by Jack Yeovil
In the reception room of the Vargr Breughel, invited guests were drinking and picking at the buffet. Felix was conducting a quartet in a suite of pieces from the play, and Guglielmo was doing his best to be courteous to von Unheimlich, who was describing at length an error in Reinhardt's Kislevite swordsmanship. A courtier Genevieve had met×whom she had once bled in a private suite at the Crescent Moon tavern×complemented her on her dress, and she smiled back at him, able to remember his name but not his precise title. Even after nearly seven hundred years in and out of the courts of the Known World, she was confused by etiquette.
The players were still backstage, taking off make-up and costumes. Detlef would also be running through his notes to the other actors.
For him, every performance was a dress rehearsal for an ideal, perfect rendition of the drama that might, by some miracle, eventually transpire, but which never actually came to pass. He said that as soon as he stopped being disappointed in his work, he'd give up, not because he would have attained perfection but because he would have lost his mind.
The eating and drinking reminded Genevieve of her own need. Tonight, when the party was over, she'd tap Detlef. That would be the best way jointly to savour his triumph, to lick away the tiny scabs under his beardline and to sample his blood, still peppered with the excitement of the performance. She hoped he didn't drink to excess. Too much wine in the blood gave her a headache.
'Genevieve,' said Prince Luitpold, 'your teeth'
She felt them, sharp against her lower lip, and bowed her head. The enamel shrank and her fangs slid back into their gumsheaths.
'Sorry,' she said.
'Don't be,' the prince said, almost laughing. 'It's not your fault, it's your nature.'
Genevieve realized Mornan Tybalt, who had no love for her, was watching closely, as if he expected her to tear out the throat of the heir to the Imperial crown and put her face into a gusher of royal blood. She had tasted royal blood and it was no different from a goatherd's. Since the fall of Arch-Lector Mikael Hasselstein, Mornan Tybalt had been the Emperor's closest advisor, and he was jealous of the position, afraid of anyone×no matter how insignificant or unlikely×who might win favour with the House of the Second Wilhelm.
Genevieve understood the ambitious Chancellor was not a well-liked man, especially with those whose hero was the Graf Rudiger, the old guard of the aristocracy, the electors and the barons. Genevieve took people as she found them, but had been involved enough with the great and the good not to want to pick sides in any factional conflicts of the Imperial court.
'Here's our genius,' the prince said.
Detlef made an entrance, transformed from the ragged monster of the play into an affable dandy, dressed as magnificently as the company costumier could manage, his embroidered doublet confining his stomach in a flattering manner. He bowed low to the prince and kissed the boy's ring.
Luitpold had the decency to be embarrassed, and Tybalt looked as if he expected another assassination attempt. Of course, the reason Detlef and Genevieve were allowed such intimacy with the Imperial presence was that, at Castle Drachenfels, they had thwarted such an attempt. If it were not for the play-actor and the bloodsucker, the Empire would now be ruled by a puppet of the Great Enchanter, and there would be a new Dark Age for all the races of the world.
A darker age, rather.
The prince complimented Detlef on the play, and the actor-playwright brushed aside the praise with extravagant modesty, simultaneously appearing humble, yet conveying how pleased he was to have his patron bestow approval.
The other actors were arriving. Reinhardt, a bandage around his head where Detlef had struck too hard in the final fight, was flanked by his wife Illona and the ingenue. Several artistically-inclined gallants crowded around Eva, and Genevieve detected a slight moue of jealousy from Illona. Prince Luitpold himself had asked if an introduction could be contrived to the young actress. Eva Savinien would have to be watched.
'Ulric, but that was a show,' Reinhardt said, as open as usual, rubbing his wound. 'The Trapdoor Daemon should be delighted.'
Genevieve laughed at his joke. The Trapdoor Daemon was a popular superstition in the Vargr Breughel.
Detlef was given wine, and held his own court.
'Gene, my love,' he said, kissing her cheek, 'you look wonderful.'
She shivered a little in his embrace, unconvinced by his warmth. He was always playing a part. It was his nature.
'It was a feast of horrors, Detlef,' the Prince said, 'I was never so frightened in my life. Well, maybe once'
Detlef, briefly serious, acknowledged the comment.
