The Geomancer Read online

Gareth took a long scent of the stew warming over the fire. He shrugged indifferently at it.

  She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her heavy robe. “Maybe you can keep Yidak and his people occupied while I snoop for the Tear of Death.”

  “There’s something strange about this place. I don’t like it.”

  “Do you think Yidak will try something against us?”

  Anhalt offered, “It’s Takeda you need to worry about. He doesn’t trust us.”

  “How do you know?” Adele asked.

  “Because I wouldn’t trust us if I was him.”

  “The general is right,” Gareth said. “Takeda is clearly the war chief here. Yidak is more curious than suspicious.”

  “Yidak is interested in the world beyond his claws,” Adele said. “He’s like you.”

  “Or he’s crazy.” Gareth peered outside into the activity of the late afternoon.

  Anhalt rested his feet against the brick fire pit. “If the old Demon King wants to know about you, tell him. Befriend him.” He nodded toward Gareth. “Feed his curiosity. Give him a reason to spend time with you. Talk. Ask him questions.”

  Adele raised her teacup to the general in a toast. “I agree. Yidak may well spill every secret this place has if we seem interesting enough to him.” She smiled at Gareth. “Remember how badly you wanted to talk to me at the British Museum when we first met? He may be just like that.”

  “Or he may be crazy,” Gareth repeated.

  Adele brushed off his concerns and stood. She went to her rucksack and pulled out her camera. As she inserted a film plate, she said, “I want another photograph while we have a minute. Let’s go outside where it’s brighter. General, will you help us?”

  As they trooped out into the bright day, Anhalt took the camera, briefly inspecting it while Adele stood beside Gareth with the towering monastery in the background. She put a firm arm around his waist and looked toward the general, who peered through the viewfinder.

  “Are you ready?” Anhalt asked.

  “Smile,” Adele told Gareth, who tried to comply. “Fine. If that’s the best we can do, go ahead, General.”

  Anhalt clicked the button and held out the camera as if it was a complex machine he was fearful of breaking. Adele took it and pulled out the plate. She waited the requisite time and flipped it open. She smiled broadly and held up the picture. The photo was brighter than the one she had taken in London. Both Adele and Gareth looked presentable. “That’s more like it! Well done, General. Gareth, you look very handsome.”

  Anhalt peered over her shoulder and gave an impressed nod at his photography skills. Adele slipped it into her pack, along with the camera.

  “Now I’ve got a decent picture of us.” She tightened the belt on her fur-lined robe. “Let’s go and find Yidak. It’s time to become the Demon King’s close friends.”

  The eerie music of vampiric speech rose in the air again. When it stopped, tiny metallic noises followed. It was the sound of tools working methodically, likely the pilgrims tinkering on something. That noise ceased, and the vampiric stirred again.

  Gareth looked to be confused, brows knit, mouthing phrases silently as they slipped past him in the cold air. “It’s the same phrasing as before, but the voice is different. I can’t make it out aside from a few common words.”

  Adele hooked her arm through his. “Let’s find out.”

  Anhalt grunted uncomfortably as he followed.

  Adele held up her hand. “Please, General, I beg you to rest while you have the chance. Don’t argue. You are in pain.”

  Anhalt couldn’t muster the energy to contradict her. “By tomorrow, I will be in fighting form.” He bowed and returned to their room with a grateful look.

  Adele and Gareth paused to take the bearings of the vampiric chanting that seemed to Adele to be coming from everywhere. They climbed steps to a large temple topped by a high minaret, the same one Gareth had seen Yidak taking refuge in. Many vampires hovered overhead but didn’t intervene. The sounds of vampiric burst from deep inside the temple.

  The interior was dark, but Adele could make out cracked and fading paintings on the walls. Once-bright colors depicted strange beings with long sharp teeth and ferocious eyes. She and Gareth passed between thick columns carved with indecipherable bas-reliefs. The chanting grew louder and harsher. Many voices cut through the air like swords and the cacophony amplified the natural grunting and hissing of vampiric. It was nearly impossible to understand the words.

