Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  “It’s not so bad is it, Clemmy?”

  “Not really Nan. Not that bad.” She plaits an errant strand of hair back into her ponytail. “Anything else?”

  “He sounds a bit more interesting than I’d have expected. You know how boring those old bloodsuckers can get. Bit of a temper seems the lot of it.”

  Clem’s face spasms into an almost smile. “Grams wrote that down?”

  “Yes.” Nan chuckles, it is a young woman’s laugh. Good natured and delightful. “As if that were news. They were all nasty pieces of work at one point or another. They’re born in blood and it takes a good while before they remember they’re people too.” She sniffs. “Boring, boring people.”

  “Are they Nan?” Clem asks. “People that is?”

  “Everyone is people dear girl. Even crossword obsessed Coven mistresses.”

  The comment hangs there for a time. Then Clem starts to bustle again. “I’ll get you a tea, Nan. We have something of a honey glut due to all the new bees.”

  Nan chuckles evilly, her kindly face contorting into a mask of contentious delight. “Yes, we do don’t we. So much stinging.”

  When Clem goes to get Nan’s tea from the cottage she tuts at the mess left by the Vampire and notices a book balanced precariously on top of a cupboard. Reaching out, she picks up Grams’ old book of crosswords.

  She decides to have another go at the obtusely clued selection of brainteasers, it’s been quite a while since she matched with wits with the old and well beloved Coven mistress.

  14

  Prussia Redux

  “End of line Master Lump, from here we walk.” Ariadne gestures at the gap in the woods, partially obscured by overgrown shrubbery and a couple of broken stone pillars decorated with horses. “A really pukka journey, don’t you think?”

  Why is that witch always so bloody cheery? When she’s not singing, she’s humming continually and seems to have enjoyed her time in the forests greatly watching my every twinge of irritation or pain with studious interest.

  And I have a stinking headache. Must be a side effect of a couple of centuries of enforced sleep followed by this strange forest trail. The damn place clearly hates me, and that trick with the memories was rotten.

  I am in such a foul mood that I am almost tempted to point out that we have been walking all the way thus far in response to my companion’s comment, but once again her point has some force to it. The forest has shifted us nearly a thousand miles in what feels like less than an hour though the skies as we walked told a very different tale.

  Even though my feet ache, it is as nothing compared to how they would feel if I had actually walked all the way to Silesia. Small mercies.

  “So,” she ventures.

  “So.”

  “Don’t suppose you’d let me in on the secret, Lumpy my lad? What are we here for?”

  “Lad?” I scoff. “I was recruiting the cream of Euboean society when you witches were still…” and there I stumble. Witches have a timeless aspect to them that makes insulting them extremely difficult.

  “Doing what we’ve been doing since the forests first grew?” Ariadne suggests with a half smile.

  “Yes.” I sniff, pointedly. I don’t need to sniff. “Didn’t your French friend tell you before we left? I thought you witches didn’t have any secrets from each other?”

  That makes Ariadne laugh out loud, “Oh Lumpy. You don’t know us at all do you? Anyway, no Clem didn’t tell me a thing even though I asked nicely. Stubborn old moo.” Ariadne casts a side glance at the saddlebags, but there is a deep purring emitting from inside. “and you’ve been as helpful as a fart in a jacuzzi whenever I’ve asked.”

  So that Aunty is good for something. “Well I’m pleasantly surprised at your colleague’s discretion. I had thought she’d have the verbal incontinence that appears to be a defining feature of the modern young witch.”

  “Ooo. Zing, Lumpy. I’m cut to the quick.” She staggers back clutching her heart. “Where are we?”

  “I suppose I can tell you now that we’re here. In my defence I have always found that it is better to arrive unannounced when you are unsure of your welcome and you, my dear girl, are both powerful and loud. I can hear your thoughts from here and I’m not even listening.”

  A moment and a pinched grin.

