Call of the Kings (23 page)

‘And that,’ replied the caliph, ‘is why they will never agree on anything.’

The younger moustachioed vizier appeared at the far end of the lake walking quickly. As he hurried toward them, Twilight, leaving his mind unread due to a self-inflicted protocol he used with gracious hosts, sensed something was wrong. Approaching the caliph slightly out of breath but still affecting a series of bows, the vizier eventually received the caliph’s nod to speak.

‘Most holy leader, some bad news has just arrived with the messengers on white horses. The great physician Ramzi has been attacked and is close to death.’

Chapter 16

He doesn’t deserve to die for something I introduced him to.

Although Tara had been taking the annual Equinoctial Festival of the Dead at Stonehenge on her own for five years, she still experienced a few jangling nerves as it approached. Twilight, knowing that she was ready and knowing that the ordeal had to be singularly overcome at some time, had left her to get on with it. After officiating at seventy-seven such occasions himself, more than any other venefici in their ten-thousand-year history, he’d more than done his bit. Nonetheless, being the only other veneficus allowed access, he was always ready to stand in with Tara if she needed him. The night before the next Festival, Virgile, understanding her trepidation at the coming ordeal and knowing that Twilight wouldn’t be around, came to the Avebury compound. He would stay with her until minutes before she was required at Stonehenge, then quickly transfer back to Carnac to steward his own annual gathering of the Cowering Dead. Once his mists had subsided and the shrieks of the cowerers finished for another year, he would then quickly return to Stonehenge and comfort his shaking wife until her normal composure returned.

It wasn’t that he was any better at facing the annual ordeal, just that he’d handled quite a few more. Besides, as Twilight was fond of saying, the day a veneficus is not disconcerted by a day of screaming cowerers, a great many of whom had been placed in the death mists by that astounder, the ceremony loses some of its significance. And, despite the many other uses of the enchantments, attendance at the festival of the dead was their true reason for being a veneficus.

Giving her husband a long kiss, Tara bade him good-bye and walked toward the mighty stones of Stonehenge. As the mists began to descend and Virgile disappeared to his own duties, Tara took up her place, closed her eyes, and steeled herself for the first screaming arrival. True to the succession of such things, it was the last people dispatched who arrived first on the scene, and the high-pitched wail of Magnus Groningen quickly assailed her ears, followed by the old woman who’d lured her into his trap. Then it became a succession of hate-filled screams from her and Twilight’s past personal body count, many of whom had been present in previous years. Similarly, Virgile was dealing with two of the three Confrerie, Teneo and Evanesco. Quiritatio, the third member of the evil Francian brotherhood, was conspicuous by his absence as - even though he was dead - being mute, he couldn’t even scream his wrath at the wretchedness of his silent prison in the cowering mists.

Finally it was over for another year and Tara, rejoined by an equally relieved Virgile, settled down in the arms of her deep-voiced husband to watch the November night envelop Wessex.

‘I wonder,’ she said softly, ‘what adventures my old mentor is up to right now?’

‘Whatever it is,’ replied Virgile, ‘you can be sure that it will be extraordinarily different from anything that he has done before.’

The caliph let Twilight go immediately with the promise that he report back on Ramzi’s situation as soon as he could. Seconds later the Wessex enchanter arrived at the old physician’s tent.

It was a mess.

Smashed jars and pots of ointment and liquids lay everywhere. The young patient Ramzi had been treating for the stab wound was nowhere to be seen, and, guarded by five other young men, Ramzi himself was lying on the table covered by a blood-soaked white sheet with his bald head swathed in crimson bandages. His eyes were closed. Freezing the five young men because he didn’t want to waste any time, Twilight bent over the little physician. His face was very pale, and Twilight could see instantly that someone had smashed him over the head violently with a club or something equally heavy. There was a faint pulse. Barely enough to sustain life and against the odds, the little physician’s heart was still beating.

Gently Twilight laid his hand on the head bandages.

It is Twilight. I am here and speaking directly to your mind.

There was a long pause before a faint reply came.

How was your visit to the caliph?

It was fine. I shouldn’t have left you. This might never have happened.

You couldn’t protect me forever. This was bound to happen sooner or later.

Who did this?

A former patient. He was desperate for opium. I told you about this problem.

What was his name?

There was a long silence before the faint reply came again.

I’m not going to tell you. He doesn’t deserve to die for something I introduced him to.

But he also killed your young patient. The young man with the stab wound who was here. Surely he deserves to be punished for that?

There was another long silence.

It’s the same thing. Desperation driven by an uncontrollable craving. It is my fault, not the killer’s. I introduced the opium into his system that eventually made him do this thing.

Twilight paused for a while in thought.

