by Eric Griffin
Overhead a solitary desert bird caught an updraft, banked, and vanished against the face of the unforgiving sun.
Monday, 6 September 1999, 11:40
Chamber of Gathering,
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Talbott glided across the threshold, advancing precisely three footlengths into the room. He stopped, pivoted smoothly to the east. His body inclined forward at the waist, bowing in the direction of Vienna. His every gesture was an exact movement in an ancient and intricately choreographed ritual. He pivoted again upon the balls of his feet and flowed forward with aching patience and grace toward the room’s focal point.
Sturbridge. was seated upon the floor at the far side of the gathering. She alone, of all the assembly, faced the open doorway. She had certainly noted the opening movements of Talbott’s approach. She made no motion, however, to rise, or even to acknowledge the newcomer.
The other members of the chantry were carefully arrayed about their regent. Each sat upon the floor in exactly the same pose of relaxed alertness—sitting back upon the right heel, with the left knee upright and folded closely against the chest.
The assembled radiated outward from Sturbridge in sweeping semi-circles, each member’s place strictly dictated by rank and tradition. The innermost arch, seated at the very feet of their regent, now consisted solely of Helena and Johanus—the two adepts assigned to the chantry.
Sturbridge was painfully aware of the novel asymmetry that had been introduced into the carefully ordered assembly. Once there had been three arrayed directly before her. This was the first formal gathering of the chantry since Foley’s entombment.
In three, there was strength, completeness. God manifested himself in a Trinity—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Similarly man, fashioned in His image, was triune—mind, body, soul. The Graces, Fates and Furies were all three in number.
By comparison, two was an ugly number. A divisive number. Good and evil. Truth and falsehood. Us and them. Sturbridge studied the faces of her two adepts, searching for the telltale stirrings of envy, avarice, ambition. Neither would meet her gaze.
Sturbridge could not help noting how the adepts had closed ranks, filling the empty place left by their recently deceased comrade. She was instinctively distrustful of this apparent solidarity. How quickly they had closed ranks. Nature had rushed to fill the vacuum left by the absence of their fallen comrade. Sturbridge suspected that it was their base nature. To an outsider, there would be no sign that there had ever been another among them. Sturbridge checked herself and forced down her rising, and perhaps unjust, resentment.
Sturbridge knew each of her adepts was a force to be reckoned with. Each had progressed through all seven circles of mastery prescribed by the Rule. They had traveled widely before accepting this prestigious and dangerous posting. Each had further honed her talents in the crucible of constant conflict with the Sabbat that was the special legacy (and curse) of this chantry. Each of them was being tried and tried severely.
Sturbridge knew that conflict between the two might well rend the already war-torn chantry apart.
Without exception, the adepts assigned to C5B were the best of the best. Foley, she could not help thinking (with some bitterness), could have led his own chantry, and done a far better job than some existing regents that she could name. She could have very much used his support, somewhere nearby—Jersey, Connecticut… But what was the point of such conjecture now? Instead of growing a sister-chantry to bolster the Tremere line against the rising Sabbat tide, Foley was dead.
Foley was killed, she corrected herself.
Sturbridge looked hard into the faces of her two adepts. Each of them might, in time, aspire to her own regency. Each of them was now precisely one step closer to fulfilling that aspiration.
This was foolishness. Sturbridge knew full well that the adepts were innocent of Foley’s blood. It was the duty of adepts to prepare against the day when they might be called upon to assume the mantle of regency. Just as it was, in turn, Sturbridge’s job to make sure these two survived long enough to get that chance. She had failed Foley. She was not accustomed to the company of failure.
Her gaze grew hard. It drank in the whole of the assembly. Beyond the inner circle of adepts were arrayed those who, through centuries of toil and intrigue, had achieved the coveted rank of master. Within each of the seven circles of mastery, the members were carefully arranged according to their status, seniority and precedence.
Beyond the closed ranks of the masters sat the seven circles of the novitiate.
