History According to Aegon Nightshade

Aegon Nightshade

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"Dreams of Darkness are but reflections of reality." -- Aegon

Prelude: Berlin -- December 21st, 2042

I had barely spoken the words and reality was rent asunder by a darkness older than creation. I felt humbled to be granted a momentary sight of the unknowable and limitless Abyss. It reaffirmed my dark faith and inflamed my need to fully understand the dark truth that served as the underpins of creation itself. Please understand, I am not a monster, I just understand that the Abyss existed before creation as we know it. It exists now and without question, it will exist when creation finally burns. These are incontrovertible truths that I would be happy to discuss with you, save that they are also holy secrets, and thereafter I would either have to Embrace you or kill you. Its simply a matter of orthodoxy, after all the Abyss is my calling, my quest and my god.

Momentarily, my eyes stung from the brightness of the German night. With a few blinks, my sight adjusted and I found myself in a winter wonderland. Berlin. The very name conjures so many images and memories for me. Obviously, like everyone born in the twentieth century it makes one think of World War II and the Third Reich. But there is so much more to this amazing city than that and to make so much of so short a period in history is a disservice to Germany in general and more specifically, Berlin.

Yaldabaoth

I could paint a fanciful scene and relay to you the might of a Titan's strike and what that might feel like, but then I didn't feel a thing.

It all happened so fast, I was lucky to catch a glimpse of something larger than a man as it closed with me. I would swear that the giant appeared, literally, from nowhere. And even as he closed with me, I knew it was too late. Then...nothing, the absence of sensation. As a mortal youth, I had a similar experience with a skittish gelding and had awakened seconds later and a good fifty feet away. This was far more terrifying.

They say in that moment before you die that your life flashes before your eyes, but that isn't true because all I saw was darkness...for the longest time. Then, at first at the edges of my peripheral vision, and slowly sliding into my primary line of sight came the images of other people's lives lived in reverse. Ghost-like flickerings of 21st century Berlin, then other locations appeared with people all rushing backwards, undoing... everything. As the days and nights sped backward into months and then years, I understood that I was watching history unwind itself. Not something one expects to see when one has died.

It is indescribable and awe inspiring to watch all of history played backwards, as if I stood like one of the angels upon the edge of creation as God worked his will, a master artisan at the easel and I alone his sole audience. From the darkness beyond the ghost-light came the voice of a woman, at first the voice was unplaceable and yet hauntingly familiar, like something half remembered from a dream. Her words only subliminally audible as if felt rather than heard. More disturbing than the vibration of whispers was its unseen source which teased that primal human instinct to see what could only be heard.

Feverish with the need to know the unknowable, I called upon that most basic ability of Abyss Mysticism and inverted my sight. And it was if a veil had pulled from my eyes, the darkness gave way to sublime illumination. As I gazed about myself I perceived that I hung suspended at the heart of a storm beyond measure, like the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, the storm could likely have consumed Berlin in an instant and shortly thereafter all of Germany. In truth it was a tempest, a funnel cloud of infinite rainbow hues cycling counterclockwise at unfathomable speeds wherein piceous lightening arched between cloud layers of cerise pink, cadmium blue and dark tangerine.

As I glanced about myself, I saw that a swarm of ignis fatuus clung to me and upheld me above the towering top of the tempest. A look down produced intense vertigo, fear and gratitude. The churning vertigo made me want to vomit, but all I experienced was dry heaves for I was already empty. The fear was visceral, but there was no escape, only an infinite down into the heart of the storm. Raising my eyes to regain my balance, I felt only gratitude to the minute will-o'-the-wisps who upheld me from a fatal fall into the storm of history.

As I raised my eyes, it was as if I looked into the heart of the sun. Its brilliance so intense it left a palinopsia of afterimages that would remain forever. Unable to bear the pain of what I had seen, I returned my sight to the mortal spectrum and was granted the respite of darkness. The woman's laughter came to me not from the storm, but from utter darkness that exited above it. And while it was clear to me that the source was that Stygian dark which spoke to me, it did so through the shadow-motes which buoyed me.

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Paris, Kingdom of the Franks -- Western Europe -- March of 1096

I woke in my tent. Even before I opened my eyes I knew I wasn't alone. It was an undefinable feeling, something primal, instinct coded at the genetic level informing humanity that a predator is close. Without opening my eyes, I spoke to my visitor, the one who watched me in utter silence.

"My Lord? Forgive me if I do not rise. I do not believe I am capable. Have I been sick long? I have vague memories of something going wrong in Alexandria and then indistinct recollections of illness and nightmare."

{Theodoric} "Salivius, you were poisoned outside the Memory City, or so I am told, by a giant albino scorpion. Were it not for my Vitae, you would have died. Still, you have been abed for more than fourteen days. But, do not worry, my other servant has been looking after your duties while you have rested."

"Thank you my lord for your generosity, I am unworthy and will seek in vain to repay your kindness."

In the darkness of the tent's interior, I could not precisely see Theodoric, but I could see his shadow. His dark form came closer until it stood directly over me and then I saw the flash of a blade. In that second, so many possibilities passed through my mind, my liege could well have decided I was no longer worth his effort and waited until I was conscious just to kill me. But then there was the sound of flesh being sliced and cold, viscus blood spattered my face and I instinctively opened my mouth to receive this gift.

The feeding session seemed to go on forever and its took all my willpower to gag the vile black blood down and to swallow it. Then Theodoric was simply gone. I lay there patiently counting out sixty seconds against the beating of my heart and then leaned over the edge of the cot and barely found the chamber pot as all of Theodoric's black blood, bile and whatever they had most recently fed me came up in a rush. It was a noisy and unpleasant business, in my original mortal life, I had always hated vomiting more than any other symptom of sickness. This time however, it was much easier and afterwards, I felt a distinct sense of relief. I rummaged around near my cot until I found a wine-skin and washed the taste from my mouth. With effort, I nudged the chamber pot under the camp table and lay back to think.

If Theodoric ever realized that my body was rejecting his vampiric blood, he would almost certainly kill me. I would need to dispose of the chamber pot's contents personally as I could not afford one of the camp followers being a spy and reporting this back to the vampire.

It had not always been so. In the nights immediately after joining the pageant, I had been able to ingest the elder's vitae without difficulty. But over the weeks following, the black blood seemed to slowly sicken me and finally my body began to expel it. In all my years as a vampire, I had never seen or heard of such a thing and it produced such sheer unreasoning terror in me that when the blood would leave me, thereafter I would collapse in shivering terror.

To stem the fear, in my mind, I tried to reorder the events leading up to the attack on the temple of Ereshkigal. Despite my efforts, those memories seemed hazy as if I were remembering the events from more than one perspective. It made me uneasy with the thought that such a long convalescence could have been due to a brain damaging fever. I quickly dismissed the possibility, for if I did have brain damage, I probably wouldn't have had the wits to notice anything out of the ordinary.

My sickbed stank of old sweat, nightmares and vomit. And I could tolerate it no more. Sitting up made my head spin and I broke out in a sweat. Getting to my feet took a great deal more effort as my muscles felt like gelatin. But I managed with a bit of difficulty. Thereafter, I retrieved a cleaner set of clothing from the chest at the foot of my cot, a bar of soap I had bought in Alexandria and a towel and headed outside.

As I emerged from the tent, I turned to see the eastern horizon fully aflame. It burned with bands of gold, ruby, and opalescent orange. It would be dawn within just a few minutes. Somewhere within the encampment, the vampires of the pageant were hiding away in dark places to wait out the day. Like cockroaches they scurried for the shadows and for reasons I couldn't name, that made me smile.

But I immediately noticed something was not completely as I recollected. The humid, almost tropical breezes of Alexandria and the city itself were just...gone. We were somewhere else. Looking up at the fading night sky, I spotted several constellations and calculated that we had traveled several degrees of latitude northward and many degrees of longitude westward. We were somewhere in western Europe. And it was cold.

Returning to my tent, I retrieved a cloak and sought out someone within the camp who could answer my questions. As I worked my way through the slowly awakening pageant, the first individual I ran across was Frater Eadweard. The good brother had just come through the double wall of canvas even as I sought egress. Coming face to face, we exchanged the morning greeting and I asked after the pageant's current whereabouts. He replied that we were in the Frankish lands, just outside the walls of Paris. I thanked him for his information and lightly brushed past him in my haste to dispose of my pot of night-soil and spoiling vampiric vitae.

To be honest, I had never really paid much attention to the fat monk with his greasy pitch of religious righteousness sold like a snake-oil-salesman. But when he grabbed me by the arm, he spun me around like little girl. Startled, I dropped my burdens and by reflex my sword blade slid free of the scabbard. As we confronted each other in the dark gray twilight, I realized the monk was far stronger than he looked. Fat and tonsured, the good brother looked soft, but clearly that was far from the truth and like an accountant, I noted it down in my invisible record book. As we stared at each other, he must have sensed something was different about me, because he suddenly released my arm and mentioned that there was a killer loose outside of Paris and that I should be careful. I nodded my understanding, but I did not thank him this time, we both knew he was not warning me so much as trying to scare me. When I offered nothing further and did not sheath my sword, he backed away and resumed his walk towards the House of the Profligate.

Gathering my fallen items from the snow covered ground, I kept my sword in my hand and passed through the first lay of yellowing canvas. The space between the two canvas layers was only about four or five feet wide, but it created a strange corridor in the twilight that seemed to stretch away into darkness to both the right and left. I did not tarry and even as I was pushing my way through the outer canvas, I heard the whisper of a woman's voice calling my name. As I turned to look in that direction, I beheld a beautiful woman with hair like living flame and iridescent green eyes that seem to gather the light like those of a cat. She was no more than five feet tall and could not have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet and yet she radiated age and power like an elder vampire might.

"Lady Astarte, I take it?" She offered a polite curtsy in reply and I set aside my bundles to bow in return. As I straightened, I noticed for the first time the elegantly pointed ears that were only partially hidden by her glorious mane of hair. As if she had read my mind, she smiled and nodded in answer to my unspoken question. "My lady, please forgive my appearance, I have been ill for a fortnight or more and I was making my way to the Seine to bathe." Despite myself, I found it difficult not to stare at this fae woman. Her feminine attributes where not lost on me as my body began to involuntarily respond to her proximity, but there was so much more to it than mere mortal lust. The air around her seemed to crackle with unseen electricity and I could feel it crawling across the backs of my hands and down my spine. I was in the presence of something far greater, older and eldritch, a fey princess.

