Death's Avenger

by Charlotte E. English

  Konrad could not have said what impulse had brought him to study it. He knew what the man looked like, having seen him in the flesh — even if it had been dead, only partially reanimated flesh at the time. But he stood before the painting anyway, and gazed long at it.

  It was a handsome piece, and large; it took up several square feet in space. The frame was ornate, heavy and gilded, and the painting itself scarcely less grand. Jakub Vasilescu was depicted in a noble pose, his chin high, hair elaborately coiffed. He wore the garments of centuries past: a long velvet coat, a braided waistcoat with many polished buttons, stockings and buckled shoes. The living man, captured in oils, had a vibrancy and energy about him that had been absent from his wasted, preserved corpse, but the eyes were the same: penetrating, dark and merciless.

  Here was a man to unite a family. Everything about him spoke of a strong will, a ruthless nature and a relentless ambition. You would follow such a man, die for such a man.

  Having hardly glanced at the painting before, Konrad now began to see why the Vasilescu might be so desirous of bringing this man back. One only had to make the most cursory inspection of their empty, cobweb-ridden house to see how their fortunes had faded. And who among the living could take this man’s place? Not Ela Vasilescu, who despised everything about her family. Not Olya, who for all her determination was only the second of three daughters. Not Denis Druganin, a man too distracted by his repulsive predilections to excel at, or even care for, leadership. If the Vasilescu fortunes were to be revived, they needed this man.

  Or someone like him.

  Konrad went back to the main hall, thoughtful.

  ‘Come, Konrad,’ said Diana, with a touch of impatience, as he reappeared. ‘Please call your serpents to order.’

  ‘Why, what are they doing?’

  For answer, Diana merely pointed a single finger upwards.

  Konrad raised his eyes to the ceiling.

  The many, ancient cobwebs that drifted from corner to corner had caught his serpents’ attention. Seemingly they had grown bored, as Eetapi had wreathed herself in puffs of spider’s webs and now sailed from wall to wall, swaying dreamily from side to side. She herself might be invisible but the cobwebs were not; the effect was, even to Konrad’s informed eye, disturbing. Ootapi had chosen to decorate the walls rather than himself, and was halfway through arranging a mass of tattered, silvery spider-silks into a design no doubt macabre.

  Konrad chose to speak aloud, for the benefit of Alexander and Nanda. ‘Stop that, Eetapi. Ootapi, leave it alone.’

  But, Master, hissed Ootapi. It is almost finished!

  ‘It would be better for everyone if your masterpiece remained incomplete, I have no doubt.’

  Moments later, Konrad felt something airy brush past his ears, and settle in his hair. Eetapi had chosen to express her disdain by shedding her cloak of cobwebs upon his head.

  He brushed them away, trying to keep a grip upon his temper. ‘Diana,’ he growled. ‘If I were to apply for new help, what are the chances that you might oblige me?’

  ‘Fairly high.’

  Chastened, the serpents drifted sulkily after Konrad as he stepped back out into the dull grey light of midday, drawing his coat tighter around himself.

  You would not truly replace us, Master? whispered Eetapi dolefully.

  Konrad felt a twinge of remorse. No, he answered. Though there are times when I am sorely tempted.

  Chapter Five

  The walk through the snow-laden pines surrounding the house, culminating as it did in the descent into the darkness of the caves, struck Konrad as eerily familiar. Everything was too much the same: the sounds of his companions’ passage through the blanketing snow, muffled by ongoing snowfall; the dark shapes of the fir trees, stark against the prevailing white; the sudden cessation of daylight as he followed Tasha into the narrow passage that led into the depths, and the flicker of wan torchlight upon the rock walls. Had it only been a week since he had last made this journey? Less? It could have been the same day, the same hour, save that this new incursion comprised greater numbers, greater strength.

  He hoped it would be enough.

  Tasha led the way. She walked with a reassuring confidence, as though she knew exactly where she was and where she was going. She had explored extensively only a handful of days ago, though not in her corporeal form. Some part of the caves had eluded even her reach, however, and those must be the areas inhabited by the coven. Somehow, they would have to do better today.

