The Iscariot Sanction

by Mark Latham

  Even with her heightened senses, or perhaps because of them, the scene was overwhelming. The music was jarring and frantic, played by six skeletal creatures who sat within an alcove balcony, their movements rapid and jerking, their faces hidden behind black veils. Around the edges of the hall, more twisted, ancient creatures stood silent and still, watching intently, their masks not hiding their ugliness. Above them all, overlooking the floor that swarmed with dancers in their clockwork trance, was a high vaulted ceiling painted with a vision of Dante’s hell, from which dozens of still-twitching naked bodies hung from long chains. Lillian saw with growing horror that the incumbent victims—human and vampire alike—groaned and writhed with what could be either pain or pleasure, or both. Drops of blood fell to the floor like rain, staining the gaily coloured costumes of the revellers. The scene was lit by flame rather than gaslight, with great fires burning within iron bowls, sickly sweet incense mingling with the smoke.

  They continued through the centre of the room, de Montfort’s arm in hers; Lillian felt hundreds of pairs of eyes upon her. She heard the whispers even over the screeching din of the violins: ‘It is her,’ ‘Heresy!’ ‘The King’s new bride…’ ‘So, it is true, de Montfort thinks himself a god.’ Her escort revelled in the attention, nodding to the assembled courtiers shamelessly.

  The dais before them housed a long table, set with finery before thirteen places. Only half of those places were taken, and Lillian fought to hide her disgust at the sight of Prince Leopold. To the prince’s right sat Sir Robert Collins, his face ashen and drawn, looking as though he might be sick at any moment. To the left sat a fawning vampire maid, inhuman of aspect yet attractive compared to the other females in the immense ballroom. Standing behind the prince’s chair, straight-backed, eyes front, was Colonel Ewart. If the Scot was repulsed by the scene before him, he did not show it; Lillian imagined he had long since thrown in his lot with the Knights Iscariot, and was perhaps accustomed to their ways. The maiden whispered something in the prince’s ear, and laughed musically. At this, Leopold—looking vacant and sluggish—turned to look at Lillian, and raised his glass to her.

  ‘Curtsey,’ de Montfort whispered.

  Lillian did as she was bid, at which the prince turned back to the vampire woman and became at once absorbed in conversation with her. Sir Robert tried his best not to so much as glance furtively in Lillian’s direction.

  ‘What now?’ Lillian whispered.

  ‘Patience,’ de Montfort said through the side of his mouth.

  Trumpets blared abruptly. The music stopped and the dancers froze as if they were figures in a clockwork music box, whose mechanism had wound down. A prancing, spindle-limbed creature in a costume reminiscent of a plague doctor leapt upon the stage, dancing to his own music for a moment before bowing low to the silent audience. Where the creature’s skin was exposed at the hands and throat, it was dark and dry, rustling like crumpled parchment.

  ‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, in a rasping, throaty voice that projected magically across the hall. ‘The Nameless King bids you welcome to Scarrowfall, the heart of the wampyr court and, as you all know, soon to be one of the great royal residences of the British Empire!’

  This was met by a ripple of appreciative, yet mirthless, laughter.

  ‘We welcome to the royal table tonight a very special guest,’ the master of ceremonies went on. ‘A royal prince of England is among us, signalling, we hope, the dawn of a new age of cooperation and prosperity between our two peoples. Please join me in welcoming Prince Leopold to Scarrowfall, and in extending our condolences for the recent, tragic loss of his dear mother, the Queen.’ The creature adopted mock sincerity, and his performance drew further laughter and a ripple of applause from the crowd. The prince was unmoved. Sir Robert looked even more ill, appearing to shrink into his chair until he all but disappeared.

  ‘We also have a new member of our hallowed ranks, escorted here tonight by Lord Lucien de Montfort. We extend welcome to Lillian Hardwick, who will tonight be inducted into the Nameless Sisterhood. Come, child.’ The grotesque compere beckoned to Lillian.

