‘Oh.’ Horst nodded. ‘That’s all right, then.’
‘Is it?’ Leonie wasn’t having any of Cabal’s vague hand-waving explanations. ‘Is that all right?’
‘Yes.’ Horst nodded again, albeit a fraction less certainly. ‘I expect so. Probably.’
‘It is not in the nature of occult tomes to be blazingly transparent, Miss Barrow,’ said Cabal. ‘We are seeking out the secrets of life itself, not assembling a bookcase. Those secrets are hidden, and hidden for good reason. Can you imagine the state of the world if the Fountain of Youth was signposted so that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could waltz in and help themselves?’
‘Happier?’ suggested Zarenyia with practised ingenuity.
‘It would be chaos. People living forever left, right, and centre, the aged skipping around like new lambs. Think of the impact on the population demographics!’
‘Life insurance salesmen would be out of a job,’ offered Horst.
But Cabal was not finished on his theme of keeping the wonders of the esoteric world away from the common herd who might do something ghastly and embarrassing, like use them. ‘Scavenger hunts would include the Holy Grail! Tourists trooping around the crystal cavern that holds Merlin! Immortality and godlike power bandied around amongst people I wouldn’t trust with a freshly sharpened pencil!’ He realised he had raised his voice. He coughed and looked away. ‘Chaos. It would be chaos.’
‘And we don’t like chaos,’ said Zarenyia firmly. ‘It’s full of fish, isn’t it, Johannes?’
This statement hung in the air for a long moment, partially due to the bafflement of Leonie and Horst, and also by the realisation that Cabal knew exactly what Zarenyia meant by it yet had no intention of elucidating.
‘Quite,’ was all he said on the subject. ‘The book is in the nature of a key to an outer vault, represented by the four locations it describes. Those locations then constitute the key to the final, inner vault. There will be the Fountain of Youth.’
‘Delightful.’ Zarenyia yawned delicately. ‘Now, let us address more important matters; what magnitude of frightfully evil, delightfully expendable enemies shall cross our paths?’
‘If we’re careful,’ said Leonie, giving Zarenyia a guarded look, ‘none at all. We can bypass most threats.’
‘Oh!’ Zarenyia seemed to have a brief attack of the vapours. ‘But that will never do! Murders, Johannes! You said there would be murders!’
‘I don’t know why you’re so keen on that,’ said Leonie. ‘Where there are murders, there are murderers. I thought we were trying to avoid trouble?’
‘Not murderers, silly.’ Zarenyia fixed Leonie with a fond smile. ‘Murderer.’ She held her hands out as if accepting applause. ‘Me!’
Leonie regarded Zarenyia stonily. ‘Cabal…’
‘Do not trouble yourself, Miss Barrow,’ he replied. ‘You and Zarenyia shall not be travelling together. I shall be her companion.’
‘Companion, he calls it,’ said the spider-woman, and smirked. It was an expression that actually looked quite good on her. Then, with a clatter of eight armoured legs unfolding in an arachnid bloom beneath her, she rose. ‘So I’m with you, and Little Miss Titian with the morals here goes with your brother—is that the plan, Johannes?’
‘It is.’
‘Perhaps…’ Zarenyia looked speculatively at Leonie. ‘Perhaps I would prefer to travel with her, and you can go with your brother the deader.’
‘That is not the plan that I have formulated.’ Cabal looked from Zarenyia to Leonie and back. Leonie caught his expression and noted some concern there. That, she felt, was reasonable.
‘But she’s so prissy,’ said Zarenyia, and pouted. ‘So holier-than-thou.’
‘As you’re a devil, everybody is holier than you, Madam Zarenyia.’
‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ She flexed her legs, lowering her forebody so she could look Leonie in the face. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt.’
Leonie made a point of looking Zarenyia in the eye as she spoke, but inwardly she quaked. Yes, a promise to cause her no harm had been made, but weren’t devils notorious for finding loopholes? ‘If you don’t like that, why do you want to travel with me?’
‘I didn’t say I didn’t like you. You just need re-educating a little.’ And Zarenyia smiled a smile that promised pleasurable damnations by the wagonload.
