Blackest Spells

by Phipps, C. T.

  “Hey, what about the little guy?” one of them asked.

  “Forget him, this one looks like he could pull an oar better,” replied the one who had hit me. “Come on, I’m gonna need some help.”

  “That man’s a murderer, you fool!” I shouted.

  “Yeah, well, so are we,” said the third, a veritable mountain of flesh. “So don’t give us any trouble.”

  I have no time for this, I thought, as I surged forward and slammed my fingers, stiff like a board, into his throat. He went down with a gurgling cry. The next swung at me and missed as I ducked, then hammered a foot into his jaw. I heard the crack of bone as his head tilted to an impossible angle. The last simply stood, stunned and mouth agape, as I struck. I grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the wall. He clawed at my grip as I ground my thumbs into his throat, our faces so close that our noses nearly touched. Terrified, confused eyes, stared back at me, unable to understand how it had come to this.

  “It seems we all have something in common!” I said as I released him. He slid down the wall, still clutching at his throat, slowly realizing that he would never draw breath again.

  I rushed to the end of the alleyway, but there was no sign of the Soothsayer. He had known, somehow, that these men would be here, had known just where to go to delay me. I realized, with a chill, that he must have known he would meet me before I had ever arrived.

  There was no point in trying to pick up his trail. He could be anywhere by now, and at any rate, why should I even care? Let the Soothsayer kill all he wanted. Until someone offered me enough money to make it worth my while, it wasn’t my concern.

  I spent a while walking off my anger. It began to rain, and at first I welcomed it, but before long, it became simply miserable. After an hour or two, cold, wet, and in a foul mood, I decided I had been sufficiently punished for my stupidity, and I made my way to Thull’s. Warm, yellow light from the oil lanterns and roaring fire spilled from the open door, lighting the weather-worn shingle and beckoning all fools and mad dogs to take solace from the downpour. I walked in and took my usual seat at the end of the bar, leaving a trail of muddy footprints behind me.

  Thull was standing watch, polishing a glass with a towel, his huge hands making the sturdy pint mug he was holding seem more like a child’s cup. He was built like a moose, an inch or so taller than I, and close to three hundred pounds, all of it bone and muscle. He was in his fifties and long retired from the army, but unlike most old soldiers, he had kept himself in fine shape. I could have beaten him in a fight, mind you, but I wouldn’t have arm-wrestled him, not even with heavy odds. As I slid onto the stool, he looked my way and grinned, exposing perfect, white teeth that fairly glowed against his almost black skin.

  “You look like shit, Lucian,” he said, his deep, rumbling voice filling the room. He wiped his towel over his glistening, bald head, then tossed it my way. I snagged it out of the air and made use of it.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” He poured a shot of vodka and brought it over. “Little late for you tonight, ain’t it? You out running in that mess?”

  “Every night.” I traded him the towel for the vodka and knocked it back. It was just what I needed. “Had some thinking to do, took a long walk afterward. What’s new?”

  “They say the Soothsayer got another one tonight. What’s that, like thirty now?”

  As they say, bad news travels fast.

  “Thirty-three,” I told him, scowling and gesturing for a refill, not particularly happy at being reminded that the bastard had outfoxed me. Thull shook his head and poured another.

  “Somebody’s got to do something about him,” he said quietly.

  I stared down at my drink, saying nothing.

  “I seen him, ya know,” called snaggle-toothed Sal from across the room.

  “You ain’t seen nobody, you liar,” another patron retorted. “Everybody knows the Soothsayer is invisible. How else ya reckon he creeps up on people?”

  “Fuck you, I seen him!” Sal bawled, angry now. “Seen him grab a feller down the canal last week! He ain’t invisible! Some guys I know even follered him home one night! He’s a man, like you and me!”

  Before long, they were all arguing over it. The Soothsayer was a demon, or a vampire, or an invisible spirit. He could fly and walk through walls. He could see into your soul. He could walk on water. But one thing they all agreed on was that Sal had definitely not seen him. The poor old drunk turned to me for help.

