Best Laid Plans (17 page)

‘Have I told you the one about the geezer from Britannia who slips through the gaps between worlds and ends up in some crazy afterlife where his bint’s waiting for him?’

Zara Gen’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.

‘Funny ol’ world, that one. You see, our protagonist is the only person not really dead and he ends up with all these super powers. Strength of a titan, speed of a cat. He can even bound for yards at a time like some demonic kangaroo.’

Zara Gen shuffled the chair away from Elias.

‘Just passing the time. Nothing like a bit of confinement for reviewing stories and learning lyrics. What’s up Guv, potty time?’ Elias swung his feet off the table and sauntered over to the en suite latrine. ‘Don’t know what you been eating, Guv, but it sure doesn’t smell nice.’

Zara Gen growled beneath the gag.

‘No? Don’t need the pan?’

Zara Gen was silent.

‘Here’s a gag for you, if you’ll excuse the pun. What do you call a politician when he’s always busy?’

More silence.

‘No? Tied up. Next one: What do you call a politician who can’t speak? A blessing. Sorry, not too good, that one. Don’t blame you for not laughing—not that you could if you wanted to. Cheer up, Guv, ol’ fat boy’ll be back before you know it and then the fun will really start.’

Zara Gen remained a sullen presence.

‘You are one tough audience. Sure you don’t want a piss? No? OK. Don’t mind if I nip in for a Jimmy? Only all this waiting for the big bad necromancer upsets my bladder.’

A sharp rap at the door startled him.

‘Quiet now, Guv.’ Elias rushed back behind the desk and seated himself. ‘Looks like playtime’s over.’

The enormous bulk of Dr Cadman lumbered into the office. Elias caught a glimpse of the skeleton guard and a huge death-knight beside it before Cadman pulled the door shut and lowered himself onto the edge of the desk.

‘I need you to tell me all you know about the Statue of Eingana,’ he said amiably, ‘and this Deacon Shader who so rattled my dear friend Callixus.’

Elias clamped his jaw shut. He’d shown enough indignity at the templum. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get out of this alive, so he might as well put up a fight.

Cadman sighed. ‘I really don’t have the time for this. There’s a veritable ocean of Imperial troops setting up camp outside the city and I don’t plan on sticking around to find out what they want.’

With a slight gesture of his hand the air about him shimmered and the skin melted from his body. Fat withered into leathery strips that clung to mottled bones; the eyes sunk into empty cavities, and fleshy lips gave way to rotting teeth. Elias gagged and looked away from the decomposing corpse that now sat before him, but he could do nothing to dispel the pungent odour of decay and the cold unnatural terror seeping through his veins.

‘There are many means of coercion, little man,’ Cadman rasped. ‘Trust me, I’ve seen more than anyone should of that sort of thing. But out of all of them I find the tortures of the soul the most efficacious. Do you have any idea what a liche can do to your humanity? And of course, with the nature of my magic, the suffering doesn’t have to stop at the point of death.

‘You know, I learnt a good deal from my apprenticeship to Otto Blightey, not all of it pleasant, I’m sure you’ll understand. I’ll never forget his deftness at impaling; but it wasn’t so much his ability with a stake that impressed me: it was what he did to the victims when they should already have been dead.’

Elias began to blurt out everything he knew about the Statue of Eingana and then recounted the coming of Deacon Shader to Oakendale, his routing of the mawgs, and the founding of the White Order. Finally, he told the liche of Shader’s love for Rhiannon.

Cadman nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘I have noticed,’ he said nonchalantly, ‘a presence, something shadowy and rather sinister attuned to power of Eingana.’ He cast a sideways look at the bard. ‘Do you think it’s Sektis Gandaw?’

Elias frowned. ‘Difficult to say. The statue’s always had its fair share of stalkers, not least of all Eingana’s own brother, the Demiurgos.’

Cadman stood and resumed his corpulence. He took his time siting his pince-nez on the bridge of his nose and then tapped his breast pocket three times. Plucking out a silver case, he flipped it open and selected a cigarette.

‘One other thing,’ Cadman said, lighting up with a shiny Zippo Elias would have given his right arm for. ‘Did my old mentor, Otto Blightey, have any part in the statue’s history?’

Elias gave a little cough and wished he had the guts to ask for a smoke. ‘That business with the Ipsissimal Monas a few decades after the Reckoning—Blightey found out it concealed an eye of the statue and stole it.’

Cadman took three quick puffs on his cigarette and raised an eyebrow. ‘And you know this how?’

Elias tapped the side of his head. ‘Use of the ol’ noddle, how else? Why’d you think they sent the Grey Abbot after him?’

‘So,’ Cadman said, ‘the Grey Abbot’s ingenious method of concealing his piece wasn’t original after all. How disappointing.’

Elias could see he was getting through to Cadman. If he continued to be useful, he might even get out of this with his life. ‘Something similar happened before, according to a tedious religious historian I once read…’

‘Alphonse LaRoche?’ Cadman said. ‘Believe me, I’ve read my fair share of him. You’re referring to the burning, of course.’

‘Well, well, well, aren’t you just the dark horse.’ Elias, wetted his lips, immediately regretting his choice of words. Cadman showed no reaction. If anything, he looked distracted. Elias redoubled his efforts. ‘On that occasion, long before the Templum rose from the ashes of the Reckoning, Blightey murdered some poor geezer named Hafran Thrall, a sort of forerunner of the Keeper of the Sword of the Archon.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cadman snapped. ‘Your point?’

‘Blightey used the sword to enhance his power.’

Cadman’s neck cracked as he nodded. ‘It was supposed to make him invulnerable, but he was hunted down and the ritual was interrupted. This is nothing new. It’s all in La Roche.’

