However, Mullior was at war with Mother Church, in the person of the High Cardinal, His Reverence Straylish Beatified. And each day of the contest harvested enough soldiers and commanders, camp followers and lords, to sate me several times over. I did not lack for sustenance, despite my scruples.
Yet I may indeed have lacked a soul, or the impulse for redemption. I kept my vow—and all this carnage did not content me. Touching my hand to a torn side here, my tongue to a gutted chest or a ripped throat there, I skulked among the bodies and the charnel stench, feeding abundantly—and still I desired more. Nausea hindered my satisfaction.
This night, trouble found me in spite of my caution. My foraging had drawn me nearer than I realized to one of the Cardinal’s encircling camps, and their tents and fires stood no more than an arrow’s shot distant. I heard the unsteady crunch of boots among bones and mud as a heavy tread approached me, but the warning came too late. I could not slip away among the shadows and corpses before I was observed.
The man’s presence was dangerous enough. More fatal to me, however, was the lantern in his fist. He had shielded its light so that it would not expose him to hostile eyes, but when he turned its radiance directly toward me he could not fail to see the blood upon my hands and lips—the stigmata of my unalterable damnation.
Hunching among the fallen, I stared up at him, unblinking, transfixed by the cruelty of illumination.
“Ho, carrion-crow,” he snorted as he regarded me. “Eater of the dead.” His tone held no fear. Rather it suggested the amiable malice of a soldier who took pleasure in killing and meant well by it. His grin showed teeth the color of stones. “Straylish told us Mullior’s foul Duke harbored such as you, but I doubted him. I doubted such fiends existed. Now I see the virtue of this war more clearly.”
I made to rise, so that I might better defend myself. At once, the soldier snatched at his falchion. In the light of the lantern, its notched and ragged edge leered toward me, eager for butchery.
“Stay where you are, hellspawn,” the man warned. “There will be promotion in it when I deliver you to the High Cardinal. He will be pleased if you are presented to him alive—but he will find no fault with me if you are dead.”
And Straylish the High Cardinal would certainly recognize me. This war attested daily to the enmity between us.
The soldier’s grin sharpened as I sank back. His lantern reflected sparks of greed in his gaze—for advancement, for pain. Directing his falchion at my neck, and confident of his authority, he shouted over his shoulder toward his camp, “Ho, you louts! Here! On the run!”
While his head was turned, I rose.
Here was one of the High Cardinal’s captains, brutal and righteous—and rich with life. I had fed enough, and could overmatch him, striking a blow against my accuser in the person of his servant. Within my stained robes, behind my tattered beard and shrouded eyes, I was no longer the frail figure who skulked the shadows of Mullior, or crept tottering in prostration from the Duke’s chambers. I had become strong again. This man’s blood would exalt me.
Yet I had forsworn such measures. In my heart, I had accepted the accusation.
Instead I leaped upon him, sweeping his sword aside as I sprang. My unexpected bulk staggered him, hampered his reactions. In that instant of advantage, I struck him senseless to the ground.
Shouts carried across the field, answering his call. His men had heard him, and hastened to respond. But they would not catch me now. With nourishment I had grown fleet as well as strong, and the dark was my ally in all its guises.
Before I could flee, however, I saw that the captain’s lantern had fallen with him, spilling its oil over him as it broke. Already flames licked at his side. In another instant he would begin to burn.
His men might save him. Or they might reach him too late.
And I had sworn that I would take no life not first claimed by God. Uncertain of my own soul, I had sworn it on the maid Irradia’s, in the name of Mother Church.
The soldiers of the Cardinal charged toward me, yelling. Their weapons caught the unsteady light of the campfires and shed it in slivers of ruin. Although I was frantic for my life, I spent a precious moment stamping out the flames. Then I turned and ran.
The captain had named me “carrion-crow,” and so I was. Threadbare, my robe fluttered and snapped about me like wings as I raced among the dead. I stooped and turned like a raven assailed by hawks. My only haven was Duke Obal’s secret portal, distant before me, but I did not aim for it. I feared betraying its existence to the High Cardinal’s forces. Instead I directed my flight elsewhere.
