It was then that he had seen himself as he truly was. Not a man at all, a fiend, though he was not too modest to say, a handsome one. After that, nothing. Were his masters dead? Had God been wounded and Satan gone mad? He had heard such chatter among the devils his grandmother had summoned—the ones that fought alongside him at Crecy. But they were her servants and would say what she wanted him to hear.
Outside the little chamber he could hear his men moving, talking, listening at the door for any sigh, any belch, that might reveal their patron's mood, hint at his wants, enable them to appear with a plum or a purgative saying “if it please you, sir,” and lay it down on the table before him. Courtiers imagine princes are puppets, though they appreciate there are a multitude of hands up their skirts, vying for control. The prince was inclined to agree with them. Puppets, though, won't bite you of their own accord.
The evening light faded, the trees deep and lovely, the horizon gold and crimson above them, the starlings swooping and turning above their roosts. He put his hand to the hilt of his sword. There was his purpose. To cut and to kill. There was no puzzle in battle, no flock of thoughts turning this way and that, offering new shapes with every swoop. Just the enemy in front and your friend at your side. Words came to his lips, surprising him. “If my father dies...” He blushed almost to speak them. Just to think of the king's death was treason but it needed to be considered. Edward was not a young man, near forty. The siege at Calais could kill him, as a siege had killed Richard Couer De Lyon, had killed countless others.
A missed mass, a bad thought, a concession to unholy men—and Edward had made plenty of those—and God could blow upon the crossbow bolt of a defender, blow it through a king's heart. And then what? He would rule. But a devil cannot rule in place of a king. It would be unholy. A devil, like a prince, can wield power with a king's blessing but he cannot rule of his own accord any more than an animal, no matter how kingly, no matter how magnificent, could rule. Could a lion sit on the throne of England? It could not. And he was a devil. The looking glass did not lie. He took out his rosary and kneeled.
“For what, God, for what am I here?” Perhaps God was testing him, offering him great temptation and seeing if he could resist. Now, more than ever, he needed advice. He had thought to speak to Lord Sloth, the Iron Lion. He claimed to be an ambassador of Hell. But Sloth was bound to his father. His grandmother Isabella? She could summon devils. But she had had nothing to do with him as he had grown—handed him over to the care of wet nurses and tutors. They might know his purpose but they would be his grandmother's creatures, bound to her. His mother? He feared her, could not touch her royal body with his low hands. She must know, must suspect. But she had been so ill when he was born and he had been taken away to the care of others so young.
His clothes for the evening lay on the bed. Soon he would have to call in his men again, to dress him. He did not want company but he could hardly go to evening mass and then to dinner naked and he wasn’t about to put his clothes on himself.
A prince and a devil. A thing born to rule and to serve. An impossibility.
“My Lord!” A knock at the door. “Come.” The door opened. He'd dismissed most of his men for the night and only nine or ten of the most noble remained in the outer bedchamber to see to the very minimum of a prince’s needs. He felt low, servile, before them. He stood straighter. It was the king's authority he wielded, not his own.
It was no offence to God for him to gesture to Lord Percy, to place the embroidery on the table, no offence to allow Scrope to pass him a cup or Beaumaris to offer him a little cake. Lord Scrope spread the cloth across the table. There was his new crest in black and silver, the feathers he had taken from Blind John of Bohemia and the motto he had appropriated in his honour beneath. Ich Dien. I serve. The words had appealed to him. While his father was alive it was obvious who they applied to. But, once he was dead, then who? Himself alone. He shuddered to picture himself in Westminster Abbey, the crown upon his head, a living contradiction, an abomination before God. Devils do not rule. Devils do not rule. Other devils, yes, or other men with the authority of a king but not in their own right. He would be twice a usurper, first of the role of a king, then of the role of a man.
He had to have an answer, and he would provide it himself.
The prince turned away from his men, forbidding them to follow him and ran down the stairs, out across the chapel courtyard to St George’s Chapel, newly called by that name. This was also the chapel of the virgin and of the Most Holy King Edward the Confessor—a Norman true through his mother Emma. The sun was falling and the prayers of vespers murmured from the open doorway.
He went within. The air was heavy with incense. The fellows of St George’s College kneeled before the great altar, their white cassocks bright in the dying sunlight behind them, recalling angels kneeling before the splendour of God. They turned around as he crashed in and the priest bowed deeply.
“Continue,” he said. “Continue.”
The priest led the prayer once more. The prince’s Latin was not good but he knew the prayers well enough to translate them easily.
“Out of the depths I have cried to you, Lord:
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears listen out
for the voice of my pleading.”
He knew then he was in the right place. Surely God had sent him here. He said the words himself. They buzzed within him, resonated in his guts. A high singing, plainsong, sprang up. That was not the fellows of the college. The stone saints that adorned the walls were singing out for him, as they were supposed to do for royalty. He had never heard them before and their voices were enchanting, soaring.
He walked to the altar of the church, not at all bothered by the eyes of the fellows upon him. There he drew his sword and kneeled.
