The Book of Fours

by Nancy Holder

  “You have said it, Cameron Duvalier,” she whispered. “I hold you to your promise, on forfeit of your soul.”

  When he awoke, he was lying in their bed, Cecile in one of her lacy nightgowns beside him. The sunbeams caught the sparkle of the gilt mirror on the far side of the room, making it glint like flame.

  He stretched and yawned, then looked over at the lovely, dusky woman who dreamed beside him, an innocent smile on her lips, one hand curled beneath her chin, as infants sometimes sleep.

  It was all a dream, he thought, vastly relieved. He was amused; he chuckled as he put his feet into his slippers.

  He stood.

  Froze.

  The book lay on a round brass table beside the bed. The cover was not printed in a strange wavy script, but in plain English, and it said, The Book of Fours. The pages within were also in English. All of them. Every single one. Stunned, he sat on the floor and pulled the book onto his lap, and began to read.

  Buffy looked over his shoulder:

  And dreamed of Sallah ibn Rashad, who was the first Servant. And of Chretien de Troyes, a French knight, who was the second Servant:

  The Diary of Chretien de Troyes, Knight The New World, 1629

  I have at last escaped, and now will finish my story.

  I was prisoner and Servant of the Gatherer for almost four hundred years, and I bitterly regret the vainglory of my youth, when I joined the Crusade of my sovereign, King Louis IX of France. We knights rode with splendid retinues to Jerusalem, bent upon freeing the Holy City of rule by the infidel Muslims.

  At that time, we had heard the legend of a miraculous healing substance which had been brought to the city by a man named Sallah ibn Rashad. He was said to be at least two hundred years old himself, and the leader of a strange cult of people, who called themselves the Gathered.

  They worshipped the healing substance, and, some claimed, willingly sacrificed themselves to it rather than allow natural death to take them. Ibn Rashad, it was also said, had brought the substance to Jerusalem and built a splendid temple to house it. The substance itself—which was a living creature—dwelled inside a carved stone pit on a dais in the center of the enormous stone edifice.

  Arrogant young warrior that I was, I demanded to be shown this man and his miracle. My command was promptly obeyed—although, I was later to learn, ibn Rashad had already divined my arrival.

  For ibn Rashad was the Servant of the Gatherer, as this substance was named. He was quite proud of this fact, and sought to demonstrate his especial position by the performance of many astonishing feats of magick. He levitated not only himself, but all within the temple; he cast a light upon the cavernous walls and revealed to me many things which were to come. With a flick of his wrist, he created beings to serve me in all ways as I might care to be reverenced.

  This continued for seven days and seven nights, at which point I was both exhausted and awed beyond my powers to describe. Then the Servant, ibn Rashad, informed me that his master wished me to transport both him and the Gatherer to France. When I dared to question the reason for this, he became quite angry. He plucked from a hideous crate one of four hand axes, and threatened to cut off my head if I did not agree to help him.

  I believed that a plot was afoot to deal poorly with the peoples of the lands of Christ and His Father, and so I refused.

  Ibn Rashad became further enraged. So angry was he that blood burst from the corners of his eyes and gushed down his face. The hand axe, he smote upon the marble floors of the temple, much as Moses had done when faced with the recalcitrance of Pharaoh.

  For another seven days and nights he threatened me. He was mad with fury. It seems that my acquiescence had been foretold, and I was not behaving as predicted. The more I refused, the more frenzied became his manner. He performed terrible rites of magick, the like of which I dare not describe, lest all hope of Heaven be lost to me.

  I resolved to escape. It was clear to me that I had been entrapped by a mad magician. Ibn Rashad was an evil sorcerer who derived his power from the thing inside the pit. I prayed for deliverance, and resolved to become a monk if I was set free.

  That night, an angel visited me. Barely more than a child, she came in the clothing of the women of Jerusalem, a lovely blue cloak wrapped about her features. She spoke to me in the local dialect, which I could partially understand. She informed me that her name was Shagrat al-Durr, and that she was the Slayer. She had been sent by her superior, or Watcher, to dispose of the Gatherer and his minion, and in that undertaking, had learned of my imprisonment.

