Lord of Slaughter c-3

by M. D. Lachlan

  The man reminded Loys of a richly embroidered cushion, he was so fat and so colourful.

  ‘Do you know or have you ever known of anyone striking bargains with devils, demons or other maleficent powers?’ said Loys.

  ‘No one at all,’ said the ostiarios. He smiled in a jolly way.

  ‘Do you know, or have you ever known, of anyone involved in the production of magical amulets, charms or spells?’ said Loys.

  ‘No one,’ he said, again with a smile. ‘If you are looking to trap me, you shall fail.’

  Loys glanced down at his notepaper and scribbled ‘defensive’ on it. Then he looked up.

  ‘Why would I be looking to trap you? Surely if you have nothing to hide you cannot be trapped.’

  ‘Well, quite so, but all the same. You know. It’s quite nerve-racking being questioned like this. One wrong word and all that.’

  ‘One wrong word about what?’

  The man gave a loud ‘hem!’. ‘I don’t know. I mean, that’s the problem with wrong words, isn’t it? You don’t know they’re wrong until you’ve said them.’

  Loys fixed the man with a stare.

  ‘Have you ever prayed for the health of the emperor?’

  ‘Yes. Often.’

  ‘Have you ever kissed the emperor’s image and asked for his blessing?’

  The ostiarios seemed not to know quite how to answer. He sat and gulped for a moment like a frog wondering if it was a fly or a bee he had swallowed.

  ‘I would be disloyal if I said I had not.’

  Loys linked his fingers and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. ‘You are aware that is conjuring?’

  ‘Oh come on, everyone does it.’

  ‘Really?’ said Loys. ‘Could you furnish me with their names?’

  ‘No, I…’

  ‘You are unwilling to reveal your accomplices?’

  ‘This is ridiculous. You might as well say that when the people call for the saint of the walls to bless the emperor they are casting spells. They carve the symbol of the moon and the star, and we all know that began when the names of the saints were unknown.’

  Loys looked at the ostiarios with hard eyes. Really he pitied him. The man was no more a devil worshipper than he was. He was naive, a little conceited about his own intelligence but harmless enough. However, Loys needed to build a reputation in the palace, to be known as a man who should not be crossed.

  ‘Have you done these things?’

  ‘No, I-’

  ‘If I were to call at your house now I would find no evidence of idolatry or anything similar?’

  The ostiarios coloured. ‘We are simple people,’ he said, ‘and the affliction of the sky troubles us greatly. We sometimes turn to the old ways, not to harm but to help the emperor and the city. A thousand men have carved the star and the moon on their walls. It is a protection for us and the emperor. What can be wrong with that, when it is the symbol of the city?’

  ‘But you have just admitted you carved it for the purposes of sorcery. You imperil your soul. Do you not know of the sermon of St Andrew the Fool?’

  ‘I do not listen to the sermons of fools,’ said the man, trying to regain his dignity.

  ‘He was a wise fellow,’ said Loys, ‘who feigned madness and drew the scorn of all men for his love of God. He told the story of Vigrinos, a magician whom a lady asked to give her a spell to make her cheating husband love her.’

  ‘I have no interest in the stupidity of women.’

  Loys smiled a tight smile.

  ‘There is a wider point here. The magician cast his spell and the husband became faithful. But demons afflicted the woman in her dreams — a black dog that caressed her like a lover and kissed her on the mouth, an Ethiopian inflamed by lust and other manifestations. She fasted and prayed, and it was revealed to her that to make his magic the magician had defiled holy icons with shit, filled a magic lamp he had given her full of dog’s urine and carved the name of the Antichrist on the wick’s base along with the words “Demon Sacrifice”. This was the price she had paid to return her husband to her. Her soul. St Andrew says demons often use magic for apparent good with the aim of making unsuspecting persons subject to their influence. Is this what has happened to you? Have you fallen in with demons?’

  ‘Your knowledge of these matters is very great, sir, but, no. I… No.’

