by Steve Thomas
The Curse of Sangrook Manor
Steve Thomas
@2016 Steve Thomas
All Rights Reserved
Cover designed by Adrijus Guscia
http://www.rockingbookcovers.com/
A pig will scream when you clamp a vice to its head and start screwing a spike through its skull. That hadn’t surprised Darvik. What never failed to surprise him, however, was just how long they kept screaming. He’d timed it once. The pig had screamed for over ten minutes, and somehow it hadn’t taken a single breath in all that time. It was as if the pain itself was filling the poor animal’s lungs. It had screamed until the very moment it dropped dead. They always did.
Darvik slowly cranked the extractor’s drill another quarter turn, to where he knew it would work most efficiently. The pig squealed even louder, and the process had only just begun. Darvik turned his attention to the glass vial at the base of the extractor, sitting between the two wings that gripped either side of the pig’s head. It was starting to fill with essence, the magical energy locked inside all living creatures and some of the dead ones. By siphoning essence out of an animal, Darvik collected fuel for his master’s artifacts. This particular pig was giving its life to fuel a spirit-lamp, so some spoiled nobleman could go a few years without lighting a candle.
Darvik nodded to himself and took a seat at the far wall, letting the cluttered workbench block his view of the animal. The pig was immobilized by chains and the extractor would do all the work from here. He didn’t have to watch. Darvik waited as the pig shrieked out more air than its lungs could possibly hold until it finally slumped to the floor, its body spent and the extractor’s vial full. Thus did Darvik, journeyman artificer to Master Erenkirk, slaughter yet another pig.
Before lunch, he would have to drag the corpse across the street to the butcher, where it would be sold at a discount to hapless townsfolk who didn’t mind eating tainted meat. On the way home, he’d have time to visit Candle. He always visited her on pig days. Her company and the many comforts she provided helped wipe the horrors of the slaughter from his mind. Some days, she was all he looked forward to.
With his break over, Darvik returned to his work. He slowly unscrewed the extractor’s spike, taking care not to give the pig an opportunity to spray blood and brains at him, then loosened the vice and pulled the extractor free. Skin and scabs came with it, but at least today was a dry day.
He gingerly pulled the vial free — it was held in place by a tight strip of leather — and quickly stoppered it before the precious essence could waft away. He tapped the glass and gave it a swirl. The purple-black essence curled and rippled like smoke mixed with water. It was a good yield, as it should have been. Darvik had spent weeks of his life and dozens of pigs calibrating the device. It had been his second task as an apprentice artificer. The first was crafting a set of earplugs.
The matter at hand, of course, was the viscount’s lamp. It wasn’t ready for the essence yet. Darvik had yet to unlock the magical pathways that would turn essence into clean white light. Lamps! The task was beneath him. Darvik should have been promoted to master and given his own apprentice by now. Old Master Erenkirk was hungover or worse from last night, most likely, and his hands shook more than a dying pig. Surely he was ready to retire and let Darvik take over.
A bell jingled in the shop-room. Darvik set his work aside and crossed through the curtain, where he emerged behind the counter. The shop’s shelves were lined with spirit-lamps, music boxes, and kitchen tools. The more valuable and more interesting artifacts were all kept in a locked cabinet in the work room. Erenkirk’s shop carried various baubles such as rings to enhance lustful performance, amulets that eliminated the need to sleep, and various other physical enhancements. They carried seeing-stones and healing chains, harnesses that compelled a dog to heed his master’s commands, pens that could write on paper from miles away, and cruel iron weapons that burned as well as cut. Below a trap door lay the least wholesome and least legal stock of all, such as artifacts to cut through glass without making a sound, lift objects from afar, or open locks without leaving a scratch.
But the man who stood in the doorway wasn’t interested in anything they had in stock. This was Streshim, Captain of the Guard. He stood tall in his glittering mail, with an arrogant sneer resting beneath a crooked nose and a thick gray mustache. “Fetch your master,” said Streshim. “And clear off your workbench. I have some real work for you.”
