Tenebrae Manor (6 page)

Bordeaux turned his head from the departing demon to the closet. His mind raced away on the subject of what to do, red eyes looking down to see Comets the jester staring back at him indifferently.

“Well, what is it, Comets?”

Comets’ head tilted to the side but his expression was unchanged.

Bordeaux shook his head at the imp’s folly. “Enough of his nonsense.”

More than ever, Bordeaux felt the eager urge to return to his belvedere and waste a few hours on rest. Observing Comets barricading the cabinet doors with a stray oddment of firewood to the chagrin protests of Jethro, Bordeaux left the drawing room.

In the halls the air was mercifully cooler, though the heat had become too much to endure once and for all. Usher, the ever-loyal vigil, stood and acknowledged Bordeaux’s presence with eye contact.

“Enough for the while, my friend,” murmured Bordeaux.

“Yes sir,” Usher replied. “Maybe you should sleep.”

Bordeaux considered returning the offer in kind, before realising its impotent nature when applied to Usher. The stairs greeted him.

“I am very weary. Goodbye, Usher.”

“Goodbye, Master Bordeaux.”

Time is a most enigmatic phenomenon at Tenebrae - comparable to a stallion-hauled chariot, indifferent to the poor souls who become trampled under the wheels, balanced in turn by its cold absence and maligned cruelty. The grains slip through the neck of the hourglass with incredible briefness, leaving behind feelings of happiness and joy in the upper bulb, never to be revisited barring regretful reflection. And of the other direction - through the neck, to the present, where the hourglass becomes so clogged that time itself would appear to have halted its chariot altogether. It remains still as scum-skinned tarn, the languid revolutions of clock arms the only betrayal of life, cycling across the face of the clock as dragonflies over the stagnant swamp. These insects are the only vital giveaway to the presence of a future, its composition - be it bleak or promising, is unknown.

Perched on a balcony overlooking the southern cliffs of the mountains, where a prominent spire looms atop as the apex of Tenebrae Manor like a ghastly, rusted blade, two shadows sit in a sombre assemblage.

It is Bordeaux and Deadsol, brothers of the eternity, companions of the twilit melancholy. Bordeaux - a man of whim and reserve, of refined panache. The rascal Deadsol - cut of the same vibrant cloth, albeit with threads of mischief, of ravenous appetite for destruction. Time in its most mysterious nature has blurred the hours together, so that the haze encompassing has absorbed memory; how long had it been since this pair had met in the drawing room?

The only conclusion one can be assured of is that it is now closer to Libra's birthday celebrations and their interrogation of the intrusive man ever further in the past.

"The summer must end shortly," said Bordeaux.

"End?" Deadsol replied. "Whatever does end in this place? It merely drips onward, down and down. Unending, my friend."

"Hardly an optimistic response." Bordeaux procured a cigarillo from his coat pocket and ran two fingers down its rough side.

"Will you do me the pleasure? Fine smokes, these."

"My thanks but I have my own," said Deadsol, retrieving his own pipe as though drawing a pistol.

Bordeaux clicked his fingers like flint, igniting a flame upon the tips, with which he lit both his cigarillo and Deadsol's pipe.

His pipe lit and illuminating his face with its glow, Deadsol continued.

"Even were we to be relieved of such a heat wave, what would follow? I ask you; what would naturally tail a summer of such intensity?"

Bordeaux thought a moment. "One would hazard to guess at a blizzard."

"Exactly. The weather will do as it pleases, Bordeaux. And even if we were to possess some powerful magician who could control such phenomena, say - a glutton whose self importance is as inflated as her abdomen, why would she concern herself with our troubles?"

"Hmm, yet Libra informed me the control of weather was beyond her skill."

Deadsol guffawed. "And you my friend? You believed such piffle? She can maintain a night of everlasting proportions and you thought a simple heat wave was beyond her skill?"

"I suppose I had not seen it that way."

Deadsol had struck a blow on Bordeaux's dignity and though they had conjured a friendship capacitating of such honesty, the crimson demon seemed eager to move onto other subjects.