I knelt there before her and recalled the three things my old mentor had to say about the fay: creatures of faerie are not to be trifled with, pure iron can kill them, but one must never ever make a deal with them. For the fay are more clever than mankind, subtle and worst of all, fickle.

Niflheim -- Seventh of the Nine Worlds -- April of 1096

All along the wagon-train, men and draft animals shivered in the cold dim twilight following dawn. The snowstorm had only partially abated as the sun rose in in the east tinting the gray horizon there with rose and amber. Flakes of icy crystals still fell thick on the left bank of the Seine where the pageant prepared to depart Paris on its eastward trek. Beautiful as the dawn might have been, my eyes were turned to the south where the last vestiges of Bolverk's Army vanished over a low series of hills. As I turned back to look at Paris, I could see that despite the sudden and heavy spring snowstorm, some buildings still smoldered after the fires and riots of the most recent chaos. As the line of wagons and riders began moving towards the dawn, my mind drifted over the events of the preceding nights and the part we had played in them. There was a sense of destiny in all that had transpired and as the only living man to witness such momentous events, the responsibility fell to me to record what I knew of this new history.

Less than a Roman mile from the walls of Paris, the pageant encountered thickening snow and fog. Visibility became so labored that riders like myself were obliged to tie our horses to the rear of the closest wagon and walk afoot through the knee deep snow. Most lit torches and called back and forth to one another so that individuals might avoid getting lost in the foggy blizzard. I tied a length of rope to the nearest wagon, then about myself and had each of my men do so at three foot intervals. In such conditions, it would be all too easy to lose one's footing or get turned around and separation from the pageant would almost certainly mean a long cold death. Before the blizzard caught us unawares the pageant had been moving along the Roman track the Franks now called the Eastern road. Fairly early on, I lost track of time and a sense of plodding continuity took its place. It seemed forever that we wandered through that freezing white storm, not that I questioned this, rather it seemed only natural. But somewhere along the way, the pageant had left behind the fallow snow covered fields of the Left Bank with its numerous peasant hovels and occasional aristocratic manses for a single snowy track through a twilit forest.

I shook my head as if to clear it of too much drink or too little sleep, an indiscriminate fugue that in future days I would come to anticipate each time the pageant moved in that peculiar way wherein it traveled impossible distances in only hours or days. Later, I would with difficulty remember something of the terrors the pageant had passed through on its journey from Paris to wherever we were now. As if in a half-remembered dream, I recalled the pageant's passage through a blasted arctic landscape. Snow still fell in thickening gusts and eerily the fog clung to the wagon-train in spite of the freezing wind. So cold was the air that my breath smoked like Argont's forge and I felt the first tinges of numbness that would eventually become hypothermia. But as I looked up, I beheld a cold blue sun many times the size of the golden Sol and its azure radiance gave the icy landscape an alien ambience. The white plain seemed to stretch as far as I could see, but it was anything but flat and periodically whorled pillars of ice would rise from the surface, carved by the wind into fractal shapes that shattered the cerulean light into a kaleidoscope of rainbow hues like a prism. Further interspersed, sometimes by miles, were barren hills and ridges of black volcanic rock rising from the icy surface. Although it did not touch the pageant, the wind shrieked like a banshee and beneath its icy keen I heard something else - a low rumble that was omnipresent and felt deep in the bones. The sound was that of massive ice sheets grinding together for the surface of this world was composed of endless glaciers.

In disorienting flashes these memories surface and only with meditation and occasionally magic. Reconstructing what happened while the pageant journeys as it does is most like assembling a child's puzzle cut from the center of an old tree. The whole is lacquered and polished to reveal the very specific pattern of the wood's rings, then its cut into countless pieces and dumped willy-nilly into a box to be sorted by bored children trying to rearrange the original whole. With time, patience and a bit of sorcery the memories can be reconstructed, but its clear that the powers-that-be never intended that the pageanteers should be aware of the eldritch nature of their constant sojourn and of the myriad of worlds used as way-stations betwixt here and there.

Our journey across the arctic landscape eventually brought us to a ice-floored valley squeezed between two high escarpments of black volcanic stone down which layers of hoarfrost glittered like blue diamonds dying in the fading light. The days on this world were long, even compared to arctic summers, and with a sky empty of clouds the nights would be too cold for humans caught outside. Despite the cold, instinctively, I welcomed the false night between the canyon walls as only a creature of darkness or a former creature of darkness might.

The valley's width narrowed until we moved through a crevasse like defile. Eventually the crevasse emptied onto the frozen surface of a lake that lay in a crater many miles across. The pageant's pace across the great ice lake slowed to a crawl as men and beasts lost their footing with alarming regularity. I was among those and as I began to rise, I had occasion to look down into the glass like ice to see what lay below. At first uncertain of what I thought I saw, I knelt down on already numb legs to brush away the wind drifted snow.

The frozen lake was as crystal clear as tropical seas and there, only a few feet below me I saw them, countless men, women and children caught forever in the moments of their deaths. They were spaced out every few feet in all the cardinal directions, if the entire lake floor where so meticulously filled with human corpses, then an entire race of man lay forgotten below the ice. I scrabbled to my feet and resumed my zombie's walk towards the unknown, like all those around me, only partially aware of the graveyard across which we walked. Beneath my feet the open staring eyes of countless people looked upward at the dying light, perhaps in envy of our still warm flesh and the freedom of motion of which we were still capable.

As twilight betook the land, the arctic zephyr ceased to rage and in the stillness I heard a woman's voice raised in song. Incomprehensible were the words which were foreign to mortal ears and I felt my heart quicken with a surge of the arcane. Like whale song her mellifluous coloratura carried far across the glistening ice and was answered by a chorus of baritones as bleak as a funeral dirge. This alien opera progressed even as the wagon-train approached the center of the vast and frozen lake. There at the heart of the crater was a monolith of ice, carved by the wind, into a towering crystalline structure the equal of any twentieth century skyscraper. As the sapphire sun began to sink below the horizon, its last rays seemed to ignite the arctic monolith throwing shards of fractured light to the farthest extremity of the cold crater lake.

Somewhere up ahead, a brazen and sonorous note sounded, that of a rams-horn. This ancient symbol brought the caravan to sudden halt. In that place, the light died with surpassing speed and violet shadows pooled within the crater-lake like dark water rising up from below and leaving only half of each animal, wagon and man visible to the mortal eye. As horses and oxen stamped their feet reflexively for warmth, men and woman shivered without the heat of exertion generated by our sleepwalker's march and the breath of all the living smoked in the half-light adding to the aberrant mist that still clung to the caravan's periphery.

From my position towards the middle of the pageant's convoy, the tower or towers of ice, for they were two and intertwined dominated the landscape before me and it was impossible for me not to see that windows, doors and stairs of all sizes had been carved from the monolith's exterior. Looking out and down upon our twilight parade from countless windows were faces, indistinguishable in the dying light, but both familiar and alien. Down the frozen exterior of the monolith trailed flights of stairs and down these stairs came men who were not men, their skin was painted as blue as Pictish woad and their hair although dark shown with many metallic hues. None were dressed for the arctic cold and some were not dressed at all. As they grew closer it became apparent that these alien men were proportionally larger than mortal men twice over and not all who descended were masculine in character for many beautiful if fierce looking amazons traversed the cold crystal stairs to the surface of the frozen lake.

At the base of the monolith they gathered, several hundred and more looked on from above. They stood in an archway a hundred feet high that served as the entrance to a tunnel that made its way through the base of the ice towers and out the other side, an otherworldly Eiffel Tower formed entirely of ice. From the throng before the great arch, a small contingent of a dozen or so made their way across the frozen lake to stand before the head of our motley column. I could not see them well from my vantage point and my attention drifted from time to time. When next I was aware, the group was once more in motion along the caravan's port side giving me a good view of them. In the lead was a naked woman who stood twelve feet tall, her voluptuous blue body swayed with predatory grace like a Balinese dancer or a Bengal tiger and her black hair tinted in shades of violet hung down to her ankles in a thick braid. I knew before me was a queen for upon her head was a delicate diadem of arctic ice like a crown of pale blue Tiffany glass.

Beside her, and so much smaller was Astarte, but not as I had known her. Her hair was like molten copper as it flowed out behind her in an otherworldly breeze and her dress of amethyst and verdigris bore a corona of eldritch emerald fire that gave off sparks of gold. Never in all my countless lives had I seen anything to compare with such alien beauty, both terrible and majestic, a unearthly vision made manifest and given life eternal. Such sights mortal man was not meant to see and I came to understand that the fugue that held us all prisoners in our own flesh and robbed us of our reminiscence was meant in part to insulate us from the madness such sights could instill and alternatively to protect these alien, but beautiful beings from humanity.

Behind this otherworldly duo came a cadre of blue giants, bodies sheathed in armor of iridescent reptilian leather trimmed in long fur the color of a Russian grey cat. I could not imagine what animals gave up their lives to cloth these blue warrior men, but as they approached, I could see that like Astarte, their ears were distinctly pointed and each marked with ritualistic black scars that I had originally taken for tattoos. Like their armor, they bore no ordinary weapons, but creations of ice, glittering deadly spears, swords and axes that seemed glow of their own accord. And yet, despite each of these unearthly features, it was their eyes that captivated me, red the color of blood and with a vertical pupil reminiscent of felines more than those of a serpent. Despite their initially humanoid appearance, I understood on an animal level, that these creatures were in no way related to mankind and as they looked upon us and spoke among themselves in a harsh guttural tongue that they bore us an ancestral enmity that must one day be slaked in a genocidal holocaust. What is more, somewhere in my own mortal heritage, every fiber of my being, bones to blood called out to me to attack without mercy or else flee for my life. I could not imagine under what fey truce we the children of humanity stood in this place alive without being butchered to the last.

With the death of the sun, the sky's amethyst turned atramentous and from the unfamiliar void burned alien constellations whose meanings I could not fathom. These things my down cast eyes perceived in the mirror of the darkening lake. No more the staring eyes of countless corpses were seen, but rather the Oculus of Niflheim.

This mirror darkly, reflected many things, all the more so as an eldritch aurora spread across the foreign firmament casting all those present as aspects of incandescent. It was neither Astarte's reflection bound up as it was with the entwining image of a great black serpent, nor the gathered host of azure giants whose reflected raiment consisted of the bones of human children that surprised me, but the reflections of the nearby pageanteers.

Of course, I could only see the reflections of my men and those closest to us. Several of the pageanteers bore distorted visages, some looked starved like concentration camp victims, while others were obviously sick as their reflections bore terrible lesions or oozing pustules. Like the host of the damned revealed to Scrooge by Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol, all of the pageanteers were weighted down with chains of varying lengths. Some were bound to additional weights like coin chests or beautiful weapons or even stranger things.

