Heaven's Gate

by Toby Bennett

Rugan resists the temptation to point out that the man could also have done so in order to cause humiliation. The Pardoner still had great influence with the General, both on a personal level and because Leedon knew, as well as anyone else, that any conflict between the two of them could split the faithful into veteran Crusaders and the more modern brand of Inquisitors, who had come, as inevitably as vultures, to feast on the former’s success. Such a threat to everything the Crusade had achieved could not be countenanced on the say so of an old priest, no matter how high he’d stood during the Crusades.

  “Forgive me, Angus,” Rugan deliberately uses his first name rather than any title or rank, “it was you who mentioned the possibility that the Chief Pardoner might be looking for an advantage.”

  “I only mentioned it because of the possibility that the barons might look to him as one of their own if I do not find legitimacy soon. I do not think that Nathaniel is actively disloyal but I would be a fool to discount anyone of his stature.”

  “Very well, if she did have help and it’s unlikely that it could be otherwise, it means that someone with something to gain has been plotting against us, perhaps one or more of the barons. Indeed it may even have been our old enemies and if not, by claiming you suspect them rather than one of your new ‘advisors’, it may give whichever baron is behind it a false sense of security.”

  “How do we know the spoilt brat didn’t just decide that she wouldn’t marry me?”

  “Any way you look at it, she just could not have got so far without help or outside intervention. Hence you are safe to draw the conclusion and present it to the barons, the involvement of an outside agency prevents anyone suggesting that you were at fault in some way,” Rugan continues firmly. “We emphasize that she had to have been abducted and dismiss any suggestion that it might have been due to any kind of souring between the two of you. Even if we discover that that is the case, it is what people will assume unless we give them information to the contrary, besides she will hardly be allowed to announce that publicly, once we have her back! We have everything to gain by asserting abduction and little to lose.”

  “True enough and saying that the help came from the desert rather than one of the barons will unify those who are still loyal and give us an excuse for recruiting new troops, along with allowing a full search without embarrassment.”

  Sharp indeed! Rugan thinks, I must tread carefully.

  “Though when we do require the girl I think you should carefully reevaluate your position. Another bride might still be more suitable. ” Rugan cautions.

  “Let us concentrate on regaining the girl. I must be seen to be doing all that I can to save her from this terrible fate. Besides, despite your objections, I still wish this alliance to succeed, the Carter barony is worth a little discomfort and bother.”

  “Indeed, but if we handle it properly we could ride the wave of public outcry and suspicion against the Carters and then arrange an alliance with the Whistler clan after all.” Rugan says, without much real hope of diverting the General’s intent.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Rugan. I’m more than likely to get her back at the moment so I still see no reason to upset our arrangements with Baron Carter.”

  “As you say, Angus,” Rugan concedes quickly, while privately hoping that Jesop Carter is fool enough to harbour his daughter, thus implicating himself and forcing the General’s hand.

  Chapter 3:

  “Limit”

  Sand hisses around his horse’s hooves, piling up against its shanks. The wind is faster than it was an hour ago, its growing strength promises a storm but the rider hunches in the saddle, unmoving, staring down at the fastness of the line stop below him, watching the lights wink on in the growing dark. Limit, a town once thought to be as far as civilization could reach on the line, a truth that had held until Simon Richard’s great boreholes struck water at Triumph. The settlement was fat with trade now, untold amounts of silver and steel, the basis of the Rucroft barony’s wealth flowed through the town every day. That wealth had funded the high stone walls guarding the heart of the town; had built the cathedral towers that rise above them and the sumptuous buildings with their gardens that seemed to defy the lifeless dunes and hills that surrounded the town with their verdant beauty.

  Very little of this wealth reaches what is by far the larger part of Limit, the huge sprawl of shanties and shacks that huddle against its thick walls, like moths drawn to murderous flame. It is hope which was killed in Limit, a hope embodied by the wealth behind those grey walls. At night the slums are at their most dangerous, with the light and music from their overlords seeping over that high barrier, the dispossessed citizens of Limit were at their most bitter and desperate. A few still have it in them to dare the haunted desert and bring back what they can from the forbidding hills to the north or the abandoned wastes to the south but most of the slum’s inhabitants have learned to wait. Wait, feeding off other, more successful, adventurers and in times of extremity, each other. Necessity has made them what they are - thin cannibals, tight packed, with the smell of another man’s meal rich in their nostrils.