Blood I encountered aplenty as I ran. My senses discerned it acutely, despite my haste through the enfolding darkness. I knew it by its aroma, and its luminescence, and its aura of life. Its sweetness clad the fallen wherever they lay. Yet I did not pause to feed.
There was purpose to my path—and hope. Although the soldiers pursued me perilously, I trusted the Duke’s defenses, and bent my flight ever nearer to his walls. Like their captain, the men on my heels carried lanterns, as revealing as corpse-light, else they would have lost me at once. And those shielded flames were apparent from the walls. Soon I heard shouts from the city, a quick fusillade, cries at my back.
Several of the soldiers dropped, shot-struck. Cursing, the rest fell back and let me go.
Those who had been mortally wounded died at my hands. Cardinal Straylish was my enemy, and when my vows permitted it I did him what harm I could. By choice, I accepted the taint of Hell with each flicker of life I consumed from the dying.
Once I had fed deeply, I turned away.
Ashamed of the carelessness which had led me into difficulty, and haunted by the ceaseless fear of my kind—the alarm that I had not fed enough to sustain me until I could feed again—I returned to my portal and signaled for admittance.
Had I possessed a soul, its sickness might have driven me to madness or suicide. I had embraced the teachings of Mother Church, and knew my own evil. From Irradia’s sweet love I had learned to yearn for Heaven. With the eye of my heart, I saw clearly the baffled distress and—perhaps—revulsion she would have felt at my actions since her tormented death. Although I had not caused this war, I used it to serve me. Duke Obal and all Mullior unwittingly carried out my contest with the High Cardinal. Grieving, Irradia might have begged me to surrender, as she would have surrendered in my place.
I, too, grieved. I had no hope for the redemption which had surely enfolded her in God’s grace. But I had chosen another road, and did not turn aside from it.
Because I grieved, however, I resolved to spend this night in the hospital where the Duke’s surgeons tended those who had been injured in battle—both Mullior’s men and the soldiers of High Cardinal Straylish. There I could repay in some small measure the life I had stolen from the battlefield. I was familiar to the surgeons and nurses, although they knew nothing of my nature. I had moved among them often, when Duke Obal did not require my service. Where the portal guards considered me a minor spy, the hospital’s attendants believed me a holy man of an obscure sect, visiting the injured and dying in expiation for my sins—a man whose piety and prayers gave rest to pain, healing for fevers, and relief from infections. I was subtle and circumspect, so that no one grasped what I did. The small restorations which helped the victims of this war survive their hurts passed unremarked.
I felt the need for expiation. My carelessness had led to deaths which might not have occurred otherwise, and that burden I did not bear easily.
But at the portal a new trouble awaited me, more ominous than my encounter with the Cardinal’s captain. The guards informed me that Duke Obal required my presence. I was instructed to obey swiftly.
That he saw fit to risk my aid two nights running was highly unusual. It was also profoundly unwise. The “miracles of healing” which I performed in his service endangered us both. They attracted notice. Members of the Duke’s court, as well as of his army, could hardly fail to observe that m
en such as Lord Ermine—or one of the field commanders—or indeed the Duke himself—were borne, dying, from the day’s carnage, only to return entirely whole. In sooth their recovery was so remarkable that even the opposing forces noted it. No ordinary surgeon or priest could account for the new health of those men, except by miracle—or by Satanic intervention. And Straylish preached that God’s judgment would permit no miracles in the name of an excommunicate like Mullior’s Duke. Thus were spread the rumors that fiends and hellspawn served Duke Obal, empowering his resistance to the righteous authority of Mother Church in the person of the High Cardinal.
This notion was so fearsome to the devout of the Duchy that it undermined Obal’s position and strength, despite the fact that his people loved him. To all appearances, I alone bore the cost of the arduous restorations which I wrought on the Duke’s behalf. I passed stored vitality to those of his most precious adherents who had been sorely wounded—a transaction fraught with pain for me, as well as with the weakness of deep loss, all compounded by the unannealed visceral terror of giving away my own life. While it drew its recipients back from death, the infusion left me drained and frail, scarcely able to provide for my own continuance. Thus the core of the Duke’s support in Mullior was preserved. All the suffering of the stricken became mine.
