Cadman's Gambit Read online

  Shader shook his head, bit the tip of his thumb. ‘It’s not just—‘

  ‘Faith, my friend. Faith. It’s all you need. Ain loves you. All He asks is that you do your duty. No more than that.’

  ***

  The docks were deserted, dark as pitch and silent but for the lapping of waves on the jetties, the creaking of yards.

  Shader pulled his coat tighter, tugged down the brim of his hat and ducked into the salty wind.

  ‘Perfick time fer stowin’ away.’ An old man hobbled from the boathouse, wheezing and hacking up phlegm, shaggy hat pulled low, thick cloak draped around his shoulders.

  ‘Perfect time for sleeping.’

  The old man coughed into his hand, hunkered down by the door. ‘Sleep’s fer the dead. Ample time fer that when I gets t’ the Abyss.’

  Shader reached into his pocket, jangled some coins. ‘What’s it going to cost for you to keep quiet about this?’

  The old man gave an innocent look. ‘Quiet about what? ‘Less ya mean a knight o’ the Elect, champ o’ the tourney, bearer o’ the Sword o’ the Archon, slinking off at night lookin’ fer a ship t’ take ‘im t’ the other side o’ the world—maybe e’en as far as Sahul.’

  ‘Who are you?’ A chill crept beneath Shader’s skin. No one but the Grey Abbot knew of his plans, and he’d not set foot outside of Sahul in decades.

  ‘Pacts ‘tween lovers outweigh oaths t’ hierophants. That’s just the way o’ things: human nature in a nutshell.’

  Shader’s hand instinctively went to the hilt of his sword.

  ‘I’d use the other one if I was you. It’s got a much keener edge.’

  ‘If you insist.’ There was a soft rasp as Shader drew the gladius. ‘Now cut the acting. You with the Judiciary? Where are the others?’

  The old man chuckled. He pulled his hat off and straightened up, the cloak falling away.

  ‘Aristodeus!’

  Moonlight bounced from his bald head, etched deep grooves in his face. The philosopher rubbed his white beard between thumb and forefinger, as he always did when pleased with himself.

  ‘How the Abyss did you find me?’

  ‘Oh, the advantages of age and wisdom. Mind you, who says I was looking for you? I do have other things to attend to, you know. Always hopping about like one of those kangaroos you have in Sahul. Here one minute, goodness knows where the next. Must admit, though, I was hoping you’d head back. Well, actually, I knew you would.’

  ‘I promised the Grey Abbot.’

  Aristodeus stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Yes, the noviciate. Round two, eh?’ Aristodeus threw a few shadow punches, bobbing and weaving.

  ‘Not this time. No more fights. This is the end of it.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Aristodeus said. ‘Good idea, if you ask me. Prove yourself the best and then pack it all in for a life of prayer. The sort of thing I’d have done myself, only you know my thoughts on Nousians.’

  Shader knew them only too well. The philosopher always seemed to move in Nousian circles, though, teaching, advising, debating. He’d even schooled Shader to enter the Templum all those years ago back home in Britannia. Ever since Shader was a child, he’d had Aristodeus to guide him, first as a tutor hired by his father, who’d insisted on the best, and then as a friend. He’d missed the old man’s advice since he’d left Nousia for Sahul, and even that decision had been encouraged.

  ‘Fancy a trip to Sahul?’ Shader said. ‘It’d be good to have some company. Six weeks at sea’s enough to rot your soul if all you have to talk to are drunken sailors and the ship’s cat.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must disappoint. Business with the Templum.’ Aristodeus raised his eyes along with his hands.

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll return the sword for me.’

  The philosopher leaned in for a theatrical whisper. ‘Don’t suppose they’ll notice if you keep it. I won’t say anything if you don’t.’

  Shader knew they’d have his blood if they found out what he was doing. A knight of the Elect—no matter how former—reneging on his duties to the Ipsissimus. That would be the kind of excuse they needed to bring back the stake. If the Templum Judiciary wasn’t already on his tail, it would be come morning. With any luck he’d be half way to Rujala by then, and well on the fringes of Nousian territory.