Erenkirk was already hustling down the stairs, tightening his belt as he came into view. His wispy white hair was unbound and flapping in all directions, his boots were unlaced, and his shirt was haphazardly buttoned. Hungover and barely awake, just as Darvik had suspected.
Commander Streshim sniffed. “I hope this,” he gestured at the old master artificer, “is not meant as an example to your apprentice.” Erenkirk wiped his nose on a sleeve. “Gods, man, show a little dignity. I come to you as a representative of the Duke of Windmire.”
Erenkirk spat. “You don’t like me, find a new artificer. What does the Duke want me to make for him, for free I might add, today?”
“The Duke has been kind enough to exempt you and your apprentice from taxes, military service, and weekly inspection. You will repay his kindness by crafting whatever he desires.”
Erenkirk sighed. Darvik could tell the old man had some retort planned, but wisely held his tongue. Erenkirk knew full well what happened to those who drew the wrong kind of attention from the city guard; he and Darvik had built most of those consequences.
“I need another tool,” said Streshim. “Lately, prisoners have an ugly habit of dying before we get answers. We need a way to continue our interrogations.”
Erenkirk’s face went pale. He leaned heavily against the wall and smoothed his hair. “You’re talking about necromancy. The Sangrooks…”
“No,” said Streshim. “I’m talking about interrogating suspected traitors and heretics, and that’s how the Duke will see it. Make it happen.”
Erenkirk leaned the back of his head against the wall and breathed deeply. After a moment’s contemplation, he said, “I have some ideas, but it will take a few months. The boy and I will need to make a trip.”
Streshim raised an eyebrow. “A trip?”
“Research,” said Erenkirk. “Maybe some tools.”
“You’re talking about the Manor?”
“I’m talking about the fastest way to make an artifact for nec— for posthumously interrogating prisoners.”
Now it was Streshim’s turn to think. “You can’t do it from scratch?”
Erenkirk for once stood tall and met the guardsman’s eye. “No.”
Commander Streshim shrugged with a jingle of mail. “Then see it done. This is too important to the Duke for half-measures. I’ll post a guard on this building until you return.” He turned on his heel and stalked out onto the street, but not before grabbing a spirit-lamp from the shelf.
Erenkirk followed Streshim to the door and slammed it shut. “A damn guard in my shop. I’d rather take my chances with the thieves.” He shook his head. “Did you extract that pig?” Darvik nodded. “Good. Take it to the butcher and trade it for some smoked pork for the road. Then come straight home. Don’t go sneaking off to that brothel like you always do. We leave at noon.” He clapped Darvik on the side of the head. “Why did you let him in? Hmm?”
Darvik spent the rest of the morning in a haze. Sangrook Mansion. That evil place had been abandoned for decades, and for good reason. The Sangrooks had ruled this country through their dark magic, necromancy and worse, leveling curses upon their enemies and capturing peasants as slaves, sacrifices, and experiments to satisfy their lust for forbidden knowledge. Erenkirk mus
t be truly desperate if he had resolved to go there, and the Duke mad to authorize an expedition. What information could be so valuable? What crisis loomed over the city of Windmire?
Darvik knew better than to ask such questions. Erenkirk would only answer with his belt.
***
Sangrook Manor loomed before the blood-red sunset, all glowering gargoyles and grimy windows and crumbling brick. The grounds were a hazy memory of once-great splendor. Here and there, a rosebush gleamed through the waist-high grass. Scattered topiaries grasped at their ancient forms like water-logged corpses, bloated and deformed. From atop a cracked stone pedestal, a statue of the old heretic Maldaeron Sangrook, who first dined with devils, watched over it all, while black-red vines clawed at his feet like a demon of the earth trying to drag him down.
“This is an evil place,” said Darvik. “We should leave now and tell Streshim we couldn’t find anything useful here.”
Erenkirk shook his head. “And then what? He’ll just tell us to forget about the duke’s artifact and send us on our way? The holy duke is a paranoid zealot who sees treason and heresy everywhere he looks. You know full well what artifacts are waiting in his dungeon. Apparently, they work so well he needs a new one to help him torture the corpses.” Erenkirk gritted his teeth and shoved his finger in Darvik’s face. “So don’t tell me about failing the duke. I missed my one chance to refuse an order from him when I was your age. There won’t be another.”