  “And that is both an unseemly thought and one that is unworthy of you.”

  “Tough tits Lumpy. World’s changed a bit since your time, I get to think what I like.”

  “My one guiding principle has been to assume that that is the case for everyone, dear girl. My job is to teach and offer guidance, a paragon if you will. A demonstration of why my… what are you doing?”

  “Pretending to vomit. You talk way too much, you have to have noticed? Right?”

  Hmm. People have indicated as much before. They obviously haven’t been listening properly. “Do you want to know where we are or not young lady?”

  “YES!”

  “A tale then.”

  “Nooooo.” She slaps her hand to her forehead and incants minor hexes contrary to my general wellbeing which I ignore as they fizz away, glancing off my wards.

  “I left a package here that I need to collect in order to pursue my broader goals. It was protected by some of the most subtle and cunning defences known to the Masters, and despite the powers that have risen since that time and the wars which have burnt their way over this place, I can feel that he’s still exactly where I left him.”

  “Can I say something?”

  “Of course dear girl.”

  “Still not sure where we are.”

  I ignore her and continue my monologue. Age hath its privileges. “I feel him here across the ether as I can feel that my hand” I wave said appendage, “is on the end of this arm. The castle still stands. The shadows, pushed back. The triumph of entropy is delayed. The stars are…”

  “Blotted out by the fecking clouds?” A muttered retort.

  “Shush.”

  “You know what, you keep your secrets. Nothing could be worth this torture.”

  “Your loss,” I sniff.

  We step out of the forest, through the stone pillars, and into a rough scrubland, dotted around with burnt out houses and patches of woodland. The woods stink of the fungus and iron of the present rather than the healthy oaks and elms of the world woods.

  The clouds seem lower here than back in old France. To the east they seem almost to touch the very ground, and maybe they do. Standing tall I feel like I could reach up and touch the clouds with my fingers from some of the taller ruins.

  A terminal endeavour were I to do something so self evidently stupid.

  “This is nice,” deadpans the Witch.

  It really is not.

  Honestly I got no further than 1915 in my historical reading when looking at this area. That may have been a mistake though one I blame entirely on the poor quality of the historians who had authored said tomes. Their style had lacked. Their focus was off. All ‘what were the poor eating or how were they voting’ and not enough of the high court politics in which I revel and which forms the meat of history.

  The subject matter was no better. Endless switches of allegiance and silly little skirmishes between the human powers of Europe, strutting the stage as if the real powers of the world did not exist.

  And gods help us but we couldn’t learn about who was doing what at the command level. Instead, the experience of the lower classes as cannon fodder and all their blasted poetry too. Pain from age, and pain from age cut short. Always pain and love and tiresome feelings.

  Because of that misalignment I had assumed that Silesia had remained an industrious theatre of war, dotted with fine towns and peopled with hard working peasants. None too different from my own day when, give or take a thirty-years war or two, a bagatelle between Empires as to who could claim the taxes and conscription rights, this was a fine province in a rich land.

  Mistakes. I have underestimated the hope-price the modern
ravages of war and the catastrophes of the clouds that have befallen it have taken on this once prosperous province. In point of fact this place is soul-crushing for one who knew it in happier times.

  Dead bones of better years poking from the soil. A broken bride cold in the ground.

  Ice hangs from burnt lintels. The wind chills my fingertips and it is evening-dark even at midday. The all pervasive scarlet light from those low clouds gives even the living the sickly look of a day old corpse …

  “So,” says my companion.

  “What, Ariadne?” The witch is shifting from foot to foot as she walks. She is impatient.

  “You do know I’m gonna find out where we are the moment we pass a set of road signs and you don’t get your big reveal? Oh I can imagine it. Your smug face. I had this vision of you standing in front of a honking great ruin and giving me a really boring lecture on the way that change eats everything but… vampires.”

  I ponder her words. “You think the castle might be ruined? That would be disappointing, did anything of import happen here after 1915?”