Genevieve suppressed another shiver, and realized it had passed around the room. She could see momentarily haunted faces in the cheerful company. Detlef, Luitpold, Reinhardt, Illona, Felix.
Those who'd been at the performance in Castle Drachenfels would always be apart from the rest of the world. Everyone had been changed. And Detlef most of all. They all felt unseen eyes gazing down on them.
'We have had too many horrors in Altdorf,' Tybalt commented, a mutilated hand stroking his chin. 'The business five years ago with Drachenfels. Konrad the Hero's little skirmish with our green-skinned friends. The Beast murders. The riots stirred up by the revolutionist Kloszowski. Now, this business with the Warhawk'
Several citizens had been slaughtered recently by a falconer who set a hunting bird on them. Captain Harald Kleindeinst, reputedly the hardest copper in the city, had vowed to bring the murderer to justice, but the killer was still at liberty, striking down those who took his fancy.
'It seems,' the Chancellor continued, 'we are knee-deep in blood and cruelty. Why did you feel the need to add to our burden of nightmares?'
Detlef was silent for a moment. Tybalt had asked a question many must have pondered during the evening. Genevieve didn't care for the man, but she admitted that, just this once, he might even have a point.
'Well, Sierck,' Tybalt insisted, pressing his argument beyond politeness, 'why dwell on terrors?'
The look came into Detlef's eyes that Genevieve had learned to recognize. The dark look that came whenever he remembered the fortress of Drachenfels. The Chaida look that eclipsed his Zhiekhill face.
'Chancellor,' he said. 'What makes you think I have a choice?'
III
Upon this peak in the Grey Mountains, there had once been a castle. It had stood against the sky, seven turrets like the talons of a deformed hand. This had been the fortress of Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter. Now there was only a scattering of rubble that drifted like snow into the valley, spreading out for miles. Explosives had been placed throughout the structure, and detonated. The fortress of Drachenfels had shaken, and collapsed piece by piece.
Where once there had been a stronghold, there was now a ruin. The intention had been to destroy completely all trace of the master of the castle. Stone and slate could be smashed, but it was impossible to blow away like chaff the horrors that lay in memories.
Buried in the ruins for these five years was the Animus, a thinking creature with no true form. Just now, it resided in a mask. A plain oval like a large half-eggshell, wrought from light metal, so thin as to be almost transparent. It had features, but they were unformed, undefined. To gain character, the mask needed to be worn.
The Animus was not sure what it was. Constant Drachenfels had either created it or conjured it. A homunculus or a spirit, it owed its existence to the Great Enchanter. Drachenfels had worn the mask once, and left something of himself behind. That gave purpose to the Animus.
It had been left in the ruins when Drachenfels departed the world for one reason.
Revenge.
Genevieve Dieudonne. Detlef Sierck. The vampire and the playactor. The thwarters of the great design. They had destroyed Drachenfels, and now they must themselves be destroyed.
The Animus was patient. Time passed, but it could wait. It would not die. It would not change. It could not be reasoned with. It could not be bou
ght off. It could not be swayed from its purpose.
It sensed the disturbance in the ruins, and knew it was being brought closer to Genevieve and Detlef.
The Animus did not feel excitement, just as it did not feel hate, love, pain, pleasure, satisfaction, discomfort. The world was as it was, and there was nothing it could do to change that.
As the moons set, the disturbance neared the Animus.
As they made love, Genevieve licked the trickle of blood from old wounds in his throat. Over the years, her teeth had put permanent marks on him, a seal. Detlef had taken to wearing high collars, and all his shirts had tiny red stains where they rested against her bites.
His head sunk deep into the pillow, and he looked at the ceiling, vision going in and out of focus as she suckled his blood. His hand was on her neck, under her blonde curtain of hair. They were joined loin to loin, neck to mouth. They were one flesh, one blood.
He had tried to paint the experience with words, in one of his still-secret sonnets, but had never managed to his satisfaction to catch the butterfly feelings, pain and pleasure. In many ways his chosen tool×language×failed him.
Genevieve made him forget the actresses he sometimes took to his bed, and wondered if she too found this joining more special than her brief liaisons with young bloods. Their partnership wasn't conventional, hardly even convenient. But even as he felt the darkness gathering, this ancient girl was the candleflame to which he must cling. Since Drachenfels, they had been together, sharing secrets.