What I saw of myself and my men in the oddly illuminated ice brought on a moral terror and revulsion that would later manifest itself as twisted déjà vu and the occasional nightmare as the memories sought to break free of the pageant induced amnesia.

In the ice, my form possessed a distinctly draconian aspect, like a man sized dragon standing on two feet with a tail like an alligator and wings like a gargoyle, clearly my reflection was both strong and hungry, but not the least bit human.

My reflected self was covered in black gem-like scales that became horn-like ridges over both the eye sockets and where the ears should have been. My scaled hands ended in obsidian claws three inches long, and the leathery midnight wings upon my back possessed ebony spines for both defensive and offensive purposes. It was my face that stayed with me the longest, my face was like that of a crocodile with a broad short snout and rows of savage teeth visible even with my mouth closed. The worst part were the eyes, reptilian and golden, they seemed imbued with both calculated cunning and predatory intelligence.

Around my neck was a thick slave's neck-chain and hanging from it was the amulet versus demons made for me by Mordblund. A single thick chain hung around my waist like a belt and from it hung three books, the arcane tomes I had stolen from the library of the French king's palace in Paris. But that was not all, in each hand, I held a thick iron ring and bound to those rings were chains that bound my men to me. Strangest of all, at my feet sat a black house cat with not a care in the world.

The group behind my cadre were camp followers, a mixture of men, woman and children. In the coldly reflective ice, each and every one of them looked like a corpse. In the back of my mind, I knew what was going to happen to them, but I was powerless to even twitch an eyelid let alone change the outcome of a foregone conclusion.

As the delegation of blue giants passed my men and I, for the first time I understood their conversation. Astarte and the blue giant queen were haggling over the price of passage for the pageant through this realm, the cost would be paid in human lives from among our camp-followers. The powers-that-be within the Pageant were obviously possessive of their chosen and indentured servants, those the giants could not have. But those poor fools who had sought to find safety and an easier journey following the pageant to Trier would pay a far higher price than they ever might have imagined.

Astarte matched the blue queen's stride with several smaller steps and she personally helped the giantess select the sacrifices. As each victim was chosen, a blue warrior would step forward and take the unresistant mortal by the arm and lead them several feet out onto the ice. There beyond the confines of the mist that surround the Pageant, the individual would start into wakefulness. Like drugged animals they were slow to realize their plight and when it finally dawned upon them that they were being systematically cut off from escape and the safety of the Pageant, they began to panic and begged for their lives.

The blue giants treated this behavior the same way a farmer or butcher might the bleating of a sheep or goat. But rather than gentle kindness or casual indifference, the blue warriors obviously relished the terror of their human victims and sought to enhance it with savage intimidation and physical cruelty. How many times had this sort of scene played itself out as the pageant moved from the mundane world to another realm and back again? How many human lives had been lost paying the toll between worlds? Only Astarte would know for sure.

When a full two dozen men, women and children had been selected, the queen of giants trailed her warriors and their charges a bit further from the pageant and there she had them herded at weapon point into a rough knot inside a circle of blue warriors. Those within the circle, save for the children, knew that their time was up and as the cold began to afflict them, the chatter of their collective teeth carried over the ice to where I stood. Like animals to the slaughter they bleated and cried, screamed and tried to push through the warriors. One of the men called for calm, and brought order to the chaotic, weeping group.

Then unlike animals to the slaughter, they all knelt down and began to pray. Their chattering prayers served as feeble counterpoint to the the rich notes hummed by the queen of giants as she walked the perimeter of the circle and chanted in the harsh tongue of her people. As she completed her first rotation fine traceries of blue-white light delineated a perfect circle below the surface of the ice. I did not need to see what was happening, although I could peripherally glimpse the action – rather I could feel the gathering of power, of air and water as they interacted to momentarily imbue a significant quantity of fire and then just as quickly drain it away.

I expected screams and the sounds of splashing, but that never happened. One moment they were kneeling on the ice praying and the next, they were just – gone.

From some long forgotten store of human emotions passed down to me in my first life or perhaps from my most recent reincarnation, I felt rising within me a primordial rage that for just a few brief seconds allowed me to brush off the fugue. Astarte had not even bothered to watch what became of her human sacrifices, she was striding back towards the head of the caravan when she must have sensed something of what I was doing. She stopped before me and as our eyes met, I saw that her eyes, from iris to sclera had turned infinitely black – the Abyssinian stare. The emptiness of the Abyss drained away my rage and my spell collapsed before fully forming. Once again the fugue held me, distancing my mind from thought and emotion, insulating memory and injecting absolute bliss – once more I was as serene as the Buddha.

The queen of giants had a much longer stride and caught up to Astarte only a moment or two after my spell fizzled. She inquired what Astarte was looking at, the Autumn Queen's reply was nominal, just enough in the language of the giants to dispel the giantess' suspicions. In that second as she still faced me she must have looked down and seen my reflection, what she gleaned there, I cannot know ever were I to remember the event. But as she lifted her head high and the eldritch nimbus of cold fire blossomed anew around her, she turned to face the queen of giants. Although coldly polite, she now dictated terms, the Pageant would pass through the portal within the frozen monolith and we would leave this world for the realm called Midgard.

The blue giant queen, frostily agreed as she eyed all the other potential sacrifices with something resembling regret. But then, Laufey, queen of the frost giants and mother of Loki – the lord of lies, remained painfully aware of her pledge of hospitality and the golden oaths that bound her to deal fairly with this wispy princess of the Autumn Court. And perhaps to reassure Astarte that her obligations and responsibilities were not forgotten, she recited the compact between the courts of Autumn and Winter. She never looked back at the dirty fire haired human, the surge of power could never have come from a mortal member of the Pageant, and her assumption of Astarte's fickle anger were correct save for their source. But while Laufey was many things including sublimely powerful among the fae, one thing she was not, was overly imaginative.

From somewhere at the head of the column, the long lonely call of the rams horn reverberated across the ice and the caravan that was the Pageant began to move forwards on legs long since gone numb into a gateway of glittering blue-white light that swallow the humans, horses and wagons like a dragon of ice swallowing a giant serpent of flesh.

Trier, Duchy of Upper Lorraine in the Kingdom of Germany -- near Luxembourg -- May of 1096

I came to myself leaning against a frost covered wagon for support. I was bone tired, weary in the way soldiers are after a forced march and my body was completely numb from my feet to the scalp of my head. Everywhere I looked, pageanteers and camp-followers and even the horses began to collapse in their tracks. We all drew in deep gasping breadths of moist seemingly warm air and every object bore a rhyme of frost. I had trouble remembering how long we had been traveling and where precisely we were. The details of our journey seemed fragmented and fuzzy, and the harder I tried to make sense of them, the more swiftly they flew away from me like the black birds of Paris.

I was literally jerked into the moment as the man closest to me and tied to me by a frost covered rope, lost his footing and began dragging me down. Without any feeling in my feet, keeping my balance was difficult. I could not feel my hands as I grabbed the hilt of my dagger and once again I nearly lost my footing as I wrenched it from the scabbard with too much force. It had been necessary however, as the blade itself was thickly covered in ice crystals. With a single strike, I severed the length of rope binding us and he along with rest of my men hit the ground hard. My second strike severed my bindings to the wagon allowing me to totter a bit before kneeling next to the first fallen. For a few moments, I struggled even to think of the fallen man's name. Then it came to me, Agilulf, born in the northernmost reaches of Italy he was a Lombard and all of my personal guard called him Little Wolf. As I inspected Agilulf on my knees, I could see that his normally tan face was far too pale and as cold as we all were, he should have been shivering. But the boy was not shivering and by the lack of visible breath he clearly was not breathing either. I know, its ironic that I call him boy because physically there could not be more than a year or two between us and he could easily have been my older brother, but then appearances can be deceiving and I had lived many lives before this one.

As I bent over him, with the knife in hand it occurred to me that this life might very well be my last.

From that point forward, I thought of nothing other than what might be necessary to save his life. A lifetime of combat training has other uses than just the acts of war. In my hands the dagger made a series of precise cuts to remove his leather armor, a woolen vest and a stinking linen shirt that had not been washed in months. Then sheathing the dagger, I leaned yet closer and began to breath life back into the boy's mouth. Those around me starting to become aware and stared at me in a dumbstruck fashion which was a shame, because resuscitation is a two person effort. I made do as best I could, but without the right rhythm, I was likely doomed to fail. Then a shadow fell upon me and I glanced up to see Blagoy the barber-surgeon, it must have been his wagon we had been tied to during the journey, and a turn of good luck for the dying Agilulf.

In the Bulgarian dialect of the southern Slavic tongue, I said:

"Master Blagoy, the boy is dying, the cold has stopped his heart and breath. We must quicken the him and I need your help to do so."

His reply was typical of the man.

"If the boy isn't breathing, he is already dead. In this, he is not alone and there are others more likely to survive if I attend to them this night."

As he turned to walk away, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his knees. So detached was he that this assault merely drew a questioning glance and a raised eyebrow.

Blagoy was a man that I admired for his deep calm and utterly rational behavior, he would never make a decision based on emotion, nor allow emotion to sway him. With him the only appeal that would move him would be one of enlightened self interest.

"He is not yet dead and if you do exactly as I tell you, we can save his life. What price would you pay to know how to restart a man's heart and make him breath again?"

My grandfather was the fisherman of our household, but I knew the best morsels with which to bait a hook.

His voice did not change, nor did he seem to breath any harder, but the widening of his pupils told me what I needed to know even before he voiced his reply:

"Show me."

I placed Blagoy on one side of the Little Wolf and showed him the palpitations needed to compel the heart to beat again. I emphasized the need to synchronize our tandem routine, of my breathing for Agilulf while he palpitating the young man's heart. Blagoy as my partner needed only to see me do this thing once and he had mastered it. In those moments, it seemed as if time contracted and stretched out infinitely. This then was the opposite of battle, the struggle to save a life became a labor alike and yet different than childbirth and both of us were straining and sweating even in the evening chill. I am not sure how long this went on, but eventually we were rewarded by the convulsing of Agilulf's body as he returned to the land of the living.

Blagoy and I looked at each other over the young man as he struggled to get enough air and then we were both laughing. It was the first time I had heard the serious surgeon laugh at anything and it was an explosive thing. After propping up Little Wolf's head, I got to my feet and looked around while Blagoy remained at the boy's side.

