Dark Ages Clan Novel Tremere: Book 11 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Sarah Roark

  “If I may, milord.” Father Erasmus spoke up hesitantly. “Surely the answer to nigromancy is not more nigromancy.”

  The prince brushed wearily at his mustache with a thumb and forefinger. “Father, do you realize that the bulk of the troops the Sword-Brothers are using in Livonia are in fact Letts and Livs? Natives, whose devotion to Christianity consists almost solely of the yearly tithe they pay. The only hymns they sing are songs of delight in the plunder they capture from their ancestral enemies. Let’s be honest in this room. An entire nation doesn’t convert overnight, not in its heart. But the outward observances come little by little to be matched by inward belief. That’s the hope we all cherish. Until the time comes when they serve the Lord in truth, however, the Sword-Brothers are happy to let them serve the order instead. A spear doesn’t care what sort of hand let it fly. If it’s worthy of the Sword-Brothers to let pagans kill pagans in the name of killing paganism, then what is there to object to in letting sorcerers kill sorcerers?”

  “I don’t pretend to understand the methods of the Sword-Brothers, Highness.”

  “Very well, then, milord—write to Ceoris,” Christof interrupted, wisely heading off any debate on the virtues, or lack thereof, of the Teutonic Order’s Livonian counterpart. “But not this Tremere. That they have the unmitigated gall to even send him back here insults us and speaks ill of them. You could at least demand, as a token of their sincerity, that they dispatch some other messenger.”

  “Not gall but guile, I’d wager,” Jürgen mused.

  “Exactly. Hochmeister, we’re speaking here of a man—of a Cainite—who was willing to steal a Toreador bauble and replace it with an elaborately crafted forgery, then pretend to discover the deception in open court, and all for what? A moment of political embarrassment for some far-off queen who never was among your stauncher or stronger allies anyway? Do you honestly believe that such a man even says ‘Good evening’ without meaning something else by it?”

  “At least it’s a well-balanced bauble.” He patted the gilded pommel of the sword at his side. “Well, perhaps I’ll ask him that. I’m sure I’ll get an interesting answer. I’m curious, in any case, to see what he has to say about it all now that the years have intervened. The Lady Rosamund assures me that he’s apologized most satisfactorily to her…”

  “It’s you he should apologize to,” Christof grumbled.

  “Yes, he should. And we shall see how satisfactory that apology is,” he said with a keen smile. “What do you think, Akuji? Akuji? Surely she’s here.”

  “Yes, your Highness.” The voice was, as always, a marvel: smooth, faintly husky, yet despite its huskiness unmistakably, alluringly female, tinged with a hint of foreign spice.

  The other Cainites in the room edged minutely away, except for Christof, who grimaced in private amusement. Akuji—whose form, draped and veiled in dilapidated linen, was no match for her voice—stepped forward.

  “What do you think, old friend?” Jürgen asked her. “Ignore the Tremere completely, write to Ceoris or treat with Meister Jervais?”

  “A difficult choice indeed, your Highness.” She paused. She had an exquisite sense of when and how long to pause, to make her audience bend to hear the next word. “Perhaps, however, it is worth pointing out that of the three possibilities, two are not mutually exclusive.”

  “Here, Josselin, please.”

  “What do you want me to do with it, petite?”

  “I don’t know.” She drew her raw lower lip into her mouth again. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I should do.”

  He gazed at the length of bloody, sliced cloth with only slightly less than complete revulsion. “Myself, I’d fling it into the fire. I know you don’t like to hear things like that, but I can’t help it.”

  “I know, I know.” She gazed at it as well. Part of her, too, wanted it gone completely, destroyed, like some heathen idol—as though doing that could banish Alexander and all thought of him from past, present and future forever. Just as much of her was terrified to do it for that exact reason. Perhaps some idols still had the power to revenge themselves on their desecrators. The reach of the ancient boy-prince, junior in blood only to the Eldest himself, had been long.

