by Jack Yeovil
'I am just a conscientious gardener, child. I have cultivated your bloom, but that does no credit to me.'
Eva didn't know, but she was the first he had instructed. She'd be the last.
Eva Savinien came along only once in a lifetime, even a life as extended as the Trapdoor Daemon's.
The girl sat at her mirror again, looking at her reflection. Was she trying to see beyond, to see him? The thought gave him a spasm of horror. His hide crawled, and he heard the drip of his thick secretion.
'Spirit, why can I never see you?'
She'd asked that before. He had no answer.
'Have you no body to see?'
He almost laughed but his throat couldn't make the sound anymore. He wished what she suggested were true.
'Who are you?'
'Just a Trapdoor Daemon. I was a playwright once, a director too. But that was long ago. Before you were born. Before your mother was born.'
'What is your name?'
'I have no name. Not anymore.'
'What was your name?'
'It wouldn't mean anything to you.'
'Your voice is so beautiful, I'm sure you are comely. A handsome ghost like the apparition in A Farce of the Fog.'
'No, child.'
The Trapdoor Daemon was uncomfortable. Since the play opened, Eva had been pressing him about himself. Before, all her questions had been about herself. About how she could improve herself. Now, uncharacteristically, she was being consumed by curiosity. It was something she'd discovered inside, and was letting grow.
She was wandering about her room now, back to him. A bouquet had arrived from the palace every day since the first night. Eva had made a conquest of Prince Luitpold. She took yesterday's stiff blossoms from their vase and piled them with the others.
'I love you, spirit,' she said, lying.
'No, child. But I shall teach you to show love.'
She whirled around, the heavy vase in her hand, and smashed the mirror. The noise of the shattering glass was like an explosion in the confined space of the passage. Light poured in, smiting his shrinking eyes like a rain of fire. Shards pattered against his chest, sticking to the damp patches.
Eva stepped back, glass tinkling under her feet.
She saw him. Unfeigned, unforced horror burst out of her in a screech, and her lovely face twisted with fear, disgust, loathing, instinctive hate.
It was no less than he had expected.
There was an urgent knocking at Eva's door. Shouts outside the dressing room.
He was gone through his own trapdoor before anyone could intervene, pulling himself through the catacombs on his tentacles, driving himself deeper into the heart of the theatre, determined to flee from the light, to hide himself from wounded eyes, to bury himself in the unexplored depths of the building. He knew his way in the dark, knew each turn and junction of the passageways. At the heart of the labyrinth was the lagoon that had been his home since he first changed.
More than a mirror was broken.
She broke the lock and pulled the door open. Eva Savinien was having hysterics, tearing up her dressing room. At last, Genevieve thought rather cattily, a genuine emotion. It was the first time Eva had suggested offstage that she might have feelings. The mirror was smashed, the air full of petals from shredded bouquets.
The actress flinched as Genevieve stepped into the room, others crowding in behind her. Like a trapped animal, Eva backed into a corner, as far away as possible from the broken mirror.
There was an aperture behind the looking glass.
'What is it?' Illona asked the younger woman.
Eva shook her head, and tore at her hair.
'She's having a fit,' someone said.
'No,' said Genevieve. 'She's had a fright. She's just afraid.'
She held out her hands, and tried to make calming gestures. It was no good. Eva was as afraid of Genevieve as she was of whatever had thrown such a scare into her.
'There's a passage here,' said Poppa Fritz from near the mirror. 'It goes back into the wall.'
'What happened?' asked Reinhardt.
Detlef shouldered his way into the room, and Eva threw herself at him, pressing her face to his shirt, her body racked with sobs. Detlef, astonished, looked at Genevieve as he patted Eva's back, trying to quiet her down. Being the director made him stand-in father for everyone in the company, but he was not used to this sort of behaviour. Especially not from Eva.
The actress broke away from Detlef suddenly and, darting between the people crowding the room, ran through the door, down the passageway, out of the theatre. Detlef called after her. There was a performance tonight, and she could not run out.