  ‘Sword and man are bonded.’ Aristodeus adopted that look of grim seriousness he saved for making his strongest points. ‘It is a matter beyond ceremony and the tinpot power of Ipsissimi. Unlike so much that is to be found in the Templum, the Sword of the Archon is much more than smoke and mirrors. Much more.’

  Shader’s eyes narrowed. The disparagement of religion was nothing new. Aristodeus had always considered himself above such superstitious nonsense. Nevertheless he’d indulged Shader’s mother by arranging for the boy to join the Templum Elect in Aeterna. Under his father’s tutelage he was already an accomplished swordsman, and Mother’s piety had been such a huge part of his childhood that he had the makings of a Luminary. As Ignatius Grymm had told him at the time, it was the perfect combination for a consecrated knight. Probably would have been if not for the third influence. Aristodeus’s ideas had begun nipping at his faith like termites in wood the minute tuition had been handed over to Adeptus Ludo. But years later it was Ludo’s holiness that had won the day. Under his guidance Shader had set sail for the Abbey of Pardes, leaving the world of warfare behind him.

  When Aristodeus had been informed, he’d frowned a lot, taken his time formulating his reply. Once he’d done so, he’d been so encouraging you’d have been forgiven for thinking it was his idea all along. Maybe he’d known the religious life wouldn’t work out.

  Shader had proven too restless at the abbey, too frustrated with the stillness, too tormented by the parts of his nature that wouldn’t settle down and die. He’d grown critical of the other monks’ aloofness, their indifference to the world outside. The Grey Abbot had warned him about where such thoughts would lead, but he’d continued to indulge them. How could Ain be a just god if he did nothing about suffering? If Nous was his manifestation in the cosmos, his followers the hands and feet that carried out his work, why did the Templum tolerate evil? Why did it suppress the knowledge of the Ancients—knowledge that could cure disease, avert famine, and even make possible travel between the stars? That’s if what Aristodeus said about such things could be trusted. After all these years, Shader was no longer sure.

  When the mawgs came and the brothers did nothing his true nature reasserted itself. He’d hunted the beasts all the way to Oakendale and led the villagers against them. It had been an epiphany, a finding of another way. Whilst others might sit in selfish contemplation, he would truly lend his hands to Nous for the meting out of justice, the slaying of evil. He’d founded his own Order, imbued it with the same ideals. He trained local recruits in the spirit and the sword, and then fell prey to the same flaws that had hindered him at Pardes. His feelings for Rhiannon had smothered his dying faith. He’d been convinced she felt the same. Her rejection had almost proven fatal, sending him back to the abbey, the only home he’d known in Sahul.

  He’d returned to Aeterna for the tournament on the advice of the Grey Abbot, who’d told him these issues with fighting, with being the best, needed to be worked out before he could continue the noviciate. Shader wondered now if Aristodeus hadn’t been behind that as well. It wasn’t beyond him to pop up in Sahul for a quick word. Nothing the old man did surprised him anymore. He’d always had an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time.

  Aristodeus was watching him with that pretend questioning raise of the eyebrows that said he was reading you like a book.

  ‘The sword is yours, my friend. Take it with you to Sahul. Shove it under your bed at the abbey if you like, but take it.’

  The flesh on Shader’s back began to crawl. The wind whipped up, spraying salt water in his face. He sheathed the gladius and put one hand on his hat to stop it blowing away.

  ‘Don’t worry
about the Ipsissimus,’ Aristodeus said, heading off down the gangway. ‘I’ll sort things out with him. All the best with the noviciate.’

  Shader turned and started out along the jetty.

  ‘Oh,’ called Aristodeus over his shoulder. ‘Give my love to Rhiannon.’

  Shader spun. ‘How do you…?’

  But the old man was gone.

  VISITS IN THE NIGHT

  Ernst Cadman flipped open his pocket-watch and squinted at the digital display. It took a moment for his sleep-dulled mind to register that he wasn’t wearing his pince-nez. His bedroom was blacker than he’d known it. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. Couldn’t see the pocket watch now either—which seemed a little odd. He reached out and patted the hard wood of his bedside table with tremulous fingers. Precisely four reassuring dull taps, not the sharp raps he’d feared. Not that it was a reasonable fear, he told himself. He’d worn the illusion of fatness for so long now it had the familiarity of an old coat, the comfort some children glean from a favourite blanket. He brushed against the frames of his pince-nez, felt them skid away from him, but managed to snag them before they could fall.