Beyond the novices lay only the door to the outside world and the battering of the Sabbat upon the portal.
Judging by the muted whispers among the assembly, it was clear that Sturbridge was not alone in being acutely aware of the secundus’s absence. The worried murmurings were only further fueled by Talbott gliding into view of the rearmost rows of novices. He proceeded straight toward the regent, oblivious to the waves of seated figures through which he soundlessly cut. All eyes were upon him by the time he pierced the innermost circle of adepts. Talbott stopped, pivoted again toward Vienna, bowed. He then bowed to Sturbridge and settled gently to the floor. Despite his advanced years, Talbott effortlessly assumed the pose of the rest of the gathering. He waited with head still bowed.
“Yes, Brother Porter,” Sturbridge acknowledged.
“Your pardon, Regentia. There is a guest without. He says he would speak with you without delay.”
“Who is this guest, Brother Porter? Is he of the blood? If so, you may bring him before us presently. If he is not, you may escort him to our sitting room where he may await us.”
Talbot seemed to hesitate. “Yes, Regentia. He is of the blood. There is no denying his credentials. But perhaps it would please you to speak to him privately. He is from…he has come a great distance,” he finished awkwardly.
“If our guest wishes to rest and refresh himself, you will see to his needs. If he would come before us directly, you may bring him here.”
“But, Regentia, he is from…” Talbot began, obviously agitated. Then he recollected himself. “As you wish, Regentia.”
Talbot rose in a single motion without apparent effort. He bowed to Sturbridge, turned east, and bowed nearly double. Still facing toward Vienna,’ he glided backward from the hall.
He was barely out of the room when the sound of a disturbance from the corridor broke in upon the uneasy silence. Two distinct voices could be heard—one raised in challenge, the other pitched soft and conciliatory. A number of novices were already craning around to get a better view of the doorway. When the door at last cracked open, all that could be seen was the broad expanse of Talbott’s back. He was still deep in discussion with the figure just beyond him—apparently trying to interpose not only his words, but his bulk between the other and the door.
Having won some momentary advantage, Talbott seized upon the opportunity to slip deftly through the opening. He turned to face the gathering, blocking the still-opened doorway with the breadth of his back.
He took only a moment to collect himself. Clearing his throat audibly, he announced in a broken voice, “Your pardon, Regentia. We have guests. Please allow me to present, from Vienna, the Lord…”
Talbott’s voice choked off abruptly and he wheeled as if struck from behind. Only the head of the newcomer could be seen peeking around the crack in the doorway. He held one crooked finger to his lips. The withered hand trembled slightly as with great age or palsy. Talbott tried to speak but all that escaped his throat was a harsh animal squawk and a fine spray of blood.
The newcomer held Talbott’s startled gaze for only the briefest of moments. Satisfied, he lowered the admonitory finger and leaned heavily into the door. It swung open fully, spilling him a few shuffling steps into the room. Almost as an afterthought, he turned back toward Talbott, muttering to himself.
“No that is quite all right. You are dismissed, Brother Porter.”
Talbott stagge
red backwards as the newcomer shuffled past him into the midst of the assembly.
He critically surveyed the entire gathering—their carefully orchestrated ranks, their precise and identical pose, their military precision honed by many lifetimes of service.
He muttered aloud in a voice dripping with age and vitriol. “Discipline, lax…security, lax…” He continued his damning litany the entire length of the hall. He did not pause until he had penetrated the inner circle of adepts. He then turned upon the gathering. His entire form shook with the intensity of his emotion and effort to speak.
“Children! I have crossed oceans to come here and all I find within this house are children. Unkempt, undisciplined, unmannered children. Where is the regent of this house?”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the hall. The stranger had positioned himself so that he stood between Sturbridge and her subjects. Not only had he purposefully turned his back upon her, but she was the only person in the room so slighted. Furthermore, he had interposed himself squarely between her and her people—as if attempting to eclipse her from view.