They matched stares for several long seconds, but it was Zarenyia who broke eye contact first, though her smile did not waver a jot. ‘Oh, you would, you know,’ she said as she turned away. ‘You so very would. But not just now. I can wait. Johannes, my sweet. I believe you are to be my travelling companion?’
Cabal looked slightly confused by events, but replied promptly enough, ‘That is what I said.’
‘Well, let us trot along, then. I adore adventures; let us have one.’
The First Way: JOHANNES CABAL, THE NECROPOLITAN
It is traditional to explain, in great detail, the necessary preparations for a lengthy quest of any description. Supplies must be secured, routes decided, contingencies explored, dwarves fed, and so forth. Johannes Cabal, by contrast, bypassed the first largely by the use of finances transferred to banks along the way and the possession of letters of credit and cash in hand for more immediate use, while the second and third hands had already been decided in sufficient depth by Cabal himself without reference to anyone else, thereby forestalling any muddying of the organisational waters by bringing the opinions of others into the affair. As for dwarves, they could feed themselves as far he was concerned; he had no time for them or their interminable songs about gold.
There were, however, a few problems that he was unable to address until they became immediate and unavoidable.
‘I don’t wish to be the gooseberry who spoils the party,’ said Horst, ‘but Miss Zarenyia here is, by and large, a huge spider. I’m not sure they’ll let you on a train looking like that, ma’am.’
‘Won’t they?’ Zarenyia was miffed at such impoliteness. ‘Well, that’s prejudiced and barbaric of them.’ She pouted and shook her head in a sharp little motion. ‘Does this mean I shall have to pass for human?’
‘I fear so,’ said Cabal with uncharacteristic sympathy.
‘Oh, how utterly loathsome,’ she said, and adopted an expression of great concentration.
In juddering degrees, she leaned back so that the tip of the great abdomen touched the stone floor and the legs on her right side drew together, as did the legs on her left. There was no gradual metamorphosis, nor even an instantaneous change, but rather the disquieting air of two figures being there, one far more substantial than the other, formerly the spiderish in the ascendant and then latterly the human, although even that pivotal moment was impossible to judge or even to perceive.
Presently Miss Zarenyia was a fashionably dressed young lady with a small bustle where once she had sported a vast abdomen, a parasol, a hat, and even her hair had lost its gamine effect in favour of red ringlets that tumbled alongside the winsome face of the supernatural serial killer.
‘That’s how I wear my hair,’ said Leonie Barrow.
‘I know, darling.’ The devil was unabashed. ‘It’s pretty.’
Seeing no satisfaction imminent in that quarter, Leonie instead appealed to Cabal, who shrugged, and said, ‘It’s pretty.’
So the matter was settled.
‘The first two points of interest are in Abyssinia and Constantinople. Does anyone have any particular preferences?’
‘Well, obviously Horst and Leonie shall go to Constantinople.’ Zarenyia said it as a matter of indisputable fact.
‘Why?’ said Leonie, disputing it.
Zarenyia regarded her as if addressing somebody at a cocktail party who has just been introduced as the village idiot. ‘Because Abyssinia is frightfully hot and sunny and so forth, and you’re all pale and interesting. You’ll fry like a sinner, and furthermore it will bleach that lovely straw colour out of your hair. It cannot be permitted.’
Leonie
looked askance at Zarenyia. ‘You’re pale, too,’ she pointed out. ‘A redhead.’
‘And—important point here that bears remembering—a devil. Not human in any sense that would delight the heart of a doctor. Denizen of Hell and all that? Everything is a warm afternoon to me, from pole to equator.’
Horst considered this. ‘Doesn’t that get boring?’
‘No.’ A thought occurred to Zarenyia, and she partially lifted her skirt to show her ankles. She regarded them with dissatisfaction. ‘I am sure that you are all thoroughly delighted to be bipedal, but really, you don’t know what you are missing out on. So wobbly.’ She dropped the hem and looked around. ‘So the scorching plains of Abyssinia for Johannes and me, and the louche pleasures of Constantinople for handsome Horst and lovely Leonie, then.’
And so that matter was settled, too.