  He fumbled and squeezed the pince-nez into place on the bridge of his nose and saw clearly that the time was 3.33 a.m. and 55 seconds exactly. He gulped—more out of habit than necessity. The two number fives danced around his mind, taunting, warning, predicting. Just my rotten luck, Cadman grimaced, his mind already permutating to make them into anything but what they really were. 5+5=10, the ritual began. And 1+0=1, which is 4 less than 5, but added to 5 makes 9. That was where he needed to stop, he reminded himself. 9 was a good number—it was 3x3 after all. But if you added it to the original 5…He groaned. That made 14, and 1+4…

  How the deuce can I see the watch when I can’t even see my own sausages? Cadman wiggled his fingers in front of his eyes. It struck him as odd, too, that the pince-nez had made a difference. It was a matter of illumination, not of focus, and he’d never really needed them for that. Like so much about him, they were merely for show, and not a little comfort.

  Gosh it’s cold. Not that that was anything new. Even Sahul’s scorching summers had done nothing for the chills. But it was a darned sight colder than normal. Freezing even. He expected to see his breath misting before him—well more of a death-rattle than actual breath—but couldn’t see anything in the pitch blackness. It was becoming rather worrisome, not being able to see. He tugged at the end of his moustache as if it could ward off evil. The evil of the Void. Cadman began to run the numbers through his mind, adding, subtracting, dividing, as the panic began to rise. If only he could get to the curtains without tripping over and breaking his neck. He tugged aside the blankets and rolled his great bulk to the edge of the bed.

  ‘Cadman.’

  A voice like the rustling of paper. He froze, black heart thumping against his ribs and threatening to shatter the illusion of flesh. Someone’s in the room. Someone’s in the room. Someone’s—

  ‘Cadman.’

  The blackness darkened at the foot of the bed. It was all Cadman could do to turn his head, his hands clenching around the covers ready to tug them back over. A sliver of shadow curled towards him as if it were going to stroke his cheek. Cadman drew back, pulled the blankets up to his nose. Tentacles sprouted from the heavy dark, bobbing and undulating, poking and retracting. A series of pustules erupted from the central mass, lumps of twisting blackness that could have been heads, lolling, nodding, shaking. It was still too dark to see any more than the outline of black on black, and Cadman was grateful for that.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Both hands were on his moustache and the number seven raced around his mind. Damn those fives. Curse them. Now look what they’ve done.

  ‘I come in answer to your call.’ A Cheyne-Stoking rasp.

  ‘I bring what you seek.’ A malign susurrus.

  Call? Seek? ‘I called no one. Please go away.’ Unless…

  ‘You read books of knowledge.’ The first voice rippled and crunched.

  Blightey’s grimoire? Indecipherable poppycock. All sigils and wards, pious sounding words and a bunch of warnings meant to frighten the ignorant. He shouldn’t have read it again—nor any of the other works of his one-time master, but when you’d lived as long as Cadman, you had to refresh your memory by rote—every last bit of it. Systematically. Some might even say slavishly. It didn’t pay to forget.

  ‘I came to Otto Blightey as I now come to you. I offer knowledge of things that can ease your suffering.’

  ‘What do you know of my suffering?’ The fear was turning to anger now, as he’d hoped it would. Seven was great for that. A strong number. Very resolute.

  ‘Every time you feed your needs I feel it.’ A voice thick with pity, as if it considered him less than the smokers of narcotics whose every waking moment was consumed with the desire for more. Which is not so far from the truth. Perhaps, if there were another way. It was all very well clinging onto existence, but there had to be more dignified ways of doing it. Ways that didn’t involve guzzling down the gory remains of others. All these centuries he’d been nothing more than a parasite, but what other choice did he have? It was either that or…He squeezed his eyes shut. He never liked to think about oblivion.

