Clan Novel Tremere: Book 12 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Eric Griffin

  CLAN NOVEL

  TREMERE

  By Eric Griffin

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Clan Novel Tremere is a product of White Wolf Publishing.

  White Wolf is a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive.

  Copyright © 2000 by White Wolf Publishing.

  First Printing April 2000

  Crossroad Press Edition published in Agreement with Paradox Interactive

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  For Susan—

  (Because real magic is matrilineal)

  Table of Contents

  part one: the dragon’s graveyard

  part two: interiora terrae

  part three: the children down the well

  part one:

  the dragon’s graveyard

  Sunday, 18 July 1999, 2:00 AM

  Manhattan cityscape

  New York City, New York

  Aisling Sturbridge sluiced through the rain-slick streets. The city towered above her on all sides in colossal glyphs of pitted steel and sizzling neon. The jumble of arcane signs and sigils that assaulted her senses seemed haphazard. The city streets were piled high with half-forgotten ambitions rendered in concrete and raw altitude.

  This was the Dragon’s Graveyard—the place where the lumbering juggernauts of unbridled industry came to die. Sturbridge could feel the weight of old bones looming over her.

  She ducked through a low archway and found herself in the midst of a vaulted colonnade of jutting ribs. Each of the gently curving monoliths was yellowed and pitted through long exposure to the elements. She absently ran a hand down the nearest ivory pillar. Its surface was encased in a nearly invisible envelope of cool water, tricking over the pocked surface in dozens of miniature fountains, cascades, waterfalls. As if of their own volition, her fingers searched for and traced out the letters of the logo—the sacred name that the faithful had carved into the obelisk all those years ago.

  The Plaza.

  She smiled at a distant memory, recalling a lobby on the scale of a cathedral, filled with the luminaries of the American aristocracy gliding among peerless marbles. After only a brief contact, her hand fell absently to her side and she moved on.

  In the rigors of the hunt, there was little room for nostalgia.

  Through careful scrutiny, Sturbridge began to discern that hers was not the only sign of life among the ruins. She was amazed that the castoffs of two hundred years of avarice and ambition were not content to lie still and be dead. All around her, the city clamored heavenwards, clawing its way upward, trampling upon its own shoulders in its rush. The glass-walled towers seemed to shift like liquid under her gaze, flowing upward toward some unguessed sea amid the night sky. Experimentally, she put one hand out and broke the mirrored surface of the nearest building.

  The tingling was not the expected rush of cool water, but something different—the scurrying of thousands of tiny legs across her skin.

  The touch of Sabbat sorcery.

  The vision shifted abruptly as the enemy attack erupted all about her. The alien mindscape pulsed like a migraine of flashing red lights. Fire engines emerged from the glaring light and screamed toward the Harlem River where a great funeral pyre tore free from the low-lying tenements. It cracked skywards like a whip. There were figures among the flames. Long, lithe, gibbering figures. They danced the primacy of the flames—the legacy of Heraclitus.

  In the beginning, there was the flame. And the flame was with God and the flame was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

  Through it all things were made; without it nothing was made that has been made. In it was life and that life was the light of men. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

  Sturbridge could feel those flames reaching out to embrace her, to engulf her. She staggered, throwing one arm before her eyes to block out the light and heat. They bore into her skull. She stumbled against the nearest building, but its shifting surface would not bear her up.

  Instead of the unbroken towers of still water she had envisioned earlier, the buildings now seethed in carapaces of teeming insect life. Sturbridge recoiled, stumbled. She could feel the wave of scurrying life break over her. She felt herself going down beneath the weight of it—clinging, crawling, stinging. She sank to one knee.

  Immediately, there were hands beneath her arms, steadying her. The ancient chant that formed the backbone of the ritual reasserted itself. The distant voices rose to a worried crescendo. Although the singers were all miles away, secluded within the walls of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs, the voices imposed themselves upon the vision.

  She could see the individual voices, distinct and radiant, like strands of colored light. They wrapped around her, supporting, caressing. Where they touched, the clinging insects burned away.

  Sturbridge caught at the nearest snatch of song and latched on to it. Held firm.

  She recognized something familiar in the bright but tentative strand of amber light—it was Eva. Sturbridge smiled. She felt the novice stagger under the unexpected tug from no discernable source. Sturbridge could almost see Eva flailing wildly, trying to catch her balance and momentarily losing the rhythm of the chant.

  The amber light flickered and vanished, but immediately there were a dozen others to take its place. Sturbridge could no longer see her surroundings for the glare of them.

