XIV
Pacte d’Abeloth
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> My covenant I will not violate,
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> Nor will I alter the utterance of tongue.
—The Saint-Skin Scrolls, Hagiographia of Solomon I 33:6-7 (the Verse of Vows) translated into Vulgar by Bishop Gascoine D’Tristime; New Standard Version printed by Argo & Sons.
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In the immortal words of the Bard: ‘the ashes of time bury the past’ and I attempted to do the same with mine. But a Son of the Éder can no more run from his roots than can someone fashion whole wood from the coals. I was drawn inexorably to the Old Ways of Kalé, iron to lodestone, needle to North, sympathie compass to mine blood of yore. But before I tell you of my coming baptism, let me speak of the matters before and in between.
A lunar month had come and gone since I had first danced with the ghûls; that nest’s bounty had been forfeit as I had consumed the grave hag’s head as well as that of her spawnlings. And so, I had to return a few more times to be able to even collect a single Talent from the endeavour. In doing so, I had discovered a forgotten place that I might make into a nest of my own—a vampyre’s lair sans coffin.
Lamaré and I had transformed that section of the Underbowels of Saint-Getaine into a downright cosy abode. Our walls were curved into a dome that coterminated into a circle that led upwards into a well; the aquifer’s water down below had long since dried and my entrance was that of a vampyre bat, having to descend on the wings of my cloak.
The alp-leather did nothing but endow me with a greater dread aspect but it was still neat all the same. Made me feel as if a boy again, unhindered by the burdens of age and worry and taxes—not that I paid any, what with me living in the sewers.
It was a tad difficult getting the wooden furniture inside without rendering such into splinters and junk or even just without arousing suspicion and gossip but we’d had done it. No small amount of pulleys and rope was used, as were some simple charms of muteness that we’d bought from Calcifer—Cousu-Fermé talismans were the shrunken heads of liars and conmen, their mouths eponymously sewn-shut forevermore; rather grim but necessity makes law..
Tables and shelves and chests and a cot and even an ambarique stove lined our walls.
Upon the tables were maps of Saint-Getaine’s Underbowels and streets, diagrams of would-be clockwork artefices designed by Lamaré, and the tools needed to scribe and annotate such; I even took to journaling my days away as I had more than enough time to spare when I needed no more than an hour of sleep.
Upon the shelves were books—the mass-printed and cheap kind, mind, that ranged the gamut of natural philosophy to entertainment and literature—and occult reagents and paraphernalia. Though I could not enchant anything myself to the same degree as Calcifer, I could set up simple Éderi tricks and expand our knowledge of the arcane arts.
These things were of simple make as we had to be miserly with our leftover silver, but they were more than I ever had before becoming kindred to the Witch-God. So strange it was to finally feel anchored to a place, to feel it less like a place to sleep and more like a home—a safe haven where I need not put up pretences either social or martial.
From my domicile, I only left under cover of evening or night and would be doing so tonight on a full moon. I had yet to test if I could enter through the threshold of a church but I would indeed accept bounties therefrom. The best manner for an unsworn sword such as myself to accumulate capital was the dangerous job of monster-hunter, be they monsters of the literal or metaphorical variety.
But before that, I needed to finish what Calcifer had started.
I climbed up the well’s dry gullet into a forgotten cul-d’sac overrun by vines d’Getaine. God’s Left Eye wept its tears upon me, the moonlight a bath of twilit blood. There, under the gaze of the Witching Hour, I sat on the cobbles with Ashen on my lap.
Artefacts such as my cloak and boots and blade might be anchored to one’s heart through the ancient art of soul-binding. Soul-bound objects were felt by the bearer as if through a sympathie compass, always knowing their direction and general distance; the enchantments thereupon would listen only to the bearer or those of their closest lineage even without rúna dedicated for such a thing. Elsewise, the sword is rendered an accursed thing that hexes any that would draw it unlawfully.