My other men lay where they had fallen, as had at least half the pageanteers. The forest around us was showing signs of spring, the budding of trees, new shoots and even a few flowers were visible from where I stood. About a hundred feet from the road on which the caravan had settled, the true forest began, it was a wild tangle of trees and undergrowth and also a means for our survival. Turning back to my men, I stopped and knelt down to speak a few words of encouragement to each, but they just shivered where they lay.

In this life and those that preceded it, I had known many taskmasters, some had favored positive reinforcement, but most had understood that men are just animals that walk upright and must not be coddled. I walked to my horse and from the saddle I pulled a whip and to each of those still lying down I gave a taste of the lash and repeated my command.

"Get up! Move!"

A couple screamed and a couple cursed me, but all came to their feet panting. As an analogy, men are most like dogs and I mean this in all ways. One must establish dominance and then show them affection, too much of one spoils the animal or turns it savage. I walked up to each and offered a long pull from my wine-skin filled with Frankish brandy. While the alcohol provided only a false warmth, it did galvanize each of them and remind them that their master could give them punishment or reward depending on their actions, but he would never accept failure. Once I had them moving, I took them into the nearest edge of the forest to collect deadwood. Despite the feeling that it should be true night, we could all see the sun had barely set and the dimming light would last for some while longer.

I did not waste the opportunity this situation presented, rather I sought to instill each of my guard with the understanding that each of them was important to the whole and that as a group we could survive anything. As a team building exercise it was perhaps imperfect, but it got their blood flowing and allowed us to collect considerable wood with which to create campfires. As we returned from the forest, I could see Vulo Vodach riding slowly along the line of wagons giving directions from atop his dark warhorse. Momentarily our eyes met and he nodded ever so briefly and then continued on his way. His directions told me that a clearing had been found ahead and that the Brotherhood of the Blade were pushing the exhausted pageanteers forward to a defensible location. I led the men to the head of the column and down the road where a pair of scouts waited. One already had a fire going and we added our fuel to the blaze and created other fires around which the half frozen travelers could warm themselves.

While it took longer than it should have, the wagon train followed those on foot until everyone was gathered together in the clearing. Tonight the wagons were arranged in a circle to protect the exhausted pageanteers. Only one of the large tents was erected, the Tent of Dionysus, which was used to shelter the sick and the tired while food was cooked outside in black iron pots over each of the campfires. Slowly, other small tents were erected around the mess-tent and while fat Rodolph and his helpers made a quick stew for everyone, I commandeered one of the small fires to brew up some coffee for myself and my men. When I gave each of them a tin cup of the bitter brew, each looked dubious and some spit it out immediately while the more pragmatic made faces but drank it down. I needed them both alert and warm, food would only make them sleepy and none one including myself would sleep until we had scouted the area and determined potential risks to the Pageant.

As they warmed themselves by the fire and drank their coffee, I watched each of them. Of the three remaining Mochán was the eldest at around his middle forties, home for him was Dublin Town, a Viking stronghold on the east coast of Eerie (Ireland). The men called him Early Bird for the fact that he seemed to need less sleep and was always the first to awaken. After killing a Norman knight who had mistaken one of his daughters for a whore, he had been obliged to leave his old life behind if only for the sake of his family, for the Normans did not take the killing of one of their own lying down. The Hiberno-Norse look after their own and he found passage on a long-ship to the port city of Bordeaux in the Duchy of Gascony. There he took up with a mercenary company in the endless border wars between the duchies of Gascony and Toulouse. His mercenary company was eventually destroyed by the Army of the Red General as it made its way from Nimes to Clermont. He was a man who could tell a story and keep the men fascinated and he had a decent singing voice as well, but his finest asset was a solid head on his shoulders and the capacity to keep it there. Being the eldest of my guard, the other men looked up to him as an older brother and I found over time that I could entrust him with instructions that would not be questioned, at least not before the other men. For myself, I liked the Irish man, although he would offer to fight me if I called him that for his sire had been a full blooded Norseman with a taste for adventure and war.

Next to Mochán sat Gebahard, a proud Saxon from Büren in Westphalia. Dark haired and stout, the German was hardheaded but pragmatic, until you got him drunk. The men called him Hardy and that sobriquet described him well. Born the third son of landed but destitute knight, on his sixteenth birthday his father placed him on his second best horse, given him a sword and a small pouch of silver and told him to make his own way in the world for he was a man. Gebahard rarely spoke of the years immediately following, but I got the impression he joined a gang of bandits and did a number of things for which he was not proud. On only a few occasions had he reminisced about what his life had been like before he joined the Army of the Red General, and I did not press him, for men will tell you their tale when they are ready and every man has secrets. I did not pry and in return I found Gebahard to be an amicable man of deep humor who was always playing harmless pranks in the dull day to day of the pageant.

The last man was also the most complicated, Waramunt was the youngest son of Veremund, 11th Baron of House Hasek of Augsburg in Bavaria. In the summer of 1094 Bavaria had been under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV since its old duke had taken up arms in rebellion against his lord twenty years before. Henry had appointed a imperial seneschal, Lord Carolus to oversee the Duchy of Bavaria until such time as a new duke or duchess could be found. But the emperor must have failed to mention that he planned to select a new ruler for the duchy himself, for when a prospective heir - a young woman named Eadburga of Nordheim had appeared the noble houses of Bavaria decided to take matters into their own hands and ignited a civil war. In all likelihood, the emperor's absence from the Kingdom of Germany and the war being wagged between himself and his eldest son in Italy had much to do with the Bavarian noble houses belief that they could choose from among themselves a new duke or duchess. At the time of the advent of the Bavarian civil war, Waramunt has been the wastrel and black-sheep of House Hasek, and as such had been given in pledge by his father to Leudoberct - Baron of House Adler to shape into a reputable nobleman. Waramunt for all his lack of experience, had fought bravely for the Southern Alliance, but had been captured by the Western Alliance of Bavarian houses early on in the civil war. The boy must have learned something from the Old Eagle of Adler or found some nobility in his own blood, for only a month into captivity he organized a group of low ranking nobles and led them to escape into the Duchy of Lower Lorraine. This disparate group of young nobles quickly left the civil war behind to seek fame and adventure for themselves as they traveled ever westward. In Orléans a squabble over a woman led the group to fragment and Waramunt chose to join the Army of the Red General rather than return to a homeland shattered by war. The White Rabbit as the men like to call Waramunt, a vague reference to his heritage and his luck with games of chance, is a handsome lad with a ready smile for the ladies and a surprisingly keen wit in general and specifically in the arena of politics. Although I like the White Rabbit, I show him not a hair more favor than the Little Wolf who was born of simple peasant stock. His station outside of my cadre and the pageant does make him useful in dealing with the Christian nobility of Europe and he serves as my agent in matters political.

Taking Mochán aside, I outlined my intent to scout the area and that I was going to speak to Vulo Vodach. His stoic nod was all I received in reply, but we had worked long enough together for me know he would prepare the men and all would be in readiness. On my way to speak with the leader of the brotherhood of the Blade, I only stopped once to retrieve my shield from one of the pack animals.

The clearing chosen as the campsite lay upon a flat-topped hill, about one hundred feet wide and a little over three hundred feet long, perfect for the pageant, one could almost say - too perfect. Already the pageanteers were erecting the Wyrdling Wall creating an eye-shaped space oriented north to south with a gate located in the east wall at the head of what looked like an old road that zigzagged down the heavily forested slope to cultivated fields half a mile east of our position. The location offered an excellent view of the local farmland between us and a wide slow moving river, and just on the other side, a city with well fortified walls.

All this and more I noticed on my way to Vulo's tent which lay in the pupil of the eye-shaped encampment. The tent itself was shaped like a bee-hive and formed from numerous skins sewn together. Smoke poured from a small hole at the top and fire light threw orange and gold illumination onto the moist dark earth before the tent, it also partially illuminated two of Vulo's guards as they stood at attention on either side of the entrance. Both men were Slavs and of dour disposition, as a point of interest I found it odd that the leader of the Brotherhood of the Blade would surround himself with such a homogeneous group when the rest of the pageant seemed to be made up of an almost random grouping of peoples from across Eurasia, the Middle-East and Africa.

Both men focused on me as I approached. Rather than risk a confrontation I kept my hands away from my weapons and offered a greeting to them. One of them stepped forward and placed a well muscled hand on my chest and queried me on my business with the Vodach (leader). Succinctly I told him that I needed to speak to Vulo on the matter of a scouting mission. Behind him, his fellow guard chuckled while the man before me smirked. Obviously I had violated some social taboo or stepped above my station in their eyes. Despite this, the second guard entered the tent to inform Vulo while the first guard locked gazes with me in a contest of dominance, he was the first to look away.

A moment later, the second guard emerged and gestured for me to come forward and enter his master's tent. As I entered, I could feel the first guard's gaze boring into my back, but I focused on the fire-lit interior. The smell of dung-fires and an almost drowsy heat enveloped me as I entered, off to one side were two men seated upon the rug covered ground facing each other, Vulo and his second in command Arnviðr. Both looked up as I entered and they exchanged comments in the Slavic tongue. Strangely, I had to work to understand them and only caught the gist of what they said. The Varagarian thought I should be taught a lesson for over stepping my place among the pageanteers, but Vulo seemed genuinely curious what might have brought me to his tent. I had only spoken to the war-leader a few times and he had largely ignored me since.

In the vulgar Latin that was so popular with the common people, I offered the evening greeting and waited for Vulo's response. Even while seated, Vulo seemed to radiate authority and I noticed his shadow was much larger upon the wall of skins that it should normally have been. I spent a few moments interpreting this sign and determined that like myself, Vulo had some power over the shadows and that there was far more to this man than met the eye. In turn both men watched me, with measured interest on Vulo's part and obvious scorn on the part of the Varagarian.

Vulo's deep bass voice was like the low roll of thunder when he spoke. "What brings you to my tent Aegon?"

"Vodach, I came to offer the services of my men and myself in scouting the local territory."

This response drew an immediate snicker from both men who drank from their cups and exchanged jokes at my expense in the Slavic tongue. In response, I smiled sheepishly as if I too found this funny, but did not quite get the joke. Sometimes it is best to humor those above you, it stokes their egos and sometimes they show you a bit more of themselves than they realize. My continued presence and patience in waiting for a real response eventually killed the mood and then Vulo spoke again.

"Aegon, neither your assistance , nor that of your men will be required. Arnviðr is in charge of all scouting missions and his men have already determined the lay of the land. You may go about your business as Arnviðr and I have business of our own. Goodnight."

