Nights of Villjamur (49 page)

He made as if to stand up, but Tryst grabbed his sleeve, shook his head. 'Jeryd, I know what you're thinking, but you don't know anything yet, and also think of your reputation among the Inquisition--'

'To hell with my reputation,' he growled, but his resolve weakened. Jeryd took several deep breaths, and sat back down to watch the
couple
more closely.

It was her all right, Marysa, laughing eagerly at his jokes and flashing him glances once reserved for Jeryd. The way he touched hands, the way she flirted with him in return. He pressed his lips against her fingers as she held them to his mouth. The look of anticipation in his eyes, the promise of something Jeryd assumed was only for himself.

Jeryd glanced at Tryst, who shook his head firmly, though he had been watching them, too. 'Drink some tea.'

'You think a fucking cup of tea's going to make me feel better?' People nearby looked their way.

'No,' he said quietly. 'Remember, Jeryd, you're a gentleman and a fine investigator of long standing. You're not going to blow all that in a fit of jealous rage in a public place.'

Tryst made a quick hand movement across Jeryd's drink.

After a few minutes where he could feel a strange rage take charge of his body, Jeryd stormed out of the tearoom and left Tryst alone there. Into the Villjamur night, skidding on the ice sheet so that he fell flat on his face. His tears fell onto the ice.

Jeryd made it home, eventually, with more bruises than he ever sustained in the course of Inquisition duties. He changed his robes of office for something more casual, started a fire, brought down a bottle of some old vodka, the sort that burns the throat. He wanted some control over things, over his life, and the drink felt like it could help.

He slumped in a chair by the fire, drinking and totally miserable. Outside, somewhere in the distance was the keening of a banshee. Another death, but that would be the job of some other poor bastard to investigate. Jeryd could not help wishing that Marysa's new man was the one the banshee was screaming about.

He sat waiting in the darkness for her to come home.

*

She came in much later, a fluster of scarves and robes.

Marysa was acting as if nothing unusual had happened. The way she looked at him - all warm and loving - disgusted him. He was so unusually angry he felt as if some drug had taken hold of him.

She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek, the ghost of another man on her lips. He was amazed that someone who was blatantly cheating on him could act so innocently.

'It doesn't get any warmer, does it?' she murmured. 'So, how was your evening, dear?'

'Fine,' Jeryd replied tersely, working out how best to approach the subject of her betrayal. He wanted to say so many things. To tell her everything he had witnessed. As she was hanging up her outer garments, he hurled the heavy mug from which he'd been drinking straight at the back of her head. As it exploded in a ceramic shower, he felt like some animal thing had taken possession of him. Like chemicals that weren't meant to be inside of him had affected his thoughts.

'We both saw you!' Jeryd yelled out to her unconscious form, half in tears, fighting to maintain charge of his throbbing mind.

No response from her.

In all his decades in Villjamur, and during all his years in the Inquisition up to that point, Jeryd had never struck a woman. Men who did disgusted him, and now Jeryd disgusted himself. It was as if something had claimed his body, making him act with impulses he would have normally kept under firm control.

He felt drugged.

He knew all too well that there was a fine line between sanity and madness.

*

Later, Jeryd was aware of a knock at the door. 'Sir, it's me, Tryst. I was worried about you. Is everything all right?'

At last a friend, someone who can help.
Jeryd rubbed his eyes because he'd been crying for so long and now felt numb as he was recalling what he'd done, as if he was starting to have no memory of the event. Jeryd let him enter amid a blast of cold air, and then tried to explain what had happened. He stared at the unconscious form of Marysa, who was breathing so faintly that he wanted to weep again.

Jeryd was glad that Tryst was there. Right then, he needed someone who could think clearly, because he damn well couldn't.

'You hit her?' he gasped.

Poor guy, he shouldn't have to see me like this.
Jeryd remained in a stunned silence, sheer disbelief at what he'd done.

After leaning down to examine her in the shadows of the sparsely lit room, Tryst suggested they move her to the bedroom. Luckily there was no sign of wounding, and he was greatly relieved that rumels rarely bruised.

Every now and then he collapsed into sobs, whereupon Tryst tried to comfort him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. They carried her up the narrow staircase, to the marital bed which by now had changed all meaning for him. Her tail slopped limply, but her face was the illusion of peace. He covered her up carefully, then Tryst led him downstairs again.

'Aren't you going to reproach me?' Jeryd said finally.

'No, of course not,' Tryst said emphatically, and Jeryd felt an instant surge of relief.

'You're a good man, Tryst. A good friend.' Jeryd wanted to shake his hand in gratitude, but felt too ashamed for that. What he'd done was
unforgivable
. If Tryst told someone and Jeryd lost his career, it was nothing more than he deserved.

Tryst calmed him down. His tone was assured, and that's what he needed right then, the sound of someone in control, any sort of control in this madness. Jeryd stood up and went over to look through the window at the snow gathering on the ledge again.

He began to sob helplessly at what a monster he'd become.

'Try and forget it,' Tryst urged. 'You need to concentrate on your work now. Concentrate on those Council murders.' Then he paused. 'Maybe she'll forgive you, in time.'

If she left him after this and never talked to him again, Jeryd wouldn't blame her. For some reason, the thought of her being with someone else wasn't the main issue any more. He didn't know what was. Maybe he just didn't care about anything any more.

'Let's go for a walk, help clear your head,' Tryst suggested.

Before they left the house, Jeryd wrote a note to Marysa, then tore it up. What the hell could words do between them now? Anything he might say would be deeply inappropriate and he imagined her reaction upon reading it in the morning.

