Kelrob returned the pressure of Jacobson’s hand, his unblinking eyes fixed on the big man’s obscured face. “I’m crumbling now,” he said weakly.
“Perfectly understandable. You’ve earned the right, bless your mad heart. The trick is to allow yourself to bend rather than to break. Remember that you are also a victim, lad, a right persecuted one in my eyes. And they are still my eyes, for all of Tamrel’s impish bluster.” Jacobson rocked backwards, though he maintained a tight grip on Kelrob’s hand. He stared directly into the mage’s eyes and said, quite simply, “Feel it, then dispose of it. This madness isn’t over yet, Kelrob. I need you.”
These last words caused Kelrob’s body to stiffen beneath the enveloping robe, the tendons in his angular feet flexing. “I see their faces,” he said, in a calm voice with only a hint of quavering. “I feel what they felt at the inn — and I can’t think about it, can’t let myself remember. If I do I feel fear, and I hate myself for my part in their sufferings. But there is so much to do, so much to save...I have no idea how to best Tamrel, by the way. Everything is being improvised, up to and including this moment.” His eyes flickered about the room, lingering on the gilded tassels dangling from the teakwood bedposts. “Part of me feels that I should run to the nearest consulate and inform the Order. But if I do that, your life will be forfeit, and Tamrel will be unbounded by the deal we have struck. I have no doubt that he would find another body and resume his songs.”
Jacobson nodded soberly, his face suddenly hot and uncomfortable beneath the mask. “Aye. He’s busy devouring my mind, but at the same time I’ve had a few glimpses of his. Happened when I dozed off, just before you came running. I saw the Seven Cities lost in orgiastic ruin, the foundation-stones of all the great towers gleaming with the blood of sacrifice. I’ve no doubt he’s from some older order, a thing from a world before, perhaps what your madman Absalom was ranting about. He’s long been sedentary, happy to perform for those who seek to hear him and presiding over the revels at the Black Circle, but we,” Jacobson jerked a thumb at Kelrob, then to himself, “have intrigued him, lured him out of his hermitage into a wider world he has never seen. And what he sees disgusts him, that I know. In fact we agree on several major philosophic points, but his methods do truly seem to be madness. I’ve no desire to see any more killing, lad; if that means we need to play his little game, find a way of outwitting him, so be it. Isn’t there always a loophole in such arcane dealings, some surefire way of foiling a magical being?”
Kelrob nodded slowly, teeth nibbling at his lower lip. “Such is generally the case in the mythologies, though there are some instances where the human becomes over-confident and falls into his own trap. The trick is to think carefully, suppress fear, and above all be certain that the bargain you make contains a preconceived loophole. Unfortunately, in my haste, I forgot to provide that particular aspect, so we are faced with a slightly trickier situation.”
Jacobson smiled slowly, his mind working over the deal Kelrob had struck. He knew that any revelations he had would become known to Tamrel at once; however, the bard was also bound by his oath, which should preclude active interference. “There’s a way to twist every deal,” Jacobson said aloud. “I’ve been too mired in my own ill-fortune to think of it this way, but really this whole silly quest is just a business arrangement. We merely need to find the crooked path.”
Kelrob pushed himself excitedly up in the bed. “We need to cheat,” he said. “Somehow.”
“Exactly. You’re a quick study.”
Kelrob thought for a moment, pulling the fluffy robe tight under his chin. He seemed newly animated, calmed by the prospect of a plan besides his own, regardless of how vague or implausible. One hand strayed up to toy with his hairless chin; Jacobson absently wondered if the mage had any inclination towards growing a beard, or if the boy was even capable of such a follicular feat.
“We haven’t tested the parameters,” Kelrob said at last, with a quick glance at Jacobson. “What were the exact words of the bargain? ‘An instrument you cannot play’...damn it, I was an idiot to relate it to music, but that was all I could think of. Is he hearing everything we’re saying?”
Jacobson nodded. “Undoubtedly. However, I think he’s iron-bound by this deal. If we find a means or method to his defeat, his nature will keep him from foiling it. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect any and all kinds of mischief from the fiend, mind you.”