* * *
It is further traditional to explain, in great detail, every footling detail of the trip from here to there. Why this should be is a mystery; one suspects it has something to do with contractual obligations with regard to the number of pages for such stories. Given that it is a novel that you are currently reading and not, for example, a travelogue or a hideously inaccurate biography of Sir Richard Burton, we shall therefore dispense with the travelling beyond the following few points.
It took Johannes Cabal and Zarenyia six days to reach a small township in the northern reaches of the country.
The trip was wholly uneventful, apart from the business with the slave traders. That all worked out well in the end as Zarenyia was given the opportunity to kill a few men, which improved her mood immeasurably, the rolling of the ship and the reduction in the number of legs she sported having combined to put her in a mild dudgeon.
There was also an attempted train robbery, but those happen all the time, so it’s hardly worth noting.
It would be remiss not to mention, albeit in passing, the affair with the tomb guardians. And now that it has been mentioned, we may pass on.
Also, a matter of some giant ants, but—given Zarenyia’s true form and some chemical ingenuity of Cabal’s part—dealing with them was a trivial matter requiring only the inflammation of some five thousand gallons of aviation spirit and the destruction of a dam.
Thus, after six days of restful travel, Cabal and Madam Zarenyia arrived at the small township in the northern reaches of Abyssinia, formerly described by some European observers as being the seat of Emperor Prester John.
This came as a surprise to the Abyssinians, who pointed out that they’d never heard of a ‘Prester John,’ and that ‘John’ was a fairly unlikely name for an Abyssinian in any case. Also, that they didn’t really have an exact term for ‘Emperor’ in the European sense, such creatures being surplus to requirements to the people of the region.* Therefore, of the name ‘Emperor Prester John,’ the first word was redundant and the last unlikely. They didn’t know what a ‘Prester’ might be, either. Nor did the Europeans, but that didn’t stop them from dismissing the Abyssinian protests as dilatory, distracting, and irrelevant. Wise heads in Europe had decided that—as it hadn’t turned out to be somewhere in Asia after all—then here lay the empire of Prester John, and the locals were too ignorant to have noticed it, or they might possibly be hiding it along with the Ark of the Covenant in a hut somewhere.
‘So is it here or isn’t it?’ asked Zarenyia. She was dressed in a summer frock of beguiling blue, unbesmirched by even a grain of dust, untroubled by any iota of feminine glow. Devils sweat when they want to, but it seemed like a lot of unnecessary work to her.
‘I thought I had explained this before.’ Cabal had, indeed, explained it before, but every explanation had been drawn down conversational side roads by Zarenyia not actually caring very much, or they had been distracted by attacking bandits, or giant ants.
‘The empire of Prester John never existed per se. It is a chimera of a place, lent form by the optimism—they might have characterised it as “faith”—of hundreds of thousands of fools.’
‘Christians?’
‘I believe I implied that.’
Zarenyia, whose view of humanity was necessarily alloyed by lengthy experience, nodded. ‘I see. So, who’s this “Percy”?’
At which point the conversation meandered once more.
* * *
The locals, wisely, shunned the strangers, although that wisdom was likely a function of a general distrust of a pair of white people, as if white people had ever done anything reprehensible in the continent of Africa. This suited the Caucasians in question admirably, as—in fairness—they comprised of a necromancer and a soul-devouring (albeit well-spoken) devil, and they were up to matters philosophical and bordering on nefarious, as so much philosophy does.
‘This is where the African location of Prester John’s capital was assumed to be by the gullible of Europe,’ said Cabal as they surveyed a small town, bounded by low hills on one side and an arid plain to the other. It did not seem to be much of a seat of anything, least of all government: scrubby trees, utilitarian buildings, bands of bush across the hills so darkly green as to be almost black, and a dusty pale red sand that coloured everything.
‘Scenic.’ Zarenyia seemed disinterested in the civic aspects of the place; the citizens drew her attention far more strongly. She regarded any passing man with an unwavering stare, the gaze of a praying mantis weighing up her prospects. The men started by walking by, and ended by scurrying out of sight, unsure why they felt so uncomfortable. ‘Scrawny creatures, aren’t they? Still, a soul’s a soul.’ She sighed. ‘I am making myself ever so available, and all I’m getting for my troubles is a lot of frightened looks and scuttling. Haven’t they ever seen a gorgeous woman before?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not. But if they have, I suspect that encounter involved blinking.’