The dismissal was obvious as both men returned to their conversation and joking at my expense. It did not really surprise me, but then this was simply an exploratory foray into new political territory. I had learned a fair amount, but I wanted to leave them with a bit of an impression to make future advances more profitable.

"Of course, Vodach, I look forward to visiting Augusta Treverorum again. The city seems to have prospered since my last visit and I long to once again soak in the Imperial Baths and visit the Temple of Mars. Shall I offer a sacrifice in honor of the Brotherhood of the Blade?"

Arnviðr had just told his lord a ribald little joke wherein a eunuch accidentally finds himself in the most renowned brothel in Constantinople and when presented with the options he is dumbfounded. Both men were so amused that Arnviðr had fallen over and Vulo nearly choked on a mouth full of expensive red wine. The Varagarian's implication that I was somehow like the eunuch was meant to insult me. In that moment it occurred to me that were I so inclined I could kill both these men before the guards interfered, but what would be the gain and did I really care what Arnviðr or Vulo thought of me? The answer was hard, but then the truth usually is, yes I cared both emotionally and intellectually. I needed the good will of both men if I was to rise within the pageant and that was my goal. I could not afford to alienate or kill either of them and killing out of wounded pride would be stupid. Taking life is a necessary evil, in the defense of oneself or a loved one, to prevent a greater loss of life or to achieve a greater end. None of these things would be served by needless butchery, so I turned off my emotions and offered them my best retort.

"Asphodelus Albus."

Both men stopped laughing and looked questioningly at me.

"The White Asphodel is the most renowned brothel in Constantinople. It is run by a dangerous little man who calls himself Aristidis Michelakos, who if rumor holds true, has ties to the imperial court and the emperor himself."

Vulo Vodach narrowed his eyes as he looked at me and asked:"Why is the brothel called the Asphodelus Albus?"

I was already turning on my heel and had stepped out into the night when I looked over my shoulder and replied: "Ah. Because the unopened flower, in shape, closely resembles a man's erect phallus."

Arnviðr gave me a cold look that told me that he knew of the White Asphodel, but that he had never been there, either due to lack of personal influence or coin. Vulo on the other hand, offered a minute nod of appreciation before I stepped fully into the night.

---

I walked away from Vulo's tent and the Pageant, down the the wooded hill recently turned green with springtime green and towards medieval Trier. My men met me at the edge of the encampment, like loyal hounds they fell in behind me as I passed.

Erdach Kodesh -- The Tarringan Castinate -- November of 1096

In the early hours before dawn, I rode my horse hard out of Wifilisburg in my return to the Pageant which was camped just outside a forgettable little village of Bökenförde. That little village lay twenty-six Roman miles north-west of Wifilisburg though what the locals called the Wälder bei Büren, a mere remnant of the ancient old growth Teutoburg Forest which has once covered most of this region and beyond. I only made two stops, one at midday as I passed through the village of Geseke which lay at the halfway point between Wifilisburg and Bökenförde and a few hours later at what I guessed was the halfway point between the two villages, a campsite at the ridge line between two valleys.

I arrived at Bökenförde an hour before dusk and both the horse and I were bone tired. I left the horse at the Bestarium with Wilkin the fodder-boy. Before leaving, I placed a trio of silver coins in his hand and instructions for the horse's care. Wilkin was ginger-haired youth from the Anglo-Saxon islands of Britain. I had heard in the Tent of Dionysus that Wilkin had been with the pageant a long time, though no one could remember exactly when he might have joined. I knew little enough about him, but we got along and I enjoyed bargaining with him, for he had a shrewd way about him.

As I walked away towards my tent, I wondered about what I really knew about anyone in the Pageant. A kid like Wilkin could well be a thousand years old and would I even begin to guess? Everyone in the pageant had secrets. I was no different. Perhaps Cronus had placed me in the path of the Pageant on purpose. After all, what was the pageant really? What purpose did it serve and who or what lay at its center? On the surface, the pageant was a sometimes shabby medieval circus, but the deeper one looked the more terrifying it becomes. Like a predatory plant, the pageant was seductive, luring in the gullible, the hungry, and the vain.

Caught between fatigue and the myriad mysteries of the pageant, I found my bed and dreamless slumber.

For a time there was black oblivion and then without warning, I found myself wandering a scorched landscape that mirrored in the large the burning thirst I felt within. Dust swirled around me filled with screams, and as I searched with stinging gritty eyes for their source, I stumbled over half-seen bodies in the dying light and there followed a bone-deep chill turned my breath to pale vapor. In that moment, so very fast my living heart beat, something horrible rose up before me and the fear was so very real that I could not breath.

Then a shudder passed through my body, beginning in the soles of my feet and arching up through my body like the fire from the heavens, directly into my skull. I was overwhelmed by a kind of horizontal vertigo, the sensation of sliding over a slippery surface and the gaining of traction that heralds a controlled stop. As my eyes finally opened and my conscious mind took over from my frightened animal brain, I shook off the last vestiges of slumber. I could see firelight flickering on the fabric of the tent wall opposite where I lay and upon the dusty gravel before my cot.

From my bed I rolled, feet forward and sat up with a naked sword in hand. Before I slept, I had nothing to drink and yet my head buzzed and throbbed as it would following a marathon drinking contest. But I wasn't hung over. The familiar feel of cobwebs on the brain and of slow moving thought processes told me that I had only slept two or three hours rather than the whole night.

As the disorientation began to fade, I stood up and peered outside. Beyond my tent flap the pageant was and was not as it should be. Night had fallen and the cook-fires burned brightly enough, but there were too few pageanteers hovering about those fires and despite the silhouette of tents placed properly, I could tell something about the encampment had changed. While I did not know it then, it was to be a night of revelations, a time of great possibilities and terrible deeds and already, some of us were dead - never to return.

Sword in hand, I emerged from my tent and walked to the nearest campfire. I was a bit unsteady on my feet as if I had just stepped off a merry-go-round, but I found my footing fast enough. The smell of freshly brewed coffee caught my attention and I quickly poured myself a cups worth and sipped the hot bitter brew as I cast about for any of my men. A cursory search revealed no one, inside or outside the the tents.

My next stop was the Tent of Dionysus. The tracks between the tents were wide enough for two, sometimes three men to pass abreast and as I passed the coordinated camps of each of the venues I observed a similar absence of those I knew from their habitual activities: food cooked unattended over dwindling fires, clothing or bedding that had been brought out to air or be beaten lay where they had been dropped, and most telling of all, the dray animals stood around nervously awaiting their grooming and feeding. Where was everyone? {Pageanteers present: Giulia, Ratan Orell & Vítor}

But before long I found the bulk of the pageanteers gathered on one edge of the encampment, staring towards the rising moon with a rapt kind of fascination.

The shadowed throng huddled together like herd animals fearful that a predator is about. But there was also a hush of expectation, the kind of anticipation that precedes public executions. Dread and a lust for blood emanated off the crowd in distant imitation of the mobs of Rome as they and their favored gladiator awaited the traditional thumbs up or down that presaged a warrior's death. Nowhere however, did I perceive a source for such visceral behavior, only the brightening of the horizon.

As I pushed my way through the gaggle of goggling pageanteers, I saw many familiar faces, not all of whom could I pair with a name. More than a few parted for me as if I registered to them as an authority figure. When I breached the foremost rank I found myself standing near Theodoric.

Even in a setting as uncommon as St.Calenda's Wandering Pageant, Odeum & Lunar Fair, one cannot just walk up to one's vampiric master and offer public obeisance. No, after our first encounter, Theodoric suggested that I treat him as just another member of the Lunar Fair. If I had been bound to him by the Cainite blood-oath, that would have been impossible. But for reasons even I do not understand, I seemed to be immune to the curse enforced loyalty that emotionally chains all ghouls to their vampiric domitors. However, this unexpected benefit came with significant danger, were Theodoric to realize his blood held no mastery over me, he would almost certainly have killed me as a potential threat to his survival. Under such circumstances it would be the vampiric thing to do and for that reason I had worked tirelessly to behave as if I were indeed bound to him by the Cainite blood he gave me from time to time.

As I moved to stand next to Theodoric, I glanced in the direction of the moon's rise, much as anyone would. But as I began to speak, it struck me, and I looked not once, but twice. The horizon was wrong, the pageant should have been camped next to the walls of Bökenförde. But there was no town. A forest should have surrounded both the town and our encampment, it too was missing. Involuntarily I stepped forwards and away from the crowd to partake of a full one hundred and eighty degree look at our surroundings. The pageant was now camped at the very center of a bowl-shaped valley. Every step I took stirred up small clouds of fine gray dust and everywhere I looked there was nothing but desolation, save for occasional clumps of spiny vegetation not unlike yucca. The valley's floor sloped away, gently gaining elevation as it moved from our location to the distant gray cliffs that formed the rim of the valley, several miles away.

Standing there, gaping like a fool, the broken pieces of my nightmare returned to me and the sensations that immediately followed had been a side effect of whatever had brought us to this inhospitable locale. As strode back to Theodoric with several questions in mind, he made the faintest of nods towards me or rather at something behind me and I spun about to witness the rising of an alien moon. It came up fast, clearing the horizon in what I estimated to be mere moments and its silvery light quickly illuminated the darkened valley to the brilliance of twilight. But the speed and brightness of the moon were not its only effect for I could feel a change come over everyone present, a kind of nervous energy that was followed by what felt like a faint tremor in the ground and a stirring of the air.

When the full silvery moon was a hand's span from the horizon another illumination followed it and the silent crowd began to murmur. This time, the entire horizon took on a ruddy gold glow and I feared that the sun was rising in this strange place. As I turned to warn Theodoric, I found him standing next to me and before I could speak he shushed me with a faint shake of his head. The second moon was many times the size of the first and as it came up over the edge of the valley I felt it in the pit of my stomach and in the trembling of the soil, a tidal effect without the sea. The smaller moon had been too bright after the dark of night to see the details of its surface, but this second moon was huge, and it rose far more slowly. I saw quite clearly with only the naked eye and in great detail the countless craters that pockmarked its gibbous surface of salmon and gold.

Hypnotic as the rising moons were, I turned towards where Theodoric should have been, and he was gone. Even as I pushed my way back through the gathered onlookers, I could hear the long solemn sound of the ram's horn signaling our departure. Fear and confusion pulsed through me as I walked back to the tents of my men, where I found Theodoric waiting for me.

