‘It wasn’t in the real world.’
Zarenyia showed a modicum of increased interest. ‘Hell, then? You’ve seen it in Hell?’
‘I’ve seen it in the Dreamlands, in the great necropolis of Hlanith. But the stuff of the Dreamlands and of the mundane world are entirely different. This place cannot possess both.’
‘Copies, perhaps?’
‘Not content with taking landmarks from my life, this place contents itself to copy them, too? No. It is the original, impossible though that is. Truly, this is an awful place.’
‘Johannes…’ Zarenyia spoke slowly and suspiciously. ‘Are you frightened?’
‘No,’ said Cabal, but he lied.
He had been sarcastic to demons, dismissive to Satan’s face, and called Nyarlathotep a little bastard. He had been impolite to cultists, behaved indecorously towards his fellow necromancers, and had once tried—unsuccessfully—to upset a vicar. He had not wavered in any of these endeavours. He was quite capable of feeling fear, he knew, but it was a rare circumstance and rarely—no, never—had he been so existentially threatened as he felt now.
There were rules, laws, principles that governed everything, rules, laws, and principles that controlled every falling raindrop, every whirl of an electron, every frolicking ghost. These laws he understood better than most, and those laws said this place could not be. A pocket universe containing material aspects of the mundane, mortal world was one thing, but it was the presence of an artefact of the Dreamlands in the same place that put it all awry. It was tantamount to an electrical cell having two positives, or a planet failing to generate any gravitational pull; it simply could not happen.
There were, then, principles to which he was not privy, and to which he had never guessed at, and which he did not begin even to understand how he might understand. Not only had he built his house of science upon shifting sands, so had everybody else.
Yes, he was frightened.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Where do you get these absurd ideas?’
‘Oh.’ She looked at the pagoda and added conversationally, ‘Oh, look, the door’s opening.’
The door to the jade pagoda was, in fact, a low double door, barely tall enough for the average pall-bearer to pass without crouching. The right hand of the two doors was slowly swinging inwards before them, an inky darkness—uninformative in its totality—being the only thing revealed.
‘Do you suppose this is part of the trap, too?’ Zarenyia weighed up the possibilities. ‘I must say, as traps go it’s a little bit lazy, isn’t it? Tiny bit short in the bait department. Why would we want to go in there?’ She squinted, her inhuman senses apparently able to make something out of the pervading shadow. ‘Oh, it’s all right, after all. It’s not trying to get us to go in. It’s letting something out. Much better.’
Something shapeless and dark detached itself from the blackness and covered the ground from the open door to Cabal in a confusion of flutters.
It spoke in a furious voice. ‘Cabal!’ The voice was human. ‘I trusted you!’ The voice was female. A hand rose from the tatters and wings of what the better light revealed to be a robe. The hand bore a gleaming, curved dagger.
Cabal stood too astounded to defend himself, so it was as well that Zarenyia was less impressed by the proceedings. She stilted forwards in a shimmer of legs and sent one of them rising in a sharp arc that intercepted the shadowed figure’s chest. The figure emitted a loud ‘Oof!’ of expelled breath and flew back some ten feet to land heavily, the dagger landing safely out of its reach.
The figure tried to rise, but Zarenyia wasn’t having that. In a moment she was standing over the attacker, one foot planted firmly, indeed painfully, upon the assailant’s midriff. The woman struggled, but Zarenyia wasn’t having that, either.
‘Now, now, darling,’ she chided, ‘don’t be awkward. Not when I can run you through so very easily. And I have far more interesting plans for you than something as wasteful as a dull old impalement.’ Behind her, Zarenyia’s spiderly abdomen started to pulse with a salacious anticipation.
‘No!’ Cabal ran towards spider and fly, waving with both arms as if trying to stop an oncoming train. ‘Madam! You must not kill her!’
‘Oh, what?’ Zarenyia regarded the approaching necromancer with sour disappointment. ‘Really? You said I could murder people, Johannes! I must say, this outing is proving a bit shy on souls devoured, if you can bear a little criticism?’
