Lord of Slaughter

24

The shadows were wolves again, their long jaws stretching towards him as he slept. He heard their snuffling and grunting as he lay dream-bound in his bed.

And now the voices, the shrieking and the howling, the sensation of falling, the helpless descent into the blackness that the runes had hollowed in his mind. The bright symbols floated away from him leaving trails of silver as he plunged after them through the shadow world of his sleep.

Where are they, those needful symbols? Where are they? The voice sounded in his head.

‘They are in my heart. They are growing here.’

Whose are they, those needful symbols? Whose are they?

‘They are mine, for I paid the price for them.’

Who are you?

‘I am Karas, who gave the waters what they asked. Who are you?’

Your sister, dead by your treacherous hand.

Her face emerged from the darkness, bloated and bleached by madness, her eyes swollen and puffed like fungal growths, her hair lank and wet as seaweed.

The chamberlain seemed to fall forwards and there was light. The runes were there again, symbols growing inside him, the eight, feeding off him and sustaining him, clasping their tendrils around his heart like a tree curls its roots around a rock.

‘I took your life. I took your symbols. They are mine.’

You but borrowed them a little while. Come away to the waters from where they came.

‘They are mine, for I paid the price for them.’

Come away, descend as the spirits of the dead descend, travel through the great galleries of darkness.

‘I will not give what I paid so dearly to own.’

I am wet with the blood of gods. The vision put forward its hands, red and bloody.

‘Why are you here?’

This is the time. This is the needful time. The time of endings. She is calling the wolf. She is calling the wolf to you.

‘The goddess will reward me, not punish me. It cannot end, not while these things are mine.’

Listen, the black dogs are barking. The wolf is near. Can you not hear her call?

‘Lady of the crossroads, lady of moonlight.’ The chamberlain crossed himself, though he uttered a pagan charm.

The moon has been eaten.

‘I call on the sun.’

The sun chased away.

‘Lady who is three. The snake, the dog and the horse. Protect me here. Jesus, who is three, the father the son and the holy ghost, protect me here.’

Walk to the lower dark and never look back, though you hear the sound of footsteps and the barking of dogs.

‘Lady of walls.’

You have broken the walls.

‘Lady of gateways.’

You have passed through the gate.

‘Lady who returned from death. Christ who returned from death, help me here.’

She is clothed in her funeral jewels and waiting with her dogs, those guardians of the threshold.

‘Lady who protects from demons. Christ who cast the demons out.’

You have called the demons in. They that despise the light. You know where they dwell.

‘I will not come to you.’

The wolf will follow her. She is near you now.

‘Who is she?’

She who is three. The storm, the trap and the wolf maker.

‘No!’

The chamberlain sat upright in bed. The lamps in his room were lit, as they were always lit, but they only served to deepen the sense of encroaching darkness all around him.

From a walnut wood box at the side of his bed he took a pierced golden sphere, the size of skull, on a chain. He walked to the centre of the room and swung the ball around his head. The holes in the sphere caught the air and a howl like that of a miserable dog sounded, sour and low. The chamberlain muttered incantations into the night — psalms and spells.

‘The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide; neither will he keep his anger for ever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.’

He tried to believe it was true, he would be forgiven, his grave sins would be absolved. But still he could not stop the prayer to the goddess coming.

‘Hecate, who triumphed over death, who rose in the black jewels of burial, I invoke you. Hecate, lady of the moon and of the shadows of the moon… I…’

He broke down, let the chain slacken and sank to his knees.

‘You lifted me up. You raised me high. Maintain me so.’

He stood and put the sphere back in the box, went to the window and looked out into the night. Flat black. No moon, no stars. All eaten by the enveloping cloud that sat over the city.

The chamberlain came back from the window, took up a cloth and dipped it into water in a copper basin to wipe his face. He felt sick. The magic sat uneasily in him. It was moon magic, he thought, Hecate’s magic, woman’s magic — magic that expressed itself in symbols that shone in his mind, that creaked and groaned like a hangman’s rope, that sucked and whispered like the sea, that smelled of spring and rebirth or of autumn and death. He rarely dared to use it but kept it damped down inside him with wine and herbs he got from his doctor. But still the symbols asked things of him. They wanted out. He was sure they had attacked the emperor. They fed on Karas’ distress, on his discomfort. The operation that had stopped Karas becoming a man had not made him a woman.

What if the scholar discovered the truth? His men told him Loys was not as incompetent as he had hoped. The chamberlain had concealed even the presence of the wolfman from him. But he would find out. Styliane, who he had brought with him from the slum, who he had protected and favoured with his magic and lifted up as a lady, had a sliver of her family’s magic inside her — she was working against him, all the reports said so.

The bond with his sister had severed on her thirteenth birthday. The full moon had risen in the sky and in her mind, and she had begun to suspect him. He let her talk and plot against him, for the sake of the guilt he felt, for the thread that connected him to human feelings of duty and love.

All those years, clinging to sanity, clinging to position and to power. Fighting the pull of the runes inside him; thankful for what they had brought him, fearful of what they would bring. When the rebel had risen up the runes had told him Basileios would fall to the usurper. That would have been the end of everything. So he had sweated and starved for a month and allowed the symbols inside him to travel forth to the rebel and strike him down as he rode forward. Such magic, once released, is not easily contained. The comet had come and now the black skies and the wolf.

Karas sat down on a couch and wiped his face again. The cloth came away with blood on it. A nosebleed. He felt disordered and vulnerable. There had to be a way out. There had to be a means, other than death, by which he could avert the fate that stalked him. He had run from the wolf for too long. Perhaps now it was time to seek it.

He would need a ritual.

‘Fetch Isais.’

The runes stirred inside him. He needed to establish some sort of control, to at least sacrifice to the goddess who had set the symbols in his mind. The streets were dark enough and the moon — though invisible — was in the right position. He had to go to the hillside, to be among the people he had come from and to make the observances he hoped would buy him a little peace.

After a while there was a whisper at the door. The chamberlain opened it to the commander of the messengers, plainly dressed in dark soldier’s attire.

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes. Immediately.’

‘I will arrange it.’

Isais left.

The chamberlain went to a side room where he kept his clothes, including his campaign gear. It was plain and worn, and no one would think that odd. In the field he emulated the emperor in dressing like a common soldier. He took his sword and checked the folds of his padded jacket. Stuffed into a pocket in the interior was a mask of black cloth — like the Arabs wore in the desert — with no more than slits for eyes. He picked up a tight-fitting desert hood, white to reflect the sun and proof against grit and sand. He pulled his horse cloak around him.

The door opened; there was no knock.

Two men accompanied Isais, again dressed plainly as guards.

‘The way is clear,’ Isais said.

The chamberlain lowered his eyes in acknowledgement and walked out of his chamber, down to a room where there was a secret staircase that led to the bowels of the palace and from there out through the kitchens to a back door to the outside. They encountered no one, Isais as good as his word. The chamberlain put on the desert hood and stepped out into the street. From here it was two hours to the hillside, so they would have to move fast.