The Enterprise of Death (33 page)

As the most powerful living necromancer prepared to escape the prison of his body atop the Sierra Nevadas, Inquisitor Kahlert journeyed to Granada to assist the Spanish Dominicans with the ongoing expulsion of Jews and Moors from the lands united by the deceased Isabella and the demented Ferdinand—the kabbalists were up to their old tricks, adding blood to the matzos, and stranger sorceries still were credited to the Moslems. Reluctant to abandon the purging of his homeland though he was, Kahlert had learned from his father that the cleansing could not be limited to one area, lest honest men forever be taxed with the guarding of their borders from marauding witches.

Granada was a fair city, and so purged of Jew and Moslem that Kahlert could scarce believe a Moor had ruled it only twenty years before and allowed every sort of degeneracy to flourish. The Spaniards—some of them, anyway—understood the effectiveness of his father’s interrogation methods far better than the Imperial Inquisitors had, and Kahlert established himself in a quiet little house up in the Andalusian foothills overlooking the city. When he was not assisting in the more problematic interviews with the accused, he rediscovered his youthful love of the romance, and in only a few years had assembled a fine collection of melodramas and adventures by the greatest German, English, and Italian authors; the French he found entirely too French, and the Spanish were, well, everyone knew what Spaniards were, and it went double for their romances.

One evening, after a day sweating in a dungeon with a pair of pliers and a pair of Jewesses, Kahlert took a constitutional among the chestnut trees above his house, and there he met the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen. There were no other houses for some distance, and the servants he kept were all men, and yet here was a woman sitting on a boulder, dark enough of complexion to arouse suspicion, but comely despite it. She wore an exotic, flowing garment of multicolored silk and, even as he knew she must be brought in for questioning, Kahlert found himself looking for an excuse to delay such an engagement.

“Good evening,” Kahlert said in Spanish with a bow. “You are lost?”

The woman looked up, and he saw from the tears still shining on her cheeks that she had been crying, though her kohldarkened eyes were not the slightest bit puffy or red. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then replied in a husky voice. “I am indeed lost, good sir. Indeed, I doubt any in all this world are more lost than I.”

“Perhaps I may be of service, then,” said Kahlert, the encounter seeming more and more like one of his romances. “My house is not far from here, and from the patio we may overlook all of Granada. I have found a delicate pigeon sofrito after a leisurely stroll helps orient oneself marvelously.”

“That is a most generous offer,” said the woman. “If it would not be an imposition I would be pleased to join you.”

She was not jabbering at him in a foreign tongue; on the contrary, she spoke with obvious care and intelligence. Having seen a few Spanish ladies with only slightly lighter skin, Kahlert let himself hope she might actually be a lost Christian of unfortunate pallor and nothing worse. Then he realized she was clearly waiting for him to help her from her seat, and he quickly extended his hand. Through his glove her fingers felt even thinner than they looked, the delicate bones hard in his palm.

“What is your name, my lady, and from where did you hail prior to being lost?” Kahlert asked her as she released his hand and stood beside him.

She began to tremble anew, the pools of her greenish-brown eyes filling, and as if speaking the words caused her physical pain, she groaned, and he barely made out her words: “Um … a … Rose. Call me Rose. I’m from … there.” She pointed south, her face contorting with emotion.

Kahlert realized how insensitive he was. His work had not allowed for much polite contact with decent women, and he cursed himself for a low-mannered clod. “Forgive me. Of course you are exhausted and in need of rest and nourishment, not an interrogation. Please accept my apologies, Lady Rose. My name is Ashton Kahlert, and I confess that I am a terrible host.”

She nodded, too well-bred to sniffle despite the obvious appropriateness of the occasion for it. Kahlert’s mother would have sniffled. If, during his lengthy tenure as a witch-hunting Inquisitor, he had encountered even one actual witch Kahlert might have paid more attention as he led her back to his house. He might have noticed little things, like the way the hem of her dress never became dusty, or how, despite wearing little brown sandals, she left bare footprints upon the dirt track. But he had never captured anyone more sinister than a mundane midwife and so these telltale signs were lost to him.