You know I can easily find out who the killer was. His traces are everywhere around this wrecked tent. I can follow them to wherever he is hiding.

Ramzi’s stooped little body seemed to heave with an internal sigh. His eyelids fluttered before he settled down again. Finally his reply came.

Great astounder from Britain, your presence here has given me much joy. I have enjoyed our discussions more than anything and was greatly looking forward to their continuance. But now I am dying and have one last request of you. It is this; that you do not pursue the person responsible for the death of my patient and myself. It will serve no purpose . . . For me there is no redemption in vengeance, only more suffering. That is my request.

Twilight looked down at the bloodied body of the physician who had, in just two short days, become his friend. A clever, erudite, gently perceptive little man who had earned the praise and trust of everyone who knew and dealt with him. Blessed with a small aura, which he only used in the furtherance of his calling, and smashed to near death because of his great love of pharmacology and the discovery of potions to heal the sick and wounded of his native city, the protection of his own killer was typical of the strength of the little Baghdadi, even as his own destiny approached.

Your request is granted, great physician Ramzi. Strike for the stars, a better place awaits you.

Thank you and good-bye, my magic friend. May your final years glow with fine deeds.

The reply was barely distinguishable, made with the little physician’s final breath.

Outside of the deaths of his own family and the passing of his great mentor, Merlin, and that of the blessed Katre, Twilight rarely shed tears at someone’s passing. Death to a veneficus was a commonplace occurrence whether caused by his hand or others. Now he wept openly and at some length for the death of a fine little man whom he hardly knew.

Then, as promised, he transformed back to the caliph’s summer tent to pass on the news of Ramzi’s gallant death. Having done that he made a big decision.

He didn’t need to visit Jerusalem; Rome, Constantinople, and Baghdad had provided him with all the information he required. Besides, even an old veneficus gets to miss the companionship of other familiar astounders and his loyal black and white pied poly devil birds.

It was time to go home.

‘Wars fought in the name of religion have a vehemence attached to them not found in the more normal power struggles for territorial dominance. A sword’s edge is all the keener and wielded with extra strength when forged in the image of a believed god. Lives are less important and freely given when subjugated for the faith. History is littered with religious and pagan victories won on the fervour and piety of fanatic fighters. Leaders know this. That is why the great battles to come between Islam and Christianity will be so intense and so bloody, with both sides believing that the occupation of Jerusalem is essential to their faith. One thing I have discovered in my travels is that there is absolutely no will on either side for compromise or dialogue. This battle is going to be enjoined one way or another; it is, as you feared at the outset, going to happen, my liege, and nothing will stop it. Nothing in all my venefical codes, experiences, and discussions in the three great cities of Rome, Constantinople, and Baghdad tells me when it will end or what the final outcome will be. This is a conflict that has the potential to continue for a very long time.’

King William of England, now universally known as William the Conqueror, sighed and nodded his thanks and acceptance at Twilight’s words, who was accompanied by Tara and Virgile in the Throne Room of the Westminster Palace.

‘Then we had better prepare for the worst,’ he said quietly.

The End

Epilogue

As the eleventh century drew to a close, two major events took place. The first - and Twilight would say by far the most significant - was a rallying speech made by the new pope, known as Urban II, at a conference in Clermont, Francia. Mounting a high scaffold he exhorted the massed assembly of the faithful to regain the Holy Land from the Infidel by unsheathing the Holy Lance and following it east to a Christian victory. Feelings ran high. The spark that would inflame the next millennia had been lit. Hearing of this the Muslims similarly took down the mighty curved sword of
Zulfiqar
and stoked up the fires of war in preparation for the coming invasion. Jerusalem would be taken; Allah would be victorious. The
Jihad
had begun.

Shortly afterward a Norman duke called Godfrey of Bouillon, an old friend and ally of King William with whom he had fought at Hastings, set off from his castle on the plateau between Flanders and Brabant at the head of a small army of Francian knights and soldiers. He had assumed huge debts, mortgaged his castle and everything he owned in order to meet the cost of raising, arming, provisioning, and providing horses and carrying mules for his private army. Their destination was Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Many others would follow their two-thousand-mile march across inhospitable lands at great hardship.

The first Crusade had begun.

Odo, Twilight’s hermit friend with the small aura, had foreseen the coming battle seven years earlier in Rome. Silas, the Jew in Constantinople, and Ramzi and the caliph in Baghdad - one of those expected to lead the Muslim armies - had also known it was only a matter of time.

The second event was Twilight reached his one-hundred-year reign as a veneficus.

Eighty-seven years after he had arrived as a thirteen-year-old village boy called Will Timms at the Savernake compound of the mighty long magus, his Destiny Stone awaited.

