I am grounded in this world. I have taken my bearings using a combination of my own memory and Ariadne’s travel guide. Based on my exact knowledge of our location I am beginning to suspect that Aunty Clem deliberately dropped us off about twenty miles away from the castle out of purest spite.
Well it is her sister who is suffering. I do not delight in that. Honestly.
“Jesus and all his saints…”
In the time it has taken for me to match memories with the mess of the world, we’ve made up about five of those miles, creeping and sneaking across patches of low ruins, dead copses of trees and fields of mud.
From an aesthetic perspective this is a sad little place.
We would have made better time but for the clear fact that something is ‘occurring’. A favoured descriptive of Stanley of the Snail terrarium. Typically used when we were huddled behind a wall in a burning building with a large mob tramping around outside.
This journey has, all things told, been quite the adventure. Dodging armed men on horses who ride in disciplined groups, firing at anything that moves with that mechanical clank and buzz of bullets. Hearing the screech of flying witches overhead as they hurtle around madly seeking… something.
We are currently sheltering in a ruined market of some kind for the living members of our party to conduct their ‘business’. Hemlock is still engaged in this scraping dust over his leavings with jerky little motions of his front paw.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
“Faster we get out of here the better.” Ariadne picks up the cat and puts it in her bag. It descends with ill grace and an expression of confusion, a scrape less than it would have chosen.
We continue.
A small coven of witches fly over head. There is a pell-mell feel to their flight, swooping and climbing almost to the cloud line. For what do they search? They drop lowest at the small patches of trees which grow where the earth’s veins remain near enough to sustain them.
I look to Ariadne. She shrugs. “Firewood? Entry to the world wood? Mebbeh.”
“Doesn’t seem to be us.” I nod as one flies nearly overhead, crying out charms of finding and protection.
There is a telling encounter near the next settlement. A dozen or so witches are mobbing above the walls. My first thought is that they are preparing to land.
Unexpectedly there is a crackle of automatic weapon fire from the heavy artillery towers built into the core of the settlement. Large calibre. Explosive ammunition. The shells are visible as they hurtle towards targets in the swarm and jink in flight to pursue the women.
The witches circle into a swarm and slide urgently away.
“I thought you said they were all on the same side here. Peasants excepted.”
“They are.” Ariadne looks concerned. Something’s not right and I’m not enjoying the thought that my knowledgable guide does not know what is happening. “Doesn’t hurt us though does it Lumps? Bit of cover if anything?”
One of the shells drops from the sky a few hundred yards away and explodes on impact in a shower of mud and stone.
“That’s one word for it, young lady.”
The day is dying, the glow in the clouds is far off to the west and finally I can see the turrets of the castle in the distance. A red-lit silhouette of crenellations set fair against the darker scarlet of the clouds.
“Please tell me that’s where we’re going.” Ariadne groans “Me feet are killing me and if I have to hunch down to avoid one more Russian patrol I’m going to go super Saiyan and turn them all into fecking frogs.”
“That would be an interesting sight.” Witch arcane terminology has altered with the passage of time. “That is indeed where we are going.”
I assess the route ahead by the glow of protective runes and electrical lights in the gathering darkness. “May still come down to a fight though.”
Between us and our destination are several fortified settlements. More patrols canter between the walls on horseback beside primitive crawlers that belch black smoke.
Like a hornets nest, disturbed.
Ariadne has her binoculars out and is doing much the same as I. “Tell you what. There’s a copse over there that looks like it’s a leftover bit of the world wood. Can’t use it to travel but a nice rest and recharge of the batteries are definitely in order.” She looks hopeful. “If you don’t mind, Lumpster?”
“Not at all.” It’s on the way anyway.
We are walking under a screen of rot-trees, the rind around the nut, when I hear Ariadne swear and swat at her shoulder, brushing something away that clings on sharp teeth before falling.
“Blood fecking chestnuts? You’re vexing me life, you’re vexing me hard.”
