by Tim Waggoner
“Even so…”
She nodded. “I’ll be careful.”
“Good.” He turned to go, then paused. “You said you were my shaman and more. What does that mean?”
Deverra cast her gaze downward, suddenly uncomfortable. “There is a bond between us, Qarakh. Like two wolves in a pack that are united by deep understanding, by… love.”
Not knowing how to react, Qarakh nodded once, turned and started walking back to the campsite, trying to hurry without looking like he was trying to hurry.
Deverra watched Qarakh leave. Curse him for asking that! And curse her for answering him like that! What did the undead know of love?
You could have used another word, she told herself. But you didn’t.
Aloud, she said, “It’s just a word.”
Is it?
“What if—”
What if what? He didn’t want to know? He was unhappy you used the word? That he thinks you foolish for claiming a relationship with him that can’t exist?
“Yes.”
Do not attempt to fool yourself. You chose that word for one reason: Not because it is true, but because you hope it will become true.
Deverra had no rebuttal to that thought. How could she argue with the truth?
She looked down at the pool of her blood rapidly coagulating on the ground. There was somewhere she had to go, someone else she had to speak with, and she would prefer that Qarakh not know about it. Not until he needed to—if he ever did. But if the alliance with Alexander failed to come to fruition, and the tribe went to war with the Ventrue’s army, they would need help if they were to have any hope of emerging victorious. And Deverra could think of only one other place to go.
The Grove of Shadows.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite what Qarakh had told Deverra, he returned to the campsite only long enough to feed—being careful to take only a small portion of blood from several different mortals. When he had drunk enough to restore his strength, he once again left camp.
He rode his mare this time, not wishing to take the wolf shape again so soon. Besides, it felt good to be in the stirrups again. Comfortable, reassuring. When he rode, he wasn’t khan, wasn’t Gangrel or Cainite. Wasn’t anything but a man named Qarakh, a Mongol astride his mount.
He held the reins loosely, letting the mare have her head. She knew where they were going; he’d ridden her this way often enough. Though he rode standing in the stirrups in the manner of his people—his mortal people—he felt calm and relaxed. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to the sensations of riding: the rhythm of the horse’s hooves; the jingle of her tack; the deep in and out of her breathing; the wind blowing lightly on his face and tousling his hair; the warmth of the horse’s living body; the scents of lush green grass, crisp cold night air; and good honest horse sweat.
Far too soon, the mare slowed. Qarakh knew they had arrived. He opened his eyes to behold Aajav’s mound and the two gray wolves that guarded it. The horse whickered nervously and shifted her weight from hoof to hoof. Though the wolves were his ghouls just as she was, she’d never been comfortable around them.
He dismounted, spent several moments stroking the horse’s neck while speaking soothing nonsense to her and then commanded her to stay put. Thought she hadn’t been completely calmed by her master’s actions, they were enough to keep her from bolting.
Qarakh walked up to the male and female wolves and allowed them to approach.
“The night grows old, and I would speak to my brother alone. I give you leave to go off and hunt until dawn.”
The wolves didn’t understand his words, of course, but Qarakh communicated with them on a level much deeper than mere language. The guardians wagged their tails and yipped like eager pups before bounding off across the plain. Qarakh watched them go, for a moment wishing he could shift form and accompany them, but then he climbed to the top of the mound and settled into a cross-legged position. He bit his fingers and thrust them into the earth.
At first he felt nothing, and he feared that Aajav had at last retreated so far into slumber that he couldn’t be reached even by Telyavic magic. But then he felt the first faint stirrings of his blood brother’s consciousness, and he was relieved. One night, Aajav might very well be lost to him, but that night was not yet here.
“Greetings, Aajav. Much has happened since last we spoke. So much that I hardly know where to begin.”
Though he did not experience Aajav’s reaction as words, Qarakh had the impression that his brother was saying, So pick a place and just begin. You’ll get around to everything eventually.
Qarakh smiled. Even in torpor, Aajav gave good advice.
