Dark Ages Clan Novel Tremere: Book 11 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga Read online

  DARK AGES

  TREMERE

  Eleventh of the Dark Ages Clan Novels

  By Sarah Roark

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Dark Ages Tremere is a product of White Wolf Publishing.

  White Wolf is a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive.

  Copyright © 2004 by White Wolf Publishing.

  First Printing April 2004

  Crossroad Press Edition published in Agreement with Paradox Interactive

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  Table of Contents

  What Has Come Before

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  What Has Come Before

  It is the year 1232, and decades of warfare and intrigue continue among the living and the dead. The Teutonic Knights and Sword-Brothers have embarked on campaigns to conquer and convert pagan Prussia and Livonia, spreading the crusading zeal into new lands. Bloodshed has, as always, followed in its wake.

  Away from the eyes of the living, in the shadowy world of the undead, these crusades have dark echoes. The powerful Saxon vampire Jürgen of Magdeburg shares the Teutons’ zeal and leads the so-called Brotherhood of the Black Cross, a secret order within both the Teutonic Knights and Livonian Sword-Brothers. He is determined to expand his domain into Livonia, using the banner of Christianity to increase his holdings. Last year he sent his guest-cum-rival Alexander to lead the conquest on his behalf, but that mighty vampire fell before the vampiric chieftain Qarakh, who leads a band of pagan blood-drinkers in alliance with Deverra, a blood sorceress and unliving priestess of the pagan god Telyavel. Qarakh’s might in battle and Deverra’s witchery together brought ancient Alexander low. Jürgen is rid of a rival, but his plans of conquest seem in a shambles.

  Existing in the midst of this chaos is Jervais bani Tremere, a vampire and wizard who wishes to establish good relations between Jürgen and his superiors in the Tremere order. Unfortunately, Jürgen is not inclined to trust Jervais (who once schemed to deceive him) or any Tremere (whom he considers interlopers among the undead). Jervais attempted to make himself useful by conveying the warning that Qarakh had sorcerous aid. Now he must deal with the evident fact that his warning was either insufficient or went undelivered.

  And hope that it doesn’t cost him his head…

  Prologue

  He knew he was dreaming, but that did not help.

  It was a room he could remember being in a long time ago, a library in which he and his master had once spent a few months. Bookshelves covered each wall from floor to ceiling, some holding codices, some with ancient moldering scrolls that threatened to spill out onto the floor. They towered over him, silently judging him a child and a fool. He moved through the cavernous chamber, filled with dread. He listened but heard only the sound of his own footfalls. Perhaps it was watching him, matching his pace. He could not hear it breathe. But it didn’t always breathe.

  Across the room, a pile of books and maps suddenly tumbled to the floor. He stared at it in a panic, and for one searing moment tried to will himself to believe that it had simply been overbalanced. Then he saw the blood spattered across the pages. He ran.

  Now he could hear it quite clearly, footsteps ringing like marble on marble and furniture flying in all directions behind him. Eight doors led out of the library, but most of them lay back toward the Thing. He chose a door from those before him, yanked on the handle several times before it gave way at last, then dashed through.

  And so it began. The next room he also recognized, but it didn’t belong to the same building. That hardly mattered. It had six doors leading out. He tried to remember which one he’d chosen last time. The one on the left, he thought. This time he went right. Still the Thing came hot on his heels.

  The chase seemed to last for hours. Every door he opened led only to a room with more doors, and though he tried at first to keep his bearings, he soon lost all concept of direction and distance past a vague horror that somehow his path was being bent in upon itself—that he was being herded.

  He also found that while the first rooms he’d wound through had had six, eight, twelve, four-and-twenty doors, the later ones had only two or three. His choices were narrowing. And though he still couldn’t hear the Thing behind him breathe, he could hear the devastation it wrought in its wake. Whatever it was, it was enormous. He had no idea how it was fitting through the doors. Yet somehow or other it gradually gained on him. He ran faster, chose his doors with diminishing care. He was sure he was making mistakes. Mistakes he might have avoided if he’d only been able to pause, think, consider. But he also knew with the absolute certainty of dreaming that if he stopped or even slowed down for an instant, he would die in its teeth.

  In another part of his mind, in a parallel reverie to this frantic scrambling, he was aware of his body tossing in its daytime slumber. He longed to wake himself up, but that would take his attention away from the maze for that one fatal instant. During other instances of this nightmare he’d imagined that she came to him, as she had come to him once (and only once) in reality, and laid her soft cool hand across his sweating forehead. Just now he could not conjure even the imagination of her. He was all alone, immured in stone. Sometimes the master heard echoes of the torment, but even he could do nothing.