  “You didn’t read the whole of the history books did you?”

  “I can only read the same old story so many times. Humans are immensely predictable.“ And as I said, the historians were strangely preoccupied with faction and the peasantry.

  “You think so Lumpy? Tell you what. I’ll get you up to speed if you could kindly get to the point so I can explain why your grand plan is going to come falling down around your pointy ears.”

  I take her point, my love of grandstanding can be overwhelming to someone who doesn’t literally live forever. “I suppose there is little point bringing a travelling companion if you don’t tell her where she is, and still less if you want her views on what change there might have been whilst you were buried in the ground. And so. it is only fair to tell.” I pause for effect. “We are thirty miles west of the Prussian City of Breslau in Silesia in what remains of Imperial Germany, the second Reich, a fine province renowned in my time for its industry and for its wondrous… and you are laughing. Why are you laughing?”

  She really is laughing. Laughing whilst holding a box up to her eyes, staring east by the glow of the sun. Laughter is a little disconcerting as I know the package is here and it’s clear that the forest knew where to take us… Castle must be there as I feel it, a little muffled maybe…

  She eventually controls herself. The combination of breathing and laughing must be quite difficult to coordinate I suppose, given the autonomic aspects of both activities.

  “Not sure where to start Lumpy… Breslau? No such fecking place. Silesia? No idea, not familiar so doubt it’s there either. Prussia? Nope. Second Reich. Got a bad name, not as bad as its later incarnation though. But gone.”

  I grunt.

  “You really did get lazy on the background reading didn’t you? After all the effort that Nan went to to help you out. Anyhow I can tell you that this place did get it in every war since the year dot and the pelting just got worse and worse. Now having translated your pompous fangy middle of the century before last bull-crap I think you’re telling me that…” She pulls out a small traveller’s guide. “We’re 30 miles west of Wroclaw in old Poland.

  “If…”

  “And good luck finding a castle that no one’s battered down with a missile in the past hundred-fifty odd years.”

  “I…”

  “Nope. Still talking Lumps.” She gestures off to the distance where there are lights bobbing around what look like a field. “My second point after we get past your complete geographical and historical failure…”

  “But…”

  “Even if this castle is still standing, we’ve got some practical problems.” Ariadne taps on her hat. “Unless you’re in the mood for a big old fight with the locals.”

  “I’d rather we didn’t. Though I’m able enough in a scrap.”

  She ignores me and growls out some imprecations against cruel fate. “Damn it Clem, why are you listening to some dumb dead thing over your own sisters. Don’t be so bloody spooky. If I’d known where we were goin’ I’d have brought some different stuff, made things a lot easier.”

  Her attention flicks back to me. “See if you can get the point I’m making. Take a look over there if you would be so kind.”

  She hands me some viewing glasses with magnifying lenses all set in a handy package that adjust on a cunning hinge to fit the user’s eyes perfectly. I admire the workmanship.

  “You put them against your eyes and look.” Ariadne appears to have misunderstood my interest as lack of understanding.

  “I know how lenses work, Ariadne.”

  “Binoculars Lumpy. Saves words if you use the right ones.”

  I put them to my eyes and take a look across the desolate scrubland towards the distant lights. The magnifying effect is superb, the lights become hanging lamps on tall poles linked with wires. I can see small figures wrapped in thick layers of rags and battered old coats tending to fields of sickly crops.

  Behind them are hovels that would have been poor dwellings in my time, seemingly constructed from materials scavenged from richer homes of the past that sit burnt out all around. There was once a major town here and now the peasants scratch a living in the rubble.

  And a difficult one, apparently. There is a crude chest high wall carved with protective sigils against vampires and the dark. Powered with blood magic and soul bindings.

  The technique is familiar, the power is less so, almost vampiric. “Witch work on the walls?”

