic moment with you. To squeeze a hand, to exchange an exaggerated sigh, and then to be tom away again, becoming everyone’s once more.
Aaron was not quite sure how she had pulled them all out, gotten them safely home again. That was the reality, of course, not the damned smile. She didn’t need them half as much as they needed her. And they all knew it. Even if it were nice to pretend otherwise, if only for a short while.
But upon her homecoming that evening, she was furious. It was something between Foley and Jacqueline, Aaron was never exactly sure what. Sturbridge was hot, raging on about invaders, earthquakes, traitors.
It was at precisely that instant that Foley had caught his eye. And he saw, damn him. Aaron didn’t know how he saw, but in that instant Foley knew everything. Over the last few weeks, he had gone to great pains to let Aaron know that he knew. These wardings—the elemental regalia that Foley had insisted that Aaron gather personally—they were only the latest in a long string of insinuations. Oh, Aaron had followed his superior’s instructions to the letter. But he’d thought that would be the end of it. He would present his hard-won treasures before the secundus. He would be humiliated. He would be exposed. He would perhaps even be blackmailed.
But this? Surely Foley wasn’t going through with this. From his station in the east of east, Aaron glanced once more uncertainly toward the secundus. But Foley was lost in his preparations.
Aaron stared after him for a long moment, his thoughts racing through the possible scenarios—intrigue, threats, blackmail, confession, violence, submission, bribery, reconciliation. He picked up and examined each in turn like a rare jewel. Just as carefully, he
set each aside again, dismissing it. Gradually, something crystallized within him. His features became hard, angular, sharp.
With the cruel precision of a diamond cutting through glass, Aaron stooped and marked out true east on the floor in bone-white chalk. It was not the east that would read on any manmade compass. Nor the celestial east of equinoxes or solstices viewed through menhirs. It was true east, Vienna. The home of the Council of Seven, the resting place of the Father, the seat of the blood.
Resignedly, Aaron placed his unorthodox ward over the Eye of the Storm, the diagram’s easternmost point. It was a plank from a gallows, long, thin, straight as a stave. The wood had the added virtue of never having touched the earth.
He was now committed. From this point, there was no turning back from this mad course. Forcing down any further uncertainties, Aaron paced off the precise distance to the southernmost point, the Hall of Fire.
Here he drew forth from his bundle a rusted dagger. The classical lines of the Roman design were unmistakable, even under the years of wear and corrosion. Aaron placed the knife carefully, its blade pointing treacherously inward, toward the center. Toward where Foley must stand to invoke the blood.
Another exact turning brought Aaron to the furthest west, the Waters of Oblivion. Without ceremony, he deposited the cup of hemlock. He did not pause to glance into the dark waters at the bottom of the chalice. They would only remind him of those other dark waters and the faces of the Children, round and bright as moons. He hurriedly turned and moved further north.
Pausing to judge his mark, Aaron drew back and cast his final treasure to the ground. It struck, the rotting purse spilling thirteen of its thirty silver coins. A very inauspicious throw. Aaron let it lie.