  They reached a thick-beamed doorway that opened onto a large chamber. Vampires crowded in the center of the space, all facing outward. Adele expected them to be chanting like monks in prayer, but they were all silent. Their mouths were closed, as were their eyes. They were listening.

  She saw a strange shape against one wall. Some sort of machine about the size of a hand loom. It consisted of a wooden frame easily ten by ten feet, but instead of spools of wool, there were six metal cylinders suspended on the front like rollers. Each cylinder was about two feet long and six inches in diameter and they were all spinning. A figure sat in front of the machine working levers and turning handles. His feet pumped pedals on the floor like an organist. The vampiric chanting seemed to be coming from this strange loom.

  The organist suddenly stopped. The garbled chanting ceased as the rotating cylinders slowed. The room grew silent but for a ringing afterglow. The vampires in the center looked as one to see who disturbed their reverie.

  Yidak turned from his seat before the machine. He regarded Adele and Gareth expectantly. All the other vampires in the room were staring coolly at her.

  “Welcome!” Yidak called out. “You heard our memories.”

  Adele gestured to the machine. “What is that thing?”

  “Our memories.” The Demon King laid a hand on the wooden frame. “Your kind might call it a library.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the apparatus. The levers and pedals were connected to interior cords that ran over a series of wheels and pulleys, which, in turn, drove spools on which the metal cylinders rested. Yidak reached down to the floor next to his bench and picked up another of the metal cylinders. He shuffled across the chamber and extended it to Adele. He was eager for her to examine it. It was light, made of a thin metal like copper. Adele ran her fingers over the surface and felt dimples, holes, and scars in the metal. She handed the cylinder to Gareth, who studied it and rolled it between his hands.

  Yidak chortled. “That is the lives of our people.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gareth asked with an edge in his voice.

  Yidak signaled for them to follow him. He returned to the machine and settled onto a wooden bench in front of it. The vampire pulled his voluminous sleeves up and set his hands purposefully on a lever and handle. Bare feet pressed onto the row of pedals. Pumping his legs, he manipulated the controls before him with dexterity equal to Gareth’s swordplay or skill with a pen on paper. The copper cylinders rotated and the guttural hissing of multiple vampire voices filled the air.

  Despite the harsh sounds clawing at her ears, Adele moved closer and peered through the machine’s frame into its workings. Each spinning cylinder was being brushed by a metal stylus of some sort, which was fixed on a moving arm that carried the stylus back and forth across the pitted copper surface. That interaction created a mechanical replication of vampire speech. It was amazing. Although created from rough materials and without beautiful decoration, it functioned with all the elegance and complexity of any clock or automata device Adele had ever seen.

  Bobbing her head to better study the interplay inside the mechanism, Adele called over the screeching, “Who built this?”

  “I did,” Yidak replied simply.

  “No.” The grinding disharmony of the chanting set Adele’s nerves on edge. “Who built it? Who made it?”

  The old vampire turned his head in confusion. “I did.”

  Adele straightened and felt light-headed. The hissing was cutting through her bra
in. “The pilgrims, you mean?”

  “They bring the materials. And they forge those for us.” Yidak indicated the copper cylinder in Gareth’s hand. “We don’t have that skill. Yet.”

  Adele leaned heavily on the frame of the machine, blinking her eyes and feeling a creeping headache from the merciless barrage of noise. She wiped her perspiring forehead. “I don’t think you’re understanding the question.”

  Yidak released the handles and sat back. The cylinders ceased rotating and their screeching silenced. Adele nodded in grateful relief.

  “I don’t think you’re understanding the answer,” the old vampire said to her. “I built this. Yes, some of the more delicate work was done by human hands, if that’s what you wish to hear. But most is my work. When I was young, I befriended several generations of craftsmen around Samarkand. They were divinely skilled at clocks and music boxes, all manner of machines that produced chimes and sounds.” Yidak ran his claw over one of the cylinders. “Over the centuries, I found ways to mimic my own tongue. So we spend our days chanting our memories and recording them. Each of these cylinders is the story of one of my monks, dictated by them, saying whatever they feel is important. We come here to listen. It may sound odd because we have trained ourselves to hear multiple voices at one time. There are many of these cylinders, created so that our kind may remain, even if we are gone one day.”

