Machina Obscurum

by J. Edward Neill

  So they had set their bait and now waited in the darkness.

  “He isn’t inside,” Pinque whispered, arriving in the alley two blocks from the baths. “You’re certain he will come here tonight?”

  “I’m rarely certain about anything. It makes me good at what I do.”

  “Téssera’s shrouded itself in clouds this eve. Maybe it doesn’t want to see this unfold.”

  Perhaps, Drav thought. Pinque was right. The man they suspected worked at the bathhouse during the day and went home at dusk. He was out there, somewhere in the dark. Lurking. Beholden to whatever sickness had taken hold of his mind and forced him to kill on this night every month. If he wasn’t, Drav wasn’t sure what he would do next.

  Every man who left the house would be trailed by an armed constable all the way to his home if necessary. Also, the men they had planted inside were instructed to act as foolish and intoxicated as possible, hoping to make themselves especially appetizing targets.

  Drav and Pinque waited in an alleyway across from the baths and they waited for hours. The night grew cold. Pinque’s resolve and attention started to falter as they passed into the next day, but Drav kept his nighteyes focused. Men would leave the baths, finished with their washing, conversing, or fornicating, and a constable would follow and then return five, ten, twenty minutes later with nothing to report. At one point they mistook a blind beggar for their prey. Astia ordered him detained until morning, just in case.

  Two and a half hours past the mid of night, the clouds shrouding Téssera quickly and gracefully parted and allowed the Eye to dimly illuminate the city in pale blueness. Mere minutes later, a stocky older man, not one of Drav’s, left the bath house and walked south down the central lane, towards Drav and Pinque’s alley. They tucked themselves farther in and away from the street. Drav marked the man as he passed. He was stumbling a tad, humming quietly to himself a tune that would not find him performing for the Cyng any time soon.

  “Pinque,” Drav whispered as the man passed the alley, “why don’t you— “

  Another man passed, following right on the heels of the first. A slim man, with gangly limbs and a hitch in his step. With his gift, Drav could make out his face as if it were noon.

  It was the painter.

  HE FOLLOWED THE DRUNKEN PIG of a man, first at twenty paces, then ten, soon getting within five without his quarry taking any notice. Being downwind the painter could smell the rotgut fumes left in the man’s wake. He was large, larger than the ones before, but was so in his kegs that resistance seemed unlikely. Perhaps he wouldn’t feel it when the blow came. The painter didn’t like causing pain. At least, he didn’t remember liking it. He barely remembered the times before. Fragments, impressions remained of those previous four nights. Those deeds were ethereal, less real to him than the visions that prompted them. Every time he ventured out to deliver his message in the sight of Téssera, it was a new experience.

  The fat man turned west down a slender cobblestone corridor and the painter quickened his step. He withdrew from the small of his back his favorite brush, still stained with the dried paint of his previous works. Eyeing the man’s neck, thinking about plunging his tool into just the right spot, feeling the imminent violence, he became exhilarated. His body tingled. His senses heightened. Time slowed. As he raised the brush above his head and prepared to strike.

  Maybe he did like causing pain.

  The bulge growing in his breeches seemed to say so.

  Grab your brush.

  Prepare your palette.

  Find your canvas.

  And—

  “In the name of the Cyng I command you to halt!”

  The painter whipped around to face the unwelcome threat and heard the fat man’s footfalls as he ran away. Two forms faced him, dimly lit by freshly-revealed Téssera. They appeared to be men, but he saw them for what they were: vassals of Twyth, sent to silence him. Censor his message. Defy his destiny.

  The taller fiend wore a wide-brimmed hat. He spoke with a deep and gravelly voice:

  “Put it down.”

  He looked down at his favorite brush, squeezed the hilt tight, and leveled a defiant stare at the interlopers. The other enemy, bareheaded and shorter than his companion, inched toward him, his double-edged spatha unsheathed and brandished.

  They need to see what I haven’t seen.

  They need to know what I do not know.