Before my campfire, the storyteller spun a tale both frightful and fascinating. Countless eons ago, theoretically at the beginning of time, this world was one of the first created by the elder gods. And it was here, a world called Heimur Byrjunar, that gave birth to both gods and giants. The prehistory of the pantheons of Earth began with the childlike races of gods and giants testing their powers against each other, warping first the land and then the very rules of nature until they created some kind of supernatural blight. This corruption of natural laws poisoned the land and twisted the native flora and fauna into monstrous predatory forms, and even the magical energies of this place became dangerous to use.

An unspoken truce evolved due to these events and the gods of the earliest pantheons worked together to seal off this realm from all other realms for fear that its corruption might spread to the rest of the multiverse. After the vanishing of the gods, the sentient races of this world found sorcerous ways to protect and nourish isolated locales from the encroaching desert that slowly covered the planet.

Millennia later, about the time of the rise of the city of Rome, there was a decline the faith of the White faced Priests for their goddess Carna who had originated the lunar carnival in the distant years of prehistory. One of Carna's high-priests found a scroll containing not only the history of Heimur Byrjunar, but a means by which to travel there. Seeking to scare his priesthood into renewing their faith to the goddess of masks and exchange, he used the scroll to bring that ancient carnival to this world and here they wandered for a year.

Eventually the survivors, for many members of that Roman era carnival were lost here, found a way back to Earth located just outside the city of Tsev Fuabtis. This desolate desert world is known in the oral histories of the Pageant as Erdach Kodesh, the world abandoned by all the gods. We would find no cults or religions here, not temples or priesthoods and all the miracles both light and dark of the Pageant would be absent. In Eradach Kodesh, there was no Weirdling Wall to protect the pageanteers from external and internal threats, all bargains are suspended as are their miraculous gifts, and for those who died here no hope of rebirth as could be expected elsewhere.

In the light of the two moons, Theodoric's face looked more corpse-like than before and the firelight seemed to add to that impassive and noble face elements of fear and uncertainty, but only for an instant. When I looked away and back again, he appeared as he always had, like a statue that had been waiting there on the other side of the fire for years. I mulled over all that he said while around us the pageanteers worked at double time to break camp and prepare for a new journey. But to where?

After mulling over all that the Night Minstrel had revealed, I rose and asked his permission to scout the surrounding terrain. He watched me with hooded eyes like chips of arctic ice that seemed florescent in the queer moonlight. He merely nodded and as I turned to make my way to the Bestarium, his voice followed me, low and like an auger it bored into my back. This region was called the Tarringan Castinate and it was where the pageant always arrived when it transitioned to Erdach Kodesh. As I turned to ask him more of what he knew of this place, I saw that once again he was gone and in frustration I returned to my original objective.

I encountered my men on the way to the Bestarium, two I sent to pack up our belongings and the other two I took with me to reconnoiter. Once beyond the borders of the Pageant, we took off at a gallop, leaving a trail of dust behind us to mark our passage. As we had materialized in the very center of the Tarringan Castinate , a wide open flat floored valley from which the light and the smoke of our cook-fires would have been seen for many miles in all directions both before and after the rising of the moons, I felt no need to try and hide our presence. If there were anyone or anything in this mournfully empty land, they had already spotted us hours ago.

The sudden burst of speed, the violence of the horses bodies as we raced across the floor of the valley answered the strange waves of emotion that moved through me like lightening. As a mortal, I had always struggled with my emotions, that strength of passion diminished after my Embrace and for decades after my mind was largely calm. When it came time to train with my mentor among the Abyss mystics, I learned a much greater depth of calm, almost the death of emotion that was required to embark upon the study of Stygian secrets.

But since my mortal rebirth in Alexandria earlier this year, I found myself once again struggling with those very emotions I thought I had put to rest forever. In hues both bright and dark those emotions plagued my every waking hour. The Pageant with its constant temptations made this situation all the worse as desires I had long thought dead rose from the ashes of my formerly cold heart. Worst of all was loneliness, as a Cainite, I had never really felt the need of companionship or intimacy. Darkness served as my closest friend, my lover and my god. In becoming mortal again, I was severed from the perfect unity with night, shadow and the Abyss. Like a man falling out of love, I was bereft of that which had sustained me for decades.

A rigorous schedule, constant meditation and a host of new threats kept me from sliding down the slippery slope of humanity. But since the rising of Erdach Kodesh's two moons, I was once again struggling. I had seen that mere mortals were affected by that strange light, I could not imagine what the shape-shifters of the pageant must be feeling. My senses seemed enhanced as colors and details leapt out at me and my emotions were a wild riot of vibrant hues where once there was only darkness. But riding, the unity of beast and rider, the need for watchfulness and the wide open spaces seemed to dim my chaotic emotions as I tuned into the horse's need to be free and wild. It would take me a little longer to understand the source of my emotional struggle, after all there were many concerns with which to distract myself, but even so I should have realized sooner.

We rode for several miles in the direction of the rising moons, which I labeled east. The flatness of the valley's floor made judging distances harder, but not impossible and my guess is we had ridden for five or six miles when we noticed a slow increase in elevation and sighted a number of small mesas that extended out from the canon wall of the valley's edge in our general direction.

It was then that I wished for spyglass so that I could see further than mortal eyes would allow. I added it to a growing list of items I intended to create for myself, just because I was marooned in the tenth century, did not mean I had to give up all the benefits of a twenty-first century technology. But such innovations had a tendency to escape into the wider world and like the proverbial genie, once out of the bottle it would be very difficult to put things back to normal. I would need to be cautious in that regard.

We stopped long enough to water the horses from leather buckets and half empty our own water skins. We were all breathing with difficulty for the air was thin and dry, and that was affecting our horses more than us as they were the ones exerting. I had no idea when the sun had set in this world, but it must have been an oven for I was only now feeling the night air growing cool. It made sense that without any kind of real vegetation most of the heat from the surface of the planet would radiate out into space.

That meant the next few hours were going to get colder, a lot colder and we were still some distance from high ground. I took a horse blanket from my saddlebags and cut a v-shaped hole in the center large enough for my head and neck to fit through, a poncho. My men quickly imitated me and soon we were in the saddle again riding hard for the mesas.

An hour later, we were probably twenty miles from the last location of the pageant as we started working our way up the gentle slope of the low lying mesas. The horses were winded from our ride and struggled to make it up to the flat hilltop ahead. We had plenty of light from the two moons, the smaller of which was almost halfway across the vault of the sky, and the larger slower moon well above the eastern horizon, I calculated it would take more than a night to complete its orbit. Still we took it slow. Out here working our way up a rubble strewn hillside, even with good lighting risked breaking a horse's leg and the horses were now irreplaceable. We could not know for sure if this world even had horses or anything like them and while I was in good shape, I had no desire to walk all the way to our destination.

When we finally attained the level high ground, I realized that the valley, was actually a massive crater about forty to fifty miles in diameter, we had come halfway to the crater walls, but there was no sign of civilization in sight. The mesa's surface held the bleached white bones of what I took to be herd animals from their numbers and the locations of the skeletons. We also found wooden spears with obsidian heads and I took one as a souvenir, along with a few curious bones and horns we hacked off with our swords.

During the ride back, my mood was one of contemplation. Theodoric was not one to impart knowledge without purpose and his history lesson while epic and informative seemed to have as its point something other than mere educational value. As we rode, I turned his words around and around in my mind trying to understand his point.

Obviously this primal world figured deeply into the Pageant's power struggles, I could see the advantage of bringing the pageant here. Everywhere else, the pageanteers were essentially immortal, they could be slain, but would likely return which made succession difficult. Those who wished to advance themselves within the Pageant needed to bring us here so that they could kill or subjugate their chosen targets. But clearly this strategy was a risky one for those seeking to elevate themselves could just as easily be slain and if the rules of politics held here as they did on Earth, then the incumbent individual would have the upper-hand even here.

Still a nagging feeling told me I was still missing something from Theodoric's lecture. After all, the history of the Pageant seemed to come towards the last part of his story. The legend of Erdach Kodesh as the birthplace of the first gods seemed too mythical to really be the point.

Ironically the middle of his tale seemed to hold the whole story together, for the early gods and giants had abandoned this world after a nasty little war that warped not only the land, but the native lifeforms and magic itself. These warlike pantheons had even quarantined the planet in some mystical way. If those ancient and savage gods had gone to that much effort, whatever horror they had created here had been dangerous beyond belief.

Theodoric had called it corruption, perhaps something virulent? But not something purely biological for it had affected physical and mystical laws as well. How long could such a force remain viable? Eons have passed since the birth of the cosmos, wouldn't this mutagenic force have long since subsided by now? If not, how was it communicated? If it was through the air we had already been exposed. If it was in the land or water, it could theoretically be avoided, but not for long. If like radiation it was simply present in all things, then all we could hope to do was leave this place quickly.

As we came galloping into the encampment, I could tell the Pageant was almost packed up, but as we dismounted I immediately sensed something was off. The cold dry dusty air reeked of fear and distrust, and it was then that I realized the truth, it was not my emotions that were out of control, no I was feeling all those around me, drowning in their fears, desires and aspirations.

Since my rebirth, I had lost all my vampiric powers and had slowly become unable to even ingest Theodoric's blood. At this point I still did not understand how such a thing could happen, but I had faked my way through most of the Night Minstel's tests. I had all but resigned myself to a mundane life when a few months ago my psychic abilities seemed to return. As a vampire, the bloodline to which I belonged had no special affinity for psychic ability, but I had mastered the discipline of Auspex nearly as easily as the holy art of Obtenebration.

Erdach Kodesh's moons obviously had a strong impact on the pageanteer's emotions, but for me to feel them at such a distance meant my psychic numina were growing faster than I had thought. Or perhaps the moons did enhance my abilities as well, I could not know for sure yet. But time would reveal the truth eventually.

Leaving our horses with the wagons, the three of us made our way to Vulo's gaily painted tent. Several of his men were outside, but this time they were not lounging and while we were still a dozen paces from the entrance to his tent, they confronted us wanting to know what we wanted. Their distrust and hostility hit me like a wave and for a moment I failed to react. Then regaining my composure, I explained that we had ridden quite far out and had a report for Vulo.

One of Vulo's most trusted warriors listened to what I had to say, refused to touch the bones or the obsidian headed spear and politely, for a Bulgarian warrior, told me and my men to be off. Rather than risk a conflict, we backed away and returned to our wagons in time to hear the second call of the ram's horn which signaled our imminent departure.

