Arcanum Part 48

The men looked at each other, and Buber shrugged theatrically. They'd have to get closer.

They crept on, with Buber stopping them every few steps to check his bearings and his quarry. He'd never tried to sneak up on a crowd before. A herd, yes, but there was a big difference between the two, and he wasn't willing to take any risks. Most creatures plant-eaters, at least would merely turn tail and run if they scented him, but these people? It'd be him doing the running.

He slowly manoeuvred the two of them into position among the trees above and to the left of the back of the novices' house. A path ran in front of them, and they had a reasonable view of the space in front of the building and along the avenue leading to it.

He sat down, his back straight against a trunk so as to not offer a silhouette, the muted browns and greens of his clothing helping him to blend in almost instantly. He tucked his legs in front of him, controlled his breathing, and kept his head still.

Ullmann, watching him closely, did the same, choosing a tree a little way behind him.

They sat, and they watched.

With the emptying of the town, first onto the quayside, then towards Goat Mountain, he'd expected to find most, if not all, of Juvavum's missing inhabitants here. But it became clear that the crowd wasn't as large as Buber had feared.

Those who were left had divided themselves into groups huddles was a better description and seemed intent on watching each other, which helped to render them oblivious to the two men looking down on them from between the trees.

Though he would have to contend with Eckhardt's supernatural abilities, Buber was certain that he, of all people, could get closer without being spotted.

He pointed at Ullmann, made a sign that was unambiguously "stay", then eased himself further downhill. He could, if he chose, use the wall of the building to hide behind, but he couldn't see through that any more than the next man. He stuck to the trees, swinging around in an arc to give the closest group a wide berth.

This was better. Now he had a good view of both the novices' house and what was happening in the space in front of it. He sat down again, back straight, knees bent, willing himself to appear as gnarled, flaking bark.

The group nearest to him were all facing the other way, looking at the two groups closest to them. In turn those groups eyed each other, and those behind them. In the middle, surrounded by them all, was Eckhardt, sitting in a high-backed wooden chair. He had a glowing staff resting across the arms, its brightness paling in the daylight.

Littering the ground in front of him was a pile of wan, bloodless bodies, naked and thin like worms after a rainstorm.

Buber narrowed his eyes and looked closer. There was another figure beside the chair, chained to it by his neck, limbs tied, mouth gagged and eyes blindfolded by an expert in knotwork. Some high-status prisoner, obviously, but it took him a while to realise who it was kneeling in the dirt, blind and dumb, hobbled by a rope around his ankles.

Allegretti: Eckhardt had apparently found the Italian as trustworthy as Felix had.

Buber shifted his gaze and concentrated on the group directly below him. Individuals seemed to have different roles within the mass. Some, those closest to the edge, were armed with whatever they could lay their hands on, the sort of weapons that the mob had brought to the library last night. At the centre of the group was a curious hollow, until he worked out that the prone and sitting figures were bound captives. Between the "soldiers" on the outside and the prisoners in the middle, were the "guards", preventing escape.

He could smell the tension. Eckhardt, though, didn't just appear content, but seemed to be actively enjoying the madness that had taken hold of them. He turned his head this way and that, like a bird eyeing a crumb, then eventually gave a tiny gesture, so small Buber almost missed it. His wrist tilted up, not even moving from the chair arm, and a finger waved in the air. The sort of signal a great lord would make to his attentive servants to clean a spill, or pour more wine.

Pandemonium broke out. Each group exploded into frantic activity, trying to be first to deliver a wretched prisoner to Eckhardt's feet, while attempting to prevent the others from achieving the same goal.

They fought with each other. They rucked and mauled and seethed and pushed. The participants ebbed and flowed across the open space, groaning and grinding until, finally, one of the filthy captives, frozen in fear, was grounded near the chair. Again, Eckhardt did his little finger gesture, and the winners held their ground while the losers slunk back into their positions.

Eckhardt ordered the prisoner to be untied and stripped. The man lay there in the dirt, unresisting, as his clothes were torn off. He seemed dead already, and didn't move as the hexmaster started his ritual.

The hexmaster rose from his seat, placing the glowing staff behind him, resting it in the angle between Allegretti's bent legs and stooped neck. He was using the sword-master as a stand for his symbol of office, and Buber felt a twinge of sympathy. A traitor for sure, but to end up like that?

