Vladivar ignored my jibe and settled back into his throne.
“Well, Jean, I actually believe you. I don't think she did tell you anything. But your play acting did tell me one thing.”
“And what was that, pray tell?” I scoffed.
“You want her.”
“If I did, I should have done so by now instead of procrastinating over the matter as you obviously are.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But it is fair to say I am disappointed in old one tooth. Rudolph lied when claiming his younger daughter dead, when we all knew she wasn't, and then had not the etiquette to introducing me when the opportunity arose.”
“He maybe doesn't like you. I could understand it, of course, even if it isn't royal decorum.”
“He's no more royal than you or I. However, he is a man of great power and influence. Almost as much as myself, eh men?” Vladivar loosed a bellowing laugh and threw his arms in the air, a sign for all others to laugh too. I did not oblige. “And he has something I want.” Vladivar tip-tapped upon his throne, his restless fingers belying his angst.
“May I ask what?”
“You may. It is very important that you do.”
“Then, what is it, good sir,” I asked squinting away the pain.
“Oh, just a simple matter of his death. You will soon correct that for me.”
A very many thoughts flashed through my mind at that moment. The identity of the letter sender which I could almost definitely rule Vladivar from, was foremost. Why at least two people wanted King Rudolph dead, was another. Yes, he was a King in name, but he held no particular power even if Vladivar indicated that he did. And, why me? Why of all the people in the world did it have to be me that assassinated him? I had no allegiances to others, no preference to who ruled the world's lands. I had always kept myself to myself. It didn't add up.
“What if I said I won't do it?” I demanded, standing as straight as the pain in my limbs allowed.
“You have no choice, my dark raven.”
“And why not?”
“Because otherwise I shall not reveal who labelled you Princess Chantelle's murderer and therefore who embroiled you in this whole sorry affair.”
How I wanted that question answered; I was sure my features revealed as much. Who had reported my mistake and, as Vladivar said, embroiled me in such unpleasant events? I had to find out!
“I will do it,” I declared.
“I thought you might.”
“Will you not threaten me with false promises of pain and death and such like?” I jested.
“There is no need. The person who has caused you this inconvenience already knows your part in the game. They will find you soon enough and try to kill you before you can kill King Rudolph.”
“Not even a clue?” I asked. Vladivar just smiled a wolf's toothy grin and beckoned a guard to him. He imparted some information then bade him leave.
“There is one problem, I'm afraid,” I said, spitting more blood onto the floor.
“Oh, and what problem would that be?”
“Several hundred miles, and a small case of the sun.”
“That's two problems, tovarisch, but both easily remedied.”
I waited for Vladvar to divulge his solution, but he just continued to regard me with his wolf's stare. I returned his gaze and whistled some annoying ditty until distracted by the sound of scraping that came from the passage into which the guard had vanished. Some minutes passed before the bloodied and tattered-robed form of Sunyin entered the chamber. The small monk towed an ancient, wooden coffin behind him by means of leather straps.
“Excellent!” cried Vladivar. “Now you have a mobile home. Not unlike normal, eh, Jean?”
I ignored his jibe and went to aid the ragged figure.
“How pathetic you are. Assisting a human is tantamount to loving a pig.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Ah, I see, a revelation. The monks we so lovingly lapped every quart of blood from, were human. The blood you have been drinking at the expense of our mutual friend the Marquis, is human. And your humble servant here, is human.”
“That cannot be!” I exclaimed, unable to contain myself.
“But it is. You look upon one of the world's last humans, pathetic though he is.”
“But humanity died out thousands of years ago, and with them their devices and warmongering.”
“A test tube is a marvellous thing, Jean. You never quite know what will turn up in them. It just so happened that one day the Marquis stumbled upon this fellow you call Sunyin. The genetics that came from his blood feed us all.”
I couldn't believe what I heard but asked no further questions. There would be plenty of time later. So, I played the only card I had.
“I require Sunyin.”
“Why?”