“And why am I bound by your mistakes? Why am I also a slave to the duke?”
Erenkirk’s open palm lashed out and landed on Darvik’s ear. “I took you in when your parents left you swaddled and screaming on the streets. I raised you as my son and my apprentice. My burdens are yours, and you will not question me.” He balanced the first blow with another to the opposite ear. Darvik didn’t flinch. From Erenkirk, a slap to the face may as well have been a frown. “Now get this door open before the wolves take us. Son.”
Darvik stepped up to the faded oak door, trying not to think about the special orders the duke had commissioned over the years. The artifact that burrowed itself into a man’s spine and slowly climbed to his brain, paralyzing him inch by inch over the course of weeks. The goggles that showed images of the victim’s deepest fears. A harness that converted blood to acid. He could think of a dozen ways Streshim might torture him to death or insanity, and that was neglecting the conventional methods like hot irons and pliers.
The great doors of the estate were adorned with a relief of swirling, sinister lines. The wood was bare in spots where the deep gray paint had stripped away. The knocker was fashioned after a child’s face and forged of brass, spotty and green with corrosion, as if the child were suffering some disfiguring disease. Darvik wondered if he even needed to unlock the door. Perhaps some thief had already broken in and left the manor unlocked. It had been empty for generations, after all.
Darvik reached out and pushed. The door was solid as a wall. A mild inconvenience, but not a surprise. Every child heard stories of what lurked in this evil place. Some said that the immortal Starcrimson Sangrook still roamed the halls, or that the manor had been overrun by demons summoned by some catastrophic spell, or that anyone who entered would fall to the same madness as the Sangrooks. Darvik had heard a hundred tales about the mysteries of the Sangrooks. Some were even believable.
He rummaged through his sack of equipment until he found the lock-pick. This was no ordinary lock-pick, for what artificer would carry a common tool? No, this artifact was a disk of brass, perfectly designed to manipulate other brass objects to change form as needed. It would counteract any magical protection, melt the tumblers, and turn the lock. The method left the lock destroyed, but one doesn’t come to an artificer for subtle solutions.
He braced the lock picking artifact against the keyhole and waited for it to do its work. The familiar purple-black aura of spent essence wisped out from the device, and the door cracked open. Destructive, crude, but still easier than smashing his way through.
Erenkirk stepped past him and held out a pair of goggles. The old master was already wearing his own. “Dark vision lenses,” said Erenkirk.
Darvik slipped them on. These were imbued with the essence of a cat. The essence contained not just magical energies, but all aspects of the creature it was taken from. The key to advanced artifice was in matching the correct essence with the desired effect. In this case, the goggles invoked a cat’s night vision. “Not spirit-lamps?”
Erenkirk slapped him in the back of the head, upsetting the goggles. “Use your head, boy. We can’t be blasting magical light all over this place. The less we touch, by any means, the safer we are.” He placed a hand on the door and pushed. It creaked and groaned as Erenkirk pushed through the years of grime, corrosion, and decay binding the threshold and hinges.
Darvik wiped his shoes on the threadbare, rat-chewed doormat and stepped into the darkness of Sangrook Manor’s parlor. The thick layer of dust and rat droppings put the lie to any claims that anyone had set foot in this mansion since its owners had fled. Moldy mahogany chairs adorned with skulls flanked every door, linked to candelabras by a labyrinth of spider-webs. The curtains were faded and frayed. A book shelf stood in the corner, the black-stained tomes exuding must.
Erenkirk stopped to gaze at a wall of portraits. He tapped one depicting a gaunt, pale-faced main with a wiry beard and soulless eyes, standing behind a table cluttered with vials, flasks, and scraps of metal. In one hand, he held an upside-down human skull with his finger highlighting a hole in the forehead. In the other…
Darvik retched when he recognized it. Such a device was beyond illegal, beyond unholy, beyond insane. How could any man admit to owning such a thing, let alone immortalize it and its evil result in a portrait? Pigs were one thing, but this… “An extractor designed for humans. Is that why we’re here?”