  Serpents, Konrad said, once every member of their group had passed into the dark silence of the caves. We rely on you to discover the coven. Find them, please, and take note of their location.

  That could take days, Master, said Ootapi. You do not know how extensive these passageways are?

  Consult with Tasha. She has searched many of them already, and knows where it is futile to look.

  He detected a hint of disdain, or perhaps it was merely dissatisfaction, in the words, Yes, Master, uttered by Ootapi in long-suffering tones. But away sailed the serpents, Diana’s fox chasing at their tails.

  The route Tasha followed was familiar to Konrad: she was retracing their earlier steps into the large cave where they had, not long ago, encountered Jakub Vasilescu, a man not nearly as dead as he should have been. As the walls of the passage fell away and the confined space opened up into the wide, high-ceilinged cave Konrad remembered, he noticed at once a difference. Whereas before, the chamber had been largely sunk in darkness, now it was brightly lit. Torches set into the walls at regular intervals gave off a bright, cheery glow, though for whose benefit Konrad could not have said, for the cave was empty.

  The dais upon which Jakub Vasilescu had lain was still there, ringed in a halo of light. To his surprise, a body lay there.

  He paused. Diana walked directly behind him; he waited for her to join him, and whispered: ‘Did you not remove the corpse that lay here?’

  ‘I did.’ She frowned, gestured to Lev and Anichka, and advanced upon the dais, Konrad at her side. They prepared for trouble, alert and ready to counter any threat that may emerge.

  None did. Alexander and Nanda consented to fall a little behind the Malykt’s Order as they advanced, though Tasha, with her usual insouciance, beat them all to the dais. ‘Different body, methinks,’ she offered.

  It was indeed. Different in form, feature, and… freshness. Konrad’s mind formed the latter word with distaste. Whereas Jakub’s body had been marked by the yellowed, withered skin and waxy demeanour of the long, long dead, the woman that lay in his former place looked as though she might have died only this morning. Her pale skin had not yet lost the vitality of life and health, and her slightly greying dark hair was full and glossy, spread over the dark rock of the bier. She was as richly clad as her predecessor, though in more recent fashions: a gown of dark purple silk, buttoned up to the throat and ornamented with lace; polished black boots; jewels of gleaming jet. She looked so healthy, in fact, that Konrad doubted her condition. Was she dead?

  Yes. He watched closely, but failed to discern any movements of her torso, however slight. She was as still as a marble statue, not breathing.

  Konrad briefly regretted having dispensed with his serpents, however urgent their errand.

  ‘She looks familiar,’ said Nanda softly.

  Alexander nodded. ‘There is a resemblance to… to Eino’s mother.’

  He was right. Konrad, too, had noticed it, though his mind had not been so quick to make the connection with the living as the inspector’s. The woman had the same hair as Alina Holt, nee Vasilescu, and her features were similar.

  ‘Ela?’ suggested Nanda.

  ‘Or Olya,’ said Alexander grimly. ‘I believe it to be one of the sisters, certainly.’

  Three sisters Vasilescu, at least two of them dead. Alina, the youngest, had been slain by her own family… or had she? They had not yet determined exactly who had carried out the macabre massacre of Alina and Eino Holt and their erstwhile guests. Had
Olya Vasilescu been responsible? Konrad had assumed, perhaps unfairly, that she led the coven that hid itself away beneath her family’s ancestral home. Was he correct, or had she been supplanted? Was it she who lay here, slain by her own fellows? Or had they somehow discovered the whereabouts of the eldest sister, Ela, and tracked her down?

  Tasha spoke, a warning note in her low voice. ‘There’s something odd about her. I cannot say what, but I would… step back.’ Tasha retreated a little from the dais as she spoke, which was sufficient to alarm Konrad. Tasha feared nothing, and hardly knew the meaning of the word “caution”.

  Nanda threw her a startled look and followed suit, as did the inspector. Konrad, however, stood his ground, as did Diana and her necromancers. He reached for his spirit vision, and sight faded; instead of rock and skin and cloth he saw searing white light and deep black shadow, his eyes looking now into the spirit world.