Kelrob nodded, a little uncertainly, then cast his eyes around the room. His gaze settled on an old bronze astrolabe, and the hand caressing his chin began to stroke more forcefully. “I have an experiment I want to try,” he said, with a sideways look at Jacobson. “With your permission.”
Jacobson released Kelrob’s hand — which was now steady — and followed his eyes to the celestial globe. “Never had a magister ask my permission for anything,” he said in mock disbelief. “Go ahead, lad. I think I see which way your mind is tacking.”
Kelrob nodded. Turning to Jacobson, he said, in a calm, commanding voice, “Tamrel, come forth. I wish to issue a challenge.”
16: Kelrob’s Challenge
Tamrel stirred in Jacobson’s mind. A foreign power entered his limbs, anointed his tongue; when next he spoke it was in that high, musical voice, and the words were not of his making.
“I am ready to meet your challenge,” Tamrel said, arching Jacobson’s back and stretching his arms until they cracked. “Speak, mageling, though I warn you: already I am turning this brutish form to greater degrees of subtlety. These fingers are thick and coarse, but I have mastered them.”
Kelrob met and held Tamrel’s lambent blue gaze. The mage hesitated for a moment, then said, in barely more than a whisper, “That astrolabe. An instrument by definition, though not of a musical nature. I bid you to find some means of playing it, and, should you fail, to quit Jacobson’s body and give yourself into my power.”
Tamrel quivered faintly, a chuckle bubbling in his stolen lungs. “So very clever,” the minstrel said, rising and crossing to the celestial globe. Reaching out Jacobson’s fingers, he lovingly trailed them along the device’s encircling bronze ring. “A lovely inclinometer, one I have been admiring from the corner of this vessel’s eye. Play it, you command? I could satisfy your challenge by calculating your astrological nature, or showing you the position of near-dead stars that burned brightly when the world was young. But that is not your meaning, and as we have an agreement, dear mageling, I shall abide by its terms.” So saying Tamrel set to drumming his fingers against the bronze ring and the star-incised globe it encircled, all the while tapping Jacobson’s left foot in impeccable time. The sounds that emerged from the astrolabe were mellifluous, otherworldly, a music of gentle metallic pings and bell-like reverberations; Kelrob fell back into the great bed, his mind exploding with images of strange, exotic worlds hung amid the starry wire of the firmament. Tamrel began to sing as he played, the pads of Jacobson’s fingers impacting the bronze sphere with increasingly mesmeric result. His wordless chant enhanced Kelrob’s perception of the great abyss, of luminous spherical bodies carving order through the void; the mage felt his spirit pulled towards the gulfs of interstellar space, and it was only the cessation of the song and the final dying reverberation of the astrolabe that brought him back to his own flesh.
“There,” Tamrel said, delivering a final tinkling flourish with the tips of Jacobson’s fingers. Turning to Kelrob, he bowed formally, and said, “Your mind is quite pliant, my dear child. You would follow the threads of my music to the stars, with no thought of the mortal husk left behind. I admire your enthusiasm, but I must advise caution. I am quite intrigued by your current incarnation, and would be sore disappointed if your essence were to transmute, leaving me only a useless lump of meat.”
Kelrob blinked his eyes slowly, his mind still lost in lingering visions of void and starfire. He found that the paths of the stars were burned into his vision, and squ
eezing his eyes tightly shut caught a fleeting inscription of infinity. Again he felt the tug on his spirit, the ephemera of his being prying its way loose; opening his eyes he drew in a great breath and focused all his attention on the ludicrous silken tassels dangling from the bedposts. This served as a surprisingly useful grounding exercise, and within a few moments his spirit — if such it could be called — had fully settled back into its accustomed seat.
Tamrel nodded his approval. “Good. You have returned sufficiently. I trust my playing was to your liking?” As he spoke the mask smiled, inanimate lips curving into a grin. Kelrob could say nothing, merely nod to the supernal musician’s question, his eyes leaping from the tassels to the other potential ‘instruments’ in the room. A trick, a trick — he had to find some way of snaring this elusive creature. At last, pushing himself up in bed, he pointed mutely to the arrangement of enchanted blades spread out in their decorative fan. Tamrel followed his finger, and the smile twisted further, the eyes dancing with amusement.
