by Dmitry Bilik
I lifted her up lightly and set her onto her good leg. She looked around, hopped over to one of the rocks and slumped onto it. “Go take a look at what he dropped.”
I was actually already on my way to the little pile of ashes which kept shrinking despite the fact that there was no wind here to disperse them. I picked up Talsian’s sword but immediately snatched my hand back: the blade felt red-hot as if it had just left the swordsmith’s forge.
Arts frowned. “Whassup?”
“It’s hot!”
“Can I take a look?”
I scooped the sword up and lobbed it to her. She caught it in mid-flight with both hands and began studying it. After a while, she stopped and raised her head.
“When it rains, it pours,” she said. “This Talsian must have been a decent spell modifier. He charmed his sword all by himself.”
“What kind of magic is it, let me guess,” I said sarcastically, pressing my burned fingers to the lobe of my ear. “Aha! It’s blood magic! It has already put me off steak for a year.”
“Your insight knows no bounds,” she replied in kind. “Of course it’s blood magic plus his own Dark karma that also played a part. So for you Lighties this sword is sorta cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“Not in the true sense of the word, no. It’s just that you can’t use it. Just imagine it as an unruly adult dog and yourself as a newbie pet owner. The dog just won’t obey you.”
“I see. By taking it, I would be biting off more than I could chew.”
“Sort of.”
“You can have it if you want,” I said.
“I don’t think so! You’ve no idea what kind of magic might still be lurking within it. I really don’t want it to activate at the worst possible moment. It would be better to sell it,” her eyes lit up with the kind of greed Scrooge would have been proud of. “Eighty percent to you and twenty to me, for arranging it.”
“Okay, go ahead. I didn’t expect anything else from you, anyway. You really think there is demand for this sort of thing?”
“Sure. You don’t think that Talsian is the only blood mage around, do you? There must be Players prepared to pay hundreds of grams for a sword like this. It’s just a question of time.”
She promptly slid it into her inventory while I bent over the malefic’s ashes. I picked up 140 grams of dust and shoved it into my own bag, feeling no remorse for not sharing it with Arts. This was one simple truth that had already been hammered into me: if you kill a Player, everything he or she drops is your property. It’s nothing to do with greed or selfishness. It’s just the way it is.
Something glinted amid the ashes. Overcoming my nausea, I rummaged through the mage’s remains and fished out a large well-worn brooch shaped like a butterfly. Just a piece of cheap costume jewelry, and an old one at that.
I took a better look at it. Its front wings were so dark they were almost black; its rear wings were yellow with two parallel dark lines.
I turned the brooch over and saw a pattern on the butterfly’s chest shaped like a human skull. Talk about horrendous beauty. I shoved it into my inventory too.
“Now what?” Arts asked.
Her question had the effect of an electric shock because deep inside I divined the meaning she’d invested in it. There were only two options available to us. We could either split up so that I could go and fetch the guards while the girl kept an eye on any survivors.
Or we could just split, period.
I focused, searching my own heart for an answer which came surprisingly quickly: the kind of solution which would suit everyone involved.
“I’m gonna use my Map Making skill to set up a marker here,” I said. “Once we get to Heraclea, we’ll forward the information to the guards and leg it. I won’t be able to save both you and all these people on my own. And it would be pointless leaving you here because you won’t be able to help them, anyway. The sooner we get to the guards, the bigger their chances of survival.”
You’ve taken the next step toward acquiring the Leadership ability.
Arts nodded and pointed at one of the new victims lying by the entrance. He was a skinny young lad in a pair of torn jeans and a light jacket. His cheekbone was caked in blood, his nose flattened to one side, obviously broken. Talsian hadn’t worn kid gloves with his victims.
Still, there was something else about him, judging by the inscription hovering over his head:
???
Observer
“Well, what did you want?” I said. “That’s exactly how one becomes a Player. You’d better give me your hand and let’s get the hell out of here.”
The climb up the rocky slope took us a while. Not because of Arts who seemed to be warming to her role as a one-legged pirate, hopping from one ledge to the next. It’s just that the terrain was a real nightmare. It was a miracle how Talsian himself had never broken a leg here.
Once we’d climbed to a relatively level platform, I activated Map Making. The mist of war covering the area had now disappeared — probably because Talsian had already dragged us through here all the way to his lair. All we had to do was follow the light-colored trail back. After a mere fifteen minutes’ trot, we found ourselves back on the road, at the exact same spot where the malefic had injured Arts and killed her snapdrake. We even saw the traces of blood still left on the tarmac. The snapdrake was gone.
“I wonder if my snapdrake is still hanging around here somewhere?” I wondered.
“Even if he is, you won’t be able to catch him,” Arts perched herself on the guard rail. “He has his own master, that fat guy from Heraclea. He was the one who caught and tamed him, so that’s where he’ll go back to. We’d better hitch a ride.”