The Telling of the Bees

The passage of a few hours found the Pageant a semi-broken wagon trail, fragmented by mutual distrust, and stretched out further apart than I would have liked. My men, our wagons and those loyal to me formed our own train of seven. Among those wagons were those of a German merchant and his family, a family of Jewish bookbinders, and a rabbi whose family I had saved in the city of Worms. What the merchant and his family or the Jews thought of Erdach Kodesh, I could not imagine, nor did I care.

I drove Theodoric's wagon along an ancient and nearly unused road that we found a few hours into our journey. The landscape we passed through began to change gradually, patches of rusty brown soil began to appear amidst the granular gray dirt so common within the crater and large protrusions of iron rich stone became more regular as we approached the crater's rim. The air had grown steadily colder and my breath steamed in the moonlight like the exhalation of dragons.

In the brightness of the night, the dry and desolate terrain looked more like the lunar surface than any place that I had visited on Earth. As the road meandered toward the crater's rim, I observed that there were few if any likely places for ambush and turned to study Theodoric's profile.

By the ruddy light of Figylese Hold the vampire's complexion was almost healthy. Theodoric had obviously been in his late sixties or early seventies when he had "fallen beneath the Shadow", a euphemistic term often used by members of Clan Lasombra for the journey into immortality.

His eyes burned an arctic blue in the brighter glare of the smaller silver moon, Keresese Hold. And in the ample light, I could see the faded liver-spots and wrinkles that made up the roadmap of old age. Crisscrossing that stern visage were deeper crevasses, one moved diagonally across his mouth from left to right, another stretched parallel to his nose and a third ran from the outer edge of his left eye to the left corner of his mouth, old mortal scars that told the tale of a warrior's life. His silver-white hair and matching beard, cropped short as a Roman soldier might, granted his harsh face a kind of faded elegance, like a lion grown old, but not weak.

While I had thought my study of Theodoric surreptitious, I was wrong and his voice broke the silence of hours, low and melodic. "You have questions?"

I did not answer immediately as I turned a variety of questions over and over again in my mind. The crux of the problem was that the medieval mindset was vastly different than that of my own era and in some ways, although not all, I had more in common with the Romans and their world view. The medieval mind and the question and answer response was deeply colored by Christianity and the trinity. Serious questions, were almost always offered up in sets of three and who was I to question the way of my new world.

The night lay utterly quiet around us save for the sounds of our wagons and the horses that drew them. And I decided to start at the beginning.

“By what mechanism were we brought to Erdach Kodesh, my lord?”

The Night Minstrel had closed his eyes and seemed to be listening to something I could not detect, my heartbeat perhaps, the conversations of those in the wagons behind us, or to something altogether other. And when he did speak, his words produced no visible vapor in the maroon lit night.

“The Antiramhyras device, an ancient orrery that allows the Pageant to move through gateways to other worlds. It had been given into the care of Rodolph the mess-cook, whose job it is to steer our ship from one world to another and of late, he has been receiving tutelage from Astarte. The night before our arrival here, Rodolph and the device went missing.”

Again my mind turned suspicious, for it was not Theodoric's way to provide information so freely and yet, since our arrival on this desert world he had become uncharacteristically informative. Perhaps it was just that in this place, without all the tools of protection usually afforded to the pageanteers, he felt vulnerable and sought to provide his servants with the best information available in the hopes of quickly finding the Antiramhyras device and escaping this place. But another part of me, that voice that whispered from the darkness, questioned Theodoric's motives and his recitations theatrical nature, for while he had answered the question he had done so rather obliquely.

Of course, none of these things meant anything really. For the Night Minstrel was a performer and reasonably enough his explanation would seem theatrical. As to the nature of his circumspect answer, old vampires were by nature cautious and if he seemed reticent, well I had only recently come into his service. Why should he trust me?

I set all that aside as I prepared my next question.

“Who would have motive to bring the Pageant to Erdach Kodesh?”

Theodoric's still form had slowly grown hazy as shadow began to coalesce along his form, leaving nothing visible save for his seemingly disembodied head. And as he turned to look at me, I felt a touch of uncharacteristic fear, as his crystalline eyes bore into mine and I felt a driving need to look away. As I did so, his voice was like a susurration of bitter smoke blown into my ear.

“So, we have come to the Telling of the Bees. Before you can understand the motives of the various pageanteers, you must first understand what they have become. The Pageant is like unto a hive of bees, there are drones for performing common labors and there are warriors for protection, there are attendant maids who look after the queens of the hive and the queens themselves.”

“Our hive is multi-generational and newcomers like yourself are of the lowest rung, who have yet to discover their place within our community. All too quickly, newcomers discover that the Pageant moves to its own rhythm apart from the world, time passes differently once one becomes a drone and the dance of the daily routine becomes all.”

“The bees of our hive, work ceaselessly to acquire honey for their Keepers. Individual drones gather nectar from countless flowers and bring it back to the hive, where it is slowly transformed into honey. The honey is apportioned to individual bees based on their rank within the hive, most of the honey flows upwards to the queens who take their due and pass the lion's share to the hive's keepers who ensure the hive is protected.”

“Years, decades and sometimes even centuries can pass before the individual bees awaken from their appointed routines. Like any normal hive this can come from some external threat or it can be triggered from within.”

“In times of strife, the hive becomes agitated and if not attacked from without, then they turn their stings upon their fellow bees. This is sometimes called Physis, and during such times certain bees may change their caste if they successfully sting and kill a rival. Even queens are not immune to such struggles and as the queens have the most to lose, they insulate themselves with their most trusted attendants.”

“But these times of violent activity are dangerous for all, because previously stable alliances can crumble without warning and old friends can become new enemies. While our hive is normally static, such violent convulsions can create a new order for us and those with the most ambition rise through their own effort and the misfortune of those immediately above them.”

“The Gordian knot of your question lies in the fact that during times of stasis those with power over others often abuse it, creating resentments or vendettas that slowly metastasize until they explode during a time of physis. Quite literally anyone could have had the motive to bring us to Erdach Kodesh to kill a rival, but very few have the means to achieve this. Those with arcane skill are the most likely culprits and for the last century or so, there has been a growing struggle for power between Sender and Mauritanus.”

The ground beneath the wagon's wooden wheels began to gain significant incline and the labored breathing of the horses belched forth a blood tinted brume in the fuchsia light. Just a mile or two shy of the crater's rim, we could see the rough stone walls, a two hundred feet high, layered in strands of iron rich ore that stood out in bands of coral and crimson, magenta and maroon.

When we finally crested the rim, there lay before us a sere brown plain that stretched at least fifty miles wide to either side of our wagon train. The road visibly straightened as it left the crater behind and seemed to drift due east.

The plain was almost perfectly flat, the soil the color of brown sugar and of a similar consistency, and no life could be seen, neither plant nor animal. When the sun rose as it surely must, there would be no place to hide and in this flat terrain the temperature would rise fast and cook anything caught out in it. To the north and south, lay distant hills of a darker color, but they came nowhere near the road. We would have plenty of time to see the dust trails of raiders or warning of a dust storm.

We rode along the lightly rutted track, through brown emptiness and I tried to choose my next question carefully, all while trying to stay warm. It was deeply cold and the arid air made every breath painful as the small silver moon sank beyond the western horizon, the larger, slower one reached its apex. The shadows of our train began to lengthen before I spoke again.

“If the master of coin and the master of ceremonies are struggling for greater power, does that hurt your position or help it?”

Theodoric laughed, and for the first time, it held a genuine note of humor. In the waning light of the greater moon, he was almost invisible beside me.

“The word you seek Aegon, is Ascension, that is the treasure for which they quest. To reach the pinnacle of power within the Pageant and to become one of only three true masters, the Infernal Trinity.”

“The answer to your question is complicated, but provided they do not attack the Master of Two Worlds their struggles are their own. Concern yourself not, with Mauritanus or Sender, they will only try to drag you into their battles and I have for you a far more important mission. Find the Antiramhyras device, whomsoever holds the device holds us hostage in this place and the longer we tarry here, the more of us will die the final death."

Dalm Eberhard

I awoke with a start. Nothing identifiable had awakened me: the plodding sound of the horse's hooves, the metallic jingling of the harnesses, and the steady rattle of the wooden cart in which I slept were all perfectly ordinary. Still, something had brought me up out of deep slumber without even the hint of half-remembered dreams.

I lay snugly wrapped in old horse blankets at the bottom of the cart. I had no recollection of falling asleep, or of laying downing in the cart, nor even how long I had slept. But, for too long, I had been living a twilight existence, a sleepwalker who never really rested and when I finally ran out of energy, the lights must have just gone out. I had slept so long, that my eyes were crusted shut with sleep and my body stiff from lack of movement. Rubbing at my eyes I found myself looking up into a starless night sky.

Black without relief, an infinity of emptiness, Erdach Kodesh, its sun and two moons were the only inhabitants of this universe. It was as if the abyss had swallowed every distant sun. However, I doubt this likelihood, rather I believe that when the gods left this place and sealed it off, they were ensuring that whatever they were running from, it would have no other place to escape to and no other place to infect.

Stiff from lying on my back for too long and with a strong need to relieve myself, I shed my blankets with regret and heard a high shrill whistle from the front of our cart. Shortly thereafter, a cessation of motion. I leapt from the back of the cart and landed in the middle of the dry and dusty road. From the rear of the cart, I could see each of our other wagons by the feeble glow of their lanterns. I urinated right there in the middle of the road and wasted no further time as I made my way to the front of the cart.

I expected to see Theodoric's indistinct form, but encountered Dalm Eberhard holding the cart reins. Dalm was a fellow soldier whom I had know in the eastern legions, a somewhat younger man who upon retiring had no family to which to return, and had accompanied me into retirement to Alexandria in Egypt. Like Salivius Ludovicus, the man whose life I had appropriated, Dalm was a eastern German and the two of us had bonded during our final campaign for the new Komnenid dynasty under Emperor Alexios I - the Battle of Levounion.

Levounion...That name has such power to conjure my host's memories that I sometimes forget that it was not me who fought there. The battle took place on April 29th, 1091. A horde of Pechenegs (a semi-nomadic Turkic people whose westward migration led them to settle the regions immediately north of the Black Sea) eighty thousand strong had descended into Byzantine territory and plundered much of the northern Balkans on their way to besiege Constantinople.

The Emperor Alexios had gathered what troops he could, twenty thousand in total, after the debacle of the Battle of Manzikert twenty years earlier and then with ingenuity and diplomacy brought the strength of the Cumans (another nomadic Turkic people who were enemies of the Pechenegs) tribes to Constantinople's side in the conflict.