  Go to him. De Montfort’s voice rang in Lillian’s mind. Though she had no desire to join this mysterious sisterhood, she moved to the side of the dais and ascended a small flight of steps. As she walked past Prince Leopold, drawing a surreptitious glare from Ewart, she looked around at anything she could use to escape. To kill. On the wall behind the stage, flickering torches burned theatrically. Great claymores hung upon the walls in front of tapestries depicting Old Testament scenes of plague and destruction. She wondered if her vampire form gave her the strength to wrest them from their brackets. She saw that Ewart was armed, and presumed therefore that other armed guards would also be present among the Nameless King’s attendants.

  ‘Come, come,’ said the master of ceremonies, a bony hand outstretched, strange, blackened fingers clacking long fingernails together. The creature smelled of oil and ash, and moved in unnatural, jerking motions as though its bones were fused together and it had to break them anew with each exaggerated sweep of its arms.

  ‘Our sister is shy!’ the creature proclaimed to the room. ‘Or perhaps she thinks I bear her ill will, for past transgressions. There, there, Lily-white, Snow-white… I hold no grudge for crimes committed in a former life. How could any of us immortals be so petty?’

  Lillian did pause now, checking her stride as she came to the grim realisation of the compère’s identity. Though the voice was pained and rasping, it was unmistakeable. Had it not seemed such an impossibility, she would have guessed as soon as the scarecrow-figure took the stage.

  ‘I see she remembers Sir Valayar Shah at last!’ said the creature, clapping its hands together dramatically. ‘Miss Hardwick was surely destined to become one of us; she remembers not the lives she has taken. No matter! How can I bear any malice towards this creature, for she gave me the greatest gift of all: the gift of exquisite agony, that I shall remember for all eternity.’

  At this, Shah removed his mask, and even Lillian, inured as she was to horrors, checked her advance and stifled a gasp. Shah’s flesh was no longer marble-white, but tobacco-brown. His rictus grin, which Lillian was certain had been carved surgically onto his features, was now more grotesque than ever, the electrical energy from the Tesla pistol having burned it back to the bone, the edges blackened like burned paper. His eyes still glittered behind the torn mask of a face.

  Shah clacked his fingernails again, bringing Lillian back to her senses. She joined him at the centre of the stage quickly, taking his gnarled, dry hand, her skin crawling as his horribly long, bony fingers curled around hers, cracking as they did so. He began to bow, jerking awkwardly as though his back could hardly bend.

  Curtsey.

  Lillian heeded de Montfort’s mental instruction, feeling like a marionette in a puppet show, next to a black-clothed Punchinello. From up on the stage, the crowd looked even more ghastly, their smiles almost as grotesque as Shah’s, their forms shifting dizzyingly as glittering costumes reflected the torchlight. Smoke hung in the air above them in a fragrant miasma.

  Shah raised Lillian’s hand, and twirled her around as if to display a prize, before passing her over to a human servant, dismissing her as yesterday’s news so that he could continue his address. Lillian was led by the hand around the back of the long table, past a group of three well-dressed vampires who looked at her with a confection of morbid fascination and haughty derision; past the arrangement of swords upon their fixed metal mounts; and was finally seated by yet another servant next to Sir Robert Collins. The comptroller of the prince’s household avoided her gaze diligently. The prince smiled, a vacant expression on his face as though he had already been at the wine for some time. Lillian felt Ewart’s eyes boring a hole in the back of her head.

  To her right was the largest seat at the table—a great gilded throne, positioned at the centre of the top table. She felt something in the pit of her stomach, and only slowly ca
me to recognise it as trepidation. The Nameless King would undoubtedly be seated next to her. Her audience with this mysterious creature could not be far away.

  In front of Lillian’s seat, she was relieved to find a large silver candelabra blocking her view of the crowd, and theirs of her. Beneath its arms, however, she saw de Montfort being led up the steps at the side of the stage, whereupon he took a place four spaces along the table to Lillian’s right, and was instantly caught in the fawning pull of a hideous, wrinkled vampiress, whose teeth had been filed to points, and whose eyes shone in the candlelight. The creature tossed her head back as she laughed, revealing an ugly red brand upon a saggy, milk-white neck, and while she spoke to de Montfort, her eyes remained fixed upon Lillian, filled with malice.