A thrill shot through him, and he heard her gasp, blood bubbling in the back of her throat, knifepoint teeth scratching the leathered skin of his neck. They rolled over, together, and she clung to him as their bodies joined and parted. There was blood between them, and sweet sweat. He looked at her smiling face under his in the gloom, and saw her lick the red from her lips. He felt himself climaxing, first in the soles of his feet, then
His heart hammered. Genevieve's eyes opened, and she shuddered, overlapping teeth bared and bloody. He propped himself above her, elbows rigid, and collapsed, trying to keep his weight off her. Their bodies slipped apart, and Genevieve eased herself forwards, almost clambering over his bulk, pressing her face to his cheek, her hair falling over his face, kissing him. He pulled the quilts up around them, and they nestled in a cocoon of warmth as the sun rose behind the curtains.
For once, their sleep came at the same time.
With the play and the party and their private embraces, they'd both been awake the night through. Detlef was exhausted, Genevieve in the grip of the vampire lassitude that came over her every few weeks.
His eyes closed, and he was alone in the dark of his mind.
He slept, but his thoughts still raced. He needed to work on the swordfight to prevent more accidents. And he would have to give thought to Illona, to balance the blossoming Eva's performance. And the second act could use delicate pruning. The comic business with the Tsar's minister was just a tiresome leftover from Tiodorov.
He dreamed of changing faces.
This high in the Grey Mountains the air was as sharp as a razor; as he inhaled, he felt its cutting pass in his lungs. Trying desperately not to wheeze and thus lose his habitual decorum, Bernabe Scheydt completed his mid-morning devotions to the gods of Law. Solkan, Arianka and Alluminas. At the dig, the first thing he had ordered was the erection of a sundial. A fixed point on the world, shadow revolving precisely with the inexorable movement of sun and moons, the sundial was the perfect altar for worship of order.
'Master Scheydt,' said Brother Jacinto, touching his own forehead in a mark of respect, 'there was a subsidence in the night. The ground has fallen in where we were digging yesterday.'
'Show me.'
The acolyte led him to the place. Scheydt was used to hopping around the ruin, judging which lumps of rubble were sound enough to be stepped on. It was important not to fall over. Every time someone so much as tripped, two or three of the workforce deserted in the night. The locals remembered Drachenfels too well, and feared his return. Every slightest mishap was laid to the lingering spirit of the Great Enchanter. Many more, and the expedition would be reduced to Scheydt and the acolytes the arch-lector had spared him. And acolytes dug a lot less well than the mountain men.
The superstitious fever of the locals was nonsense. At the beginning of the expedition, Scheydt had invoked the dread name of Solkan and performed a rite of exorcism. If any trace of the monster lingered, it was banished now to the Outer Darkness. Order reigned where there had once been chaos. Still, there had been 'incidents.'
'Here,' said Jacinto.
Scheydt saw. A half-rotten wooden beam was balanced over a square pit. A few slabs angled into the edges, like the teeth of a giant. An earthy, shitty, dead thing smell fumed up from the hole.
'It must have been one of the cellars.'
'Yes,' Scheydt agreed.
The earliest-rising workmen stood around. Jacinto was the only one of the acolytes up from their comparatively comfortable village lodgings this morning. Brother Nachbar and the others were poring over and cataloguing the expedition's earlier finds. Back at the university in Altdorf, the arch-lector must be pleased with the success of this dig.
The acquisition of knowledge, even knowledge of the evil and unholy, was one way in which the cult of Solkan imposed order upon chaos.
'We must pray,' Scheydt declared. 'To ensure our safety.'
He heard a suppressed groan. These peasants would rather be digging than praying. And they would rather be drinking than digging. They did not understand the Law, did not understand how important order and decorum were to the world. They were only here because they feared Solkan, master of vengeance, as much or more than they feared the ghosts of the castle.
Jacinto was down on his knees, and the others, grumbling, followed him. Scheydt read out the Blessing of Solkan.
'Free me from the desires of my body, guide me in the path of the Law, instruct me in the ways of seemliness, help me smite the enemies of order.'