  Adele realized her mouth was open in amazement. She glanced at Gareth, who was staring at the cylinder. “That’s incredible.”

  The Demon King nodded in agreement.

  She ran her hand over some of the cords inside the strange loom. “I never thought this could be possible from a vampire.”

  “It’s not.” Gareth shook his head.

  Adele looked at him through the machine’s workings. “But it plays your language. We heard it. You said vampires didn’t have any sort of script or writing.”

  “We don’t. I don’t know what these marks are.”

  “How else do you explain it?”

  “I can’t,” Gareth snapped. “But he’s lying.”

  Yidak smiled with gentle patience and motioned with his hand. The group in the center shuffled past soundlessly out the door.

  Gareth said to the old vampire, “Even if you could make these things, why would you do it?”

  Yidak met the stern gaze. “Why are you so surprised? You use human tools and weapons.”

  “This is so far beyond that. This is impossible for us.” Gareth raised the cylinder again and crushed it easily in his gloved hand. “Impossible!”

  Yidak grew briefly perturbed at the mangled copper in Gareth’s clutch. Then he took a deep breath and studied the younger vampire with concern. “Why are you so angry, Gareth? Is it because you are no longer special? Is it because you know there was another way, but it has been lost?”

  “We’re wasting our time trying to be human,” Gareth said in a harsh voice.

  “Time is all we have.” Yidak looked slowly at the painted walls surrounding them. “But I don’t want to be human. I want to see what we can be. Or at least, what we could have been.”

  Gareth dropped the bent metal tube to the floor with a sharp clang. It rocked back and forth slowly and noisily. He looked at the machine. Adele held her breath. The bewilderment in his eyes was almost painful. Then Gareth spun on his heel and went out into the night.

  CHAPTER 25

  Adele started to follow Gareth, but there was something compelling in Yidak’s face that made her stop. Curiosity? Doubt? Vampires typically expressed emotions as a mask; beneath them was always either hunger or fear.

  Yidak spoke with what sounded like actual concern. “He seems so angry.”

  Adele hesitated to reply. She didn’t want to say anything about Gareth to this stranger. She had a limited notion of the reality of the vampire world, other than it was dark and brutal and advantages were always exploited. Still, there was a real desire in Yidak’s eyes to understand.

  “Many are,” the old vampire continued, “when they come here. I think we can help him.”

  Adele grew suspicious and the vampire noted it instantly because he smiled.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I have no dark motive. There is no war here between us.”

  “Right,” Adele agreed. “Here, you’ve already won.”

  “I suppose it looks that way to you.” Yidak laughed. “You must look harder.” He gestured to a small arched doorway in the rear. “Won’t you sit with me?”

  Adele glanced anxiously toward the door where Gareth had gone.

  Yidak repeated, “He will return in a moment. Trust me, please.”

  Her curiosity won out. She followed the Demon King across the stone floor. Beyond the arch was a small room, again decorated with flaking paints of gods and demons.

  Yidak sat and indicated a chair for Adele. “I can have tea brought, if you wish.”

  “No, thank you. Gareth is right that it’s very unlikely you made that machine.”

  “Yes, it is, but you don’t doubt it. And Gareth only says he disbelieves because it frightens him, not because he thinks it’s untrue.”

  “Why would this thing scare him?”

  Yidak interlaced his long fingers in a monastic pose. “As I said, most of my little clan came here for the same reasons he did. They felt like outcasts and heard rumors of a place of sanctuary. I think Gareth is searching, but he’s helpless.”

  “Helpless?” Adele grew annoyed with the pedantic old vampire schooling her on Gareth. He had no notion of what Gareth truly was. “I’ve never known anyone less helpless than Gareth. He’s reinvented himself many times.”