A small round chestnut, spiky and motile, lands in the mud at the edge of the copse. It immediately aligns itself towards Ariadne and starts to bounce its way towards her feet.
“Feck off. Feck off. Feck off.” She stomps down at it hard. It dodges and somehow leaps at her face.
I am chuckling so hard at the adorable little seed that I nearly miss my telekinetic catch. Nearly.
The seed spins in place, little white teeth like protuberances pushing outwards in hungry waves from the more standard spiny husk in which the nut resides. “What the devil?”
I slip the little fellow into the palm of my hand. It is immediately quiescent. “Like recognises like,” Ariadne comments, tartly, wincing as she massages her shoulder.
“Hmm. I think the little fellow is hungry.” I hurl the chestnut out of the woods and towards the nearest settlement. It disappears into the darkness.
“Bloody thing was trying to colonise the copse. They convert old growth into the new stuff and they are a bloody menace.” She snorts and settles on the stump of an oak. “Bloody menace. Get it?”
“I have heard a lot of vampire jokes in my time young lady.”
She taps into the leyline that underpins this little part of the old world with a sigh, I can literally see the lines of strain that have accumulated over our journey dropping from her face. “Holy Mother. That’s much better.”
Even her clothes are cleaning themselves, patching up rips, drying and warming. Her hair gains lustre, her eyes sparkle. It is a lovely sight to see her strength regained. “You too Hemlock.”
She gently puts the cat down and it starts to snuffle around with its habitual air of distrustful curiosity and dull belligerence.
“I needed that.”
“Glad I could oblige. Any…” Displaced air, sudden. I open my mouth to speak.
A witch drops from the sky, falling through the branches and leaves and bringing many down with her. She neither resists her fall nor reacts to the impact which has to have been terminal.
Hemlock jumps for Ariadne who catches the moggy in her arms. So much for cat reflexes. I leap forward to see if I can assist the fallen woman, or protect my friends if it comes to that.
She is deader than a stone.
“Is she…”
I shake my head and remove the greenery from her body.
She is beautiful, her body avian in many aspects but there is something about her that makes me recoil, hands raising in a ward against the dead and teeth itching. It is not her appearance that causes this reaction, rather the absence of her essence. She may as well be a dead Fae, those who return to the element from which they were created upon death.
Wood or Earth, Fire or Water, Air or Ether. An inanimate lump good for little bar fuel.
Ariadne joins me, holding the cat close. “That’s not right, Lumpy. That’s not right.”
When a human, or a witch even, dies, their essence dissipates over time back into the world. The stronger the being the longer elements of them linger. Meanings and beliefs hold on the longest.
It allows a practiced wielder of the arcane to bring much of the original person back. Not all, not everything that they were but much of them, and all the things that they might have been.
It is what makes raising the truly old
difficult. There is nothing to take and remake to cover the gaps, the parts already departed. A complicated trick and one barely worth performing bar in exceptional circumstances. To raise a question unasked. To understand a final gasp.
A dead witch should take days to reach this level of entropic decay.
I consider the options. “Do you think she could have been thrown here?”
“I think I recognise her. She’s one of the ones from above the last settlement. Poor lass.”
Despite passing within our eyesight this woman is no longer present in any sense. There is nothing there. Everything she was and everything she could ever have been is gone, as if it had never even been there.
“I don’t like this one little bit, Ariadne.” The effect is disturbing. “There were practitioners of this form of death in my youth amongst the old cities of East. They were wiped from the Earth in a great cleansing and even they, for all their powers, could only kill those within the reach of their gaze. “
And of course there were other requirements, the practitioner had to declare themselves, become known to their target and know them in turn. There were the binding contracts with powers long dead.
“I…” Ariadne is wearing an odd expression, like she has seen a ghost.
I ask her what is wrong.