“I need someone to watch the coffin whilst I sleep. If he is as human as you say, then he's the only one who can do so.”
Vladivar scratched his chin and looked as thoughtful as a fool could before declaring, “I don't see why not. His blood is all that the Marquis needs, and he has an almost endless supply of it. Which reminds me, there's about two weeks' worth in the coffin. If you get through that lot early then you'll be feasting on your daytime protection.”
“I doubt it, some of us have self-control.”
“Really, tell Princess Chantelle that.”
“Touché.”
“Well, it's not that I want rid of you, but …”
“No need to ask twice. I'm glad to leave. If I stay any longer I might retch upon your dismal floor, what with the smell and all that.”
“You can't resist one last jibe, can you, tovarisch. You should be more careful. Who knows when our paths will cross again and if I'll be so benevolent next time.”
“I'm already looking forward to it,” I growled, as I took the straps from Sunyin's bleeding fingers and proceeded to drag the coffin from the chamber. “Oh, and one more thing,” I added.
“You ask a lot of questions for a supposed silent man.”
“I do where my life is concerned, or continued existence, anyway. When I've killed Rudolph, and presuming my accuser has not revealed themselves, how do I know you'll reveal their name.”
“I could give you my word. Would that suffice?”
“Not really, I'd rather trust a leech.”
“Well, let's say I have even less desire for them to remain alive than you have. You will be doing the Hierarchy a great favour in their disposal. I will make sure you know even if it's just to see their head on the end of my sword.”
“You still use swords! Isn't that a little old fashioned?”
“I find them satisfying.”
“You do all have the armour I suppose. Didn't do your guard much good though, did it,” I said and winked.
* * *
We left in total silence. Not even a creak of armour disturbed the void, until we cleared the room, then such a chorus of cheers arose as though a war was won. Poor Sunyin shivered at the tumult.
“Don't give them the pleasure,” I hissed.
“I'll try, sir,” he struggled to say.
“Not sir, just Jean.”
“Thank you, Jean,” he said and tried to smile. The multiple bruises that welted on his face restricted his ability to do so with any conviction.
The coffin weighed nothing to me and I pulled it with ease from the halls and out of the only open door in the palace. We emerged back into the courtyard to be met by a pile of decimated, robed bodies that lifted twenty feet from the ground and easily as wide. There was barely a blood stain left. Vladivar's horde had licked the place dry. The bastards!
I could not stomach the sight of all those innocent bodies and heaved the coffin up onto my back to make better haste. Sunyin followed as best he could and we made our way out of Vladivar's disgusting home and back into a dark and ominous night.
Chapter Eight
-
Release
“There's a storm coming, Sunyin.” Not so m
uch as a murmur stirred the treacherous night. “Sunyin,” I repeated.
I shook the first globs of acidic rain from my hair and turned back to the monk. The little fellow was out on his feet. He seemed oblivious to the world about him and stumbled along using the coffin for support. I had no words of comfort, so fell silent and left him to his staggering.
A glance over the near vertical cliffs ruled out one means of escape: Shangri-La was gone. The Marquis, notorious by his absence, had departed. The coward's part in proceedings was for a time over. Gift-wrapped and tied with a bow, he'd deposited his parcel, me, and left without waiting for a thank you. Duped by the one man I'd thought incapable of doing so, the blood boiled in my veins. I would make sure he received his thank you. I'd guarantee it no matter how long it took.
A rumble of thunder shattered the silence of my murderous brooding. Sheet lightning followed in vicious streaks illuminating the whole valley with a spectral luminance. Shangri-La's absence had left a barren panorama of rock, shale and wretchedness. It was a no-man's land, occupied only by Vladivar's rabid pack and the hollow footprint of a Shangri-La ghost.
Deprived of a Shangri-La's ethereal beauty the valley took on a new and even less hospitable visage. If death were a plague then the valley stank of it. Every rock and boulder took on the forms of sneering Eternals, their teeth blackened, eyes unblinking. Every twisted peak became a fortress of slavering, armoured morons. I cared not for it and would have sped from the place given half a chance, but without deserting the courageous monk, I could not. What would that have made me? I had so little to be proud of in my life that if I'd deserted him what shred of humanity I still possessed would have vanished too.