  Loys scribbled some notes again — nonsense, really. He was simply trying to be intimidating, though he suspected he wasn’t very good at it. He imagined the man a mouse and himself a cat eyeing it. That idea made him laugh when the doorkeeper tried to speak but only came out with something resembling a squeak.

  ‘You will be recalled to answer at a future time,’ said Loys.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I cannot say. You’ll have to wait.

  ‘I am not in league with devils.’

  ‘I will decide that,’ said Loys. ‘I am charged with discovering the source of this unnatural weather, the reason for fireballs and other phenomena that do not concern you. So unless I find greater evidence of devil worship then I shall have to conclude that even the slightest evidence is enough to justify suspicion. I suggest you and anyone who wishes to avoid such suspicion does his best to bring anything unusual to my attention.’

  ‘There are a thousand magicians and soothsayers not fifty strides from the palace gates.’

  ‘They are low people and could not have worked the magic to cause this sky. We are looking for someone within the court, I am sure of it.’

  ‘I will make every endeavour to be watchful,’ said the gatekeeper.

  ‘Good,’ said Loys. ‘You may expect to see me again sometime soon. The chances are that I will need to commit you to the Numera for a period.’ Loys had no intention of doing this but was prepared at least to threaten it.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a family.’

  ‘Then endeavour to keep it,’ said Loys.

  The man sat for a few seconds looking at his shoes.

  ‘Have you thought of interviewing the prisoners in the Numera?’ he said.

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘It would seem politic to start with known criminals and enemies of the state.’

  ‘Do you know something, Ostiarios?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I do not. Just that I think the Numera’s list of prisoners might be a good place to start. There are sorcerers in there for sure. The chamberlain stuck one in there just the other day — one of the Arabs they captured in Abydos — right by the emperor’s tent, I heard.’

  ‘Which Arab?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just heard it mentioned over a cup of wine.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By…’ The fat doorkeeper was suddenly wary of incriminating anyone. Loys held his silence and let the man fill it with his own fears. ‘Meletios the warder would know.’

  Loys didn’t find it too surprising a sorcerer had been imprisoned, as sorcerers and heretics had a habit of finding themselves locked up. But the ostiarios thought it worthy of mention. No one else had mentioned a sorcerer. That in itself was odd. Idiot Loys. Circles existed within the court, codes and secret understandings of which he knew nothing. Perhaps knowledge of the sorcerer’s existence had been limited to a very few. Perhaps it wasn’t common knowledge that the savage who had attacked the emperor was also a sorcerer. Loys wanted to question the ostiarios further. He knew he wrote on delicate parchment, so to speak. It would be all too easy to put a pen through it and ruin the work completely. Better to proceed slowly. And besides, he’d heard enough rumours to build a bridge of them back to Neustria.

  ‘I thank you for your advice.’

  The man bowed and Loys put down his fan to signify he was dismissed. When he had gone, Loys scribbled a note to Meletios saying he had been mentioned as part of investigations into sorcery and must to report to be interviewed within a week. He then lay back in his seat and looked up at the ceiling. Beatrice, who had been behind
a screen at the rear of the room, came out. She was bigger now — very pregnant.

  ‘You did well.’

  ‘It’s unfair to treat these fellows this way.’

  ‘Anxiety is a condition of a courtier’s life. You are just speaking to them in a way they respect and can understand. This will yield dividends more quickly than poring over all the books in the world.’

  Loys took her hand. ‘I know. I don’t have to be comfortable with it, though.’

  ‘No. But you have to do it. It’s a matter of survival for us. We’ll get ourselves in a position where we can prosper here or at least survive. How long now until the chamberlain wants his report?’

  ‘Two months. And how long until the baby?’

  ‘The physician thinks a month.’

  ‘Good timing,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if it looks like I’m not going to get to the bottom of this and God grants us a boy, we can make our escape back to your father before I have to face the chamberlain.’