“You wish me to play these blades?”
Kelrob nodded. “Instruments of death,” he said in a thin, dry voice. As he spoke he steeled his consciousness against further transportation, determined to remain embodied throughout the performance.
Tamrel nodded. Lacing Jacobson’s fingers together, he cracked them noisily, then crossed to the table and inspected the glass-encased swords. “Enchanted,” he said, more to himself than to Kelrob. Leaning forward, he flicked aside the ward-locks on each case, flipped open the glass fronts, and began to play. He started with the leftmost blade, a short stabbing weapon whose keen edge began to glisten as it vibrated. Tamrel slid Jacobson’s fingers along the pommel, the tang, the tapered cutting edges, creating a strange metallic whine. This proved a mere overture, and as the bard set about satisfying Kelrob’s challenge in earnest, fingers evoking a symphony of metallic discord as they flew from blade to blade, Kelrob found his inner sight drawn to ancient fields of battle, where blood flowed to satiate the earth and stain the willing hands of inhuman warriors. The stink of death flooded his nostrils — blood and horse-sweat, vomit and leather and the newly-familiar reek of powder. A black hatred rose in Kelrob, a loathing of Tamrel, which kept him grounded and wrenched his perceptions free from those antique fields of carnage. When Tamrel concluded his orchestration and turned to bow, Kelrob’s mind was already firmly re-fastened in his body, and he regarded the minstrel with cold, hard eyes. The strange keening of the swords died away into silence.
Tamrel regarded his lack of reaction with some disappointment. “You have taken my advice to heart. Nevertheless, my aptitude is proven. There is nothing I cannot master, nothing I cannot make to sing.”
Kelrob raised his chin, marshaling arrogance to counter arrogance. “And what of the wind?” he cried, gesturing at the air around them. “Some would say it is the instrument of the world, on which the so-called gods deign to play. Can you match even them?”
Tamrel drew in a deep breath, exhaled, his stolen fingers flexing as if preparing for some arduous task. “A worthy challenge,” he said. “There was a time when I could not meet it, but that is millennia past.” With no further prelude the bard began to caress and coax at the air. At first there was no sound, though Kelrob immediately sensed a change in the room’s pressure. The few motes of dust floating in the bilious sunlight began to move in uniform fashion, flashing and flickering with great urgency through the jaundiced beams. Tamrel bowed his head, a low mumbling emerging from his throat; as if in answer the air began to whisper, to hum, and finally to sing. The vibration coursed through Kelrob’s body, thrummed in the hollow spaces of his lungs. The images that began to emerge in his mind were impossible for him to define: gulfs of glowing particles twisting and dancing with a frenzy that reminded Kelrob of the revelers in his recent nightmare. He peered closely at them, surrendering a sliver of the loathing that kept him bound and embodied, and shortly found himself caught up in the dance. Drawing close to several of the particles, he felt a compelling gravity emanating from them, and with a joyous whoop surrendered to their orbit. It was then that he heard, amid the sussurant music produced by Tamrel’s manipulations, a million disparate strains encroaching on his consciousness, wellsprings of song that surged wholly apart but in glorious and hallowed union. Amongst the euphony he picked out several melodies that he recognized, songs of ancient majesty remembered from the concerts and recitals he had attended while studying at the Rookery, songs of simple word and changeable composition that he had often overheard the house-servants sing whilst going about their daily tasks. Underscoring melodies both familiar and foreign was a deep thrumming that beat in multifarious cadence from the dancing particles, which Kelrob now saw were pulsing and mutating in time with their rhythmic emanations. As he listened ever more closely he heard the music of other races and other spheres, surging choirs of alien sound that sprouted in his mind and set to ripening as-yet untasted polyphonic fruits. Coiling threads of song — of communication, Kelrob realized in awe — formed a helix of light about the mage’s still-corporeal frame, sending thrills along the atrophied nerves of his scholar-softened body. The music rose to ever-higher realms of cross-fertilization, the particles twisted and swayed, and suddenly Kelrob understood that he was observing the particulate framework of reality, the oft-debated realm of atoms that were known to comprise the unseen and chromox-resistant basis of matter. The Alchemist’s Ulcer, as Master Kenlath had playfully and bitterly described them; Kelrob’s remembrance of his teacher caused his vision to dim, his mind to stray from the ever-mounting tintinnabulation. Suddenly he was hurled from the realm of atomics, hurled from the divine beacon of song, back into his robed body reclining on the plush bed. The ridiculous tassels were there, the bleak light eeking through the window; Kelrob noted that the dust motes no longer danced in harmonious unison. It was only then that he realized Tamrel had finished his song.