The servants were surprised to see their master returning with anyone along the trail that wound into the hills behind the stucco-framed house, let alone a beautiful, immaculately dressed woman. Not having any women in the house meant he had not needed female servants, but the woman insisted she was perfectly capable of bathing herself once the bath was heated. Kahlert retired to change for dinner, not something he was accustomed to doing.

Omorose settled into the bathwater with a sigh, and while her illusory appearance remained unblemished, scraps of the young corpse began floating loose in the water. She frowned at that. She would need to acquire bandages to wrap her flesh in, lest an
ear fall off mid-conversation with her host—at the very least, the strange particulars of necromancy meant she would keep her tongue and her bones, which would be sufficient so long as she kept the ring on her finger at all times. She had stopped daring to hope she would ever enjoy another bath around the time she had died, and while the sensation of warm water running over exposed tendons and bone was less fulfilling than it was on her few remaining patches of skin, a bath was a bath was a bath, and she was happy to have it.

Omorose had not allowed herself to relax since fleeing the mountaintop days before, convinced her former slave was right behind her the whole time. The fleeing corpse had avoided the few houses and towns she had glimpsed, terrified she might be caught and banished back to the grave by Awa if she were discovered eating in a farmhouse or dozing in a barn. Yet when the pasty man had discovered Omorose in the woods and offered her succor the idea of further flight lost all appeal. Let the beast find her, so long as it meant a hot bath and a meal of something other than chestnuts and longpig. Being dead, Omorose needed neither food nor drink, but wanted them desperately, and the longer she went without them the less real and the more deranged she felt.

Her mind turned to Ashton Kahlert. He would have to be informed of Awa, at least in some fashion, so that if the black beast arrived, he could …

What was left of Omorose’s lips curled back in delight. Ashton Kahlert was not dead. Ashton Kahlert was a man of some means, clearly. Ashton Kahlert was not prevented by Awa’s curse from harming the little beast, from killing her. Why scour the ends of the earth for a book when all she needed was to find one of the living to exact her vengeance for her? She could watch, of course, she would have to watch, it would be too wonderful to miss, and if he took it slow …

Then again, Kahlert seemed a little old and soft, hardly the sort of man to indulge Omorose’s need to watch Awa being taken apart by degrees. She would have to be very careful and very convincing, for he was alive and she was dead, and therefore she could not tell him a single lie. Worse still, if the beast had not been following her, if she had fled in the other direction, then she might already be a week or more away, and who was to say this Kahlert would employ his resources to capture her?

The man had hungry eyes, to be sure, but that might not be enough. Clearly no women lived in the house, which was curious for a man of means, and might denote a difficulty rather than an advantage in securing his favor if he were unaccustomed to indulging a lady. Omorose sighed and sank lower in the tub, not having had many opportunities to relax as an independent, undead being.

There was a knock at the door.

“Yes?” she called, louder and more confident than she intended.

“Just checking in,” Kahlert’s voice came through the door. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished,” she said in a much more satisfyingly quavering voice. “I shall be out soon.”

“No hurry, please,” said Kahlert, padding away from the door. He returned to his library and his pacing, hands clammy. Being alone had restored some of the wits she had taken, and Kahlert was not at all convinced she was not a dangerous witch. This was how his mother had ensorcelled his father, after all, through her looks and manner, a seemingly simple girl in need of the attention of her betters. He would flush her out, though, or be convinced of her purity, and to this end he hurried to the kitchen to make preparations—holy water in the carafe and blessed salt in the table bowl to burn her lips, a mug of sheep’s milk that she might spoil with her presence.

Lifting herself out of the now-black water, Omorose inspected the small room and immediately noticed a book on a stool beside the chamber pot. Constipation and bathroom reading have long been confederates, so its mere presence did not interest her —it was the title. Her tutor had prepared stews for his pupils using dried tongues, and one of the tongues had belonged to a very lost Franciscan who had blundered within reach of the necromancer’s bonemen. The monk had known Latin, and as a result so did Omorose and Awa.

