Chapter XXI
XXI
My young companion was talking with Monsieur Comtois, whose incomparable cheeses were wrapped in cloth and stowed in my saddlebag.
Antoine was eating one of the golden, buttery apples from the late season, a sheen of sweet juice on his lips.
The two men were discussing the changing of the year and, of course, the Beast.
I think Cecile might have objected to that, and we can’t really afford to make any more enemies here, I replied, especially anyone with her sort of talent. She may also be useful to us—she clearly knows something about the Beast, and we don’t have a lot of leads right now.
He snorted but did not press me further.
“Sebastian!” called Antoine. “Come! I was just telling our good cheesemaker how we shall be the only two men who return from the hunt fatter than when we left.”
“Not if you are in charge of meals, I fear,” I replied.
I made genial conversation but I was impatient to leave. Our encounter with Cecile and steely Jean Chastel had soured the day for me. The presence of so many other hunters also made me uneasy; I disliked especially the watchful eyes of the Ennevals and Bauterne.
“Sebastian?” Antoine peered at me, his brow creased. “Are you well?”
Sarmodel!
I feel it. His presence sharpened like an icicle.
A vertiginous pressure rose around us. For a moment, everything yawed sickeningly along the axes of matter and energy. The market was saturated with impossible Arcane hues and the air was tinged with the stink of burning metal. The sensation built and then broke like a wave, receding to nothing.
I feared to think what it had washed up in the world.
It’s him. The Beast—he is here! Sarmodel was a nest of sucking, snuffling mouths in my mind. Oh, but he’s big! I smell him!
I looked around desperately, drawing my silver Walloon blade. Antoine and Monsieur Comtois recoiled in confusion at my sudden ardor; they had felt nothing, of course.
“Sebastian! What—”
I silenced him with a shake of my head. The bucolic bustle of the marketplace was suddenly filled with peril.
Sarmodel Projected in front of me, taking on his child form.
“That way, quickly!” he urged, pointing to a gated laneway on the far side of the fountain. It was little more than the space between two houses, barely wide enough for a horse to pass.
In there? Are you sure?
“You felt it, Sebastian! Something just shifted phase!3 We may not get another chance like this!” He faltered for a moment. “By the Rift, he’s enormous.”
I walked slowly toward the wooden gate.
Quickly then, I need you, I said to the Projection.
I waited for him to come forward, but Sarmodel’s anima was sluggish and barely warmed my fingertips.
“I’m not strong enough,” he snapped. The child scowled at me. “You never listen! I told you I was hungry!”
I swore and curled my fingers nervously around the handle of my pistol. He was right; absorbed in my sylvan daydreaming about Antoine over the last week, I had indeed neglected to take proper care of my Guest.
And now it was too late.
“Sebastian?” I barely heard Antoine’s voice.
The gate was open slightly.
Time to see what we’ve got.
I pushed it with the tip of my sword.
There was a quiet sound, a gentle sound, coming from the shadowed laneway. At first, I saw a touching tableau: a big, cloaked man comforting a red-shirted little boy in his lap, his arms cradling the child protectively.
But the shadows resolved into horror. The child’s vest was dyed with his own blood. The whimpering cries were his last breaths as the man nuzzled at his torn throat, one hand kneading savagely inside the poor boy’s rib cage.
And the killer was of course no man.
Covered not in a cloak but dark, ragged fur, the thing in the laneway rose towering onto its hind legs, dripping gore and fresh plasma onto the stones. It raised the child’s heart to its mouth and crushed it like a grape between its fangs.
Sarmodel and I were both silent in shock.
It wasn’t dread of the monstrous Beast or the sickening act it had committed (though these were terrible enough) which so disconcerted me.
I met my Guest’s wide eyes and knew I had the right of it.
It’s him!
It was not his physical body I recognized; that was just the keyhole through which glimpses of his true form were visible, looming mightily just outside the Mundane world.
Similar recognition flashed in the monster’s eyes; three hundred years had not dulled his memory.4 The Beast knew me—knew both of us—and his gaze was even and unafraid.
And now, as then, he spoke to us.
“TU! QUOMODO?”
They were words I might have said myself—YOU! HOW?
Momentarily stunned by his sudden appearance, I could not respond.
“Yes! I see you, Avstamet!” crowed Sarmodel-child. “MARS VIGILA!”
“By the Lord!” Antoine’s voice was distant; I had all but forgotten he was there. “The Beast! The Beast! Save yourselves!”
Silence bloomed across the village like a shock wave.
Then all was screaming—hunters screaming for their dogs, parents screaming for their children, children screaming for their lives.
“Sebastian—the Yoke!” barked Sarmodel-child.
I started the Tartaric syllables, but the Beast leaped before I could finish the opening pronouncement. Only the tight confines of the laneway saved me from disembowelment. The creature snagged the swinging gate as it lunged, slamming me to the ground in a cascade of splintered wood.
The screaming intensified as the Beast emerged into the open, a nightmare suddenly made flesh in sleepy Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream.
They could not remember exactly what it looked like, the survivors of that fatal market day, when later they tried to describe the killer.
Like the other witnesses before them, they would recall the dark fur, the pointed ears and the muzzle full of fangs.
Like a wolf, but as big as an ox, they would say.
But the whipping, tufted tail and matted mane did not belong to anything they could name.
And the human proportions, the intelligent eyes, the face—these were beyond comprehension.
They could not bear to look at it in the daylight, and their recollection would shy away from it for fear of madness.
They had only one word that might capture it.
“Beast.”
I knew better.
I recognized the animal that speaks with a man’s voice, the father of orphans.
I saw the impetuous, violent Spirit that Greece and Rome had pacified with worship and nourished with the blood of legions.
The god they called War and Glory, Ares and Mars.
I recognized the devil on the shoulder of poor Jehanne d’Arc, and the voice that seduced Gilles de Rais into depravity.
The ancient Spirit Avstamet, walking the Earth again—somehow—after all this time.
He tensed on the flagstones, a single point of stillness in the churning, shrieking press of people, like a bowstring drawing taut.
And then the Red Winter truly began.
1. A diligent scavenger, usually found where the corpses are plentiful and the anima of low quality. In the Mundane world they appear as you would expect: crows, rats and other vermin.
2. A Spirit summoned without Wards or Contract is considered feral. While it’s unfair to generalize, and every life is precious etc., a feral Spirit is almost always up to no good and should be put down as soon as possible.
3. When a Spirit shifts phase (either by assuming control of a host or by manifesting directly) it requires two things.
The first is energy in the form of anima.
The second is an induced aberration in the laws of the Mundane world—a rupture of sorts—to allow the crossing.
Generally speaking, the more powerful the Spirit is, the more anima will be required, and the more noticeable the aberration will be.
4. Please refer to Livia’s supplement for the outcome of our previous encounter.