  She was exalted, bathed in their light. The adepts, Johanus and Helena, were twin pillars of smoke and fire, rallying and guiding the chosen. They shepherded the novices who flickered uncertainly like fragile phosphorescent tubes. Sturbridge could not quite stifle a smile of amusement and pride in her young proteges.

  But where was Foley? She took a quick headcount of her forces. He certainly could not have forgotten about the ritual. The secundus regularly regaled the novices at great length about his infallible mnemonic powers.

  Her mind leapt to thoughts of treachery and then quickly discarded them. No, Foley was ambitious, but not so foolish as to attempt to dispose of his superior in such a clumsy, imprecise and public manner.

  That probably meant trouble back at the chantry. It might be something as innocent as an unexpected guest, or an inadvertent trespasser. Or i
t could mean an intruder, a would-be thief, a Sabbat scouting party or even an all-out assault.

  She took another rapid count to be sure that no other forces were being withdrawn from the ritual to deal with the crisis at home. No, everyone seemed accounted for with the curious exception of Jacqueline. And here, at last, was Foley. His affected royal-purple glow was flushed and pulsating as from great exertion.

  Sturbridge grabbed Foley and held him back from taking his rightful place at the head of the adepts. It was a gentle reminder that his absence had been noted and would be addressed as soon as the ritual was concluded. Foley was unflinching in her grasp. His light grew more stable. Good, he was not wounded at least. Nor did he try to draw her back to the chantry. Situation under control.

  Sturbridge gathered the varied and multicolor strands of light to her. She stroked each one reassuringly, drawing from its strength, returning its strength twofold. She was the conduit. Her entire body thrummed like a taut string. Twisting. Tuning.

  There. She was again perfectly in pitch with the pulsing lifelines and she rode the rising chant toward the very crux of the city.

  The tops of neighboring skyscrapers rushed angrily toward her, intent on pinning her, wriggling, against the night sky.

  But even as they closed upon her, she was already conjuring up her defenses. Her armor was forged of the materials abundantly at hand, the cast-offs of the city streets. She girded herself in the overturned trash cans, the abandoned cars, the gutted apartment buildings, the rusted iron gratings, the bodies (some stirring, some not) in the alleyways—the detritus of the city, jettisoned in its heedless skywards rush.

  A vast pyramid of rubble and refuse was taking form around her. The vengeful thrust of the skyscrapers crashed against the sides of the pyramid but could not avail against it. They fell away harmlessly to feed the tangle of ruins below.

  Sturbridge broke from the press of voracious buildings like a predatory bird rising above a forest canopy. Suddenly, she could see for miles in every direction. Any minute now… There.

  She sighted the main gathering of Sabbat forces along the burning river and swooped down upon them. She could now pick out individual figures capering through the flames. Her prey was there among them. The Koldun. The spawn of the Dragon.

  The Tzimisce sorcerer had the aspect of a broken mirror, his body a jumble of cruel, jagged angles. Looking at him, Sturbridge expected that his movements would be tortured and ponderous, but the fiend was inhumanly lithe. He seemed to flow without effort in and out of the dark pauses between the tendrils of flickering firelight. His slightest movement was accompanied by the music of fine crystal.

  The fiend sensed her approach. Looking up, he thrust one accusing finger toward her. Sturbridge felt the impact of the blow despite the intervening distance. She tumbled in the air, careening wildly toward the waiting arms of the inferno below.

  The Koldun curled the upraised hand into a fist with the shriek of diamond cutting through glass. Sturbridge plummeted like a stone.

  She struggled to right herself as the flames roared up at her—to regain some control over the direction of her unchecked descent. To hurl at least her body at the Koldun like a projectile. It was no good. She tumbled end over end, unsure even which way was up any longer.

  She knew the first caress of the flame would remove all such uncertainty. She thought of Icarus, of the boy who, refusing to heed his father’s warning, flew too close to the sun. In her mind, she could trace each detail of the intricately handcrafted wings. She could see the wax that sealed them soften, run, melt away as she drew nearer to the fierv orb. She screamed as her wings unraveled. She had been so close. With nothing to bear her up, Sturbridge plummeted away from the jealous sun.

  The Koldun staggered back in disbelief as Sturbridge broke from his grip, falling upward, away from the flames. He reached for her again. Too late.

  A blaze of incandescent red erupted from the crystal of his upraised fist. With a cry, the sorcerer jerked his head away from the blinding glare. The light pulsed and beckoned like a pillar of fire. It was almost immediately joined by a streak of ethereal silver light. A pillar of smoke.

  The Koldun shone like a prism. A dozen searing strands of colored light shone through him. The air was filled with liquid song. It coursed over and through his body.