Malleus Maleficarum.
Malleus was “hammer,” so the title was
The Hammer of Malefactresses
. Thumbing through the dog-eared volume, Omorose very quickly deduced that in this instance “malefactress” meant “witch.” Flipping back through it, she saw an inscription on the very first page, and as she read the cramped Latin a dry, rattling chuckle rolled out of her throat.

My dear Ashton, Inquisitor Before Man and God,

 

What father but He Above may know my grief at being unable to intervene beyond bestowing my own humble wisdom upon so loyal a son? Hearken to the Clarion Call, heed this text, add to it with thy observations, and with brands aloft we shall rid this world of every witch that pollutes it with her licentious evil. Fear not, for I shall be thy hammer, just as thou shall be mine.

With Respect,

Heinrich Institoris Kramer, Inquisitor Before God

The woman stepped out into the warm evening, bringing the odor of honey and lavender to Kahlert’s flaring nostrils. Her saya dress appeared even more lovely than it had before, and not so exotic in style, and by the light of the many candles he had lit she did not look nearly so dark as she had first seemed. The dust of
the road, no doubt, now washed free. At that moment the servant cleaning the bath chamber was nearly overcome by the fumes of the water and the foul gray, green, and black residue on the towels. As the help uniformly hated Kahlert, no mention was made to him regarding this unpleasant discovery—if she was a bruja then it would serve him right.

“You appear radiant,” said Kahlert, striking a clumsy bow. Most of what he knew about etiquette came from his romances, and were thus out of date and from the wrong regions besides.

“Thank you, Inquisitor Kahlert,” said Omorose, bowing herself. “Why did you not mention that you were a witch hunter?”

She smiled to herself at his stupefied expression, his reddening cheeks, his nervous babbling of excuses, and with a wave of her delicate hand she quieted him. Then she poured wine from a silver decanter on the table into his glass, refusing to let herself lick her lips at the sight and smells of the dinner. Then she poured herself a glass and leaned back in her chair, the lights of Granada shining beneath them as though they were dining above the stars.

“Inquisitor,” said Omorose, cutting off whatever nonsense he was saying, “I was chased here by a witch who is trying to destroy me. I was a pious girl in my youth, but not so very long ago found myself at the mercy of a sorceress, and only narrowly did I escape her clutches. As long as she exists I am in mortal danger.”

Kahlert dropped his glass and it broke at his feet. Whatever he had expected, this was not it, although it certainly explained a few things. He had
known
witchcraft was involved, and he was overjoyed that his guest was innocent. Then he realized she had taken his shaking hands, and looking at her pale cheeks, her eyes blue as his own, he could not imagine how he had thought her a Moor.

“Ashton,” said Omorose, choosing her words as carefully as he chose his tools when interrogating supposed malefactresses.
“I wish that I could tell you tales of this witch and her actions, but due to my condition, the condition she has afflicted me with, I cannot without risking myself. I must furthermore beg—beg with all my heart—that no matter what, you never ask me any questions about myself, about my past and what has befallen me. If you do, the witch will surely triumph. I will tell you what little I can without risking myself, but if ever you ask even a single question of me I may fail, and the witch, the necromancer, will be victorious.”

Kahlert clung to her words like a romantic hero clinging to a precipice, knowing at long last his true test was at hand.

“Ashton,” Omorose breathed, the fear in her voice genuine—if he asked but one question … “Ashton, will you help me find and destroy this malefactress, though I will not tell you all the details of her witchery? I cannot stop her by myself.”

Well she might have asked the rain to dampen her hair, or the sun to dry it. She was a simple creature, he realized quickly, of limited understanding but a true heart, and if the trial of his faith was not questioning her further then he would obey. Preventing a victim from testifying under penalty of some curse was exactly the sort of trick a witch would employ. Once Kahlert recovered from the shock of it all they ate together, and then talked long into the night of how to find the witch. He would be her hammer.