We moved onwards and downwards in silence, I with my lurching cargo banging at my back, Sunyin staggering ever further behind. I toyed with talking to my daytime guardian but my mood was unconducive to discussion. Instead, I trusted fate to not let him slip to his death and to my own resolve to ignore the blood that seeped from his many wounds. He smelled so delicious like a perfect claret aged just for me.
The weather didn't aid our descent. Whether it was a natural occurrence, or a manipulated one, I was unsure, but the lightning that sliced through the heavens threatened to carve the world asunder. Strike after strike of forked fury shattered different parts of the valley with a power unfathomable, I prayed it had no desire to strike our stumbling selves. The whole landscape was so illuminated as to mimic an early sunrise intent on burning the world. The pain it caused my eyes was intense.
Too bright a light is not in a vampire's remit for a happy non-life. As the lightning strikes grew ever closer, drawn by the iron conductor atop the mountain, I became incrementally more troubled. After a while, I could stomach it no more. I removed the coffin from my back and dragged it one-handed by its leather leashes, whilst shielding my eyes with the other. That did nothing to improve my mood, not that much ever did. I was a man with violent thoughts, deadly intent, and a long walk to dwell on both.
* * *
The pair of us continued our morbid descent battered by heaven's tears in its incessant weeping. I bumped down step after endless step almost blind, Sunyin forced to sit from exhaustion and lower himself down each one in turn. The weather closed fast in a curtain of absolute darkness, the staircase becoming a never-ending path of torment. Yet, we persisted. We had to.
We'd made about half the distance in that peculiar fashion, or so I fathomed, when a strike of spectacular brutality shattered the rocks close by, and with its glare my eyes. For a moment, I thought I should stagger over the precipice and fall to my doom, or at the minimum intense, physical discomfort such was the pain that exploded through my mind. I wasn't sure if an Eternal could die from being splattered, but theorised they could, and had no wish to test it.
As if hearing my thoughts, a hand rested upon my elbow and steadied me.
“Trust me, Jean. Close your eyes,” came Sunyin's wearisome voice.
I did as instructed, although, in truth, I had no choice. But it was still with trepidation that I closed my already useless peepers. It wasn't that I didn't trust Sunyin, I did, as much as any man, just my concerns over the drop were grave. I was not a man prone to trust preferring my own judgement even when poor.
A sound as of something ripping cut through a temporary lull in the storm's bombardment. A moment later, I felt soft hands tying a cloth about my eyes.
“I will guide you,” said a broken voice.
Sunyin led the way. He moved with a slowness that articulated his pain, but never for a moment did he take his arm from my elbow or fail to tell me where to place my feet. Where the little fellow got the strength from, I did not know? My admittedly poor knowledge of history proclaimed that humans held at best a fraction of an Eternal's strength. And so it was that I marvelled at my guide's sheer determination, his appreciation for our situation's gravity.
In all honesty, I couldn't believe what was happening. The fact I'd drunk of human blood, never mind accompanied one and was forced to trust in him, was almost beyond my comprehension. Centuries of knowledge and accrued contempt had been turned on its head by nothing more than a bite. Yet, if I hadn't taken the charming Chantelle's essence would I have been in any different a situation? Would I have been left to my own devices as I'd longed for, or would I still have become embroiled in a game that destiny had preordained? Who could tell, certainly not I.
However, there was one thing I was sure of: I was no man's pawn. The sooner I settled my situation, one way or the other, the happier I'd be. Though I couldn't shake the feeling that things would never be quite the same again.
