Through the holes in the thatch, I watch the pitch of the sky crack in white light. Rain pours down like a waterfall. I listen to the echo of the world, as suddenly everything around me sings.
This hovel has no particular amenities, beyond the fact that it is abandoned. There are many such places these days, with half the men dead in battle, half the women raped or sickly, and the children vanishing at a steady pace. The walls are overgrown with henbane. Just one stretch of floor dry enough to shield me. I press my back to the wall and let my mind drift. I am hungry, and on a night like this, there is bound to be someone caught in the storm.
I find voices then, two men arguing. One has the accent of an Italian.
“I tell you, Poitou, if you continue with that, you will bring the Devil’s wrath down upon us!”
“This is madness. I will not stay here another moment!”
“If you leave this circle, the spell will collapse, and we will suffer yet another failure. Do you wish to be the one to tell him why?”
There is a sniveling reply, an oath, a prayer in Latin, and then, “I conjure thee, Barron, Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, by the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, by the Virgin Mary and all the saints, to appear here in person to speak with us and do our bidding.”
His voice has a lovely roundness to it, a kind of confident fluidity that makes the rubbish he spouts sound all the more credible. As the lightning turns the landscape beyond the broken window into a series of colorless sketches, I sit, in a stunned silence.
Whatever their aim, a ritual such as this, even in the dead of night, could get them burned at the stake. If but one person overheard their summons, if Poitou took it upon himself to race to the nearest monk and confess all, this wizard would lose everything…just after he lost his fingernails, his teeth, or any other organs that could be stretched or burned with a hot iron.
I would be impressed with their bravery, if not for the fury building within me.
I am crouched in a shack, soaked to the skin, starving, no place to call mine no matter how useful I make myself. All day long picking from rotting bodies like a raven while the Church takes its gains from my hide. The people I serve see fit to cast me out whenever life becomes too much for them to bear. I slave, and still am never given quarter, accused of every crime under heaven. Out of one side of their mouths they spurn me, and from the other, they have the gall to summon hellspawn to my lands?
I am done with insults.
Rising, I shed what rough-spun garments make me seem human. tucking them and my supplies into a crumbling alcove. I slip into the tempest, instantly a slick and ugly blemish in this idyllic setting. and follow the sound of them. The conjurer is still raving in tongues, the assistant sniveling like a coward.
Tonight will either end in blood, or some much-needed amusement.
From the tree line, I can see the great circle they have carved in the dirt. The would-be magician holds a strange dagger aloft, as if he wishes to be struck down by a bolt of divine reckoning. He is handsome and elegant, though he be sopping wet. But a certain curl of his mouth, and a shimmer in his eye tell me that this is all a show. The poor sap on his knees, crouched over a censer as if trying to breathe all the vapors into his own lungs, is just a foil.
Grand gestures are made, grand words spoken. With each drop of water, my ire goes numb — a buffoon, and a buffoon’s fool — there is no fun in this, and no offense to be taken.
Eventually, Poitou can withstand no longer. Crossing himself fervently, he leaps from the circle and turns round and round, the burner forgotten.
“Be done with it, I beg you!”
“Barron comes to me in his time, not in mine.”
“Don’t you think he’d rather come to you in a place that’s dry, Francois? I cannot even see the chateaux from here! How are we meant to find our way back?”
I watch as the conjurer’s smile twitches, and his eyes close in satisfaction. The desired effect has been achieved. His back still to the man, he lowers his knife, and runs his hands over the dark hair plastered to his olive skin.
“We might as well leave. You have ruined any chance we have, you idiot. My lord de Rais will be so pleased to hear that his contract has yet again gone undelivered.”
My mouth drops open as memory paints Gilles de Rais a fierce knight in blood-spattered armor, carrying the injured Maid from the Tourelles, the arrow protruding from her shimmering breastplate. I see devotion in his expression, righteousness, honor, and yes…the arrogance of the highborn. To think that since her death, he has deteriorated to such a state — the Marshall of France employing halfwits and cheats to summon Lucifer.
I shake my head in disappointment.
Poitou is ashen and quivering. He clutches the sodden burner with white knuckles and shakes his head, speechless with fear. With a nonchalant air, Francois folds up a bit of parchment, and tucks it into a sleeve. In a few moments, they are stomping back toward the river, Poitou trailing behind.
Low to the ground, I follow in their wake, a vengeful plan of sudden wickedness unfurling in my heart.
Coming as close as I dare, I reach toward them with my presence, imagining all the many things I will do to them, if they lose their way. When they begin to glance behind, I snap twigs to spite them. As the storm subsides, they stumble onto familiar ground, and like two mice fleeing a hawk, scamper for the fortress.