  ‘What are you? What can you offer me?’ Almost immediately, Cadman wished he hadn’t asked. He’d learnt all he could stomach of the dark paths from Blightey back in Verusia. There was a limit to how far he was willing to go. He knew Blightey had taken things much further—he’d seen the fruits of it in the mutilated victims, the impaled corpses outside the castle walls: white and rigid, the stench of faeces and putrescence. Some of them had continued to gurgle and gasp around the stakes protruding from their gaping mouths for hours. Days even. If that’s what knowledge of the Abyss did to a man, Cadman wanted none of it. It’s why he’d fled. Why he’d come to this accursed backwater on the other side of the world.

  Another head plopped from the black mass and swayed towards him on a sinuous neck. ‘You know of Eingana?’

  One of the Aeonic Triad who fell from the Void with the Archon and the Demiurgos, if the myth’s to be believed. ‘The serpent goddess of the Dreamers?’

  The black mass gurgled and hissed, its appendages lashing the floor, dark heads rolling. ‘The mother of life, they say.’ There was a note of irony in the voice this time. ‘Keeps the creatures of Aethir in being by the slenderest of threads.’

  ‘Ah, the funiculus umbilicalis. I’m not entirely ignorant of Sahulian mythology.’ Always paid to study the native culture. Might make all the difference in a tight spot. You could never be too careful. ‘Cords of her own flesh invisibly sustaining all life in the world of the Dreaming. Once severed, so the Dreamers believe, the creature ceases to be.’ Cadman shuddered. Such a graphic description of the precariousness of existence. Every moment a tightrope walk over the Void. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t she also the bringer of death?’

  The creature roiled towards him, tentacles rearing and coiling like vipers in heat. ‘All things have two natures,’ one of the heads hissed. ‘You of all people should know that.’

  Cadman felt it could see through him, through his corpulent disguise and right down to the bone. He backed up against the headboard, dragging the covers with him.

  ‘I know what you fear.’ Another head spoke now, its voice soft and empathetic. ‘I too have endured on the threshold of existence, a dweller of the space between dreams and the Abyss. I, who have seen so much, felt so much. I can help you.’

  ‘Why?’ What’s in it for you? Nothing good ever came free.

  ‘Because we are fellow sufferers. Because what I have I would share with you.’

  That didn’t sound at all appealing, judging by the look of the thing. ‘You would have me become like you?’

  All the heads laughed in unison, a loathsome cacophony that rattled the windows. ‘There can be no others like me. My creation was…unique. What I offer i
s the knowledge to endure, the fullness of the life of Eingana.’

  ‘And that’s yours to give?’

  The tentacles settled to the floor, the heads turning as one to glare at him with eyes blacker than the darkness.

  ‘It is yours to take.’

  That would involve action, and action never came without risks. ‘I’ve survived this long without your help, thank you very much. If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to keep things just as they are.’ Lurking like a spider at the heart of its web, with an unsuspecting city my larder. Oh, joy! An eternity of feasting on the corpses of peasants.

  The creature surged towards him, limbs flailing and agitated. ‘You cannot refuse,’ hissed one of the heads. ‘It is in your nature. You will not refuse.’

  Cadman pressed his back into the headboard, wishing he could pass right through it, through the wall and out into the street beyond. The creature squelched over the foot of the bed, its tentacles bashing against the floor.

  ‘You will not refuse.’ Thud, crash, bang. ‘You cannot refuse.’ Thud, crash, bang…

  ***

  Thud, crash, bang.

  Cadman sat bolt upright in bed, patting his face to make sure it was still there. Cheeks and jowls, bushy moustache, great mop of hair. All present and correct.

  ‘Hold on,’ he called out to whoever was knocking at the door. What time is it? He snatched up his pocket-watch from the bedside table and flipped open the lid. 3.34 and 16 seconds precisely. Who the hell’s bashing at my door at this infernal hour?

  Dirty light from the street lanterns spilled through a gap in the curtains. He rolled out of bed, eyes adjusting to the gloom, and found his pince-nez atop the book he’d been reading himself to sleep with: Otto Blightey’s Voices from the Abyss. He shoved it onto the floor. Damned nonsense had fired his imagination a bit too much for comfort.

  The knocking from downstairs grew louder and more urgent.