Call of the Kings (15 page)

As Tara had absorbed the enchantments and gradually assumed the venefical reins, Twilight, although always available when required, was presented with the opportunity to indulge in two activities that had long occupied his thoughts.

The first was to spend time reading the huge collection of writings gathered by Merlin and housed in his
scriptorium
on the Isle of Avalon. Joined on infrequent occasions by Tara herself when her duties permitted, he worked his way through most of the collection, which the long magus had put together with specific attention to the Greeks but with added texts by the Persians, Etruscans, Macedonians, Romans, Spartans, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Thracians. As Merlin had described it to Twilight, here were one thousand years of proclamations, speeches, laws, tracts, poems, ballads, marching songs, arguments, legends, plays, prayers, homilies, entreaties, sermons, compendia, fables, criticisms, romances, battle strategies and formations, anthologies, public and senate orations, maps, manifestos, philosophies, oaths, jottings, and stories of every kind. Like the long magus before him, he found his knowledge, understanding, and wonder of the known world and its people hugely increased. There was still a great deal to read - even with his speed he was still only two-thirds of the way there - but as he approached the final pile of dusty scrolls, tablets, piles of inscribed vellum, papyrus, parchment, and wood board covered in great flowing arcs of texts illustrating the collective recordings of the great minds of the time and enormous narrative on the cradle of civilization and its history, he began to slow down in order to prolong the pleasure each one gave. Being endowed, as all venefici, with total recall of everything that was said to him or read, he could always bring to mind particular passages that had a specific resonance or were beautifully crafted such as to merit a revisit.

The second activity was to progress what he had come to call the ‘ways and means’ of the enchantments. He had been conscious for a long time that the enchantments and their execution had become stuck in a time warp. Their usage had stagnated, and nothing new had been advanced since the long magus had discovered how to disguise the telltale aura trails left by the movements of individual venefici or their animals. This discovery, subsequently repeated by Freyja, the Norse astounder, had proved vital in subsequent battles involving other venefici such as Elelendise, Freyja’s Viking twins, Go-ian and Go-uan, and, more recently, the perverted Leannan Sidhe.

There must be other advances, other innovative ways to deploy the enchantments to the future benefit of right-thinking venefici who would be charged with the future care of their lands. So, for the last ten years or so, Twilight had devoted himself to the science of the enchantments. His careful study and experimentation had revealed some very interesting and new developments.

All he needed now were the opportunities to try them out in the real world, and one had just presented itself.

‘Now we have a moment,’ said Tara, ‘do you think you could tell Virgile and me the outcome of your conversation about our betrothal with the spectral Zeus?’

‘Of course.’ Twilight chuckled and sat down on one of the rough wooden seats in Virgile’s stone hovel. ‘I’d almost forgotten in all the excitement of receiving a visit from one of the hated Confrerie.’

Tara rolled her eyes at Virgile and they settled down.

‘Zeus was quite specific. He was not against your union and welcomed the joining of venefici as being a good thing. He did, however, have a problem with you both living together in one or the other place, Avebury or Carnac, on the basis that the one where you did not reside would not have the permanent services of what he called a ‘trusted’ veneficus. Moving from one to the other as a pair would always leave the empty site vulnerable, and he wants both of them to each have the services of a fully functioning, permanent veneficus. His suggestion was that you should wed but continue to live separately at Carnac and Avebury, taking occasional but random and fleeting trips to see one another. That way you could fulfil your individual commitments to the venefical duties of Francia and England with those to one another.’

‘What if, as now, we saw the need to join together to fight a foe?’ Virgile asked.

‘Then both purposes, the venefical duty and the need to be together as lovers, are being correctly served.’

‘Did you discuss the possible benefits of our children being born with auras?’

‘I did,’ Twilight replied to Tara, knowing how important it was. ‘His take on that was the chances of your children being born so are slightly better than normal, but not much. Having both parents as venefici is apparently not much more a guarantee than normal.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Virgile asked in his deep bass rumble, his brows knitted in a frown.

‘My suggestion is you wed immediately. As soon as this little fracas with the Confrerie is over, go away together for a long break. I’ll look after both sites. Somewhere far away where there will not be any need for you to use or reveal the enchantments. Ireland, perhaps. Tara can show you around the beautiful green sward of that magic land of saints and scholars ruled by the Gael kings. The thing Zeus saw immediately was that as long as I’m around to look after England, which should be for many years to come, Tara is free to spend as much time as you both want together in Carnac. If I need her, or you, Virgile, it won’t take long for me to find her.’