It towers over us, a slab of gray malevolence. The drawbridge extended, it is a mountain with a tongue. Strangely, there are few lights about, and almost no men upon the towers. The spell-caster races in out of the cold, the drawbridge reeled in behind him.
No fortress is impenetrable to the likes of me, but such things do take time. I must slink down into the trench, cross its murky sludge carefully, slog up the sheer ramparts, and climb straight up the curtain wall. Claws digging into the stone, I dangle, searching the parapet above me for signs of life. Finding naught but silence, I tug my bulk up through the machicolation and give myself a shake.
As I stand in the gloom, the hunger dissolves my thoughts. Cast me out? Fortify themselves in such places only to call upon the Devil? I will give them the Devil. I will give them fear.
Eyes closed, I lurk in the gloom, dropping down through the walls, among the chambers of the imposing gate house, I emerge in the shadow of the manor house with its peaked roof and high windows. The wind picks up as I crouch against a work shed, and an unmistakable odor wafts past my searching senses.
Death.
It is so tantalizing. Before I can stop myself I am wandering the vacant grounds like a wraith, drawn on by ravenous desire. I drift into the chapel, past the snoring priest propped up in pew, and into the vaults. As the scent grows stronger, my thoughts vanish, and I am lost.
When I open my eyes, there is a wooden chest before me. My hand is sticky with barely putrified juices, my mouth full of tender flesh, and my mind hums with stupid pleasure as I pluck another morsel from this makeshift tomb, only to recoil.
It is a tiny foot.
I drop it at once, and for the briefest instant, nearly lose the faculty of reason. I have never, in my hundred years of life, wanted to harm a child. They are often my only comrades, staring into my face with eyes that know so very much, and yet are delightfully naive. In their presence, my impulse is to take them in hand and protect them. That is why the abbot named me as he did.
Sick with self-loathing and suspicion, I close the coffin, and turn my thoughts to witchcraft.
The summoner is in a room in the high tower, drinking hippocras and chewing on a meal of roasted lamb, plums, and bread, all taxed from the weary serfs of this land. His hair is drying into dark curls, and he smiles at the damp parchment.
The candles flicker as I drop through the mullioned window. In the draft, he draws his robe around him. I have a moment to turn his magic against him and become this creature of his ritual.
He turns, and in one sharp gasp, drops his cup.
I know what I seem; dripping wet, with pallor and claws, black eyes and twisting mane, bloody grin and strange physique, I am from nightmares, or perhaps, his wildest dreams.
His pulse stammers to keep up with furious thoughts, his eyes flicking over me in disbelief. I let out a deep growl, upon the edge of human perception.
The full lips tremble, the language that spills forth is his native Italian. “What…in the name of—”
“Do not invoke Him, unless you wish to die.” My voice is foreign to me, and the tenor sends the man from his chair to the ground. “Who is it that conjures me?”
Terror gives over to absurd joy, as his features transform. Charlatan, perhaps, but believer, most definitely, and I have fulfilled fantasies he’d cast aside for practicality.
“Barron?”
It means “warrior”, an acceptable accolade, no matter what the source. Just as fair as Gaurin.
“Call me what you will, but only for your name.”
“F…Francesco.”
“Speak, Francesco.”
“Oh…” he moans, and prostrates himself, as my insides twist in disgust. “I never thought…In all my imaginings, I hoped…I knew you were real! I knew my dreams were real! Blanchet did not believe me! He scoffed at me when I told him…but I always knew—”
I reach down and take hold of his hair. One yank drags him to his feet. I hurl him into the wall, and barely restrain myself from worse. Plaster but a few years old, shakes loose in a cloud.
“I’ve no time for your adoration.”
Winded, he slips to the ground, a slack smile still on his face, the parchment clutched in a fist. “Forgive me.”
“Demons are not the forgiving sort. That is precisely the point.”
He finds this amusing and drags himself to his knees. The parchment is proffered. I snatch it from him and look it over. The writing is smeared, a strange ochre hue I know at a sniff to be blood and ink. But for all my scrutiny, it remains indecipherable. I toss it back.
“Think you, that I have patience for the scratchings of men?”
“Of course not, sweet angel! A thousand apologies.”
Obsequious toad. It is no wonder de Rais has become so fond of him. The man always did love his retinue of hangers-on.
“It is a contract. Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais, does invoke thee, Barron, to replenish his fortunes, and his estates. For this thou shalt receive any of thy wants, save his soul or life.”
I cannot help my snort. “The very things I come to take. My lord de Rais believes he can command the firmament with what? Promises of feasts and lands? I should tear out your guts and hang you by them. Perhaps that would teach him.”
His face transported in bliss, the wizard licks his soft smile. “I did tell him it was a foolish thing.”