“Among other reasons,” said Erenkirk. He pulled a flask from his coat pocket, then raised it to the portrait in a toast. “Habrien Sangrook, the family artificer. We owe a great debt to him and his research.”
Darvik turned away. “You have a copy of his book. He invented the extractor.”
“And he never calibrated one to work with pigs, I can assure you,” said Erenkirk with a wry chuckle. “Looks a bit like you. You haven’t been hiding Sangrook blood somewhere in that forgotten ancestry of yours, have you?”
Darvik retched again. He despised how close his own work was to that of an Sangrook monster, how much of his livelihood was rooted in that family’s fell experiments. How much of his future would be dominated by them? He needed an escape. “I want you to test me. I need to be named master so I can walk away from Windmire and the duke while I still have some humanity left.”
Erenkirk, to Darvik’s surprise, considered the demand. “Convince me you have the knowledge. Why do we need the human extractor?”
That was barely a question. “Essence holds every aspect of the creature. If we extract a man’s essence before he dies, we have his memories. That makes it possible to build an artifact to read them.”
“Good, and if the subject is already dead?”
Darvik had tested dead pigs as part of his calibration process. He had hoped that he could extract the essence without suffering the screams. “Essence escapes quickly after death, but you can still collect some. You only get a fraction, but it could be enough.”
Erenkirk tilted his head and nodded. “That didn’t take long at all. Maybe you really are ready.”
“Even if the human extractor is here and we can find it, we still need a way to access the memories.”
“Oh, do we?” asked Erenkirk. He adjusted his dark vision lenses for effect, then opened the nearest door. This one led into a dining room. By the looks of it, the servants had never cleaned up after the Sangrook’s last meal. Plates were covered in bones, cups lay on their sides on the stained tablecloth, the chairs were pushed back, and a mound of wax lay beneath every candle-stick.
“You�
��re hoping Habrien already solved that problem, too,” said Darvik.
Another door. Another ruin of a room. This time it was the kitchen, where the fireplace reeked of bat guano and insects buzzed over a water-barrel. The previous rooms had reeked of mold and death already, but the added stench of bat shit and a rotten pantry was too much. Both artificers held their breath and pushed through the next door.
They stood in hallway lined with doors, thankfully bereft of anything but cobwebs. “We have two objectives,” said Erenkirk. “We need to find Habrien’s laboratory and his journals. His tools, such as the extractor, will be in the lab. The journals will either be in the family library or his bedroom. The Sangrooks weren’t known for their hospitality, and they didn’t breed quickly, so there’s hope that neither room was ever cleared out and re-purposed.”
Darvik pointed toward the end of the hall. “There are a lot of doors in this mansion. Twenty in this hallway alone. It will take more than all night to find what we’re after.”
Erenkirk kicked open the nearest door, revealing a small chamber with a bed. “Servants’ quarters. We’ll spend the night here, then split up in the morning. You’ll check every floor below this one, and I’ll check the ones above. Then we’ll talk more about whether you deserve your independence.”
The old man slipped into the bedroom and slammed the door behind him, leaving Darvik alone in the dusty hallway, where floorboards rattled and rafters groaned. He opened another bedroom door and examined the dilapidated chamber. A mound of dead flies lay below the dust-dark windowsill. The bed was tightly made, and upon pulling back the blanket, Darvik found a clean set of sheets, more comfort than he had expected. A plain armoire stood in the corner. Darvik cracked it open to find a set of hose, a wool jacket, a few coins, and various brushes. The young artificer helped himself to a brush and set to work dusting off the bed and clearing cobwebs, wishing he had found a broom as well.
He sat down on the bed and set his goggles on the nightstand. How could Erenkirk expect him to sleep here? His answer came in the form of a muffled clatter through the wall. His master was rummaging through his pack for a bottle. Erenkirk never fell asleep sober, so the surroundings hardly mattered to him.