‘Blinking! I’m such a fool. I keep forgetting to do that.’ She slowly closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘There, perfect.’
‘Perfection indeed, Miss Zarenyia, if only performed approximately twenty times faster.’
‘So critical. I do it easily enough when I’m more myself. I’m concentrating so hard on not falling over when I’m forced onto two legs, I forget those little details.’
‘Blinking.’
‘Blinking. Breathing. Bipedal locomotion. That’s just repeatedly interrupted falling over, you realise?’ She smiled suddenly, her mood mercurial but rarely melancholy for longer than it takes to say ‘melancholy’. ‘So, onwards! To adventure, excitement, and oodles of delicious murder. How do we progress from this dusty town?’
‘This dusty town is our destination, madam. I thought I had impressed that upon you many times during the journey here?’
‘Oh, probably. But you do that thing and I get distracted.’
Cabal favoured her with a blink only slightly faster than her own. ‘That thing?’
‘You know.’ He clearly didn’t, despite her flapping one hand at him impatiently. ‘That thing when you talk.’
Cabal considered. ‘When I explain?’
‘That’s it! I just go, “Ooh, another explanation!” and then…’ She passed the previously flapping hand across her face. Before it arrived, her expression was vibrant and engaged. After it had passed, her face was slack and her eyes rolled up. She held this for a moment before life returned. ‘It’s like magic! Hmmm.’ She looked at him inquisitively. ‘Are you sure that you’re a necromancer? You might be a tediumancer without realising it.’
‘Very well,’ said Cabal. The very definition of ‘a losing proposition’ was to try to imbue Zarenyia with any sense of gravity or seriousness. ‘No more explanations.’
‘Unless I ask. And then make them snappy with lots of hand gestures so I don’t suddenly pass out.’
‘That is hardly me, madam. You describe an Italian. Nevertheless, I shall be brief. You will have to imagine the hand gestures. This’—and here he indicated the town—‘is a mundane location lent arcane significance via—’
And here he was interrupted by Zarenyia’s eyes rolling up, her jaw drooping, and a loud, pantomimish snore ratcheting up out of her throat as if she’d swallowed a ripsaw.
‘It’s a magic gate,’ said Cabal.
Zarenyia smiled.
* * *
The necromancer and the devil processed through the court of Prester John with great aplomb born of ennui in the former case and a degree of playacting in the latter. Cabal walked steadily, his face stony, disregarding the fabulous sights of the most fabulous court the world had ever known, but that it had never been more than a phantasm of desperation. Before a stern throne of ebony curled around with what seemed to be the tusks of mastodons, Prester John looked down serried rows of lesser kings, plenipotentiaries, lords, and recanted sultans. Cabal ignored them all. Zarenyia waved, and smiled, and complimented people on their hats.
‘Well, this doesn’t seem so bad,’ she said in a stage whisper.
‘They cannot hear you,’ said Cabal in his usual tones. ‘They do not exist. They have never existed.’
‘Hush! You’ll upset them.’
But Cabal did not upset them, because they were entirely insensate to the presence of the interlopers. It was an endless moment of glory: the greatest Christian emperor—never defeated in war and bane of the infidel Mussulmen—accepted the same envoys, the same gifts, gave the same solemn nods of acknowledgement and acceptance, for all eternity, a gorgeously rendered painting from an improving book for Western children that lived and moved but never progressed.
‘Oh,’ said Zarenyia. ‘Perhaps you won’t upset them.’ She crossed her eyes and pulled a horrid face in front of an emissary of the tsars. Beneath his fur hat, which must have been uncomfortable in that environment, he did not spare her a look, nor react in any way, or even sweat. She tried patting his face, but the solid flesh flowed around her fingers like motes in a shaft of sunlight and reformed quickly and perfectly. The emissary did not seem aware his cheek and jaw had temporarily been wafted into dust, but carried on as he always had.
‘This is nothing,’ said Cabal. ‘At the always-present risk of boring you, I must emphasise that this is only a gateway. What lies beyond it will be far more solid, more reactive, and infinitely more dangerous.’
The Fall of the House of Cabal Page 7