The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “It’s moving!” Manuel called. “It’s trying to get up!”

  “Oh? Good,” said Paracelsus. “Tell me if it succeeds. Where was I, my dear?”

  “I ain’t your dear, shitlips,” said Monique, her eyes rolling as he prodded farther up her arm. “You was gettin traded from chickenheads ta bounty riders.”

  “Yes, of course. Well, that was that—the monster attacked from the darkness, and the one or two men that held their ground were disarmed or killed outright. One fiend against a dozen stout men, and they all fell, some running, some hiding, some praying, but they all fell. Then it gnawed through my bonds, curious why I smelled of she, I imagine, and the answers I gave it delighted the beast … I pretended to know where she was, and so it consented to let me live so long as I took it to her. I agreed, of course, and it set to making a den in the barrow. It meant to spend the night in its lair, eating all the men it had killed, and that is when you found me, tending the last dying man.”

  “I—I think it might be dying,” said Manuel, and that decided things for the physician.

  “You won’t bleed to death now, and amputating that arm ought to wait on better light and equipment.” Paracelsus stood, coated from brow to boot in caked blood and dirt.

  “Amputate?” Monique said quietly, trying to move her broken arm and nearly passing out again. “Nah, no need, I broke bones afore an’—”

  “It comes off or maggots will materialize,” said Paracelsus as he picked up his bag and advanced on the hyena. “Take comfort that you have your life.”

  “Then maggots materialize, ya fuckin quack!” Monique screamed after him. “Fuckin piece of shit!”

  “Yes yes, blame the doctor.” Paracelsus smiled at Manuel, who looked greener than the dark pines overhead. The physician was in better spirits than he had been in years, and turned his attention to the dying hyena. It looked up at him with its pleading golden eyes, and he walked around it thrice, like a dog preparing to lie down, then squatted just out of its reach should it muster its strength and try to bite him. In Latin he asked, “Can you understand me?”

  “Ita,” it whined, the voice that of a boy not yet through the trials of manhood.

  “Good.” Paracelsus reverted to German as he unscrewed the pommel from his sword. “Though ita vero is really more appropriate for conveying assent—must have eaten a novice, eh? Is that how your faculties work?”

  “Help me,” came the little girl’s voice again, Manuel stumbling away and dry-heaving in the shadows.

  “Certainly,” said Paracelsus. “Now, we don’t have much light left, this lantern’s almost empty. But before we got started I thought you might help me coin a term for the sort of examination we’ll be doing. I love language every bit as much as you evidently do, so since you’ll be contributing so heavily I thought you could offer your opinion.”

  “Examination we’ll be doing?” The doctor’s voice bounced back at him, which only widened his smile as he removed his Stones of Immortality from their hidden compartment in the pommel of his sword. Technically they were not stones, being a compound of poppy oil, quintessence of gold, a few binding agents, and preservatives, and they certainly did not bestow immortality, although they did provide a wonderful buzz, but he thought the name had quite the ring to it—a fascinating drug, one of the finest discoveries to come from his time in the Middle East.

  “Stick out your tongue … that’s a good doggie.”

  “Ba-ba-bad doggie,” wept the creature, but it did as he asked, and when he had crumbled some of the laudanum onto its tongue it made a pathetic coughing sound.

  “Noooo, good doggie. It will calm you, take away the pain,” said Paracelsus, and as the mighty head began to sag even lower he scratched behind its sharp ears. “Good doggie. Now, before your tongue grows too heavy, what do you think about the word vivisection ? The Latin vivus is obvious, but something about sectio strikes me as being apropos, don’t you think?”

  “Vivus?” The hyena’s tongue was lolling, its eyes contracting as Paracelsus took something long and shiny from his bag and set it on the ground. Next the doctor removed a bandage and gingerly helped the creature roll onto its side. The animal was not responding as strongly to the stimulation as he plugged the gunshot wound, but it got another word out. “Sectio?”