A calm and clear voice broke the silence.
“Be welcome among us. I am Aisling Sturbridge; you may address me as Regentia. You have come a great distance and are no doubt fatigued. Sit. Rest.” She gestured to a place beside her own. Her voice dropped into a reverential tone as if reciting words of some ancient scripture. “The shadow of the Pyramid is long; there is room enough for one more to shelter beneath it.”
Her words were calm, precise, unruffled. Behind this barrier of outward composure, however, Sturbridge’s thoughts were racing. A representative from Vienna.
Never in all her time of stewardship over the Chantry of the Five Boroughs had the “home office” in Vienna seen fit to pay a visit. An unannounced visit. No, this certainly did not bode well.
She had heard the stories of course. Everyone had. Of how certain undesirables within the hierarchy were suddenly “recalled to Vienna”—disappearing entirely from Tremere society. Dropping off the face of the Pyramid.
But that kind of thing always took place somewhere else. Somewhere very far from here. Please, not here.
It was the assassination. That had to be it. The assassinations.
First Atlanta, then Baltimore, and now here. Of course, it wouldn’t do the higher-ups much good to drop in on the Atlanta chantry to throw a little weight around. Surely the ashes had cooled enough by now to allow safe passage, to gaze upon the blackened remains, to search for some clue as to what had gone wrong (gone so horribly wrong). But to what end? There was no one left in Atlanta to hold accountable. None to render back to Vienna what was Vienna’s.
And what of Washington? Sturbridge wasn’t even sure who the new regent in D.C. was now that Chin was dead, and Dorfman…unavailable. Something unpleasant nagged at the back of her mind, but she pushed it down. Was the besieged D.C. chantry even now suffering under the unwanted and unannounced attentions of their own legate from Vienna?
Her guest turned upon her very slowly. Freed from the spell of the stranger’s attention, the adepts quickly regrouped and rose up as one. Sturbridge took little comfort from this display of unity.
She wondered what they might do, her ambitious adepts, if they did perceive a direct threat to her well-being. Would they leap to defend their regent, or would their loyalties fall along more established party lines? Sturbridge sat calmly as if unaware of the silent conflict of interests that must be playing itself out inside the private thoughts of each of her adepts.
“Sit? We do not,” the visitor pronounced each word separately, “sit on the same level as novices. It is unbecoming and erodes proper discipline.” He scowled over the seated Sturbridge. “We shall stand.” Sturbridge ignored this rebuke and spoke past her accuser. “Talbott, please bring our guest a chair. It is uncharitable to keep him standing so long.”
Although Talbott was at the far end of the chamber, the room’s acoustics were such that the regent never raised her voice. Talbott seemed grateful for the opportunity to slip from the room and recover himself.
Sturbridge had been steadfastly refusing even to consider the alternative—that the representative from Vienna was here for some other reason, for some very personal reason. That was cause to fear.
She had taken great pains, of course, to be circumspect in her inquiries into the Tremere role in resisting the Sabbat offensive. Of course she was puzzled, confused, frustrated by the Tremere’s almost systematic refusal to take any hand in the resistance.
But what if word had gotten back to Vienna about her private doubts about this matter? Of her covert conversations with leaders of the Camarilla council in Baltimore? Of her interview with Jan Pieterzoon, leader of the council? Of the “bargain” struck during that interview?
In hindsight, that rendezvous was, perhaps, a miscalculation. Not a mistake, per se. But perhaps not as subtle an approach as she might have taken. The home office was most comfortable when their carefully selected regents stayed where they were very carefully put. Yes, they would certainly inquire further into her trip to Baltimore.
Bracing herself, she smiled up at her guest and posed the question she most wanted to have answered and that she least wanted to ask.
“We are flattered by this unmerited attention. To what do we owe the honor of this visit, Lord…excuse me, Talbott did not have opportunity to finish your introduction.”
These words provoked exactly the opposite of the disarming effect that Sturbridge had intended.