  “You believe me, don’tcha, Lucian?” His eyes implored me to impart some measure of credibility to his story. Well, there was no harm in it, and it was important to Sal. Perhaps, later, he would be grateful and do me a favor in return. At least he had the time scale right. The Soothsayer had murdered a bum about five days before. Maybe he had thought his lie out well enough to have an entertaining story to tell.

  “You’ve never lied to me before, Sal, not that I know of anyway,” I said. That much was true, for what it was worth. “Tell us what you saw.”

  “Well, like I said, I was down the canal—”

  “Ah shut up, ya old windbag,” suggested the patron who had started the whole mess.

  I heard a whistle in the air behind me, but I was not concerned enough to turn. I had been a regular here long enough to know the sound. One of Thull’s heavy mugs streaked across the bar and slammed into the chest of Sal’s heckler. The man fell over in his chair and spilled onto the floor, gasping. One of his companions tossed the mug, none the worse for wear, back to the old barkeep, who took a bow to a round of applause.

  “Next time, I’m gonna put it upside your head, boy,” Thull admonished once the clapping was done. “Now shut up and let the man speak.”

  Sal cleared his throat, waiting for total silence, then continued. “So I was down there, tryin ta hit up the sailors for some rum or maybe a few coppers, and one of em give me a bottle of sumpin, I dunno what it was, but it warn’t bad. I drank most of it, and, well, then I decided to have me a nap, so I climbed up in a stack of tarps they had layin along the pier.

  “Well, I wake up, and it’s real late. I dunno what time, but late. And I hear some kind of scuffle, so I peek out, just my eyes, and I see him. He’s got this old feller slung over his shoulder like a sack o ‘taters, and I couldn’t tell if he was dead or asleep, but he warn’t fightin him none.”

  “How’d you know it was him, Sal?” Thull asked, interested despite himself.

  “I’m gettin to it,” Sal said. “So anyways, he flops this guy on the ground next to a lamp pole, and then I can see him good, and he’s cut wide open like the rest of em. Then he pulls out a knife. It’s glowin all green, like some kinda evil thing. And he starts cuttin out the poor bastard’s….” Sal’s grimaced, obviously distressed, took a swig of whiskey, then continued, “You know what he does.”

  Everyone nodded. The Soothsayer gutted his victims, and left the entrails in curiously arranged heaps near the bodies, hence the moniker.

  “Well, I just couldn’t stand it. I come out from under them tarps and I yelled out, ‘Here, you! What’re you doin?’ just as loud as I could. I reckon it was stupid, but I did it. And he stops and looks at me, and he just laughs, and he says, ‘I’ll be comin after you soon enough, Sal’. Knew my name, I tell ya!”

  “Oh, bullshit!” someone yelled from the back of the bar.

  “Shut up!” I shouted. The speaker ducked his head and tried to present as small a target as possible for Thull, but the barkeep, now fully caught up in Sal’s tale, was too distracted to do more than wave a glass menacingly in the air while waiting for Sal to continue.

  “What’d he look like, Sal?” asked the first heckler, who had either been converted, or was trying to regain Thull’s good graces.

  “He was ugly, that’s for sure. Raggedy clothes, and tangled up hair all hangin in his eyes. Looked just like a bum, mostly, like me I reckon, but younger. He was all whisperin and grabbing at his shirt, and he had eyes like some kind of f
iend, crazy eyes, like he’d pull out your soul if you looked in em long enough.”

  The scream came just as Sal finished his sentence and was drawing breath for the next. It rattled the windows in their frames, and the teeth of every man in the place. I am certain that at least one reveler lost control of his bladder, and the rest of us were closer than we would care to admit.

  My mind shifted immediately into combat mode, categorizing the scream, and calculating angles: female, terrified, unmoving, perhaps twenty yards away, too coherent for an attack. Over and over she screamed, and then, as suddenly as it began, there was silence.