  “What is it?” He knelt by her side. “Rosamund, don’t. Please don’t cry. Don’t dignify it. I beg you.”

  “Forgive me,” she said in a small, weak voice. She wiped away the tears, but new ones took their place.

  “He doesn’t deserve your mourning. He doesn’t deserve a single one of your tears, unless it’s a tear of joy. After what he did…”

  “And what do I deserve, Josselin?” she blurted. A sob escaped on the heels of this question. She stood up.

  “You deserve to be free. And you are free, now.” His passion heated his words, made them fairly glow.

  She shook her head. “You heard what Jürgen said. Sorcery. Heathen sorcery! Josselin, it is my fault.”

  “Petite, it’s not.”

  “My doing, then. That much is true. Don’t argue with me, my brother. I am not the little girl you once knew in Chartres. I know what I’ve done when I’ve done it. I simply—I simply have to make peace with it, that’s all.”

  “Rosamund.” He followed her as she paced away. “Make confession, then, if you feel you must. We can get you a priest! But don’t keep it, no matter what. It’ll only eat away at you, and I can’t bear watching any more of that. He’s had long enough to make you suffer. It must finish now.”

  “I can’t. I can’t burn it. Don’t ask me to, Josselin.”

  “I’ll burn it for you.”

  “No!” She cried out and reached toward him, even though he made no move toward the fire as yet. He stepped forward and put his arm around her.

  “Will you at least let me take it with me and offer it to Geoffrey?” he murmured into the flame-colored cloud of her hair. “He has the strongest claim on it, anyway, and it would be well within the bounds of custom to bring it to him as proof. Then it would be out of our sight at least. Will that suffice?”

  She hesitated for a long moment, then nodded. As she nodded he could feel some of the tension drain out of her frame.

  “Good. Then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Just as he thought to pull away, she began sobbing. He tossed the surcoat to the floor as though it were so much rubbish and comforted her.

  “Sh, shh. You only did what you had to, petite. To save yourself—to save all of us. It’s over now.”

  It has to be, he thought. Dear God and Our Lady, let it be.

  But on a night when God’s favor rested inexplicably with a wild-eyed blasphemer in the dark swamps of Livonia, it might be wise to retain a certain prudent caution in one’s heart regardless.

  “Don’t be such a whiner, Fidus,” Jervais hissed. “It’s quite simple. They’ve never seen you before, so there’s no danger at all.”

  Fidus stood without shivering, despite the raindrops running down the length of his white nose and tumbling off. “But, master, I…look at me. I can’t pass for ali—for a mortal anymore.”

  “Ridiculous.” The older Tremere waved this off. “It’s easy. All you need to do is bring the color up into your cheeks and remember to breathe. Trust me, they’re all far too distracted right now to go worrying about you. You tell them you have some message from me.”

  “What message?”

  “I don’t know—surely you can think of something! A request for another meeting, perhaps. That way you’ll be sent out of their presence to wait for an answer, and if you do a little wandering about the house while you wait and aren’t too clumsy about it, no one will much mind. Look, I’m not even asking you to actually lay hands on the thing—although for Tremere’s sake, if the chance falls to you, take it—but if you can even find out where it’s being kept or what they’re planning to do with it, that alone may be enough. Now do you think you can manage it or not?”

  “I’ll do my best, master.” Fidus brushed his hair out of his e
yes and made for the gate behind the house, trying to remember what it felt like to blush. He thought of the time several years ago when Jervais had sent him out to dig up toadstools and neglected to mention that he’d be entertaining women in the house that night—all so that when Fidus came back road-beaten and covered with soil Jervais could send the little trollops into gales of laughter with a mocking remark. Yes, that did well enough.

  A few bursts of hammering on the gate brought a harried-looking, middle-aged man to open it. He had something wadded up under his woolen cloak to keep it out of the wet.

  “Yes?”

  “A message for your lady from my master Jervais,” Fidus said, and coughed for verisimilitude. He let his cloak fall open to show he was unarmed.

