To Katerina's horror she saw she'd hooked the something all right. Benito's breeches. He was clinging to the pole with one hand and her oilskin-wrapped parcel with the other. Benito jerked angrily at the boathook pole, and Katerina lost her balance. She landed in the water beside Benito with a shriek and a splash. Benito swam away as she came up.
"I can't swim!" she yelled, spluttering. Fortunately there was quite a lot of air trapped in the thick serge of her dress.
Benito backed off to the stairs at the water-door. "You tried to murder me!" he accused, also forgetting to keep his voice down.
Katerina shook her head. She was getting lower in the water. "You were on the other side of the boat. Now get me out!"
"Oh. Yes. Like I was supposed to stay where I went down." Benito clutched the parcel to his chest, and retreated.
Katerina managed to grab the edge of her gondola and, having learned from last time, hauled herself hand over hand along the boat to the mooring post and thence to the steps.
Benito held the precious parcel in front of himself like a shield. "You come any closer and I'll throw it back into the water."
Katerina found herself trapped between fury and embarrassment. "Look. It was an accident. I told you."
"Accident, my foot!"
By the tone, Katerina knew she was in trouble. She couldn't offer him more money. A ducat was stretching things as it was. "Look. I can offer you more work. . . ."
"Va'funcula!" spat Benito. "Are you crazy? Claudia warned me—"
A terrible shriek, a sound not intended to issue from a human throat, came from the embassy behind them.
It silenced both of them. Briefly.
Benito snapped out of it first. "Holy Saint Mark! What . . ."
A terrible inhuman laugher erupted. Katerina felt the hair on the nape of her neck rise. She knew she had little magical skill, but she was sensitive to it. This was magic. Something dark. The medallion on her chest felt very hot.
"Never mind what!" Katerina scrambled into the gondola. "Come! Let's get out of here."
Benito looked doubtful, his face white in the reflected light of the unshuttered windows. Then there came more sounds from the windows, as if tables were being overturned and glass breaking.
A man's voice, shouting: "Back! Back, you fool! Knights! Seal the doorways!" Followed immediately by a swelling chorus of many voices screaming in panic.
"Come on!" Katerina barked. "Get in. You can hold the parcel. Just get in! We've got to get away from here!"
The boy jumped into the boat and cast loose hastily.
Katerina pushed off. With skill, she turned the gondola and sent it gliding away from the embassy.
Breathing a prayer she looked back. And nearly dropped the oar. It was hardly surprising really, with all the noise they'd made and the goings-on over at the embassy. But at the Casa Brunelli, the doors leading onto the upper-floor balcony were thrust open, flooding the balcony with light. She saw him clearly. The same slight red-haired man. The same single forbidding line of dark eyebrows. He was staring at them. Katerina would swear the expression on his face was one of triumph.
She shivered. And the shiver had nothing at all to do with her wet clothes.
* * *
Benito felt for his dry jacket. He was shivering. It was partly the cold and partly the fright. The boathook, bobbing in the canal behind them, had barely scratched his thigh. Hell. He loved thrills. It was the best part of being a roof-climber. But this was deep dark water. She could have her parcel. Then he'd be off. He wanted no part of this woman and her business. Fortunately, they'd part ways in a few hundred yards and he would never have to see her again. She'd never be any part of his world. He could look after himself, but he didn't want Marco involved with someone like this girl.
Chapter 9
The monster was dragged away from its feeding by a shrill of command from its master. The master's servant, rather, through which Chernobog usually spoke and gave commands.
Emerging from the darkness of its feed—snarling, reluctant—the monster's world began to take on a semblance of color. Insofar, at least, as various shades of gray could be called "color." After a time, red streaks began to appear in the mist. Those were not real, however—simply reflections of the monster's own rage.
The sight of those scarlet flashes brought courage. Again the monster snarled, and this time with bellowing fury rather than frustration. The clump of gray that was the form of the master's servant seemed to waver, as if she were cowering in terror.
The monster's moment of pleasure was fleeting. In an instant, the master himself billowed through the mist, an eddy of gray so dark it was almost ebon.
Silence, beast! Do not challenge me.
Again, red streaks came into the mist. But these were like blazing bolts of lightning, overwhelming the monster's own fury as easily as a flooding river flushes aside a child's pond. For just a fleeting instant, the monster thought to catch sight of Chernobog behind the shadows and the mist. The master was terrifying—huge, and tusked, and horned, and taloned. Scaled like a dragon, bestriding a broken earth like a behemoth.
One of the scarlet flashes curled through the mist like a snake, and struck the monster's flank. Agony speared through it. The monster whimpered. Broken words pleading forgiveness tried to issue from lips that had once, long ago, had the semblance of human ones.
But that semblance was too ancient, now, too far gone. The words would not come any longer. Not over lips that were no more than a gash; not shaped by an ox-thick tongue writhing in a mouth that was more like an eel's gullet than a man's palate and throat.