  He could feel heat, worry, responsibility all burning away before the purity of that searing light. He felt the trickling of the chant running through his fingers and puddling on the pavement below. He watched with a strange detachment as the skin of his hands flowed away in pursuit, leaving him staring at the bare, gleaming knucklebones.

  He flexed his fingers experimentally. He was unnaturally calm, despite the certainty that these were to be his last moments. The rest of his flesh pooled away, running gently to the ground with a sigh. He had no regrets. He had known he would never leave this place. He had come here—to the Dragon’s graveyard—to die.

  With great care, he stepped out of his skin. If he had but one gesture left to him, he would step free and dance in his bones. He took a single step and then his bones would bear him up no longer. The earth gathered him in.

  Sturbridge settled gently back down to earth. Her splashing feet broke the ghost images gathered in the puddles, scattering reflections on all sides. She took care to avoid the Sabbat’s more mundane forces, who still cavorted nearby in the grips of their fire dance.

  She did not know how much of the arcane clash they could perceive, but she could pick out a number of them watching now, keeping a respectful distance from the overgrown vacant lot where the Koldun’s mound crouched. It was not likely that they would intrude upon the fiend’s lair without first being summoned. The Kolduns had a well-deserved reputation for being fiercely territorial.

  Sturbridge turned her attention to the novices. She touched each of the tenuous strands of light in turn, assuring herself that everyone was accounted for. Only after the last of the familiar lights had flickered out did she turn to make her own way back to the chantry. Somehow, she could not shake the feeling that something was still amiss. She scanned her immediate surroundings for the slight, telltale visual clues that might herald a new threat. Everything seemed normal enough for the moment.

  Well, almost everything. Glancing down, she noted with some puzzlement that she seemed to cast two distinct shadows. A trick of the light? To be sure, she made straight for the nearest functioning streetlight. No doubt about it now. Even under the glare of a bright single light source, she definitely had two separate shadows.

  Her first thought was that she was being watched, or worse, followed. She was reluctant to turn back toward the chantry with an unwanted guest literally or figuratively in tow. She assumed the worst. If this new presence were friendly, then why would it not identify itself? Of course, it was possible that the shadow did not represent any conscious entity at all. Perhaps it was simply a harmless side effect of the clash of arcane energies. Even old familiar rituals seemed to produce unanticipated results these nights. And the Sabbat sorceries she had faced this evening were an even more volatile element. When dealing with the alien conjurings of the Koldun, it could be difficult to discern between the enchantments themselves and their deadly afterimages.

  She regarded the shadow with mingled curiosity and distrust. She half expected it to lunge suddenly ninety degrees to the vertical and go for her throat. After a few minutes of observation, however, she managed to shake free of this apprehension. The shadow seemed to behave normally, if one disregarded the rather obvious fact that it did not appear to react to the presence, direction or intensity of light in the expected manner. And the shape was not quite the same as her normal shadow. It was smaller and its contours were not quite right. The tiny limbs were more gangly, more girlish.

  Recognition dawned on Sturbridge, accompanied by a cry of pure animal fury. She stomped angrily in the puddle as if to crush the shifting shadow underfoot. The shadow wavered as the ripples rolled away from the poin
t of impact, but the small fragile figure clung to her tenaciously.

  Damn them.

  She wheeled angrily as if trying to put, not only the now-familiar shadow, but even the very thought of it behind her.

  It was a useless gesture. The little girl’s shadow stretched before her on the pavement, taunting her, mocking her loss.

  Sturbridge’s shoulders knotted beneath the weight of the gathering forces. Her arms snapped forward and down as if hurling a great stone to the pavement. Rage erupted from her hands. The asphalt cracked, smoked, boiled away. Still she did not relent.

  She was blinded by the acrid black smoke. Where it touched her skin, it condensed and clung, burning like a liquid fire. She broke off, stumbling backwards, one arm thrown protectively in front of her face. But when she had fought her way back clear of the deadly cloud, the shadow was there before her. Patient, tenacious, reproachful.

  Her eyes stung with salt and smoke and her ears burned with the echo of distant laughter.

  Saturday, 22 May 1999, 11:00 PM

  Suburban Lodge

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  Nickolai awoke bathed in blood-sweat. A thin red film coated every inch of his body and had already soaked through the silk bedclothes. Ruined.

  He peeled away the clinging topsheet and, holding it at arm’s length, let it slump to the floor. Blood puddled and lapped over his hands as he pushed himself to his feet. A trail of sticky red footprints followed him down the hall and into the bathroom.

  In a matter of days, no doubt, the authorities would discover these macabre signs and begin the search for a corpse that they would never find. But that was nothing to Nickolai. This particular ambulatory corpse would be far away from here long before daybreak.