  ‘You will get to the bottom of it, Loys. I have faith in you.’

  He lowered his voice and drew her close. ‘And what if the bottom of it is at the top?’

  She knew to whom he referred — the chamberlain. Styliane had hinted as much.

  ‘Then know all you can. If our friends are truly our enemies then perhaps some who appear our enemies might be our friends. She has said as much.’

  ‘That is a dangerous game.’

  ‘More dangerous to blunder blindly. Has there been nothing from your interviews?’

  ‘All too wise and too scared to mention his name, if indeed he’s complicit in this. And I am too wise and too scared to ask them to.’

  ‘But it’s important to have all the information you can get. Might you find an excuse to look into the chamberlain’s past? And Styliane’s too.’

  ‘You think she could be responsible?’

  ‘Of course not. But a prince looks at the lie of the land before deploying his troops. You need to do the same.’

  Her voice was just a whisper in his ear, scarcely audible.

  He was sick of interviewing, that was for sure. It had served his purpose of making him feared. But he wanted to know more about his master, who seemed to have so much to do with sorcery in one way or another — if only his seemingly fervent interest in its eradication. And why hadn’t the chamberlain told him he’d locked a sorcerer up?

  Beatrice was right. It might, he thought, be worth a trip outside the walls. He would please Isais by seemingly investigating the Varangians and delve into the chamberlain’s past while he did it.

  ‘I’ll go first thing tomorrow,’ he said.

  22

  The Pale God

  I have died, thought Azemar. I have died and this is hell. He could not bear the heat of the Numera, nor the darkness, nor the smell. His irons afflicted him terribly and skinned his ankles raw.

  They’d taken him down to the lowest level, given him no food and left him in that black hole — to die, he was sure.

  The stench was obscene, the floor rough and uneven, offering no comfort, and the moans of the sick and the dying really did make him think of the cries of the souls of the damned in their torment.

  The darkness was terrible to bear, that and the hatred of the other inmates. Occasionally, perhaps once a day, the guards came to give him water — no food — and those around him who still had the sanity to realise what was happening would scream and beg for a drink or curse him for his luck.

  He tried to save some for his fellow prisoners, gulping down as much as he could and taking a big last mouthful. A man lay next to him, and he found his mouth and dribbled the water in. It gave the man strength enough to weep. Azemar sat with him, holding him, trying to bring comfort where there was none.

  Rats scuttled about them, tormenting them as they slept. He would feel a movement on his foot and he learned to kick quickly and hard before the animal bit him.

  The rats weren’t the only ones on the lookout for food. Hunger and thirst did bad things to men. The darkness of the Numera was a darkness of the soul and they fell on the dead and fed upon them. When the guards with the water came with their lights Azemar saw terrible things, sights like something from a church painting designed to terrify people into belief. Yes, it was like hell, and men had become devils there.

  When the woman had said she needed him but that he could rot a while, he had thought he would be left in that horror for a day, a week. How long had he been imprisoned? He lost all track of time. Only the coming of the water and the death of the man in his arms told him he was moving from moment to moment at all.

  The hunger became acute and Azemar hallucinated. He was in a pit of wolves who sat watching him with unblinking eyes, some of yellow, some of blue and some of a terrible red. One wolf above all others seemed to watch him. At first Azemar thought it was a pagan idol, a thing like ignorant people set in their fields in autumn to frighten dark spirits away — a construction of straw and wood with turnips for eyes and pine cones for teeth. It stared at him for a long time until it changed to become a mask like travelling players used to tell their tales — stuck together with fur and twine.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  The thing said nothing, just watched him, its face bobbing at the edge of the liquid dark like that of a drowned man in black water.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  Terrible hunger consumed Azemar’s mind. He needed to eat. He needed to eat!

  ‘You are a wolf.’

  The voice made him start. The dark was unyielding. The voice had spoken in Norse. This was not an hallucination but something real and near to him.

