The Shadow Master (23 page)

“What is happening?” he tried to say, but found his mouth and tongue were too misshapen to get the words out properly. He looked at the walls of the small chamber and tried to look to its top and bottom. The top was still there above his head but the bottom was far out of sight, way, way down there where his feet were.

“Close your eyes,” said the Shadow Master. “It will help counter the disorientation. We will arrive shortly, and when we do you will need to be ready.”

“For what?” Lorenzo tried to ask him again, his mouth grown longer still than it had been a moment before.

“For anything,” he replied. “Expect the best but prepare for the worst.”

“I don't understand,” Lorenzo tried to say.

“It will all be clear in a moment,” the Shadow Master told him, “as long as we have the timing right.”

“And if not?” Lorenzo was starting to get control of his mouth again. That was almost distinguishable.

“Too early will be forgivable, but too late will not be.” Then Lorenzo shut his eyes as he had been advised. He moved his arms and hands and they felt just normal to him, no longer stretched impossibly thin and tall. “Ready?” the Shadow Master asked.

Lorenzo opened his eyes. The chamber was normal sized again, as were they both. He felt a little giddy and disorientated. “Now your chronometer,” he said. “Get it out and be ready to activate it.” And then he drew his sword. It was a strange shape. Long and thin, with a slight curve and an even width along its length. Then the Shadow Master kicked at the wall in front of them. Nothing happened. “That wasn't meant to happen,” he said. “Let me try that again.” He moved a little to the left and kicked once more, and this time the wall swung open in front of them like a door. Lorenzo looked out in shock. The hessian-clad men from the catacombs were climbing out of holes in the walls and falling upon the people in the room before him, stabbing them brutally. Then he realised they were in the Council chambers. He knew it from the many maps on the walls and the huge model globe of the world. And then he looked closer at the people in the room. Those at the table were the councillors. And there was the Duke and Duchess of Lorraine. And Cosimo Medici as well. He shook his head a little as if it might clear it and help make sense of this all. “Now would be a very good time to activate the chronometer,” the Shadow Master said and leapt out into the room. Lorenzo looked down at the device in his hands and then back at the Shadow Master, who was moving as if time had been slowed already. Lorenzo could only watch in amazement as he fiddled with suddenly clumsy fingers to activate the chronometer, forgetting to not hold it in his gloved hand. The man whirled like a demon, whipping his cape behind him so fast it cracked like a whip, and each time he spun past an assassin, the robed figure fell as if by magic. But Lorenzo could see the blood spilling on the floor from their insides or throats. The Shadow Master's sword might have looked thin but it was obviously deadly sharp, severing limbs and disembowelling men with seeming ease.

It took a moment for the attackers to realise he was amongst them, and he had killed half of them by that time. The men at the table were trying to defend themselves from attack, which only made it easier for him to whip past the assailants from behind. He saw one man raise a dagger over the Duchess of Lorraine and smile before his head flew from his shoulders. The Shadow Master's sword then whipped left, a flash of light striking down two more attackers.

One of the robed men got a lucky blow in, striking the Shadow Master with his dagger, but, seeing it coming, he actually opened his arms as if to invite it. The dagger broke on the armour beneath his clothes as if the blade was made of card and then the robed man's legs fell out from under him as the full length of the Shadow Master's blade ran through him before he could understand what had happened to his blade.

And then it was over. The attackers were all dead. The men at the table were still in shock, looking about them in astonishment as the Shadow Master stepped back into the small chamber. Lorenzo stood there with the chronometer in his hands. He had not managed to activate it. “I'm… I'm,,, I'm sorry,” he said, holding it up between them. “No matter,” the Shadow Master said. “It was really just to measure how fast I was. Less than ten heart beats, I'd think.”

“It was… it was…” Lorenzo said.

“Amazing, wasn't it? You were amazing. No, perhaps courageous is better.”

“Me?” asked Lorenzo.