* * *
How many hours passed as we descended that most treacherous of paths, I could never be sure, but it was many. By the time we hit the flattened ground of the valley floor even I felt fatigue. However, Sunyin's was far greater. I heard the slump of his body, the sickening schlup as his head hit the compacted mud, and hurriedly removed my makeshift mask to assist him. Momentarily blinded, I staggered to his side by smell alone and waited for the glare to pass. In the twinkling flickers of myriad stars the light dimmed to a constant blur, but I was no longer in the same distress. The same could not be said of my companion. The monk was out cold and I didn't have a clue how to help him.
“Arrgghhhh!” It was an emotional response; one I was rarely prone to. The storm felt my wrath as my anger eclipsed its own.
I wiped the rain from my face with one drenched sleeve and cast my eyes up and down the valley. Only the sun's onrushing presence, a sense all Eternals depended upon, indicated where we were or which way to head. Plumping for what I suspected to be a rough south-westerly direction, I did the only thing open to me. Carefully extracting Sunyin from the slopping mud, I lowered the monk over my shoulder and set off again towing the coffin in my wake for as long as I dared.
The sun's ever looming energy prayed at my thoughts. That, and the desire to put as much distance between myself and Vladivar's lands as possible, was foremost in my priorities. Despite his claim to needing my assistance, I felt him unstable enough to change his mind on a whim. As a result, every thunder strike became the sound of his horse-backed troops, every lightning bolt a stake through my heart.
I dragged my ragged form, my shouldered companion, and that of the coffin along the valley floor, in slip-sliding monotony. Yet despite the tumbles, the many falls, Sunyin did not stir once, and I feared him dead.
Only the glint of revenge that sparkled in my maddened eyes and etched its way into my cold heart drove me on. I scowled at the thunder, grimaced at the rain, but never once looked back. An unseen horizon became my destination; one I would not be prevented from reaching. And so the monotony continued.
The fact only my boots were still my own caused the greatest anger. Every stone chip to leather, every scuff and new splatter of wet dust, set me to cursing. Before long, I growled and snarled my way across the valley floor more beast than man. In fact, I suspected that if I'd not had Sunyin's draped
form sprawled across my back I would have torn off my ragged clothing, turned tail and returned whence I'd come to face down the horde. It would have meant certain death, but the beast within should've derived great pleasure from my taking some of them to hell too.
Then, just as I felt at my lowest, the clouds broke, the storm abated, and we emerged from that valley of death into an expanse of low-lying grassland. The greying haze that always precedes dawn and dusk cast a deceptive veil over the barren landscape and I knew I had to enter the coffin or die.
“Sunyin, Sunyin,” I said, more in hope than expectation. I gently shook the man on my shoulder. His body twitched then stirred, and if I'd had a heart it should've lightened. With greatest care, I lowered him to the sodden floor.
It was one of the most difficult things I'd ever done, the smell of the monk's blood-drenched clothing and skin were such an aphrodisiac that I knew I had to get away from them before my resistance broke. “I must sleep, Sunyin,” I almost begged.
“I shall watch over you, Jean,” he whispered through a broken spirit, as his eyes flickered open.
And I knew he would. There was nothing more to be said, so I opened the coffin lid only to see that which I'd feared, the ultimate betrayal: a single blood bag. Vladivar had played his final cruelty upon me. Like a drowned rat flushed from its home and bidden to sleep in a sewer, I crawled into my grotty, leaking coffin, closed the lid, and passed swiftly into the sleep of the damned.
Chapter Nine
-
Anger
“Jean! Jean! Jean!”
“If you rap on my bedroom lid one more time I may become even angrier than I already am,” I growled. Or was it me that growled?
“Jean, Jean, quickly!”
The only thing in my non-life I looked forward to was sleep. To be awoken, disorientated and disturbed made the flinging open of my coffin lid a touch overly dramatic, especially when I saw Sunyin's sandalled feet disappear into a nearby shrub.
My first reaction was, of course, to help him even though he had incurred my awakening rancour. My next, to chastise him for being so stupid as to stand upon my bed. But I think my third reaction was the more appropriate, and that was to deal with the half dozen wolves that encircled us.
The Eternals Page 7