The two blew slow wisps of indigo smoke into the void beyond them, swollen as it were with pines of infinite number. Bordeaux's thin lips parted and from his mouth slid a smoky serpentine dragon of terrific tooth and whisker. Above them, the dragon took on a life of its own, as rabbits of smoke snorted from Deadsol's prominent nostrils leapt forward only to bounce into the stream of indigo flame of the dragon, perishing instantly. Some were constricted by the beast, some caught in its savage jaw. Others simply took one hop too far and found themselves caught in the embers of the dragon's fiery breath. The two demons were pleased at their puppet show, before Bordeaux's eyes focused beyond the curls of smoke into the trees below.

"Do you think he'll find it?" he asked.

"He always does."

As though he knew he was being spoken of, Comets hurtled over the banister and plopped onto the balcony, breathing heavily.

"Well, speak of him and he comes," said Bordeaux. "Comets, what of this intrusion? Did you find the shiny thing?"

A triumphant Comets held forth a silver coin, gleaming as bright as his smile. "Found!"

"Quite good, lad." Bordeaux turned to Deadsol. "Your turn or mine, my friend?"

Deadsol gestured an invitation with the sweep of a hand. "Let it be yours, fine citizen."

"What joviality. See here, Comets. Hand it over."

Comets snatched his hands away, cradling the coin like a bird egg.

"Come now, Comets, you disagreeable scoundrel," said Bordeaux.

"The shiny is mine!" said Comets with defiant finality.

Not one to sway towards random physical violence, Bordeaux simply stared intently at the jester until his intimidating gaze became all too much for Comets and the coin exchanged hands.

Comets took a step back; head down like an obedient canine as Bordeaux tossed the coin up and down in his hand.

"Last time, Comets," Bordeaux reminded.

Swinging his forearm in revolutions like a pendulum, the crimson demon wound up his strength and let loose an almighty throw. The coin whistled into the night, cutting the cobwebbed gloom like a sickle. Its reflection lingered a moment, before sight of the medallion was lost to the black trees.

Comets darted over the precipice with unrestrained vigor until he too disappeared from view.

“Deadsol, I had wanted to inquire - the man?” Bordeaux sat back down.

“He is not going anywhere,” Deadsol assured. “He’s right where we left him, bound with ropes now, too.”

“Be sure to spare him, Deadsol.”

“Cease this fussing, B. You and your sappy sentiment! He’s being fed. Madlyn is taking him the scraps of Libra’s excessive meals. Scraps though they may be, with Libra’s hunger as it is, you can be sure that he is well fed indeed.”

“I must thank you for your restraint, Deadsol.”

“You are welcome, my friend. Much as I’d like nothing more than to prey upon such a fragile mind, I realise you need one less stress on your mind at present.”

Bordeaux smiled, “You are far more charming when you suppress your ribaldry.” The wisps of indigo smoke drifting from their mouths continued to play at their ventriloquism.

As though of need of vent, Bordeaux opened the floodgates of his angst on Deadsol and words began to cascade from his mouth. “Personally, I will be glad when this farce is over.”

“The birthday?”

Bordeaux nodded slowly, his face curled with vagabond smoke.

“Were that ghastly banshee not so short of temper and abundant of magic, I would give her a piece of my mind,” said Deadsol.

“If we pay her no other compliment, we must say that she
does
keep the sky dark for us.”

“Yes, the spell. Bah! If only the old bat would divulge the secrets of her witchcraft.”

“Old bat? She’s the vigour of a lass in her mid-twenties!” said Bordeaux.

“Ah yes, of
two
or
three
lasses I might say and I speak not of her mental structure,” chuckled Deadsol.

“Another jab at the physical decline of our fair mistress.”

“I’d call it a physical increase.”

“Enough.”

Deadsol was visibly amused with his antics but held his tongue from further insults. The demons sat in silence, gaze hypnotized by the nighttime scene surrounding.

Somewhere in the gloom, Comets was scavenging for his coin.

****

Comets tore through the conifer maze with adroit agility, paying no notice to the whips and lashings of pine needle striking his person, his eyes bore into the darkness, searching, hunting. It was a trivial game to be sure but to a being of Comet's juvenile disposition, chasing down a silver coin in a forest was the highest calibre of fun. The imp was an enigma, a humanoid of disproportioned features, grotesque
 in their peculiarity. Did his mind bulge with knowledge and press against the very inside edges of his scalp? Or, encompassed as it were in his melon like skull, was his mind more akin to a rattling bead in an egg-shaker, chiming like the bells of his motley cap and echoing off the cavernous walls of unused head? The eloquence of the monologues poured from the angular slit of a mouth in beautiful and nonsensical phonics; were they of purposeful poetic prose or merely the ramblings of an ignorant fool? Despite an attention span of extremities so opposing that one could deem it as suspicious trickery of a changeling, Comets found his focus enraptured upon his little game for hours at a time. While other exploits came across to him an ignoble nuisance, his shiny coin held him in hypnagogic state. Wont of his character, he was drawn to such relics as a moth is to flame and no matter how long it took, he always managed to uncover the treasure he sought.