I wish it were that simple! I stood on the roadside for a good twenty minutes before the first car drove past. “Past” being the operative word. Two more then flashed by, with the same result. And I’d tried everything, I tell you. I used my Disguise to try all kinds of appearances, from a young lad to a frail old man. But as Bumpkin would have said, I seemed to have chanced upon some particularly fussy Greeks. So I really had no other choice than to disguise myself as...
“Hi baby,” the next driver said, lowering his window as he pulled up in his white Toyota. He was in his forties, his snow white teeth as brilliant against the backdrop of his bronze skin as two sticks of Wrigley’s gum.
“Excuse me,” I twitted. “I don’t speak Greek. My friend and I are tourists. I’m afraid, she needs help. She’s broken her leg. Maybe you could give us a lift to Hera- er, Iraklion?”
“I to speak little English. I help, sure. Put your friend in the back. You pretty one, you sit with me. In front.”
I heaved a sigh. Or rather, the leggy blonde (that I now was courtesy of Disguise) sighed. I had no choice. I went and fetched Arts, helping her to hop back to the car. She climbed in the back while I had to sit next to the driver.
“Pretty lady,” he tapped me approvingly on the shoulder. There was not a trace of fatherly good nature in his touch.
I must have been a Buddhist monk in my past life — oh what the hell, I could have been the Dalai Lama himself, because I didn’t smash his skull in there and then, just calmly removed his hand with a frozen smile and turned away to the window.
Still, this aging Lothario had no intention of stopping. He introduced himself as Christophoros, told me a few things about himself in his broken English and didn’t let up for the next hour.
That was the worst hour in my life. Everything else — like university lectures on the theory of relativity, the first days in my job as a loader and even family dinners — paled in comparison. He was by far the champion of boring. I tried to reply as politely as I possibly could while keeping an eye on the map. Where was that wretched Heraclea now?
Much to the driver’s credit, he did bring us almost to the Community gate. In the end he asked me how long we were going to stay on the island, cadged my non-existent phone number off me and even gave me a peck on the cheek,
so fast that I didn’t get the time to react and beat his brains in. In actual fact, I was so taken aback I even forgot to rewind time. When the car finally pulled away, raising clouds of road dust, I didn’t feel great at all.
“I didn’t know you were so popular with men,” Arts said, suppressing a smile.
“If you tell one living soul, I’ll bust the other leg for you,” I said under my breath.
She made a mouth-zipping gesture, then leaned heavily on me and hopped in front. “Let’s hurry over to the guards. We’ll tell them everything that’s happened and get the hell out of here.”
“I think it’s gonna happen quicker than you think.”
Indeed, one of those minions of the law was already walking past us. I waved, attracting his attention, and headed toward him. It took me all of five minutes to give him the whole story. The problem was, no one seemed to have any intention of letting us go. The masked guard went off to fetch several more who in turn brought even more to the scene. As I narrated the events for the fifth time in a row, I felt like I was playing Chinese whispers.
By then, I’d already managed to materialize the map and forwarded them the cave’s exact coordinates. That cost me another ten grams of dust but it couldn’t be helped, I suppose. After an hour and a half, we finally received the message that all the victims had been rescued. Only then did they let us go, but not before they found out our exact destination and wished us a good journey under their ever-watchful stares.
The Pilot too wanted his pound of flesh: he caught up with us on the way back and demanded three hundred grams for the two snapdrakes. As it turned out, the second mount had never come back. I had no intention of arguing with him in front of the guards, especially seeing as we’d indeed failed to return them. I hated to part with the money but it couldn’t be helped.
“I won’t be going with you anywhere soon,” I said to Arts as we approached the Gatehouse.
“”All’s well that ends well,” she replied, still limping. A healer guard had cast a powerful spell on her leg and recommended that she use an ointment for a couple of days, so by now the girl could already walk unassisted, albeit a little bit unsteadily.
“I can’t wait to get home,” I said, entering the Gatehouse. “A nice hot bath, a cold beer and a bit of time to forget all this nonsense.”
A squat shadow darted out of a corner of the room and blocked our way. Instinctively I cast Mantle and drew both my Katzbalger and the knife. Arts couldn’t boast any Nordic sangfroid either, so she reached for her staff too.
“No weapons in the Gatehouse!” the Gatekeeper thundered.
We’d already realized that. Besides, I’d already taken a good look at the lad standing before us. He had huge bulging eyes, a sharp nose and a birthmark on his right cheek. My Insight didn’t offer any information at all, apart from his Order affiliation: the boy was a Seer.
“Good day to you,” the lad squeaked.
“Likewise,” I said, frowning. “If you keep jumping out at people like that, you won’t live to see your wedding day.”
“Why my wedding day?” the lad appeared lost.
“Because,” Arts played along. “What did you want?”
