by Eric Griffin
He turned again upon Foley. Surely, the game was up now. Foley wasn’t going through with this. Foley would turn on him, mock him, scorn him. He would bellow something dramatic like, “Now take your proper place at the center of these treacheries that you have brought into my house!”
But no. Foley was composed, hauntingly still. Aaron recognized that stillness. It was the lull, the pregnant pause into which the blood spills.
No, this was foolishness. It had to be stopped. He would ruin everything. What possible use could these assembled barbs and insinuations serve in an actual ritual? An invocation of the blood was a thing of delicacy and no little danger. What kind of madman would knowingly ward himself in these petty treacheries?
Foley’s voice was calm. “Aaron?”
“Yes, Secundus.”
“Would you be so kind as to send Jacqueline in to me as you go through?”
“Secundus, you can’t…”
“Thank you, Aaron.”
“No, sir. I’m serious. I’m sorry. It doesn’t have to happen like this. I’ll…I’ll send him away.”
Foley smiled. “Send him away? You can’t just send him away. I know. I have looked into his eye. There is no turning him aside from his purpose.”
Aaron started, catching himself glancing over his shoulder for the dark, silent accomplice that he knew was not yet there.
“But you cannot have looked into his.” Aaron fell silent. It was then he saw the blood. The twisting strands of vitae stretching floorward from Foley’s dangling fingertips.
It had already begun.
Foley reached out one trembling hand toward the apprentice. As his palm turned upward, Aaron could see the vicious slashes running in parallel down the secundus’s forearm. There was a hole gouged in the center of the upturned palm. A single black and red stone was pressed deeply into the center of the wound. In Aaron’s excitable state, the whole resembled nothing more than a single unblinking eye.
“He has shown me all, our dear Hazima-el. I have peered into his eye. His lost eye! Seen into its very depths. Do you think that I do not see it before me when I go to my rest? It is all laid bare before me. You are there, of course, and the other. Your dark shadow. You are conspiring outside the Exeunt Tertius. Oh, and there are others. Jacqueline is there—that is why you must send her to me.”
Aaron could only look on in growing dismay as Foley staggered forward. “But it is not any of these that accomplishes my end.” Foley laughed, coughed, barking a fine spray of blood. Fingertips groped for Aaron’s cheek. The apprentice braced himself and stood unflinchingly before the ravages of the blood.
Then, as if struck by an entirely different thought, Foley let his hand drop absently to his side. He mumbled something and, turning away, began smoothing the wrinkles from his ceremonial robe. He succeeded only in leaving long smears of blood. A clumsy effort like a child’s fingerpainting. Foley looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. Like a magpie, he turned from one curiosity to another. At times he stumbled. At times, he dashed things from their cubbyholes. At times he tore books from shelves, or pages from books, or words from pages. Some words he brandished at Aaron. Others he ground underfoot. Others still, he ate with great relish, humming to himself.
He’s mad, Aaron thought. He will ruin everything.
Without a backward glance, Aaron slipped from the sanctum and hurried down toward the Exeunt Tertius.
Saturday, 24 July 1999, 11:35 PM
Anteroom of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Talbott fumbled midphrase, and shivered as if someone were walking upon his grave. He covered the lapse in his narrative with a weak fit of coughing, taking the opportunity to gesture for another mug. Someone poked the fire back into a more welcoming blaze, sending shadows scurrying for the comers of the room. Chairs were hastily shifted to make room for the storyteller closer to the hearth.
Talbott was having none of it. When he was again suitably fortified against the chill with a long draught, he waved aside their fussings in mock indignation. “Worry a body to death with all this mothering. Haven’t needed anyone to wipe my nose for the past seven decades, close as I can figure. Just had a passing chill.” A premonitory chill.
Talbott could feel the tale rising up against his approach. This was the trickiest part of the whole endeavor. A story, a real story, had to be coaxed, courted, finessed. He had the uncomfortable suspicion that this story was lying in wait for him.
