But then obviously not!
When he turned the last corner before the grand staircase, all thoughts of flight became moot. Ahead of him, blocking the corridor, stood another cloaked figure, identical to the first.
Beuphalus stopped dead in his tracks, mouth agape. He thought of talking, of pleading, but it was obvious these infiltrators were not mere housebreakers. As he looked he could see that what he had previously thought was a bestial face was in fact a mask. The robes were designed for ceremony, not concealment. These figures were sinister indeed, sent to scare him, or kill him. Worshippers of a rival to Valac perhaps... or something worse? The powers Beuphalus had been toying with over the years were bound to catch up with him sometime. But he was not about to give in easily.
With a shrill cry of defiance, the Earl threw himself at the nearest window. The heavy glass shattered under his weight, and he felt the stinging pain of fresh cuts upon the flesh of his hands and face.
He lay on the balcony beyond, the stiff evening breeze was blowing strong, and it served to ripen the pain of his cuts.
Beuphalus knew he was hurt, he found it difficult to move, but he still managed to crawl to the balcony’s edge, hearing the crunch of glass beneath him. Glancing down he could see that his suit was in tatters, but it mattered little now.
Grasping the balustrade, Beuphalus pulled himself up. Blood covered his hands and left a dark smear on the stonework. He managed to get his head over the top, seeing nothing but clear air between him and the ground, hundreds of feet below.
‘Help!’ he screamed to the distant earth. ‘Help me!’
His second cry turned into a strangled sob, but the Manufactory did not seem to be listening. It was too preoccupied with its own noisome clangour. It was hopeless; there would be no rescue now.
Desperately, Beuphalus lifted one leg, the tattered cloth of his trouser fluttering in the breeze. He almost made it, almost shifted enough of his weight over the balcony for gravity to do the rest, but he was not quick enough.
Firm hands grasped him, with strong fingers that dug into his flesh and held him tight. As he was dragged back across the balcony, through the broken glass and into the darkness of his tower, Earl Beuphalus managed to scream one last time.
CHAPTER TWO
The room stank.
It was a mix of rotten eggs and dead animal. There was an eviscerated rat on the floor but that wasn’t the source of the animal stench. The rat still smelled bad, anyone who thinks that dead rats don’t leave an odour should try giving one a sniff, but this was worse; a more intense musk, reminiscent of a well used stable.
Thaddeus Blaklok lifted his head from the bare wood floor of the tiny room. It was fuddled, like a hooch hangover of the worst kind, but with an intense feeling of elation inextricably locked into the nausea. His hands were shaking. Could have been the adrenalin; the buzz of his recent communion. Or was it just fear? No matter how many times he did it, whether the invocation was a minor one or a full-blown hellfire-and-sulphur stink, it took all his willpower not to shit his trousers. Of course, anyone watching would struggle to notice. There was rarely any clue on Thaddeus Blaklok’s face as to his thoughts. That was where his power lay. Most of his power, at least. Had he been a card sharp, Blaklok would have been very rich indeed.
He rose to his hands and knees, heaving a large gulp of air into his lungs. A bead of sweat ran across his shaved head and dripped onto the floorboards. It spattered and spread, making a tiny sound as it hit the dry wood, the moisture quickly consumed into the thirsty wooden veins. Thaddeus raised a hand to his moist head and ran his fingers across it, feeling the droplets of perspiration gather into a puddle on his palm. With a deft flick he sent his sweat flying towards the floorboards.
Bending one leg he put an unsteady foot to the floor, trying to lever himself upwards on his powerful limbs, but the going was difficult. He was drained, as though some infernal machine had stripped his musculature of all power, leaving behind only dry and impotent sinew. Every movement sent a tingling pulse through his ligaments and he moved slowly, as though afflicted with a pox.
Thaddeus managed to gain his feet, but the room insisted on spinning like a whirligig. It seemed violently set against him, bent on sending him sprawling to the ground. Quickly he closed his eyes, hoping that by blocking the sight of the room that was shooting past his field of vision in a blur of colour it might somehow allow him to stand straight. It didn’t work, and he stumbled all the way to one wall, feeling the pain of a table corner dig sharply into his thigh. Something tumbled from the table, crashing to the wooden floor with a crack and a smash. The pulsing light he could see through his clasped eyelids suddenly dimmed, and Thaddeus realised he had broken a lamp. Never mind; it wasn’t his lamp anyway.
