by Toby Bennett
“I need no reminding of that!”
“Animal or man, it makes no matter, a general and a mule, both have the same flaw - they have minds of their own. In Leedon’s case this is unavoidable, the living only follow their own, without him we would never have brought down the Citadel.”
“Indeed, we came close to victory then. If only he had done all that was required.”
“But in the end greed prevented him from doing all that was needed. He did what he wanted rather than what he was told, that is a vice of the living we must accept and be wary of.”
“We can trust the Captain to follow his own nature, at least! He hates our enemy and his obsession with the Gate is fanatical; so long as he is given the right motivations he should be biddable enough.”
“All the more reason he must be watched! He will hate us with the same passion, even hunt us, should he come close enough. He is haunted by his own piety, his own sense of damnation. Such obsession is the great flaw of the living.”
“And a great strength, if used correctly…I am aware of the difficulties of manipulating the living, Mordiki, none more so, but it is sometimes necessary, particularly when facing an enemy as dangerous and cunning as the Strigoi. The very initiative that makes this one a liability is also what makes him a greater threat to our enemies than any summoning or construct we could make ourselves.”
The thin hum of the voices in the clown’s head goes on, as the two watchers continue their debate but they are drowned out by the notes of his flute as the clown returns his attention to the instrument resting against his teeth and continues his mournful playing. He rarely bothers to listen to his masters’ deliberations, they will give him his orders soon enough and with no choice in whether to follow them or not, the clown can see no reason not to return to his playing. Indeed, only moments later, the urging comes and he sets off at his steady tireless pace, after the single set of horse tracks that lead from the town, leaving a low note echoing on the wind behind him as he wanders back onto the burning sea of sand.
*
It takes a moment for Father Rugan to adjust to the reality of the trees swaying gently in the small orchard outside his window. The haze of the open desert seems hard to clear from his eyes and for a few slim seconds he could believe that the lush growth around him is only a mirage melting in the oppressive heat of the desert’s Anvil. His hands reach tentatively to his face expecting to touch the pitted smoothness of old bone. No, he reminds himself he is Father Geoffrey Rugan, Abbot and Confessor to General Leedon and as such, one of the most powerful men in the Union, or so he had been once. Lamentably Maliki was right, his grip on his protégé is slipping now and General Leedon, Protector of the Faith and his once fanatical charge, has grown hungry even, as he’d stopped being lean.
With the Crusade fading in memory, the General had been taking to politics with a speed and skill that made Rugan question just who his other advisors might be. Oh there was no denying the Church for him now, he was still and had always been a true believer, besides too much of his strength lay with the Pilgrims and Crusaders but Leedon had not been as blind as Rugan and his brothers both within the Church and without had hoped. It had become increasingly hard to twist that strong streak of fundamentalism in Leedon to what Rugan saw as desirable ends. Once the boy would never have taken a step without consulting his confessor, now as a man, Leedon had taken his faith into his own hands. Six years ago the Citadel had fallen and the game that had been played out between Necromancer and vampire for centuries had ended. The holy fires of zealotry had consumed the very heart of the leech’s foul creed or so those behind the Crusade had thought. The hell spawn had died by the hundreds that day and yet these days there always seemed to be more, popping up in the remotest corners of the Union, as if the destruction of the Citadel had only served to disperse them, like bees without a nest. Despite their apparent victory, Rugan and his brothers still found their plans subtly thwarted, as far as Rugan was concerned the interference could only come from one source.
Rugan would call that source evil, he had gone to great lengths to reveal the extent of that evil while hiding how much he knew of it. Since the founding of the Union and probably before Necromancer and vampire had been locked in competition, many, on both sides of the conflict, argued about whether the Necromancers had made the vampires, who defied them like willful children or had somehow discovered their secrets from studying this most potent form of undead.
Rugan turns his gaze from the garden to the small mirror besides him. Granted most Crusaders would have trouble differentiating the withered creature that looked back at him from the glass, from the twisted Elders of the vampire sects, the methods that kept him alive for so long could hardly be called natural. They would call the clown he’s set on the Pilgrim’s trail equally evil. Rugan sighs and with an effort of will puffs out the desiccated flesh into the rosy, vital jowls that he always presented to the court. It was foolish prejudice like this which forced him to seek out agents like Samuel. Sending living men against vampires, except in the numbers they had gathered during the Crusade would simply swell their ranks. Agents of bone and dust stood more chance but they brought with them all sorts of other problems. No, Samuel Blake was something unique, even allowing for the inherent danger, he just might be the tool to finally penetrate to the heart of the enemy.
A knock on the door, forces his mind back to the here and now.
“Father Abbott? His Excellency General Leedon, demands to speak with you, in haste if you can accommodate him.”
“Give me a moment, Jacob.” Rugan answers, quickly replacing a small doll, adorned in a jester’s outfit, in his drawer. “Tell His Excellency I shall attend him in the chapel, as soon as may be.”