  Sal gave voice to my suspicion. “A silver says the Soothsayer’s been out in this storm.”

  I rose and headed for the door, with most of the clientele and Thull following behind me. Almost exactly twenty yards from the bar, in a darkened alley, we found them, two dead.

  No, I corrected myself, one was still alive. She was lying unconscious on the ground, most likely fainted from screaming. There could be no mistake about the second, however. Several drunks, already struggling to keep their stomachs, gave up their dinners on the spot.

  She had been slaughtered like game, slit from crotch to chin and gutted. She dangled upside down, nude, a rope cinched about her feet and looped over the arm of a lantern post, just like all the others. Her long, once blond hair was now red, drenched in her own blood. It dangled gently against the ground, blood dripping from it and mixing with the dirty water as she swayed to and fro in the light breeze.

  The worst, by far, however, was the sight of her eyes, flung wide open in horror that had not dulled even in the glaze of death that hung over them now. Her features were forever locked into a final mask of the agony she had known in the last moments of her life. Though I could not be certain without a more complete examination of the body, the wound edges suggested she had been alive and conscious through most of it. It was the most brutal killing I had ever seen, and I had seen far more than my fair share.

  “Ilaweh give us strength,” Thull whispered.

  I bent to examine the living woman. She appeared whole enough, so I tossed her over my shoulder and carried her inside. Thull led me to his back room, where we laid her on a table and roused her with smelling salts, then pumped some strong liquor into her until she could speak.

  She was a whore, not very surprising considering the locale and her dress. Her name was Alicia, and she was a pitiful thing, perhaps fifteen, and absolutely terrified. Young, indeed, but in her eyes was that hard, bitter glint that street people, especially whores, acquire early in life, a keen awareness that death, in one guise or another, is a constant neighbor: random violence, disease, starvation, and lately, the Soothsayer.

  I felt an uncharacteristic pang of guilt as I considered the life to which these people were condemned. I had been there once myself, twenty years before, struggling for survival in the pitiless streets. I had known their desperation first hand, yet, for months, I had stood by while the Soothsayer had butchered them. Had I truly surrendered so much of my soul, I wondered, that I could not expend the effort to hunt down and destroy this unnatural predator, this thing that killed without rhyme or reason?

  “Her name was Cheri,” the girl said softly, head bowed, as she ran her fingers through her fiery red tresses. She spoke mechanically, the words seeming to hold no meaning for her. “She was nineteen. She looked after us, ya know, called us her little sisters. She had friends and stuff, people who could keep pimps like Hammer in line.” Then, as if suddenly awakening from a nightmare, her head snapped up, eyes clouded with rage and grief as she glared at me, tears leaving tracks in her thick makeup, throat working as she swallowed.

  “Why?” she whispered. “Why don’t somebody stop him?” Her voice rose to a shriek, and she tore her hair in frustration. “‘Cause we’re easy, ‘cause nobody gives a fuck if we live or die!” She doubled over and put her arms behind her head, rocking back and forth in a frenzy of anguish.

  Was she a reader of minds, this child, that she hurled my own thoughts back at me like stones? But no, she was simply voicing her misery to the skies, at no one in particular, or perhaps at everyone.

  Looking back, I remember this single, powerful moment as a turning point in my life. I will not make the claim of having ever been a good man, but I have certainly been more evil than I am now. As I listened to a child far too wise for her age crying against the wretchedness, the savagery of the world I had come to accept, I was forced to re-evaluate a few things.

  I pulled a coin from my pocket and regarded it for a moment, admiring the graven image of a kris piercing a crown. It was my own design, my calling card. I took it between my thumb and forefinger and gave it a thump, setting it spinning on the table.

  “How much money do you have, girl?” I asked at last.

  She eyed me with distrust, the street in her telling her not to answer. The coin slowed, drawing her gaze as it flipped on its side and gyrated a moment, then stopped. Her eyes widened in alarm as she recognized the image and made the inevitable connection with my own grim stare.