  “Please,” the painter plead. “I must be heard.”

  “Not until you put down your dagger, Theras.”

  Theras. Kilo Theras. That’s my name.

  He held the demons at bay with his brush, sweeping it back and forth.

  Was my name.

  But no more.

  “Drop the blade or we will drop you,” the hatless minion barked.

  “I must be heard!”

  The taller villain stepped in front of his jumpy companion, gently pushing that man’s blade aside with his own. “I will listen to you, Kilo,” he said, calmly and quietly. “But not while you are brandishing steel. You disarm, you surrender, and then you will be heard.”

  “No one ever listens to me!”

  “I know. But I’m here now.”

  The smaller enemy tapped on the other’s shoulder.

  “I was right, Drav. Just a madman. Let me run him through and finish this.”

  I am not a madman.

  “Stand back. Let me handle this.”

  I speak the truth.

  I am here to warn you.

  I am here to save you.

  You must listen to me.

  Because I am the…

  The…

  The Herald lunged.

  PINQUE JABBED HIS SPATHA at the onrushing murderer. Theras wrapped his left hand around Pinque’s thrusting blade. He grunted as both edges of the sword cut into him; blood flowed instantly and his index finger fell to the cobblestones.

  Despite the pain he was able to push the blade aside, enough to close on Pinque and jab his knife into the constable’s shoulder.

  In his life, Pinque had been beaten, kicked, clubbed, slapped, burned, and thrown by the meanest mare in New Slidtown. He had once, under the influence of nothing but his own clumsiness, tumbled down the fifty and a hundred winding stairs of a WardenStone tower. The memories of that pain vanished the moment the knife plunged into him. The shock radiated outward from the wound and swept through his body like a fast-coming storm. He screamed, he knew, but he didn’t hear it. He heard nothing. His vision blurred. He only felt. He was not afraid for his life. It didn’t cross his mind. Nothing crossed his mind but the pain.

  For a moment. Then his eyesight cleared and he was face-to-face with The Herald. The monster snarled as he twisted and bore down on the blade, trying to drive it deeper into Pinque’s shoulder. It was then that Pinque noticed he had dropped his own sword and had two hands wrapped around Kilo Theras’s one, fighting him, unable to pull the knife out but at least preventing it from plunging any deeper.

  Astia, any time you want to—

  DRAV SLIPPED AROUND PINQUE’S LEFT SIDE, raised his sabre, and brought it down on The Herald’s forearm. The blade cut fabric, then flesh, the muscle, and stopped at the bone. Theras yowled and pulled away, yanking the dagger from Pinque’s shoulder. Pinque howled in pain and dropped to his knees.

  The Gloomwalker stepped between killer and constable as the former took a few long, slow steps backwards. His left hand had lost two digits and a lot of blood. His right arm, despite the nasty cut Drav had given him, still functioned and raised the bloodied blade in meager defense.

  Kilo Theras was as tall as Astia but nowhere near as solid. He wore a patchy young man’s beard that did a poor job of veiling the face behind it. It was a young man’s face. He was barely into his third decade. His eyes were tired and afraid, but not cruel, not possessed, not evil. In other circumstances Astia may have called them kind.

  They were certainly not the eyes of a madman. Drav had stared into enough of those to kno
w. They were not the eyes of Creno Nar. Theras was well beyond recovery or redemption, but not mad. He was determined. Defiant. But also frightened.

  “So you’ve come across the sea to silence me, have you?”

  Drav shook his head. “You have assaulted a man of the Cyng, Kilo. Do you know what— “

  “You look like men but underneath you are nothing but bones.”

  Pinque managed to stand. He held and pressed his wound with both hands. “What are you on about, friend? Of course we got bones— “

  “We are constables of the Heart,” Drav cut in. He leveled his sabre at Theras. “When you are in our custody you can tell me all the tales that you want. I look forward to them. But first you drop your blade.”

  “I did not leave my home this eve expecting to return,” The Herald said with flat affect. “Téssera did not tell me the means, but it seems it will be you.”