“As you wish, Father.” The young monk agrees, scurrying off.
So the child had escaped already. Even though he had encouraged her and provided some of the where with all, he had not expected her to run so soon. It was typical of the spoiled girl that she had acted on her own wishes so soon, before Rugan could be absolutely sure what part she played in his enemies’ plans and before he had even managed to manipulate Captain Blake into position. She would have to be watched over by other means until Blake arrived. Perhaps it was for the best, he’d intended to use her to draw the Pilgrim but it would be safer if he kept events at a distance, the last thing he needed was a fanatical hunter in the city! As his colleague had pointed out, Blake would be pretty much indiscriminate in his persecution of what he perceived to be evil. Not that a mercenary like Blake would ever be allowed near the palace but why take the risk? Rugan could manipulate things just as well through his agents.
“No doubt you would think me evil too?” Rugan murmurs, quietly addressing the monk even now retreating down the hallway, “I have done evil things, it is true,” he tells the ruddy mask that looks back sympathetically from the mirror, “but I am still alive, my soul is my own to answer for and my appetites are not those of Hell.”
Am I innocent in this, though? He asks himself. Blake is an evil thing, an abomination fueled by corruption, no matter what misguided religious dogma he may espouse. The dead were pure tools, neither good nor evil, simply mannequins in the hands of their master. The same could not be said of the living, when one engaged them one was responsible for unpredictable and possibly appalling consequences. The last time he had seen Blake the man had been stained head to toe with blood and there was no telling how many innocents he had cut down in his frenzied efforts to reach the heart of the Citadel. No one could have seen him gorge himself in the chaos of battle, in the dark corners of that old fortress or the man would have been burned then, along with the foulness in the ancient fortress but Rugan had suspected what Captain Blake was since the very first time he had seen him.
The man had something of the drawn look about the eyes that Rugan had seen in many of his brothers; even if the body has the strength, the average human mind is not designed to watch the passing of more than one century. Madnes
s took the older Necromancers more easily than any frailty of the flesh and Rugan had seen something of that mania in the Captain’s eyes. Indeed, the fact that he was prepared to use such a tool, made Rugan even more inclined to self-examination. He looks back critically at the mirror, looking for some crack in his mask, some sign of the inevitable disintegration. No, he was not mad but he was old and growing desperate! Extreme action was required if he was to finish what he had started. The necessity for such action was disturbing but still logical, he assures himself as he gathers his robes and prepares himself to go to the waiting General. In the final analysis he was beyond human moralities, almost any price was better than the idea of the Strigoi gaining what they had sought since men first became trapped in the Bowl. Next to that the deaths of Blake or Lillian Carter were sins too small to concern himself with; or was that the start of madness? The disassociation that allowed any number of terrible actions? Rugan had lived a long time but he had a growing suspicion that he had been arrogant to think that he could pit his experience against the ageless evil of his undead enemies.
Before entering the chapel, the priest pauses and surreptitiously slides back a thin panel, which allows him a glimpse into the chamber beyond. As Rugan had expected, Angus has not wasted his time simply waiting for his confessor to come, the General is on his knees, hunched before the carving of the Christ man, in supplication. Rugan can never help a flush of pride when he sees his chapel. Only in IslandCity with the clear waters of the Blue Snake to nurture the trees could so much wood be found. A fortune in amber varnished wood gleamed in the light of countless candles. No doubt, in their own places in the desert, dwellers like Mordiki felt that their brethren had nothing to lose by acting precipitously but Rugan knew well how far he had come, he would no more willingly lose this chapel to open war than he would the man who kneeled penitent within it. Not to the blood drinkers and not to the political vampires that served them.
“Angus,” the priest greets his old protégée as he enters, “I have missed seeing you at prayer.”
Leedon’s shoulders, already hunched, seem to tense still further.
“Yet I assure you that I have not missed a call to dedications, Father.”
“Oh I am sure of it, my son but having built me this sumptuous chapel, it is unfortunate that it is so rarely that you share it with me.” Rugan extends a hand to forestall Leedon’s protest. “Don’t worry, I know, affairs of State. I understand, even if it is disappointing for an old man. It is not as it was in the beginning, we must be respectable now.”
“We have always been respectable,” the General responds, the iron in his voice warning Rugan not to take his familiarity too far.
“Indeed, indeed, but the barons did not always think so! I was merely wondering what had torn you away from them for the moment and brought you back to me?”
Not as politic as I should have been, Rugan admonishes himself even as the words leave his lips, but damn it, the boy had to be reminded. The barons had not made him a leader willingly, merely ratified his position, when they had been given no choice.
Anger then acceptance war on Angus’s face.
“No, you do right to admonish me.” He says at last.
Rugan does not dare hope that the boy has regained some of his honesty, indeed it said something of how far those political animals have twisted him that he was so easily able to master his emotions and present the face he knows his old councilor would want to see most. Rugan was a master of this himself and he recognized it easily in others.