Tara smiled. ‘How do we wed?’

‘You need to have someone officiate at your hand-fasting ceremony.’

‘Did Zeus give you any clues who that should be?’

‘Of course. Only a very senior veneficus can handle such an occasion.’

‘I’d better go and pick some flowers then,’ said Tara, giving

Virgile’s hand a good squeeze. ‘And you need a haircut.’

Gira, the peregrine falcon, cruised high on the thermals over the dark, foreboding mass of stone and wooden fortifications that was Dundas Castle. On the horizon, the other side of the castle, Desi, his mate for life, did the same. Their sharp eyes watched every movement in and around the castle below. Finally they saw what they were looking for as Teneo and Evanesco emerged from a small door high on the castle ramparts and walked around deep in discussion.

As if connected, the two falcons peeled away instantly and began the long flight back to Carnac and their master, their mission fulfilled.

Virgile received the two magnificent falcons, one on each shoulder, and listened to their screeched report. Brushing the wings of each bird gently, he thanked them, and they lifted off his shoulder with a gentle wing beat and were gone.

‘Teneo and Evanesco are both at Dundas Castle. They are obviously awaiting the return of this one.’ He gestured dismissively to where they held Quiritatio suspended just off the ground in clamped immobility, his mute’s eyes trapped in the moment of terror he’d realized he was caught by superior venefical skills and power.

‘Then we shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer,’ said Twilight softly, walking over to the frozen mute. ‘His aura and other functions are still intact?’

‘The same as they were when he arrived,’ said Tara. ‘His own aura, body and mental processes. Even the shriek remains exactly the same. Teneo and Evanesco will not know the difference between the old Quiritatio and the new Quiritatio. They will not know that I am now in complete control all of all those functions and he isn’t. Thanks to the successful outcome of your experiments, Quiritatio is now ours to do with as we wish.’

‘According to my experiments he is effectively dead,’ said Twilight. ‘A shell propelled by the power of others, in this case Tara. Stripping out all his mental and physical functions killed him.’

‘Good,’ said Tara. ‘Now let’s see if he can carry out the rest of his mission.’

Twilight turned to Virgile. ‘Place the linen sack in his hand that is supposed to be your own blood-filled head, the proof of your death and prize he is taking them to sup. Then let’s send the child-killer on his way and follow to the clouds above Dundas Castle to see if our little ruse works.’

Clutching his prize firmly, the captured body of the child-killing veneficus disappeared.

At two minutes after midnight as Teneo and Evanesco sat in the great hall of Dundas Castle, they received a mind message from Quiritatio.

I have destroyed the foul veneficus Virgile and am about to return with the promised prize of his head swollen with blood for your pleasure.

Teneo beamed at his fellow Confrerie.

‘Quiritatio has succeeded. Let’s transport to the ramparts to welcome him.’

‘I never doubted for one moment that he wouldn’t,’ said Evanesco, appearing beside Teneo on the highest part of the castle.

Giving one of his high-pitched shrieks, Quiritatio suddenly appeared alongside them. He had a big smile on his face and held out a linen sack dripping with blood to Evanesco.

Your promised prize, my fellow Confrerie. May it bring you much pleasure.

Evanesco reached out to grasp the linen sack, words of thanks forming on his lips.

Giving off an enormous bang, the bag exploded, sending an orange fireball billowing upward to where Tara, Virgile, and Twilight hovered high in the clouds. The force of six thunderbolts packed together in the bag completely obliterated Evanesco and the shell body of Quiritatio, taking with it a large chunk of the castle ramparts. Fragments of the brightly coloured robes worn by Evanesco, the African veneficus, blew out over the surrounding countryside. There was no trace of the child-killer.

‘Teneo escaped,’ growled Twilight. ‘A split second before the explosion, something alerted him and he transformed out of there on the very edge of the explosion.’

‘I tracked his aura trail,’ said Virgile. ‘He’s in the lower basement of the castle.’

‘Spread out to form a triangle in the sky over the castle,’ said Twilight. ‘He can’t move without us knowing.’

‘My timing was slightly off,’ said Tara. ‘I should have blown the bag a split second sooner. He must have seen something in Quiritatio’s eyes that alerted him.’

Two powerful rogue venefici destroyed in one go is a great result. Your timing was perfect.
Twilight had reverted to mind-speak as they took up their positions over the castle.

