Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01]

by The Mask of Tamrel (epub)

  “That’s all very civilized and lovely, but let me summarize. You’ve never met this girl. You know nothing about her temperament or her ways. Your marriage to her is a social disgrace and a personal betrayal by your father, not to mention an impediment to sending Tamrel to the abyss. Lad, I’ve got to be honest with you: say damn it all to duty and refuse her hand. You clearly have no interest in matrimony. In fact, every time you hear the word you grow a little paler.”

  Kelrob had placed his hands on the window’s ledge, seeking some comfort in the wood’s subtle grain. Now, his nails dug into the casement, leaving marks. “I need time to think,” he mumbled, a nervous heat sweeping over his body. Reaching down, he began to struggle with the buttons of his tunic; sweat prickled on his skin, saturating the inner layers of the shirt. With a shudder of panic he swept past Jacobson, making for the arched doorway leading to the inner chambers.

  Jacobson followed him, laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Come now, lad, don’t storm out on me. We need to plan. I say we sneak out and make for the crypt. No reason to linger here engaging in idiotic rituals.”

  Kelrob rounded on the big man, shrugging off his thick grip. “My father has made his wishes clear,” he said in a hollow voice, “and if I choose to disobey them I will likely be disinherited and cast from the family line. Furthermore the crypts are sealed, only accessible with a silver key that Lord Azumana carries with him at all times. Should the conservatory fail us I plan on convincing him that I wish to burn an offering to my new ancestors; when he opens the tomb we will slip through, and escape, or not. There’s also the possibility that given some time the siege-dome will drop and help will come from outside, though I think the keymaster was killed in the consulate explosion. That means the dome will have to be burrowed under, or worse dismantled from outside, which could take weeks.” As he spoke Kelrob reached down and rubbed at the bandages swathing his index finger. “I have a plan, stupid and muddled as it sounds; if I had my chromox things would be very different.”

  Jacobson listened closely. When Kelrob finished speaking he reached forward and clasped the mage by the shoulder, gently this time. “The lock on this tomb. It’s magically sealed, I suppose?”

  “Triply enchanted. The key is less a physical object, more a deactivating mechanism that exists in multidimensional space.”

  “So no hairpins or dagger blades. The skills of a lockpick are wasted in this world.” Jacobson tightened his grip for a moment, holding Kelrob’s eyes. “Are there any more turns and twists to this plan? A gorgon guarding the crypts, perhaps?”

  Kelrob shook his head. “That’s everything I’ve figured out. My father wishes my betrothal, and going through with the ceremony will give us a chance to escape. I have to do this.”

  Jacobson raised his free hand and trailed it down the mask, his fingers lingering on the smiling porcelain lips. “Madness begets madness,” he said wistfully. “It sounds like you have it all in hand, lad, or as much in hand as any debacle can be. What can I do to help?”

  Kelrob released a sigh that vibrated to the depths of his marrow. “You can let me take a long bath,” he said. “Maybe I can think of something else. I feel like I’m missing some obvious solution, but I can’t think clearly without my chromox. I need it.”

  Jacobson squeezed Kelrob’s shoulder a final time, then released him. “Go on and soak,” he said. “I’ll sit here and think of some way to be useful. Wish I could just slit my throat, but it seems I can’t even bring wretched self-sacrifice to the table.”

  Kelrob resumed undoing the buttons of his increasingly sweaty tunic. “This door leads to the rest of our apartments; there should be food and wine spread out in the solar. There are also books in the study, which might be of particular interest to you.”

  Jacobson nodded in weary thanks. “As my master wishes,” he said. “Remember to wash behind your ears, and don’t mind me; I’ll not want for company.” His eyes sparkled with mock solemnity, half-concealing a deep despair. Kelrob merely nodded to him and quit the chamber, his fingers tugging at the final pernicious button.

  A corridor led from the bedchamber to the further succession of apartments. Kelrob passed the doorway leading to the solarium, noting the spill of curdled sunlight filtering into the passage. The next doorway led to the bathing chamber, and he pushed open the tall, resin-treated door, slid into the room, and closed it behind him with a sense of apoplectic relief. As an afterthought, he reached down and turned the lock.