  The man looked even less patient at that, but he stepped aside. “All right, come in. You may just have to give it to Peter to give to them. I don’t know if they’re receiving any more messengers tonight.”

  “Thank you.” He dutifully followed the man, who stopped at the stables en route to the house itself. Evidently Fidus had caught him halfway through the process of loading saddlebags. Fidus turned his body away as the man stuffed the wadded-up bundle inside the bag, feigning disinterest, but glanced over sidewise at the last moment. There, a flash of bloodied and ripped cloth. Good—it was packed away in the saddlebags already then, doubtless in preparation for a hasty departure the next evening. Far easier to get at than if it had remained in the house.

  Surely one more small rip in a garment so woebegone would never be noticed. Jervais had taken pains to teach Fidus that the minutest loss to one person could represent the most bountiful gain to another. And to a wizard of Tremere, for whom blood fueled unprecedented wonders, even a tiny dried stain of ancient’s essence could prove useful in ways few other Cainites would ever suspect.

  Chapter Three

  “You do as you like, Meister Tremere, but I hope you won’t mind if I speak very plainly to you.” This first volley was out of the sling before Jervais had even finished his bow.

  “Not at all, Highness,” he replied smoothly. “I am simply grateful to have a personal audience with your Highness at long last.”

  And that was no exaggeration. Evidently Jürgen was not a man to be hurried by even the most terrible news. Despite his warning that he’d call for Jervais “sometime soon,” a solid two months had gone by before the summons finally came.

  “Even though the last words we exchanged at any length were hardly friendly?”

  “Especially for that reason, your Highness. I fear I’ve never had opportunity to convey fully my regrets, my humblest apologies for the conduct of my childe Alexia in the matter of your sword all those years ago.”

  “You could have said so at the time.”

  Plain speaking, eh. Well, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to try some. “I did make some poor effort in that direction, Highness, but as I recall, your Highness was understandably too angry with me to entertain that effort at the moment, and dismissed me instead.”

  “Did I? I suppose I did.” Jürgen, Prince of Cainites for Magdeburg, Overlord of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, and Lord Protector of Acre, sat in the room’s single chair. That there should be only one chair in Jürgen’s antechamber was a bit odd—no doubt orchestrated, so that Jervais could be forced to stand without making it seem like a deliberate rudeness on the prince’s part.

  Jürgen studied him minutely, un-apologetically for a little while. Jervais wondered what the matter was: whether he looked too much the wizard, or not enough. Usually it didn’t do to make too open a display. That was something a lot of other magi, who came to court wearing whatever musty, antimony-smelling old robe they’d been working in that night, didn’t quite understand. When folk were already hard at work conjuring scenes of child sacrifice or demons leering out of smoke pillars every time they so much as looked at a Tremere, there was little enough need to remind them. There were certainly other times, however, when sorcery was the one asset of interest, and on such occasions Jervais troubled himself to look the part. Tonight he’d been unsure of himself on the whole matter, so he’d chosen a long, plain, dark-blue velvet scholar’s robe with some discreet but distinctly occult-looking jewelry. Even that much had drawn chilly looks from the mortal and Cainite brethren who’d shown him through the successive portals.

  “So, you return to my court after all this time to, what, tender those long-neglected regrets?”

  “Not that only, Highness. I’ve made no secret, or I don’t think I have, of the fact that the House and Clan still earnestly hopes to win your goodwill. I believe that an alliance between your forces and ours could alter the entire mappa mundi of Cainite relations—alter it to your Highness’s very great benefit.”

  “And to the House and Clan’s.”

  “Naturally, your Highness. But our ambitions aren’t the same as princely interests, so there need be no strife in that regard.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that this is the usual Tremere homily. ‘We’re not rulers, but scholars. We seek inward not outward power, and wish only the liberty to do so.’ But that’s not entirely true, is it, Meister? For if it were, then why do you stay in Hungary, defying those who’ve tried to exterminate you for centuries? Wouldn’t it be just as easy to conjure in…oh, England, say, or Paris?”

