Previous Chapter: The Temple
Dry death is a waste
A crumbling of flesh and water
A mist of sand upon the desert floor.
Our ancestors gave their lives
So that you could walk and breath
And taste the dust in the breeze.
You must die a blood death,
Your life must lie in puddles
Coloring the knife of your enemy.
You and he must trade blood,
For without a sacrifice
You shall never walk the Halls of your Fathers.
Suffer not the witch, purveyor of evil,
Kill the urbanite, softened by comfort,
Ignore the Northron if he bring no weapon of war.
Song of Dry Death (A Haliurunnae Prayer)
The Pursuers
Silas Amaro stood before the High Priest of the Cult of Rankar and knelt. He was a big man, heavy-set, with shoulders like a bull and hands nearly as large as dinner plates, and he often gave the impression of being slow and ponderous, although those who had seen him in action knew this to be a deception. With head bowed and eyes diverted to the floor, he waited patiently for the priest to speak. A skinny-legged chicken shit he thought, the barest trace of a smile twitching on his lips. I wonder what his lordship needs at four o’clock in the morning. Someone probably stole his bed slippers, and he wants the thief drawn and quartered. The gentry never surprised him with their ridiculous demands. He had once been summoned at a similar hour by the Duchess to ascertain which lady in waiting had defecated in her chamber pot, a crisis of the state, to be certain. Yet he was very good at his job and being the head of the Secret Service of Massalia had its benefits. So what if he had to find a lost terrier or identify a man by a few misplaced hairs? What the gentry wanted you to be aware of was that they had you at their beck and call. You were their man and not your own, although how many persons could say that they were truly their own master? The Duke could claim such, though even he was constrained by his nobles and the burgeoning merchant class, the latter of which grew more powerful by the day. Indeed, fear was increasing in ranks of the old aristocracy, who felt that the shippers, traders, and spice dealers were coming for their titles. The priests decried the merchants as godless men vying for positions above their station and therefore guilty of heresy. If this old coot only knew what I was guilty of thought Silas as the priest snorted and told him to rise.
“What is thy bidding, my lord?” asked Silas. The High Priest was an old man, with a neck like a chicken and a beak-like nose, and his head bobbed back and forth as he paced before Amaro.
“You’re a direct man, are you not?” asked the priest. “You may speak with the proper courtesy, but you are always straight to the point. I am going to be equally straight with you, Amaro. This is a true matter of national security. A great heresy has been committed. The Heart of Rankar has been stolen.”
Silas felt his stomach tighten. Holy religious artifact, the symbol of the Duke’s dynasty, gift from the Pallas Emperor himself. He rattled off all he knew about the Heart in his mind. It was a priceless relic, no doubt about it, worth more than any crown jewels… and yet he didn’t see the danger to the state that its theft represented, unless it preempted a war with Galvania, who had long desired the Heart as well as the city of Capetia. The thing had no practical value. It was not on display in the center of the Square. Its magical properties were dubious. If they were unable to recover it, a duplicate could be made, and would the Duke know any better? He, of course, could not suggest such a thing to the High Priest, at least not yet. He hadn’t even heard the circumstances of the theft.
“Tell me what happened,” said Silas.
The priest looked at Silas as though he was embarrassed.
“It was my fool of a brother, Lord Dempsey,” he said finally, spitting out the words as though they ailed him. “He took a courtesan by the name of Cassilda and a troubadour to the entrance of the pyramid and demanded to see the Heart of Rankar of the Medjay guards. While they scuffled, the musician somehow sneaked into the temple and reemerged later with the Heart. He and the courtesan then leaped off the mountain. Dempsey claims no knowledge of this plot. I have him locked up, under guard. The Medjay searched the foot of the mountain but have found no bodies. A pair of tracks leads across the Dash-Margot to a ruin where the footprints of the Haliurunnae are found. My emissaries are trailing the tribes as we speak, but the desert people are wary of Capetians and are very good at not being found. They are very close to the Northrons. God help us if it crosses the border into Vaalbara.”
“I’m not sure the Northrons would want the Heart of Rankar,” replied Silas. “They are of a different philosophy than us, and they do not use sorcery, openly despising it. They do not worship Rankar, and if they chose to invade Massalia, they would come in great warships, bearing guns and rockets. Now it is possible that they would steal the Heart to demoralize our people, but I do not believe they think this way. They are direct, Northrons are, and of a machine mind, being constrained by rigorous processes and rigid, mechanical thinking.”
“What other conclusion must we reach? The tribesmen care only for their wastes,” said the priest, irritated. He went over to his nightstand and took a bottle and poured himself a glass of wine, which he raised to his lips with a trembling hand.
