by Pierre Pevel
‘Did the cardinal send you?’ she asked upon seeing La Fargue approach.
‘The circumstances did, more like it.’
‘Then it’s divine Providence at work.’
Side by side, they lifted their eyes towards the Primordial and the white forms that were confronting it.
‘The battle being waged by your louves is doomed to failure, mother.’
‘They know that. But it’s only a matter of gaining time.’
‘Gaining time for what?’
‘For the ritual the sisters are preparing inside … Oh my God!’
The great black dragon had just struck a Chatelaine with a fiery blast. Burning alive in her flaming robe, she plunged from her wyvern, a long silence accompanying her fall before she vanished in the black waters of the Seine.
On Ile Notre-Dame, joyful exclamations and war cries greeted the terrible spectacle of the living torch, which fell from the skies trailing a swathe of flames. The damp and rotting alleys of Les Écailles were full of excited dracs who, ever since the tocsin had sounded, had been following the Primordial’s manoeuvres. They instinctively took its side against the Chatelaines and applauded this success.
Keress Karn broke off observing the aerial combat to keep an eye on his men who, at a street corner beneath an enormous lamp, were replacing one barrel with another. Their return was welcomed with acclamations, both from dracs who were already drunk but wanted to drink some more, and from new arrivals who had been drawn by the rumour of free drink. The first barrel had been emptied in less than an hour. The second was immediately tapped and would not last long.
Karn knew that similar scenes were taking place here and there all across the stifling maze of Les Écailles. The Heresiarch had ordered him to provide a generous flow of drac wine and that’s exactly what he was busy doing. The task itself was an easy one: dracs loved this mix of wine, eau-de-vie and golden henbane that intoxicated them after just a few glassfuls. But Karn needed to make sure that his own men didn’t touch the stuff. Although most of his band was waiting out of harm’s way to go into action, those he had entrusted with delivering the barrels were susceptible to temptation. Karn himself had to avoid breathing in the fumes from the irresistible brew. To his men, he explained that they needed to keep a cool head in readiness for the forthcoming combat that night.
It was the truth, but not the whole truth.
For Karn still mistrusted the mercenaries he had hired to replace those who had fallen at Bois-Noir. The new recruits knew how to fight and to obey orders, and had no fear of dying and even less of killing. They were true drac warriors. But how would they react if they knew? What would they do if they found out the Enchantress had poured a substance that induced madness into each of the barrels? Would they accept the idea of poisoning other dracs simply to achieve the aims of the Arcana?
As for the red drac leader, he couldn’t care less.
The idea of Paris burning delighted him, and now he was eager to plunder the helpless city.
Long and spacious, the cellar featured rows of columns upholding elegant vaults. Large flagstones covered the floor and the lit candles placed in large candelabra cast tortuous shadows on the bare walls. Gathered before the altar, there were thirty people reciting an incantation in the old draconic tongue. All of them were masked and draped in scarlet cloaks. All of them carried a sword. They had secretly sworn allegiance to the Black Claw and, not content with having placed their names, their fortunes, and their influence at its service, they also worshipped it in a cult whose sinister rituals induced an unhealthy fascination in them that flattered their basest instincts.
The Demoiselle was leading the ceremony.
As she chanted the words that her acolytes repeated after her, she hardly resembled the charming young person that she ordinarily pretended to be. The features of her face had become sharper, more bony and hollowed. Her eyes shone with a cold and cruel sparkle. Her tangled blonde hair fell upon her bared bosom. She seemed taller and stronger. More mature, too. But that was nothing compared to another change: below her waist, her body had formed a thick scaly tail upon which she held herself upright.
With her arms spread and her head tilted backward she undulated slightly, abandoning herself to a pleasure which was enhanced by the vapours from the decoctions of henbane which were being heated in bowls filled with red-glowing coals, placed on either side of two long, crossed daggers upon the altar. Powerful fragrances rose into the air, thick and yellow. They affected the acolytes too, and had also plunged Clotilde into a hypnotic torpor. The girl was behind the Demoiselle, bound to a stone table that was inclined to expose her to the view of all present. She was naked, and her body had been shaved and covered in painted inscriptions, and her wrists and ankles were held by leather straps.
