More Than Mortal (23 page)
Authors: Mick Farren
Columbine could feel herself sinking. One of the problems of coming to the high turrets was that her time there usually started with hopes and grand aspirations, but contemplating their accomplishment easily turned her to introspection. In turn, introspection led to an increasingly negative self-analysis, and ultimately plunged her into the deep end of self-pity. Self-pity would of course, in turn, harden into a need to punish someone other than herself for her discomfort. Subordinates would suffer, and as she contemplated that relief, she reminded herself how few could outstrip her at creative cruelty when she put her mind to it.
She would never know whether it was accident or unconscious design that positioned her at the window looking exactly in the direction of Morton Downs and placed her in the perfect spot to observe what transpired. The first apparition was a soft sparkle, like a slow whirling dance of iridescent snowflakes. At first she was annoyed that this bizarre phenomenon, these diamonds in the sky, was interrupting her well-worn circle of fluctuating self-esteem, but then she realized how damned stupid that was, and in the same instant, the diamonds fused into the red aerial glow of a distant fire. Her absorption in herself dropped away, and she watched with increasing disbelief, as the red glow brightened, turned
to violet, and finally to a searing white heat. Thick fire ropes of energy streamed vertically into the sky, like the psychic equivalent of a Hiroshima burst, and Columbine unconsciously took a step back.
to violet, and finally to a searing white heat. Thick fire ropes of energy streamed vertically into the sky, like the psychic equivalent of a Hiroshima burst, and Columbine unconsciously took a step back.
“What the hell have you three done?”
If Renquist, Destry, and Marieko were at the source of all that power, what chance of survival did they have? Was it the destruction of whatever was in the burial ground? Were her awful dreams at an end? Then an ugly thought presented itself: If the three who had gone to Morton Downs had been destroyed, she was alone. What the hell was she going to do? She didn’t care about Renquist, or at least, she would pretend not to care about Renquist for as long as she could, but without the other two in the troika, how was she going to organize her survival? She couldn’t run this whole estate with just two thralls and some day laborers.
Away in the distance, the fireball had contracted into a single blazing beam, a narrow lance of light stabbing to infinity, exactly vertical, all the way to the upper stratosphere. As the background radiation passed through her, Columbine could hear voices whispering in the air, a soft and inexplicable Babel of a hundred tongues. Most she didn’t recognize, but they sounded ancient or archaic to her admittedly untrained ear. She thought she detected Latin and, disturbingly, languages from her recent and recurring dreams. Strangest of all, she definitely heard words from the Old Speech, the deep and secret, original language of the nosferatu.
Columbine was both fascinated and repelled. The mystery was deepening, but the more it deepened, the less she liked it—if, indeed, she had ever liked it at all. Columbine preferred the kind of mystery where she dictated the game and knew all the answers. In this adventure, she knew none of the answers. It was Renquist’s kind of game, where deduction and informed guesswork prevailed rather than spite, guile, and manipulation. The column of light glowed brighter, extending all the way
into space. The radiation was harder on her body, not painful, but definitely more aggressive, with a touch that generated a certain veiled excitement. But what was happening, she again asked herself, to Victor and her two companions? Columbine’s only consolation was feeling none of the signs that always accompanied the departure of one of the undead from this realm of existence.
into space. The radiation was harder on her body, not painful, but definitely more aggressive, with a touch that generated a certain veiled excitement. But what was happening, she again asked herself, to Victor and her two companions? Columbine’s only consolation was feeling none of the signs that always accompanied the departure of one of the undead from this realm of existence.
Columbine knew exactly what happened when a nosferatu was suddenly and violently lost to this world. She had observed the process, up close and firsthand, on that terrible blazing morning she had hidden undetected in the dark cellar of the ruined Persian mosque, outside of the stinking little town of Kashan, while, above her, Dr. Feisal and his Bedouin cutthroats had conducted the screaming ritual impalement of Sir Francis Varney. Poor, idiotic Varney’s destruction had been like a ballooning vacuum, appearing in the very air itself and then vanishing in a silent clap of implosion. In this case, Columbine sensed no such unquiet disappearance, and it allowed her at least some reason to hope. To be left on her own at a time like this was completely unthinkable. This was not to say, however, the minds of the three might not be wiped clean by the psychic detonation. They might return as functionless zombies—if they returned at all, and she didn’t have to go out herself and find them.
A sudden burst of radiation caused concentric shock waves to race horizontally across the contours of the hills, but they were the power surge’s final encore. The spear of light collapsed like a fountain with the pressure shut off, and all was once more normal night. At first Columbine could only stand and stare, marveling at what had just come to pass. Finally (and to her extreme distaste) she realized she might actually have to take some kind of action. Columbine preferred to issue instructions rather than carry them out, but she found herself without anyone to follow her orders, save for the human thralls, and they were too slow and dimwitted to be of any use
in a situation like this. The question was also what action should she take? Obviously a long-distance scan, an attempt see if she could detect anything, was a place to start. If only she had taken the time to exercise and extend her powers as Marieko did. She could perceive nothing except a distant and generalized afterglow. Marieko, Destry, and Victor appeared to have vanished without trace, as though the landscape had swallowed them up or the energy onslaught had stripped them of their auras.
in a situation like this. The question was also what action should she take? Obviously a long-distance scan, an attempt see if she could detect anything, was a place to start. If only she had taken the time to exercise and extend her powers as Marieko did. She could perceive nothing except a distant and generalized afterglow. Marieko, Destry, and Victor appeared to have vanished without trace, as though the landscape had swallowed them up or the energy onslaught had stripped them of their auras.