Genevieve was examining the hole where the mirror had been. A cool breeze was coming from it. And a peculiar smell. She thought she heard something moving far away.
'Look, there's some sort of liquid,' Reinhardt said, dipping his finger into a slimy substance that clung to a jagged edge of glass. It was green and thick.
'What is going on here?' Detlef asked. 'What's got into Eva?'
Poppa Fritz leaned into the cavity and sucked a whiff into his nostrils.
'It's the Box Seven smell,' Reinhardt said.
Poppa Fritz nodded sagely. 'The Trapdoor Daemon,' he said, tapping his nose.
Detlef threw up his hands in exasperation.
Bernabe Scheydt had found the theatre easily. It was on Temple Street, one of the city's main thoroughfares. But, by the time he reached the place, Scheydt was not much more use to the Animus. Although he'd bound his stump as best he could with rags torn from his robes, he had lost a lot of blood. He was leaking badly through the hole in his back, and he still had the head of a crossbow quarrel lodged in his spine. This host was dying under the Animus, just as the horses that had brought him to Altdorf had died under Scheydt.
He managed to haul himself into the alley beside the Vargr Breughel Memorial Playhouse, and slumped across from the stage door. As he lurched into the recess a passing woman pressed a coin into his hand, and gave him the blessing of Shallya.
Gripping the coin in his remaining fist, he let the wall support him. He was aware of the slow trickle of blood from his many wounds, but he felt little. Suddenly, the stage door clattered open, and a girl came running out. She must be from the company. She was young, with a stream of dark hair.
The Animus made Scheydt stand up on weary legs, and totter towards the girl, blocking her path. She dodged, but the alley was narrow. He collapsed against her, bearing her towards the wall, dragging her down. She struggled, but did not scream. Already in the grip of panic, she had no more fear.
As he fell on her, Scheydt's leg bent the wrong way and snapped, a sharp end of broken bone spearing through muscle and flesh below the knee. With his hand, he grabbed the girl's hair, and pulled himself up to her face.
The girl began screaming. The Animus guided its host forwards. Scheydt pressed his face close to the pretty girl's, and it peeled off, sliding down between them.
Suddenly, he was free, and pain poured into his body. He shrieked as the full agony of his wounds fell on him like a cloak of lightning.
Without the Animus, he was lost, abandoned.
The girl, calming, stood up, heaving him off.
He could not stop shaking, and liquid was spewing from his mouth. He curled into a ball of pain, his limbs ending in ragged edges of agony. Looking up, he saw the girl feeling her face. The mask was in place, but not joined to her yet. The white metal caught the moonlight, and glowed like a lantern.
She was not screaming anymore. But Scheydt was, letting out a tearing, dying, jagged howl from the depths of his disordered soul.
Detlef examined the hole, and was glad nobody suggested he explore the passage. It would have been hard for him to get through the mirror-sized gap, and there was something about the dark beyond that reminded him of the corridors of Castle Drachenfels.
'They must go back for miles,' he said.
Guglielmo was by his side, with
a sheaf of floor-plans and diagrams, shaking his head.
'Nothing is marked, but we've always known these were approximate at best. The building has been remodelled, knocked down, rebuilt, refitted a dozen times.'
Genevieve was nearby, waiting. She was in one of her siege moods, as if she expected a surprise attack at any moment. Stage-hands were out looking for Eva.
Illona was trying to look concerned for the girl.
'And this part of the city is rotten through with secret tunnels and passageways from the wars.'
Detlef was worried about tonight's performance. The audience was already arriving. And they were expecting to see the discovery of the season, Eva Savinien.
There was no time to deal with this.
IX
The new host stood up, the Animus settling on her face. Scheydt was writhing at her feet, scrabbling with his hand at her leg, trying to pull himself up.
'Give it back,' he shouted through his pain.
It was easy to shake him off.
