Abomination (2 page)

Alfred gave the page a reluctant nod. “Tell him I will be there presently.”

The page bowed low, then hurried away. Alfred sat a while longer before making his way to the courtyard. Whatever fresh horror Aethelred had in store for him, he was in no hurry to see it.

Five months ago, Aethelred had come to Alfred in feverish excitement. During the rebuilding of London, a common laborer had by
chance discovered a cache of ancient Latin scrolls buried beneath the earth. The laborer brought them to his parish priest, who, so startled by what he saw within them, rode them to Canterbury himself that same day.

Aethelred, too, recognized in the scrolls something remarkable the moment he saw them. They were old, so old that the Latin text they contained, some earlier, arcane form of the language, was barely understandable even by his most learned priests. But what they were able to translate both chilled Aethelred’s blood and excited him so he could scarcely keep his hands from shaking. The scrolls spoke of powers even more ancient than they. Of incantations and rites that could change the shape of flesh, create new life from old. Of the power to make any man who wielded it into a god.

It took Aethelred and his most senior scholars months to decipher the text of all nine scrolls. When at last their work was finished, Aethelred brought it to Winchester and presented it to his King as a way to finally secure peace for all the English kingdoms—to annihilate the Danish threat, once and for all. When Alfred heard the archbishop’s promise that he could accomplish all this without a single drop of English blood spilled, he was intrigued; when he heard how Aethelred intended to do it, he did not know whether to be appalled or simply think the man mad.

It took a demonstration for Aethelred to prove to his King that his mind had not taken leave.

Aethelred had one of his curates bring forth a hog appropriated from the castle’s livestock. Alfred, and everyone at court that day, was at first amused to see the leashed pig pulling the hapless curate along by its leash as it sniffed the stone floor. Was this some kind of jest? At best, Alfred thought, Aethelred might embarrass himself before the entire royal court. Which would give Alfred just the excuse he needed to ease the man quietly from his seat at Canterbury and replace him with someone less irksome. The poor man had obviously been working too hard. It was time.

The curate threw a half-eaten apple before the pig and backed away as the animal scarfed it down. Few noticed the look of pale dread on the young priest’s face as he retreated; all eyes were on the pig, a common beast running loose in this highest of halls.

As the pig chewed greedily, Aethelred cautioned the royal guardsmen standing nearby to be at the ready, then threw back his arms with a flourish. Courtiers exchanged awkward glances; some of them giggled.
This is already enough to finish him
, Alfred thought to himself from his throne.
The Primate of All England, waving his arms about like a court jester performing a conjuring trick
.

And then Aethelred began the incantation. The giggling stopped. So did the amused glances. All eyes were fixed on Aethelred as he mouthed the ancient words decrypted in Canterbury.

The language was familiar, and yet not.
What is that, some kind of Latin?
Alfred wondered. Only one thing was certain: as Aethelred continued with the incantation, his voice slowly rising, a chill descended upon the room. Though none understood the words, every man and woman somehow knew that there was something
wrong
about them. As though they had come from a place not human. Several of those watching felt a strong urge to leave the room, and yet their feet would not carry them. They were rooted to the spot, paralyzed, unable to look away.

The pig, who had been happily devouring the apple, suddenly dropped it. Its jaw went slack. Its head twisted and turned in an unnatural circular motion, as if tortured by some infernal sound only it could hear. It let out the most horrendous, piercing squeal, then fell sideways onto the floor, where it lay still.

For a moment the room was eerily silent, all present rendered speechless by the bizarrely morbid display. Aethelred had, seemingly, killed this animal without laying so much as a hand on it. With the power of words alone.

It took Alfred to break the silence. “I demand to know the meaning of this—” The pig squealed—louder than before—cutting
Alfred’s words short. Then its body jolted back to life, writhing on the floor through a series of violent spasms.

Some postmortem reflex?
Alfred glanced up from the stricken beast to Aethelred and saw the broad grin spread across the archbishop’s face. As though full of delight in what he knew was to come next.

Something burst from the belly of the pig, blood spraying across the floor. Several onlookers shrieked in dismay, and those standing closest backed away in revulsion as another protrusion erupted from within the pig’s body, then another, each glistening with dark, viscous blood as they unfolded and took form. Bony, jointed, stalk-like appendages, resembling the limbs of some monstrous insect, they slipped and slid across the smooth stone floor like the legs of a newborn calf trying to stand.

And then the
thing
—it could no longer reasonably be called a pig—rose up on its six newly formed legs, each bristling with thick, fibrous hairs. The creature’s jaw unhinged and dropped wide, revealing a mouthful of sharply pointed fangs. The royal guardsmen drew their weapons and Alfred watched with grim fascination as the creature ambled forward. Its eyes were wild and bloodshot, searching the room, seemingly half-blind and in the grip of some rabid fever.

The beast lifted its head, opened its jaw wide, and howled—an appalling sound that defied nature and raised gooseflesh on the arms of every person present. The callow young guardsman who stood closest to the beast moved to strike it down with his sword. Before Aethelred could warn him off, the guardsman’s blade came down on one of the beast’s spider-like legs, releasing a spray of black blood that splattered his tunic. As the beast screamed, the guard tried to draw back his blade for another blow, but it was stuck fast in the bone and gristle of the beast’s leg. Wounded and enraged, the pig-thing wheeled, wresting the sword from the guard’s hand. Before he could withdraw, the beast lurched forward and its two front legs closed around his waist like pincers.