“Here,” he said. “Here, I will make my vigil until my path is revealed unto me.”
The service continued but his mind was full of the song of the saints and the prayer he had heard when he came into the church. Until the priest said:
“As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son gives life to anyone he chooses.
Jesus Christ, although he shared God’s nature,
did not try to cling to his equality with God;
but emptied himself, took on the form of a slave,
and became like a man:
not in appearance only,
for he humbled himself by accepting death,
even death on a cross.”
At first the words meant nothing to him, nothing at all, so intoxicated was he with the light of the church, the incense, the intonation of the prayers and the songs of the saints. But they too caught in his mind and repeated themselves again and again.
The service finished but still he kneeled. The fellows did not disturb him, would not have dared. Was it a night? Was it two nights he kneeled neither hot nor cold, all base functions of the body suspended, barely breathing it seemed? The words in his head spun on:
“for he humbled himself by accepting death,
even death on a cross.”
Beyond the pain in his knees, beyond numbness and weakness and thirst and hunger, he kneeled. A man stood in front of him. He wore an old fashioned, shapeless robe but on his head he bore a crown. He made the sign of the cross.
“You are dead, I think,” said the prince.
“I am Edward,” he said, “who ordained the right of the Norman masters of England.”
“Then you are dead.”
“I am dead.”
The prince gazed at the holy form of old King Edward, falsely called the last true Saxon king of England. He had thought a spirit would glow or be insubstantial but this man stood in front of him as real as any you might see in the court.
“I need guidance,” said the prince. He had not meant to say that but the words had emerged despite him.
“You who are so blessed? No arrow can pierce you, no
sword cut you. What can you want to know?”
“Am I...” He paused. What did he want to say? “Am I doing God’s work?”
The Confessor smiled. “God has set his limits,” he said. “It is for you to follow them and him to judge you when your time comes. Ask for what you want. You did not come here to question me but to ask for something.”
For he humbled himself by accepting death,
even death on a cross.
Now the prince knew.
“I want to die before my father,” he said. “I want never to be king.” A vast feeling of relief swept over him.
“No arrow can pierce you, no sword cut you.”
“Let me die before him. It is not right that I take the throne.”
The Confessor made the sign of the cross again. Then he put his hand to his lips and kissed it. He extended it towards the prince. The prince took it, trembling. His flesh rebelled and crawled on his bones as he touched his lips to the saint’s hands, as no devil should do. Just a momentary kiss but his lips were agony.
“I have given you the gift God gave me,” said Edward. “A death of slow agony. You will die before your father.”
The prince bowed his head. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
The Confessor turned away. The prince closed his eyes for an instant and then he was alone in the chapel. He made the sign of the cross.
“Now,” he said. “I am content and, knowing that I cannot displease God, nor die by any violent measure, I shall rid the earth of all my father’s enemies and float to heaven on a river of evil men’s blood.”
He stood gingerly, his legs numb from his vigil and made his way from the chapel, calling for a cup of wine to cool his burning lips.
Old Blood
- Shadows of the Apt -
Adrian Tchaikovsky
The spreading stain of darkness gathering around Uctebri was pleasantly warm for now, but that would not last. Soon he would be shivering, heat leaching out into that growing pool and back to the world he had stolen it from. And Uctebri the Sarcad, most ambitious of his abhorred people, would die.
Lying in a pool of blood. It sounded luxurious, something his people should aspire to. So much less fun when the blood’s your own.
The air brought the scent of smoke and engine oil, of an enemy who had no idea of the victory they had won. Above, the dark fingers of the forest sawed at each other in the wind. If he made a supreme effort and turned his head, he could see a corpse, wasted blood soaking the forest floor just like his was, and he too weak to crawl over and taste it. Past the body he could see sunlight through the last of the trees: open space and freedom. But sunlight had never been something his people prized.
Uctebri tried for tranquillity as his life seeped slowly away into the ground. It was hard, with death coming so fast on the heels of disappointment. Was he not one of the great blood magicians of the Mosquito-kinden? Was this a fit death for a power that should have shaken the world?
And might have done, in another age, but magic was no longer what it had been, nor were magicians. Now he was just the least ragged of a ragged race who had lived in shadows for so long that most thought they were just children’s stories. The Mosquito-kinden’s chance for power had come and gone centuries ago, back in the Days of Lore, when they challenged the Moths, greatest sorcerers of the age, for the rule of the world.
And they smashed us, Uctebri considered. They drove us to the point of extinction. And then they fell in turn, and the busy, busy Apt rose up with their machines and their ignorance; so we are just a memory of a memory.
He felt a deep well of frustration that he should die like this, within arm’s reach of a power that should have been his. A long life fighting for every scrap—food and lore both—and yet the ending the worst part of it...
Then there was movement nearby and he realised that things could still be worse. Out of the dark between the trees a figure came stumbling. It was the Moth-kinden woman and, though her grey robes were blotted liberally with dark red, she was still on her feet.