“Of course,” he said. “I don't exist. Remember that. And when you explain things, you'd better make it good.” Then, as fast as he had moved amongst the assassins, he whipped his hood and cape off, had them around Lorenzo's shoulders and had pushed him out the door into the chamber. Everyone in the room turned to stare at him. He looked down in his hands, but the chronometer was no longer there, having been replaced by the Shadow Master's curved, bloodied sword. He heard the door close behind him with a click and imagined the Shadow Master was stretching back down to the cavern, way beneath them.

Lorenzo pushed the hood back from his head and surveyed the carnage about him. He held up his gloved hand to knock any guard across the room who might try to attack him, but no one did. There were dead and wounded men everywhere. A few of the city guardsmen were still alive, although badly wounded, and most of those at the table were uninjured, though clearly shaken. They looked at him, as if unsure if he was going to attack them or not, and he dropped the sword to the floor and lowered his gloved hand and detached it, then held up his empty hands to them. The Duke was nursing a wound on his hand. The Duchess seemed untouched and his master, Cosimo Medici, was staring at him fixedly. He could see one or two of the guardsmen grabbing for their pikes and he wondered if this was going to become another one of those “that wasn't meant to happen” moments when the Duchess said, “You saved our lives. Who are you?”

“And how did you do that?” asked the Duke.

“Tell them nothing,” said Cosimo Medici, suddenly recognising Lorenzo. Then he heard a banging on the outer door and one of the councillors hurried over to unlock it. Things were going to move very, very quickly now, he thought and he was saved from having to explain himself until he was back inside the Medici household. And then, he knew, however he explained himself, it would need to be very, very good indeed.

 

 

XLIV

“What are you doing?” Leonardo demanded, and Damon turned around slowly and looked at him, his eyes glaring beautifully in the candle light. He had awoken to hear a strange noise in the workshop and had come to investigate. “I am going to fly,” Damon replied joyously.

“No, it is too dangerous,” said Leonardo, hurrying over to the youth, who was already half-strapped into the harness.

Damon shrugged. “The affairs of the Houses are not my concerns when I am an eagle. I will fly way beyond the city, over the countryside, or up above the clouds. It is dark now and no one will see me when the sun rises.”

“No, you must not,” Leonardo said firmly, placing one aged hand upon the youth's forearm.

“You are not my master,” Damon said.

“I think I am,” Leonardo said with a harsh tone to his voice.

“You are not my master anymore,” Damon amended.

Leonardo then noticed the dried-blood cross mark on the youth”s forearm. “What is this?” he asked.

“It is a mark of my faith,” said Damon, pulling his arm away from the old man.

“What faith is that exactly?” asked Leonardo, cautiously. But Damon would not answer and continued fixing the harness about his body.

“Come now,” said Leonardo, “enough of this. Take the harness off at once.

“You should build more of these,” Damon said. “Enough for a flock of beings. I would lead them up out of the city and we would fly away over the lands to build a new world high in the mountains. Or atop the clouds. We would escape the wars and pestilence of the Earth.”

“You and your master?” Leonardo asked.

“Yes,” Damon said. “And his flock. They must be made to understand that they do not need to skulk under the city in the catacombs anymore. They have a glorious destiny ahead of them if they choose the shape of angels.”

“Birds,” said Leonardo. “You become a bird, not an angel.”

“No,” said Damon. “It only appears a bird to your eyes. From my eyes I know I am an angel.”

Leonardo closed a fist over the strap that Damon was trying to fasten across his chest. “This is dangerous,” he said to the young man, placing his other hand on his chest. “Metamorphosis is a largely unknown science. You know how it transforms your body, but you don't know what other changes it can bring.”

“This is not science,” said Damon. “Science is heretical. This is divine but you think it science.”

“Who has told you this?” Leonardo asked.

“My master.”

“If I am not your master, then isn't the Lord Duke your master?”

“He is not my master.”