The minstrel stood at his ease by the sword-laden table, stolen hands braced on stolen hips. The mask was grinning broadly. “Forgive me,” Tamrel said with a faint bow, “but I, too, have cheated. I have told you of the songs I have to sing you, songs to free your mind and heart and dear stunted soul. That, my lovely child, was one of them. A sampling of the wonders I have to offer you.”
Kelrob sat bolt upright, then leaped from the bed, all infirmity forgotten. Clutching the robe tightly about his shoulders he approached Tamrel, taking slow steps, unsure if the meager substance of the floor would support him. He could feel the sentient elements loaning substance to his body, feel the strange distances howling between them, feel the eternal divine music which joyously negated those voids. Keenest of all, Kelrob was aware of the crucible of his own essence, of the existence of his own essence; cracking his lips, he met the glow of Tamrel’s expectant eyes and said, simply, “I have a soul.”
Tamrel nodded faintly. “As does every living thing. As do I, twisted though it has become.” The mask’s grin bent sideways, and Kelrob fell back, the smile a hideous wrongness to his newly-cleansed senses. He realized, in that moment, that he had been shown the truth by a false messenger, and averting his eyes from Tamrel quelled the desire to yield himself up to further songs. He knew that Tamrel had once been a mortal being who had decanted his essence, ripped it from its native housing and imprinted it on inanimacy; such an unnatural transition, the mage now understood, would have a degrading effect on the purity of one’s essence. It was mere imprint, not true soul. Tamrel was, unknown perhaps even to himself, a construct beyond all his sentience, an artificial being subject to the decay of his transubstantiation. It was a realization of blinding clarity and grim purpose, and between one breath and the next Kelrob discarded all thought of heeding Tamrel’s seductive offers, instead setting his mind and will utterly to the task of the destruction, or at least defeat, of this most luminous monstrosity.
Tamrel noted the change in him, the mask’s lips curving downwards for the first time in Kelrob’s r
ecollection. “You have set yourself against me,” he said. “I see it in your bearing, in the fire of your newly-seeing eyes. Why, child? Do you not yearn to taste those fruits you saw swollen to ripeness, whose intoxicant nectar is but the first forbidden taste of many?”
Kelrob stared into Tamrel’s glowing eyes, Jacobson’s eyes. He could now see the man behind the parasite, staring out helpless but aware from the prison of his own mind and body. “You have played well,” he said to the minstrel, “and shown me much. I give you leave to depart, and kindly ask that you remain dormant until the next test of your abilities.”
The mouth of the mask twisted further downward, a frown of frank and very human disappointment. “You taste the well of ultimate knowledge, yet shy away? Perhaps I am wrong about you. Or perhaps you think me foolish enough to further tempt you, to offer that forbidden fruit? No, dear mageling, there will be no more songs, not until you yield to me.”
It was Kelrob’s turn to flash a twisted smile, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. “Save your breath. It isn’t yours to spend anyhow.”
Tamrel’s frown curved slightly upward at the corners. “Very well. Your refusal, of course, is meaningless; when the month expires and your quest has failed you will be mine, as promised.” So saying, before Kelrob could respond, the azure light left Jacobson’s eyes. His body slumped forward, seemingly unoccupied, and Kelrob rushed to its aid, catching Jacobson by his massive shoulders and attempting half-successfully to ease him to the ground. The big man landed face-down on the carpeting; Kelrob bent all his strength to rolling him onto his back. After a few moments of this treatment Jacobson groaned, and reaching down with trembling arms pushed himself to a sitting position.
Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Page 23