In her ecstatic trance, the Demoiselle did not see the flasks of naphtha flying towards the gathering. She did not see them fall, burst and splatter in all directions. She only opened her eyes when one acolyte, soaking and surprised, overturned a large candelabra as he stumbled, and then suddenly caught fire. The layer of oil in which the cult members found themselves suddenly floundering was set alight. Other acolytes began to go up in flames. There was panic. The human torches screamed and struggled while the others hastily stepped away, jostling one another. Some threw off their burning cloaks, slapped on their sleeves or breeches to put out fires, threw away smoking gloves, and rubbed at their scorched hair. Meanwhile those the fire had spared stared around them without comprehension, their minds still sluggish from the golden henbane.
Saint-Lucq approached with his sword in his fist, having left two dead bodies at the door behind him.
‘TAKE HIM!’ screamed the Demoiselle, pointing her finger.
Having entered by a second door, two mercenaries – a drac and a human – rushed forward to meet the half-blood. Very calm and still advancing, he parried the man’s attack and pierced him in the chest, withdrawing his blade just in time to avoid an attack from the drac, whom he brought down with a knee to the groin before finishing him off with another blow to the chin.
Frenzied with rage, the Demoiselle roared as her face became more brutal and scales appeared on her shoulders and throat like armour plating. She seized the two sacrificial daggers placed before her and turned to the inclined stone table. And then she roared again in fury, a prominent ridge emerging in the middle of her brow. Laincourt had freed Clotilde. The girl was having trouble standing and clung to his neck, so he held her tightly against him with his left arm while he backed up and pointed a pistol at the Demoiselle, or rather at the creature she had become.
He opened fire.
Hit in the left shoulder, the Demoiselle reeled back, but then straightened up like a reed on her scaly tail and looked in stupor at the hissing wound. The pistol ball was made of draconite. Another detonation rang out. This time, the reptilian creature arched her spine, hit in the back by a second draconite projectile. She spun round and saw Saint-Lucq aiming at her with a smoking pistol.
‘FLEE!’ he yelled to Laincourt. Then, giving the Demoiselle a contemptuous look, he added: ‘I’ll take care of this bitch.’
Blackened corpses lay on the floor, emitting a faint sound of hot sizzling grease. Only a few scattered puddles of naphtha were still burning. Among the acolytes who had not fled the scene, some drew their swords and went to attack the half-blood. Very coolly, he reversed his pistol with a flick of the wrist and grasped it by the barrel. Then he smashed in a temple, slit a throat, and perforated a heart, eliminating his adversaries in three strokes of lethal precision. The bodies collapsed almost simultaneously. The last hit the ground just as Laincourt gave a last glance backward before disappearing with Clotilde.
Saint-Lucq caught his gaze and nodded.
Foaming from the mouth, the Demoiselle had gone completely berserk. Her jaws yawned open in an uncanny fashion as she screamed at the half-blood and unleashed the full power of her aura. Its impact drove away the last remaining acolyt
es, who fled in wide-eyed horror, and it even forced some of the mercenaries, who had just arrived hungry for a fight, to beat a hasty retreat.
Saint-Lucq remained where he was. The dragon blood that ran in his veins made him immune to the Demoiselle’s influence. Impassive and unimpressed, he raised one eyebrow behind his red spectacles and placed himself en garde, his black rapier in his right hand, and his pistol held like a club in his left.
Armed with the two long ritual daggers, the Demoiselle came at Saint-Lucq, her serpentine tail writhing with a scraping noise across the flagstones. A terrible duel began between them. Blows were delivered, parried, deflected, and dodged faster than the eye could see. The steel blades clanked and clashed as if propelled by a life of their own. Concentrating fiercely, the half-blood knew the slightest error would be fatal and that, in addition to the daggers, he needed to be wary of the scaly tail that threatened to knock his legs out from under him. The two adversaries were equal in the swiftness of their reflexes. They seemed to be dancing rather than fighting. They circled one another, striking to right and left, immediately riposting, advancing and retreating, never holding anything back.
