by Eric Griffin
The limited real estate might not have been such an issue if it were not for the increased population pressure. Because of the Sabbat forces pawing at the gate, all of the apprentices, journeymen, masters and adepts attached to the chantry were required to reside on the premises.
Unfortunately, this led to Foley’s having to work and exist at uncomfortably close quarters with mere novices like Jacqueline, Aaron, and the others.
The prevalent opinion seemed to be that the chantry, tucked beneath the Camarilla fraction of the city, made up in strategic value what it lacked in acreage.
“There’s only so much space between Barnard College and the Harlem River,” Sturbridge had told him the one time he’d ventured to mention his cramped quarters to her. Her peculiar summary dismissal of his concerns had dissuaded him from asking why the chantry didn’t expand in other directions.
From amidst the tightly packed shelves of curiosities, Foley’s hand extracted a modest, wooden chest—no larger than a jewelry box—which held the object of his present obsession.
The preparations he had assigned Jacqueline were only a small part of his ongoing efforts to unlock the secrets of this little enigma. Foley did not like mysteries.
The chest was unadorned save for a tiny mother-of-pearl, fleur-de-lis inlay on the lid. Foley cupped his hands around the box. In the shadow thus created, the design gave off a faint milky radiance.
Excellent, he thought. It’s still active.
With a steady hand, he opened the lid. Nestled in the felt-lined interior was a semi-precious stone no larger than a marble. It was a finely polished quartz, roughly spherical. Its color was a uniform cloudy red except for two black circles at its poles. The north pole was smooth and flawless. The south pole, slightly jagged. Raised areas on the stone’s surface made no special pattern that Foley could discern.
He had never expected the gem to prove of much interest.
Sturbridge had presented him with the stone several years earlier, with the expectation that he would perform experiments on it. The exact nature of these experiments was never specified. The stone had a faint resonance, but then again, so did an amazing number of trinkets, baubles and outright forgeries that found their way into the possession of Clan Tremere.
Foley had done some preliminary experiments, but to little effect. Before long, he’d set the gem aside. He had seldom even thought of it since, and then mostly in disparaging terms—a semi-precious stone taking up precious shelf-space.
All that had changed three weeks ago.
Foley had entered his sanctum and found that the precautionary seal which he had placed on the chest was broken, and the lid thrown open.
The very idea that someone had been handling his things! It was unclean. It was a violation. Why, it was an outrage!
Foley had already flogged three novices for their recalcitrance when the event repeated itself the next evening. No one in the chantry would have been foolish enough to so mock him after such a pointed and public a display of displeasure. So he’d been forced into a pattern of watchful waiting. He’d checked the gem several times each night, resealing the chest following each inspection. For weeks, nothing changed, except the normal degradation of the residual energies. Then last night, the gem had suddenly flared to life again and tonight, as indicated by the glowing mother of pearl, it still seethed with power.
To the naked eye, of course, the gem gave no such indication. Foley, however, had come to rely implicitly upon his little box. He had it on good authority that the chest had been brought out of Versailles just days before things had taken an irreversible turn toward the bloody and squalid.
He laid the list he’d shown to Jacqueline across a shallow copper dish on his worktable. He struck a match and held it to the parchment until the edges curled and blackened. Foley needed the list no longer; he’d taken it back merely on principle.
Before the paper was completely consumed, he took a tapering purple candle from a nearby shelf and held the wick to the fire. The candle was another of Foley’s creations. To the casual observer, the only visible sign that the candle had been carefully crafted by hand was that its wick ran the entire length of the candle and peeked from its stump.
The flame caught, the melting wax releasing a faint scent of honey. A moment later, the lower end of the wick inexplicably flared to life. Foley rotated the candle slowly, allowing the lower flame to soften the stump end before slamming it down abruptly onto a wicked iron spike that protruded from the northwest comer of the worktable. A mound of hardened wax—the legacy of several nights of vigilant testing—lay sprawled around the spike.