The Animus was intrigued by the cool, purposeful mind of Eva Savinien, and by the recent blot of panic that had been scrawled across the hitherto perfect page of her thoughts. This was the vehicle which would get it close to Genevieve and Detlef. Close to its purpose. It would have to be more circumspect now.
Like Scheydt, this host had her needs and desires. The Animus thought it could help assuage them.
She spread and fisted her fingers, feeling the pull and push of her muscles as far up as her elbows, her shoulders. The Animus was conscious of the perfection of her young body. Her back was as supple as a fine longbow, and her slender limbs as well-proportioned as an idealized statue. She spread her arms, heaving her shoulders, stretching apart her breasts.
The screaming man at her feet was attracting attention. There were crowds in the street, and they passed comment. Soon, someone would intervene.
Scheydt had denied himself everything, and, with the Animus in his mind, had exploded. Eva was more in accord with herself, but there were still things the Animus could do for her. And she welcomed its presence, feeding it the information it needed to proceed towards its purpose.
Detlef and Genevieve were both in the building, but it would stay its killing blow for the moment. The revenge had to be complete. It would be cautious not to wear out this host as fast as it had Scheydt.
'Eva,' said a male voice.
The Animus allowed Eva to turn to the man. It was Reinhardt Jessner, standing in the doorway. He was an actor in Detlef's company, a buffoon but a decent one. He could be of use.
'What's wrong?'
'Nothing,' she said. 'Stage fright.'
Reinhardt looked unsure. 'That's not like you.'
'No, but one shouldn't be like oneself all the time, don't you think?'
She eased past him into the theatre, and darted up a small, hungry kiss at his bewildered mouth. After only a moment, he responded, and the Animus tasted the actor's soul.
The kiss broke, and Reinhardt looked down at Scheydt.
'Who's this?'
'A beggar,' she explained. 'Overdoing his act somewhat.'
'His leg is broken. You can see the bone.'
Eva laughed. 'You should know the tricks that can be done with make-up, Reinhardt.'
She shut the door on the still-kicking cleric of Solkan, and let Reinhardt take her back to the stage.
'I'm perfectly all right,' she kept saying. 'It was just stage fright just an accident just a panic'
'Curtain up in half an hour,' Poppa Fritz announced.
Eva left Reinhardt, and made her way back to her dressing room. The Animus remembered the thing the host had seen beyond the mirror. There was no time to take account of it.
'Poppa,' she told the hireling. 'Get me a new mirror, and whip my costumier into action.'
Below the Vargr Breughel, underneath even the fifth level of the basements, there was a saltwater lagoon. A hundred years ago, it had served as a smugglers' den. It had been abandoned in haste; chests of rotted silks and dusty jewels stood stacked haphazardly on the shores. This was the Trapdoor Daemon's lair. His books swelled up with the damp like leavened bread, but the water was good for him. He could drink brine, and needed to immerse his body every few hours. If his hide dried out, it cracked and became painful.
But not as painful as the heartache he now felt.
He had known how it would end. There could be no other outcome. As a dramatist, he must have understood that.
But
Collapsed on the sandy slope, his bulbous head in the water, its ruff of tentacles floating around it, he was alone with his despair.
Everything had been a futile attempt to put off the despair.
He heard the constant drip of water down the walls of this dungeon, and saw the rippling reflection of his lanterns on the water's surface.
Sometimes, he wondered if he should just cast himself off, and let his body wash through the tunnels to the Reik, and then to the sea. If he were to throw away the last of his humanity, perhaps he might find contentment in the limitless oceans.
No.
He sat up, head breaking the water, and crawled away, leaving a damp trail behind him.
He was the Trapdoor Daemon. Not a spirit of the sea.
There were age-eaten wooden statues of gods and goddesses around the walls×of Verena and Manann, Myrmidia and Sigmar, Morr and Taal. They had been ship's figureheads. Now, their faces were vertically lined where the grain of the wood had cracked, and greened with masks of moss. Slowly, they became less human. When the Trapdoor Daemon had first found this place×the marks of his own change barely apparent to anyone else×the faces had been plain, recognizable, inspiring. As he had become monstrous, so had they. Yet they retained their human faces underneath.