Tara buried her mentor and great companion under his mighty Blue Horn sarsen stone on a cold, wet first of November morning. He’d reached his one hundred years exactly the previous day as the winter sun had eased down over the Silbury Mound and had, as she would have expected, taken his leave with great dignity and a smile. His final pronouncement, delivered softly with a smile playing about his lips, had been typical in that he was still thinking about the venefical lot even as his own death approached.

‘Y’know,’ he husked softly, ‘the long magus was absolutely right. We venefici may be knowers of the progressions and habits of this turning earth and have the wonderful power of the enchantments at our fingertips, yet we are as susceptible as anyone to the thrall of charismatic kings and the golden light cast by their crowns. Luckily for us there are not many of them with the requisite abundance of charisma. Even being able to transform from one place to another with the speed of thought pales into insignificance against the power of their influence. Charisma, then, outstrips our crinkum crankum as the best magic and takes all of us, veneficus, slave, or freeman, along with it . . . eh?’

Then he’d slowly closed his famous black eyes, holding her hand, his other hand gripping the old pica beak necklace around his neck given to him all those years ago by Old Pen, the wolf leader.

A whisper caressed her mind as he departed.

The final moment of my destiny, dear Tara, has just arrived. Strike for the stars, great venefica . . . Good-bye.

As he closed his Cimmerian black eyes for the last time, still as deep and clear as when she first saw them, Tara remembered the first four lines of the old Elder Pendragon couplet called the Song of the Venefici, taught to Twilight by his beloved Merlin, and, in turn, passed by him to her. The prophetic words eased their gentle way into her mind and as she whispered them, Twilight’s voice seemed to accompany her.

Kiss the wind and sense the seasons

Smell the rain and know the reasons

Feel the sun, plunge the earth

Whisper plant, whisper birth.

Although Tara had reigned as the primary English venefica for many years and was a wise and experienced spellbinder, her old and much cherished mentor had always been there. Hardly a day had gone by when they had not shared a few words, walked the mighty Stones of Destiny at Avebury, laughed at the foibles of venefical decision-making, especially that associated with the reigning monarch, and sometimes just sat in the comfort of each other’s company without words. As Twilight had always done with the stone of his mentor, the long magus, she would do with his. A daily visit, a caress of cold sarsen, a few words to let him know what she was doing as she sought the comfort of his silent approval.

Over two thousand pica had been sitting on the fence and trees surrounding the old Avebury compound for weeks, young and old. They would not leave him, not now, not ever. If Tara had not made sure that a plentiful supply of grain and fresh water was at hand for the birds to eat and drink where they sat, they would have starved rather than leave their beloved liegelord’s compound for a single moment. They would leave the compound when he did. His life would always be inextricably linked to theirs; generations of the pied poly devils had shared and contributed to the mighty deeds of his enchanted rule. They had been his eyes and ears, his messengers, fighters, decoys, and, when called upon, had killed for him and been killed by those that opposed him.

They were his breath.

Of the many small tribute stones surrounding his mighty Blue Horn stone, itself named after the pica with the blue feather flash in its wings killed by Lupa, the white wolf of Elelendise, the great majority belonged to gallant pica that had died in his service.

The silence from their serried ranks when Twilight finally closed his eyes was a visible manifestation of grief more powerful than the loudest sound. With their dark, inquisitive eyes closed, every black and white head had dropped and buried its beak deep in its chest feathers as they each gave into their grief and an individual memory of a ragged thirteen-year-old tyro who for eighty-seven years had truly struck the stars as he led them from one victory to another in the constant battle to maintain the independence of Wessex against the brutal dominance of invaders and religious savants.

Vale, great veneficus, we were proud to be your pica. We are now released from your ligamen.

But now he was gone and Tara had to get on with it.

Even though she still had the comforting presence of Virgile just a few transformational moments away in Carnac, Francia, the mighty Stones of Destiny close by, and her loyal fourth-generation wolfhounds by her side, the English venefical burden was now all hers to deal with. With the ever-present conflicts ebbing and flowing across the land and the boundaries of sovereign rule extending to a countrywide, nay even further, remit, protecting the Celts of Wessex had expanded beyond the country of Britain. No matter how hard Tara and Twilight had tried to keep away from the religious and sovereign power games played out in various parts of the land, church, and state, the venefical enchantments would always, as her great mentor’s final, quiet statement had said, be inextricably entwined with the charisma of kings.

Now its union was threatening to expand even further.

As Twilight’s own journeys had verified, great religious battles in the arid lands to the east were beginning. The venefical remit was now expanding to encompass faraway countries and alien cultures.

Would that mean strange venefici, different outlooks, and skewed enchantments?