“His Firmness the Grand Master of the Order of Seers wishes to speak to you.”
“Maybe some other time,” I said, backing off from him. My last conversation with the Eternity Weaver hadn’t been too constructive. “I wish to take a hot bath.”
“He said he might have the answers to a few questions you most surely have,” the lad fearfully blocked my way again. “Including whatever you’d like to know about the Oracle and the malefic.”
“And am I supposed to tell him something in return?”
“Yes, but it concerns you as well. It’s about the Horsemen.”
“Which horsemen?”
“The ones the Oracle was talking about,” Arts hissed to me. “The Sakis guy. Don’t you remember what he said? About the Red, Black, Pale and White Horsemen?”
“The White one...” I repeated mechanically. I gave the lad a long look and nodded. “Very well. Where’s your Grand Master?”
Chapter 23
ACCORDING TO Mikhail Bulgakov’s famous quote, you should never ask anyone for anything, especially not from those in a position of power. “They will make the offer and they will give of their own accord.” Even though it was Satan who had uttered this phrase[9], it doesn’t make it any less wise.
So that’s why I chose to preserve an air of calm indifference. And as time later proved, it was the right tactic because judging by the Grand Master’s nervous pacing of the room, he seemed to be more interested in our conversation than I was.
He wasn’t in good shape. He appeared somewhat anxious, with sallow skin and dark rings around his eyes. I wouldn’t exactly say he was ripe for the grave but he’d definitely lost his mojo.
“I’d like you to allow my friend to be present at our conversation.,” I said, breaking the depressing silence.
“Are you sure you’d like to let her in on what I’m about to tell you?” the Grand Master asked.
“She’ll find out about everything within half an hour, anyway. And I might need her advice.”
“Very well. Oliverio!”
The Magister entered so quickly that it was clear he’d been eavesdropping behind the closed doors. Unlike his boss, he appeared completely unperturbed.
“I’d like you to bring the girl.”
“It’s Arts,” I said.
The Grand Master smiled for the first time. “That’s not her real name. Women! They like making a mystery out of everything. Their age, their names, their families, their men...”
I didn’t get the chance to ask what he meant because the door opened, letting Arts in. The Grand Master motioned her to a fancy bow-legged soft chair. I was already sitting in a similar one.
Arts looked wary and comported herself appropriately, appearing calm and composed. It’s not every day that you get ushered into the residence of an ancient Order like this.
“Your Firmness, would you be so kind as to tell us everything right from the beginning, if it’s not too much trouble?” I asked.
“You don’t need to mention any titles,” the Grand Master replied.
“But I like to,” I said with a small smile. “I love the suggestiveness of it. I hope it wasn’t women who gave you this title?”
“Sergei!” Arts snapped. She turned to the Grand Master. “Were you telling him about the Horsemen?”
“Exactly,” the chief Seer gave the girl a long look as if weighing her up. “Have you heard about them?”
He sounded so cordial as if he’d known her his entire life. And strangely enough, his tone hadn’t raised any objections in any of us.
“Of course,” Arts shrugged. “It’s common knowledge. The four brothers who divvied up Cesspit between themselves. Morbian, Slayer, Austerius and Omega. There’re lots of rumors and legends circulating about them.”
“And some of them are true. Only they weren’t brothers. Morbian and Austerius were. Omega is actually a woman. But you’re right: they used to be the most powerful Players here. Or rather, their team was. The time of their rise to power is now called the Dark Ages. The memory of them is still so vivid that Commoners even call them...”
“The four horsemen of the Apocalypse!” it finally dawned on me. “Of course! Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death! Those who will usher in the second coming of Christ!”
“Sergei, Sergei. You’ve been reading too many fantasy books. Although it’s very likely that the arrival of the other three might deal our world a critical blow — but at the moment, it’s quite impossible.”
“At the moment?”
“As long as Morbian, the White Horseman, has the seal in his keeping.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well.. sooner or later I might have to explain everything to you anyway. I’m not gonna tell you how the Horsemen had come about. It’s pretty pointless
and in any case, what they did later is much more important. As I already said, they used to be pretty powerful as a team — but each one of them had an ego to match and wanted to become the sole ruler of this world, reigning over commoners as well as Players. That’s when they came up with the idea of a ‘Tourney’. Its rules were simple: each one of them received a particular nation and the first one who conquered half the world with it would be declared the winner. All the others would kneel down to him and obey him.”
“Let me guess,” I said, taking in what he’d just said. “Fifth or sixth century A.D., right?”
The Grand Master nodded. “The fifth, by the commoners calendar. Morbian with a small retinue of Players went to rule the Huns, Slayer the Visigoths, Austerius the Vandals and Omega the Celts. But it was Morbian, the White Horseman, who had the biggest success in guiding Etzel the Hun. He was closer to winning the Tourney that any of the others.”