  The rider does not hesitate out of fear, though the thought of falling to some random bullet or a few thugs, lucky enough to catch him unawares, feeds into his all-consuming fear of final death and damnation, he is used to risk and accepts it with a terrible fatalism. The rider waits because dusk always stirs the dark voices in his soul, gives him a taste of the unholy hunger which had been passed on to him from his long dead victims. While he waits he battles a terrible temptation, one he will not even admit exists, except in these moments of twilight. How easy the voices tell him, how easy it would be to find someone soft, her blood still warm, to feel the surge of power as he draws in another soul, not the old dry strength of the undead but a young vital, life force. Just a touch of his spur on his horse’s flanks and he could go down there, like a wolf among the chickens. So easy! So free! A freedom worth any price, the whispers promise. The rider remains still, not answering these desperate siren calls; he has long since learned not to debate with the beast raging within him, let it wear itself out and then ride on. His hand shakes and not with the growing cold, his anticipation is not all a predator’s need, he is waiting for something. Whatever is following him will be here soon, senses beyond any human understanding tell him of its coming. He smells it, though the wind is in the wrong direction, hears it, though it has no beating heart nor blood to tempt his wakened hunger. He knows all this because he knows it is dead, it is something he can never mistake, no matter how the dead might wreathe themselves in the trappings of the living. He does not need to see their pupiless eyes to recognize the shambling corpses and wind blown specters of the dessert. The creature that stalks him now is different, however, he can feel it, it has purpose, a portentous weight that decades of wandering have taught him is more than coincidence, what the ignorant might call fate. So the Pilgrim waits, caught between two worlds, the void of the desert and the false light of the western line.

  Sure enough his pursuer rounds the rock to his left, just as the last lights in Limit are winking on. The clown does not bother to hide its nature as others, who remember life more clearly sometimes do, the moonlight falls on white limbs, making jagged blades of the ribs poking through his once colourful clothes. Neither the bone clown nor the rider need any light to clearly see the other; a look of disgust curls the rider’s lips as he stares down on the skeletal face, made chalky white by the rising moon. Recognition halts his hand on his gun’s smooth handle, the figure before him is not simply some unfortunate spirit still animating a shambling corpse. His preternatural senses tell him of an intelligence behind those empty eyes, perhaps more than one. Taking the rider’s hesitation for welcome, the skeletal troubadour springs up onto a rock and squats, playing a tune that is little more than a whisper on a much-abused flute.

  “Etine?” The rider asks, the familiar tune and the battered jester’s hat fixing the corpse’s identity in the rider’
s mind.

  For a while there is no reply, just the sad, low lament of the flute. The rider raises his weapon, thinking to make a quick end of the unfortunate abomination, when the crouched figure speaks.

  “Captain,” the thing says breathily, it has no lungs and yet its speech is halted and laboured as if it had just finished running a long race, “Captain, it is good that you waited, I could not safely have followed you in there and I must speak with you on an urgent matter.”

  “What could I want with you?” Blake does not lower his weapon. “You have used this man, who was once my friend but it will not help you sway me. I sense that you are not truly the man I saw die, nor would it help if you were, I have no use for damned spirits or their bones.”

  “Please, at least listen, Captain, though I am sure you find my servant distasteful, I have news that relates directly to what you seek,”

  “And what do I seek?” Blake’s finger curls on the trigger.

  “What you have always sought, flame in the sky, the Gate, that was your last thought before you lost consciousness outside the Citadel and it is what you seek now is it not?”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Even before the Citadel fell there were rumours of a wanderer who sought such a thing. To most he is long forgotten but I have lived longer than most, I do not forget.”

  “How can you be so sure I am this wanderer?”

  “I may not be the man who once owned this body but as you say, he died next to you. Your own mind was laid open by your encounter in the Citadel, you were swept into darkness together, before he died he shared your vision and I took that from him when I raised him once more.”

  “Necromancer filth!” Blake spits, as if to clear a bad taste from his mouth. “What you have done to this man is an abomination.”

  “You think me unnatural? A strong condemnation but then you should have died yourself, you had enough wounds when I last saw you and I suspect you have more years than you have any right to. How did you sustain yourself? How did you see the light in the sky in the first place? Not with your own eyes I’ll warrant! You stole it from another, sucked it from them with their tainted blood. The same blood that, even now, keeps your body together, just as my own enchantments keep these old bones from falling to the desert floor.”

  Blake glares down at the grinning clown, “I never said I was not damned myself. I simply do not revel in my corruption as you do.”

  “My corruption, as you call it, was almost as vital as your own in destroying the Strigoi fortress.”

  “You were at the battle?”

  “I was indeed, and I can tell you that what you sought that day is not lost, the Gate may yet be found.”

  “What do you mean? Are you saying you know where it is?”

  “No, the Gate is old, as old as my own order or the Citadel. Whichever Strigoi you drained to see that image must have been old perhaps even one of the fathers of that misbegotten race.”

  “She was the first,” Blake explains simply, “I think she wanted to find it again almost as much as I do now but after centuries, I think she had given up all hope of redemption.” Blake trails off, the memory of the Elder’s blood on his tongue is a guilty secret that he will not share with this bone puppet or the Necromancer behind it. “There have been others who shared this hope since, even a few who remembered seeing it but their experience was as vicarious as my own, I do not think any who saw the Gate in person still walk the Bowl.”

  “I thought as much, even among the undying, the quest for the Gate is an ancient one. How strange, that it should reemerge so suddenly in recent years.”

  “I have been searching for decades… Are you saying there are others, seeking the Gate?”