“Damn it to hell!”
She would have to go there herself, and she would have to ride on horseback. The others had the Range Rover, and it was the only Ravenkeep vehicle, aside from the rarely used Bentley, totally without the kind of all-terrain capability she would need. Like Renquist, Columbine preferred to be chauffeured than to drive, and up until this spectacular emergency, it had worked out fine, since Marieko and Destry shared the Range Rover and Columbine had Bolingbroke call the car service. Now, she was forced to improvise. It wasn’t that she minded riding; she had, in fact, prior to ascending the turret room, toyed with the idea of, if not actually hunting, at least reconnoitering a pair of possible prey. A strange woman who had apparently once been something vaguely important in punk rock had purchased a cottage some seven or eight miles away, where she and a highly androgynous companion had taken up alcoholic residence and appeared to be building a recording studio. They were exactly the kind who might disappear under mysterious circumstances without the Wessex Constabulary raising much more than a token hue and cry. Those plans would now have to be postponed. Psychic energy explosions could be a damned inconvenience. With a flash of anger, she used the voice of authority to bellow for Bolingbroke.
“Get to the stables! I need a horse saddled.”
But which horse? Her first instinct was to take the
infinitely manageable and practical gelding she would have ridden on her hunting sortie, but the great black Dormandu was by far the more stylistically suitable for Morton Downs. Of course, Destry would be furious, but wasn’t Columbine coming to her blasted rescue?
infinitely manageable and practical gelding she would have ridden on her hunting sortie, but the great black Dormandu was by far the more stylistically suitable for Morton Downs. Of course, Destry would be furious, but wasn’t Columbine coming to her blasted rescue?
“Saddle Dormandu for me!”
Before descending to prepare for her one-woman cavalry charge, she made a final attempt to locate any trace of Marieko, Destry, or Renquist. Again she saw nothing except empty night. Then she happened to glance down at the grounds of the estate, especially the area immediately beneath her high vantage point. A mist had formed over the lake and was advancing up the incline of the lawn. Under other circumstances, she might have been intrigued by the seemingly determined movement of this localized fog, but her entire attention was focused on her now avowed mission, and no space remained for comparative meteorology. Thus she dismissed the odd fog without thinking and started down the rubble-strewn stone stairs to the lower, occupied levels.
A further ten minutes found Columbine on her way to the stables, in black-and-red riding habit, maybe more tightly form-fitting than function might have dictated, but in some areas, she allowed no room for compromise. Her sense of style included no limits to absurdity. Against her leg she lightly tapped a leather crop with an ivory head, carved in the shape of a coiled cobra. Destry wasn’t the only one who could handle a whip as an accessory. She entered the stables, fully expecting Bolingbroke to have the black stallion saddled and ready. Instead, she discovered him, held fast, apparently the prisoner of two huge red-bearded male nosferatu, who, if not brothers, were at least close cousins. Their filthy ginger hair hung well past their shoulders and was partially braided and decorated with beads, pheasant feathers, and small bones, either human or animal. They wore the ragged, never-laundered plaid of wild Highlanders over body armor of studded leather, while basket-hilt
claymores hung at their hips in heavy scabbards. Yellow fangs extended in canine grins, and even in a stable, their rank smell was offensive: smoke, whisky, old blood, vomit, and other repulsiveness she didn’t care to recognize. Dormandu snorted uneasily in his stall. Columbine didn’t know whether to run or curse them with all her power, but while she was making the choice, a heavy hand fell on her arm.
claymores hung at their hips in heavy scabbards. Yellow fangs extended in canine grins, and even in a stable, their rank smell was offensive: smoke, whisky, old blood, vomit, and other repulsiveness she didn’t care to recognize. Dormandu snorted uneasily in his stall. Columbine didn’t know whether to run or curse them with all her power, but while she was making the choice, a heavy hand fell on her arm.
“Oh, no, ye don’t, Mistresss Dasssshwood, ye’ll no be ridin’ oot any place this night.”
Marieko paused and sniffed the air. The passageway beyond the door Victor had so precipitously opened, that presumably led to the main chamber of the burial mound, had a rich earthy smell, dark loam, brown soil, dust, rust, and long-composted vegetation, part decay and part regeneration. Up ahead, Renquist ducked and scrabbled. The ceiling of the passageway was low, scarcely more than four feet at its highest, and where rock had crumbled and shifted, and dirt and debris had fallen through, they had to struggle to keep their footing. Fortunately, they could see perfectly in the total blackness, and were unburdened and unencumbered by lanterns or flashlights as humans might have been. Renquist, noticing that Marieko had stopped, glanced back. “Are you okay?”