  She gave me an exquisitely forged scimitar to use as my defense. She herself carried a very short spear of wood.

  We crept through the temple for perhaps an hour or more, but did not escape detection. The Servant’s guards found us. We fought hard and well, killing many of them, but we were severely outnumbered.

  We were taken and thrown into cells, and there was I most direly tortured.

  Then I was to witness the execution of the young girl, the Slayer, who had fought more bravely than many of the knights under the French king.

  Bound and gagged, the Servant’s guards carried her up the stairs of the dais, as ibn Rashad chanted in a language I did not know.

  Summarily, she was thrown into the pit, and I shortly thereafter.

  What happened next is a blur to me. I seemed to burst apart with astonishing force. Each tiny piece shattered and exploded, becoming smaller pieces, and smaller still, each one shooting away from the others like stars in the heavens.

  I was aware, and yet not aware, of what was happening. My thoughts scattered. I raced past stars and the spinning world; I saw the tears of the Virgin Mother spilling across the black void.

  Through icy nothingness I soared, and then plummeted into the inferno; I prayed out to Christ the King to save me, and then I was reformed into a new creature. But alas, I was not a creature of the God I have striven always to worship.

  I was become a demon.

  Ibn Rashad had been freed of the curse of servitude, and I stood now in his stead:

  I became the Servant.

  I do not know if I was mad, or if evil . . . .

  “. . . consumed me,” Buffy murmured. Still reading over his shoulder.

  * * *

  But the Gatherer had transcended its original being upon devouring Shagrat al-Durr, and my new Master demanded more of her kind.

  More Slayers, as the Gatherer called them.

  And I provided. For now, I was part of the great creation that was the Gatherer, as was Sallah ibn Rashad before me. I absorbed his knowledge and his memories. I was now a formidable magician, capable of great evil.

  Through the years, my powers exceeded ibn Rashad’s in all ways, as did my cunning. I learned all I could of Slayers. I devised strategies to lure them to us. By the count of my damned head, I gave at least six young Slayers to my Master. Despite their allies—which I have come to know as the Watcher’s Council—they were Gathered.

  I myself, was freed however, by—

  “Buffy,” Giles said.

  She bolted upright in her sleeping bag.

  So did Faith, who must have crept in during the night.

  “Giles, I’ve been dreaming,” Buffy said. “I have to tell you all of it before I forget.”

  At that moment, the library phone rang. Xander took it.

  When he was finished, he looked at the group. The nurses, stirred by the call, were all looking at him.

  “Willow’s awake,” he said. “She wants Buffy and Faith to go with Giles to his condo. India Cohen’s diary is there. They’re supposed to read it and then go to the hospital. Something about the Ghost Roads. And Slayers.”

  Giles pushed up his glasses. “Her diary? At my place?”

  Xander shrugged. “She says Roger Zabuto sent you some stuff.”

  Giles frowned. “Some weapons information I’d requested.”

  “Oz took the phone from her. She’s wiped out,” Xander said.

&n
bsp; “Let’s check it out,” Faith said, crawling out of her sleeping bag. Buffy nodded and did the same.

  The Red Cross nurse said, “What are you people talking about?”

  “Nothing,” everyone chorused.

  That was when the earthquakes started in earnest.

  Chapter Three

  San Diego was a great town, and Cameron was just as happy to land there as Sunnydale. He didn’t know the reason for the change in plan, but he didn’t mind. Cecile was on top of everything, just like usual.

  The plane landed smooth as glass, and Cecile was there to greet him. The Servant of the Gatherer dressed to pass: no one needed to know that he was in league with a god, and himself over a hundred and fifty years old. He had stopped aging at forty, but that was scarcely important. In his black jeans, black turtleneck, and cowboy boots, he sat like a king on a makeshift throne in Cecile’s rented digs. It was of human bones and skins, just like his more permanent one back home, and he sat kinda like Conan the Barbarian and frowned down at that damn lyin’ Yankee demon, Tervokian.