“Then who is?” Leonardo asked cautiously.

“You will know him when he ascends over the city like a giant angel. You will build the harness that will transform him into his rightful form.”

Leonardo took his hand off Damon's chest. He now saw that the glare in the youth”s eyes that he had at first thought beautiful had a tinge of madness to it. He had been blinded by the young man's beauty and not seen what was before him.

“What has this new master promised you?” Leonardo asked.

“We will be saved the sufferings of this Earth,” Damon said. “We will see this city destroyed by plague and war and we alone will escape it. The sinners will all be punished.”

Leonardo tightened his grip on the harness strap and said, “You must stop this at once. You must take this harness off.” But Damon jerked the strap from Leonardo's hand. “You are not well,” said Leonardo. “You must come and lie down. Let me fetch some potions to calm you.”

“No more potions,” he said. “Angels do not need potions.”

“I insist,” said Leonardo, grabbling hold of the harness strap once again and attempting to undo it.

“No,” shouted Damon and swung wildly at the old man. His arm and one wing struck Leonardo, sending him falling heavily to the floor. Damon did not hear his head strike the stones heavily and did not see his eyes roll back in his head, as if staring sightlessly. He continued to put on the harness as if he was alone in the chamber. He had a destiny to fulfil, to show his master and followers that they were not defeated, that they could still achieve their ascension. He only had to show them the way.

 

 

 

XLV

The dead bodies were laid out in rows along the floor under the framed maps of the world that they had appeared through. They had been placed on hessian mats, like the cloth their hoods had been cut from, to prevent their blood from staining the tiles beneath them. On one side of the dead men, the Duke of Lorraine stood with about two dozen moustached men at his back. On the other side, Cosimo Medici stood, with a similar number of bearded men behind him. The Head Councillor worried that at one wrong word they would all rush at each other with weapons raised.

Cosimo and the Duke walked up and down the row of men, warily looking at them. They were surprised to recognise several of the men. Ghislieri the merchant. Cervini the stone mason.
Farnese
the minor noble. All good men of the city.

“What madness has driven them to this?” the Duke asked. But the only man who could perhaps have told them, the councillor Sforza, lay amongst the dead, having taken poison when he was seized by the city guardsmen at the Head Councillor's orders.

Cosimo Medici shook his head in amazement at the simple but brutal way each of the dead men had been slain. “It seems a little too neat that they are all dead and we have no one for questioning.” the Duke had protested, upon learning that the man who had saved them had been in the service of the Medicis.

“These men do not easily talk,” Cosimo replied, thinking back to the survivor of the attack on him in the cathedral that he had tortured for information.

Looking at the parade of dead men, Cosimo or the Duke would occasionally reach out a foot to turn over an arm with a booted toe, looking for tattoos or other marks, finding the same bloodied cross-shape cut on each one's forearm.

“So, are you now satisfied that it was not the Lorraines who snuffed out your brother's candle in the cathedral?” the Duke finally asked.

“It seems I might have been, uh, a little hasty in presuming your breath was behind it,” Cosimo said.

The Duke smiled, knowing the poor excuse for an apology was probably the best he was ever going to get. But Cosimo Medici went one further. “And do you also agree that it is probable that it was not the Medici who were behind the loss of your daughter?” he asked the Duke.

The Duke looked across the chamber to his wife and seemed a little pained, but then said, “Yes. I admit it also. Perhaps we too were a little hasty in making the logical presumption.”

“Wait,” demanded the Duchess, striding across the room and confronting Cosimo. “How did you know our daughter has gone missing?”

“Ah,” said Cosimo. “Your household is a leaky bucket of whispers.” The Duchess scowled at him, unconvinced. But the Head Councillor took the initiative and clapped his hands together and said, “Well that's the first step towards peace. Admitting that you don't need to be at war anymore.”

“Oh, we still need to be at war,” said Cosimo. “With whoever was behind this cowardly attack on us.”