  No shades lingered near the dais. The corpse, traced now in shadows and lights, lay alone and unattended.

  This ought to have reassured Konrad, but he felt a moment’s disquiet. It made no sense. Why was this woman here, if her soul had passed already into The Malykt’s hands? If she had lately died — or been, by some means, slain — and merely awaited burial, why had she been left in this spot? It was as though she had been placed there deliberately, in expectation of discovery. Konrad knew that he was meant to find her, meant to examine her — meet her? He could not have said. The coven’s motives remained impenetrably obscure.

  Still, if he could neither see nor sense a shade attached to this particular corpse, then it was probably all it appeared to be: nothing but dead flesh. He permitted his spirit-sight to fade once more, and stood blinking in the aftermath, an unpleasant thought worming its way through his attempts at tranquillity.

  If his fingers had ceased to obey him as they should… could he rely on his spirit-sight? What if that, too, had weakened? Just because he had not detected a spirit adrift, did that absolutely mean that there was not one?

  He was relieved to note, when he had wrested his mind away from such unhelpful reflections, that this particular corpse had not yet turned talkative.

  Diana looked hard at him. ‘All is well?’

  Konrad could only shrug. ‘I think so.’

  Tasha’s voice split the air, sharp and penetrating. ‘This way.’ The words came from some little distance away, echoing down dark passages. How far had she gone? Konrad hastened to reach her, for her tone clearly announced that she had found something. The coven? Some danger?

  No. Another bier, and another body. He hurried down two winding passageways, each torchlit like the cavern, and emerged into a second cave-chamber, rather smaller than the first. A low dais dominated the centre of the room, and upon it lay a second dead woman. Konrad recognised the coarse, dark blue dress and white cap that she wore: she’d been a maid at the great house until, perhaps, two days ago. His experienced gaze detected the signs of a day’s decay and more; dark bruising around her throat proclaimed the manner of her death. She was young, perhaps not even twenty years old.

  Konrad took in the scene in grim silence.

  ‘There will be more,’ said Alexander quietly.

  ‘Many more, I fear,’ Konrad agreed, for what the two corpses represented was the beginnings of a trail.

  No; more than two. The mutilated bodies at the gates had been the start. Now they were being led, body by body, deeper into the depths of the caves. Straight into the clutches of the coven.

  Serpents? Konrad called, but though he sent the word as far and wide as he could, no reply came.

  Tasha had hardly waited for her companions to catch up before she had dashed away again. Soon her voice came echoing back, much as before. Diana, Lev and Anichka went on, but Nanda and Alexander remained with Konrad.

  He’d paused to look for the maid’s spirit, should it happen to linger still. But of her ghost there was no sign.

  He hesitated.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nanda asked, with a narrow look at him.

  Konrad glanced at the inspector. ‘I… do not know what to do. I need…’ He gestured at the unlucky maid’s torso, trying to indicate his duty to wrest a bone from her without having to say the words.

  Alexander smiled faintly. ‘You need not tiptoe around me.’

  True. It was too late to hide any part of himself from Inspector Nuritov. ‘She is clearly murdered, and I ought to take a bone. As I ought from Olya, or Ela, whichever she is. But—’

  ‘There isn’t time for that,’ Nanda said, already walking away from him, in the direction that Tasha had gone.

  ‘It is my duty to deliver justice.’

  ‘So you will. Later.’ She did not slow down.

  Konrad answered Alexander’s bland look with a small sigh, and followed Nanda.

  They traversed many more winding passages and three more expansive cave-chambers in similar fashion. Each cavern held a bier with a newly-dead corpse, most of them erstwhile staff at the house. Sickened by the extent of the carnage, and deeply disturbed at what it might betoken, Konrad maintained an increasingly grim silence. Nowhere could he discern any trace of a lingering spirit, which began to trouble him as well. Murder led to unquiet spirits, and they often tarried at the site of their death, unable to understand or accept what had happened to them. It was part of the reason for Konrad’s existence: his task was to shepherd such agitated spirits upon their way, in part by granting them the justice they so badly needed.

  So many corpses and yet no attendant ghosts made him uneasy. Either his worst fears were true, and his spirit-sight was failing him; or something else was at work, something he had never before encountered.