She stepped over the corpse without comment, leaning on her staff and with eyes only for the dying Mosquito. Her people had driven his to the point of destruction. He had been her reluctant accomplice, but beneath that he was her rival. Now that metal-shod staff slammed down next to his head and her face swam into view above him, drinking in his suffering. It must have eclipsed her own pain, because she could raise a smile for him. Lying helpless beneath that cold gaze, Uctebri cringed and tried to hasten his own demise for fear of the pain she was about to gift him.
* * *
Twelve days before.
Uctebri sensed the magicians as he crouched at the edge of a Wasp army camp, hoping to scavenge their leavings. Not long ago he had been darkening the dreams of superstitious Dragonfly-kinden peasantry and feeding off the richness in their veins. Now the Wasps had come with a mass-produced nightmare that Uctebri’s bespoke darkness could not compete with.
Magic, his old senses told him, twitching at his concentration. The Commonweal had magic, but mostly dusty and abandoned. The Wasps had no magic, did not even believe in it. Since they came to swallow up province after province it was a rare thing to feel that touch within his mind. And a rare thing to feed well, too. The Wasps feared the dark like the Dragonfly peasants did, but when they feared something they destroyed it. Their camps were lit by burning gas and always they were buzzing in and out.
Now he was creeping too close to their sentries, because one of them had disciplined a slave an hour before and dumped the body just where their lights met the shadows, and Uctebri, great magician, was hungry. While the fighting had been fierce, there were plentiful casualties for him to slake his thirst on. Now he was behind the lines, the Wasps burned and buried the bodies and took the survivors away in chains.
He reached the body. Hunched like a shadow himself, drawing all his power about him to hide from their lamps and sharp eyes, he lapped at the wounds—cold now, but cold blood was better than no blood.
And magic was best of all. What magicians were abroad, in this war-torn and forsaken place? Magicians meant danger; magicians meant opportunity. And Uctebri had kept company only with the ignorant and the dead for a long time.
He knew then that he would seek them out, these magicians. And perhaps he would kill them, but he would at least sate his curiosity first.
* * *
He found them soon after, following that ethereal scent from shadow to shadow: two Lowlanders, southerners from a land the Empire had not conquered yet. And Lowlanders were fair game for the Slave Corps, yet the sergeant approached respectfully with a sack of loot and let the travellers paw through it. Uctebri watched, fascinated, seeing the Wasps take gold coin and hand over what must have seemed worthless trinkets to soldiers who didn’t believe in magic.
They had this treasure with them all that time, he cursed himself. And I too hungry to notice!
Two Lowlanders: both women, both magicians, and as disreputable and worn out as Uctebri himself. One was Mantis-kinden, a tall skinny woman wearing a voluminous green robe that pooled at her feet. It had seen a few sword-thrusts, that garment, but darned more from wear than from war. Her reddish hair was long and loose, halfway to her waist; her lean face weirdly peaceful, eyes seeming to look into some other world where things were better. She leant on a long-headed spear and the Wasps gave her a wide berth.
The other magician did the talking and dispensed the gold, choosing which oddment to purchase, which to reject. She was a slight-framed woman with white, featureless eyes, grey-skinned and robed in grey. The copper band about her brow was set with the sort of stones actors used to enthral the gullible. Her open robe showed the ribs of a leather cuirass and a shortsword half-hidden at her belt. Clutching her plain, metal-shod staff, she looked more wanderer than wizard, yet Uctebri could feel the magic in her blood, speaking to his shrunken stomach. Grey skin, white eyes; Moth-kinden seldom came so f
ar north, which was precisely why Uctebri’s people had fled here centuries before, those few of them the Moths had left alive.
He watched the Wasps heading off and counting their coin, wondering if he dared brave the Mantis spear.
The women made camp and began to pick over the trinkets they had bought, and Uctebri decided he would try them tonight. They seemed lesser magi than he, though he was diminished by hunger and a long road. In his mind he planned his campaign, the magic he would use to baffle their own, the ancient game of power against power. Then he felt something sharp at his back and knew the moment had been taken from his hands. When he twisted about in fear and rage it jabbed harder, and he got a shove in the back for his pains, sending him staggering out into the firelight.
The Moth and Mantis showed no great surprise at his appearance. Perhaps they had been trailing their magic like a fisherman with a lure, to see what lurking magicians they might attract.
The Moth regarded him, and knew exactly what he was, and he saw in her expression that she knew exactly what he was. Still, no order came to send that spear through him. She only shrugged and said, “Everyone’s coming out of the shadows these days.”
Their third walked out from behind Uctebri: another woman, but no magician she. Uctebri stared balefully at the stocky Beetle shouldering her crossbow, and she grinned back. “What’s this old monster then, mistress?”
“Monster indeed.” The Moth smiled slightly. “Ruthan, let’s all sit down and I’ll tell you about the Mosquito-kinden.”
* * *
The Beetle was Ruthan Bartrer, out of Collegium, and she was the Moth’s servant. It was an eye-opening arrangement that was not explained just then, save that the Moth could speak of magic and the lost Days of Lore without Ruthan scoffing, with her hanging on the Moth’s every word, in fact, desperate to understand.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 10