“The thieves meant to deceive us,” said Silas. “Surely one of them was a sorcerer, for how else could they have survived the fall from the mountain?”
“Yes, the Medjay say they drank from a flask. According to my mages, it must’ve been a levitation potion that took some time to process, which was clever, for the time delay allowed them to escape the enchantment radius of the pyramid,” replied the priest, draining his glass in one long drink.
“How were they able to steal the Heart in the first place?”
“Damned if I know. Who do I look like to you, Amaro? I am no master investigator. The man, the dark-skinned musician, he apparently committed the theft. He must’ve been agile, quiet, and cunning. And damned lucky. I don’t know how he managed the first guard. That thing doesn’t really sleep. The last chamber is impervious. Soros the Magnificent, the archmage of the Pallas Emperor, designed it himself. We couldn’t even enter. We could only look at it and watch the Heart beating upon its altar, pulsing with the lifeblood of our species. You don’t understand what’s at stake, I can see it in your eyes. Every age comes to an end, and we are not the first sentient beings to inhabit Pannotia. In the Pyramid of Arat, the Heart was safe, and so were we. The other races were killed by the Corruption. Once a piece of God is corrupted, then so are we, Amaro, and we become Lilu, soulless husks doomed to wander until the madness takes us, and we beat our heads upon stone, tearing ourselves limb from limb. You think this to be theological theory, but it is truth! The Heart is more than a religious relic or a symbol of the Duke’s sovereignty. It is the living soul of mankind.”
“This Corruption, how does it start?” asked Silas. He thought it best to not dispute the importance of the Heart. It was not his role in life to argue with priests.
The High Priest waved his hand dismissively and sat down on his bed.
“No one knows. It is thought that the Theodoti invented it as a means of war, for they were like demigods, having discovered many pieces of Rankar. The relic disappears, and the diminishing of the race follows as a plague. Set is our historian; he knows more than I do, but we will not call him. I need you to find it, Amaro. Perhaps even personally. If it is not the Northrons or Galvania who are the thieves, it is some powerful magic cabal with dark designs. I do not presume to order you about. I know the Duke is your sole master, yet I hope I have impressed upon you the danger we are in.”
You have certainly impressed upon me the danger you are in thought Silas. The High Priest was in hot water; it was his brother who had aided in the heist, and Capetians held familial honor above personal independence. The crimes of the man are the crimes of the family went the old saying. He had already formed a plan in his large, battered head. He would search for the Heart, and if it was recovered, then he’d use it to depose the High Priest and raise his own star among the nobles. Silas was a well-to-do man, but he had no title or manor, both of which would be suitable recompense for the return of a piece of God. If the Heart was not recovered, then he would have a replacement crafted, and the High Priest would suffer an unfortunate fall off Capanne Mons. Those steps were awfully steep and slick, after all.
“I will help you, my lord,” replied Silas. “I’ll put my best man on the job.”
Silas had him working almost as soon as he’d left the High Priest’s chamber. Firenze first interrogated Lord Dempsey, and after several unnecessarily painful spells, discovered that he’d been bewitched. He then journeyed across the Dash-Margot with a band of thugs and trackers to examine the ruins where the trail had run cold. Nearly a week later he entered Silas’s office ragged, dirty, and weary, yet wearing a jagged smile across his gaunt face. Dropping a blood-stained sack down on Amaro’s desk, he sat down and began to roll a cigarette.
“Boss, we have a problem,” he said, fingers moving rodent-like across the paper.
“Yes, we do. What the hell is that on my desk?” said Silas, jabbing the sack with a quill.
“It’s one of the tribesmen. He saw the whore and the singer go through a portal to devil-knows-where. Trouble is, I had to kill him in a scuffle before I got to examine his head thoroughly. But we can remedy that. There’s a necromancer living in a tower on the west side that’ll do the job. If I can see what the thieves look like, I can cast a tracking spell, and we’ll find them.”
“Dempsey saw them,” pointed out Silas. “And get that thing off my desk. The blood’s leaking through it, as you can plainly see.”
“Ah, but Dempsey was enchanted. Any good mage knows how to hide their handiwork. He can’t even give us the vaguest details about our thieves. And Medjay are immune to magic—you can’t go peering inside their mutant skulls. No, the necromancer is our best bet. He’s a strange chap, but they all are.”
“So what are you waiting for? Go see the blasted necromancer.”
Firenze shifted in his seat and took a long drag on his cigarette. He started to speak, but then grew quiet and stared at the floor.
