The Dark Arts of Blood

by Freda Warrington

  “Emil?” said Charlotte. “Have you ridden before?”

  No answer. The dancer leaned back against the rock face, silent and ashen-faced. He hadn’t said a word since they brought him out of the cave.

  “Don’t worry,” said Fadiya. “He’ll sit behind me. These desert-bred horses are far tougher than they look. The Bedouins rode mares like these into war. They’re forged in fire. They can bear great weight and run like the wind for hours.”

  She spoke with tender reverence, her gaze a thousand miles away. She sounded nothing like the treacherous vampire Charlotte knew.

  Mounted on Dabab, Charlotte felt secure and balanced, as comfortable as if she were seated on a cushion, even though the mare felt like a ball of lightning beneath her. Both mares danced, joyously eager to gallop. A word from Fadiya, and they were racing into the night.

  Emil sat behind Fadiya on the chestnut Ghazale, his arms tight around her waist and his head slumped on her shoulder. The mares ran with long fluid strides like a flash flood across the sand. They – and Fadiya – knew exactly where they were going. Without her guidance, Charlotte knew this journey would have been infinitely more difficult.

  The sun rose, a great red sphere trailing a plume of light, casting a rosy light over the plains of sand and rock. Fadiya led the party down into the shade of overhanging rocks, to a narrow archway that couldn’t be seen unless you already knew it was there. She dismounted, pushed Emil into the gap in front of her, and signalled Charlotte to follow.

  The mares only just fitted through the entrance, but they went in willingly as if they’d entered this place a dozen times before. The narrow ingress curved into a small, intricate cavern, all pillars and arches of glowing orange rock.

  A small pool of water welled from below ground to fill a central dip in the floor. The mares went straight to drink. Emil fell to his knees beside them and dipped his whole head under the surface.

  “We’ll rest here until sunset,” said Fadiya. “Give Emil some food, while I see to the girls.”

  Emil sat with his back against a pillar, wordless. Water streamed from his drenched hair. His eyes were open but dull. Charlotte wondered what, if anything, was going on in his mind. If this ordeal had broken him beyond repair – she pushed the potential tragedy out of her mind. She already had too much to think about, not least what might be happening to Violette… and to Karl.

  Charlotte held a flask of water to his lips and tried to ignore her own thirst, no matter how tempting the throb of blood vessels in his throat… A human, alone with two vampires in the wilderness, was hardly in the safest of hands. But duty came before thirst.

  He turned his head away when she offered him flatbread, even refused a sweet raw date. Charlotte watched Fadiya tending the mares at the edge of the pool, removing their saddles, rubbing their backs and checking their hooves.

  “She loves her horses, doesn’t she? She can’t be all bad.”

  Emil said nothing.

  “Dear, we’ll get you home safely.”

  “Vampires. Witches.” His voice was a dry, cracked hiss. “You bring me to this and expect gratitude for not killing me after all? I’d rather be dead.”

  “Drink some more water, then try to sleep,” said Charlotte.

  Nothing she said would soothe Emil, or repair his crushed spirit. She longed for dusk, when they could travel again. The day was going to be baking hot, endless.

  * * *

  The voice inside the skull sounded light and mellow. Not a voice to wake terror, but its smooth quality disturbed Violette in a less definable way.

  “What language do you prefer to converse in?” she asked.

  “English will suffice.”

  “I’ve come for Emil,” she said calmly.

  “I know.”

  “Then you understand that I am not here for your benefit. I’m here to take my dancer home. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but if any harm comes to him…” Violette paused as all her emotions went still. She became icily focused and ruthless, with Lilith coiled under her heart ready to strike. She’d seen vampires and humans alike flee from her arctic stare.

  The intelligence behind the skull remained impassive.

  “We have heard about you, Lilith, Queen of Demons. Come closer.”