Eckhardt drew a circle and signs around both himself and the sacrifice, then straddled the man, kneeling across him in a disturbing mirror of the position he and Nikoleta had been in last night. Blood-encrusted robes covered most of the victim's naked body, and Eckhardt reached down. Buber couldn't see what happened next the hexmaster's back obscured his view but there was an audible sigh.

He expected to see a pool of blood form, but there was nothing. And when Eckhardt staggered to his feet, the ink on his arms running like clouds before a storm, there wasn't a mark on the man.

Now came the boon. Someone presented Eckhardt with a something or other a trinket, or necklace maybe even while others were stacking the limp body with the others. The magician took it back to his chair and held the chain in his hands so that the pendant hung free in front of his face.

There was a flash, and Eckhardt simply tossed the necklace back. That was how it the enchantment was done. The ink stopped boiling and settled into its predictable patterns, and the master leant back, retrieved his staff from Allegretti, and closed his eyes.

Buber thought he could take him there and then. It was a distance, but his target wasn't moving. He'd have all the time he needed, and it'd be an easier shot than the one he'd made in bringing down the Teuton horseman back at Obernberg. If he missed, of course, he'd have a pissed-off hexmaster and a clearly insane mob howling at his heels. He thought of what Nikoleta would say, and reluctantly pulled his empty hand back out of his quiver.

He could see Ullmann. The usher had gone an unhealthy shade of grey, and he judged it was time he went back to him. He crept from tree to tree until he was within reach, then gently took Ullmann's arm. He led him away, unresisting, until they were far enough away to be no longer concerned about being spotted.

There was no way anyone could go down into that sea of madness alone. They'd have to think of something else.

48.

Nikoleta was furious. Furious enough to let small flashes of fire escape from her fingertips that threatened to burn the boathouse down.

Buber tried to calm her in his oblique and reasonable way, but she was having none of it. Ullmann was poised by the door, one foot in, one foot out, and ready to run for it if her fury overtook her common sense.

She had gone from dangerously over-controlled to dangerously unpredictable in the space of a few days. The battle at Obernberg had been the start of it, but not the whole reason. If the Order had still been intact, perhaps she'd have found another hexmaster to take her under his naturally a his wing and show her how to rule her seemingly unlimited powers rather than allowing them to rule her. That was impossible now, and it simply served to stoke her rage.

"I'll do it now."

"No," said Buber, "it's not for you to decide."

"You put too much store in the prince. He's a twelve-year-old boy, for Zeus's sake. What does he know about anything? He wants Eckhardt dead? Good. So do I. But I'm not going to have him tell me how I should do it."

"Nikoleta..."

"Don't. Just don't. I've had enough of being pissed about by mundanes. Tell me of somewhere where there are no people, and I'll go there in a moment. I've had enough of princes and masters and free men and earls. To Hades with the lot of them." She pressed her palms together, and when she pulled them apart, there was a ribbon of flame connecting them.

Buber sat on the walkway beside the boat, swinging his legs, apparently unconcerned by her petulant pyrotechnics. "You can't do this on your own. The mob still needs distracting."

"No, they don't. All that Felix's army of Jews and librarians are going to do is get in the way. Either Eckhardt will dominate their minds and turn them against each other, or he'll make them drop their weapons and allow the mob to take them prisoner. Eckhardt will get stronger and Felix will be left too weak to defend anything."

"Then we need to think of something better. Perhaps Frederik has found something in a book we could use." Buber stared into the distance.

"No one is going to get to Eckhardt except me. I can resist his domination attack, I can avoid the mob, and he's wasting his power on making little magical gew-gaws for his followers. He'll have a couple of spells in hand at most: I have everything. I don't even know why I'm waiting."

"Can you handle a rowing boat?" asked Buber, mildly.

"I can fly, you idiot."

"Over running water?" He had this knack of saying just enough to remind her that she was, after all, mortal.

"Yes. I can row a boat." Of course she could. It didn't look that difficult.

"You've made the point that I can't stop you. And I doubt if Max over there is up to the task either." He shrugged in Ullmann's direction. "Don't take it badly, Mr Ullmann."

"No offence taken at all, Master Buber," said Ullmann.