To underline the fact that Teneo was trapped, the three of them laid down a perfectly symmetrical barrage of thunderbolts around Dundas Castle. The basement walls where Teneo cowered shook with the explosions.

Twilight’s mind-speak came to the others.
Take great care, he might go for a terminus.

Which, having considered his options and knowing that somehow he was surrounded by three powerful venefici, was exactly what Teneo did.

For over an hour and at a good distance from Dundas Castle, Tara, Virgile, and Twilight watched the systematic destruction of the solid stone fortress and a good deal of the surrounding countryside as the trapped and defeated veneficus took out the opprobrium of his failure on everything around him. Later, as they stood over the spent body of Teneo in the rubble of the castle, a body that just had enough strength left to hold his eyes open, Twilight remembered the last time he’d witnessed the venefical end of Elelendise in similar circumstances and how, as the long magus had brought the mighty Excalibur arcing down on her neck to finish her, she had suddenly disappeared. As he tapped the final message that would send the rogue venefici to the cowering mists of Francia forever on Teneo’s forehead, he knew the Presidium wouldn’t get involved this time. After all, he’d only recently come from a meeting with Zeus, king of the gods, father of the Olympians, sky and weather, hospitality, rights of guests and supplicants, sending of omens, punishment of injustice, and governance of the universe.

And he’d said they were going in the right direction. Now they had managed to destroy the three rogue venefici without actually destroying them. They’d been allowed to destroy themselves.

The final moment of your evil eternity has just arrived. You now join your rogue companions. Good-bye.

Chapter 11

‘Kill this man.’

Philip I, King of Francia, was delighted. He wanted to festoon the simple tunics of the three venefici with every honour at his command. He offered them estates with important castles at their centres, fine jewellery, gold, silver, horses, and servants. All they had to do was stay near him and protect him from his many enemies.

All his gifts were politely but firmly turned down.

Finally, having run out of inducements, he begged them to accompany him as a personal favour on a journey to a place they, too, would gain much from visiting.

Rome. He’d received an invitation to visit the Eternal City as a guest of the Holy Father himself. Having never been there, it was also a pilgrimage of faith for him.

The invite had come from Pope St. Gregory VII.

The invitation had been made on the basis of Philip’s status as head of the Church of Francia. He would be taking a number ofhis senior archbishops, including a close Christian advisor to his court who had studied in Rome and whom he believed Twilight and Tara were acquainted with.

Robert of Jumieges had returned from England, former Archbishop of Canterbury under the English king, Edward the Confessor, and a man who had escaped from under the nose of the subsequent King Harold when he and his two brothers, Beorn and Swein, had sailed up the Thames with their fleet of Viking ships. Hadn’t Twilight been present when their father, Earl Godwine, had choked to death at a royal banquet?

Something to do with a piece of bread?

‘Robert of Jumieges is indulging in guesswork,’ muttered Twilight. ‘But I must confess, a visit to Rome is of interest to me for I have read much about it and would appreciate the opportunity to study some of that great city’s history and buildings at first hand. I will discuss it with my companions, who themselves have a pressing engagement.’

‘Oh?’

‘Virgile and I are to be wed,’ said Tara.

That set the king off again. It would be a state occasion, the biggest wedding since he himself had wed the queen. No expense would be spared. The finest food, flowers, wine, musicians, jesters, and jugglers. It would take place in the palace itself with guests from every royal house in the known western world. William the Conqueror, the Norman English king, would be the guest of honour. Tara would have a dress of the finest silks made by the queen’s own dressmakers, and at the banquet afterward Twilight would sit at his right hand between the two great kings, William of England and himself. The festivities would last for days as the people hailed the union of the two great venefici.

After a great deal of more polite but firm refusals from Tara, Virgile, and Twilight, at last one thing was agreed. When Tara and Virgile returned from Ireland, Twilight would accompany the king and his party to Rome, where he would be left alone to wander around to his heart’s content. He would not, for reasons Robert of Jumieges well understood, get involved in any religious discussions, nor, in deference to their hosts would he employ the enchantments except in the direst circumstances. Although he would be attached to King Philip’s party as an advisor, he would not be expected to attend all the official gatherings.

One month later Tara and Virgile returned from their visit to Ireland and, although now man and wife by both Francian and English law, resumed their separate duties at Avebury and Carnac. They had the ability to talk through mind-speak, so communication between them was instant. They also had Virgile’s peregrines, if required, who knew both Tara’s and Twilight’s whereabouts, and Tara had the added protection of her fierce wolfhounds. Other than the previous month when she had been in Ireland with her new husband, it was the first time Tara had been apart from her mentor since she had joined him.