  And then there were the others that also heard—some locked within their own torpid
bodies, some with no bodies at all. They heard and laughed, taunting him with the truth they all knew: that even immortals could only run so far and so fast for so long before that final slip, that brief hesitation that was all the Thing would need…

  Chapter One

  Lady Rosamund moved the last of her pieces off the board. “I didn’t think the magi of Tremere were taught always to let a lady win,” she remarked.

  Jervais bani Tremere tilted his head to the side in a slight gesture of acknowledgment and began to reset the board again. It bought him time to consider his response. “I can’t speak for the rest of my brethren, milady,” he answered, “but for my part, I was taught always to give a lady precisely the sport she requires, neither more nor less. Why do you mention it?”

  “Well,” she said lightly, “wizards are supposed to be clever, are they not? I hardly expected to defeat one so handily twice in a row. I’m forced to wonder if you’re playing to win at all.”

  “I always play to win, milady.”

  “I detect a note of irony.”

  “Milady has a fine ear for music.”

  “Ah, we must be embarking on the obligatory chain of political metaphors now.”

  “Good God, I hope not,” he exclaimed—and was rewarded with her first genuine, though small, smile of the evening. “Surely we haven’t run out of actual conversation just yet.”

  The smile vanished quickly at that. He immediately regretted his words. He’d thrown her off rhythm, and while that was often a worthwhile goal in diplomacy, tonight he needed just the opposite. No doubt this was already difficult enough for her, even if one would never know it. But she quickly recovered herself and gave him another smile. It was pretty, warm, invitational and not half so captivating as the real thing now that he’d seen the difference.

  “Do they not play tables in the sorcerers’ towers, Master Tremere?”

  “There’s little time for such pursuits, I fear.”

  “Such frivolous pursuits, is that what you were going to say?”

  “I would certainly never say that, milady.”

  Her head remained bent over the board, but her hazel-green eyes flashed upward. “But someone else would?”

  It was necessary, he reminded himself. It was the price of admission, or rather of re-admission. She would be satisfied when she believed she’d obtained more than he’d meant to give. Things could always be worse. It could be Prince Jürgen the Sword-Bearer himself putting him through the paces, rather than Jürgen’s beauteous mistress. Still, Jervais did not have to force much reluctance into his voice.

  “That is what is taught to our apprentices, yes. If they have time to play, then they must have time to study more, work harder. No doubt there are floors that could use a scrubbing, at the very least.”

  “They don’t even play chess, then?” She shook her head. “That has, as you know, a special significance to certain bloods. It is also widely extolled as a thing that sharpens the mind, teaches the art of the stratagem. The game of princes.”

  “I know of but one Tremere prince, milady,” he returned mildly.

  “There is something to be said for standing behind the throne, I suppose.”

  “Or at the side of it. That isn’t the argument, however. Why waste one’s time toying with men and Cainites and governments when the levers that move the very world are waiting there to be discovered and mastered? Conquer them, and you conquer everything.”

  She knocked a blot of his onto the bar. “Ah. You don’t seem to agree, however. You play. You must have been a very stubborn apprentice.”

  “I have been accused of it, milady. But is it stubbornness to realize that not everyone cares about the virtues of onyx or the exact shape of the wards on Solomon’s key, and that while one is shut up in one’s little room learning Creation’s secrets, Creation itself rolls by outside?”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to hear such a widely traveled man utter such sentiments,” she said wryly. “I must have assumed it was a matter of duty and not pleasure. The others of your clan I’ve spoken to—who, I admit, are few enough—all seemed to hate the world as much as any anchorite.”

  “Many do. I’ve never understood it myself. There’s far too much to see.”

  “Even in Magdeburg?”

  “Especially in Magdeburg,” he chuckled. “Far more to see here than in the very clearest crystal.”

  “And at Ceoris?” she prompted.

  That drew him up short. “At Ceoris—at Ceoris what?”

  Her eyebrow flickered a bit, noting his reaction. He inwardly cursed himself once again. “Is there much to see?”

  “Ah.”

  “Ceoris is in Hungary, is it not?”

  “Yes, of course, milady.”

  “Of all that country I only know what I’ve read in soldiers’ letters from the battle front, which, as you can imagine, are short on detail.” She sighed. “I’m not one of those ladies who needs to be entertained with long soliloquies on pine and lake and mist and moonlight in foreign lands, Master Tremere, but for those of us who must wait at home with the distaff, there’s always that desire to know more of what those dear to us saw and suffered.”