"I'm still not going to let you go alone, though. If this is what you want, I'm coming with you." He looked up at her.

She wanted to stay furious. She felt that passion and fire were better for her than the cool analysis she'd been taught for all those years.

Then she realised, and stamped her foot on the wooden boards. "The bastards."

"What now?"

"They ... they lied to us." She was astounded. The whole method of learning magic, by stoic endurance, by pain, by effort of will, was a fabrication. It had served her masters well over the centuries, for certain. If novices were the slaves and victims of their system, the adepts were both their playthings and their enforcers. It was only when an adept broke through their conditioning and embraced their fear and loathing would they ever achieve mastery of their craft. By then they would be so bitter as to be ideal material for joining the highest rank.

No wonder they had hated each other.

"That doesn't come as a surprise. Now, are we going to do this or not?" Buber put his feet onto the walkway and levered himself up.

If she had been burning before, now she was the queen of winter. Her anger had crystallised into a block of ice, cold and hard and heavy in her heart.

"Yes. Let's do it. Let's do it right now."

Buber clapped Ullmann on the shoulder, and the usher winced. "This is not for you, lad."

"But I can guard the boat and wait for you to return, Master Buber."

"If Eckhardt dies, we'll be able to walk across the bridge. If he doesn't, there'll be little point, and probably very little left of us, to return." Buber purposefully reached past the man to close the boathouse door, with both of them inside. "Your job is to wait until dusk, then go back to Felix and tell him what we tried to do. If we've succeeded, we'll be there already. If we haven't, well. Not quite all hope is lost, but my lord may well wish to sue for peace."

"Not before the sun goes down," warned Nikoleta. "Otherwise I'll be very disappointed in you. I have every intention of coming back, and I will find out."

"I wouldn't, Mistress," said Ullmann. "But I could bring the boat back, rather than leave it on the far side for anyone to use."

"He has a point," said Buber. "Get in the boat, then."

They all climbed aboard, and arranged themselves for balance: Buber in the rowing position, Ullmann facing him from the stern, and Nikoleta squeezing past them both to sit on the prow. She looked down at her warped reflection, and found the water closer than she'd like. She'd never learnt to swim, and wondered how difficult it might be and how long it would take.

Buber slipped the rope and pushed out. When he'd rowed her across the first time, it hadn't seemed far. The buildings of Juvavum had been something to aim for, to concentrate on. And there had always been the possibility that she could still avoid her fate.

Now that she was crossing again, towards what the gods had planned for her from the very start, all she could see was a wide, fast-flowing stretch of muddy brown water and, looming above her, the White Tower.

It took an age. Perhaps Buber was tired. With three of them in the boat now, it was bound to be harder work, and he'd been across four times already. They should have rested, made more of their time together.

She wasn't going to lose a duel with Eckhardt. There was no conceivable way she could lose. She was going to set him on fire and watch him burn for a while, then explode burning chunks of him over his so-called followers. He was mad and weak, and she was fresh and strong. She'd go in hard, disrupt his concentration, put him on the back foot from the very start. By brushing aside his domination spells, he'd have nothing left to hit her with.

Quick, if not clean.

Buber pulled on the oars, dragging them closer.

The mob? She had a plan for them, too. Not to kill them, but to humiliate them. She could do that. Part of it would be through killing Eckhardt as if he were no more than a beetle beneath her heel. The rest would come in good time.

And Allegretti. Eckhardt was her priority, but she knew they wouldn't be dragging the tutor back across the river in his chains. She wasn't going to give the man the opportunity to talk his way out of his treason.

She was almost within touching distance of the river bank. She couldn't feel Eckhardt. Presumably he couldn't feel her yet, either. What would he do when he first sensed her and her raw, naked power?

The bow of the boat bumped against the earthen bank, and she skipped up and off onto dry land, painter in hand. Buber scrambled up with far less grace, and Ullmann carefully shifted around to take the oarsman's position.

"Straight back, mind," said Buber. "Don't let yourself drift downstream."

Nikoleta let go of the rope once the usher was confident of his grip, and she watched his first few strokes, assured and deep. The boat surged back into the flowing water, and she found she didn't have the inclination to watch it leave.

"Shall we go?" she asked.