  The other seats at the table began to fill with strange-looking creatures that Lillian did not recognise. Throughout it all, Shah had not stopped his performance, drawing laughter and gasps from the crowd in turn, prancing back and forth along the stage like a music-hall comedian.

  ‘Please put your hands together for Count d’Aurenga of Montelimar, and His Grace the Bishop Ferdinand of Limburg,’ Shah was saying, as more of the Knights Iscariot’s membership took the stage, filling the final places.

  Bishop? Lillian thought, incredulous at the notion of a vampire inveigling its way into the church hierarchy in any nation. Perhaps the title was an affectation, taken through some tradition or historical technicality, much as de Montfort’s position seemed to be. Or perhaps even these depraved highborns had been able to disguise their monstrous nature to live among mortals, much as Cherleten had for so long.

  It appeared that the assembled lords and ladies at the top table represented some of the more important figures in vampire society, drawn from around the globe. Their exotic accents and outlandish ornamentation gave them away as foreign-born, although their pale, scarred flesh and violet eyes lent them a homogenous appearance; one that Lillian realised, with some distaste, she now shared. She wondered if the vampires had their own society, away from the artificial distinctions provided by political borders and racial incongruence. She wondered if, should she fail in her mission, whether she would meet her end, or become instead inducted into that culture, eventually forgetting all that she had been previously. There was some dark comfort in this thought, in the idea of being embraced by a new family.

  De Montfort was still inside her mind. He turned to fire her a glance as she thought these things, and with it sent a psychic progression of a single word. A name: John.

  She looked away. Her brother was locked in some stinking dungeon and whatever happened, she would see him freed; she owed him at least that much. She owed it to the ghostly vestige of her humanity. These thoughts, and others, she buried deep, hopefully deep enough to be concealed from de Montfort’s mental prying.

  The throne, and the seat to its right, were the only empty places remaining. Lillian noticed this only when Shah had ceased his droning, and the crowd’s laughter at his show had subsided. Her concentration upon guarding her thoughts had distracted her. She looked about, catching the eye of Collins briefly, before he turned away hastily, guilt and fear writ large upon his countenance.

  The momentary lull was ended by another blare of trumpets, at whose signal Valayar Shah shouted to the chamber, ‘All rise for the Nameless King!’ The scarecrow-man bowed low, and fair scuttled backwards to the wings of the stage, as a heavy curtain behind them lifted.

  All those at the table stood, as did every seated vampire within the hall. Lillian, reluctantly, followed suit.

  From the shadows behind the curtain, dozens of pairs of violet eyes shone bright, and one by one their owners stepped out into the light of the hall; it was an entourage the likes of which Lillian had never seen—a gruesome, twisted line of creatures more removed from humanity than any vampire Lillian had encountered.

  The procession of the Nameless King had begun.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The music recommenced, an assault on the senses. To its maddening strains, the procession took to the stage, a long line of bizarre creatures, some nimble and lithe, some shuffling and feeble. Concubines, half-naked vampiresses and slender, immortal youths, their skin scarred and powder-white, violet eyes dull, heads lolling upon their chests.

  Each of the entourage was in some way misshapen, pierced with jewels and barbs, their pallid flesh like pin-cushions. Some were hunched, others had missing or withered limbs. Some were mutilated with bony crests beneath the skin or necks elongated by metal rings in the manner of the tribeswomen of the Dark Continent. Lillian wondered if, like Shah, these creatures were once those very people. It was impossible to tell now, for even if they had retained any features of their race, they were long subdued beneath sickening scars.

  The leaders of the troupe were the sprightliest of all, shaven-headed women, though almost androgynous, ugly and somehow seductive, dancing in sinewy motions ahead of the others, swirling great veils about their slight, scarified forms. Their bodies twisted and contorted awkwardly, and with such immodesty that Lillian found herself averting her eyes more than once. The creatures hissed, and stretched out their malformed limbs to the crowd, extending long talons from fingers and toes. Lillian noticed, with growing distaste, that all of the creatures wore collars, and threaded between them was a silver chain, held by two guards who followed the cavorting slaves. Was this to be her own fate? A cavorting slave-beast, paraded naked before the King and his sycophants like so much cattle?