‘Only part of him was strengthened,’ Elias said. ‘After the religious authorities burned Blightey at the stake, his skull survived, but it was locked in a casket and thrown into the Abyss by the Archon. Guess that’s where everyone thought he belonged.’

‘Except Sektis Gandaw, who eventually rescued him,’ Cadman said. ‘But you’re not answering my question.’ Cadman’s eyes blazed at Elias, and dark mist spilled from his bony fingers. ‘Forget everything that happened before the Reckoning. What became of his piece of the statue?’

‘It was returned to the Ipsissimus. Not the same Ipsissimus, mind, as Blightey managed to hang onto the eye for quite some time. I think it was Valens II to whom the Monas was restored. It’s said he lived an unnaturally long life, but eventually went mad and threw himself from the roof of the basilica. The Monas has been passed down the line of succession ever since. That’s where your friend Shader comes in. Well, not him personally, but his Order.’

Cadman thrust his face towards Elias, the eyes suddenly black as the Void. ‘Go on.’

‘You won’t find any of this in your standard histories,’ Elias said.

Cadman stood with his back against the door, a corona of cigarette smoke billowing about his head. He peered over the top of his pince-nez, waiting for Elias to resume. Elias didn’t miss the tapping of fat fingers against his thigh. Apparently Cadman didn’t have all day. Elias, however, didn’t want to see what happened next, once he’d finished his tale.

‘The Blightey affair had shown the Templum to be vulnerable from within. Blightey was the principle architect of the new religion and had the ear of the Ipsissimus. In short, he was allowed too much access to the ruler of the Templum, and that’s when things started to go wrong.

‘Blightey just happened to leave Aeterna for the eremitical life after the Monas disappeared. He wasn’t even suspected at first, and when he returned, having not aged a day, many years and a couple of Ipsissimi later, he resumed his position as counsellor and spiritual director.’

Cadman was nodding vigorously, a long trail of ash hanging from the end of his cigarette. ‘Blightey never mentioned this to me,’ he said. ‘Oh, he liked to gloat about the past; loved the effect of recounting his own twisted history to his agonized victims. I’ll let you into a little secret.’

Elias winced. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this. If it was a particularly important secret, he doubted he’d be trusted with keeping it.

‘It’s what made me run from him in the end,’ Cadman said. ‘The endless lectures in front of the rack, or with some poor former student strapped to a chair…’ Cadman’s eyes wandered to where Zara Gen sat rigid and attentive. ‘…the Pear of Anguish forcing his jaws wide, teeth ripping through gums, breath gasping from a constricted airway. It was as if Blightey had to go on teaching others and then torturing them to death in order to generate some spark of pleasure in his life. Naturally, the more I learned, the more imperilled I became.’

Thanks for sharing that.
Elias licked his lips.
Makes me feel a whole lot better.

‘Please,’ Cadman said, dropping his smoking stub to the carpet and treading it underfoot. ‘Continue.’

Elias wrung his sweating palms together. ‘Soon after Blightey’s return to Aeterna, plague broke out. The Templum was largely unaffected, but as more and more citizens perished, suspicions were aroused. Blightey was summoned by the Templum Judiciary, but vanished before a hearing could begin. He left a trail of corpses in his wake. He was hunted for months, but no matter how close his pursuers came, he always managed to escape at the last minute.

‘Finally, the Grey Abbot was called in. The official histories say he used the power of prayer to find Blightey, but it seems more likely he used his piece of the Statue of Eingana. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Blightey was captured and the Monas was taken from him. Before he was tried for his crimes, he was rescued by some sort of winged devil and went into hiding deep in the forests of Verusia.’

Cadman wrinkled his nose.

Elias scrabbled about for something else to say. ‘What happens next is really interesting, particularly because it relates to Shader. There was some sort of high-powered meeting in Aeterna and it was decided the Ipsissimus couldn’t be trusted to keep the Monas safe—which is a laugh when you think how they consider him infallible.’

Cadman puffed out his cheeks to the accompaniment of a sharp exhalation of air. Elias took the hint and went on.

‘They set up this Order of fanatics known as the Elect to protect the statue. They selected the best soldiers in Nousia and ranked them by means of a tournament. They continue the practice today. The winner basically gets to play Hafran Thrall and become Keeper of the Sword of the Archon. It’s supposed to be the same blade Blightey stole centuries before. The Templum believes it has power against the supernatural.’ Elias gave a little cough and did his best not to look at Cadman. ‘The Elect are ostensibly an elite fighting force answerable only to the Ipsissimus, but you can bet your life there’s more to it than that.’

‘Such as?’ Cadman asked.

‘Well I don’t know, I’m not a member. Even if I applied I expect they’d blackball me. But my point is that Shader’s a knight of the Elect and he won the tournament this year.’

‘I see,’ Cadman said. ‘Then that explains the sword and how he was able to wound Callixus.’ He flicked at his bottom lip with his finger. With a decisive nod, he clapped his hands together and turned to leave.

‘Of course,’ Elias blustered, ‘there’s a whole lot more I can tell you.’

‘Thank you. You’ve given me what I need.’ Cadman took hold of the door handle.

‘But you need to hear about the skull.’ Elias was clutching at straws. ‘Remember the legend of how Blightey’s skull escaped from the casket and made its way through the Abyss? His old pupil, Sektis Gandaw, built some contraption to bring him home…’

‘We’ve finished,’ Cadman said.

‘No.’ Elias was shaking now. ‘The skull resurfaces in the legend of Jaspar Paris. It lures Paris into the forest by assuming the form of a beautiful woman…’

Cadman was no longer listening. The door opened onto the armoured cadavers outside.

‘Jaspar Paris was saved only by the intervention of his spurned lover, Renna Cordelia,’ Elias said. ‘Don’t you want to hear how it ends?’

Cadman paused for a moment, as if considering.