  “The Eyes don’t speak. They only watch.”

  Theras shook his head as if he pitied the Gloomwalker.

  Then he ran.

  Astia took off after him, his sabre ready to run the man through.

  Drav was stronger, and faster, but when he caught up to Theras, ten yards from where they’d started, the painter stopped, spun around, dropped to his knees, and jabbed his blade down into his pursuer’s right boot.

  THE DEMON GROWLED IN PAIN and The Herald knew he had struck a blow. He took his brush back and, as the beast stumbled and hopped backwards, he stood and ran.

  His left hand was devastated. Three digits remained, and one of those was hanging by a string of flesh. The gash in his opposite forearm was deep and should have rendered the limb useless, but he was filled with a white-hot energy that lessened the pain and gave him strength where he knew he should have none.

  He looked up at Téssera, full and round in the sky. If this was what Lo wanted from him, he could not refuse. The Sea. The Uncounted. The undead warriors. The fire. These things, these things that he had seen but not seen, they added up to one idea.

  To one word.

  One final word.

  His final word.

  As he ran he saw no one but heard the evil minions calling to each other in the dark, looking for him. He could escape, he knew. This was his hunting ground and he knew it better than some creatures from beyond the Sea. He could become invisible, find in a shadowy nook like the one he had hidden in earlier when he waited for Téssera to come out from its shroud and reveal the scene to him.

  But he was not looking for escape.

  He was looking for a canvas.

  And he knew where to find one.

  DRAV ASTIA FOLLOWED A TRAIL OF BLOOD. His quarry showed no signs of evasion. No backtracking. No attempts to stem the flow of that was leading the ‘walker right to him. This painter was no skilled criminal. He was frightened, cornered, and wounded.

  And probably insane.

  The Gloomwalker followed the crimson wake of the killer as it wove itself through the streets. At first Drav believed them to be going in circles, that the man had no idea what he was doing. But soon he realized that they were indeed circling, but not idly. They were making their way back towards the baths.

  With every step, Astia stumbled and winced. He cursed the wound. Not for the pain. The pain was fleeting and far from the worst he had ever endured. But, despite the whisperings of common folk, Drav Astia was mortal, and molded from the same clay as they. Normally, he would have closed on The Herald immediately, subduing him or, if necessary, using his steel to send him to Lo, but the hole through his foot slowed him considerably, leaving behind bloody boot prints that complimented the trail created by Kilo Theras.

  After ten minutes of measured and labored tracking, Drav found himself around the backside of the enormous building that housed the baths, as far from the opulent main entrance as one could get. This end of the structure bore the visage of the ancient ruins it once was, hidden away from the public by a grove of trees, brambles, and leftover columns and rubble of long gone times.

  The blood trail had begun to fade, but Drav only needed it for a few more moments. Theras was headed inside, he was sure, but why? And how?

  As soon as he asked the question, it was answered. A door, ancient and nearly hidden by overgrown vines, was set into the base of the building. A portal that, at a glance, one would suspect hadn’t been opened in centuries. A long-forgotten entrance to the underbelly of the baths. Perhaps once used for servants or slaves. Or as an intake for the coal and timber that heated the building’s warm water pools. Whatever its initial purpose, it had outlived its usefulness and been abandoned. It was likely even Herndon didn’t know it was back there.

  But someone did. It was cracked open and there was a smear of blood, vaguely shaped like a handprint, on its edge.

  The Gloomwalker redrew his sabre and kicked in the door, slamming it inward, half-expecting the killer to jump out at him from the darkness, but instead finding himself in a long narrow passage, much darker than the Eye-lit night outside. For one without Drav’s gift, wading into that void, unable to see a thing, knowing that somewhere inside was a murderer with a blade, would have been suicide.

  Drav Astia didn’t hesitate.