  “Yeah, if you can call them that. Eastern Witches, Russian ones. The ones we stopped talking about. The Russians brought them when they invaded and they never left. Not that there was anything to go back to.”

  “Hmm. That does make things more difficult. Magic adds risks.” Everyone and their dog seems to be using arcane powers in this new world. Clumsily. Eastern witches were a heretical off-shoot that had retained rather too much of the old days even for me.

  “I shouldn’t worry too much Lumpy. Hopefully they’re off collecting dinner or chasing down some of your wilder kin.”

  “I have an intense dislike of things that eat children.”

  “Yeah. Not the nicest ladies to be about. Nan sends them a reminder once in a while and they tend to send the reminder back minus her eyes. Need to keep an eye or two upwards too as they get a bit… crow-like as they get older.”

  I mutter some basic camouflage charms and scan the figures. Take count. Assess risk. Peasant, peasant, peasant…

  Amongst them are larger men on horses in tattered uniforms, carrying guns and lances. Faces masked against the cold and goggles over their eyes. Live men whose breath comes out in clouds of condensation.

  One of the farmers staggers as he pulls something from the ground, and then falls.

  “Are they weeding?”

  One of the cavalrymen approaches him, yelling in some slavic argot and gesturing with a knout. I recognise the uniforms from my visit to Paris with Nan. The main difference between this man and his ancestors being the protective ruins scrawled across the armour plates which cover his body and the cloak trailing behind him. Powerful and crude magic, turning arcane forces into light and energy to blind and maim attackers.

  I bet if you hit this one with anything direct, he'd flare up like a star, which would explain the goggles. And then he would shoot you with one of those nasty automatic rifles that may not hurt me but which could do untold damage to an unwary, mouthy young witch.

  The officers are worse. I frown as I recognise some of the more powerful runes that are cut into flesh. “Now that’s ridiculous. That rune is a direct danger to its user. That rune on his arm is eating away at his soul even as we speak.”

  “If you say so, Lumpy. I can’t see them remember.”

  “Oh yes.” They seem on edge. That might go with the territory. And they glance upwards continually.

  “Which way is your castle?” Ariadne interrupts my thoughts. Rudely.


  The collapsed peasant is dragged by his hands back to the walls and another takes his place pulling up weeds with bare hands. I hand her back the binoculars. “Through that.”

  “Okay Lumpy, we need a plan. I don’t know this part of the world good but we should keep our heads down as best we can, those Russians look pissed.”

  True. Not just me then. I ponder shortcuts and a thought occurs. “Any chance we might ‘tree it’ just a little further, mistress witch? A little hop?” I move my hand mimicking a rabbit jumping.

  She shakes her head. “Forest won’t go a mile further than this even for Aunty herself. Everything east of here is shitsville.”

  One of the riders yells and waves as a small patrol appears up on a rise beyond the town. We duck down on to our haunches to make ourselves as small as possible.

  “We best start walking then.”

  15

  Baronies

  “This is taking bloody ages.” Ariadne turns angry green eyes my way. In this wasteland of mud, ice and ruins the witch appears to feel the same as I felt back in the forest. Turnaround is fair play.

  “Quiet, Ariadne.” I reply, amicable as ever.

  A statement of the differences between a witch and a vampire. I’m a dead thing, alive on the inside I suppose, in a manner. This is my natural environment. Were I hungry there would be plenty to eat, if I wished to use my magic there would be no impediment.

  That is not all we are though. I have worked hard to make us more than that. A pig might thrive in the forest but it will grow bigger on a well-run farm.

  Ariadne is a creature of life, the veins of the world from which she draws power are hidden deep here, they seem to have withdrawn into the earth repelled by the very nature of the clouds.

  “How far is it now?” She looks miserable. There’s mud splattered across her travelling cloak and damp cold mush is climbing its way up her jodphurs.

  “Fifteen more miles. English.” I spit unwelcome ice flakes from my mouth. “Maybe a little more.”