by Eric Griffin
Chessie felt a sinking sensation, a hole opening up at her very core. Anger bubbled up to fill the void.
“I did not ask for this! I came here in good faith, because you asked me to come. And this is how you have treated me? You would visit some measure of your curse upon me? You are a monster, a creature of deceit and of treachery. You would poison me with your tainted blood?”
Sturbridge held her gaze, felt the fever burning there, saw the hint of the earlier madness gaining full rein.
Chessie flung herself toward her. Sturbridge did not try to ward her off. An embrace fired by a warmth very different than that of two lovers.
The blood sang between them.
Thursday, 29 July 1999, 1:58 AM
Adirondack Mountains
Upstate New York
A cloud passed before the moon and the rows of tombstones vanished, replaced with the more mundane jumble of broken boulders that littered the ascent. Far away, in a luxurious hotel room near Central Park, Nickolai’s body deftly shifted the bowl he was carrying to his right hand and sketched a complex sigil in the air with his left.
He caught himself in the act and cursed his own foolishness in a long-forgotten tongue. In the many lifetimes since his demise, he had never quite managed to shake the ridiculous superstitions of his mortal life. It was a tenacious peasant magic. A thaumaturgy of dung and onions. To Nickolai’s embarrassment, no amount of sophistication could quite suppress it. No true power could shout it down.
Perhaps it was another trick of the light or the lingering grip of visions, but it seemed that the tracery of his fingers hung there before him in midair. Nickolai scrutinized the familiar glyph.
The sign against the Evil Eye.
With greater deliberation, he pricked the tip of his index finger with his thumbnail and retraced the symbol in blood. The delicate network of lines devoured the precious vitae and then blazed suddenly to life.
Elsewhere, high within the Adirondacks, another aspect of Nickolai took a step backward in alarm and nearly fell over the nearest tombstone. He caught himself in time to see the last of the flaming remains of the glyph gently raining down upon the rocks below.
The moon, drawing back its cloudy veil, fixed him with an accusing stare. He could not abide the intensity of her visage and quickly turned away. He thought for a moment that he caught a glimpse of a retreating gossamer form among the tombstones. Nearby he heard the trickling laughter of a brook fleeing down the mountainside. Resolutely, he turned his back upon the snares and distractions of the night and began the last leg of his ascent.
The path between the tombstones (boulders, he reminded himself) led him to the lip of a precipice. He was very near the summit and looking down into a wide depression, a hollow carved out by an ancient spring. The floor of this bowl was crowded with crude obelisks of rock jutting up at improbable angles. It was as if the entire floor of the hollow had been pierced from below by uncounted spear thrusts from an angry mountain god. Disturbed, no doubt, in the midst of his stony sleep. Nickolai was envious of the slumbering god. Each night, he grappled with the temptation to sink into the earth’s arms and surrender himself to her embrace and stony sleep. To be free of the dangers of the Final Nights, of the manipulations and covert dangers of the Jyhad. Of the hunters, and of the hunters of the hunters. To sleep, to forget, perchance to be forgotten.
But Nickolai was the last and he now must bear the responsibilities of his House. Alone. He scanned the broken ground for a likely avenue of descent.
Not far from where he stood, one of the mammoth obelisks had fallen like a lightning-struck oak. It leaned drunkenly against the wall of the precipice; its tip extended well above Nickolai’s own height. It should be possible, Nickolai thought, to descend its sloping side to the floor of the depression.
As he neared the fallen giant, Nickolai began to get a sense of its great age. Its sides were pitted with evidence of the slow passage of trickling water and years. He thought immediately of stalagmites and stalactites. He had never, however, seen such intricately carved columns of rock above ground before. He would have thought that the indiscriminate hand of the rain would obliterate all such delicate chisel work.
Nickolai put one foot upon the great column of rock to ensure that it would not shift under his weight. Unlikely, he thought. If the giant were in the least bit unbalanced, it would have collapsed long ago under its own mass.
He looked to the spot where the pillar had impacted and settled into the wall of the precipice and was surprised to see newly broken earth. It was as if the impact of the colossus had taken place a matter of days ago rather than of centuries. Nickolai put his hand to the stone and ran his fingers across the deeply gouged surface. Was it his imagination or was the stone warm? For a brief moment, it seemed the stone still trembled slightly as with the remembrance of its precipitous flight through the earth’s surface, its first glimpse of sky and the impact of its calamitous fall to earth once more.
Nickolai shook his head as if to banish such nonsense, but he could not quite shake the picture of the angry mountain god, awakened from its slumber.
There were other powers, Nickolai thought, as he picked his way down the treacherous slope, that slumbered deep beneath the earth. Dark powers. Angry powers.
It occurred to him that he might be traipsing barehanded into the lair of just such a mountain god. He searched back through his memory for tales or stories of the taming of a mountain. In the vain hope that he might find some efficacious weapon.
Saturday, 28 August 1999, 5:42 AM
Lord Baltimore Inn
Baltimore, Maryland
Without a word or backward glance, Sturbridge eased the door closed behind her.