  He towered over her, wrapped in robes the colour of the desert; russet and purplish red. His head, concealed by the huge skull helmet, looked grotesquely out of proportion with his slim figure. The staff he held was taller than him and shone like white-hot metal. It was a weapon, she was certain, that could kill her with ease.

  A weapon to destroy a goddess.

  Violette had expected to find this creature seated on a throne. A grand chair constructed of bones would have looked fitting. Some vampires liked displays of pomp, but Zruvan had none. He only stood there as if imprisoned in an oubliette, like a martyred saint.

  She saw Istilqa knives lying in neat rows around the circumference of the cave. Dozens of them. Carving tools, also. A hammer and small anvil to shape metal, small heaps of rubies… some in the rough, some polished. Perhaps he supervised craftsmen, but she suspected that he made the daggers himself.

  Apparently he had to control every tiny detail… just as she did.

  “I was told you never leave here,” she said. “Is that true?”

  “I used to, long ago. Not now.”

  “But what do you live on?”

  “My attendants bring me sustenance.”

  He glanced up, where the ceiling attenuated to a narrow pipe. Violette imagined humans being forced down that chimney, falling in terror.

  “And leave the bones here? You do know – you must know, since I’m sure you’re a wise man – that vampires shouldn’t remain too close to their victims? Hoarding their corpses around you will bring disaster. Eventually they start to suck back their stolen life. Friends of mine have witnessed it.”

  “Of course we know,” he said patiently. “That’s why we hoard the dead. That is why I bear the agony and guilt for all those like me. I always have and always will.”

  “You live here in suffering, like a… a scapegoat?”

  “It’s my duty.”

  “This is unhealthy,” said Violette. “To keep the bones of your victims around you and wallow in their pain is ridiculous. Dangerous.”

  “Unhealthy? But to do otherwise – is that not denial of our guilt? It’s part of our nature to live with what we have done.”

  “That’s true,” Violette said softly. “You have a point.”

  “Sit with me,” said Zruvan.

  “I assume you lured me here to kill me,” she said. “Or at least to try. What is the point of us sitting down?”

  “I want to talk. I tried to talk with you many times, but I could not.”

  “Because you weren’t really there,” she said. “What I saw was only a projection of you.”

  “Yes. That is why I had to bring you here. So indulge me, please.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t want to fight with you, but I do want Emil back.”

  “Sit,” he repeated.

  He planted his staff in a cleft in the floor and sat cross-legged, his rusty robes falling in folds over his knees. Cautiously Violette knelt before him, like a disciple before a guru. The idea of such a role made her bristle. It was not who she was. Roaring heat oppressed her. She felt she was melting like wax while whispering spectres clawed at her skin, taking her apart cell by cell.

  He means to destroy me, she thought, glancing up into the apex of the cone. I won’t escape alive. Charlotte, you had better get Emil home or I’ll come back from hell and haunt you!

  “May I ask questions?” she said.

  The huge skull-head nodded. “You must have many.”

  “Why were you following me? What do you want?”

  “We know that you are Lilith. A wild and destructive spirit. The hag of the night wind.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Rumours come to us, even here. We have
spies in the outer world.”

  “Fadiya?”

  “Not only her. You have been watched since the moment of your creation.”

  “Even when I was human.” She remembered three figures that had haunted her childhood. Angels, they called themselves, claiming to be sent by God to tame the disobedient Lilith. Now she believed they were actually sentient fragments of Raqia, products of the vast sea of dreams and myths formed by mankind.

  Still real enough to cause her torment and peril for years.

  “Did the angels warn you?” she said. “Self-styled angels. Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof…”

  “I am older than such myths. But yes, we were warned.” A noncommittal reply. So, he meant to learn about her while giving away nothing in return.

  But he’s afraid of me, she thought. Why else did he lure me here?

  “You think I’m a threat to the very existence of vampires, don’t you? Humans reviled Lilith. They saw her as an enraged demon who was out to drain men’s life force and murder their infants. Vampires fear me too, because they can’t control me. Is that it? You feel you have a duty to destroy me.”