Marieko quickly found her voice. “Yes, yes, keep going.”
Despite her assurances, Renquist continued to peer at her in the dark. Did he sense she was having certain difficulties? “Surprisingly, I have met a number of nosferatu who have mixed feelings about enclosed spaces under the earth.”
In Marieko’s case, mixed feelings was an understatement. Was Victor being kind? The entry to the interior of the burial mound, the smell, and the enclosed darkness caused unpleasant memories to surface from the time when, a hundred years earlier, she had been forcibly
entombed while held hostage by the Clan of Kenzu during the final grinding conflict of the late nineteenth century between the Kenzu and her own Yarabachi Clan that had all but destroyed both their ancient houses. Taken during her daytime weakness by ninja thralls of the Kenzu, transported to the enemy stronghold in an iron-bound, carved wood casket that at least protected her from the lethal ravages of the sun, she had then been buried in the same box with a full twelve feet of earth packed above her. At the time—and since none of her abductors had felt the need to inform her otherwise—she had believed she had been selected at random for a cruel and lingering destruction. Only later, she discovered she and twelve more of the most favored Yarabachi females, the concubines and bonded hunting partners of the clan’s undead lords, had been taken as hostages. The Kenzu threat had been to destroy them slowly if the Yarabachi Clan didn’t concede to the Kenzu’s territorial and authoritarian demands. In fact, had she known this, it would have done nothing to mitigate her anger or fear. Even the numerically significant sacrifice of thirteen favored females was hardly sufficient to sway the will of the ever implacable Yarabachi.
entombed while held hostage by the Clan of Kenzu during the final grinding conflict of the late nineteenth century between the Kenzu and her own Yarabachi Clan that had all but destroyed both their ancient houses. Taken during her daytime weakness by ninja thralls of the Kenzu, transported to the enemy stronghold in an iron-bound, carved wood casket that at least protected her from the lethal ravages of the sun, she had then been buried in the same box with a full twelve feet of earth packed above her. At the time—and since none of her abductors had felt the need to inform her otherwise—she had believed she had been selected at random for a cruel and lingering destruction. Only later, she discovered she and twelve more of the most favored Yarabachi females, the concubines and bonded hunting partners of the clan’s undead lords, had been taken as hostages. The Kenzu threat had been to destroy them slowly if the Yarabachi Clan didn’t concede to the Kenzu’s territorial and authoritarian demands. In fact, had she known this, it would have done nothing to mitigate her anger or fear. Even the numerically significant sacrifice of thirteen favored females was hardly sufficient to sway the will of the ever implacable Yarabachi.
For eighteen days, she had retained her composure. She tuned back her senses and dominated all of the negative thought process that would lead inevitably to panic and horror. She managed to convince herself she no longer cared, and lived in temporal moment-by-moment illusion in which destruction held no terror, and, in the greater picture of herself and the universe, her passing was of no significance and certainly no tragedy. Once she had mastered the desperation and adrenal hysteria inherent in the drive to self-preservation, she had found an almost blissful passivity, a nothing-to-lose capacity to relish the tightly narrowed band of her senses. The pressure of the earth around her, the illusions that her vision created in all absence of light, the sounds of the disturbed ground settling, and the burrowing of worms,
voles, and other subterranean creatures became a micro-universe of infinite possibilities.
voles, and other subterranean creatures became a micro-universe of infinite possibilities.
After these eighteen days, however, her resolve inexorably cracked. She had screamed. One scream to experiment, to see how it would feel, a second to confirm how it felt, and then a third that was infinitely protracted, near mindless and deafening in a place of subterranean loam where only she could hear it. She had gone to the brink of madness, sank helplessly, but finally surfaced again, by an effort of will she still couldn’t quite believe. As far as she knew, she had screamed for five days. In the end, the preserving miracle had come in the form of Katoh. Katoh was her very huge human thrall, the size of a sumo wrestler, whose near-adoring loyalty had been bestowed on her as an indication of her elevation among the Yarabachi females. After she’d been missing for more than three weeks, he’d managed to locate her deep burial plot, and in one frenzied night with a pick and a shovel, and a body count of four dead Kenzu swordthralls, he had been transformed from slave to liberator.
The two of them had embarked on a nightmare escape in the hellish hold of a freighter bound for Sumatra, a rusting, wheezing hulk from the depths of a Joseph Conrad story. Unfortunately, toward the end of the voyage, she had become so weak and depleted, rather than take the risk of preying on the already highly superstitious and suspicious lascar crew, she had been forced to feed on Katoh, so repeatedly it had resulted in his death. Katoh dying that she might survive had been a definitive nosferatu paradox, in that, for the first part of the transaction, she had been too weak to bestow immortality upon the man, and for the second half, he was too weak to receive it.
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