  “Yes, yes.” Paracelsus nodded as his fingers peeled back its gums, prodded its cheeks. It clearly wanted to bite him, tried, even, but it could barely stay awake. That changed soon enough. “Vivisection. A lovely word, don’t you agree?”

  XXXIII

  Bastards of the Schwarzwald

  “Your companions must wait here,” said Awa’s host as he closed the red door behind them. The walls of the hut’s only room were smooth, dull metal that glowed and shimmered from the single torch set in a sconce. The only other exit was a round portal in the floor.

  “Why?” Awa looked up at the gaunt, pale man, wondering just what his nudity indicated—madness or simply different societal mores.

  “The iron will keep them insulated,” said the man as he put a foot under the handle on the portal, and with a light kick the metal door swung up to reveal a black pit. The trapdoor was as thick as Awa’s wrist but the man’s scrotum was barely swaying from the exertion of opening it. “Down, if you please.”

  “What’s your name?” said Awa, warily noting that his spirit did not keep inside his body but stretched out from his skull in all directions, barely visible translucent tentacles swaying around him.

  “Carandini,” said the man, and bowed. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Lady Awa.”

  “Right,” said Awa. “So … down?”

  “Down.”

  “Why?” Awa glanced at her two mindless assistants and the dripping bag they carried containing Chloé. “And you said iron would insulate my mindless ones, my new bonemen. From what?”

  Carandini’s left eyelid twitched, the pinkish eye it covered dilating ever so slightly. He sighed, plucked the torch from its mooring, and stepped forward, dropping straight down the black shaft. His fall stopped abruptly at shoulder height, and then he began descending a flight of stairs, his head dipping out of sight. Reasoning she had little choice, Awa lowered herself the short drop to the first stair and hurried after. She heard the iron portal somehow close behind her and knew she was sealed in with Carandini, his torchlight reflecting on the iron-lined walls of the spiral staircase. She was powerless, but she had not come to test her prowess against beings that even her tutor could not master.

  Carandini was talking quietly, she realized with a smile. He was dead, undead but dead nevertheless, and so compelled to answer the questions of the living. It was a fine little loophole, Awa had to admit, answering but doing so out of hearing.

  “I couldn’t hear you,” said Awa. “Why are we going down, and what will the iron room insulate my bonemen from? And please speak up.”

  “Certainly!” His voice echoed up and down the stair as he paused and smiled up at her. She saw his canines jutted out and down like pearl tusks, yet as he closed his mouth there was no bulge to his lips. Awa supposed the clip-clopping her left foot made on the stair might seem similarly odd to her host. “We are going down because you came here looking for answers, and unlike some we do not believe in punishing the curious by keeping them prisoner in drab little rooms. The iron lining above will keep your so-called bonemen insulated from our leaking wisdom.”

  “Leaking wisdom? What is—” Carandini broke into a trot down the stone stair, and Awa hurried after him.

  “We are a collective of scholars,” his voice echoed up to her. “As such, it does not behoove us to keep our individual minds isolated from one another. We have adapted ourselves to share our intelligence with one another, but once you let something as vaporous as intellect out of its vessel it can go any old place, including into normally mindless servants.”

  “The wolves and birds outside,” said Awa, impressed with herself for coming to the conclusion so quickly. �
�They’re normal animals that absorbed your leaking wisdom?”

  “Bats aren’t birds,” Carandini said aloofly.

  “Oh,” said Awa.

  “And not my personal wisdom, thankfully. One of our servants noticed you, and so I volunteered to monitor your progress through the wood. When it was obvious you were coming here I alerted the others, some of whom went above to orchestrate my entrance, and ensure you were who we suspected. If you were not the lady Awa, but instead that insane tutor of yours wearing the flesh of yet another apprentice, then we would have been ready with beast as well as brains.”

  “I knew my tutor had come here before, and I inferred you didn’t care for one another,” said Awa. “So when you’re around other creatures they become as smart as you?”