“I’ve not seen it myself Lumpy. Not like this but the older witches who survived the Catastrophe said something like this happened to a whole heap of us just before it happened. Grams died, all her closest advisers died, we…”
A mystery! “Did you find who did it?”
“Grams left a message to leave well alone, addressed to everyone. Nan’s stuck to it. We had enough on our plate back then.”
I close the dead witch’s glossy black eyes with the back of my palm. “Death stalks your distaff cousins. Is it a general malaise? Maybe that is why they fly around like lunatics.”
“Mebbeh.”
Death is difficult for the living and this girl was of a type with my friend. Time to be considerate. “Do you have any rites you want to perform?”
Hemlock mews plaintively. “Ah. Yeah. Bit of an issue though.”
“No vampires?”
“No vampires. Sorry Lumpster. It’s kind of sacred.”
I smile my kindest smile and nod assent. “I will wait outside. Get a feel for where that delightful toothy little plant came from. Like craves like, as you say.”
A wry glance from the woman. “And that is why you can’t be around for this ritual, Lumpy my old mate. Thank you for understanding.”
I leave the witch and the cat to their ancient rites and watch spectral monsters dance amongst the clouds. They do not seem to care much for the world below, so long as it does not intrude.
When I hear Ariadne’s voice pipe up it is night and there is no sign of the dead witch other than a passing effervescence of life in the trees around.
We set up camp for the night at the copse. It is warmer here and it does Ariadne a world of good to spend time near the Ley-lines. Hemlock too. He’s scampering around like a kitten hunting bugs and small things that squeak as they die.
There’s also a fair supply of dry wood despite the weather beyond the boundaries, which shifts between sleet and icy rain depending on the vagaries of the weather gods. Teshub was a changeable lord. We set a small fire and Ariadne covers us in some kind of camouflage ward that I note for future use.
Then she settles down and picks at food from the packs as we talk until it’s time for her to sleep.
“Can’t stop thinking about that poor lass, Lumpy.”
“I understand. Death is a difficult subject for the living.”
“Not that, Lumpy. We’re good with death.” She pauses. “Not exactly good, okay with it. It happens and we return to the earth and the world keeps on growin’.”
“A fair description of the way the world works, young witch.” I never returned to the Earth in any meaningful way nor do I feed worms or plants if I cease to exist. Just sit unmoving and cold amongst the shadows.
Happy thought. Makes it all the more important to do something positive to help the living.
“That girl just ended. One minute buzzing through the air on errands for her Coven mistress and the next dropping like a stone. Extinguished.” Ariadne shivers. “Do you think she felt anything?”
“I doubt it. My suspicions that it is like snuffing a candle. One minute alight, the next a little smoke and nothing else.”
She pulls open a can of stew which she’s had resting in the embers of the fire. “Morbid crap. Nothing’s getting me like that. Change of subject mebbeh. Chance for you to yammer. What did you think of the blood chestnut?”
“Adorable. If a little overly eager. I’d ask who made them…”
“But you already know. Yeah. They turned up right after the Catastrophe along with a heap of other GM modified crops and plants. Some animals too. Your lot were trumpeting it around, how they’d keep everyone alive.”
Oh Serah. You don’t seek publicity for such things. You keep them quiet and let the world draw its own conclusions. “Is that why the Union thinks we did this?”
“Mebbeh.” She spoons out a large mouthful of meat and gravy. “They’ve got their own reasons to keep you in the crosshairs for the Catastrophe.”
“Oh?”
She chews thoughtfully. “Old news. Ask them if you really care. They were doing some shady shit back at the start.”
I may do just that if I happen to run into my friend Mr. Johnson-Pole. Or maybe not. He doesn’t seem the sort to unburden himself unnecessarily.
“Not sure if they’d survive if you brought the sun back, they’re a bit photophobic. You thought about that? Lots of vamp modified shit growing out in the wild that I bet you’d find just divine.”
Yes, I have thought about it. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the action is still necessary. I’m sure I can find some way to save an appropriate germ-seed line. “World needs to go back to how it was, Ariadne. This has to end.”