Nothing in this world was free: I would have to pay a price of blood that would limit the ichor in my veins by near half—this wouldn’t limit my strength output but would weigh down my stamina to the level of a Mul-Stybourne charm; the spell ensorcelled a person such that they had the endurance of a beast of burden twice-over. Colloquially called a Mul, the name itself is an archaic form of the adage ‘stubborn as a mule’.
“Watch your tongue, Lamaré,” I said with foreboding, “for tonight is a night where the Gods and Their Apostles will look down upon us. And Gods suffer no fools.” With that I looked above, into the firmament that holds up the waters.
The starsign of Abeloth shone down upon me as I had consulted Calcifer’s orreries for this constellation in specific; it was the known as the Effigy of Blades and the Idol of Bitter Loathing and was associated with war and strife and the severance of gangrenous limbs of the past from would-be hale future bodies. Renewal through death, rebirth through scar and sunder; penitence through suffering.
Without further ado, I began the ritual, speaking in the black tongue of Kalé.
“I invoke Lucifer’s Apostle of War; Abeloth He-Who-Parted-Water-From-Water.”
With my own sword, I cut my palm and baptised the blade black under the moonlight. It, like with Gendrie, stuck upon Ashen, the sympathie of this ancient rite overcoming even the vampyre-curse if for but an eternal moment. Afterwards, I did the same with the hood of my cloak where it might rest upon the crown of my head and anointed also the soles of my boots so that in my wake there would be blood.
“I call upon the Alephen; harken O Watching Stars of the Empyreal Host so that might mine own sign be affixed with that of the Effigy of Blades, now and forevermore.”
My covenant I staked upon a shard of broken steel, one of the three secret things within my lock-box; it was passed down from generation to generation of Keepers and so mine to keep. The front of the idol was writ with my Éderi name of Zumavel while the contra was writ with my true-name of Āzmūdan in the black tongue of Kalé.
I put the talisman around my neck, the iron-wrought chain that held it cold against my nape. This was a phylactère not unlike Calcifer’s; a preserver of the things within, yet where the reliquaire of tombac held God’s blood, this one held only mine, spilt before the Left Eye.
“Mote it be.”
The wind stilled and I knew then that I was watched from all sides by the unseen spirits of the World Thereunder. The stars, Alephen, wove my own sign into that of Abeloth, and so until the Advent, I would be sworn thereto. Only the World Thereafter would break my self-imposed chains.
A soul-binding ritual need not invoke any name but that of the Left Eye; I had chosen to compact with the Effigy using the ken of the Éder as a means to an end. Power was wrought through sacrifice and now I could never again taste anything sweet for my tongue was to be bitter as iron.
This was my price for compacting with Abeloth for ’Zumavel’ means ‘to taste’ in Éderi and the Apostle of War would exact a toll that was the reverse of my own true-name. In return, I could now taste any living edge in my vicinity and know when steel is drawn near me—this knowledge was seared into the marrow of my bones, in that sort of low animal cunning that all men have at the back of their heads.
Éderi star-compacts hail from the same place as the blind-vows taken by the Luciferine Church, though they’d never admit it aloud and would instead erect a cross with your name on it if you brought the topic up. The old-world ritual originates from Nazirét the Land of Wreathes whose name translated into Vulgar is ‘consecrated-through-separation’ for ‘Nazir’ means ‘to swear off’.
There is a reason that I called Mahhomed’s faith a variant of religion for all beliefs are but branches of the same tree, splittings of the same trunk. Heresy is but the leaf below that is smothered by those above it. Blasphemy is but the root exposed and so shunned to be eaten through by worm and wind. Or, as the Éder say: the all is one.
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I looked down to Ashen on my lap. It had no rust upon its surface as was the oath-blood gone with the moon now under clouds. There were no smouldering glyphes or the more modern rúnari to signify the binding I had undertaken.
What confirmed that the Alephen—the stars—had heard my prayer was the taste of iron at the back of my mouth. I would never be rid of it even if I cut out my own tongue for an oath once sworn cannot be broken without wounding the soul.