Foley turned back to the chest already uttering the opening syllables of the proper incantation. Reaching into a recessed drawer, he produced a slender silver lancet. Slowly, he passed the fingers of his left hand through the candle’s flame. It did not bum him, but he doubted that his handiwork would show the same consideration to anyone else foolish enough to attempt to duplicate the feat.
With a deft motion, he pricked the tip of his middle finger with the silvered needle and watched as a single drop of blood seeped, coalesced, swelled, and finally fell to the sputtering flame below. The fire drank eagerly, releasing a curl of oily black smoke that was heavier than air. The vapor coiled downward, winding languidly about the candle. Tentative tendrils drifted across the worktable and cascaded over its edge.
Foley placed the tiny chest in the precise center of the table and, with his index fingers, drew back the lid.
The candle sputtered and hissed. The flame seemed to arch its back in response to the presence of the lifeless red stone
Foley took a pair of long delicate silver tweezers and gently lifted the gem from its resting-place. With great patience, he moved it closer to the flame.
Twenty inches away. No change. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen.
The flame guttered as if buffeted by a strong wind. But it refused to be snuffed out.
The candle was shrinking visibly, wax pouring down its sides from the heat of its exertion. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen…
There.
Foley had been expecting the candle flame to suddenly surrender the fight with the telltale pop of a small implosion. The same experiment had played itself out for many nights now with nearly identical results. The only variation on the theme was the exact distance at which the stone crushed the fragile flame. That distance, and by association, the gemstone’s baleful influence, was increasing nightly.
What Foley was not expecting was for the candle flame to suddenly and inexplicable rotate ninety degrees. The tenacious lozenge of flame stretched out lengthwise upon its wick, as if felled by some mighty blow. Lying on its side, the flickering teardrop of flame looked like nothing so much as a tiny smoldering eye. Foley blinked twice in an effort to banish this illusion, but to no avail. Instead, he had the unsettling impression that the flickering orb winked back.
There was a darkness now at the heart of the flame. A shrewd narrowing of pupil. Foley found himself leaning involuntarily closer to the candle. Closer.
The flame no longer shrank from the stone in his hand. On the contrary, it seemed to expand in anticipation of its touch, of their long-frustrated reunion. The yellow eye sizzled, dripping viscous waxen tears. Foley felt as if he were being swallowed, consumed by the baleful stare. He could not wrench his gaze away. His right hand, forgotten, flapped clumsily as if he had lost all feeling in the extremity. It groped, fumbled for pen and parchment.
Finding, as if by chance, the sought-for pen, Foley bore down with a desperate palsied grip. He scribbled wildly. The mad lines staggered off the edge of the page. The delicate brass nib gouged agonizingly into the wood of the worktable.
Sunday, 18 July 1999, 3:45 AM
Morningside Heights
New York City, New York
Sturbridge stormed through the remnants of the dissolving vision. All around her, elaborate arcane constructs streaked and ran like watercolors. The vivid images and inc
antations that had sustained the ritual fell about her like a gentle rain and puddled at her feet. She clomped angrily through the puddles, each footstep leading her instinctively toward more familiar stomping grounds. The topography of the melting vision gave way to a landscape of streetlit rainbows in oil-streaked puddles.
Through the early morning drizzle, Morningside Heights was quiet except for a low hum of activity from the late-night coffee bars. Sturbridge could feel the tips of delicate and deadly fangs slip down from the roof of her mouth in answer to that hum.
Somewhere within her, hunger raised one sleepy eye, stretched and leaned against its tether. Sturbridge roughly shouldered it aside. She was far more angry than she was hungry.
Far more angry, she repeated, as if to steel her conviction.
It would not be long now. Already she could see the familiar outlines of the residence halls of Barnard College rising out of the misty rain. Soon she would be home. They would, no doubt, be waiting for her.
If only they would not be waiting for her.