  Perhaps an hour had passed since they had entered the caves, and their route — guided, in such macabre fashion, by their quarry — had taken them along a winding trail, ever deeper down. Konrad did not think he imagined that they were journeying in a loose spiral, aiming, perhaps, for some dark heart at the centre of the caves.

  ‘Konrad.’ Tasha’s voice again, emanating from the depths of the shadows wreathing the mouth of the next dimly torchlit passage.

  He broke into a run, pushing past Diana and Lev, and arrived, breathless with exertion and cold and alarm, in yet another cave. But this one was the size of his own parlour at home, and fitted up in similar fashion. Its occupant corpse lay not upon a cold stone bier but upon a silk-upholstered divan, and it was handsomely dressed.

  ‘Did we not earmark this gentleman for a good, solid burning?’ Tasha demanded.

  Konrad swallowed. ‘I… thought we did.’ For it was Jakub Vasilescu lying there.

  Diana looked thunderous — and disquieted. ‘I gave orders for him to be taken out of here.’

  Konrad thought he could read her thoughts. Had something befallen the men and women she had sent in to remove the erstwhile head of the Vasilescu family? Would she soon be forced to stare into their dead eyes, and wish she had taken more care?

  His own thoughts wandered down a slightly different road. Serpents, he called, sharply, but still no reply came.

  He drifted nearer to Diana. ‘Have you been hearing from Martita?’

  ‘Not for the past hour.’ She did not ask after his serpents; his tone, and his subsequent silence, told her enough. She straightened from her scrutiny of Jakub’s corpse — mercifully inert, this time — and said crisply: ‘Lev, Anichka. I need you to reanimate this one.’

  ‘Surely they cannot,’ said Konrad. ‘I sent his spirit into The Master’s care myself.’

  Diana made to speak, but Konrad held up a hand, for a slithering voice that moment sounded in his mind. Master, something is gravely amiss.

  You think so? Konrad returned, more tartly than he ought.

  We have found no one alive, Ootapi continued, ignoring Konrad with admirable grace. But we have found many, many that are dead. They are everywhere.

  I know, we have encountered a few of them ourselves.

  You do not understand.
That was Eetapi, in a splintering tone that set his teeth on edge. Come deeper down, Master, into the darkest places. Then you will see.

  Konrad relayed this. Something flickered across Diana’s face — recognition? Dread? But she said only: ‘We go on. Quickly.’

  Tasha sped on, and Konrad fell in behind. Despite his serpents’ assurance that nothing was left alive, he felt a sense of impending danger that grew with every step he took. As he strode deeper into the caverns, passing several more silent corpses stretched upon cold funeral biers, he let his Malykant’s powers ripple to the fore. His stride lengthened and ate up the ground; strength washed through his wearied limbs; his mind cleared, focused, and his fears melted away.

  Then Eetapi appeared, shimmering sickly white in his mind’s eye. In here, Master. She streamed through one of three yawning arches, and Konrad followed.

  The chamber beyond shone with warm, welcoming light, and unlike the rest of the labyrinth it was comfortably warm. The source of the heat was a series of fireplaces dug at regular intervals into the walls, each roaring with a cosy blaze. That alone was odd, for if nobody was alive down there, who was tending the fires?

  ‘Mercy,’ gasped Nanda, and stopped upon the threshold.

  The floor was covered with corpses. They were neatly arranged, evenly spaced, and all in the same posture: supine, their eyes closed, legs outstretched and their arms lying by their sides. It was less as though someone had placed each body in that pose; more as though they had arranged themselves, all lain down together and… and died.

  You are sure they are all dead? Konrad asked of his serpents. The display reminded him of another, earlier case: when he had first encountered the lamaeni people. He’d found a room not unlike this, filled with apparently deceased bodies — only they had not been. They had merely done as Tasha so often did: separated their spirit-selves from their physical selves, and wandered off in the former state, leaving their bodies temporarily behind. Perhaps such was the case here.

  Stone dead, said Ootapi, dashing that idea. Are they not lovely? It is like a field of flowers.