Lamaré was silent throughout my ministrations of Éderi rites; he knew the magnitude of a non-Éderi witnessing such a thing. He was the first man since God’s Death that had seen a soul-binding in the Old Ways of Kalé. And he would cherish the gift for there was a great beauty in the mores of men that would forsake a part of themselves in service of an even greater ideal.
But mine was not virtue but instead vice: I wanted wealth, and I wanted power, and I wanted better. I had tasted of Sauvignon Sanguine and now I could not suffer the lesser wines that this world would inflict upon me even if my tongue could no longer perceive saccharinity.
I would become a living legend or a dead one but legend I would be all the same.
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Practice makes perfect or as the Lucielãçais say: ‘c'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron.’ It is by forging that one becomes a blacksmith—Gendry was rather fond of that turn of phrase for reasons both obvious and poetic.
There, under the Left Eye of God, I drew steel and danced.
My eyes were closed and yet by skill and star I knew where my blade was at all times in relation to my body—my tongue, in specific. That ephemeral sense was sensitive and malleable, able to extend outwards up to twenty paces.
I executed the Pilgrim’s Danse perfectly, drawing on my familiar spirit’s past life as a swordsman. But it was a hollow thing without a partner, for to dance alone is the lunatic’s lot.
And so I retired to my abode and let Lamaré out of the cage of my skull to waste away inside the pages of books. He was researching combinations of rúna for Calcifer to etch on the alquemist-gloves we’d bought a month and span ago; they were a cog in our machinations to infiltrate Ré’s ancestral house. Lexicons and primers were consulted and referenced on sheafs of paper so that Ré might return to the source; an arrangement of Féth-Fíada was his pick.
Known as a Mist-Veil, the charm was based on Tirrish magiques such as the case for geases and cantrips; but transliterated into modern rúnari script as ‘Gê-Eikos al-Ain-Chaer’ or ‘to hold the reflection of the sky as ash in your hand’. Lamaré could make the indentations of the glyphes by himself and pour my blood within them along with ash of a burnt vine; Calcifer would have to finish the enchantment as only he knew the binding spells that could tie up the loose ends into proper sorcerie.
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Once the Left Eye gave way to the Right, Lamaré returned to me the reins of my body.
I went out in search of a partner with which to dance the Pilgrim’s Danse and test my mettle against. We’d avoided going out during the day for most of the past month as it was harder to hide under the light—the alp-leather stood out with a garish, all-devouring black that caught the sight of many passersby. But there was no for it and so I bore their stares as I made my way to a certain house in a certain street of the slums.
Saint-Getaine’s stone and pavement gave way to mud and dirt, buildings turning into wooden shacks and shanties that would blow over under even sight of wind. We were past the monsoon season and well into the end of summer, so at least the poor would not have to suffer floods.
Instead, they would die of heatstroke.
I knocked on the door of a humble dwelling and waited. Through my hyper-sensitive hearing, I could tell that I’d aroused a man from slumber and he came to see who’d come upon him at such an hour. He had a bollock dagger in his palm, the edge sharp against my tongue.
Does that mean you tasted his bollocks before mine? Lamaré asked with that insufferably sultry voice of his. The man might as well have been born a cat for his disarming charm whilst simultaneously being a right prick.
“Shush, you.”
Eyes gazed through a crack in the wood and I did my best not to meet them lest I scare the man away; at my sight, he put his bollock back in his pants (Lamaré’s words, not mine). A minute later, the lockbolt scratched against iron and the door came open.
Durante looked at me in confusion.
I looked back at him and waved.
That did not help with the confusion.
“I need a sparring partner.”
“And why didn’t you, I don’t know, go to the Mangy Feline? Plenty of fellows there more than happy to fight with the Lightning-Bolt.”
“Claude wants me dead. Again.”
“Oh.”
“Yep.”
“I’ll pay ya fifteen coppers for an hour.”
“You think I’m some cheap hooker?”
“Twenty.”
“Deal.”
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I imagined that it must’ve been quite the sight, seeing me fight with my eyes closed. The pounding of blood formed a lattice-work spectre by which I could ‘see’ Durante without actually opening my eyes.