  Upon entry, the smell of the place nearly cast him back outside. Shit and decaying flesh were the dominant scents, with a hint of smoke. Bracing himself, he carried on, holding his breath for long stretches at time, using every bit of his will to keep his throat from seizing up on him. He stepped over the remains of animals, vermin mostly, but also hounds and cats, ranging from stripped-bare skeletons to freshly-dead and stiff carcasses. He could avoid those, but could only guess what filth he was trudging through, what vileness to which he was subjecting his wounded and exposed foot.

  Periodically another passage crossed his path, more black and narrow hallways ran underneath the entire complex. Some sort of service tunnels, he surmised. A quick way to get from one part of the baths to another without disturbing the visitors. The ancients weren’t any less inventive that we are now. They were more so, in some ways.

  He turned when The Herald’s blood trail, now barely a trickle, turned. Carried forward when it carried forward. Drav was a strong man, a man who had experienced many horrors, but he needed to get out of this stench as soon as he could. It was perilously distracting. His stomach churned. He hastened his pace, no longer concerned with the detritus he crushed or squished beneath his boots.

  A dozen or so turns through the grotesque maze lead him to a small room containing exactly three things: a wash basin, a wood stove, and a ladder.

  The basin, a low wooden barrel with rusted iron banding, was half-filled with dark, murky water. Drav dipped his finger in, took it out, and held it close to his face. The water covered his skin transparent pink. Blood. He wiped it off onto his breeches.

  The stove was a stove, the same sort found in every home in every town in every nation under Lo’s light. It lay cold. Its iron just as maligned as that of the barrel. Beside it lay a few sticks for kindling. The door was open and hanging, half inside the stove and half out, was a man’s shirt, streaked with blood.

  I did not leave my home this eve expecting to return, the painter had said.

  This room has no bed, Drav thought. No belongings of note. No trace of food or human waste or painters’ tools. He does not live here. It’s not his home. It’s his sanctuary. He comes here to purify himself. Wash his hands of the blood. Put his clothes to the fire. Not out of fear of discovery; no one knows this place exists save him. He incinerates it for himself. To burn it out of existence. He wants to purge it all from his memory and leave no evidence of what he has—

  The hearts.

  Drav stared into the maw of the oven. Had this also been the final destination of his victims’ hearts? It was unclear, perhaps even to Theras, why he had taken them. If he disposed of his clothes in this manner, why not the hearts? They were no good as trophies. They would quickly rot unless brought to a proper herbologist or alchemist, so ei
ther he was eating the organs, or he was burning them.

  Burning them.

  The heart will burn, Astia thought, seeing The Herald’s last message composed in the blood of a wealthy man from Lyton. Could the puzzle have been that simple? Could the “heart” referred to be literal and not a threat against the city, the citizens, and the Cyng?

  The ladder was thirty or forty rungs high and led up to a circular portal. Sheathing his sabre, he grabbed a rung and pulled himself up. He did not know where it would lead him, but it had to smell better.

  Drav climbed, grunting with every other rung when forced to use his pierced foot, and when he reached the top he carefully poked his head out into yet more darkness. On the stone floor next to him was a grate that once covered the hole, lifted and tossed aside in Theras’s haste. He pulled himself up into a pantry, its shelves stocked with oils, soaps, linens, and other things that brought incalculable relief to Drav’s nostrils. Again, the killer had left the door open; he was making no attempt to cover his tracks, to slow his pursuer.

  Astia tread quietly out the door and into the cavernous white marble expanse of the baths. The pool itself was empty. The tiles and mosaics on the walls were ancient and crumbling. This was the room that Herndon had not yet opened to the public, he realized.

  This was the room where The Herald painted.

  On the far side of the room was bright orange light. It burned brightly and cast outward into the pool and up along the wall. Drav blinked away the sting. It was the first actual light he had seen since leaving Téssera and the stars behind. A lantern, lit and sitting on the top level of a scaffolding the height of six men.

  The light cast the shadow of a man onto the wall.

  Drav skirted around the edge of the pool, trying to stay out of the lamplight until absolutely necessary. As he got closer, he got a better look at the man atop the scaffold.