“A Spadeful of Earth from Your Grave,” he called.
“What’s that you see there, child?” that old fiend he says to his only daughter. “In the distance. My old eyes have gone rheumy and I can’t well mark it. I bid you speak.”
“A fire, father,” came the whisper. If her stillness cast peril over even the Hosts of Hell, her voice was more terrifying still. It rent the very air. The words she spoke were softer than an adder’s breath, but they fell with the weight of mountains. The voice carried with it a sudden chill as if someone had taken a spadeful of earth from your grave. “Upon the Plain of Adoration.”
A hissing invective escaped the Devil’s lips, for he had at last figured out what ailed him. “A sign,” he said aloud, out of habit. “No mistaking it.”
And now he knows. Knows that a child has been born—a babe that might one day stand before the dark well of Cromm Cruaich, the Stooped One—and speak the words of fire and of blood. The fire on the blasted plain marked the child’s birth. It beckoned to its own.
That Devil, he finds himself squinting into the distance, trying to pick out the smear of broken ground that marked the boundary of the Plain of Adoration, the place of sacrifice. “Too much blood already,” he thinks aloud. “Blood of the firstborn, polishing smooth the crude stone idol. Cromm Cruaich. He was their Moloch, their Kinslayer, a nightmare of an older order. Chidden of God, banished to the dark places of the earth, sheltering from the light of life-giving day. He has had centuries to brood in those shadows, marking time by the spilling of blood into his dark well.”
The mere prospect of another soul lost to the Stooped One, well, it makes the Devil’s cold heart colder by turns.
So that Devil, he decides to take himself down and see if he can’t find this child. And just give him a looking over. Not meaning him any harm, mind you. Not even Old Nick can abide the suffering of children. Oh, he’ll get the work done right enough, but it’s far beneath him to get any enjoyment from it.
“Leave me,” he says kindly and his girl, she is gone as suddenly as she came. A good lass and clever. A great comfort and no small credit to her doting father.
The very stones sighed at her passing.
“Can’t imagine how I’d ever get on without her. “ So down the Fiend goes to that tiny distant smudge of green, just to have a better look.
But the closer that Devil gets to Eire and the newborn child, the louder the ringing gets.
Now, a little discomfort is not going to stop yourman, so he keeps coming. But soon the ringing’s grown so loud it’s rattling the teeth around in his mouth. He sets his jaw firmly against the riot as he crests the rim of the world, taking seven leagues at a stride. At first nothing of him can be seen but his head, rearing up into view. Ice-blue eyes, bright but opaque, like moonlight through storm clouds. Alien, ambiguous, unreadable.
Then the thin shoulders, tapering to a point behind where they meet the down curve of the magnificent tracery of wing. By the time the head of his walking stick first rises into view, his own head is already hidden amongst the layers of cloud.
Each time he opens his mouth to draw breath, that ringing it peals out of the cloud like thunder. Fishermen noting the darkening of the sky are already taking in their nets, casting reproachful glances at the sky that has so suddenly betrayed its earlier promise. And the vindictive storm it dogs them all the way back to Eire’s fair shores.
That Devil, his head is literally splitting by this point, but still he comes and at
last he sets foot firmly upon the edge of the docks at Malehide. The sound of that footstep it thunders as if an entire herd of cattle is clattering up the wooden dock on cloven hooves. The fishermen they look up apprehensively and return to hurriedly lashing tight their moorings and stowage. The looming storm it promises to be a visitation from the very gates of Hell.
Well, yourman the Devil, he’s close enough at this point that if he merely falls forward, he’ll hit Irish soil. But he can come no closer. So there he just sits himself down, cradling his aching head and moaning quietly to himself. A low, forlorn sound, like a storm gathering, rolling shoreward.
And as he rocks himself slowly back and forth, he seems to spiral inward upon himself. Like a snake swallowing its tail. Soon the cloud-crowned giant is no bigger than a mere mountain. Then he’s a proud ship, rising just above the crest of the world. Now he’s a noble house, overlooking the town. Now a bear, standing head and shoulders above the startled hunter.