  “ Leedon did not burn everything he found in the Citadel; over the last several years I believe he has been studying some of what you yourself hoped to gain from that place. It is even possible that he has had the help of the Strigoi.”

  “He’d not work with them knowingly, I’ll wager. For that matter how do I know that you are not one of the blood suckers yourself? They’ve laid traps before, they know what I seek.”

  “Yes, they seek it too and now they may have a mortal agent who can go where they have not been able. As to whether I am a Strigoi, you have been in the desert long enough to know that my methods are not theirs.”

  “You think they are not capable of animating a few bones? One of the summoners or cults perhaps?”

  “Necromancers are hardly any better and certainly no more trustworthy.”

  “I don’t care if you trust my motivations or not, only that you listen and believe that what I am telling you is the truth.”

  “Your puppet still has a head, I am listening, bone-mage.”

  “Very well. Last night General Leedon’s intended bride was abducted. I believe this was accomplished by agents of the Elders, who somehow avoided destruction at the Citaldel. Both Leedon and the Strigoi believe that she is the key to finding or using this Gate of yours.”

  “Or, perhaps, you believe tempting me with the Gate is the way to lure me?”

  “Put your fears aside, Captain, after all can you afford to risk someone else discovering the Gate? I wonder,” the breathy voice cracks with a brief chuckle, which sets the skull’s teeth rattling. “Come or don’t come, as you choose; if it is a trap then at the least you shall find new blood there.”

  “Where should I go exactly?”

  “East. Just find the girl. She is returning to her father’s estates, south of Brigton, it’s likely that she will be attacked and abducted before she can make it to the safety of her home. It may be necessary to intercept her and escort her back to her father’s lands. If you can do this, your enemy will be forced to come to you.”

  “How am I supposed to find her before they do?”

  “You will have my help. This is not my only servant, I have eyes and ears everywhere’ If you act now, you should be able to find her soon enough to thwart the Strigoi.”

  “And Leedon won’t be seeking her too? What’s to stop me being arrested for a traitor if I am found with her?”

  “We both know that that is an unlikely eventuality.”

  “Yes but I might kill good men and for what? Why not help him find her? Surely that would end their plans more effectively than I could?”

  “I told you the General has been,” the breathy voice pauses, “changed since the Citadel. He has spent much of his time seeking this alliance, politics and his own plans demand it. I too doubt that he would knowingly aid the enemy but I suspect her return to him will fit perfectly with the Strigoi plans.”

  “Then warn him of the danger. Leedon would never do something that played into their hands.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t if he truly believed that were the case but I cannot risk trying to communicate directly with him and he would be even less tolerant than you of my messengers. He makes no distinction between Necromancer and vampire and would simply not trust any warning that came from me.”

  “Is there a difference between the devil’s servants?” Blake asks sardonically

  “Not one that zealots can appreciate but I will not debate with you. Even if I could find some credible way to warn him, the General might still ignore me, he is blinded by something he found in the Citadel, a legend which resonates strongly with his own ambitions .”

  “The Gate?”

  “Indeed! Like you he is obsessed with what it might represent. A Gate to Heaven Itself is a prize that no Crusader or Pilgrim could willingly turn away from and as the head of the Crusade.”

  “What’s left of it!”

  “True its numbers have dwindled since the end of the war but that only makes the quest more appealing to the General; having destroyed the evil in this land he now seeks to lead his followers to the very Gates of Heaven.”

  “You know as well as I do that evil is alive and well.”

  “But Leedon cannot acknowledge that without also admitting that t
he Crusade failed. No he seeks something more than conquest, now he seeks the Gate. It is my suspicion that the leeches intend to use his new ambitions to regain control of the Union or even to somehow harness the Gate’s power for themselves.”

  “They could never even approach that holy place.”

  “I do not know what they can and can’t do captain. I know what they will try to do. If they are not stopped both the Gate and the General may be lost.”

  “You were at the battle, and even now, I am sure, are close to him.” Blake states simply. “It seems he is surrounded by unholy influence, what would your kind make of the Gate, should he succeed?”

  “I will reveal no more of myself than I have to, Captain. I know you see little difference between ‘my kind’ and the Strigoi. I can only assure you that you and your quest are in no danger from us, indeed your hunting has served us well.”

  “Whoever ‘us’ might be.”

  “What I am or am not does not matter, neither of us wish to see the Gate in the hands of the Strigoi nor, I think, do you wish to share your quest with Leedon's army. If you are not on a train tonight it will almost certainly be too late for you to become involved.”

  “You know that if I do become involved, I’d kill you as quickly as any of the rest?”

  “I expected no less, Captain but I need a hunter and you are the best.”

  “I assume there is a train passing through tonight or you would not have mentioned it.”

  “Yes, in the next couple of hours Tyre should be passing through, you can get off at Brigton and head south from there. The girl will be heading up river, I’ll send word on her location once you are closer.”

  “I have no money for passage for myself and my horse,” Blake says calmly, still debating whether to trust the animated corpse in front of him and in his heart knowing that he has no choice but to follow every lead, however slight.