Chapter XXIV
XXIV
What? Sarmodel-child stared at me.
“Parley!” I said again.
The Beast heard me. He bared his teeth.
“I call you Ares. I call you Mars. I call you Avstamet,” I continued. “By your own name and the blood of Jehanne d’Arc, you have agreed to treat with me. Attend!”
It was a long shot—circumstances had certainly changed in three centuries, and I had very little with which to bargain.
But Antoine. I could not watch him die.
I breathed hard, my eyes wide as I waited for the Beast’s response. He was most displeased at being interrupted in his feast, but he had made an agreement with Livia all those years ago and the Contract held.
A burning white ideogram flickered to life on my palm.1 The Beast’s half-human paw was similarly marked; he was bound to reply.
“Vin hanc carnem?” The monster’s voice was more than sound.
I felt it inside my chest. He wrapped a clawed hand around Antoine’s ankle and lifted him from the riverbed.
In his terror, the young lord did not make a sound—he had, for now, stopped laughing.
He hung, limp and trembling, from the Beast’s grip.
Avstamet’s Latin was crisp and imperious, and he asked his question again.
“This meat, Magician?” He looked at Antoine in bewilderment. “You invoke your Contracted right—for this?”
“No! No! He does not!” interrupted Sarmodel-child. “He misspoke! What he meant to say was—”
The Beast made an Abject sound that could not rightly be called speech. In my mind it was all at once a Roman spear, a striking viper and a black meteor. It shot invisibly through the air toward my Guest’s obnoxious Projection.
“Sarmodel!”
The demon child’s chest burst like a ruptured melon. He howled, his anima pouring from the wound in streams. The injured Projection winked out of existence and he fled back into my mind, gibbering.
“Do you wish to treat?” demanded the Beast.
“I do!” I shouted, sounding far more certain than I felt. “I claim this man. What are your terms?”
The Beast looked at me, richly amused. “You are shrewd, Magician, but you are no different to these other mortals—a gnat, aspiring to the eagle’s nest.” He spat blood onto the pebbles at my feet; he was now close enough for me to smell the miasma of brimstone and plasma that surrounded him.
“You seek to devour me? You might strive as well to drink the ocean. Your life is mine already—as is yours, nettlesome Spirit. But I will honor my word, given to you so many years ago.” He regarded me for a moment and then spoke again.
“My terms are simple. In exchange for this single, unremarkable sack of meat, my price is Truth.”
“Done,” I said, without hesitation.
His bestial tongue flicked from his mouth, his eyes narrowed. He certainly suspected a trick. “Such human folly. I agree. Done, then.”
Avstamet cast Antoine aside, skimming him like a stone over the shallow rapids.
That’s your bargain? You’re saving the lordling? Have you lost your senses?! Perhaps we might save our own lives first? Sarmodel whimpered. The Beast had dealt him a fierce blow. He dragged on my life force as his anima hemorrhaged away. Please tell me this is one of your clever ploys!
I did not respond.
The Beast advanced on me. He lumbered over the riverbed, dragging the hind leg that had taken the Archangel’s bullet. His engorged, bloodied phallus thrust with every step. I raised the silver blade between us; the melee would be on again as soon as his terms were answered.
“Now—tell me True,” said the Beast. “Who are you? What are you, to pursue me so over three hundred years?” He looked into me with a mixture of fascination, disbelief, revulsion and naked hunger.
2 “The world has seen countless changes in my absence. This Almighty which grows like a cancer has become something I would never have imagined. But you—you remain a singular abomination. I have never seen your like—mortal flesh that does not die! A miracle even we, the Olympians, could not achieve. And yet here you stand.”
“Are these your terms then?” I insisted, praying that Antoine was taking the opportunity to get as far away as possible.
His face split in a red grin. “You are impertinent, Magician, and your heart will taste the sweeter for it. I will ask again—what are you? A Spirit mistaken in transition? A magician’s bargain gone awry?
A chimera of the soul? What Abject dealing gave rise to such a delicious freak?
” He inhaled deeply, drawing in my scent.
“My terms are Truth, and you will meet them. Tell me how it was done. I will know the secret to your long, long life—your undying flesh—before I take it.”
He was a scant few paces away now. I had glimpsed Avstamet once before in that long-ago encounter, but still I was almost physically stunned by his presence.
The Spirit’s gestalt was complex beyond imagining.
This close to him, I could feel the living circuitry he had built and built and built over millennia of bloodshed committed in his name.