  “What they suffer even now,” he said. He couched it as a polite murmur, obligatory courtesy, but he did want to see what she made of it.

  She nodded solemnly and cast her gaze downward for a moment. “Yes. But alas, unlike Hungary, you have not seen Livonia with your own eyes. Or so you said the last time we met.”

  A quick parry, then. Interesting. “No, milady.” Since they were treading so closely to the real content of their meeting already, he dared continue a little further along the path. “I do trust the information I gathered on the subject of Livonia has proved useful to his Highness, however.”

  “That would be something you’d have to ask his Highness, of course.”

  “Then I hope to have opportunity to do so.”

  “We all have our hopes, Master Tremere.” Her slim hand reached out, fast as a striking adder, to catch a die that tumbled off the table from her overly enthusiastic roll. “I am sure that for its part, Ceoris hopes for a better issue from your endeavors this time around.”

  He accepted his punishment without complaint. It was his own fault. She had tried to approach the subject gracefully, from the perspective of the worried grass widow, and he’d insisted on turning it into a foray into what was clearly uncomfortable territory. It was so hard to shut down that instinct, but he had to remember his real purpose here. Stop sparring, he told himself. Perhaps you should even let yourself be a bit bewitched in earnest.

  “Ceoris is more convinced than ever, milady, that Prince Jürgen’s interests and those of House and Clan Tremere coincide so closely that they simply must ally for both their sakes…as soon as possible.”

  “If you mean that should the Black Cross fall, Ceoris will have that much less standing between it and the wrath of the voivode,” she said archly, “I would tend to agree. Are you telling me that the war goes badly for your brethren there?”

  “No, not badly, milady. Petty harassment and scattered raids.”

  “Then why this urgency?”

  “Milady, clearly we’ve all been rather hoping Rustovitch’s forces would simply fall apart in the wake of the truce, and just as clearly, that hasn’t happened. Perhaps it’ll help if I explain that petty harassment and scattered raids are precisely the voivode’s favorite tactic for keeping his enemies occupied while he rebuilds his strength and whips any faltering allies back into compliance. When he has truly given up, we will know it.”

  “Oh? How?”

  “Because it won’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before,” he answered in the most serious tone he could command. “Milady, we have weathered him and the rest of the Tzimisce storm for nigh on two centuries now. I can assure you from personal experience that giving up is not in his nature. He’ll take time, when it’s given him, to rest and replenish. Then, just as that eye of calm be
gins to pass…”

  She stared at him, game piece in her fingers, momentarily forgotten. “You think Rustovitch is waiting to see the issue of the fighting in Livonia, then.”

  “I think the treaty between Rustovitch and Prince Jürgen might as well have been signed in Qarakh’s blood, because he’s its only guarantor. The truce is a handy excuse for Rustovitch to recover himself while he watches to see how badly his Highness can be damaged by the campaign against the Balts. Nothing more.”

  “You seem to be assuming his Highness will in fact be damaged.” She made her move and regarded him with a defiance that she no longer tried to disguise under flirtation. “What if he triumphs instead?”

  “He must triumph, milady,” he exclaimed. “My masters’ only desire is to ensure that.”

  “And your own desire, Master Tremere? Is it the same as your masters’?”

  An expected line of questioning, but unwelcome nonetheless. “Mademoiselle Rosamund…I was, as I’ve told you, quite firmly corrected by my superiors for my earlier mistake. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I was pursuing their goal to the best of my ability, which was and is friendship between our clan and Prince Jürgen’s court.”

  “They don’t appear to have appreciated your efforts on their behalf any more than his Highness did,” she noted dryly.

  He did his best to submerge his growing irritation. “No, milady.” He let the pause afterward speak for him.

  She gave him a consoling look. “It simply makes me wonder why it’s you that’s here once again, Master Tremere—instead of some other representative. Surely that would have been more comfortable for all concerned?”

  Jervais seized an opportunity to knock her onto the bar just as she was about to begin bearing off. He sat back, trying to school the look of relief on his face into something less earnest. The two concurrent games had nothing to do with each other really, yet it was odd how even the smallest victory in one helped his resolve in the other. Now he could marshal his thoughts. He had to give her something. The more the reasoning part of his mind repeated this, the more badly the rest of him wanted to give her nothing, nothing at all, not even the courtesy of a refusal. Under the table, one hand clenched in his lap, bearing the burden for all the rest of his body.