“What, are you afraid of him?” asked Silas, astonished. He had thought the assassin to be utterly fearless.
“I’ve got enough sense to be, yes,” muttered Firenze. “It is very taboo in the world of magic to practice necromancy. Now I haven’t given a flying fuck about what’s taboo according to the Conventum in a very long time. I don’t have a license, and as far as they’re concerned, I’m a rouge, a sorcerer. Now if I was to go around performing Black Arts, they’d get their hands on me, send some powerful warlock or archmage to bind my tongue and carry me off for judgment. The fact that this necromancer operates right in the middle of Capetia is mighty curious. I figure that means he’s beyond their authority, and anybody beyond the authority of the Conventum is not someone you’d want to meet, generally. But you, you’re the head of the Secret Service. If you were to come with me and someone was to hear about it, then I’d have the excuse that I was conducting official business for the state. Also, the odds of something funny happening while I’m dealing with this necromancer go down drastically if the head of the Secret Service is with me. He doesn’t need enemies on all sides, you understand.”
Silas sighed and pushed himself back from his desk. Time was running out, and the trail of the thieves was growing colder. If he had any hope of returning the Heart, he was going to have to get his hands soiled.
“Alright, let’s go see the wizard.”
They came to the tower that leaned west and climbed its long, winding steps, and at the top rapped the iron ring twice against the door. On the other side, something screeched against the floor, a sharp, piercing sound followed by a loud crash and then silence. Silas furrowed his brow and looked at the assassin, who was sweating profusely. Shaking his head and muttering a curse, he knocked again before Firenze stopped him.
“If he don’t want to see us, then let us go,” he said.
“This is Silas Amaro, head of the Secret Service of Massalia. I come in the name of the Duke and bid you open your door, unless you wish to be found in contempt of his law.”
Another sound from the other side, a curious ruckus as though a heavy ball rolled across the floor. Something snickered like a jackal and then uttered a low growl. Silas thought he heard a voice chanting very softly, the words harsh and ugly, spat from the mouth like poison. The more he listened to the voice, the more intelligible the words became, until he began to understand.
“Rankar save us,” he said, stepping back.
The door opened, pushed by a skeletal hand. A ragged face peered through the crack, the eyes wild, pupils dilated. A smell hit them, a strange, earthy reek, fungal and ripe with decay.
“What do you want?” he said.
Silas shook his head, trying to recover himself. It was a man that stared at them, not a monster, and the horror which had seized him left as suddenly as it had manifested.
“We need, um, your assistance in a, um, small matter, if you be, uh, a necromancer,” said Silas, stammering, feeling as unsure of himself as he had when he made his first arrest.
“If you need a necromancer, then it is no small matter,” said the man. “Do not refer to me by that name of ill-repute. I am a wizard, one who does not hide behind so-called scruples or codes of conduct written by drooling peasants. I do what I will, and I do as I must, and I will not apologize for any of it.” He leaned out of the doorway and looked past Silas at Firenze. “There is one who knows what I am talking about. He is a dabbler in small evil, as far as magic goes, and quite up to his knees in blood when it comes to speaking with his knife. Where were you trained, killer? Dortmund? Bilbao? Avignon before the burning? I was driven from the Academia as well, though for greater sins. Well, don’t stand at my doorway like beggars. Come inside and bring that conspicuous sack that you carry.”
They walked inside, hesitantly crossing the threshold as though afraid it was the point of no return. There were no signs of the commotion they had heard in the wizard’s chambers. The room was filled with books, instruments, and miscellaneous clutter as one would expect of a magician’s laboratory. Silas’s eyes caught on a portrait of a faun with a macabre smile. Seeking to restore a degree of normalcy to the situation, he remarked on its vividness.
“Yes, I had a thief steal that for me. Came from the vaults of Thelonious, the famous merchant, importer, exporter. Don’t stare too long at it, for it is enchanted and supposedly a gateway to Prax, the bloody god of the pagans. That is, if you believe in that sort of thing. Are you a godly man, Amaro?” The wizard’s gaze bore into Silas’s eyes, and he had to turn away and look at the floor.
“No,” said Silas, honestly. “The scriptures of the Cult do not interest me.”
“This is heresy, and that is heresy, and we are all marooned on the great wheel of life, deserving our stations and our suffering. Tell me, do you think God cares about the banal minutiae of our lives? Do you think He weighs each one of our souls and decides who will be made king for a span, to revel in hedonism as most of us struggle for our daily bread? What a boring god they have made, more akin to a patent clerk than a self-sacrificing creator. I believe the heretics are more likely correct, that Rankar annihilated himself in the moment of awakening, for he could not stand the weight of consciousness, and that we are all pieces of him, trapped in this mortal plane by his immortality, which we pass from parent to child, the misery of existence having no end until our species dies.”