  ‘I am a man.’

  ‘You were a man. The wolf stares through your eyes as I have seen him stare before and hope never to see him stare again.’

  ‘There is no wolf in me.’

  ‘Then why do you cleave to that corpse?’

  Azemar moved his hands about him. The man he had been lying on was quite cold.

  Azemar wept. ‘I will not survive this place.’

  ‘You will survive, Fenrisulfr. You will outlive the gods.’

  ‘I feel harm in your voice. You are here to kill me?’

  ‘No. The destiny you carry would not allow it. I cannot find the waters; I cannot find a way to kill you.’

  ‘What waters? What destiny do I carry?’

  ‘To be my killer.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am you.’

  There was a shimmering, like the moon reflected on water. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, willing them to work. What was it? Skin. A tall man stood close by, a tall man with pale skin and hair of burning red. There was no light other than the man’s body. Right next to him, crouching and seemingly oblivious to the vision behind him, was someone else, the one who had been talking.

  He peered at the crouching figure. His own face looked back at him but more weathered, thinner by far than he had been before the ordeal in the dungeon.

  ‘You have come looking for her,’ said his double, and it was as if a gateway had opened in Azemar’s mind. He rememberd how even the glimpse of the lord’s daughter riding by had tormented his dreams, how he had struggled with his lust. He recalled other dreams too — a girl with blonde hair by a fire in the snow, a headless body on a beach. The visions seemed so real they were almost memories.

  ‘Go a long way away from this place,’ said his double, ‘and never come back here, no matter how you are drawn to do so.’

  ‘Kill me here,’ said Azemar. ‘Kill me here!’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The double sprang at Azemar, putting one hand on his chest to locate him before he went for his neck. Immensely strong fingers squeezed Azemar’s windpipe but he had no fear of death. In that place, his body stewing in its own secretions, bitten by rats and fleas, rubbed raw by the rough floor, his mind falling into madness, he welcomed the end. A
nd yet it would not come.

  The pale man whose body lit the dark moved his hand in a gesture of calm, and the fingers let go of Azemar’s throat. His attacker fell back and sat down. He looked around him with the hopeless gaze of a blind man. Azemar sensed his double couldn’t see, despite the glowing figure behind him. Then he was gone, swallowed by the gloom.

  The pale figure came forward to cradle Azemar in his arms.

  ‘Who are you? An angel?’

  ‘No. I am of the older earth.’

  ‘A devil then?’

  ‘Men make devils. For what is a devil but an angel of whom men disapprove?’

  ‘Of whom God disapproves. The father of creation cast out the bad angels and they fell to hell, where they became devils.’

  The strange man laughed. ‘Then I am a devil. But what of you? The father of creation shakes to hear your name.’

  ‘That is blasphemy.’

  ‘It is the truth, Fenrisulfr.’

  Azemar knew that myth. Loki had had a son who was a wolf and grew so powerful that the gods tricked and chained him to a rock, where he waits to the final day when he will break his fetters and consume the gods. His father had told such stories; though he had been sincere in his new Christianity the stories of the old land were still dear to him. Azemar had been close to his father. He would see him in heaven.

  ‘I would be with my father now,’ he said, ‘my holy father and my earthly one.’

  ‘I am here.’

  ‘You are not my father.’

  ‘I am your father and your mother both.’

  The knowledge poured in on him, words and visions whispering and flashing in his mind. He had been a foundling. His brothers were all so blond and big, he skinny and dark. A vision entered his mind — a woman, scarred and gaunt with a baby at her breast. His brother — or the boy he had called his brother — lay sick in a longhouse, more likely to die than make the sea journey to a new life in Neustria. The woman was at the door. She could cure the boy but there was a price to pay — they must take the baby she had and raise it. His mother, who had loved her newest son more than all the others put together, had agreed straight away. The child had recovered and, because Azemar had brought such good fortune, they made the effort to have him accepted by the monastery when they arrived in Neustria.