Heaven's Gate (5 page)

“It is too late for that.” The man says sadly, simply.

“I saved your life.” Bob whines.

“And I’m saving your soul.” The Pilgrim answers, raising the sword and bringing it down as quickly as his mercy demands.

This time the Lord’s Prayer comes, along with passages half remembered from a childhood more than a century past, the Pilgrim is still reciting them when Robert Tenant’s head rolls to a stop, the only thing reflected in the shards of a cracked mirror, apart from dying flames, as red as blood.

Chapter 2
:

“Across an
Ocean
of
Sand
.”

Innumerable grains of sand wash through the clown’s empty eye sockets, yellow grains shifting like the last seconds wrung from an hourglass. The clown resists the temptation to count them, it is a failing of his kind, of the dead, who have eternity to spend on such abstraction. Instead he sits up abruptly, his bleached-bone face dislodging all but a few of the dry particles from its smooth contours in a single motion. His much abused clothing is harder to clear of sand but a few blows against his empty ribcage send the yellow grains tumbling back to the desert floor. Satisfied at last, the skeletal troubadour reaches into his tattered suit of bells and rainbow hued, shabby velvet and draws forth a flute. Air hisses between teeth worn down to nubs by the endless sand and despite the lack of lips, produces a low, sad tune. This tune is the last remnant of a life long lost, the last spark of the soul that once animated the perpetually grinning clown. At the urging of some will other than its own, the clown sniffs the wind, allowing it to waft through the ragged hole in the centre of his bony face, then sets off across the featureless sand.

Half the buildings of the old town are smoldering embers by the time the flute’s music touches the scene near the abandoned cart. A lizard, more timid than the carrion birds sharing in the feast of quickly drying flesh, scurries frantically into the gloom beneath the carts, finding cool relief in the shaded sand. The bone clown’s gaping eyes take in the scene with all the indifference of a cannon bore.
 
Nearly twenty bodies lie hacked and strewn about the half buried tracks. After a minute or so of studying the carnage the clown stops his soft tune and pricks up his head, causing the rusty bells dangling from his loose hat to jingle. This in turn sends the carrion birds, which had so far managed to ignore both his tune and his presence, spilling into the air in response to the sudden jarring sound.

A voice, no louder than the buzzing flies, echoes through the clown’s cranial cavity. It is no insect, though, anything of any interest to that kind has long been picked clean. It is something else that stirs in the endless darkness behind that bleached skull. From within the emptiness of his skull other eyes share his vision and it is their voices to which the clown now listens.

“
You see, he will make a fair tool if used correctly.”

“Never that, the living are flawed tools at best. Brother, we should not be complacent in this one’s strength, it could be turned against us as easily as against the vampires. Remember we thought Leedon could be easily used and though he has not outlived his usefulness, each year he becomes harder to control.”
Another buzzing whisper replies.

“I need no reminding of that!”

“Animal or man, it makes no matter, a general and a mule, both have the same flaw - they have minds of their own. In
Leedon’s
case this is unavoidable, the living only follow their own, without him we would never have brought down the Citadel.”

“Indeed, we came close to victory then. If only he had done all that was required.”

“But in the end greed prevented him from doing all that was needed. He did what he wanted rather than what he was told, that is a vice of the living we must accept and be wary of.”

“We can trust the Captain to follow his own nature, at least! He hates our enemy and his obsession with the Gate is fanatical; so long as he is given the right motivations he should be biddable enough.”

“All the more reason he must be watched! He will hate us with the same passion, even hunt us, should he come close enough. He is haunted by his own piety, his own sense of damnation. Such obsession is the great flaw of the living.”

“And a great strength, if used correctly…I am aware of the difficulties of manipulating the living, Mordiki, none more so, but it is sometimes necessary, particularly when facing an enemy as dangerous and cunning as the Strigoi. The very initiative that makes this one a liability is also what makes him a greater threat to our enemies than any summoning or construct we could make ourselves.”

 
The thin hum of the voices in the clown’s head goes on, as the two watchers continue their debate but they are drowned out by the notes of his flute as the clown returns his attention to the instrument resting against his teeth and continues his mournful playing. He rarely bothers to listen to his masters’ deliberations, they will give him his orders soon enough and with no choice in whether to follow them or not, the clown can see no reason not to return to his playing. Indeed, only moments later, the urging comes and he sets off at his steady tireless pace, after the single set of horse tracks that lead from the town, leaving a low note echoing on the wind behind him as he wanders back onto the burning sea of sand.

*

It takes a moment for Father Rugan to adjust to the reality of the trees swaying gently in
 
the small orchard outside his window. The haze of the open desert seems hard to clear from his eyes and for a few slim seconds he could believe that the lush growth around him is only a mirage melting in the oppressive heat of the desert’s Anvil. His hands reach tentatively to his face expecting to touch the pitted smoothness of old bone.
 
No, he reminds himself he is Father Geoffrey Rugan, Abbot and Confessor to General Leedon and as such, one of the most powerful men in the
Union
, or so he had been once. Lamentably
Maliki
was right, his grip on his protégé is slipping now and General Leedon, Protector of the Faith and his once fanatical charge, has grown hungry even, as he’d stopped being lean.