She casts me a shrewd look. If I didn’t know better there was some weight to that question that I hadn’t expected. I hope I passed the relevant test.
To lighten the mood, I change the subject.
“So. Russians in Silesia. How did that happen?” I venture.
“Read the guide book Lumpy. Pretty obvious if you think about it. Can hardly be marching up to Paris from Russia without going through Eastern Europe.” She raises a well manicured eyebrow. “Geography’s not that different. Round here.”
“Could have flown.” I suggest.
“Not through that.”
“Point taken.”
She finishes eating and tosses me the guide book. I look at it dubiously.
“Can’t be bothered to read it, Lumpy?”
“Honestly? No.”
She shakes her head in seeming disbelief. “For someone with all the time in the world you don’t half seem to have trouble using that time sensibly Lumps.”
“Any chance we could lose the ‘Lump’ variants now mistress witch?”
“Nope.”
Hemlock comes over and sniffs at me, before collapsing against the witch. Cats don’t like vampires. We’re too cold.
I give the book a prod. “Couldn’t just summarise a little before you go to sleep? I promise I’ll read the relevant section…” I won’t. I’m going to stare out at the flying witches and see if any of the others drop out of the sky.
“Okay Lumpy. Consider it payment for you letting me sort out the poor lass.” Gratitude is only part of the reason for a good deed yet it remains one of my favourite. I settle back against the trunk of an ash tree and listen to the witch speak. Above me I see Stanley watching from a bole.
“Ah, Catastrophe hits. Your lot start taking over a couple of big nations and trying it on in a few others. The big ones you miss are the Russians and the left over bits of the Brits. Russians march over your toy soldiers and your lot start getting desperate and using the clouds a
gainst them. Lots of refugees running from the places off east where the clouds reached the land and no one’s left. They joined up with lots of left behind units doing the usual stuff military types do when they have nothing better. After Paris when the last Russian commander gets his, and the Vamps get disorganised, the left over Russians and their witches set up the Baronies.”
“Why didn’t they stay together?”
“Each wanker with a couple of hundred armoured nasties and a thousand soldiers thought he should be in charge. Some of them were locals, or Vamp military types. Only thing they agree on is killing Vampires if they see them. They’re angry little grotbags. Life here is shite. Worse than shite as our distaff branch need their munchies.”
“Is there anyone organised left?”
“Union, you met them. They send the odd diplomat east to negotiate if they need something. The Americans are holed up in their hemisphere. Still doing a vaudeville imitation of the old world. And there are worse places in the world to be than here.”
I stretch, things are worse than I had thought. This sitting around isn’t achieving anything. We have a world to deliver from such incompetence and we haven’t even completed the first step. The mere thought makes me mad.
“How tired are you, dear girl?”
A glare from Ariadne who was setting up her pack as a pillow. “I could go for a couple hours of shuteye. Some of us do need to rest now and then.”
“Not up for a night time run? Might be able to make it if we started moving now….”
“Dangerous.” She mutters ‘dummy’ under her breath. I ignore it. She’s entitled to be a bit miffed.
“Do the Russians tend to operate at night? I’d have thought they’d be safely locked up in those makeshift fortresses of theirs?”
“They will be,” she concedes, grudgingly. “Witches won’t be.”
I look at her and flex my fists. “I should be able to handle myself if we do need to drive off a small coven.”
Hemlock is watching me debate with the witch. He looks dubious. It involves a mix of big green-yellow eyes with enlarged pupils complementing his jaw hanging slightly open, as if it’s trying to smell the future and not liking what’s there.
“Come now my little furry friend. I was doing this back when your ancestors were sitting around the King of Egypt’s temples waiting to get embalmed.” A cat glare. Will no one favour me with a little courtesy? I smile back. “I have some anger issues to work through. And I think I’m getting an idea of when day will be here.”
Master In His Tomb Page 13