As usual when he went to another region the old astounder didn’t alert the local pica, preferring to leave them alone unless they were urgently required. Twilight transformed to Philip’s party, where they had made camp on the outskirts of Rome.

As night fell over the camp, Philip called the senior members of his party together to go through their strategy. Although the adherence and style of Christian worship in Francia was the official reason given for the invite by the pope, apparently these were minor considerations. Imperial authority in Northern Italy of late had been much weakened, allowing considerable local autonomy. Unusually, a single dynasty or great military leader did not rule the Holy Roman Empire; the majesty of its rule had faded, the former grandeur reduced to neglect and red dust. Too many barbarian hordes had stormed its mighty walls and desecrated its magisterial buildings, and the former great dynastic rule of the Lombards and Byzantine had been usurped by the Normans, who, as William the Conqueror had so recently demonstrated by invading England, were becoming a fierce force in the Latin western world. The current power was now non-military and vested solely in the church. St. Gregory, a former Tuscan monk and now an ambitious and typically greedy pope, felt rather exposed. So much so that he had decided to redress the balance a little in his own favour by producing a papal dictum that the pope had the right to appoint and depose emperors and bishops throughout Christendom without question. The papacy and the Roman Empire, the consenting gemini of peaceful coexistence, simply had to support each other in order that they both survived. As king-maker and deposer, the pope had the power to control the throne and the souls and purses of the faithful. Better for him and the Holy Roman Empire if, as had previously been the case, they had a powerful emperor or king to protect and reinforce those rights through military might.

Why couldn’t this protector be Philip I of Francia?

No wonder Philip been grateful for the work the three venefici had done in eliminating the Confrerie. No wonder he’d begged them for his future protection. King Philip I was making a bid for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire to add to that of Francia. That was why he was here; this meeting had been called to hammer out the details. Like all those other great legends adorning the many scrolls in the
scriptorium
on the Isle of Avalon, including his Gaullist predecessor Charlemagne, whose huge picture he had on the wall of his throne room, Philip was here to be crowned as a non-Italian Holy Roman emperor and Caesar.

Once again Twilight had to smile to himself at the naked ambition of a ruler.

Just how many kingdoms are enough?

The following morning a detachment of Roman cavalry rode out to meet them and escort them into the great city. Philip had one thousand of his own soldiers of the Royal Guard with him for protection on their journey over the Alps from Francia, and together the cavalcade clattered through the cobbled streets of the Eternal City. Waiting to greet them on the steps of St. Peters, ringed by heavily armed legionnaires, stood, at the front, the papal party, fronted by the purple-clad Pope St. Gregory VII and flanked by various archbishops, members of the Senate, and at least ten high-ranking military leaders.

True to his word, Twilight stayed in the background throughout the many speeches of welcome, then quietly slipped away to begin exploring the place he had read and dreamed so much about.

Although in various stages of crumbling neglect, with weeds and a layer of red dust everywhere, the famous buildings were still standing, with many of them still being used. The Coliseum, although empty inside, was thronged with peddlers selling everything from fruit and vegetables to live chickens and goats, furs, skins, salt, wool, nuts, waxes, brightly coloured silks, gray and white linens, sandals, and leather goods. The faces of the people bore witness to the great territories conquered by the Caesars. Fascinating black faces from the Africas mixed with swarthy Mongols from the east, light-skinned Arabs with white Saxons, haughty Indians with Turks, Berbers with Persians, Wends, Franks, Jews, Greeks, Javanese, Egyptians, and the Romans themselves with everyone. Barbarians rubbed shoulders with pilgrims, vagabonds with upright citizens, penitents with heretics, nonbelievers, believers, and those who were indifferent. Many of the races were indeterminate, the results of many hundreds of years of integration. Religious adherents and holy men crept piously through the throng in a huge variety of cloaks, habits, and white, red, and orange sheets, their heads covered or not depending upon the mores of their faith. Soldiers, in the full battle armor of legionnaires and always in pairs, stood purposefully at street corners, and beggars, some with purposefully maimed children, were just about everywhere. The languages that swirled and echoed from myriad mouths were equally exotic, with many of them developing a pidgin cadence all of their own consisting of various mixtures of Italian rolled up with their own tongue. Everywhere was colour, movement, shouting, a vibrancy of cosmopolitan barter in an historic metropolitan setting as the daily reality of life continued by claim and counter-claim, anger, smiling agreement, entreaties, and the will of a world’s people to just get on with life.