She could deal with just about anything else right now except for the looks of concern on their faces. There was a time—yes, she admitted, even a hundred years did little to dim the vividness of the memory—when she had welcomed the look of concern on the faces of her family. When she had courted it. Staying out those few extra hours just to see its momentary flicker on her mother’s face. Before the expression fused into the harsher lines of anger and indignation.
But that was a very long time ago, she reminded herself. A lifetime ago.
She had a new family now. A family whose “concern” was (quite rightly) feared even in the courts of the immortals. She would not subject herself to that concern.
No, she was their regent. She would be strong. She would be aloof. She would be unassailable.
She would be angry. She thought, just have to stay angry.
Before the door had closed behind her, they were there. The flutter of their words wrapped around her like warm blankets. The flush of their concern pressed upon her like the warmth of a mug of steaming cocoa pressed into her hands. It would have been very easy to sink into the solace of that welcoming concern.
No. Have to focus. Have to stay angry. Those Sabbat bastards. How dare they?!
She waved her arms, scattering novices like a flock of carrion birds.
“Jacqueline, where the hell were you? We’ve been working on this ritual every night for the last fortnight—ever since we isolated the location of that damned Koldun’s nest. And tonight, when it comes down to smoking him out, you suddenly recall a prior commitment?
“When we go out to do battle with that, we all go. Just because I’m the one out there on the firing line does not mean that you get to take the evening off. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Regentia, but Secundus Foley summoned me to…”
“Foley!”
“Your pardon, Regentia,” the secundus pushed his way to the front of the crowd with an air of importance. “It is exactly as she says.”
Foley picked uncomfortably at the cuff of his robe. He was irritated, disheveled, distracted. Sturbridge noted that the shirtsleeve peeking from that cuff was soaked to the elbow in smeared ink. His other hand was severely burned, nearly blackened. “You are unwell.” It was not a question.
Foley withdrew his hand into the recesses of his sleeve. “It is nothing. We will speak of it later. There have been…developments.”
“We will speak of it now. You let novices go into battle alone. You owe them an explanation. You owe me an explanation.”
“Although I might question whether this were the appropriate time and place to discuss such a delicate—such a personal—matter, I remain my regent’s good and humble servant. I was in my sanctum, engaged in certain routine activities crucial to the well-being of this house. The novices were hardly alone. Johanus and Helena are certainly more than capable of guiding the novices through the preparatory stages of the ritual until such a time as I could rejoin them. I have the utmost confidence in their abilities. Honestly, my lady, you do coddle them so. They are, after all, adepti…”
“Was the chantry under attack?”
Foley’s patience grew to match her impatience. “Have no fear on that account, my lady. The premises are…”
“A fire? A cave-in? An earthquake?”
“The premises are secure.”
“Something, then, is unsecure. A spy, perhaps. You have ferreted out a spy in our midst?”
A nervous laugh escaped from somewhere among the assembled novices. Foley half turned, caught an eye, made a mental note.
“Of course not, my lady. All here are unswervingly loyal. To yourself, to this house, to Vienna, to the pyramid. Rest easy,” he soothed. “You are fatigued, nothing more. And we keep you here standing in the entryway. For shame.”
He turned upon the nearest novice. “For shame. Back to the domicilium with you. All of you.” He made a broad sweeping gesture, inadvertently revealing his disfigured hand. He hastily withdrew it again.
“Secundus.” The edge to Sturbridge’s voice brought the retreating novices up short. “What was the nature of the crisis that detained you this evening?”
Foley turned uncomfortably. Pitching his voice low, he replied. “My lady is well aware of the delicate task that consumes my evenings of late. I would hope that she is furthermore aware why it is imperative that we not speak of such matters here.”
“I do not recall the nature of this task.”
“I beg my regent’s pardon. It is a failing of mine. I am always assuming that those around me share my fascination for the mnemonic arts. My lady will recall that she not only authorized my recent investigation into” (his voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper) “the object I’ve discussed, but she said the matter was to have the very highest priority.”