“A gloomy thesis,” said Silas. The old man was clad in stained burlap, and his hair was knotted together in a messy spider’s weave. What do I have to fear from someone like that he thought, mustering his composure.
“Master wizard,” he began, “my companion has in his sack the head of a Haliurunnae tribesman. A week ago he encountered a courtesan and a musician in the desert. We wish to conjure those images so that we may look upon their faces and know them. Can you perform such a feat?”
The wizard went to Firenze and seized the sack, opened it up and peered into it for a moment before dumping the disembodied head on his workbench. A great stench rose up from it, and Silas cringed, for its flesh had become bloated and discolored, and the expression on its face was one of terror and anguish.
“It is not too fresh and yet, not too stale! Something can be done with it. Did you slay this man, assassin? If so, that is good for us. He will wish to bargain, as the dead always do. We can summon his shade, but you cannot read the mind of a dead thing. He will wish for blood, perhaps, or even a chance to walk in the flesh once more. Do not cringe, killer. Those who have no life are easy to deceive. Do those eyes look as though they can see clearly? Before we begin, however, you must agree to pay the price. Say you will do whatever he asks. I have dealt with the Haliurunnae, and he will know this and trust me. Do I have your word?”
Firenze said nothing but stared at the head as though contemplating the consequences of his violence for the very first time. His face began to mirror the hideous death grimace of the tribesman. Silas smacked him hard on the back and gestured expectantly towards the wizard, who glared at the assassin with impatience.
“Don’t you desire gold?” said Firenze finally. “Why must I do as the dead ask? He… it will crave revenge.”
The wizard laughed, a jarring sound akin to the squeaking of a rusty hinge.
“What use is gold to a wizard? Do you kill for gold? I think not. You enjoy the violent act, for through it you assume the role of arbiter and wield the heavy hand of fate. Gods and elemental forces such as disease dole out death; you think to ward off the inevitable by wearing their clothes. The clothes, however, are wearing you. Do not worry, you will not pay tonight for your crimes. I was having a bit of fun at your expense.”
The wizard took a knife from his shelf and lurched towards Firenze, who made no attempt to escape but cringed at the approaching necromancer like a cowed animal. The wizard seized his forearm and held it above a silver bowl engraved with the hideous visages of leering demons. With an agonizingly slow movement, he slit the flesh, making a one-inch incision that he squeezed, forcing blood to drip into the bowl. Silas watched in fascination, but Firenze could not bear the sight of his own blood and turned away. Having procured a sizable amount of fluid, the wizard released the assassin and took a few flasks from his cupboard and poured them into the silver bowl. Raising his scalpel to the head, he removed a thin section of flesh from its cheek and diced it quickly on the table before adding it to the potion. He then began to stir the mixture with a bone, and as he did so he chanted in a harsh voice the words of a spell. The dim candlelight flickered as though a wind had passed through the room; the shadows grew, becoming palpable, emitting rancor. Silas thought he saw a hand come out of a corner, long and dripping with darkness, and stretch its talons towards him. He jumped backward and tumbled into Firenze, who clung to him like a frightened boy. Suddenly the words stopped, and it was as though the growing malevolence froze, waiting. The wizard looked long at each of them and then drank from the bowl. He passed it to Firenze and bid him drink, and though the assassin was petrified, he did as he was told, his hands compelled by a phantom force. Silas also found himself drinking from the bowl. The elixir was cold and tasted exactly as one would imagine, but it burned as it was swallowed, and Silas became light-headed. The shadows which had grown in the corners of the room lightened, and he could see terrible things in them, formless things of tentacle and tooth that gnawed at the edges of their gloom, as though they were trying to eat their way into reality. He did not want to look at these things; he knew if he continued to stare at them, then he would either attract their attentions or go mad, but he could not tear his gaze way. It was the voice that saved him from madness. It was weak and high-pitched, whispering of the grave and the fungal decay of the earth. The wizard had poured the elixir into the mouth of the head, and now it spoke, and all the living would listen.
“What is this?” it said, the words slow and thick.
“You are in the hallowed halls of your fathers,” said Dazbog. “We are your judges, and we will ask you of your life so that we may deem if you are worthy.”
“Why can I see nothing?” said the shade. “My tongue is heavy in my mouth. I smell nothing, not the winds of the desert, nor do I feel the heat of the sun. My limbs move as though they are in a faraway place, separate from my soul. If this is death, then it is not how it was told in our stories by our wiseman.”