Looking down from lofty positions everywhere were the pupil-less, serious-looking statues of gods, Caesars, popes, and kings, many of them given a curious, almost comical twist by the loss of their noses, a particular and prominent trait of the older Roman statues’ faces. Here Mars bestrode a mighty plinth, there Claudius waved a scroll, Boniface, in a pointed hat with a shepherd’s crook in his right hand, gazed heavenward in prayer, and Otto, a king’s crown on his head, brandished his sword. Augustine, Julius Caesar, Pompey vied for plinth space with Cicero, Cato, and Marius. Great stone carvings of battles, their intricate weaving of men entwined with shields and spears, vied with scenes of famous charioteers with three horses straining forward. Nymphs, angels, serpents, and laurel leaves jostled with gargoyles, doves, fish, and crosses as the symbolism of the mighty empire.

Twilight stopped to watch a small, dark man with quick hands manipulate three little unturned pots, one with a small dried pea underneath, around a table. Time after time for a small wager a watcher would try to guess which pot hid the pea after the man had quickly moved them around. The small, dark man won every time, his dexterity and sleight-of-hand beating all comers, and he pocketed their coins until Twilight decided to make it a little harder by replacing the pea under the pot the customer tapped. In some confusion, the small, dark man began to lose every time and had to pay out. Looking skyward and muttering, he finally grabbed his pots and fold-up table and stormed off.

Smiling, Twilight walked on. An old beggar grabbed his leg and gestured to his mouth with his fingers indicating hunger. Putting his finger to his lips to indicate silence, the old astounder reached inside his linen tunic and produced a round, flat, freshly baked loaf of rye bread, which he quickly pushed toward the old beggar. It disappeared inside the ragged shirt quicker than an eye blink to be followed by a look of surprise and then gratitude. Twilight moved on. He couldn’t reverse all the sleight-of-hands nor feed all the beggars in Rome, but an occasional dispensation wouldn’t do any harm.

‘Make way, make way!’ came a loud cry as an ornate, silk-curtained sedan chair with a broad-shouldered, shaven-headed black Nubian on each corner came barging down the street. In front, shouting and waving their swords to clear a path, strode two legionnaires. Anyone who didn’t move fast enough was thrown aside or trampled underfoot, first by the soldiers and then the Nubians. The old beggar Twilight had just left with the fresh loaf of bread was busily eating it and didn’t move quickly enough for the soldiers’ liking. One of them kicked him hard in the ribs, then swatted him across the back with the flat blade of his sword. Pitching forward with the partially eaten loaf falling from his hands, the beggar scrambled on all fours to get out of the way whilst also trying to grab some of the bread. When food is in such short supply, a fresh loaf is worth striving for. This brought the sedan chair to a halt, further incensing the soldiers, who set about the poor beggar by raining kicks onto his thin, ragged body.

Until both of them locked solid in mid kick.

‘What’s going on? Why have we stopped?’ a man’s voice cried as a heavily be-ringed, pudgy hand pushed back on the ornate silk curtains.

One of the Nubians on the front pointed to the two soldiers locked solid in the act of kicking the old beggar, who had picked up the bread and was sidling into the crowd.

‘Put me down,’ commanded the voice from inside the sedan chair, and as the Nubians lowered it gently to the ground, the door was flung open and out heaved a hugely fat man dressed in blue and gold silks. He wore a blue silk turban on his head with a large sapphire clip in the centre, and his face sported a shiny black moustache and matching goatee beard. On his feet, small for a man with such bulk, he wore jewelled black silk slippers with turned-up toes. A heavily jewelled dagger hung in a silver studded case around his huge waist. His dark brown eyes glinted maliciously from within the folds of his fat face, which was sweating profusely.

Breathing heavily with the exertion of moving, the fat man walked slowly around the locked soldiers. Then he looked at the Nubians and around the crowd that had now formed.

‘What happened here?’ he said loudly, reaching into the folds of his silk robe and withdrawing some coins.

The crowd all began to speak at once, and the beggar was produced and pushed to the front clutching the bread with one hand and his sore ribs with the other. The fat man dropped a couple of coins into his outstretched hand, which swiftly secreted them within his rags. As the old beggar told his tale, his eyes darted madly around the crowd until he saw Twilight. He pointed a shaky finger at the enchanter, and the crowd instantly moved away.