Since he had embraced the cult, Scheydt had been rigid in his habits. Celibate, vegetarian, abstinent, ordered. Even his bowel movements were decided by the sundial. He wore the coarse robe of a cleric. He raised his hand to no one but the unrighteous. He prayed at perfectly defined intervals.
He was in balance with himself, and with the world as it should be.
The prayer concluded, Scheydt examined the hole in the ground.
The arch-lector had sent him to Drachenfels with orders to search out items of spiritual interest. The Great Enchanter had been a very evil man, but he'd had an unparalleled library, a vast collection of articles of power, a store of the most arcane secrets.
Only by understanding Chaos, could the cult of Solkan impose order. It was important to carry the battle to the enemy, to meet sorcery with cleansing fire, to root out and destroy the devotees of unclean gods.
Only the strongest in mind could qualify for this expedition, and Scheydt was honoured by his selection as its director.
'There's something down there,' Jacinto said, 'catching the light.'
The sun had risen, and was shining now into the cavity. An object reflected. It was the shape of a face.
'Get it,' Scheydt said.
The acolyte followed the order. Jacinto knew his place on the sundial. Two of the workmen lowered the young man into the cavity on a rope, and then hauled him back out. He handed the article he had taken from the floor of the pit to Scheydt.
It was a delicate metal mask.
'Is it anything?' Jacinto asked.
Scheydt was not sure. The object felt strange, warm to the touch as if it retained the heat of the sun. It was not heavy, and there was no place for a cord to bind it to a head.
His hands tingled as he held the mask up in front of him. He looked through the eyeholes. Beyond the mask, the acolyte's face was distorted. Jacinto seemed impossibly to be sneering at his master, tongue poked out, hands flapping by his ears, eyes crossed.
&
nbsp; A flare of wrath went off in Scheydt's heart as he rested the mask against his skin. At once, something leaped into his skull, fastening on his brain. The mask was stuck to his face like a layer of paint. His cheeks convulsed, and he felt the metal move with his twitch.
He saw Jacinto truly now, stumbling back away from him.
He was still Bernabe Scheydt, cleric of Solkan. But he was something else too. He was the Animus.
His hands found the acolyte and lifted him up. With new strength, he held the struggling young man up high and tossed him into the pit. Jacinto crashed through the remaining beam and thumped, broken, against an unseen flagstone floor.
The workmen were running away. Some screamed, some prayed. He enjoyed their fear.
Scheydt, devotee of the Law, tried to claw the mask from his face, horrified at the disorder he'd wrought. But the Animus grew strong in a moment and stayed his hands.
The Animus burrowed into Scheydt, seeking out seeds of excess within his imprisoned heart, encouraging them to sprout. Scheydt wanted a woman, a roast pig, a barrel of wine. The Animus had found desires within its host and was prepared to help him slake them. Then, it would travel.
To Altdorf. To the vampire and the play-actor.
As the workmen tumbled and ran down the mountainside, Scheydt drew a huge breath and laughed like a daemon. The straight trees that poked through the rubble bent in the breeze of laughter.
IV
Detlef got to the theatre in the mid-afternoon, leaving Genevieve sleeping in their rooms on the other side of Temple Street. The rest of the company were there already, poring over the reviews. The Altdorf Spieler, which boasted a circulation in the hundreds, was stridently in favour of The Strange History of Dr. Zhiekhill and Mr. Chaida, and most of the lesser broadsheets followed its line. Felix Hubermann picked out phrases to be flagged across the posters, humming superlatives to himself as he underlined them, 'gripping powerful thought-provoking spine-chilling bowel-churning will run and run'
Guglielmo reported that the house was sold out for the next two months and heavily booked thereafter. The Vargr Breughel had another hit. On the set, Poppa Fritz, the stage-door keeper and an institution in the theatre, was on his knees, trying to scrub blood out of the carpet. Detlef had ordered buckets cooked up in anticipation of a long run. When he had burst the bladder in his glove as he seemed to strike Eva Savinien, the whole audience had been shocked. He recalled the spurt of feeling that came at that moment, as if his own Mr. Chaida were gaining the ascendant, encouraging him to delight in horrors beyond imagining.