  She swallowed again and stared at the floor, doubtless wondering what retribution I planned to take upon her for her disrespect. “Not enough,” she whispered.

  “A hundred crowns?” The sum was so paltry to me as to be meaningless, yet I knew it was a fortune to her. So be it. Death should never be cheap.

  She looked up at me then, her eyes deep green wells of hope and sorrow, not quite daring to believe I was serious.

  “But—” she said, then swallowed hard and continued. “I heard you charged millions….”

  “Do you have the money or not, girl?”

  “I got fifty,” she said. She drew her purse from between her breasts and offered it, pleading. “But I can get more!”

  I took the purse and emptied the contents into my hand, five silver coins, most likely a month’s earnings for a woman in her business. The pimps took most of what they made, leaving them with just enough to survive.

  “Half in advance, the other half payable when the job is finished,” I said. “Gods help you if you don’t have it.”

  “I’ll have it!” she assured me, her eyes once again filled with hatred. “You make him suffer, make him fear like Cheri before he dies!”

  I put the coins back into the little purse and hung it on my belt. As little as it meant, it bound a contract. I was her instrument, and could kill in her name, a purely professional distinction, to be sure, but one that had always been of great import to me.

  “Name your proof,” I told her.

  “I want his head,” she replied without the slightest hesitation. “I’m gonna have it stuffed and mounted on my wall.”

  I bowed to her and said, “It shall be so, madam.”

  As I turned to leave, she said gently, “Sir? Mr. Lenoir?”

  “Yes?”

  She was crying again, the hot tears welling in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I nodded and left her to her grief.

  Thull followed me into the street, where at last he spoke.

  “It’s a good thing, you’re doing, Lucian.”

  “But I should have done it before, shouldn’t I?” I shot back. “I should have killed him months ago. Too little too late, that’s how it feels.”

  Thull stared at me as if he had never seen me before, then shook his head in amazement. “It’s never too late to turn things around,” he said.

  “You offering me salvation, bartender?”

  “Just a drink before you go, if you want,” said Thull. “I ain’t no savior.”

  I waved off his offer and turned to leave. “Neither am I.”

  Murmandimus pulled the sheet back over Cheri’s face, done with his reading. “Why?” he asked. His voice was calm and soothing, as always, but with the hint of some deeper motive now.

  “I need to see it,” I told him.

  The mage eyed me with a curious stare, the dim firelight
reflecting from his metallic, pupilless eyes as he considered the issue.

  “It’s very disturbing. I could just describe it to you, you know.”

  “I can handle it.”

  With a shrug, he leaned forward, reached his hands toward me and placed his long, delicate fingers against my temples. I felt a slight shock as each touched my skin. He paused, his eyes now a pale green.

  “I’m not exaggerating. Are you certain? This could cause you some trauma.”

  “Just do it.”

  He nodded. His eyes drained of color, back to quicksilver, and the world about me faded to elsewhere.

  It was perhaps ten minutes of experience that Murmandimus had pieced together during his brief reading of her body, the final moments of her life. As his power coursed through my mind, I lived those moments as Cheri, saw the Soothsayer again, through her eyes this time. I saw the blood, heard the screams, felt her horror, her pain, all of it. I knew every aspect of what it was to suffer her fate. Darkness closed in upon me, and I gasped a last, feeble cry, feeling my own life slipping away in a haze of agony beyond anything I had ever known. Then, there was nothing.

  When at last I came to my senses once again, I found myself lying on the floor. Murmandimus, inscrutable, sat comfortably in his chair, watching as I shook the fog from my head and rose, my own body feeling strange and unfamiliar.

  “Was it worth it?” he asked. “Did you find what you seek?”

  “There was no way to tell where the place was,” I said. “The windows were boarded.”

  “That’s not what you were looking for,” Murmandimus noted. “Have you found your justification for your intended action? Your motivation?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”