I remember the earth shaking as the united Byzantine-Cuman army marched towards the greatest battle of our generation. The Pechenegs has plundered about one hundred and fifty miles south and west of Constantinople, and were encamped on the fields of Levounion just north of the ancient port city of Ainos. They had eighty thousand men and our combined forces numbered only sixty-five thousand, despite our might many feared that we would not be victorious and that the Queen of Cities, Constantinople would fall to these foreign barbarians.

The battle began at dawn and lasted until the last light of day. When we marched upon the Pecheneg encampment, we found their warriors unprepared for battle and large numbers of their women and children with them. So encumbered, they fought a losing battle from the beginning. Despite their error, the Pechenegs were fearless warriors and fought almost to the last man. But bloodlust once raised is not so easily slaked, and with the collapsed of their defenses, the order was passed to slaughter the Pechenegs, it was a massacre.

At that time, Dalm Eberhard was the second in command of my century and once the formations disintegrated into a melee, we fought back-to-back throughout that savage day. When it was over, the fields of where the Pechenegs had camped were an abattoir, human blood had turned all the nearby streams crimson and the sky was black with carrion birds. The slaughter was so thorough that when it was over there were less that a thousand Pecheneg survivors taken as slaves by the Empire.

My host and Dalm Eberhard had saved each other many times over the course of that battle. The next day, after the prodigious plunder was divided up, there was a jubilant celebration and I treated the survivors of my century to the whores of Port Ainos. We drank a river of Greek wine, swore oaths of brotherhood and fucked all night. After the legions returned to Constantinople, we both resigned from the army and took our spoils south to Egypt and a well earned retirement.

All these things passed through my mind as I came upon Dalm on the wagon seat.

In Alexandria, Salivius Ludovicus and Dalm Eberhard became quite good friends, that is until the arrival of the Pageant and the fateful events at the Inn of the Joyous Harpy and the ill conceived expedition to the Temple of Ereshkigal. Since my mystical assimilation of Salivius, I had put distance between Dalm and myself. He perhaps best of all sensed the difference in my behavior and the fact that he witnessed my resurrection and return to youth lay at the heart of my decision to avoid him. But that is not the entire truth, for my feeling for Dalm although inherited from another man, are quite real and of a character far too intense for me to allow their survival. It is no easy thing being a man with two sets of memories.

At first neither of us spoke, there was much that lay between us and neither of us knew how to begin such a conversation. Then I began to detect a growing illumination that began to paint the wagon, its rider and the horses in greater detail. I looked east, or what I thought of as east, and saw the horizon fast growing bright. Sunrise on Earth was never this fast, for as I watched a faint gray line crossed the horizon, then it shifted to pink and then a unsavory orange.

In that moment, the awkward almost conversation was forgotten as a startling chill ran from my lower spine to my head and my whole body faintly shuddered. My expression must have changed because Dalm showed concern and asked if I was well. I wasted no time in trivialities and told him to carry word to the other wagons that we must feed and water our animals now for once the sun rose they would sicken if fed in the coming heat. He must have thought I was mad to issue such a command in the deep dry cold of the predawn, but I knew better.

By the time Dalm returned, the bronze orb of Boontetese, often called the Punishing Sun by those pageanteers who had survived the last visit to Erdach Kodesh, was a quarter over the horizon and we both felt the need to begin shedding garments. By the time we finished feeding and watering the horses, the punishing-sun was half up and we had both divested ourselves of excess clothing and still the heat increased.

Neither of us lost further time as we took our seats on the cart and Dalm who preferred to be called Eben, handed over the rains to me as in recognition of my superior skill as a wagoner (one who drives a wagon). Reaching into the back of the cart, I grabbed one of my packs for a spare shirt which I wrapped around my head and face the way a Bedouin on Earth would have his turban. As Eben followed suit, I dusted the flesh around my eyes with charcoal dust much as kohl was used by North African travelers, the ancient version of sunglasses for it reduces the the glare of desert light.

"Salivius, our lord Theodoric has tasked me with informing you of what lies ahead."

At the use of my hosts original name, I turned to say something acerbic about using my preferred designation and immediately halted as I noticed a foreign look upon Eben's face, fawning. I did not bother to delve his emotions with my numina, it was as plain as the expression on his face for he was enslaved to Theodoric through the Blood. A part of me that should have felt nothing surged with anger and jealousy, Theodoric had stolen my only possible friend and there was nothing I could do about it. Plans that I had hidden even from myself were crushed and only then did I realize the depth of my isolation; I worked, slept and ate with members of the pageant, but none of them knew me, not the real me and I was alone.

"Look there, beneath the sun, that long straight line of hills are a great wall, called the Fenevad Fal or Beast Wall, created ages ago by forgotten wizards to protect the people of this place from creatures called Dearc Magra. Theodoric says they are a kind of giant lizard like the Green Lizard of the Balkans, but a fast moving pack predator that moves only by day and hunts by eye-sight."

I merely nodded and signaled the wagon-train to begin moving. The next hour saw the rising of Erdach Kodesh's second sun, Megolte a Naapot, or the "killing sun." I had no questions as to why the people of this place called the second sun a killer, it rose white-hot over the horizon in just minutes and overtook Boontetese within the hour. My guess is in that in the two hours since the suns began their rise the temperature has risen from near zero to well over a hundred degrees. I no longer had any doubts that the heat was going to kill both dray animals and the weaker pageanteers, nothing we did could change it and the longer we tarried the greater the heat.

Time and the two suns were are truest enemies, so I nudged our horses gait up to a trot knowing that the carts and wagons behind us would follow suit. Eben reiterated more of what he had been told by Theodoric while we both watched for the Dearc Magra from our respective sides of the cart.

"Last night, after you fell asleep, Theodoric told me that before we reach the Beast Wall, we will pass through lightly rolling hills that were once upon a time covered by a forest. The remnants of the giant trees that once covered the region are now bleached pillars of petrified wood, a region the locals referred to as the Blijeda šuma or Pale Forest, and it is there that the Dearc Magra tend to congregate. Its only about ten miles through the hill country and then there is a flat open stretch between the hills and the wall."

"The Fenevad Fal itself is two hundred miles long with a set of iron gates in the center for controlling trade. The wall's main fort is at the gate, as is a small settlement that serves the needs of the defenders called: Kurva Város. Theodoric also said that we would be met at the gate by a small contingent of defenders to negotiate our passage through the wall, if we fail to pay upfront then we will be left to fight the beasts in the flat-lands before the wall."

I had to smile to myself, the defenders had cornered the market on trade, much like the nobility of Europe charging exorbitant fees to merchants traveling through their ancestral lands. I arranged for regular stops to water the horses, some of the less intelligent in our train complained that the horses were consuming too much water and there was little or none left for their owners. I quickly pointed out that it was their decision and that if they did not water the horses regularly those animals would die in this heat and we would leave them behind. There were many foul looks and some quietly voiced epithets, but no one, individually or as a group looked ready to challenge my decision, which was wise.

As the day stretched on hour by merciless hour, the heat shimmered upon the arrow straight road, causing it to slither hither and yon like a desert born sidewinder. Every breath was filled with pain, burned the back of the throat and the nostrils even as the hot air brought with it acrid dust. Equally, beasts of burden and men struggled beneath the unforgiving heavens in a day that seemed without end.

Heat and dust were not the only things to be found upon the road, from the corner of the eye one might glimpse a shimmer that resolved itself into an emerald oasis that held the promise of shade trees, cool water and sweet fruits. Sometimes we were obliged to stop our wagon-train when members of the pageant who were overcome with thirst or maddened by the heat would take-off running into the open desert. Most were retrieved by loved-ones, but some few vanished into the shimmering heat, never to be seen again.

Those who were brought back, often showed signs of sunstroke, and were confined to the shaded interiors of our few covered wagons. Our group had no physician, but some of the Jews who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, like Rhebarku the Younger spoke of the illness in hushed whispers and shook their heads.

These events became more common as the day passed, and I set Constance Garçon, a Frankish woman who had come into my service in Paris to looking after the afflicted. Constance was a somewhat dowdy woman in her early thirties, a spinster maid from the royal court of Paris, and plain to a fault. However she possessed two qualities that I held in high regard, loyalty and obedience, and she could be trusted to do whatever was asked of her without question.

To aid her a difficult task I gave her both water and salt. And although the giving of fluids containing the essential salts and minerals to victims of dehydration and sunstroke would not become a recognized treatment until the Twentieth Century, it was I believe, a necessary breach of history to ensure that the Pageant would survive this wasteland to return to Earth.

Ever the road wore on in the oven-hot bronze-white sunlight. Eben and I tried to keep a perennial lookout for the predatory beasts of this harsh world. But there are limits to what the mortal form could handle and by my reckoning it had been well over thirty hours since either of us slept.

Briefly, I handed over the reins to Eben, as I dug about in my pack for a bottle carved from horn and stoppered with Portuguese cork; my most prized possession. Inside said bottle were white pills the size of a man's little fingernail and formed from a mixture of dragon-bone dust and Gum arabic, the former was a kind of mystical amphetamine that boosts the perceptions and reflexes of the user, while the latter served as a binding agent and slowed the bodies rate of absorption through the gut.

I quickly pulled forth two tablets, sealed the jar and re-wrapped it in my pack. I proffered one of the tablet to Eben, who seemed dubious, but accepted the tablet with mild curiosity. Wisely he waited until I took my pill and washed it down with steaming water in a wooden cup.

Even as I handed him the cup and took the reins, I could feel the dragon-bone dust beginning to affect me. It began at the edges of my vision, seeming to widen my field of view and brightening colors, from there it seemed to magnify the distances I could see and added greater focus and contrast to what I saw. The bright glare of the two suns was diminished and a pleasant coolness spread across my skin numbing the standard aches and pains of travel as well as my sunburns. In minutes my fatigue was washed away and a newfound restless energy took its place as my sense of time seemed to contract and a uncontrollable grin spread across my face. The final effects were an alien euphoria and the inflaming of all the animal instincts and passions.

As I glanced at Eben, I could see all the hairs of his face, the fine pores of his skin, the sun darkened pigmentation dappled with saline sweat and the burgundy of his blood as it rose to cool his flesh. But it was not my sense of sight alone that benefited from the dragon-bone dust, for I could smell the sour man-sweat that clung to him - the dust - and the rotting odor of the blood Theodoric had most recently fed him. With little concentration I could hear his heart beating faster, the raw rasp of his lung tissues stretching and then a strange rumble that I first took to be his stomach, but came up through the frame of the cart from the wheels and from the ground beneath them. The Dearc Magra had found us.

The Gateway of Titans

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