Chapter L
L
I did not waste time on a reply.
Now!
Sarmodel came forward in a dizzying surge. I tasted hot metal and sour bile as my bones filled with lightning.
Quick as thought, I bounded onto the backgammon table and then launched myself across the salon, leaving a trail of steam.
Avstamet did not anticipate such a direct attack. After our encounter at Saint-Julien, he no doubt expected more Arcane badinage or an attempt at the Crippling Yoke.
Not this time. His face registered annoyance—if not quite surprise—as I peppered his torso with a dozen knife wounds in less than a second.
He swatted me aside with a snarl, sending me crashing onto the staircase.
I felt my ribs crack as I landed, and the envenomed blade was knocked spinning from my hand.
The Beast examined his injuries, barely visible beneath the thick fur of his coat.
“Cease your idiocy. A knife? Where are all your tricks and vapors?” he asked evenly.
Then he smiled as he saw plasma beginning to flow from the wounds.
“The Mother of Ants!1 A priest’s concoction. Again, you surprise me!”
In my mind, Sarmodel’s dreadful Word was taking shape. I lay there panting, steam cascading down the stairs below me.
Avstamet continued in his regal Latin. “Take care with your next words, Magician. Though you have vexed me, I do not wish to kill you.”
“You—you don’t?” I tensed warily in my vulnerable position.
“No, but I will not hesitate if you test me further. You have troubled me since our last meeting, Sebastian Grave—you should mark your singular privilege among men, to so occupy the attention of a god. Have you not wondered, oh marvelous freak, why I have not come for you? Have you never questioned, as you groveled in the snow with your mortal acolyte,2 why I have not yet taken your strangely twinned heart?”
“I would not presume to guess, my lord,” I wheezed. The amphisbaena venom was working in earnest now; the flesh around the Beast’s wounds was dissolving into seeping jelly. If the dose was sufficient—and I couldn’t know that for certain—I would only need to wait a short while longer.
“Scheme if you must, Magician—do you believe I cannot see the maelstrom in your mind? But first you will listen to me, and before you answer, remember that it is you who struck the first blow.” He looked above my head, at Sarmodel’s unknowable form.
“And you, old one—you are patient, I will grant you that. What a wretched union you have made. I wonder . . . how many forbidden names would I find in your long, long history? How long have you been waiting for your master to relinquish his exquisite anima? How much longer will you endure it?”
So many questions, my lord! Do you wish to Contract for the Truth again? Shall we lay out the Table? asked Sarmodel. But my Guest’s scorn lacked its usual bite. He paused in his crafting of the Word; it turned like a half-cut jewel in my mind.
Sarmodel, what are you doing?
Let us listen for a moment.
The Beast’s awful gaze returned to me. “Truth! No indeed. I have thought long on the last Truth you gave me. To know not what you are.” He shook his terrible head in pity.
“I believe that you alone—you, disgraceful abomination—may be the only creature in existence who remembers the world as I do, and yet you skulk among the cattle and live as one of them. So, tell me. With no Contract between us, no Table—tell me why.”
“Why?”
He nodded, his human eyes regarding me with fascination.
“Why do you so degrade yourselves? You belong to this Mundane midden no more than I. This new world, this mortal domain without living gods—it is a fallow field waiting for the plow. Why have you not taken it for yourselves? Why do you allow this Almighty to enjoy the fruits of the world we made—when surely you see that He will never awaken? You knew the glory of the empire we built, the age of heroes and conquest. You have time and power. What prevents you from building it anew in your image?”
The ancient god of war was sincere, his gaze relentless.
Again, I felt the crushing force of his will, compelling me to answer.
I took a shuddering breath. “I lived as a god for a time, my lord, many centuries ago. It ended as it always does,” I replied. “Men are not meant for such power.”
Oh please, you weren’t even trying! objected Sarmodel. My lord Avstamet, this one is not a natural leader.
I beg your pardon?
Avstamet looked at us both for a long moment, his wounds weeping. A thin line of plasma dripped from the corner of his mouth. He seemed to be weighing up options in his mind, and I was fairly certain that several of them involved devouring me.
“Serve, then,” he said finally.
“Serve?”
“I will not countenance a rival, but a general must have his lieutenants. This new world is strange to me, and I admit there is much I do not yet understand. In this regard you are useful to me, and I reward my faithful well—remember my most favored in Rome, and you will know I speak the truth.” His lips pulled up in a smile full of violent promise.
“And I have learned new ways to distinguish my flock—and to ensure I will never again be left to languish in some mortal relic. Did your young charge know the gift I gave him? A splinter of godhood; did he enjoy it? He would have, in time. In time, he would have wanted ever more, and I would have filled him to splitting. A great pity that you squandered it out of cowardice—and be assured that the Water from the Mountain will be chastised for her presumption in opposing my will. Yes, Magician, I have magnificent designs for this new age of men, and you may yet sit beside me.”
He pointed one clawed finger at my chest, right over my heart.
“But first you must relinquish your mortal folly and submit. Submit and serve, be my right hand in a new empire, and I promise you every earthly delight. No longer will you hide among the phlam like some half-breed parasite. We will take the fight to the Almighty and his angels; Michael will be but the first of your thralls, if so you desire. I promise you dominion over men—and for you, old one, a favored seat in a new pantheon. More, I promise you purpose that you will never know in this listless morass. What better test of a man than war? What better way to answer the question you could not? Serve me, and know yourself once more.”
There were few surprises in Avstamet’s pitch; it was what I would have expected from any Spirit of comparable vintage. I was ready to cast the Warfather’s bargain back in his teeth. I opened my mouth and drew breath to voice my denial.
Except.
Except, I was also . . . intrigued.
I want to tell you that I was resolute before the Warfather’s temptation. I would like to say that any offer Avstamet made was immaterial in the face of the horrors he had committed in Gévaudan.
But the thing is, I did remember.
I remembered the Roman Empire and its great temples, and the priests with their mysteries and divine boons.
I had been one of them for a time, with Sarmodel as my patron in the service of a magnificent Spiritual regime we thought would never fall.
There had been monsters and abominations and bloody wars and terrible disasters, but there were also Incarnate gods and great heroes and breathtaking miracles.
I had a place there—a purpose—and it was glorious. We had been alive.
Purpose.
Of all the things the Warfather might have used to tempt me, it was the most powerful.
And all it would cost me was a measure of freedom. . . .
I will admit that the thought of the Archangel Michael bound to me in service was also quite appealing.
My immediate, instinctive refusal went unspoken.
Well. What do you think? I asked Sarmodel.
He could be lying—there’s no Contract in play, he answered.
But what if he’s not?
Hmm. High Priest Sebastian Grave, vanguard of a new Roman Empire. Sarmodel said the words speculatively, as though trying them out. He churned slowly in my mind. It would be a nice change of pace from Professor Petticoat.
And so?
He was silent for a moment. I could feel him weighing up the risks and benefits on both sides of the choice.
He set the Tartaric Word spinning again in my mind and it crystallized into terrible sequence.
The choice is yours. But if you’re going to refuse, do it with this.
1. Another name for the amphisbaena, the two-headed serpent whose venom was now burning through the Beast’s blood. The toxin would break down his borrowed flesh into plasma and impede his efforts to reconstruct it.
2. This was a reference to Antoine. In Imperial Rome, the most favored priests were granted the power to draw on the anima of the faithful. Acolytes were the feeding stock so appointed to each priest. The comparison was not a comfortable one.