And it went on and on.
Finally, Saint-Lucq decided to risk his all. He was tiring. The sweat running into his eyes was hampering him. He had to act.
Lowering his guard, he struck with his pistol, and the blow broke the Demoiselle’s wrist, forcing her to drop one of the daggers. In doing so, he exposed his side. The reaction was immediate: with her second dagger, the creature lacerated his flank. But his trap was nevertheless in place. For anyone else but Saint-Lucq would have backed off at this point, but he did not.
Instead, he promptly riposted.
And planted his rapier to the hilt in the Demoiselle’s belly.
The creature froze, gurgling, transfixed by pain and horror.
Pressed up to his enemy, Saint-Lucq also waited without moving. At last, as he felt the Demoiselle growing heavier and heavier against him, he slowly turned the blade running through the body, jerked it up sharply while holding on to his victim, and pushed the creature away as he backed off.
The Demoiselle remained standing for a moment, heaped entrails falling from the gaping wound in her abdomen and hitting the floor with a flaccid noise. Then she collapsed and, giving a long strident cry, convulsed frenetically until death finally had its way.
A final shiver ran through the scaly tail.
Saint-Lucq looked at the body before slipping his pistol into his belt. Then, rapier in one fist, holding his side with the other hand, he left.
Saint-Lucq escaped without encountering any more resistance and discovered a city in distress as fires ravaged its buildings and its frightened inhabitants sought to flee. Suffering more than he wanted to admit, he leaned against a wall. He was on rue Saint-Honoré, at the entrance to rue Gaillon. The hand pressed to his flank was sticky with blood.
‘Saint-Lucq!’
It was Laincourt coming back for him.
Looking very pale, Saint-Lucq straightened up.
‘The girl?’ he asked.
‘In safety. I entrusted her to the Capuchin monks on rue Saint-Honoré.’
‘Good.’
‘La Malicorne?’
‘Dead.’
‘You’re wounded.’
‘I can manage.’
‘Let me see.’
‘I can manage!’ Then, settling down a little, the half-blood added: ‘We need to get to Notre-Dame. That’s where everything will be decided. And I’m willing to wager that’s where La Fargue will be too.’
Laincourt nodded but watched the frantic scene in rue Saint-Honoré with a worried eye. A burning house nearby fell down, throwing up great incandescent plumes and prompting cries of terror. Men and beasts knocked into one another as they scrambled away from the raining debris. Saint-Lucq understood the reason for the young man’s anxiety and, with his finger, he pointed to the Gaget Messenger Service’s tower.
From the Hôtel des Arcanes, the Heresiarch strove to control the Primordial. He would have preferred to ignore the armed Chatelaines that were harassing them in the air, but the great black dragon wanted to finish off the unbearable white winged creatures. They attacked it and then flitted away, sometimes inflicting a brief, stinging pain that increased its anger. The Heresiarch could not do anything about this. He was seeing the world through the eyes of the Primordial. He guided it. But he could not act against its instincts. Indeed, he ran a great risk of losing himself within the primitive meanders of the Primordial’s intelligence, of being taken over by its brutal emotions and primal impulses.
It was intoxicating to be nothing more than sheer, unbridled force.
Numerous louves had already perished. Others had been forced to retreat on wounded or exhausted wyverns. Only a few remained to divert the Primordial’s fury. Without them, Paris would have been one immense inferno by now, but their sacrifice had only postponed the inevitable. They would not be able keep this up much longer.
There was a jolt.
A psychic blow struck the Heresiarch just as a searing pain blinded the Primordial. The mind of the Arcana’s master tottered. Dazed, he needed a moment to recover and restore the link, but he managed it …
… just before another jolt shook him again.
A drop of blood ran from his nostril.