Again, the spearing agony. The monster wailed. Wailing, it could manage—as could any beast.
Some part of the monster retained enough intelligence to think, if not speak, a protest. I was a god once!
"Only the shadow of one," came the sneering voice of Chernobog's servant—as if she were anything but a shadow herself. "And he isn't much of a god anyway, which is why he crouches at Great Chernobog's side. Wearing his master's leash."
The servant drifted forward, now fearless. For a moment, the monster sensed a vaguely female form coalescing, stooping. It felt another flash of rage—but a quickly suppressed one. She dared to inspect its feed!
"Not much left," she purred, jeering. "But then, I imagine the old monk's soul was mostly gristle anyway."
The form straightened and moved back into the mist. The gray of the shadow servant merged at the edges into the gray mist that surrounded the monster everywhere. Only a vague fluttering was left to indicate her shape.
The monster recognized the pattern. Chernobog would now speak himself, using the servant's voice.
"You have done well, beast."
The monster's momentary relief was immediately shredded by another scarlet lash coming through the mist, ripping into its flank like an axe. Gray-black blood spurted from a wound that was insubstantial—healing almost in the instant it was formed—but agonizing for all that. The monster wailed again, and again, crouching in terror.
"Which is why I punish you so lightly for your insolence."
The servant's vague form was replaced by another of those horrifying forward surges in the surrounding mist. The ebony billow that was Chernobog himself, threatening to take full and visible shape.
Do not forget your place, beast. I allow you to be powerful, at my convenience. I could as easily make you a worm, for my dining pleasure.
For a moment, the monster caught another glimpse of Chernobog on that broken landscape. Hunching, this time, over a mound of squirming souls. Much like worms, they looked; especially as they disappeared into the maw that devoured them, a few spilling out of the gigantic jaws onto the charred-black soil.
Another image flashed through the monster's mind. Itself—himself, then—held down by Chernobog's enormous limbs while the master tore out his manhood with that same maw and left the monster a bleeding, neutered ruin. Less than a eunuch, who had once been a god.
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br /> The monster was now completely cowed. Its heavy brow was lowered, the muzzle that had once been like a man's pressed into its chest. Oddly enough, perhaps, the chest itself was still hairless—quite unlike the shaggy limbs and the heavy spine that protruded like a ridge, covered with a long and stringy mane of hair.
At another time, the memory of what that hairless chest had once signified might have brought anguish. Now, the monster had no thoughts beyond submission.
"Good." The monster felt relief at hearing the servant's voice instead of Chernobog's own. As much as the monster hated and resented taking orders from one who was even less than it was . . .
Nothing was a terrifying as Chernobog, unshadowed.
"Good," its master repeated. "Your recent task also. It was well done, beast. The priest burned very nicely. Though I believe you wavered once, before this shadow restored your courage."
The monster whined. The master was unfair! A holy symbol held by such as that one—encased in steel—was a thing of great power. The master knew that. Such a fearsome one should never have been allowed—!
Silence.
The monster's thoughts fled. After a moment, the master spoke again. Thankfully, through his shadow voice.
"No matter. As elsewhere, this servant has her uses. And now the way is cleared for the creature Sachs."
The gray mist swirled and billowed. From experience, the monster knew that Chernobog was retreating into his own counsel. It managed to restrain any overt sign of relief. The master would know its thoughts, of course, since Chernobog had taken its soul. But . . . so long as the monster maintained all visible signs of docility, it would not be punished.
Not much, at least.
* * *
How long it was before the master spoke again, the monster knew not. In that mist-shrouded place where it was kept—caged, for all intents and purposes—time had little meaning.
The servant's voice rippled with the master's own amusement. It was an odd sound—as if a torrent in a cavern were being heard through an echoing chamber far distant. Raw and unrestrained male power, channeled through the pleasant modulations of a female throat.
"And now I will reward you, beast. Tonight I will allow you to hunt."
In an instant, the monster's fear and submissiveness vanished, replaced by ravening eagerness.
Hungry!
The servant's voice echoed, faintly, the master's own humor. Not glee so much as simple satisfaction. There was very little left, in the monster, of what had once been a god's mind. But it understood, vaguely, that Chernobog's pleasure was more that of a game master than the monster's own much cruder urges. At another time, had its lust not been so overwhelming, the monster might have felt some grief. It had played games once itself, it remembered, and played them extremely well. Even giants—even gods!—had trembled with fear at that gamesmanship.
"Indeed," chuckled the servant's voice. "And a better soul than the one you just fed upon, I imagine. Younger, at the very least."
The image of a man came to the monster's mind, put there by the master. The man, and his raiment, and the fine house where he lived; and all the byways of the city by which he could be reached. Late at night, in the darkness.