  The skull went silent, pondering.

  “It’s my duty to find out what you are,” he said. “To protect my flock. My beloved friends.”

  He has friends? she thought. Fadiya, Nabil and the others I’ve sensed around here… how many more?

  “It’s polite of you to ask, rather than just hacking off my head,” said Violette. “But it’s none of your business. I don’t mean to insult you, Lord Zruvan, but I don’t know who you are. My life and affairs are no one’s concern but mine. I’m not obliged to explain my existence to you. I have had enough of paranoid would-be tyrants persecuting me like a witch. Truly, you are very late to this game. It is already over.”

  She heard him release a heavy breath inside the mask.

  “Lilith is a disruptive force, causing storms in the Crystal Ring that have made my friends wary of going there.”

  “The Crystal Ring is always stormy,” she replied.

  “It has grown worse since your reincarnation. When we try to create new vampires, most die.”

  “Hasn’t that always been the case? Those storms are not my fault.”

  “Are they not?”

  “No. I might lay claim to some of the disturbance…”

  Months ago a concretion had appeared in Raqia like a fortress of coal floating in the void: a manifestation of her soul that was also a house in the real world, just as Zruvan’s cave sat in both realms at once. One of Raqia’s many mysteries.

  “There was something,” she went on, “but whatever disturbs the Ring now is not due to me. You must realise that every thought we have, human or vampire, makes ripples in the Crystal Ring. Some are more powerful than others. Your own psychic journeys, pursuing me, caused worse storms than I ever have! Now there are tempests emanating from the human world. Political upheaval. It’s always been so. Your spies should have told you that.”

  “The human world is of little interest to me. It’s simply there, like an anthill.”

  “Then we’re the anteaters! We couldn’t exist without it.”

  “Still, my concern is to protect my own circle. They’ve had little rest of late.”

  “Why? Do you mean they daren’t enter the Crystal Ring to rest?”

  “They dare, but it has never been safe. I won’t tolerate it growing worse. I swore to find the source of disruption and end it.”

  “What are they afraid of?”

  She wished she could see his face. Was he angry at her questions? She could read nothing from his level tone.

  “You know the dangers,” he said. “Vampires have been lost there, or they grow too cold and drift into oblivion. My friends are creatures of warmth and peace who take badly to change. That’s why, centuries ago, we discovered a safer way to take our rest.”

  He picked up one of the bone-knives from the floor. It lay across his gloved palm like a living thing, blade and haft and ruby all shimmering with reflected heat. “These bring the most precious gift: sleep.”

  “Istilqa,” said Violette, understanding. “Like a drug? If we surround ourselves with too much human death, it drags us down with it. But a tiny amount makes vampires… sleep?”

  “I did not expect you to understand, but yes, you are right.”

  “The daggers also cause horrific nightmares and hallucinations.”

  “That happens with inexperienced use of the sakakin. In the hands of those who don’t know what they’re doing, yes, the blades can be deadly.”

  The eerie resonance of his voice and the thrumming, fierce heat were making her weak and disorientated. Zruvan’s apparent politeness did not make him less dangerous. She was trapped and more certain by the moment that she might well die here. Perhaps Lilith would survive and fly free, but she wouldn’t be Violette any more.

  She closed her mind to those thoughts and wondered if he knew that Godric Reiniger had a stash of bone-knives. She thought, He must know. Fadiya must have seen that Godric had the knives – perhaps she even supplied them to him, God knows why – but surely he must know. Is he angry that a human has them? Perhaps he doesn’t even care, since he has so many others. If I have one last wish, it’s to know what Zruvan is before I expire in this oven.

  “Tell me your thoughts,” he said, sounding a touch anxious.

  “Can’t you read my mind?”

  “I wish that I could, but no.”