Chessie was sleeping now, at last, her face buried in the bloodstained pillow. Sturbridge had waited for the gentle sobs to subside before slipping from the chamber. She crossed the sitting room to the closet near the hall door and withdrew die larger of two businesslike suitcases. She heaved the case onto the table one-handed. The latches sprang open in response to her low whisper, revealing precise rows of neatly pressed garments.
Sturbridge packed up the last of her things and tied the series of satin ribbons that held everything in its precise place. She leaned down hard upon die lid of the suitcase and the latches sealed with two distinct pings. She had turned to shoulder the suitcase from the table when her eyes lit upon the wreckage of the seating arrangement by the fireplace. Broken glass lay scattered in a glittering arc reaching out toward die room’s center. The wave of glass had broken more abruptly upon the hearth and arrayed itself in larger jagged shards.
Sturbridge started instinctively for the closet for a broom to set things in order. She stopped with her hand upon the knob.
She would go now. A cab to the airport. A plane back to New York. And safely home before sunrise.
She thought of the nights of sneaking back into her parents’ house, racing against the first hint of the sunrise. Charged on adrenaline, jazz, infatuation and bathtub gin.
Home before sunrise, she thought. The romance of the idea had begun to wear a bit thin after nearly a century. Her surreptitious early morning races had taken on a hard, ugly aspect. The consequence of losing that race now was far more severe than her mother’s displeasure. She had known of those, of course, who had been caught out by the jealous sun. Who had not? It was a critical part of a novice’s education. It was one of the Portals of Initiation.
But the steady progression of years had turned the tables upon Sturbridge. As the regent of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs, she more and more often found herself in the position of the anxious mother, waiting for her wayward daughters to return home. She had even—she remembered the incident with excruciating clarity—once ordered the door of her house barred against the return of an unrepentant and irreformable novice. The sun had caught her upon the doorstep.
Home before sunrise.
And six impossible things before breakfast.
She tho
ught of Alice, and of Maeve. She thought of the nights of reading aloud the stories of the Caterpillar, the Duchess, the Griffin, the White Knight, to her little girl. Her beautiful child. Her magical child. Lost to her and gone. Disappeared down a hole in the ground.
In a wonderland they lie
Dreaming as the days drift by
Dreaming as the summers die
Ever drifting down the stream
Lingering in the golden gleam
Life, what is it but a dream?
Sturbridge swung the suitcase off the table in a great arc. It banged angrily against the wall before succumbing to the pull of gravity. She heard an answering stirring from the inner room, but Chessie did not awaken.
It was perhaps a small cruelty to leave her like this. But she did not repent of it.
It was difficult to say how much of this evening’s ordeal the girl might remember when she awakened. Would she recall what Sturbridge had done to her? Would she be able to call to mind the unique savor of the Blood of the Seven—its power, its compulsion, its madness? Would she be able to reconstruct the shards of memory from her journey inward—the touch of the Drowned Man, the majesty of the Pyramid, the terrible betrayal of the Sacrifice?
More importantly, Sturbridge found herself wondering if Chessie would recall her own weakness in the wake of potent vitae. The suspicions, the unreasoning rage.
Almost as an afterthought, she paused in the doorway. Crossing to the writing table, she extracted a sheet of creamy stationary and the fountain pen. In a bold, unquivering hand, she wrote:
She folded the note neatly in half and stood it on the mantle like a pyramid.
Running her hand affectionately over the wood of the ancient door, Sturbridge shouldered her cases and took her leave. The hallway and the rest of what had come to be known as the Witch’s Wing was, as might be expected, deserted. Only after the door had sighed shut did Sturbridge allow herself to doubt.
Sunday, 29 August 1999, 12:07 AM
Refectory, Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Eva was late, hurrying and obviously shaken. Twice she stopped abruptly, her ears straining to pick out the telltale sound of stealthy footfalls shadowing her. She was not altogether certain what she would do if her suspicions proved justified.
It was too late to turn back now. Where would she go? To chantry security? Somehow Eva did not relish the prospect of another confrontation with Helena and her jackals—especially one in which she would have to explain how and why she had slipped her tether. Her memory of their recent encounter was still far too fresh in her mind.
No, better just to get this over with and get back before her absence was noted. She would meet with Jacqueline. She would explain her suspicions and enlist Jacqueline’s help. With Sturbridge away, Eva was coming to realize just how vulnerable her position here really was.
Her agitation was not eased in the least by the fact that her path to the refectory—and her covert meeting with Jacqueline—would take her directly past the secundus’s chambers. They were just ahead now, around the next bend. She could actually feel their presence like a weight pressing against her, holding her back. Eva realized her pace had unconsciously slowed to a reluctant crawl.
Purposefully, she forced herself to turn the corner. She felt the first gentle touch of dread caress the nape of her neck.
part three:
the children down the well
She tried to ignore it. She kept her eyes fixed rigidly forward and counted off each quick measured pace. One, two, three…she was even with the door before she realized the source of her apprehension. The keyhole.