The servant gave him a garment. Something once worn by the victim-to-be. It was full of man-scent, full of tiny fragments of skin. The monster snuffled and mouthed it. He had the scent, the taste of the intended victim. "I constrain you. On this occasion you will abjure from feeding on any other. Or you will face the master's wrath."
Hungry! Hungry!
"Do not feed too quickly," commanded the servant's voice. "The thing must be done in blood and ruin—not quickly."
The monster would have sneered if it still had lips that could do so. As if it would hurry such a feast!
* * *
The time that came after seemed endless, though the monster had no way of gauging it. But eventually, it came.
"Go now," commanded the servant's voice, and the monster sensed the grayness vanishing.
* * *
Soon enough, the gray mist was gone altogether. Replaced by the dark—but sharp—shadows of Venice's narrow alleys and streets.
The monster scorned the streets, however. The great tail it had acquired, as if to substitute for its lost manhood, drove it through the waters of the city's canals as quickly and silently as a crocodile. Though no crocodile had such a blunt snout, or had a ridged spine protruding from the water, or a spine that trailed such long and scraggly hair.
It was spotted only once, along the way, by a street urchin searching the canal late at night for useful refuse. But the monster had no difficulty disposing of that nuisance, beyond the fierce struggle to restrain itself from consuming the child's soul. Once they had sacrificed children to him. Their souls had a distinctive taste.
A quick turn in the water, a powerful thrust of the tail; the boy was seized before he could flee and dragged into the dark waters. The rest, once the monster overcame the urge to feed, was quick. By the time sunrise came, the blood would have vanished and the fish would see to all but the largest pieces. And those, once spotted, would be useless to any investigator.
The monster was not concerned with investigation, in any event. In what was left of a once-divine brain, it understood enough to know that its master would be pleased by the deed. The small murder, added to the greater one still to come this night, would increase the city's fear. Among the canalers, at least, even if Venice's mighty never learned of an urchin's disappearance.
The only thing the master cared about was that the monster itself not be seen by any survivor. And so, as the monster drove quietly through the canals, the one eye that remained to it never ceased scanning the banks. Still blue, that eye, and still as piercing as ever—even if the mind behind it was only a remnant of what it had once been. But none of the few people walking alongside the canals ever spotted it.
* * *
The shaman trailed behind, staying as far back as he could without losing sight of the monster completely. Which—in the murky waters of the Venetian canals—meant following much closer than he liked. He had to force down, time and again, the urge to follow using scent alone. The struggle was fierce, because the temptation was so great. In his fishform, in the water, the shaman's sense of smell—taste, really—was much better than the monster's, for anything except the scent the monster was tracking.
But . . . in the end, the shaman was more terrified of his master than he was of the monster. His master had made clear that he wanted a full report, and had demonstrated the depth of his desire by feeding the shaman the cooked skin of a retainer who had failed to satisfy him. Spiced with substances which had almost gagged the shaman at the time, and still made him shudder.
So, the shaman stayed within eyesight of the monster, however terrified it was of the creature. If the monster spotted him . . . it would interpret its master's command to "leave no trace" in the most rigorous manner. The shaman might be able to evade the monster—here in the water, he in his fishform and the monster in the shape it possessed. But he had no doubt at all that if the monster caught him, he would be destroyed—just as easily and quickly as the monster had destroyed the street urchin. A creature it might be today, but . . . the monster had once been a god, after all.
No longer, however. That once-god had been broken by a greater one. So, however reluctantly, the shaman stayed within eyesight.
Just barely.
* * *
The final destination loomed into sight, just as the master had planted the image in the monster's brain. One of Venice's great houses, its walls rising sheer from the Grand Canal.
Once it entered the Grand Canal, the monster submerged completely and continued swimming several feet below the surface—much too deep in those murky waters, even in daylight, to be spotted by anyone in a boat. The Grand Canal, at any hour of the day or night, bore a certain amount of traffic. The monster could hold its breath long enough to swim through the great wat
erway and enter the side canal that flanked the house.
It did so, emerging slowly and carefully to the surface. Unlike a crocodile, the monster could not simply lift its eye above the water. Half the misshapen head had to surface before it could see enough.
Then, for several minutes, it did nothing but study the situation; maintaining its position by slow sweeps of the tail and breathing as silently as it could.
It dismissed the side door without a thought. There was no way to enter through that portal without alerting the house, and the monster was not certain it could slaughter all the inhabitants before someone fled beyond its reach. Not in such a great house, which would be full of servants as well as family members. The one imperative was that it not be seen by anyone who could tell the tale afterward.
Carefully, it studied the wall itself. Then, satisfied, it sculled to the side and, with a great heave, hoisted itself onto the wall. The ugly octopuslike suckers on what had once been a deity's well-formed hands and feet had no difficulty adhering to the rough surface. Moving up the wall like some great half-lizard/half-ape, it worked its way quickly to the balcony three floors above.
The Shadow of the Lion Page 14