As the young man flailed helplessly, his comrades came to his aid, some trying to pull him free of the creature’s grip, others hacking at it with their swords, the screams of the beast and of the guardsman in its grip mingling in a hellish cacophony. Then the creature’s pincers closed tight and the young guardsman vomited blood as his body was sliced in two. The beast threw both lifeless halves of the man aside, trying now to defend itself against the other guards, who were stabbing and slashing at it furiously. But it was too late; the thing had sustained several grievous wounds and was bleeding out quickly. Weakened and dying, it finally toppled, gasping, blood bubbling up in its throat. The guard captain moved in, sword drawn high, and with all his strength brought the blade down, taking the monster’s head clean off. For a few moments more it continued to move, its chest heaving, its arachnid legs twitching reflexively. And then, finally, it was still.

His face spattered with the blood of the beast, the guard captain glared at Aethelred. Alfred stepped down from his throne and marched across the room to the priest, who had not stopped smiling during the whole bloody episode, and who smiled still.

“Did you enjoy the demonstration, Sire?” asked the archbishop.

“I did
not
,” hissed the King through gritted teeth, his fists clenched.

Aethelred’s smile arched wider. “The Danes will enjoy it even less, I suspect.”

Alfred ordered the throne room cleared of all but his guards before interrogating the archbishop about the horror they had just witnessed. Aethelred calmly explained that while he had taken care to ensure accurate translation of the scrolls’ incantations, their precise recitation was still something of a work in progress. Had the guardsmen not slain the beast, it likely would have died within minutes anyway, as had the other test subjects on which the archbishop had performed the rite in Canterbury. But he was confident that with more time, and a meager portion of the kingdom’s resources, he could perfect the process—and thereby transform the common creatures of the realm into an army of savage war beasts that would strike fear into the hearts of the Norse. In time, he went on, these beasts could be brought under control and trained to kill not just the Danes but any enemies of England who might yet present themselves.

Alfred, still fuming, had the archbishop escorted to his chambers and convened with his ealdormen to seek their counsel. And though none denied the abhorrent nature of the event they had all witnessed, the great majority nonetheless argued that what Aethelred had brought before them should not be rejected out of hand.

All shared Alfred’s concerns about the possibility of fresh hostilities with the Norse, particularly in light of Guthrum’s ill health.
And though Alfred had done much to bolster the kingdom against attack, Wessex still bore the wounds of its long conflict with the Danes and could scarcely afford another open war so soon after, in blood or in treasure. The council’s advice to Alfred was near unanimous: as sworn defenders of the realm, it was their duty to be strong as much in stomach as in purpose. They could not allow their distaste, intense as it might be, for Aethelred’s proposed methods—
unconventional
, one ealdorman euphemistically called them—to curtail what could be a potent opportunity to secure a peaceful future for Wessex, and for all England. So powerful was the promise Aethelred had brought them that, in all their conversation, no man present dared utter the one word that privately haunted each of them.
Witchcraft
.

And so Alfred had reluctantly agreed. Aethelred and his entourage from Canterbury were to be quartered at Winchester and provided with whatever they needed to perfect their arcanery.

God only knew how many poor beasts suffered and died in the archbishop’s twisted experiments during the months that followed. Alfred had lost count, when he could no longer stand the sight of the wretched abominations Aethelred conjured daily.

At first none of them had lived long. The malformed things borne of each dog and mule and horse on which Aethelred practiced his art either collapsed and died after a few minutes or had to be speared by pikemen when they turned on the archbishop or his assistants. Over time, as Aethelred made refinements and corrections to the pronunciation and cadence of the incantations written in the ancient scrolls, and to the accompanying hand gestures described therein, the monsters he brought forth began to live longer. For hours, then days, then indefinitely. But one thing did not change. In every case, no matter how long-lived, the beasts were viciously aggressive from the moment they were birthed.
They would attack anything, without provocation—even each other. Aethelred once watched as two hunting dogs, brothers from the same litter who had never shown any aggression toward one another, were transformed by the rite into a pair of scaly, ridge-backed hellhounds that proceeded immediately to tear each other apart. Fascinated, he made a detailed note of it in his journal.

Aethelred also discovered that with subtle changes to the summoning, he could create many varied forms of beast from each base subject. He could turn a swine into the same quasi-arachnid he had created in Alfred’s throne room, or with a minor rephrasing, bring about a kind of horrific, beak-nosed, oily skinned jackal. All of these experiments were carefully documented by Aethelred’s apprentices in an ever-growing bestiary. Aethelred practiced tirelessly each day for months on end, creating dozens of variations, until he was satisfied he had exhausted all possible permutations for each base subject. A cat could become only so many things, he learned, and when there was no longer anything new to be created from a cat, he would start again on a goose or a badger or whatever poor, unsuspecting creature was next on his list. In time he learned to bring forth all manner of creatures with flawless specificity, down to the length of the tail and the manner in which it breathed fire. The ones that breathed fire were his favorites; the day he discovered that particular variation prompted one of his most enthusiastic journal entries, and fire-breathers now warranted their own section in the bestiary.