“Did you? When you were drinking his wine, or when you were tangled in his bed?”
There is a small hiss of breath. Francois swallows hard, and the ecstasy of vindication vanishes from his face. Finally, it makes an appearance — the soul of the peasant — tucked down in the most defensible portions of all of these sorry folk. Beaten, demeaned, bound, starved, the peasant is a torture victim of the horrifying world around us ruled by all its lords and ladies. He is weak, he is alone, he is afraid, and now he is mine.
I sink into a crouch and put our faces on the level. He gazes into the bizarreness of my eyes, but holds his tongue. Nothing need be said, for to him, I am wiser than any man, and to me, he is yet another innocent lost for good.
“Tell me of the children.”
The tiny muscles round his huge eyes tighten ever so slightly. “What children?”
“Do not test me, conjuror. Believe me, when I tell you that all you know of holy writ and the plan of God is a carefully constructed lie. I have seen fit to claim you, and so…you will do my bidding.”
His forehead bends to the flagstones as he whimpers. “Greatest master, if I serve you, you will protect me?”
“What can you fear, with me at your back?”
He sobs, his shoulders shivering. After a long while, his face lifts. “This is a chateaux of horrors, all of them madmen. There are whispers, jests, stories they tell when in their cups. Boys appear and then are gone. I do not know what happens to them.”
“They end up in pieces, hidden in the vaults.” I smear the sanguine ring around my mouth and shove my hand beneath his nose. One death is not enough for this sin. One swift execution cannot atone. Gilles de Rais must be made to suffer. “For this, Satan would have his eternity.”
Shuddering, the devotee slinks away from me. “Give me your instructions, Barron. I will do whatever you wish.”
I come to my feet slowly, and wander to his table. Picking at his food with an extended talon, I chew through this dilemma. I am not given to morality — good people have seldom done good by me. In one century, confused and desperate for knowledge, hardly a day has passed free of slaughter; stacks of dead, whole villages purged or burned, in-fighting over land, torture and executions of the worst kind sanctioned by God Himself. The soul is more valuable than the body, the priests always say, and yet, money and station seem a fair shield to the edicts of heaven.
I cannot stay here, to see this through. This is de Rais’ territory, and if he plunders it of its innocence as easily as he has robbed it to pay off his debts, then there will be more missing children here than anywhere else. Eventually someone will have to be blamed, rounded up, and put on a spit like a suckling pig. If this imbecile is to be believed, then the baron is not the only monster, and while I know my strength, I have never tested my limitations. Arrows do not kill me, there are no swords fast enough, but another mob, shackles and a torch…this I cannot afford to risk.
But perhaps there is a better way. I do not often put my faith in the reasoning of men, but the longer such lords are given their privileges, the longer the givers will suffer. These poor people must find their way out of this by calling him to task, though I know they cannot conceive of it, because to their devout hearts, power is ordained by God.
Only an apostate like I can see that power belongs to those who take it.
“Remain at his side. Court his fancies, you clever liar. Do his bidding and observe him. Call him into greater mischief. Batter at his defenses as would a trebuchet.”
The man lets out a sigh of obedience. “And when he crumbles?”
For surely he shall. I have seen hundreds of soldiers return from the cesspits of war, and none of them are ever completely sane again. If these atrocities are his delight, there will come a point of no return, when the weight of sin piles heavily upon his facade, and the hunger erodes from within. Eventually, it all crumbles.
“Whatever mislaid plans or frivolous undertakings, encourage him in good faith. Whisper into his ear at night, seduce his better judgement, and bid him give over to us.”
“Yes…yes, I shall do all that you say.”
“This is your auto de fe, conjuror.”
“And…” He crawls toward me, a hand outstretched. I allow him to approach as I chew at the leg of lamb. He slides a hand over the skin of my stomach, fingers searching for the stigmata of humanity like a Doubting Thomas. Finding no trace of deception, he grins. “When it is finished? When I have done all that you ask?”
“There will be consequences, but they are the consequences of men. Offer yourself up to them. Confess all with great pride and precision. Do not denounce me, or all will be lost for you. I will see to it you are safe, but only if you keep this bargain.”
“I shall. I shall, sweet angel.”
I snatch his hand from where it caresses me, and slice it open. He does not protest, but to my revulsion, lets out a groan of pleasure. I drip it onto my pittance of a feast, and clean the bone with overzealous fangs.
“The bargain is struck, blasphemer. Go forth, and do your master’s bidding.”
“Will you return to me?” His voice is a mawkish melody, and to hear it, my hairs writhe.
“I will come to you in my own time, and not in yours.”
Before he can hurl himself around my knees in adulation, I am gone, and back out in the blessed cold of night.
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