In my Arcane senses, he stood out from the Mundane world like a fountain of magma; an exposed vein of gold; a lightning strike.
This, then, was a true Olympian, who had been called a god by the empires of old.
Sarmodel was correct. We would be drunk off his essence for centuries.
“Speak! Answer me now or forfeit! What are you?”
I managed to hold the Beast’s immortal gaze. The compulsion to kneel, to abase myself before him, was almost overwhelming, like the weight of the sea.
I was possibly about to speak my final words, and they were pitiful.
“I do not know.”
A familiar Arcane rush marked the fulfillment of the Contract.
“Impossible!” There was confusion and something like pity on the Beast’s face. “Your undying flesh—tell me how it was done. You are bound to speak the Truth, or I will split your mortal darling from crotch to crown!”
But Avstamet had received his Truth. The Sigil of the Table faded from my palm and I dared a devious smile.
The Beast was close enough now. With my free hand, I reached down to my belt.
Oh my.
A terrible blunder.
A hot wave of nausea accompanied the realization that my quicksilver ampoules were tucked away safely—and uselessly—in my saddlebag, next to my brandy and silver shot. In my concern for Antoine, I had descended to the riverbed with only my sword and two empty pistols.
“Oh my”?! Sarmodel shrilled in my mind. “OH MY”?! If we die, Sebastian, I want you to know—are you listening to me?—I want you to know it’s your fault!
“You truly do not know?” The Beast looked at me in wonder. “A miserable Truth, and a worthless bargain. Tell me why—”
“For the Lord!”
We had both forgotten the Lieutenant of the Hunt.
The man had moved into position atop the bridge, his musket throbbing with the Archangel’s Litany.
The Beast flinched with a snarl as gunfire cracked the air again.
Divinely infused shot from Bauterne’s musket punched into the riverbed at his feet, kicking up a spray of shattered pebbles.
The Beast leaped back, retreating beneath the northern arch of the bridge.
“Soeur! Now!”
Bloody and half mad with fury, the giant mastiff seemed to come from nowhere. She leaped from the shadows, catching the Beast by the throat. He was thrown off balance, and their savage dance began in earnest.
Sebastian, Sarmodel hissed, if you are going to do something, do it now! He was doing his best not to falter, but my Guest was in agony. I could feel an echo of his pain, as though I had scalded the inside of my skull.
Very well.
Soeur’s tenacity would buy me little time, and my resources were limited.
The beleaguered Beast moved farther out of reach beneath the bridge.
I looked with some regret at my immaculate silver Walloon sword.
The curved basket handle was still exquisitely polished—without even a dent—and the blade beneath the blood was mirror bright. It would cost me a fortune to replace.
With a sigh of frustration, I reversed my grip and cast the sword like a spear, directly at the Beast’s terrible head. The Violations blazed into life and the blade streaked through the air like a ribbon of lightning.
But the Beast was moving too quickly. The sword arced a little too high overhead and lodged, singing, in the masonry above him.
Oh, excellent, said Sarmodel. Quickly, throw your breeches as well, that we may be completely defenseless!
Ignoring him with some difficulty, I began to speak.
Not the Crippling Yoke (I was quite certain I no longer had the strength to finish it), but a rank bastardization of the Violations engraved into the sword.
I spoke louder and louder, deliberately breaking every rule of pronunciation and Arcane grammar.
The blade’s crystal song began to oscillate, jarring and warbling unpleasantly.
Overhead, a thin crack snaked across the stonework, spreading from the trembling blade. I mangled the last syllable wretchedly and my beautiful weapon disintegrated with a silent, actinic flash and a cascade of white powder.
The underside of the stone arch was suddenly crazed with blue-white light—the dangerous Arcane spatter of Violations undone.
Then, with a sound like high thunder, the stone burst.
The entire northern arch of the bridge collapsed. Even the Beast was not fast enough to escape a thousand tons of falling rock.
The monster was buried instantly. Wolves, dogs, men and horses rained down atop the rubble.
Then silence.
1. This symbol is known colloquially as “the Table.” It denotes a ceasefire for negotiations.
2. This is an expression I have endured countless times over my lifetime.
Undying flesh is something of a Holy Grail for Spirits—their greatest limitation on the Mundane plane is the lifespan of their host. My unique condition and my many centuries of life make me a great white whale to other Spiritual predators, including the Host of the Almighty.