“No I understand, our position is still not certain and with the wedding so imminent…” Rugan reassures, him taking his place in their game easily and with practiced innocence. He notes the veiled emotions pass under the General’s fixed expression and cannot help feeling guilty at cutting so close to the bone. It saddens him because, when he had first known Angus, the boy would never have been capable of such duplicity and now they must both fence around the truth.
“The Lillian’s gone,” Angus blurts, his natural passions briefly overwhelming his self-imposed reserve. “She slipped away some time in the night. I knew she was as dubious about our marriage as I but I did not think she would defy her father. I must decide how to proceed quickly, before the whole alliance is wrecked.”
“So you decided to come to me because you are not ready to tell the barons or any of your advisers, who might let them know of the situation before you are ready.”
“Yes.” The General admits. “You are my counselor as much as any of them.”
More so, once, the old priest thinks bitterly.
“It is good to know I rank amongst such august company.”
“Please, Rugan, without Carter’s daughter you know that I will not be taken seriously. All we worked for is at risk, this is not the time for jealousy.”
“All you worked for? We worked for an end to the evils that have so long divided and preyed on our fellow men.” Rugan reminds him, gently.
“And how may that work continue if I am seen as nothing but a warlord, holding title without dispensation? The Crusades are six years gone now and what peace we brought is already being taken for granted. Some even claim that there was no enemy in the first place and that we used the pretext of a holy war to take power and wealth.”
“There will always be those who say such things, they would not have bothered you six years ago.”
“Implying that they are more true now?” The boy is sharp and not to be toyed with, Rugan reminds himself.
“As you say you have no choice but to seek an alliance with the barons, I understand the reasons, I just do not want you to lose sight of our true goal. Power is not something a good man holds for its own sake.”
“I know. Rugan, you have not been as close to me these last two years or you would know, know how they have tried to whittle at me and how strong I have had to be to deny them victory. Do you think I have any interest in being shackled to this spoiled whore? Her father’s name and support are vital if I am to be seen as something more that the military overlord of IslandCity, or would you rather see Tenichi raised in my place? I know you have no love for him.”
Oh very clever, the priest mentally congratulates his protégé; bring up the Lord Pardoner. There was no arguing that Angus needed added legitimacy in order to counter the growing power of the Chief Pardoner and his peace time Inquisitors; Tenichi had a name and a barony of his own, along with his high standing as head of the Campaign of Moral Purification that had followed Leedon’s Crusade. Angus had judged right in mentioning him, because Rugan would see the General married off to Satan’s second daughter, rather than see him supplanted by a man he publicly disliked and privately suspected of being under the influence of the Strigoi.
“If I have not been as close, it is none of my doing and I counseled that you take Baron Whistler’s daughter for a wife, as I recall. She has a far more pious nature, you would have been well matched and there is little to choose between Carter and Whistler in power and influence, whatever the former and men like Tenichi may have told you.”
“No it must be Baron Carter’s daughter. Carter is my closest neighbour and he has promised me that he can gain the approval of the rest for my rulership of IslandCity and our control over the old Thatcher Barony.”
What else? Rugan thinks to himself, how does she fit into their plans? “When do you think she left the palace?” The priest confines himself to asking.
“Some time last night. I don’t know how she found a ferryman so late, unless she had somehow arranged it earlier.”
“You think she had an accomplice?”
“It’s possible. She seems to have disappeared very easily.”
“You have begun a search then?”
“Only a few trusted men but they should have found more to report than they have. I can’t afford to raise a general alarm, it might play right into the hands of whoever is behind her…disappearance.”
“You cannot keep it hidden much longer, either
or someone’s sure to accuse you of covering it up or even being involved in some way.”
“I know! That’s why I need your advice.”
“The first thing is to guess which way she might have fled. Do you think she might have gone back to her father?”
“Unlikely, he wants this alliance as much as I do, she must know he’d just send her back.”
“That remains to be seen. For all you know, Carter has been planning to embarrass you like this from the beginning. This may simply be the first move in an attempt to weaken or even unseat you.”
“It is too early to think like that, there are not enough facts, no point in creating our own phantoms as you used to say. The question is what I should do now?”
“The first thing would obviously be to find her and find out who was involved in her disappearance. We have little chance of finding her if we use only a few agents and we have no surety about where she is headed. If you take my advice you will announce that she is gone and get more people involved in the search.”
“I just said I can’t afford for this split between us to become public. The alliance must seem solid.”
“So it will, if you let it be known that she was abducted.”
“Another lie that could backfire on me! Besides it makes us look weak.”
“Not if she were abducted by supernatural forces.”
“That will cause panic.”
“Exactly! You yourself just said how our power has diminished since the beginning of the peace. The barons grow bold again and the Chief Pardoner grows in influence every day; almost certainly one of them is behind her disappearance, how else could she have escaped so cleanly.”
“I will not believe it of Nathaniel, he all but suggested the match.”