Underneath his skin, he was still a man.
The Trapdoor Daemon stood up. On two legs, like a man. The water had washed away some of his pain.
Lanterns burned eternally in his lair. It was as richly appointed as a palace, albeit with furniture rescued from the scenery dock.
The boatlike bed where he slept looked like a priceless antique from the Age of the Three Emperors, but was in fact a sturdy replica constructed for a forgotten production of The Loves of Ottokar and Myrmidia. Nothing was what it seemed.
Somewhere above, the company would be preparing for the curtain. He had not missed a performance yet. And he wouldn't break his habit tonight. Not for something as inconsequential as a heartless actress.
From a hook, he hauled down a cloak intended to be worn by a mechanical giant in one of the old melodramas.
He wrapped himself up, and slithered towards his trapdoor.
The crowds outside the theatre treated him as a madman, and kicked him into the street. The newly broken bone in his leg sawed through his flesh. On his knees, his hand pressed to his stump, he threw back his head and screamed.
The world spun around him. There was no such thing as a fixed point. A sundial is only useful if the sun is out.
Clouds gathered in the night sky, obscuring the moons.
Bernabe Scheydt yelled, and people hurried away from him. His face had been torn away, and he felt as if he were smothered with a mask of hungry ants, a million tiny mandibles dripping poison into his flayed flesh.
Up in the sky, a speck appeared. A black, flapping speck.
His scream ran out, and he just let the pain run through his whole body. His throat was torn and bleeding inside.
The speck became a bird, and he fixed his eyes on it.
An officer of the watch came near, his club out, and he stood over Scheydt, prodding him with a polished boot.
'Move on,' the watchman said. 'This is a respectable district, and we can't be having the likes of you.'
The bird was coming down like a rocket, beak-first, its wings fixed as if it were a missile.
'I am a cleric of the law.'
The copper spat, and kicked him in the knee, sending a jolt of pain through his body.
The bird still came. The watchman heard the whoosh as the hawk sliced like a throwing knife through the air, and turned around. He raised his club, and fell backwards, away from Scheydt, stifling his own yell.
The hawk fastened on Scheydt's head, beak gouging for his eyes, talons fixing about his ears. The bird had razor-edged metal spurs fixed to its ankles, and it had been trained in their use.
There was screaming all around.
'Warhawk, warhawk!'
The beak prised Scheydt's skull open and dug in expertly. It didn't feed, it rent apart. A gush of warmth expelled from the cleric's head, and dribbled down his face.
Then the pain was gone, and the bird was flying away.
Scheydt collapsed in the street, an unrecognizable, torn, broken mess. The clouds passed, and moonlight streamed down on the corpse.
X
'There's been a murder,' Guglielmo announced. 'Outside in the street.'
'What!'
Every new development was like a punch to his head. Detlef couldn't keep up.
Eva was in a corner, trying to reassure everyone that she was all right, that she could go on tonight. She was dressed and made up for Act One, turned into the bedraggled, painted Nita.
Guglielmo had a burly guard placed in Eva's dressing room, but the actress didn't want protection. She'd changed completely, and Detlef wondered if her earlier panic had been an act. If so, she'd fooled him completely. And he couldn't think of any reason for the performance. His own dresser draped Zhiekhill's robes around him, pinning them up. Cindy, the make-up assistant, set the trick wig under his cap. He felt like a baby, fussed over but ignored, an object not a person.
If a play lives through the first week, it can run for an age. Detlef wondered if the players could live through this first week of The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida.
Poppa Fritz reported that there were protesters outside. They'd been hired by Mornan Tybalt, and come to picket the lines of theatre-goers. Now, having come to stop a play and stayed to witness a murder, they were on the point of rioting.