Cabal arrived puffing slightly. ‘Madam…’ He withdrew a notebook while he recovered his breath. ‘By my reckoning on this expedition you have so far enjoyed the vital essences of twelve slave traders, five train robbers, and eight cultists of dubious taste—’
‘You’re telling me…’
‘—and I therefore must protest that twenty-five victims in no way constitutes “a bit shy” of the opportunities I promised you.’
‘Do you have to call them “victims”? It makes it all seem so very sordid.’
‘What would you suggest?’
Zarenyia considered. ‘Playmates?’
‘Victims it is, then.’
‘Oh, Johannes.’ Zarenyia was pouting unashamedly. ‘But they were a bunch of horrid criminals with stinky souls. This girl smells much nicer. Mayn’t I just—’
‘You may not.’ Cabal crossed his arms and looked steadily up at Zarenyia.
‘Just a nibble?’
‘No.’
‘She tried to stab you.’ Zarenyia rather spitefully leaned a little more weight on her prisoner, making the pinned woman cry out.
‘Lots of people have tried to stab me. It doesn’t mean I killed them all.’ He took a moment to think about that. ‘Actually, that’s a bad example. I did kill them all. But I don’t want you to kill her.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Two reasons. She was communicated to this place during its creation and may be able to offer us vital intelligence about it. And secondly’—he crouched by the prone figure and drew back the ragged black hood to reveal a woman in her mid-twenties, pale of skin, raven black of hair, a stark tiara or crown in deepest ebon upon her brow—‘because we are acquainted. Hello, Fräulein Smith. An unexpected pleasure.’
With a little chivvying, Zarenyia finally lifted her foot, and she stood by in a sullen silence as Cabal helped Miss Smith to her feet. Once she was vertical, he left her to recover her dagger and returned it to her, hilt first. ‘I forgive your first instinctive reaction to seeing me, Miss Smith; the situation is unusual, and one can easily be forgiven for being a little fraught. I would ask you not to attempt my murder again, however. It would be counterproductive to both of us.’
Miss Smith gave Zarenyia a dirty look, which the devil accepted with a prim smile. ‘Did you do this, Cabal? Did you destroy the Dreamlands?’
‘I fear you overstate my influence, Miss Smith. If I have inadvertently damaged any of the Dreamlands, it is only your corner of the old cemetery of Hlanith necropolis. Believe you me, I am as astonished by your presence in this place as you are. You are, in the vernacular, collateral damage.’
He was interrupted in his explanations by a mannered cough delivered from on moderately high. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘but introductions are in order. Miss Smith, allow me to introduce the succubine devil Zarenyia.’
‘Don’t tell her that right off the wicket,’ said Zarenyia pettishly. ‘We’ll have nothing to talk about.’
‘And, Zarenyia, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Miss Smith, former necromantrix and lately the Witch of the Old Cemetery of Hlanith—’
‘Ooh, career change,’ said Zarenyia with faux warmth.
‘—with whom I’m sure you’ll get on famously.’
Miss Smith regarded the octopodal Zarenyia with cool hostility. ‘And you trust a devil, do you, Cabal?’
‘I do. We have an understanding. Madam Zarenyia has undertaken not to harm me or my friends.’
‘I undertook not to harm you, your toothsome brother, or that handsome lady with the t
roublesome morals. Not your “friends” in general.’
‘True, in which case I must ask you to extend your forbearance to Miss Smith. We are old acquaintances.’
Zarenyia inhaled and sighed out the breath with bored disgust. ‘You realise she’s another deader, don’t you? I’m not quite sure how she’s walking around, but that’s not the mortal coil she was born into. Although … it sort of is. How is that?’
Cabal briefly explained that the body she currently wore was her dreaming form, her actual physical body having been inopportunely hanged by a rampaging mob while she was spiritually elsewhere, and her corpse subsequently used experimentally by another passing necromancer.
‘I told you we were old acquaintances,’ said Johannes Cabal.
‘What a sweet story,’ said Zarenyia. ‘I welled up at several moments. Very well, darling, very well. I don’t much enjoy feeding upon the double dead at the best of times, and you seem nice enough, so yes, consider yourself proof from my devilish wiles.’ She solemnly raised the three middle fingers of her right hand, thumb across the little finger and intoned the sacred oath, ‘Dib, dib, dib.’