  “Not at all,” said Carandini, slowing to a walk upon finding Awa more than capable of keeping pace with him. “We leak, as I say, so that here, when we work in the laboratories together, we are all of equal intellect. When we go above, however, or allow others into our sanctum, our carefully cultivated intelligence seeps out of our skulls and infects anything in the vicinity. This does not make them equal to us, at first, but the longer we are near them the more we lose, and the more they gain, until the balance has shifted.”

  “The balance has shifted? So were there, were there just as many of you up there with the wolves and bats as there were animals?”

  “Of course not. Simple beasts cannot, alone, drain more than the slightest fraction of our intelligence, which is why so many of us keep familiars. They are far more useful than your so-called bonemen, and just as loyal—their borrowed wits allow them to realize that loyalty is the soundest option for their continued self-interest.”

  “I see,” said Awa. “So you become less clever the longer you’re around other beings. At what point does it cut off ? Your leak, I mean, what is the minimum intellect you can have? Say you were trapped in a room with a hundred human doctors, smart as you are that would put quite a drain on you, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Carandini, grinding his teeth. “To even master that number of wolves and bats my associates lost themselves, I fear, for there is no minimum intellect, as you put it. The volunteers who went up are no doubt loping around on all fours as we speak, no better than wolves themselves, and if they have lost so much of themselves that they no longer realize that they should seek what solitude the forest affords to recover their wits we will need to send up others to capture them and bring them back down. Otherwise they’ll be pillaging farms and gnawing the udders off cows by dawn.”

  “I see.” Awa smiled to herself, quite liking all of this—she was completing his sentences in her head before he even voiced them. Most of them, anyway. Then a concern regarding the practicality of transforming Chloé into one of these bizarre undead impressed itself upon her, and she asked, “Is there no way to arrest the leak? Surely that is part of the reason for your isolated, subterranean dwelling, but if you were to travel out in the world—”

  “Many of us travel, or have traveled,” said Carandini. “It is slow, the leak, unless we wish it to be faster, and stopping the leak is easy. We put bands of iron around our brows, and that is all that is required. Such bands can easily be hidden in a hat or a wig, so they do not arouse as much attention as you might think, but doing so obviously has its own share of detriments.”

  “You’re not wearing one, and we’re not sealed from one another the way my bonemen are, so that means you’re voluntarily allowing me to borrow some of your intellect.” Awa nodded, delighted to hear that all of Chloé’s wits would not leak out as soon as they returned to Paris. Paris? That was a terrible idea, indeed, going anywhere except the most isolated regions was a terrible idea—she had been gambling with her life every time she entered a town, let alone a city. She, a Moor and a witch, should know better than to—

  “Not voluntarily.” Carandini scowled. The stairs terminated in another small red door, reminding Awa that they had been descending the entire time and must now be quite deep in the earth. How she would get out if he or his fellow bastards meant her harm —“I took the iron from my brow before traveling up to greet you. Not of my own volition, but … a compulsion took me. Your ward, I imagine.”

  “My ward? I—” Carandini swung the door inward and strode into the dark room, and Awa again trotted after to keep up with his breathless pace. The floor resembled ice and was just as smooth, the surface sparkling in the torchlight, and then Awa saw a curious, shallow wave rushing over the ground toward them. The tide drew closer, and Awa realized it was not liquid but countless brightly colored adders roiling over one another, the carpet of snakes making directly for Awa and Carandini.

  “Interesting.” Her host’s pale brow creased as he dropped the torch and swept her up in his arms, dancing over the polished glass floor just as the wave of vipers came crashing down around his ankles. His hands were so chill they froze the sweat infusing Awa’s leggings and she gasped at both the sensation and the sight beneath her. The squirming snakes were only able to scale up to his knees before the intense cold emanating from Carandini put the serpents to sleep and they fell away without getting within striking range of Awa’s dangling feet. “It not only prevents me from personally hurting you but actually compels me to protect you from the traps I had set to circumvent that very ward. It is just as Breanne said, but interesting to see in action. I don’t regret the time I invested one bit.”