“Very well.” And he began. He spoke of the parley with Alexander, Malachite accompanying them back to the campsite, the kuriltai, the fight with Arnulf and the Goth’s leaving, the return of tribesmen and the coming of allies. The only thing he did not tell his blood brother about was his increasing… closeness with Deverra. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because he didn’t quite know how to put it in words, or perhaps because he feared that Aajav might be jealous. Maybe a little of both.
When he was finished, Qarakh waited for Aajav’s response, but there was only silence. He began to fear that Aajav’s attention had wandered—even with the enchantment Deverra had worked upon the soil of the mound, maintaining a connection between his mind and Aajav’s wasn’t always easy—and so he thrust his entire hand into the earth and redoubled his concentration. There! He sensed a tendril of Aajav’s awareness. Ethereal, elusive… He reached out for it with his thoughts—
“Are you certain that I will be welcome?”
Aajav shook his head with mock disgust. “How many times must I repeat it to you, brother? The Anda told me to bring you to their next kuriltai—which, as you can see by the fullness of the moon, is tonight.”
Qarakh and Aajav rode side by side, their hardy steppe ponies made even hardier by periodic sips of their masters’ blood. The animals could run at a full gallop all night without tiring appreciably. There were many benefits to this new state of being, and Qarakh was grateful once again that his blood brother had possessed the courage to Embrace him despite the objection of the Anda vampires. They rode across the moon-splashed plain toward the sacred Onan River. It was there on the riverbank, within a circle of huge stones no mortal man could lift, that the Anda held council.
“Forgive me for doubting, my brother, but I find it difficult to believe that the Anda have changed their minds about my being remade.” As Qarakh understood it, the Anda controlled who upon the steppe was Embraced and who wasn’t. Aajav they accepted, after a fashion, because he had been Embraced by a wandering Gangrel who had not sought the Anda’s permission before turning the Mongol warrior. But Aajav had asked permission to Embrace Qarakh, and the Anda had denied it. Aajav had given the dark gift to his blood brother anyway, arousing the Anda’s ire. The Anda dealt harshly—and permanently—with anyone who broke their laws. But now, nearly two years after Qarakh’s Embrace, it seemed that all was forgiven. The operative word being seemed, as far as Qarakh was concerned.
“The Anda who delivered the news unto me said that their change of heart was primarily a matter of practicality,” Aajav explained. “The demons from the south have been growing bolder in recent months, attacking the Anda more often, more savagely and in greater numbers than ever before. If they are to defeat the demons, they need the sword of every warrior they can get.”
Qarakh had heard this explanation before, of course, but it still didn’t ring true to him. While the Ten Thousand Demons were a continual threat on the steppe, he hadn’t noticed any appreciable change in the frequency or intensity of their attacks.
“Even if they do accept us for the time being, what is to prevent them from turning on us after the demons have been repelled?’ Qarakh asked.
“It is true that they have summoned us out of their own need,” Aajav admitted. “And I grant that there is a chance they will attempt to slay
us once our usefulness has ended. But there also is a chance that if we distinguish ourselves in battle, we will gain the Anda’s respect, and perhaps even their admiration. If so, we shall be able to earn a place within their clan.”
Even if it occurred just as Aajav said, Qarakh wasn’t certain that he wanted to be a part of the Anda’s clan. He liked the way his new existence had been during the last two years—just Aajav and he, riding and hunting upon the steppe together. Still, he had to admit that it would be a relief not to have to avoid the Anda anymore, let alone fight them. Perhaps Aajav was right. Going to the kuriltai might be a risk, but it was a risk worth taking.
They rode in silence for the next several hours, but it was a comfortable silence. Mongols were used to riding great distances and saw no need to make irrelevant conversation, and so they let time pass in whatever manner it saw fit. The night was more than half over, but dawn was still hours away when they drew near the Onan. Qarakh heard the whisper-rush of water and smelled strong, clean river scent.