And soon he’s no larger than a man and a small, sad man at that. And yourman, he’s still curling inward at his edges.
“Here now,” Corraig shouted above the rising maelstrom. “You’ll catch your very death out here, with that monster of a storm breaking. Here’s a hand. There’s a good man. Are you hurt? I say, are you hurt?” That Devil, he just sort of scowls up at the fisherman and waves him off. With each flat gesture of his hand, the waves crash higher over the docks. Corraig shrugs and mouths something that is tom away by the wind. He readjusts the net draped over one shoulder. Then he stoops down and clasping yourman’s forearm, hauls him upright.
When it’s clear yourman has his land legs once again, Corraig looses him, clapping him once on the shoulder for good measure. Then, setting his back to the howling wind, he makes his way up the dock.
He is no more than half its length when he glances back and sees yourman still standing just where he was left. Casting eyes heavenward, Corraig fights his way back toward him and throwing the man’s arm across his shoulders sets the pair of them toward home.
Talbott jumped as the hand closed over his shoulder. There was no reassurance in that grip, no warmth of human contact. No pulse of circulation belied its death-cold grip.
“My lady…” he stammered. “We are honored. Please, join us.” He cleared the bench nearest him with an exaggerated shooing motion.
Sturbridge neither loosened her grasp nor moved to accept his invitation.
Talbott hurried on. “It seems you are just in time. I was just relating the tale of…”
“I have some passing familiarity with the story.”
“My lady, we meant no offense.” His voice fell to the whisper of a confidante. “These young ones, they are devoted to you. Their greatest desire is to please their mistress. They only want to know, to understand, to draw closer.”
In stark contrast to his hushed tones, her voice clearly carried over the crowd. “It is not your place, Brother Porter, to promote familiarity between the instructors and pupils here.” Her grip was ice and steel.
“No, no. You are quite right, my lady.”
“Who do you think will be left to pay the price for this lapse in judgment?”
Behind her, Eva stood up.
“Regentia, I asked Talbott for the tale. He is not responsible. He tried to dissuade me, but I insisted. I will pay the price of its telling.”
Sturbridge looked hard at Talbott. “The price of its telling. Those words ring of your voice, brother porter, not hers. Have you told her, as well, exactly what the price of that telling would be? And in what coin it must be paid?”
Once golden, he thought. Talbott began to explain, but Eva cut him off. “Regentia, if I have trespassed in some way, I will pay the price.”
Sturbridge turned and regarded her levelly, sizing her up as if truly seeing the novice for the first time. She nodded gravely.
“From your mouth to the Devil’s ear, child. It shall be as you say.”
Saturday, 24 July 1999, 3:17 AM
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Foley came to an abrupt halt as he careened into the worktable. He patted the table apologetically, already spinning off in another direction. Then he stopped and took a step back. He surveyed the paraphernalia assembled on the table in open wonder. Then he bent low, studying the peculiar implements with a critical eye.
With satisfaction, he took the measure of the two eight-inch-tall, four-inch-wide oval mirrors. He ran a finger over their perfectly polished silver rims, admiring the smooth glass, the silver backings. One, he noted distractedly, now bore a hairline crack running the mirror’s length from upper right to lower left. The bar sinister.
Dimly a recollection intruded upon him. Jacqueline. Yes, these were the objects he had instructed Jacqueline to prepare. He could see the list before him now, with all the clarity of his advanced mnemonic powers. It was a perfect image, a flawless reflection.
Carefully replacing the ruined mirror, his fingers fumbled among six sticks of smoothly sanded pine. Each was carved to about the size of a schoolchild’s chunky pencil. They had once been carefully arranged upon a flat silver tray engraved with a familiar fleur-de-lis inlay—a companion piece to the chest that had, until recently, housed his little gem. His eye. His eye to the Eye. That Eye is like unto this eye, he thought. But in a low place, not in a high place.