  14: Dreams

  The bathing room was Kelrob’s favorite room in the apartment, save the study, where he often padded barefoot after long soaks. The floor was ornately tiled with slivers and chips of precious stone, the occasional shard of ruby or sapphire glinting amongst the slightly more prosaic spirals of garnet, jade, and polished turquoise. The mosaic depicted no definite thing, and Kelrob had spent many blissfully moist hours meditating on its fire-flecked abstraction. The tiled floor occupied a large oval area, above which a narrow sunroof allowed a shaft of light to penetrate the chamber. Its traverse was marked with small, plain stones reckoning the hour; many were the times Kelrob had fallen into some strange, consuming vision, only to have his wandering gaze fall on one of these prosaic markers, thus wrenching him to the near-universal realization that his skin had shriveled to the texture of rotten fruit. At the end of the chamber opposite the door was a raised alcove, reached by a set of shallow marble steps. Atop the dais squatted a massive bronze bathing tub, its bulk cast to resemble an oyster’s yawning shell. A curving golden rack framed the wall behind the tub, laden with multi-hued bottles; herein were stored the various exotic additives to the basic bathing experience, distillations of scents both familiar and foreign, often jarringly but sensuously commingled. Kelrob released a second sigh as he took in the familiar sight, his heart only twisting faintly at the unhealthy pallor of the slanting sunlight. It was nearing three o’clock, he saw by the stones on the floor; dinner was a mere five hours away, a thought that both relieved and terrified him.

  Reaching down, Kelrob shed the tunic and sweat-permeated undershirt, sliding out of them with the distinct sensation that he was molting a layer of old, outgrown flesh. His skin was pale beneath, achingly pale; he ran his hands down his clammy torso, slid them down until they reached the buckle of his borrowed belt and breeches. These likewise came off in a flash, and Kelrob stood naked by the locked door, his clothes a repugnant bundle in his arms. He tossed them into a basket at his left, realizing he had brought no proper clothing to don once his cleansing was complete. No matter; there was a cabinet cleverly concealed in the lefthand curve of the wall, wherein soft robes, slippers, and various toiletries were housed. A concealed panel on the righthand wall exposed the toilet itself, a gilded monstrosity of gold and silver fluting that always intimidated Kelrob when necessity demanded its use. Stretching, he walked towards the raised bathing rub, veering around the sallow patch of sunlight demarcating the time. The air was warm in the room, warm and faintly moist; Kelrob stretched his arms above his head after ascending the first step, reveling in his impending cleanliness. He could feel the pores of his skin opening, releasing tension but doing little to alleviate the nightmare buzzing which underscored his every conscious thought.

  There was a mirror on the righthand wall at the head of the steps. Kelrob paused and examined himself, leaning over first to turn a handle that freed a gush of steaming hot water into the tub. He looked gaunt and hollow-eyed, his hair a chaotic raven-hued thatch; as always, his bones poked through the thin layer of his skin, and each rib was clearly delineated. The bruises, however, were a new touch, and Kelrob blanched at the three purpled blotches marring his torso. Won in the House of the Setting Sun, Tamrel’s song had done nothing to heal them, though the pain had been largely alleviated. Kelrob shivered at the reminder of his hideous predicament, Tamrel’s thin, musical voice echoing in his mind like the sea-tide in a spiraling shell. Raising his hands
, he touched each of the bruises, then trailed his fingers lower to trace the lesser abrasions to his thighs and buttocks. The mage had been two weeks in the saddle prior to this misadventure, with the result that his thighs had already been chapped and blistered by the time Salinas chose the aberrant route that had led them into the Umberwood. Now, staring at his abraded flesh, Kelrob marveled at the fact that he could walk at all. Steam rose from the bathing tub, curling beneath his nose; the mage inhaled deeply, his hands dropping from his wounds to dangle at his sides. He stared at himself in the mirror, eyes trailing over each bony protuberance, lingering on the unflattering jut of his hips and the long, spiderlike drape of his fingers. At last he raised his eyes and met his own gaze, seeing reflected there all the fires of madness and fear that he was working so assiduously to smother. Kelrob froze, and gazed into the wells of his own soul, appalled at what he saw. He was a child, a frightened child, caught in acting out a vile absurdism that involved the betrayal of both his Order and his class.

  But they’ve betrayed me.

  Kelrob’s long fingers curled into fists, and he began to quake with suppressed fury. He had inherited his father’s mien, his long peaked nose and black eyes, his full faintly downcurving lips; now, staring into his own reflection, Kelrob saw the face of the man who had sired him, who had taught him the meaning of words and the subtle craft of calligraphy, who had acquired him ample books at his childish whim, who had pushed him to embrace his vast gifts when they became apparent, who had loved Kelrob, his sickly mother and his boisterous brother with a strange, fervent detachment that was necessitated by his utter devotion to the management of his estates. This was the same man that had sold him, as surely as an oxen at market, to the highest and most prestigious bidder; all thoughts of Jacobson and Tamrel, of Salinas and the hideous scenes in the House of the Setting Sun, of the murderous energy loosed within the very walls of Tannigal itself, fell out of Kelrob’s mind. He stared at the echoed features of his father and hated the man, hated him with a strength and clarity surpassing the deepest meditative trance.