As the stone circle came into view, Aajav turned and gave Qarakh an eager grin. It was at this moment that Qarakh understood how much the Anda’s acceptance meant to Aajav, though he would never have admitted it. In mortal life, Aajav had always enjoyed the camaraderie of other hunters and warriors, took pleasure in sitting around a fire, eating meat he had helped kill, drinking qumis and swapping lies. Qarakh had liked those things as well, but he’d never needed them the same way Aajav had. To Aajav, solitude was something to be stoically endured—like the bite of winter wind, or a season when game was scarce—but Qarakh preferred it. In solitude, in the quiet and the open spaces of the steppe, he came as close to yostoi as he ever had. Qarakh didn’t need to be completely alone, not all the time. He loved Aajav and felt incomplete when they weren’t together. There was no man, living or undead, that he’d rather ride with or share a tent with.
But the rest of it—the fire, the qumis, the tall tales, the laughter of an incredulous and appreciative audience for his stories—none of these things were truly necessary for Qarakh’s happiness. And so he had made the transition from mortal to Cainite without a great deal of difficulty.
Qarakh understood now that the crossing from life to undeath had been much harder for Aajav. A vampire was forever a creature apart from both the worlds of men and of nature. Denied the light of day, denied mortal food and drink and all the other pleasures that a living body was capable of. For a man like Aajav, his new life in darkness would be a sentence in hell. Aajav had once informed Qarakh that some Cainites—especially those to the West—referred to themselves as the Damned. Now he knew why Aajav had told him this. But a true Mongol warrior would never speak directly of such feelings. It was a warrior’s lot to be strong, to endure, to be a true stoic in every sense of the word.
So if Aajav desired the companionship of the Anda—poor substitute that it might be for what he had enjoyed as a mortal—Qarakh would do whatever he could to help his blood brother obtain it. Even if it meant—
He’d been about to complete his thought with the phrase risking Final Death, but they were within a dozen yards of the stone circle now and the hair on the back of Qarakh’s neck stood up. He realized that his uncompleted thought might end up being not only prophetic, but also one of his last.
“Aajav, something is wrong….” The word died in his throat as Anda warriors began to rise forth from the ground around them. Heads, shoulders, chests, the heads of their mounts…
With a stab of fear, Qarakh realized the Anda had interred themselves with their steeds. Aajav could do this as well, when the need arose. He’d attempted to teach the skill to Qarakh, but he had yet to master it. But as swiftly as the Anda rose from the earth, there was no doubt as to their mastery.
The Anda had set a trap for them, using Aajav’s need to be part of a tribe as bait. He and Qarakh had ridden right into it.
The Anda and their mounts were halfway out of the ground now, and their hands—which no doubt held bows with arrows nocked and ready—were almost free. The Anda had interred themselves in a circle, and they’d waited for their prey to ride into the middle of it before springing their trap. Qarakh and Aajav were surrounded.
Qarakh knew they had only seconds before the Anda attacked. He reached over, grabbed the bridle of Aajav’s pony and turned both of their mounts around. Aajav stood in his saddle, staring blankly at the rising Anda, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
“Tchoo! Tchoo!” Qarakh said, and both steppe ponies took off at a gallop, running through gaps in the circle made by the bodies of the rising Anda and their mounts.
They should’ve interred themselves shoulder to shoulder, Qarakh thought. They must not have had enough warriors to do so. Good. The fewer Anda that pursued them, the better.
Their ponies’ hooves pounded on the plain, and wind lashed their faces. Qarakh turned to Aajav only to see that his blood brother was now sitting in his saddle like a westerner, his hands hanging limply at his sides, the reins of his mount dangling loose.
“But they invited us,” Aajav said, so softly that even with his inhuman hearing Qarakh could barely make it out over the pounding of the steeds’ hooves. “They invited us.” He sounded like a heartbroken child.
“Aajav! Take the reins! If you do not, we shall both die!”
Aajav turned to look at his blood brother, his face a mask of confusion and disappointment. “But they invited us!”