Smith looked quizzically at Cabal. ‘What?’
‘It’s complicated. Just accept the dibbing.’
Miss Smith returned her attention to Zarenyia, and bowed. ‘Your dibbing is appreciated, and accepted.’
And so, their fellowship increased by one, they considered whatever to do next.
‘This is a deeply arcane situation in which we find ourselves,’ said Cabal. ‘I hope Horst and Miss Barrow are faring better than we.’
* * *
There was an awkward pause, eventually broken by Miss Smith. ‘You’re just standing there,’ she said to Cabal. ‘Are you waiting for something?’
Cabal seemed surprised by her comment and then confused. He looked around as if expecting to find an explanation for that confusion written in the air. Finding that an unrewarding avenue of inquiry, he turned back to his companions.
‘That was a peculiar sensation. I had a distinct idea that our concerns would be put into abeyance, for a while at least. Yet, no. They are as pressing as they were a moment ago. How very strange.’
‘You want strange? I can do you strange,’ said Zarenyia, already happy to regard their presence in a mosaic of existential ‘graveyards I have known’ fragments as perfectly normal. She pointed at the ground a little way ahead of them. ‘I think they’ve got mice.’
A grave lay open, hastily and brutally excavated and the coffin disinterred with vigour rather than care. Bones lay scattered, scraps of meat still adhering to some of them. With the easy lack of repugnance or propriety those who deal regularly with the dead exhibit, Miss Smith took up one of the bones and examined it closely. ‘Teeth marks,’ she said immediately. ‘Ghouls.’
‘Oh.’ Cabal was thoroughly blasé at the prospect. ‘I thought we might be in trouble for a minute. Both Miss Smith and I have had extensive dealings with the ghouls. I doubt we’ll have much trouble from them.’
‘I cannot agree,’ said Miss Smith. ‘The ghouls of this place are not like the ones of the necropolis, nor any others I have ever met. Look, Cabal, see how clumsily the grave is opened, how thoughtlessly the traces are scattered.’
It was true; ghouls are fastidious eaters for purposes of self-preservation if nothing else. They eat what they need and no more, and they always tidy up after themselves. They see no profit in drawing attention to themselves, for that way lies outraged humans, and all ghouls really want is a quiet life and moderately gamy meat. This foresightedness has, through generations, become more instinctive than habitual. They would as soon leave blatant clues of their presence as they would boil their heads, leave off breathing, or take up Morris dancing.
‘Make up your mind.’ Cabal nodded at the gory bone. ‘Those are either ghoul teeth marks or they are not.’
‘They are, but their behaviour is distinctly inghoulish,’ replied Miss Smith, deploying a technical term unique to the profession of necromancy. ‘I have always had an easy relationship with them, as you know. But ever since I was brought here … I thought they had been transported along with me. I heard them, snickering and glibbering, and was relieved at first. At least I would have allies. But they would not speak. Not only to me, but even to one another. I was forced to take refuge in the pagoda.’
‘From the ghouls?’ Cabal was aghast; for the ghouls to menace her was equivalent to being threatened by … by …
The simile foundered in his mind—nothing should be less threatening to Miss Smith than ghouls.
‘I never saw them clearly, but their outlines were wrong, their voices wrong, everything they did, so very wrong. And’—if she had seemed distressed by her recitation of the shortcomings of these ghouls, it was as nothing to the awful thing she found she must now report—‘there’s another.’ Her voice sank. ‘Another witch. I’ve seen her, with them. The nights here are short, but so are the days. On the first night I was here, I thought I heard something in the distance, so I crept out from the pagoda, and went to see. Johannes, they were having an orgy. An actual graveyard orgy.’ She looked thoroughly perturbed at the memory. ‘It was horrible.’
Zarenyia made a dismissive noise. ‘I’ve been to oodles of orgies. You’re just a prude.’
Miss Smith glared at Zarenyia. ‘I am not.’
Zarenyia lowered her forebody so she could look Miss Smith in the eye, rested her chin in one palm, and smiled a little triumphantly. ‘Really? Do tell.’