  Cecile had the dog, Mariposa, with her, and she was watching every move of the Watcher, Christopher Bothwell, with a scrying stone, as he fought traffic, weather, and governmental bureaucracy to get into Sunnydale. The roads were closed, and she was amusing herself by watching him employ magick to get past the roadblock, which was manned by members of the National Guard.

  All their pigeons were converging for the Great Moment. The Gatherer itself lay in a pit that Cameron loaded onto a pallet and wheeled to Cecile’s Mercedes, and it was hungry for Slayers. Cameron and Cecile had promised it not one, but two, and then the Gatherer would have so much power that it would rise from its pit and walk the earth, and make him and his lady gods.

  At last. We have worked so hard.

  He smiled lovingly at Cecile, who was ravishing in the black jeans and turtleneck she’d worn to Bothwell’s apartment. Watching her scrying stone like a TV set, she chuckled at the frustrations of the Watcher nitwit. He’ll get through, Cameron knew. If he needs a boost, she’ll give it to him.

  Good ol’ Christopher Bothwell was pretty much the magickal equivalent of a walking time bomb at the moment. He had no recollection of the dark magicks Cecile had worked on him, but it would all come clear at just the right time.

  Meanwhile, Tervokian.

  Poor, nervous Tervokian.

  The demon was truly a ghastly looking fellow. In all the time the Servant had dealt with the forces of evil, he had never ceased to be amazed at the variety of horrors this dimension—and others—disgorged. Tervokian’s head was multihorned, and his teeth were serrated. The cracked gray-and-brown covering of his body—one couldn’t sensibly call it skin—was scarred and baggy, as if the wear and tear it had gone through was beginning to break it down so badly that it had lost its resilience.

  The Servant had brought Tervokian here not so much against his will, but without a proper invitation—in other words, he had transported Tervokian here without warning, and right off his airplane. The blue sphere around Tervokian wobbled as he surveyed his surroundings.

  The altar, where Cameron’s current victim lay spread-eagled and half-dead, had been specially carved by demons from another dimension, as tribute to the Servant. The girl herself was nothing special, just a little chickie he’d picked up on the way from the landing strip.

  “Why have you brought me here?” Tervokian demanded, all puffed up, head like a shrimp. He was trying hard to look like a big shot unused to being treated like a bumbling idiot, but the Servant could see his claws trembling.

  Cameron played absently with the gold earring in his left earlobe and tsk-tsked at the misshapen creature.

  “We’re just debriefing everybody involved in the plan,” Cameron soothed. “You’re here because you have a personal stake in the demise of Faith and Buffy Summers, oh, and also since your boys lost the axe you had charge of. I just thought you should have a front-row seat as the others weigh in with their contributions and possible failures.”

  Tervokian’s attention ticked to Cecile. Cameron noted it, wondering if the savvy demon was trying to figure out which one of them was more likely to spare his life.

  “We all make mistakes,” Cecile assured the creature. That puffed up ol’ shrimp-head again, and the demon stuck out his gut and looped his fingers through his belt loops in the kind of good-ol’-boy Southern sheriff posture Cameron had always detested.

  “Since we haven’t had any lasting ill effects from your ineptitude, tell me what you think you should receive for your efforts,” Cameron urged.

  Cameron assumed Tervokian was thanking his lucky stars to be alive, but the big goofball just couldn’t leave well enough alone. “South Boston?” he asked softly.

  The Servant leaned back on his throne and crossed his legs. “See, that’s the thing that I find so hard to grasp. You’re so unambitious.”

  Tervokian looked startled.

  “South Boston,” Cameron said. “That’s it?”

  “I know my limits,” Tervokian replied. “I can’t control more than South Boston. There’s some vampires who’ve got Cambridge, and I don’t want to piss ’em off. My kind’s been running South Boston since Tammany Hall, and I just want to keep it in the family.”

  Cameron scratched his chin and rested his cheek on his hand. If he set his elbow just so, he could position it directly in the eye socket of one of his first sacrifices. The fun never quite goes away, but there’s something special about the early days that’s hard to recapture.