Foley was quite pleased with himself. He was making Sturbridge’s task much easier. The man had a unique talent for being absolutely infuriating. She had seen him ply his trade on several occasions. He could devastate the most carefully constructed plot of a rival in a matter of seconds, by pushing his opponent over the edge at exactly the wrong moment. Sturbridge had recognized this useful talent early in her tenure as regent and Foley had rapidly risen to the lofty position of her second-in-command.
“Did I say that your bauble would take priority over my personal safety, or was that a priority you set on your own?”
Foley stammered, “My lady! I never…I did not mean to imply…”
“We will set aside the issue of endangering my person. For the moment.” Even the greenest novice heard in those three words the clear message that there would yet be a reckoning for this failure. A personal and private reckoning.
“My Regent is most generous,” Foley replied, head bent in submission.
“The fact remains that you have led this novice astray—a matter which I take very seriously. The Providence Compact is quite specific on the punishment of such infractions.”
Members of the chantry were seldom privy to the corpus of the law. Sturbridge doubted that even two of the masters present had heard of the Providence Compact, much less laid eyes upon any of its strictures. Only a regent or a specialized scholar of the law would have had even a passing familiarity with its contents.
She seemed to consider for a moment. “I can see three suitable sentences.” There was no discussion of trial, of defense, of appeal—only of punishment. The regent had sole responsibility for interpreting the complex web of bylaws, strictures, compacts and precedents that made up the tangled body of Tremere law. Within the chantry, she dealt swiftly and decisively with any perceived infraction. The regent did not serve the law; she enacted justice.
Sturbridge ticked off the possible fates on the fingers of her left hand. “One, the Atonement of Silence. The secundus shall submit to the removal—by fire—of the tongue which led the novice astray.”
She held up a second finger to forestall any interruption.
&
nbsp; “Two, the Atonement of Service. The secundus shall undertake the responsibility of training and guiding three new initiates through all seven circles of the novitiate.
“Three, the Atonement of Sacrifice. The secundus shall surrender the object of his obsession, that which led him out of community with his brethren and into solitary peril—the bauble with which this congregation has, perhaps unwisely, entrusted him.”
At the mention of the stone, the accused’s head jerked up. He could not master himself quickly enough to mask the look of defiance that was plain for all to see. He recovered quickly, mumbling something conciliatory about the wisdom of the regent, and retreated a half step.
“Jacqueline, as the wronged party, it falls to you to decide the matter of the secundus’s punishment.”
A look close to terror crossed the novice’s features. Sturbridge ignored it.
“But, Regentia,” Jacqueline stammered, “I am but a novice. How could I presume to judge the secundus?”
“You will pronounce sentence in loco regentia, on my behalf.” Sturbridge smiled down benignly upon the young novice. Yes, this little one must also be taught a hard lesson here tonight. A lesson about the chain of command.
“Silence, service, or sacrifice? Choose.”
To her credit, Jacqueline squirmed for only a few moments before gathering her courage. “I… I would like to choose clemency, if it please my most just mistress.”
Sturbridge smiled. She would have to keep a close eye on this one. “Nothing would please me more. But lenience will not satisfy the law. You will choose. Now.”
Sunday, 23 May 1999, 4:50 AM
Suburban Lodge
Cincinnati, Ohio
Scalded clean and dripping wet, Nickolai perched on the edge of the bed. He took care to avoid the blood that still puddled on the mattress. He tried to force his thoughts to focus on his next move, but they led him inevitably backwards.
Up to now, his movements had been instinctual—a headlong flight away from the site of the massacre—away from the blasphemous ruins beneath Mexico City. Nickolai’s sole purpose had been to put as much distance as possible between himself and the all-too-recent nightmare. If the truth were known, he could not say with certainty that it was not already too late.