We were in an open space, well trodden and made for wrestling by the local boys; those very same cheered on as they saw me weave and bob and dodge a live-edged blade with my hands behind my back.
Durante took to the Sojourn rather than the Escalier, his forms that of the Highlander Iohanz Lodestar while mine hailed from the Decalian Maestro of War Florian Liberianus. My footwork kept my feet always separated and never crossed one foot over the other as if an invisible ruler measured them equidistantly in the proportion between them; the end result was a flowing, dance-like tempo that did not trip nor step false, twirling about with pirouettes and the like.
The faint waves of the air brushed against my skin, and before them I turned aside, letting the downward slash go past. The taste of steel sliced across my tongue and I crouched just in time to survive a beheading.
I had squatted on a single foot and so used that to launch into a kick that took Durante’s legs out from under him. I caught his blade as I stood up, flourishing the arming sword as if an extension of myself.
Though it might seem that I had advanced leagues above Durante, the actual change was much more subtle. Abeloth gave me a sixth sense for edged-steel in specific and had honed my instincts for battle in general—there was once a disconnect between me and Lamaré’s skill but now that schism had all but disappeared.
I’d best describe it as if you were in a tug of war and had suddenly gained a few pounds in weight—your strength was the same but it was all the harder for your opponent to unseat you.
With a smile, I bent down and grabbed Durante by the forearm in the warrior’s tradition, lifting him up.
“The hour is not yet over, mon ami. En garde!”
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By the end of the hour, I had assimilated heart-sight into Abeloth’s tongue wholeheartedly such that both senses were one and the same. The end result was a spectacle to behold as I could now contend against ten common men.
The local hooligans had joined in with long knives and clubs, having fun in attempting to harm me; I had told them that it was fine if they hit for I had rúna that would close any wound.
“Okay, little ones, that’s enough grievous bodily harm for today.”
I removed a shank from my ribs and handed it back to the runt of the lot, a small boyish thing that was twice as big in spirit as he was in the flesh. I patted him on the head and ruffed up his hair, feeling a longing for my own little brothers. I had been a doting older sibling, always liking play and entertaining the troupe’s many children with tales and songs and wrestling.
It hurt, being away from family. Like there’s a hollow in place of your heart and your lungs grow heavy.
“Now, remember, just because uncle El can survive a shank to the kidneys doesn’t mean that others can. If you stab someone, uncle El will be very disappointed.”
I laced my voice with the vampyre’s song, not enough to hiss but just enough to rattle and put some Fear of God into their hearts. Street boys oft took to sword-fights with steel and stick alike anyhows, so I didn’t see the harm in letting them exact a little bit of sanctioned violence; Durante and I taught them how to drill properly with one another and the proper respect one must have so that they do not wound their sparring partner.
“Go slow, first, when learning a form or masterstroke. If you can’t do it right slowly, you won’t do it right at full speed.”
“Hacareal, widen your stance; you’re not a dog with its tail between its legs.”
“Footwork, boys, remember the footwork! You’ll keep tripping if you cross a foot over the other like that.”
“Randolph, don’t hit him in the bollocks—do that again and we’ll each take a switch to yours and see how you like.”
“If your breath is flagging, take a break and go to the well for water. A tired swordsman is a dead swordsman.”
And on we went until noon came upon us and we gave the lads a penny each to buy something to fill their bellies with—they were scrawny and lanky and emaciated as most lowbloods tended to be.
“I didn’t think of you as the charitable kind, El.” Durante gave me a once-over as if seeing me for the first time. He had the well-toned arms of a fighter, his skin kissed by the bleeding-sun and scarred by the bleeding pig.
“I’m not though I always was; just didn’t have the coin then.”
He patted me on the shoulder but was not the smiling nor talking sort and so went off to look for something to break his fast with; I did not need to eat and so instead went to the constable’s office in the artisan quarter.
Deputy Proctor Dufonte still did not like me but was not so intolerable of my visage like in the first time that we met. We spoke of the available bounties and marks, going-over information not included in the wax-sealed writs of execution and subjugation.