Now the pieces of pine lay jumbled like pickup sticks in the wake of his precipitous collision with the worktable. Foley picked up first one stick, then another. He stared at them intently, as if to wrest their secrets from them. With a patience exceeded only by the uncontrollable shaking of his hands, he set about arranging the sticks.
He stood them on end and leaned them together like drowsy soldiers. They tumbled down again.
His hand slipped. One of the sticks snapped sharply in two against the tabletop. It was not sap, but blood that flowed from the break. It slid effortlessly, languidly, across the fine silver of the tray.
A distant part of Foley’s mind was aware that something was wrong. Terribly wrong. It was the blood—the way it flowed, its consistency. It was too thin; it was too lithe.
The apprentice should have infused the sticks with her own blood—the blood of the Tremere, the blood of the Seven. The power was in the blood.
Foley opened himself to the Sight. His gaze became fixed on an imaginary point in the middle distance. His eyes unfocused. He opened his hand, revealing the blazing red eye embedded in his palm. And he saw.
A lithe shadow slipped between the pine sticks, winding about them, rubbing its side up against them. Purring.
A black cat, Foley thought. The blood of a black cat.
All was becoming clear now. It would be unnecessary for Aaron to send Jacqueline to him after all. He now understood why the Eye had shown her to him and the part she would play.
Foley looked around absently for Aaron, but could not see the apprentice anywhere. It was no matter. He would return soon. He had to return. That much was clear.
With great deliberation, Foley reached out and took up a second stick. He broke it and let the blood rejoin that already spilled on the tray. He took up another.
At the snap of the sixth and final stick, seven red candles flamed to life. More of Jacqueline’s handiwork, Foley mused. His judge, his apprentice, his would-be murderer. He smiled.
His instructions had been precise. Each of the candles were to be painstakingly melded with entrails of wild owl. To speed the thoughts winging out across the night. To give piercing insight through the veils of darkness.
Several of the candles had already taken flight when Foley careened into the table. They were scattered across the floor when the bough broke. They burst merrily aflame. Their merriment quickly spread. The smoke that rose on all sides pulsed redly—taking its lead from the blazing red stone embedded in Foley’s palm.
There was the unmistakable odor of blood that had been left out in the sun.
But t
he candles too, were wrong. Foley could already pick out the afterimage, not of the snowy owl, but of a black cockerel, preening and strutting among the flames.
Blood of black cat, heart of black cockerel. Company’s coming, Foley thought. Instinctively, he found himself judging the distance between himself and the protective circle. Too far.
Sunday, 25 July 1999, 12:14 AM
Barnard College
New York City, New York
It was the fourth night of his vigil outside Milbank Hall. The campus administrative building was silent. From his vantage point, concealed within the shadow of the adjacent science building, Anwar kept his attention fixed upon a particular disused side door.
For the first time since he had begun his surveillance, the door had opened. Instantly, he was totally alert, transcending even his normally high level of vigilance and entering into that hypersensitive state where duty and faith merged and were one.
The man who slipped from the doorway appeared nervous, agitated. He was young, fair, clean-shaven and dressed casually, after the manner of these western kafir. He might have passed among the faculty of the college without question.
If Anwar had half expected a gnarled old gnome—bearded, robed, a silver skullcap perched precariously atop bald pate—he did not let his disappointment to show. Instead, he allowed his expectations to align themselves with the reality before him.
With the appearance of the nervous man, the field of possibilities before Anwar had just narrowed to two. Either this was his contact, or this was someone who had discovered the clandestine arrangement, removed the contact from the picture, and unwisely decided to keep the appointment himself.
Anwar held his ground and awaited the prearranged sign.
The newcomer scrutinized his surroundings, peering intently into the crisscrossing shadows formed by the trees and academic buildings. Anwar drew more deeply into his concealment, the shadows both common and preternatural that cloaked him.