  Yidak shook his head. “No, he has covered his face many times with this mask or that.”

  Adele shifted angrily, scraping her boots across the floor. “You don’t know him.”

  Yidak settled back in his chair. “I actually know him very well because I have seen many like him. He is different, but I know his type. However, I don’t know you at all. He did say you could kill me with a thought.”

  Adele stayed purposefully quiet, trying to bring her anger under control.

  Yidak clicked his claws on the arm of the chair. “You are a geomancer.”

  She stared with alarm, reaching out immediately and gathering whatever distant energy from the Earth she could. It wasn’t much, but heat rose around her.

  Yidak shifted uncomfortably, inching back as if from an open flame. “Don’t be shocked. In China, geomancers are plentiful. Every winter the clans there kill as many as they can. Can’t afford to let them grow too numerous or powerful. Are you powerful?”

  “Yes.”

  The Demon King regarded her with peculiar respect and a hint of concern. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

  “I know.”

  He laughed awkwardly. “Does he drink your blood?”

  Adele flushed and power crackled through the air. Yidak pulled back with a pained hiss, but didn’t flee or strike out. His question was completely guileless. He wasn’t goading her. He was curious. She reined in the energy.

  Yidak exhaled with wide eyes. “How do you not burn him?”

  “Oh, so you don’t know everything?” Adele snorted a little more spitefully than she intended.

  “No. I know nothing. But I want to know everything. You see my dilemma?”

  Adele said, “I only harm those I wish.”

  “So with all that power, you’ve never hurt him?” Yidak stared into her eyes. “Why didn’t you kill all of us if you had the chance?”

  Adele clenched her mouth and looked away. She suddenly wanted to flee, but something felt cowardly about it. She smelled charred flesh and knew it was only the memory of Gareth’s terrified face burning away as she fought the very power she had unleashed, or that Mamoru had forced her to unleash.

  “Was it just for him?” Yidak pressed. “You betrayed your kind for him? Was there something more? Or are you even sure? Are you afraid you missed the chance you had to be
the savior, and that you will never have that courage again?”

  It was all Adele could do to whisper, “Don’t provoke me.”

  “I am not your enemy.”

  “It’s hard to tell. You look like my enemies.”

  Yidak lowered his head and exhaled. His posture grew calm. His voice was unhurried. “Very well. Let’s discuss something we both care about. I can help Gareth.”

  “So can I,” she snapped, recovering her breath.

  “I am not competing with you. I am merely offering a path. There is a ritual in this land called chöd. I think Gareth would benefit from it. With time, the acolyte calls upon the demons he fears most to come and devour him.”

  Adele shuddered under the glares of the monsters painted on the flaking walls, as if a hundred Yidaks watched her. “You never stop fighting your demons or you fail.”

  “On the contrary. It leaves only your purest self behind. Your fears and failures. All gone. You abandon everything you have. There is nothing braver than casting yourself into the void and being scattered to nothingness. It is the experience of choosing the end that is the greatest act of self-determination.”

  Gareth’s voice penetrated the darkness. “I’ve already done that.”

  Adele twisted to see Gareth in the archway. His face was still intense, but the anger had passed. Her legs quivered when she stood and went to him. He took her hand.

  “Adele destroyed me,” he said.

  “Don’t,” she began.

  “No, it’s fine.” He kissed the top of her head. “More than a year ago, her full power was turned loose. It tore me to pieces. I watched my flesh burn away, and felt my bones blacken. There was nothing to be done. It was enough that I knew I had done what I could to insure she would survive. So I accepted it and died. However, she brought me back. She risked her life to bring her powers back under her control, and she used them to restore my life. After that ordeal, when I opened my eyes, I saw her face.” He turned his blue gaze on Adele. “I never want to go another day without seeing her face.”

  She embraced him. She felt his heart beating through his chest.

  Yidak rested his chin in his hands and wide eyes flicked between Adele and Gareth. “Well. That’s . . . well.”