And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
She closed her eyes tightly; she knew of no other way to keep herself from peering back at the keyhole. She willed herself forward. She pleaded with her feet to take just one more step. To lift, to fall, nothing more.
It was no good. She could feel the heat of the dead man’s all-seeing eye—squinting at her through the keyhole. Boring into her. Where it touched, it burned with the brilliance of sunlight, of truth.
Eva knew her continued existence depended upon shadows, upon murky reflections, upon misdirection and half-truths. She could not endure the searing intensity of that unblinking stare.
She might have screamed. She remembered picking herself up off the floor—ignoring the fresh pain of bruised knees and battered forearms—and stumbling blindly down the corridor.
She arrived at the refectory trembling and out of breath. She was certain the sound of her wild flight had attracted unwanted attention. Jacqueline would curse her (or worse) for allowing herself to be followed.
Marshalling her apologies and excuses, she pushed open the refectory door.
Even before she laid eyes on Jacqueline, all of her carefully ordered rationalizations had deserted her. She shut her mouth stupidly, backing away from the headless body crumpled before the stainless-steel double sink.
A murky swirl of blood floated atop the soapy water. The cupboard above the sink was open and empty. Eva pressed one sleeve to her face in a vain effort to block out the pervasive smell of spilled life. The scent of blood muddled her thoughts, picked away at the frayed edge of reason.
Faced with the sudden and overwhelming presence of yet another corpse, Eva did the only thing she could do. She threw back her head and howled. She summoned the jackals.
Thursday, 29 July 1999, 11:30 AM
The Dragon’s Graveyard
New York City, New York
Leopold carefully picked his way over the pocked, bleached landscape. He could not see his footing clearly through the glare. Progress was treacherous. An unbroken expanse of gleaming white stretched away before him. Bones. As far as the eye could see, nothing but bones. They jutted up sharply like obelisks. They leaned like palm trees in a strong wind. They cascaded to the ground in crashing waterfalls. They rippled outward in concentric circles of rambling ruins.
Leopold found himself returning longingly to the cool, silent recesses of the Cave of Lamentations—and of the masterwork he had wrought there. But all that was lost to him now. Stolen.
He had come to his senses half-blind and hysterical—groping at the wound where the Eye had been. Through the haze of pain and outrage, he was struck by the unsettling sensation of someone standing over him, shaking him awake.
The figure flickered uncertainly in the dim light of the cavern and was gone again almost before it registered on Leopold’s senses. The artist caught only a momentary glimpse of a stem figure balancing a beaten copper bowl brimming with blood.
Leopold’s first thought was of recovering the Eye that had been stolen from him. It was not difficult to follow its trail back down the mountainside and away to the south—toward the gleaming white towers of bone in the distance. The Dragon’s Graveyard.
Why here? Leopold thought. Why do I always find myself here?
He again wiped the blood-sweat out of the raw, gaping eye socket. His silk shirt was already soaked through. It hung about him like a second and ill-fitting skin.
The shirt bothered Leopold. Not just in the way that it clung to him. Rather, it was the fact that it was already ruined. A distant part of his mind was nagging at him, telling him that having only just arrived in this dismal place, the shirt should still be fresh.
No, that is not quite right. Even as he formed the thought, a second and conflicting memory imposed itself. He distinctly recalled battling through the heat all morning long. Past the Whispering Fields, through the Witch’s Shins, across the Sea of Dust. He remembered them all distinctly, but somehow removed. Like a story overheard at a crossroads.
The glaringly bright heat of the noonday sun seemed to hang above him, circling lazily. He was an easy target—the only moving object above the horizon. The oppressive heat marked his progress, bided its time, coaxed out drop after drop of life-sustaining moisture.
The light of the sun? Something w
as quite wrong. Leopold’s every sense screamed danger, deception. He shook his head as if to clear his muddled thoughts.
Somewhere, tall, silent ladies in satin slippers were gliding through cool corridors of marble. Leopold closed his eyes. He could hear the gentle rustle of silk, the sound of distant laughter, the hint of a reel drifting up from the ballroom below. It all seemed so real. So very close.
As if only the thinnest of barriers separated the two impressions.
Leopold opened his eye again into the glare of the harsh noonday sun. The air went out of him. There was something behind the wall of life-sapping heat. A purpose. A hunger. Leopold could feel its breath against his skin.
Somewhere at the heart of the sun-blasted landscape—a flickering, twirling maelstrom of hunger. An unappeasable, longing emptiness. The stirrings of the Dragon. It broke over him like a wave, like the sound of distant keening.
Leopold shook his head to banish the thought, scattering precious drops of life on every side. He could ill afford to think about hunger. There was precious little hope of any sustenance in this inhospitable place. He tried to focus his thoughts on more immediate concerns. It must be nearly noon. He had to find shelter soon.
If he could just outlast the afternoon sun, he might have enough strength for one more attempt to free himself. To slice through the skin-taut restraints of the desert heat. To slip between the bars of his own skeleton, his prison these thirty-three years. To take one step back from the clumsy canvas of flesh and bone and, surveying it with an artist’s eye, make it anew.