As they walked the dark streets, it was the sheer coldness of the city that gradually brought him to his senses. Even when he slipped on the ice and mildly twisted his ankle, Jeryd didn't care. He felt he deserved the pain, as if the elements and Villjamur itself were slapping him down with a vague, ironic sort of justice.

They came two hours before the dawn, dressed blacker than the shadows of the streets itself, two dozen cultists from the Order of the Dawnir, and they gathered in numbers outside the simple wooden door. Papus placed a metal box containing a
brenna
-based relic at the base of it, altered the settings subtly, retreated.

A few heartbeats later, the door exploded, shards of wood clattering on the cobbles and the neighbouring buildings, an abrupt hailstorm of splinters. In the following silence, her cultists entered the city headquarters of the Order of the Equinox. Shouts and screams were soon heard from inside. Knives were drawn. Quick battles fought in the gloom. Only the gargle of blood exiting a throat indicated a death rattle.

They used several
aldartals
to freeze the men and women of the Equinox in time - poised in moments of confusion and terror for several minutes - before binding them with ropes. Any that weren't thus immobilized were killed. Dartun's own relics seemed to inhibit the effectiveness of many of her own devices, so much of what went on happened in real time. The bitterness of ancient rivalry had now reached a violent climax. Papus expected answers. Her previous threat - the hostage she had taken - had not produced a response from Dartun. She would search this building until she knew what secrets were hidden here, and what truths she didn't yet know about Villjamur, about the lands of the red sun . . .

About Dartun himself.

In many of the rooms there was only candlelight at best. Still, it was enough for her order to go about their search. She had planned this in detail. Thirty-four of the Equinox were captured, tied up, dragged out into the alleyway. She figured there would be at least another forty members hiding here, now fully aware of the break-in. She whispered strategy, signalled by hand the parts of the building to be investigated. Some of the corridors had been blocked by simple energy shields, relics being activated within the stonework. Simple enough to remove - they were meant for common burglars rather than to deter cultists. Progress through the complex of secret corridors and hidden rooms was efficient.

Shards of the Equinox technology were shot at her cultists, ripples of purple light cutting through the air. The darkness allowed her to see them easily, but she soon lost the ability to see clearly in the dark because of the constant flares of light. Papus tripped over more than once, her palms stinging as they slapped against the cold stone floor. She could hear gasps and shudders of breath and coughs of blood and muffled cries. She could only hope they represented the defeat of the Equinox. Then these private battles ceased.

A signal was sent along the line of her order, back to the front of the building. Torches were ignited. There might be plenty of new technology here, an abundance of unfamiliar relics, that she could steal information from.

She began to search thoroughly, although not sure exactly what she was looking for. Every stone-built room was well kept, no cobwebs in any of the corners. Wherever she stepped she found herself surrounded by intricately decorated artefacts, all alien to her eye. They had to be Archipelagan in origin, but suggested far more ancient technologies than she was aware of, perhaps not even of this world. Bizarrely inert instruments, unknown carvings, rune-work she didn't understand, scrolls written in Dartun's own code, and every new discovery made her feel less sure of herself, a cultist who was diminishing in quality.

A strange smell came from one side of the complex of chambers. This arterial architecture, so typical of this ancient city, meant it was difficult to locate at first. Such was the design of Dartun's home, each room prompted a sudden self-awareness so you felt as if you were exploring some aspect of your own mind and not just another room.

When she found the source of the smell, she wished she hadn't.

She called more of her followers to her side, standing in a large room with a curving, tiled ceiling, as if it was a cellar. The temperature seemed as cold as the snow outside. More lanterns were brought into the room, and as each extra light arrived, there was an audible gasp.

The room was fifty paces long, around twenty wide, and at the far end against the wall were the partially decayed remains of human beings, all shackled by an iron ring around the throat. Laid out on tables in two rows before these dead were crude shapes covered in cloth.

Papus stepped forward and, one by one, revealed what lay beneath.

'By Bohr . . .' someone whispered.

Mounds of flesh were heaped in metal containers, glistening under the torch in her hand. Bones jutted out from some of them, as did an array of metallic instruments that she assumed to be some kind of relic. Her vision drifted across each container in awe.

'Shit, it's moving!' she gasped, and gestured with her torch at one particular lump of flesh. As more light was brought to the table it was clear for all to see that the flesh-heap was rising and falling like some half-asleep beast. Vaguely hypnotic, utterly disgusting, the mound suddenly rolled over to reveal human organs underneath. Everyone groaned in revulsion. What she took for a mouth opened and closed cautiously, with a crepitus noise as if always taking its dying breath. Blood skimmed in intervals just under the surface of some strange, flaring epidermis.

Behind her, a man vomited.

What the hell was Dartun doing? This atrocity had to be immoral, in any age, in any society.

'What d'you think it is, Gydja?' one of the younger girls of her sect enquired. Her dark, slender features displayed a helpless fear and confusion.

'It's obviously some life form, although nothing I'm as yet aware of. I'd be interested to see if the banshees recognize this thing as a living organism or not.'

Comments were passed back and forth, theories offered, then dismissed. There was nothing to be certain of except that Dartun had been working on a horrific project. He was utterly insane.

'I want at least two of you here at all times monitoring this,' she instructed, staring at the nearest mound of mottled flesh. 'We'll examine these relics that Dartun's been using. I want to know everything that's gone on here, everything that bastard has planned.'

She headed back through the corridors, deep in thought. At times, feeling faint, she closed her eyes, paused to lean against a wall, just one thought in her mind disturbing her.

The difference between life and death isn't all that great.