Raising himself up to his full height, the emissary choked out, “We are the Word of Etrius. We are grieved to learn of recent misfortunes at the Chantry of the Five Boroughs. We have heard the cries of our brethren and we have come.
“We are deeply concerned lest external influences jeopardize the harmonious operation of the chantry. In particular, our brethren have a solemn right to expect that within these walls, they shall be safe from all harm. Until such a time as this security has been demonstrably restored, we shall remain among you. Effective immediately, the Regent of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs will report to us directly, rather than through the normal geographic chain of command. We are the Word of Etrius.”
Sturbridge sat stunned. She was not, as she had most feared, recalled to Vienna. She was not under sentence of death. They had not wrested control of her chantry from her. So why did she feel as if a great chasm had just opened up beneath her feet?
In silence, she tumbled headlong down the well.
Saturday, 31 July 1999, 5:15 AM
The Dragon’s Graveyard
New York City, New York
Leopold placed each foot carefully, deliberately. Like a novice dancer, he picked his way among the jagged spikes of bone. His sandals would prove little protection against the wicked shards underfoot. He had no doubt that at the first misstep the flesh of his feet would be adorning someone else’s bones.
He crept forward across the Dragon’s Graveyard. Leopold tried to force himself to patience, but he was exultant. He had cornered his prey and the Eye was his once again.
The snake was a fool to ever think he could ever steal the Eye away for himself. Leopold focused his newly reclaimed Eye on the small stretch of ground where his next footfall must land. Grander details of the landscape were lost to him, beyond the scope of his world. His attention was consumed by an area precisely one pace long by one pace wide that lay directly before him.
Within that area, a diverse landscape spread out before him, played out in shades of black and white. The stark white of new bone, recently picked clean, thrust up sharply in cliffs and bluffs. The off-whites of bones left too long out of ground, exposed, rolled and tumbled upon themselves like hills. The stark black of each shadowed space between the bones lurked like ravines, gullies, badlands, ready to swallow the unwary.
Gazing into these pools of darkness puddled between the bones, Leopold could see that the bones ran deep. The field was made of layer upon layer of bone. The la
yers shifted, clashed, parted at each footfall.
A fistful of knucklebones rolled slightly underfoot. Some of the dislodged pieces slipped away into the gaps between larger bones. Rattling, rolling, sifting into the unknown depths. Leopold paused midstride to listen to the bones trickling down and away. He guessed that the layers of bone must go down at least the depth of a man. Leopold imagined slipping between the bones himself and sinking from view. Sidestepping the cruel sun. Gliding to rest a cool six feet under.
But there were other noises among the bones. Leopold couldn’t help noticing (focused as he was upon the minute details of the ground in front of him) that sometimes the bones seemed to shift of their own accord.
As if some unseen footstep had passed ahead of him.
Leopold, however, suspected another source for these disturbances. His keen hearing had no trouble picking out the faint chattering beneath the surface strata. Crawling, scuttling, stirring on the undersides of the very bones he trod upon. Thousands of tiny footfalls that mirrored and magnified his every step above. Leopold was reluctant to put his foot down, lest it slip into the dark spaces between the bones. There was no telling what a single misstep would conjure up from the dark recesses.
As intent as he was upon his feet, Leopold only noted the bone outcropping because he felt its shade. A most welcome break from the deadly rays of the life-stealing sun. He leaned against it with one hand, summoning up his reserves of strength to continue his journey.
Instantly, he drew back, finding the surface he touched seething with life.
Nearly invisible white mites scattered in all directions. He wiped the back of his hand repeatedly on tattered jeans, but could not seem to shake the feeling of tiny legs scurrying across his skin, picking their way over the parched and broken landscape of pores and follicles.
With a cry of pure animal triumph, Leopold knew he had, at last, realized the great reversal and found a way to transcend the inferno of the boneyard.
“Hello, Leopold. I have been looking for you. My name is Nickolai.”