  The water was rising in the bathing tub. Kelrob tore his eyes away. The radiant fury in his heart subsided, but did not fade. He longed to write a furious air-missive to his father, demanding an explanation and refusing the union, but the active siege-dome disallowed any such communications. Jacobson’s voice sprang to sudden life in his mind: I’d say damn it all to duty and refuse her hand. He could, at that; but taking into consideration that he was staying under Lord Azumana’s roof for protection as well as convenience swayed him from resisting the match outright. Azumana controlled the only potential means of fleeing the sealed city. If Kelrob turned down his daughter’s hand, the lord would be little inclined to spare him use of his conservatory, let alone the highly illicit smuggling tunnels reputedly sunk beneath his estate. Yes, he clearly needed to play along with the scenario, at least for a time. With a grimace Kelrob climbed into the crenelated tub, hot water quickly searing away all coherent thought. He alternated his feet in the steaming liquid for a few moments before settling his body beneath the rising tide, a corpus-shuddering sigh escaping from his lips. There he bobbed, eyes tightly screwed shut, until the tub was sufficiently filled and he reached forward to twist the bronze handle. The water dribbled from the spigot for a moment before its flow was completely stilled; the last few droplets echoed loudly as they fell, ripples expanding to lap at Kelrob’s chest. He laid his wounded right hand on the edge of the tub and settled back to think.

  Kelrob floated thus for half an hour, eyes closed and body motionless, only stirring occasionally to run a fresh stream of boiling water. Steam quickly filled the chamber, drifting in muddy banks; Kelrob drew within, hovered sightless in the soothing liquid, keeping his breathing steady. He attempted to retreat into the simple meditative practices of the Mentatii, but the focus of these inner invocations had always been the chromox. Now, deprived of his symbiote, Kelrob found the meditative practices unfulfilling, leaving an empty ache in his head and heart. It was too much, it was all too much; the mage’s eyes flew open, and he stared up at the tiled ceiling.

  The tiling depicted a host of merchant-lords seated at high banquet, their eyes bright with laughter and intoxication as their respective purses overflowed with gold and silver coins. Kelrob had always found the depiction incredibly boring, having endured many such feasts throughout his childhood. Now, strangely, he found the image comforting in its mundanity, and focused on a pair of yapping dogs frozen in the process of struggling over a freshly-stripped bone. He swirled his limbs in the water, surrendering himself to motion, then reached up and plucked an ampule containing the distilled essence of rosemary and honeysuckle from the encircling rack. Kelrob removed the stopper, held the ampule beneath his nose, and inhaled deeply. The scent, as desired, was completely overpowering, set lights to waltzing and bursting across his vision. Reeling, he tipped the ampule and poured a small amount of its essence into the bathwater. The bronze tub was subtly enchanted to ensure the constant agitation of the water it contained, resulting in faint eddies that caressed the bather’s body; this same enchantment dispersed the oils throughout the water, and within moments Kelrob was bobbing in a fragrant stew. Smiling despite himself, the mage restopped the bottle and returned it to the golden rack, his nostrils flaring, devouring the delicious scent. For the first time in ages a faint glow of comfort stirred in his soul, a genuine easing of amalgamated burdens. Kelrob sighed anew and resumed floating, staring up at the mosaic with unblinking eyes. He watched as droplets of water pooled, condensed, and fell like sweat from the faces of the celebrating merchants, could almost hear their jocular voices raised in celebration over their mutual profundity. In truth it was the only unrealistic aspect of the scene: merchants-lords often laughed in each others’ presence, but in Kelrob’s experience it was always guarded, canny laughter. Furthermore, it was unheard of for a lord of even his father’s modest standing to attend a business-related ceremony without dragging along a bevy of servants, men-at-arms, and, most importantly, taste-testers. It was uncommon, but not unheard of, for heated trade disputes to end with a glass of arsenic-tainted wine. When he was six Kelrob had witnessed his only poisoning, at a backcountry regale hosted by one of their prosperous neighbors. The perpetrator, a young lord named Dalius, had been roundly accused of dissolving a pellet of potent venom in his doddering sire’s mead, and was eventually driven from the Rolling Lands, his newly and bloodily acquired estates stripped from his family and distributed amongst a number of neighboring lords. Kelrob’s father had been one of Dalius’s most vocal accusers, and it was not surprising to Kelrob that a large segment of the youth’s demesne had passed to the Kael-Pellin line. His line.