Nevertheless Duke Obal also paid a price for my aid. It may have been more subtle than that which I endured, but it was no less grievous.
The High Cardinal and others of his ilk argued that I was the whole cause of the war which had set the Duke against Mullior’s more pious neighbors. Priests damned me with their prayers even when they supported Duke Obal. Religious families shuddered at the thought of Satan in their midst. And ambitious men, men who might perhaps have made their fortunes and their futures by replacing those whom the Duke trusted, advancing to positions of power from which they could conceivably have delivered Mullior and all its riches to the Cardinal—ah, such men loathed me where I stood.
It was more than unwise for Duke Obal to call upon my service too often or too frequently. It was foolish and fatal.
I considered refusal. I sensed a crisis in Mullior which might prove lethal to me. And at all times I lived in fear that the Duke might be persuaded by his advisers, or by his people’s need for peace, to turn against me—to deliver me to Cardinal Straylish so that the siege might be lifted. I had saved his life twice—that of his beloved son, thrice—his dearest and staunchest friends half a score of times. For all men, however—and even more for Dukes and Cardinals—necessity was the mother of cruelty. I could too easily imagine that the Duke might decide my life, like his own most prized convictions, was too expensive to merit so much death.
Perhaps I had expended my last hope, and only flight remained to me.
Yet I knew I could not deny Duke Obal’s summons. He had earned my unflagging service by the simple expedient of accepting it from me. I had seen the maid Irradia tortured, and heard the High Cardinal pronounce anathema upon me. How could I not love a man who opposed such evils?—a man who did not fear my nature because he trusted my honor?
Escorted as much for my own protection as to ensure my haste, I left the portal and found my way to the Duke’s low-lying palace in the heart of Mullior.
There another surprise deepened my dread. Necessarily cautious, I turned my steps toward the private gate and the unfrequented corridors through which I customarily approached my lord. But my escort redirected me. A guard at either shoulder led me to the ornate portico which gave formal entrance to the hereditary domicile and seat of Mullior’s rulers. Before I was announced to the fusiliers at the polished and engraved doors, I grasped the significance of this development.
Despite the peril to us both, Duke Obal had commanded me to a public audience.
Holding my breath to contain my fear, I listened narrowly to the terms in which my escort had been instructed to announce me. I understood that the Duke had chosen to place my damned head on the executioner’s block of his court’s opprobrium. Apart from the danger, this violated the unspoken terms of my service. Only the form of my announcement offered any hint as to whether or not I could hope to survive the night.
The leader of my escort clearly found the occasion tedious. If I was doomed, he did not know it. In a tone of bluff boredom, he stated, “Here is Duke Obal’s faithful handservant Scriven. By the Duke’s express wish, he presents himself to attend upon his lord.”
The reaction of the palace fusiliers was more ominous. As if involuntarily, they flinched and crossed themselves. One of them muttered, “Carrion-eater.” Others breathed fervent oaths.
This caused my escort to look at me askance. Unlike the fusiliers, however, they were familiar with me, comfortably convinced that I was a minor spy serving their lord. They were veterans of the siege, hardened to it, and reserved their fear for the enemy. Surprised at my reception, they did not step back from my shoulders.
“‘Carrion-eater’?” one of them demanded. “Where?”
The fusiliers did not reply. Their captain silenced them. Stiff with disapproval and alarm, he spoke a prepared welcome. “The lord of Mullior welcomes all who serve him faithfully.” Between his teeth, he added, “I am to say that the Duke himself awaits his handservant Scriven’s arrival.”
His obedience did not comfort me. “Scriven” was not my name. Straylish Beatified knew me otherwise. However, it was the name I had chosen for the Duke’s use. While I lived, I bore Irradia’s fate written on my soul.
Covering my unsteadiness, I required myself to draw breath. My danger was as great as I had feared. Already rumor had run ahead of the Duke’s intent, hinting at worse within.