Buber unslung his crossbow and held it loosely by the stock. "We only need to be as careful as you think necessary. They're over by the novices' house. There's no one else in between us and them."

"He'll know I'm here before long. Why don't you go on ahead? Get in a position where you can see his reaction. Then come back and tell me what he did." She stood with one hand on her hip, weight on one leg, relaxed, calm. "I'll give it a little while, then follow you."

"Makes sense. If he's going to prepare any sort of defence, then you need to know about it." Buber looked at the limb of the mountain where it swept down to the river. "I'll take the same route I did last time."

As he made to leave, she pulled him back and kissed him. Almost tenderly this time.

He wiped his mouth and frowned, but set off all the same. It was impressive to watch as he merged seamlessly with the wood.

Of course Buber didn't suspect anything. There was no reason why he should. And there was no reason why he would ever think of looking up.

She gathered herself, remembering all the indignities that had been heaped on her, both as a child and as an adult. The times when she'd been freezing, starving, terrified and worse. The times she couldn't remember at all, the blank holes in her memory where she knew something had happened, something ghastly enough for her mind to reject it completely.

All the pain she'd endured to become an adept. All the lies she'd been told. All the services she'd been made to perform.

Eckhardt was her enemy and he was going to die.

Nikoleta rose into the air, avoiding the branches, fending the twigs aside and brushing through the crowns of the trees. As she flew into clear air, she started forward, heading straight for the novices' house. Poor Peter Buber below, thinking he was ahead, taking his circuitous, careful path. He'd forgive her. Of course he would.

Now she knew where Eckhardt was, she reached out, focusing her efforts in that one direction. There, at the limit of her senses, was a twisted, writhing knot of energy, dirty and seething with corruption. It was going to take him a little more time to find her, and she spent that time wisely.

She would need a shield, not against physical weapons but against Eckhardt's will. If such a spell existed, she didn't have it drawn on her skin but she'd overcome such limitations before. Now she could read them right, her tattoos told her not of rigid definitions, but of potentials. She already had a shield against physical attacks; she would change it to make it proof against Eckhardt's magic too.

The air in front of her shimmered and set, and the wind that was blowing her hair out behind her dropped to almost nothing. Then she poured her loathing of personal invasion into the shield, and the ink on her arm shifted, configuring itself to a subtly different pattern. She felt it change, and Eckhardt's presence on her mental map, along with the aura of every other creature nearby, ended.

That was an unexpected consequence, but at least it told her she'd succeeded in reconfiguring her abilities at the first attempt. What else was she capable of?

Though she could no longer sense Eckhardt, she knew where he'd been a moment ago, so she flew on at tree-top height over the shoulder of the mountain and down the other side. As she crested the rise, she could see the roofs of both the adepts' and novices' houses, and the avenue of trees that marked where the road was. There, right there.

Spreading her arms wide in the imitation of an eagle, she swooped down. The first pass was the most important. Was he oblivious to her, or had the sudden hole in his perception alerted him? No matter. What he did next was immaterial, because he'd have no answer.

Her outstretched hands filled with bright fire, and she caught a first glimpse of those with Eckhardt, still divided into their mutually warring tribes. Faster, lower: that roaring sound was the wind battering against her shield. She could make out the seat, Eckhardt's throne. She could see the pale figure seated on it and his shining staff, together with the crouching, tied man next to him.

A river of flame poured out from her. Not just from her hands, but her mouth, her nose, her eyes. She breathed fire, vomited fire, threw fire. It fell like a column, reducing the wooden chair to burning matchwood on impact and splashing out in a flood, engulfing whoever was in its radius. Allegretti died in that instant, his flesh blasted from his bones. His death was incidental, along with a dozen others who were too close, and the candle-bright twists of fire that danced and spun away shrieking weren't even distractions, because she knew, instantly, that Eckhardt wasn't one of them.

She snapped around as she overshot the target and she spotted a figure rising clear of the ground. He'd lost his staff, but how significant that was, how much of his power he'd stored in it, she didn't know. Then her shield shuddered as if she'd just run into a cliff.

The skull-jarring shock bruised her all over and left her screaming in pain. But the shield held. Eckhardt, like her, had held nothing back for his first spell. Now it was down to who had enough left to bring the other to their knees long enough to deliver the mercy-stroke.

Chapter end