  He was naming the places deliberately, demonstrating his knowledge. Jervais shifted his not insubstantial weight from one foot to the other. “Milord, it’s true that the land that cradled us, no less than it did the Tzimisce, remains dear to us. There is power in place, but it’s not the sort of power immortals of your Highness’s rank concern themselves with. It’s not found in crops or taxes or pilgrim’s coins or even in the throngs of mortal denizens. It is something more elemental, if you will.”

  Jürgen only grunted. “I daresay Hungary’s hardly the only place with such power.”

  “Not the only place, no.”

  “And where stands Livonia on the list?” As Jervais struggled to formulate an answer that would sound neither ominous nor patently untrue, the prince continued. “I couldn’t help noticing that the information you so kindly provided us a few years ago was rather specific. Specific enough to show some study had been made of the subject. Am I wrong in thinking your kind rarely studies anything in vain?”

  “No, Highness. Not wrong in the slightest,” Jervais agreed, relieved not to have to answer after all.

  “Then why?”

  “Your Highness, I was ordered…” He paused, reconsidered the wording, but decided in the end not to change it. “Ordered to do whatever was necessary to regain your trust. And you’ve made it perfectly plain just what sort of man you are. Words will not suffice, only deeds. Am I wrong in thinking that?”

  “No,” Jürgen said, acknowledging the echo of his words with a wry look.

  “No. Good. And I knew that Livonia might prove a, a troubling spot to your Highness, and so it seemed to me prudent to gather as much as I could on Qarakh and his compatriots. Indeed with your Highness’s permission, I’m prepared to go further yet. That is, if your Highness is not quite done in Livonia.”

  He faded to a halt. The room seemed to tighten inexplicably around them, an oppressive squeezing. Even Jürgen bent his back under its force, leaning his elbows on his knees.

  “No,” Jürgen said at last. “No, I am not quite done in Livonia.”

  Jervais smiled. “I’m glad to hear it, Highness.”

  Jürgen sat up again. “I must assume, then,” he said, “that this offer of alliance which you’ve spoken of to Lady Rosamund, and now to me, is officially on the table.”

  “Yes, Highness,” he said eagerly. “Indeed it is. You need but say the word…”

  The prince held up a hand at that. “I’m quite convinced of your enthusiasm, Meister Tremere. But if enthusiasm alone were enough for conquest, we should have had it by now. What makes you think that the Tremere can stand against this Qarakh? After all, he’s now slain an ancient, one of the
eldest forebears of my clan.”

  “Yes, but he could not have done so without aid, milord, as your own lieutenant pointed out.”

  “So you agree that there was sorcerous aid.”

  Jervais blinked, surprised. What was afoot now? “Of course, Highness,” he replied cautiously. “Remove that aid, and you can break the very back of his little kingdom.”

  “And that’s what you are proposing—to remove the aid.”

  “Of course.”

  “One is forced to wonder what gives you such confidence in your ability to do so.” A sour note of suspicion had crept back into Jürgen’s voice—the last thing Jervais wanted.

  Perhaps, then, it was time to name a name of his own. “Your Highness, Deverra is a sorceress of some power, and may have truck with spirits of even greater power, but—”

  “Deverra?”

  “Yes, milord. We’ve learned her name, and several other noteworthy things about her, since I spoke with the Lady Rosamund during your Hungarian campaign.” A lie, of course. He’d known Deverra’s name himself for over a century now, and others in the House and Clan had known it for even longer, but he’d decided to hold the fact in reserve until it might be needed. Now seemed a good moment.

  “Oh, really. And yet you didn’t think it necessary to mention at that time that there was a sorceress in the first place?” Jürgen turned a sudden glare on him.

  Oh.

  Jervais felt as though he’d been splashed with ice-water. His mouth of its own accord sought to form itself into a startled little o, which he tried to smooth out before Jürgen saw. Damnation—if he’d only caught it a moment earlier, he could have not said anything, could have gone to her afterward and—