‘I should point out that the orgies Madam Zarenyia attends subsequently fill the obituary columns for weeks afterwards,’ offered Cabal.
Zarenyia favoured him with a dirty look, but didn’t deny it.
Miss Smith shook her head. ‘No, you don’t understand. The orgy … it was trite. That’s why it was horrible. Honestly, I’m a witch who lives in a graveyard. You think I haven’t seen orgies before? This one looked like it had been planned by a vicar based on overhearing the sexual fantasies of the choir. It was asinine.’
‘I confess I am having trouble imagining an asinine orgy,’ said Cabal.
‘Oh, I’m not.’ Zarenyia crossed her arms and grimaced, a devil of the world. ‘I’ve seen some bloody awful ones. Really, the most fun for the attendees was when I had them. Also their last fun, but that’s the price for my favours.’
‘A steep price.’
‘I’ve had no complaints.’
Miss Smith interrupted. ‘It looked staged, is what I’m trying to say. It was like a novelist’s portrayal of a witch’s orgy, sporting with monsters. That sort of thing.’
‘Never done anything like that yourself, then?’ asked Zarenyia with professional interest.
‘With ghouls? Eew. No. I mean, they’re sweet beasts, but they’re a bit … eew. If I feel the need for a little companionship, I leave the necropolis and visit the taverns.’
‘I feel we are getting off the subject,’ said Cabal, thoroughly out of his depth and far from matters he found comfortable. ‘Still, we have at least established a distinct oddity in this place. The tombs and graves are real enough, and it even had the option of a real graveyard witch. Yet instead we find a form of playacting in progress. This warrants investigation.’
‘Why?’ said Zarenyia.
‘Because the nature of the place seems to be formed based on those who visit it. Mortal remains, witches, and orgies. These are our concerns, are they not? All are materialised here, and one hopes there is purpose in that, because finding that purpose may be our only way out.’
* * *
The trees became weird and eccentric in their growth, the grass a brighter yet more toxic green as they progressed. None of them commented on the matter, but it was apparent to them all that the place of graves was becoming distinctly more melodramatic as they grew closer to the home of the new witch and her cohort of fantastical ghouls, as opposed to the more workaday ghouls with which Cabal was all too familiar.
‘What are we intendi
ng to do when we find this interloper, anyway?’ asked Zarenyia, traipsing lightly across the lurid sod upon her many pointed feet. ‘I have to say, I’m a little underwhelmed at the idea of bringing my particular brand of good times to a bunch of corpse-eating doggy boys.’
‘I feel the opportunities for murder are still many and alluring, madam.’ Cabal was cleaning his blue-glassed spectacles as he walked, and then attended to the hang of his cravat. When the enemy—and enemy they were, he felt sure—were finally encountered, it would be to his advantage to be able to see them properly, and to theirs to be done away with by a man with tidy neckwear, if only from a sense of terminal satisfaction.
‘I am not devouring the soul of a ghoul. Heavens only knows where they’ve been, grubby beggars. I don’t mind the soul of a double-dyed villain—those are spicy—but I have my limits.’
Cabal, whose own view of ghouls had not been dissimilar until he had endured a brief period of ghouldom himself, decided not to mention any special interest in her views one way or the other. It would only lead to the sort of face-pulling already exhibited by Miss Smith on the same subject, he knew.
‘We’re almost there,’ said Miss Smith, her tone determined but also betraying apprehension. ‘You do have a plan, don’t you, Cabal?’
‘The immediate plan is entirely one of reconnaissance. You can hardly expect me to evolve some elaborate scheme when the very nature of what we shall face is currently unknown to me.’
‘A witch with ghouls. I did say.’
‘But what sort of witch? There are many. And, I begin to wonder, what sort of ghouls? There should only be one type, but from your description, they would seem different from the usual crowd. I own myself perplexed. I do not enjoy perplexity.’
‘Will it be a “reconnaissance in force”?’ said Zarenyia, employing the index and middle fingers of each hand to scratch quotation marks into the air.
The Fall of the House of Cabal Page 9