  “Huh.” Cameron shrugged and glanced over at Cecile, who beamed at him. “Like I said, that kinda thinkin’ is foreign to me. But then, I come from strong plantation stock. If the Yankees hadn’t interfered, we’d have been running things from Florida to Vermont by now.”

  Tervokian shrugged. “What can I say? I’m an urban guy. I don’t need a lot of territory. Just a lot of marks living in it.”

  The Servant recrossed his legs. Tervokian was squirming. That was good. It was always best to keep one’s inferiors off kilter.

  “You lost the axe that will kill Buffy and feed her to my Master,” Cameron said, his tone becoming deadly.

  “You gotta give me another chance,” Tervokian blurted, holding out his arms. “Please.”

  The Servant blinked. “I ‘gotta’? Friend, I don’t ‘gotta’ do anything.” He smiled. “I’m the Servant.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound rude,” Tervokian said, sucking it up. He was quaking.

  Good. Cuz any minute now, this old boy is gonna be dead.

  “We share a common goal,” the Servant observed. “You want Faith dead so that you can control the Boston area without looking over your shoulder. I want her dead to feed the Gatherer. And I want Buffy dead for the same reason. But she must die by the axe you lost or my god can’t absorb her correctly.”

  “Let me talk to some people,” Tervokian offered. “See what I can do to grease the wheels in Sunnydale, see if I can locate the axe. I have friends there. Owe me a couple favors.”

  The Servant wondered if this moron had any friends anywhere.

  One of Cameron’s strategies throughout his long existence was to hire a lot of help and give ’em each one specific task to accomplish. That way, he wasn’t overly dependent on anybody. If they didn’t get Faith, hey, they could try for Buffy. One was good, two were better, but if he didn’t feed the Gatherer soon, he, Cameron Duvalier, was likely going to be on the hot seat. But this opportunity may never come our way again, Cameron thought. Two living Slayers within our grasp. I get it all done right, then my Master rises from his pit, and Cecile and me, we get to rule this li’l ol’ planet.

  Then I’ll make the North pay for what they did. Glory hallelujah, I’ll make ’em pay.

  “All right, then, Tervokian,” Cameron said graciously. “I’m going to give you one more chance.”

  “Thank you.” The ugly thing wiped his forehead with a hankie.

  Changing his t
one yet again, the Servant said casually, “As long as you’re here, would you care to have a go at torturing my sacrifice before I return you to your plane?”

  Tervokian bowed. “You’re too kind.”

  The Servant led the way to the makeshift altar. He and Cecile had unloaded the Gatherer out of Cameron’s plane. The Gatherer’s pit was a distance away, its dwelling place resembling nothing more than an abandoned fishpond, something like that. The average visitor to the Servant’s lair—if such existed—would not realize that a living god existed in such simple confines.

  On the altar, the sacrifice groaned as the Servant and Tervokian approached. She wasn’t yet dead, but she was in terrible agony. The Servant had learned that intense pain transcended the physical realm and became an emotion, far surpassing all the others in its potential for power.

  Grief was a strong emotion. So was rage. But give pain a name and it would be Mr. Best. As far as he was concerned, pain fed the machinery that turned the wheels of destiny.

  Pain turbo-charged all courses of action. It was the man, as they said in these times. These wonderful times, filled with debauchery and hatred and people willing to do all manner of things to each other, not for the cause of right, but out of sheer malice and boredom.

  It was a wonderful age.

  “What is your pleasure, Tervokian, knives or nutpicks or what-all? Button hooks?” He indicated three roll-around cocktail carts pushed in a corner. He walked over to the nearest one, a nice teak number from the Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog, on which were arranged a number of exotic devices he’d had made up after seeing Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, a disturbing film about twin brother gynecologists. “I’ve packed me a vast array of every little knick-knack you can think of, and then some,” he said pleasantly.

  Unbeknownst to Tervokian, Cameron was sizing him up, trying to figure out which torture device would lay the demon out with the least amount of hoopla. Tervokian might be kinda dumb, but he was big.