That’s when the Anda, who now rode full out in pursuit, loosed the first of their arrows coated in demon blood.
Qarakh opened his eyes. He withdrew his fingers from the earth and pondered the memory Aajav had stirred within him. That it was intended as a message from his blood brother, Qarakh had no doubt. But as to the meaning of the message…
Then all at once, understanding came to him. Aajav had wanted so desperately to be accepted by the Anda that he had trusted them when he shouldn’t have, and it had almost meant both of their Final Deaths. As it was, Aajav had never fully recovered from the poison the Anda had wounded him with. Or perhaps it hadn’t been the poison so much as the realization that he was doomed to live an unlife forever apart from all the things he had loved as a mortal.
Whichever the case, the memory-vision’s meaning was clear: Aajav had made a mistake in trusting the Anda. It was a mistake he did not wish to see his brother repeat.
Qarakh had promised Deverra that he would come to a decision about allying with Alexander by the next sunset, but he’d come to one now. Like the Anda so many years ago, Alexander of Paris could not be trusted. There would be no alliance—and if that meant war, so be it.
“Thank you, my brother.”
Qarakh stood and walked back toward his horse. He needed to return to the camp. There were still a few hours left until sunrise, and there was much to be done.
In the darkness, Rikard lay upon a wooden table—at least, it felt like a table. He wasn’t sure. It was so hard to think. At first he thought he must be somewhere deep underground, in a cavern perhaps, although the air didn’t feel cool or damp enough, and the sound didn’t echo the way it should have, though since he had never been inside a cave, he was only guessing at this. Besides, why would someone place a table in a cavern? It didn’t make sense. But it was the only explanation he could come up with for why he couldn’t see something. After all, he was a Cainite, and his eyes were capable of—
And then he remembered. He no longer had any eyes.
“Still conscious? You have a stronger constitution that I would’ve given you credit for. At first, I feared you would succumb to the pain too quickly and retreat into torpor. Cainites are less used to enduring pain than are mortals, you know. We forget how intense, how immediate and all-consuming true pain—especially pain inflicted by a master—can be.”
The voice was familiar to Rikard. In fact, it was the only voice he could ever remember hearing, although he had to have known others in his life, hadn’t he? But though he recognized the voice, he cou
ld not put a name or a face to it. Perhaps the voice had neither name nor face. Perhaps what he was hearing was the voice of God Himself. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was the Voice, and the Voice was Pain and Blood and Darkness eternal, forever and ever, without mercy, amen.
“I wonder if you are still capable of controlling your body… or perhaps I should say what is left of your body.”
Rikard couldn’t see God’s face—if indeed God had one—but he could hear the grin in His voice.
“Why don’t you try moving a little? Not too much, though. I undid the leather straps that bound you to the table some time ago, right after I removed your last limb. But we wouldn’t want you rolling off and falling onto the floor, now would we? After all, you might hurt yourself.” God let out a girlish giggle.
Rikard didn’t want to try to move. He was in so much pain… All he wanted to do was lie on the table—the warm, wet, sticky table—and listen to the voice and stare at the darkness inside his own skull. But the voice was God, and it would be disrespectful to disobey Him.
Rikard concentrated for several moments, building up his strength. And then, with a Herculean effort, he did as his God commanded. He moved.
“Excellent! You managed to purse your lips and turn your head an inch or so toward me. Bravo!”
Pride swelled within Rikard upon hearing his God’s praise. He wanted to ask God to give him another task to perform so that he might please Him again, but he could not, for he no longer possessed a tongue.
“Do you want to know a secret, Rikard?” God’s voice came then as a whisper in Rikard’s left ear. “No matter what other amusements I indulge in, I always take care not to damage the ears. Functioning ears can continue to cause pain long after the rest of a man’s nerves have gone dead. All I have to do is shout!”
Rikard grimaced—demonstrating that he could still work at least a few facial muscles. It felt like God had driven a white-hot spike into his ear.
“But the best part is that hearing allows one to exercise the imagination. For instance—”