With the Crusade fading in memory, the General had been taking to politics with a speed and skill that made Rugan question just who his other advisors might be. Oh there was no denying the Church for him now, he was still and had always been a true believer, besides too much of his strength lay with the Pilgrims and Crusaders but Leedon had not been as blind as Rugan and his brothers both within the Church and without had hoped. It had become increasingly hard to twist that strong streak of fundamentalism in Leedon to what Rugan saw as desirable ends. Once the boy would never have taken a step without consulting his confessor, now as a man, Leedon had taken his faith into his own hands. Six years ago the Citadel had fallen and the game that had been played out between Necromancer and vampire for centuries had ended. The holy fires of zealotry had consumed the very heart of the leech’s foul creed or so those behind the Crusade had thought. The hell spawn had died by the hundreds that day and yet these days there always seemed to be more, popping up in the remotest corners of the Union, as if the destruction of the Citadel had only served to disperse them, like bees without a nest. Despite their apparent victory, Rugan and his brothers still found their plans subtly thwarted, as far as Rugan was concerned the interference could only come from one source.

Rugan would call that source evil, he had gone to great lengths to reveal the extent of that evil while hiding how much he knew of it. Since the founding of the Union and probably before Necromancer and vampire had been locked in competition, many, on both sides of the conflict, argued about whether the Necromancers had made the vampires, who defied them like willful children or had somehow discovered their secrets from studying this most potent form of undead.

Rugan turns his gaze from the garden to the small mirror besides him. Granted most Crusaders would have trouble differentiating the withered creature that looked back at him from the glass, from the twisted Elders of the vampire sects, the methods that kept him alive for so long could hardly be called natural. They would call the clown he’s set on the Pilgrim’s trail equally evil. Rugan sighs and with an effort of will puffs out the desiccated flesh into the rosy, vital jowls that he always presented to the court. It was foolish prejudice like this which forced him to seek out agents like Samuel. Sending living men against vampires, except in the numbers they had gathered during the Crusade would simply swell their ranks. Agents of bone and dust stood more chance but they brought with them all sorts of other problems. No, Samuel Blake was something unique,
 
even allowing for the inherent danger, he just might be the tool to finally penetrate to the heart of the enemy.

A knock on the door, forces his mind back to the here and now.

“Father Abbott? His Excellency General Leedon, demands to speak with you, in haste if you can accommodate him.”

“Give me a moment, Jacob.” Rugan answers, quickly replacing a small doll, adorned in a jester’s outfit, in his drawer. “Tell His Excellency I shall attend him in the chapel, as soon as may be.”

“As you wish, Father.” The young monk agrees, scurrying off.

So the child had escaped already. Even though he had encouraged her and provided some of the where with all, he had not expected her to run so soon. It was typical of the spoiled girl that she had acted on her own wishes so soon, before Rugan could be absolutely sure what part she played in his enemies’ plans and before he had even managed to manipulate Captain Blake into position. She would have to be watched over by other means until Blake arrived. Perhaps it was for the best, he’d intended to use her to draw the Pilgrim but it would be safer if he kept events at a distance, the last thing he needed was a fanatical hunter in the city! As his colleague had pointed out, Blake would be pretty much indiscriminate in his persecution of what he perceived to be evil. Not that a mercenary like Blake would ever be allowed near the palace but why take the risk? Rugan could manipulate things just as well through his agents.

“No doubt you would think me evil too?” Rugan murmurs, quietly addressing the monk even now retreating down the hallway, “I have done evil things, it is true,” he tells the ruddy mask that looks back sympathetically from the mirror, “but I am still alive, my soul is my own to answer for and my appetites are not those of Hell.”

Am I innocent in this, though? He asks himself. Blake is an evil thing, an abomination fueled by corruption, no matter what misguided religious dogma he may espouse.
 
The dead were pure tools, neither good nor evil, simply mannequins in the hands of their master. The same could not be said of the living, when one engaged them one was responsible for unpredictable and possibly appalling consequences. The last time he had seen Blake the man had been stained head to toe with blood and there was no telling how many innocents he had cut down in his frenzied efforts to reach the heart of the Citadel. No one could have seen him gorge himself in the chaos of battle, in the dark corners of that old fortress or the man would have been burned then, along with the foulness in the ancient fortress but Rugan had suspected what Captain Blake was since the very first time he had seen him.

The man had something of the drawn look about the eyes that Rugan had seen in many of his brothers; even if the body has the strength, the average human mind is not designed to watch the passing of more than one century. Madness took the older Necromancers more easily than any frailty of the flesh and Rugan had seen something of that mania in the Captain’s eyes. Indeed, the fact that he was prepared to use such a tool, made Rugan even more inclined to self-examination. He looks back critically at the mirror, looking for some crack in his mask, some sign of the inevitable disintegration. No, he was not mad but he was old and growing desperate! Extreme action was required if he was to finish what he had started. The necessity for such action was disturbing but still logical, he assures himself as he gathers his robes and prepares himself to go to the waiting General. In the final analysis he was beyond human moralities, almost any price was better than the idea of the Strigoi gaining what they had sought since men first became trapped in the Bowl. Next to that the deaths of Blake or Lillian Carter were sins too small to concern himself with; or was that the start of madness? The disassociation that allowed any number of terrible actions?
 
Rugan had lived a long time but he had a growing suspicion that he had been arrogant to think that he could pit his experience against the ageless evil of his undead enemies.

Before entering the chapel, the priest pauses and surreptitiously slides back a thin panel, which allows him a glimpse into the chamber beyond. As Rugan had expected, Angus has not wasted his time simply waiting for his confessor to come, the General is on his knees, hunched before the carving of the Christ man, in supplication. Rugan can never help a flush of pride when he sees his chapel. Only in
Island
City
with the clear waters of the Blue Snake to nurture the trees could so much wood be found. A fortune in amber varnished wood gleamed in the light of countless candles. No doubt, in their own places in the desert, dwellers like Mordiki felt that their brethren had nothing to lose by acting precipitously but Rugan knew well how far he had come, he would no more willingly lose this chapel to open war than he would the man who kneeled penitent within it. Not to the blood drinkers and not to the political vampires that served them.