  Kelrob turned his eyes from the mosaic, no longer finding it comforting in the least. Leaning forward, he ran fresh water, took down a bottle of neroli oil, and let a few droplets fall into the foaming water. The oil’s sweet floral decadence struck Kelrob’s nose and pulsed atavistic pleasure through his body: it was one of the mage’s favorite scents. Slipping down into the water, he closed his eyes anew, and lost himself to an amniotic haze.

  Reality faded. Time slipped. Kelrob found himself tossed in a strange half-sleep, his finger tingling faintly where the chromox ring should have rode, now marked by charred and blistered flesh.

  He resisted the temptation of slumber, knowing that to fall asleep in a bath is a foolish thing, but eventually surrendered and sank into warm, insulated unconsciousness.

  The first thing he felt, a strange thing, were the cradling arms of his long-dead mother. Kelrob had few memories of her. Shari by name, she had come from a small demesne in the northerly Rolling Lands, her family of old blood but only modestly wealthy, their wines simple and unrefined. She had borne Kelrob’s brother, then Kelrob, the successive births shattering her already-fragile health and ultimately sending her to the grave. Kelrob’s father never spoke of her, and the mage’s memories of her were limited to mute s
ensations of warm flesh pressed against his own. Now, in the depths of strange sleep, he heard her voice speaking to him, though the words were muddled gibberish. She cooed and rocked him, and looking up to her face Kelrob was horrified to see that she had no features, just a blank slate of flesh framed by raven-black hair akin to his own. The peaceful dream trembled, shattered; Kelrob cried out as his mother’s phantom arms dissolved, and he fell down into the black pit of nightmare.

  Perhaps it was the trend of his thoughts before falling unconscious that guided Kelrob back to the familiar halls of his ancestral home, but the mage suddenly found himself in his old boyhood rooms in House Kael-Pellin. They were far less opulent than his lodgings in the home of Lord Azumana, consisting of a central bedchamber lined with crowded bookshelves, a thick mattress suspended on an ancient oaken frame, a proper writing desk discolored with generations of spilled ink and, in Kelrob’s case, caustic chemicals, and a long worktable stretching from the low stone hearth to the bank of westward-looking windows, resplendent with their archaic quarrels of bubbled glass. An arched doorway to the left of the genuine wood-burning hearth led to a private bathing chamber; above, a domed skylight let in illumination when the sun struck mid-day. Now, however, the sun was settling into the west, its smoldering disc warped by the blistered panes. Kelrob watched it for a moment, aware that he was dreaming, aware that strange shadows and unwholesome phantoms flitted in the darkened corners of the familiar room. The hearth was unlit, cold ashes gleaming like bone between the filigreed iron grates.

  Slowly, afraid that each step would plunge him into some deeper abyss, Kelrob crossed to the windows and hesitantly cracked them open. Beyond was the familiar sight of the Kael-Pellin estate, the country manse curling off to the right in a ramble of rooms and windows and sharp-angled gambrels, the leftward view dominated by vineyard-rows spilling off over the crest of a low hillock. The grapes, Kelrob saw, were over-ripe, past the point of fruitful plucking; their bloated red bodies bobbed in a faint wind, rotting on the vine. There were no servants about, and no lights burned in the other wings of the house. Kelrob saw that a curious air of disrepair had overtaken the painstakingly preserved masonry, vines spewing from holes in the mortar and twining about the jut of slanted, smokeless chimneys. In the distance, beyond the obscuring hill, lay the perimeter of his family’s private holdings; further on lay the demesne of Kael-Pellin, a moderately sized fief of 3517 acres that was Kelrob’s heritage and, had he been an only child or had his elder brother not been so perfectly suited to take up the mantle, his future responsibility. There dwelt the nithings and lesser mercantile families under his father’s careful supervision, the former dwelling in small wattle-and-thatch villages nestled in the deep valleys between the hills, the latter living more ostentatiously in wooden houses with multiple floors and small patches of land linked to their own modest lineages. All of this humble prosperity was demarcated by a line of solid, ancient oaks edging the Kael-Pellin estate; had the hillock been lesser, as Kelrob often wished it were, he could have seen clear to the distant wood, the vineyards spilling down until they terminated beneath the shaded boughs of the encircling grove.