At the captain’s word, my escort bowed themselves haphazardly away. Eager to be rid of me, the captain detached a fusilier to accompany me into the palace, presumably so that I would not wander astray. I was hastened forward. For the first time, I stood accursed and dismayed in the formal entry hall of Duke Obal’s home.
It was not the opulence of the space which daunted me. I had little use for wealth myself, and saw no value in the devout tapestries, woven of gilt and verdigris, which behung the walls, the sheened marble of the floor, the lamps burning scented holy oils in their stands of gold and mahogany, the sculpted and pious busts of Mullior’s lords. Rather, I was chagrined by the fact that such luxuriance existed. An effort I could not conceive had gone into the creation of Duke Obal’s ornaments—and the work had not been done by men or women of my kind. Our lives were fixed on survival, and from day to day we had neither leisure nor inclination for embellishment. The palace’s wealth daunted me because it reminded me that I was vastly outnumbered by souls accepted by God and Mother Church, souls who could hope for Heaven—and who could afford to spend their existence on decoration.
Each step I took in such a place increased my peril. I did not belong there. I belonged in servants’ entrances and private passages, small rooms secreted from scrutiny, lofts and stables and mud. The farther I intruded here, the greater grew the certainty that my nature would be discovered. And each bust and weaving seemed to mock the idea that I would ever be free to depart.
Clutching to my breast the faith which Irradia had taught me—the faith that some among humankind understood loyalty and honor as well as they grasped war and anathema—I followed my fusilier toward the Duke.
Chamber succeeded chamber, some high and stately, others smaller and more discreet. Servants tended a few, but most were vacant, and their emptiness troubled me. It suggested that their usual occupants and attendants had been called elsewhere. Therefore I feared that Duke Obal meant to make me known to the entire palace.
Instinctively I yearned to cower and skulk forward as though I had come to haunt a battlefield. The strain of walking erect tested me sorely. Only the wisdom of my kind restrained me from creeping—the given knowledge that the more I showed my fear the more I would empower my enemies to act on their own.
Before me loomed a set of doors as high as those which gu
arded the portico, but at once less massive and more ornate. There the fusilier led me. Anxiously bidding me to wait, he tapped his knuckles on the wood, then stepped back to compose himself.
At once, the doors were jerked partly aside, and a man slipped between them to confront us, closing them swiftly behind him so that we might not see inward or enter.
He wore the rich braid and tooled leather of Duke Obal’s livery, although his costume was more elaborate than those I knew by sight. A pectoral cross hung by a chain of heavy gold from his neck, and a short satin cloak of midnight purple with the Rose of Obal picked out in crimson thread draped one shoulder. In his hand he held a slender staff surmounted by Mullior’s Eagle in silver and gems. This rod proclaimed him the Duke’s majordomo.
He did not look at me. Indeed, he seemed determined to avoid sight of me. Vexed by trepidation, he snapped waspishly at the fusilier, “Who is this?”
Too loudly, the fusilier replied, “By your grace, this is Duke Obal’s handservant Scriven.” Sweat stood on his brow, although the night was cool. “His presence has been commanded.”
At last the majordomo flicked a frightened glance at me, then swore in a whisper. “I know that, fool. You would have done the Duke and all Mullior a service if you had failed to find him, no matter how strenuously his presence was commanded.”
The fusilier retreated a step from the majordomo’s anger. “I’m sorry,” he murmured uncertainly. “We didn’t know—”
The majordomo swore again. “Return to your duties. Say nothing.” Flapping his hand, he dismissed my escort. Then he demanded of me, “You are Scriven? You and no other?” Again his eyes evaded my face.
Alarm closed my throat. Unable to speak, I nodded awkwardly. His manner foretold that I was doomed as well as damned.
Staring past my shoulder, he breathed, “On my soul, and for the sake of this House, I pray that the horrors rumored of you are false.”
Before I could attempt a reply, he returned to the doors. “Enter,” he commanded as he drew them aside. “The Duke awaits you.”