When the great tenor bell, called the bourdon, of Notre-Dame tolled for the second time, once again it seemed as if the Primordial had been hit full on by a cannon ball. Driven back by the impact of the sound, the giant dragon only regained mastery of its flight after some contortions and roars. The pain faded as the deep, low-pitched note of the enormous bell diminished in the night, but the Primordial did not repeat its original mistake: it remained a safe distance away from the cathedral.
In the streets of the capital, this small victory over the dragon was celebrated with cheers of joy. But beneath the tall archways of the Grande Galerie of Notre-Dame, La Fargue asked:
‘What now? Because we won’t be able to stave this monster off forever, will we?’
‘No,’ replied the White Wolves’ mother superior without taking her eyes off the great black dragon as it soared in the distance. ‘No, we won’t.’
The Ordeal had come to an end and there was no more time for waiting and hoping.
‘Open it,’ said Mère Thérèse de Vaussambre in the silence of the crypt.
A massive door stood before her.
Solemn, two Chatelaines seized hold of the rings of the heavy twin panels, turned them, and then pulled.
Slowly the door opened, without a sound, and let the light enter within.
Standing, head bowed, Agnès de Vaudreuil held something against her chest, hidden in the shell of her hands.
‘Are you a louve?’ asked the Superior General of the Chatelaines.
As her sole response, Agnès lifted a grave face and extended her joined hands, revealing an empty and translucent Sphère d’me.
In Valombre’s house, Marciac climbed the secret staircase wiping his brow and rejoined Alessandra, who was observing the sky from a window. He had carefully sutured the dragon’s wound and placed a makeshift splint on his broken leg.
‘Well?’
‘I don’t see the Primordial anymore,’ replied La Donna. ‘It seems as though the sound of the bell at Notre-Dame is forcing it to keep its distance.’
The bourdon of Notre-Dame was indeed continuing to toll in a slow but steady rhythm.
‘We must have the Chatelaines to thank for that. This must be what they were preparing earlier,’ added the Gascon.
He recalled that when Alessandra and he had passed in front of Notre-Dame on their way to Valombre’s home, the cathedral had been lit up and occupied by the Sisters of Saint Georges.
‘Except that the dragon had not yet shown itself,’ objected the young woman. ‘But since the Chatelaines were certainly not there by chance, they no doubt had good reasons to believe the Primordial would strike
tonight. And they were preparing for it.’
‘How could they have known?’
‘As for that …’
La Donna shrugged her shoulders, pensive. Then she turned away from the window to look at Marciac. The moonlight shone on her pretty profile and scattered silver in her red hair.
‘How is Valombre doing?’
‘He’s sleeping. Or has fainted again. In his state, it’s more or less the same thing … But even though he’s lost a lot of blood, he’ll live. Of course, he’d be better off in his bed, but I don’t feel strong enough to carry him up on my back … Be that as it may, if you hadn’t been so concerned about him, he’d be dead by now.’
While Alessandra went down to be at the patient’s side, Marciac went into the kitchen to search for something to drink and a moment of calm. He found an open bottle of wine that he drained in three gulps from the neck and was starting to feel a little more at ease when he heard cries, noises, and savage laughter outside.
Intrigued, he went to have a look out one of the windows, and swore.
Bands of dracs were leaving Les Écailles across the crude wooden bridges that linked their island to the two banks of Paris, but also over the rickety and almost forgotten footbridge that led to the canons’ neighbourhood, at the end of the Ile de la Cité. And even on boats, some of which capsized and went adrift, carried off by the current.
They were drunk, excited by the fires, exasperated by the din of the tocsin, exalted by the spectacle offered to them by the great black dragon in the sky. Above all, most of them were plunged into a state of madness engendered by the Arcana’s wine and the drug that the Enchantress had added to it, in accordance with the Heresiarch’s plans. A temporary madness, true. But a madness that blinded them, woke their warrior spirit, and revived their taste for blood. They felt a need to kill and to destroy, carry out acts of violence and satisfy their vile impulses. They brandished weapons and torches, howled war cries, burst into peals of cruel laughter.