 
The moon made navigation less challenging at present, for it hung in the sky as a perfect disc, a flawless swirl of vibrant paint, a blinding white at its centre. And that white faded out in a circle through brushstrokes all shades of grey and into the impregnable black canvas of night. It was as though it was a pebble, dropped into a still pond where the colourless hue was ever changing like ripples across the water's surface. The moonlight gave the forest a cloak of navy blue, electrifying in its intensity, giving new animation to the trees, sharper edges to all objects.

Comets came to a halt and stood statue-still on the matted floor of dust and needles. There it was. The moon had betrayed its reflective friend and shone a noticeable beam from the coin's surface. Betwixt weed and
 gnarled root, the coin was exposed in all its foreign, metallic glory.

The jester hopped forward
 on one foot until his shadow blocked out the shining silver. Triumphant he stood, yet as he reached forth to scoop up his prize, his wrist was grasped by a hand of knuckled root and wood.

Comets, true to form, was not in the least startled by this movement of usually inanimate tree branch, a mild nuisance, nothing more. The hand was rough and splintery on its petiolar arm and Comets’ gaze sought the source of the thing that had grabbed him. On a stump stood an awkward, squatted humanoid shape where two bulbous eyes revealed themselves with the peeling back of papery bark eyelids. The eyes were round as the moon above, penetrating with an intrusive deadpan. They were mismatched in shape, just as the eyes of the jester, so that it almost seemed to Comets that he was staring into a mirror.

His grin unabated, Comets titled his head to the side and let forth a trebling trio of staccato grunts, high in their pitch and responded in turn by a mimicking boom. The tree stump, the creature, mumbled a moan in response to Comets’ through a mouth of jagged and stitched dimensions. Unbeknownst to Comets, the monster that stood before him was a Wood Golem; an animated tree stump of a frightening potency quenched somewhat by a body sluggish in movement. Draped about the thick neck of the creature was a noose of frayed and petrified rope, a morbid adornment atop the bole that was its body.

The jester shrieked a bloodcurdling warning to the ligneous creation, his little fangs displayed in a simian-like sneer of intimidation.
Unhand my coin
, the sneer said.

The Golem responded in turn with a baritone bellow that thundered through the surrounding woods. Unchanging in its deadpan expression, the Wood Golem brought back its other arm and initiated a swing. A bludgeoning blow was ensured, a blow that would have crushed Comets’ skull like the ripe melon it resembled, had the thing not been so cripplingly slow and predictable of movement.

Comets, of lithe limb and adroit agility, threw his tiny frame at the creature that stole his shiny thing, freeing himself of its grasp and jumping onto its shoulders. With another venomous hiss, he sunk his jaws into the golem’s head. Like a vice-grip they squeezed, unmercifully biting down into the monster’s face, from which came the crunch of splitting wood. The Wood Golem languidly thrashed in a vain attempt to throw the imp from his perch but Comets’ fangs were latched down ruthlessly, showing no quarter. Further and further Comets let his teeth penetrate, one fang straying from wooded mouthful and piercing the eye of the Wood Golem like a knife through jelly. The creature let out a sickening moan of pain, the insides of the eye secreting down its face, a weeping wound.

Resorting to other attacks, Comets unhinged his jaws and snatched at the noose tied about the Golem’s neck. He pulled with all his strength, until the creak of rotted wood splitting arose and the head of the creature burst off its thick neck. The cries of the thing were no more; the rooted claw relaxed and the coveted coin plopped to forest floor.

Indifferent to his thievery of a life, Comets snatched up his coin and stared victoriously at the mound of death at his feet. The eyes were still open, still intimidating in their stare, the punctured one leaking its fluid in a hideous puddle. From the thing’s head sprouted branches twisted and deformed and it was from these handles that Comets picked up the skull and examined it. Deciding that it would make a fine trinket, a symbol of his triumph over adversity, he took it with him on his return journey to Tenebrae Manor.