“Wisemen are only as wise as their tales,” said the wizard. “How did you die?”
“I was murdered by a Capetian, a thin man with an evil smile. He questioned and tortured me and then took my life when my tribesmen fell upon him. I tried to curse him with the ancient curse, but my throat was slit, and I breathed no more.”
“The Haliurunnae killed him, and his soul sits next to yours. Speak, killer. Let this man know your voice.”
“I am sorry,” said Firenze, stiff and uncomfortable.
“Liar! The Capetian has no remorse! He took my life because he enjoys killing, because I would not tell him about the witches.”
“His soul will be judged and if found wanting, his heart will be devoured,” said the wizard, relishing the words. “I bid you to tell us of these witches and to think hard of them as you speak, for we wish to see why they were so important to your murderer.”
“I only glimpsed them. A woman came out of the night, and a man snuck behind me and put a knife to my throat. While I watched helpless, the woman performed sorcery at the Sacellum of Aset, opening a void through which they fled. Though I fired my rifle at them, I fear that they escaped unharmed. Pity me judges! I could not stop their vile magic.”
As the head spoke, an image of Cassilda and the Thief appeared as a green and tremulous flame. The wizard took this fire and shaped it in his hands until it was as small as a pebble yet bright as a miniature sun. He then pressed the light into a stone lying on his table, turning it to jade.
“What is that?” said the head suddenly, panic in its voice. “There is a sound in the darkness like the click of talons on a floor. I am filled with a sudden dread as though my very soul is in danger. Louder and louder does the sound grow, and now I hear a rumbling akin to growl of the panther. Judges, I have not been false with thee!”
The wizard looked solemn. He took the jade and placed it in a pocket of his burlap robe.
“That is not the sound of the eater of the dead, friend. We are wringing the last bit of life from your dying flesh so that you can speak to us, yet this unnatural action attracts the wrong sort of attention from things that exist on other planes. A demon has come, and it wishes to inhabit your body to wreak havoc in the world of the living. We have what we need from you and must now surrender you to your fate.”
An unnatural smile stretched from ear to ear across the head’s face. The eyes, which had first appeared cloudy, grew clear for a moment before the pupils turned black. These black eyes rotated slowly around the room, until they fixed on Silas and stopped.
“You will die by a barbarian’s hand in a foreign land,” it said in a voice that had changed to a guttural whisper. “Your father sired you with his own sister, a whore. What man can come of such a union? What happens to such things? They vanish in the night and no one remembers that they were there.”
“Wizard, banish this spirit,” said Firenze, drawing his truncheon.
“I am nothing, you are nothing, there is nothing,” spat the head. “When you die, there is nothing but the abyss awaiting you. We hide until your flesh is ripe, and then we come, and we walk in your world, raping, killing, sending you back to the nothingness from which you came. Everything will wither and die, and it will be as it was, as it should have been. You should take that knife and plunge it into your heart, murderer of men, and save your killers the trouble. Do you want to know your future? In one month, you shall be strangled, and your body tossed upon a heap of bones. As for you, wizard…”
Before the demon could finish, a club shattered its skull. Over and over Firenze kept swinging the truncheon, until Silas seized his hands and pulled him away. The wizard sat a distance away, brooding and fingering the jade he had created as the men shouted at one another and threatened to come to blows. Suddenly he stood up and raised his hands, and the gloom which had come over the room during the necromancy crawled out of the corners and blotted out all light except a faint ghostly paleness that shone on the wizard’s face. The men ceased quarreling and cowered in the dark, pleading in faint voices for the wizard to lift the evil mood that enveloped them. He waited until they were silent before he spoke.
“We will follow these thieves to the ends of Pannotia if we must. You need someone to combat the sorcery of the courtesan, and I shall accompany you for that purpose. We will go now to the dock and charter the swiftest vessel of the Duke, and you will send men to this tower so that my laboratory may be brought on board. If it is within your authority to summon a platoon to accompany us, then make it so. Come, we have no more time to waste,” said the wizard, lifting the gloom with a wave of his hands.
Light reentered the room, and the sounds of the city were heard through the open window. Silas and Firenze rose from their knees, shivering, trying to control their trembling limbs. The experience had left a fog in their minds, and the words of the wizard seemed wise counsel rather than orders given from a stranger. Later they remembered the whole experience very differently—they had come to the wizard with the plan of taking to the seas and sought his company—though they never could shake the feeling that there was something missing from their memories.
Next Chapter: An Unexpected Turn of Events
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