  “Sorry?” Awa was growing dizzy as he swung her onto his back, putting his chest between her and the darts suddenly fired at them by some unseen device in the shadowy chamber. She saw oily black blood bubble out around the small shafts prickling his chest, and then they were through the snakes and past the darts and at yet another red door. Setting her down, he opened the door and ushered her through as she asked, “Who’s Breanne?”

  “An associate,” said Carandini. “It was she who dealt with young master Walther.”

  “Walther?” The room Awa entered was dark, and as Carandini closed the door behind her the light of the abandoned torch was blotted out, leaving them in perfect blackness.

  “Your predecessor. Light.” And light there was, light of every imaginable color reflecting out of dozens of glass globes that spotted the enormous workroom. The globes were full of liquid that swirled and flashed, some set atop stands on the long tables, many more suspended from the scalloped ceiling by braided wires, and these as much as the bizarre apparatuses that adorned the room made Awa gape in wonder. “This is one of the laboratories. The others are in use so you cannot see them, lest you take more than your due.”

  “More than—oh.” Awa saw him tapping his shaved scalp. “My predecessor came here? This Walther was the last apprentice of the necromancer, the one whose skin he wears? Er, wore?”

  “Yes,” said Carandini.

  “And your associate, Breanne, dealt with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must speak with her!”

  “No.” Carandini smiled, showing his fangs again. “You speak with me.”

  “Oh. Well, you tell me, then—what was he doing here?”

  “What?” Carandini blinked at her. “The same thing I presume you’ve come for.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Awa.

  “To find a way to break the curse your tutor has afflicted you with, to postpone or prevent the loss of your body and soul.” Carandini looked warily at her. “Isn’t that why you sought us out?”

  “Oh! That would be wonderful!” Much as she wanted to indulge her curiosity, Awa had resolved to be as forthright with the dead as they were with her, and that meant honest answers given at the time of asking. “I just came here to ask for your help with my, my lover. She was the one in the sack, upstairs? She’s dying and so I killed her, but only a little, and I hoped you would turn her into one of you before she dies all the way. I don’t want her to start rotting, and the book said—”

  Carandini shook his head. “You sought us out to help w
ith your girlfriend?”

  “Well, yes. But since I’m here and you know about everything having to do with my tutor, why don’t we talk about that instead and deal with Chloé later?”

  “Chloé’s your lover?”

  “Yes. In the sack.”

  “Very well,” said Carandini, throwing his hands in the air. “Ask away.”

  “Well, first of all, why are you so helpful?” Awa sat on one of the benches.

  “Because I must,” said Carandini. “I am compelled. And besides that, your tutor is an old enemy. He is a cheat. He came here long, long ago, volunteering an alliance. We accepted, despite our caution in aligning ourselves with a breather, and soon enough he had taken what he could and snuck off instead of putting in the years of labor he had promised. Indicative of your type, was he, more concerned with personal advancement than the common good. The hunt for knowledge oughtn’t to be competitive.” Carandini glared at Awa. “ Ought not be competitive.”

  “I agree! Really! And I’ll do what I can to help, and—what was that about being compelled to help? The ward you mentioned, the curse that keeps the dead from harming me?” Awa narrowed her eyes at Carandini. “How would you treat me if the ward did not compel you to this or that?”

  “I would peel you like an onion,” said Carandini, clearly overjoyed she had asked. Those eyes, pink and shiny as salmon flesh, came alive in a way the rest of him never would, and his bright red tongue flicked over his ivory teeth. “I would commandeer an entire theatre to take you apart, to find out how his wards work. Of course, if you did not have the ward I wouldn’t have anything to study, which is a paradox. What was I saying? No, I would just kill you, I think, for your audacity, for one, in coming here to ask for assistance with your … relationship, but also because it’s the only way to thwart him, I think, but then he, then you … another paradox.” Carandini looked confused.