  More servants came behind the procession, that laggard kind of human serf that Lillian had seen before. Their close-cropped scalps with their roughly sewn scars told another story; their vampiric masters had perhaps exercised the cruellest form of control over them. These liveried servants were big and strong, breathing in heavy grunts against the leather stocks about their necks. Lillian thought that they would be little use as guards in a hall full of vampires, and equally poor as servants for all but the most desultory tasks. They were doubtless nothing more than a vulgar display of power over humanity, akin to a fine pair of spotted carriage-dogs. Lillian remembered the servants she had seen in royal residences over the past few years, their ancestors taken from the furthest edges of the Empire as slaves, and now given an illusory freedom in the service of their supposed liberators. The vampire king was not so very different from English nobility perhaps.

  As the dancers took up positions on the floor in front of the great table, seated upon velvet pillows, the liveried servants stood to attention on either side of the dais. Only then did four more vampires take to the stage.

  The first two were the familiar sort, and Lillian took note of them especially—hunters, faces puckered where their flesh had necrotised, or else had been cut away deliberately in some ritual mutilation. They wore severely tailored coats, which flowed almost like gowns past the waist, while their high collars barely hid the brands that marked their throats and the undersides of their jaws. The other two creatures were women, dressed a hundred years out of style. Their waists were drawn in by impossibly small corsets, their bosoms pushed up outrageously, ghastly faces painted paler still, so that they fair glowed in the subdued light of the hall, and the whole arrangement topped with improbably tall powdered wigs. They fanned themselves and paraded around like music-hall viragos—parodies of ladies, perhaps intentionally so. One peeled away from the group and took a place near to Lillian, on the right hand of the throne. She smelled of iodine and arsenic powder, and smiled as though her features were incapable of change.

  Finally, the music stopped and the crowd quietened to a reverent hush. Something changed in the very air, almost imperceptibly at first, and then more noticeably. Shadows gathered around the stage, the light from the torches failing to permeate them. Despite the heat of the packed hall, the temperature dropped to an icy chill—Lillian barely felt heat or cold any longer, and so she knew it must be a severe change. She saw the breath of the human serfs, Collins and the prince fog upon the air. The darkness
intensified. Lillian felt the back of her head buzz, and a pressure grow about her eyes.

  It is the influence of the King, the voice in her head intoned. Show no weakness—his chosen few are immune to these effects, but most are completely in his thrall.

  Sure enough, Lillian saw dozens of vampires rubbing at their foreheads or dabbing themselves with kerchiefs as the malign influence of the King pervaded the chamber. She found herself craning about to look at the curtain at the right-hand side of the banqueting table, waiting with bated breath for the Nameless King to make his entrance. But he did not.

  Instead, a collective gasp from the dance floor caused Lillian to turn back. From her vantage point upon the wide dais, she saw in the centre of the room a great shadow stretched out like an enormous spider. The vampires scurried away from the black, smoky void, pressing back into the crowd as the form coalesced and began to fold in upon itself. Tendrils of smoke and pure darkness retracted from floor and ceiling, taking shape within the centre of the hall. From the reactions of the vampire nobility, Lillian guessed few, if any, had witnessed this before.

  It is a trick. Do not be afraid.

  Lillian risked a glance at de Montfort, but his eyes were fixed ahead. She took a deep breath, trying her best to quell the discomfiting sensation in her head.

  Finally, the shadows shrank and swirled further, as though a tornado of darkness were forming in the room, and reality seemed to snap back into place, violently. Onlookers ducked as a great chorus of shrieks and squawks filled the room, and from the darkness came a tide of blue-black feathers. A murder of crows, hundreds strong, erupted from the shrinking shadow. In their wake, a wave of dream-like energy crashed through the hall. Lillian felt it wash over her; her skin prickled with it, and the pressure that had steadily built within her head at last dissipated.