  “Very well. I was thinking that using the Istilqa knives is not wise. The Crystal Ring is there for us to rest and replenish our powers. We are not human. We need to be alert and we’re designed to stay awake always: it’s part of our nature. Vampires should not be stabbing their veins with the equivalent of… opium or morphine.”

  Zruvan exhaled. His breath reverberated within the mask like the sigh of a bear.

  “You seem to be suggesting that it’s a weakness,” he said.

  “Exactly so. A very human weakness.”

  She wanted to ask if they could leave this terrible furnace of death and talk elsewhere. She was almost ready to beg, but – no. She wouldn’t let him see she was struggling. She detached herself from her physical discomfort and concentrated on what he was saying.

  “We are not weak,” Zruvan retorted. “However, there is a problem. We have used the knives in a sparing manner for hundreds of years. But because the Crystal Ring is so wild these days, my beloved friends are resorting more and more to the sakakin. And the more they use them, the less effect the blades have. For that reason, we need Raqia’s storms to cease. We need the vampire realm under our command. You are no ordinary vampire, Lilith. I still believe that you are the stone thrown into the pond. Some ripples flow outwards, becoming tidal waves.”

  “Perhaps once, but not now,” she said sharply. “No one commands Raqia! It’s a law unto itself, and you can’t change that. I am no threat to your circle of followers. I’m only dangerous to those who threaten me and my loved ones. It sounds as if you and I are not so different.”

  “We are entirely different,” said Zruvan.

  With that cool, dismissive remark she knew he’d made up his mind to kill her. Better safe than sorry.

  Besides, it was beneath her dignity to justify her existence to him. She thought with horrible certainty, Even if we sit debating for a thousand years he will not change his mind.

  “I don’t care about your Istilqa knives. Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you in peace. I came to you of my own free will for one reason only – to release Emil. What must I do to make you fulfil the bargain?”

  Zruvan did not reply. He went as still as a statue again, making her wonder if he’d left his body and drifted into Raqia again. Heat shimmered around his motionless red form as if he were on fire. The air scorched her throat.

  Violette looked around warily, wondering if there was any possible escape. Flight up the narrow throat of the chimney, or back the way she’d come, or even through the walls
of stone and bone? But it was no good. This couldn’t end until she understood what Zruvan was.

  The skull turned to face the burning white staff. He touched it with his gloved fingers, then looked up at the spot of sky far above.

  Then, very slowly, he turned the death-mask to face her. Bone-rimmed black pits for eyes, teeth clenched in a malevolent grin. She felt a shudder of dread building in the pit of her stomach, rising into her throat. Regardless of the fierce heat, her skin became a tingling sheet of ice.

  “Emil has gone,” he whispered. Now he sounded angry.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Fadiya and your friend have taken him, against my command.”

  “Thank goodness.” Her relief was immediately swamped by anxiety. His tone was ominous, a loud whisper echoing from inside the unmoving jaw.

  “This means you have broken our agreement.”

  “Does it matter?” She couldn’t keep her feelings out of her voice. “I’m here, am I not? I came in exchange for him. You have what you want, so let him go!”

  Zruvan unfolded from his seated position, towering over her. For a second she was like a tiny child staring up at him. Then she sprang to her feet and backed away. No longer the quiet-voiced guru, he transformed back into the terrifying figure who’d first menaced her onboard ship.

  Fire scorched her. Stinging liquid ran into her eyes and she realised she was perspiring. She felt her dress clinging to her clammy body, looked down and saw that she was sweating her own blood. Her clothing and her whole body was slicked in pink fluid. The Bone Well trembled.

  “My decision whether or not to let you go was in the balance,” he said. “But the facts remain. I have been here since before the beginning of time. I gave birth to space and time. Everything in the universe proceeded from me.”

  “What?” Violette laughed from shock. “You gave birth to space and time?”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “I’m not mocking, just… Are you claiming to be a god? Now I’ve heard everything. Angels, sorcerers, gods – the Crystal Ring sends us all mad!”