Before starting the incantation he had done his best to move all the furniture to the edge of the room. Considering the repercussions there could be from summoning the chthonian creatures of the netherplanes he supposed a broken lamp was a small price to pay.
Thaddeus clung to the wall like a drowning man to a piece of flotsam. There he waited for the spinning to subside, with nothing but the inside of his eyelids for company. It would not have been so bad had the spinning been merely visual, but he could hear it too, whooshing past his ears like the wings of some great bird, sweeping past him, adding to the nausea. But he would not be sick. To puke was to give in to it, to show weakness. That was not Blaklok’s way.
The stench of singed wood drifted up to him, the lamp he had smashed must be igniting the floorboards. There was nothing else for it; he would have to open his eyes. If the lamp had leaked oil everywhere it would not take much for it to ignite. If he were set afire when he was already feeling like crap it would not be a great way to end the day.
Tentatively, Thaddeus lifted the lid of one eye. The room was still spinning its merry-go-round waltz, but nowhere near as fast as it had been. He glanced down at the lamp. The glass shade had shattered into several pieces at his feet but it had not yet spilt its cargo of oil. The flame still flickered from the lamp’s wick and it was scorching the wooden floor. He knelt gingerly and stood the lamp upright, taking a deep breath and willing the room to slow. It seemed to work, and Thaddeus managed to open his other eye and stand on both feet without the aid of the wall.
The tingling in his limbs was beginning to subside and the shaking lessened. Like a rush of fuel to a combustion engine he felt the strength returning to his taut muscles. There was still nausea, the urge to vomit almost overwhelming, but it was the least of the side effects and the one he could tolerate best.
His skin began to cool, and the moisture that covered his body cooled with it. With a shiver, Blaklok surveyed his room. The chalk pentangle was still intact, a wisp of grey smoke still rising from its centre where the object of his conjuration had so recently debarked. The salt circle he had laid within was now smeared and skewed across the floorboards. Between the two markings was the eviscerated rat. Even now, mere seconds after its demise, jinking flies were beginning to congregate to lay their spawn and feast on the fresh carcass.
It had been a simple invocation. The circle of salt was merely a precaution. After all, the imp he had summoned had entreated
him
for aid, not the other way around. But old habits were hard to shake, and a protective circle of salt was an elementary and requisite aspect of necromancy; any novice knew it.
The encounter had been mercifully brief and Thaddeus was left in no doubt as to the importance of the liaison. Unfortunately, as with all things associated with the demonic, he had been given the most cryptic of clues as to the nature of his task.
Procure the Key for us
, Rankpuddle had said, its dog-like muzzle forming the words perfectly. As it spoke its mouth seemed strange, the bestial jaws working just as a man’s would. Blaklok didn’t know whether the key in question was meant for the imp or for someone else, for the creature always spoke about itself in the third person, and even then not very plainly.
A deluge is coming that must be stopped
continued the imp,
the Key is the way
. Of course Thaddeus had asked which key in particular, to which the answer had been,
look to the dead
. Then, with a flash of blinding light and a whiff of sulphur, the foul creature was gone.
Look to the dead
, Blaklok thought. Well, that could mean anything. If the damnable beast demanded his aid then why not just ask for it? Why all the puzzles?
Thaddeus sat himself in the small wooden chair that had been pushed to the room’s edge. The shaking in his hands had all but left him now and even the bilious feeling in his gut was beginning to subside.
A sudden rapping at the door set his heart racing once more.
‘Mr Blaklok?’ It was Mrs Fotheringay, his landlady. Trust her to pick now of all occasions to bother him. ‘Is everything all right in there? I heard a terrible loud bang earlier on. And next door is complaining of a peculiar smell.’
Thaddeus opened his mouth to give his usual gruff reply, when he noticed something on the floor. More flies had rushed to join their fellows around the rat, and something black and hairy had crawled from beneath the floorboards to investigate the tiny body. But it was not the carousing of insects that had caught Blaklok’s attention. He moved from the chair, crawling on all fours to where the carcass lay, its entrails strewn in what he had originally believed a haphazard manner.
Look to the dead
, he thought again with a smile. The rat’s innards spelled out a word, the slimy guts spread across the floorboards in an elegant script.
Chronicle,
they said, bold as brass.
Thaddeus jumped to his feet, feeling the sudden elation of triumph. Mrs Fotheringay bashed on the door once more, just as he wrenched it open. Her sullen expression, the one she bore most often as though she had just stood in dog shit, dropped from her face. Her eyes popped open at the sight of Blaklok bearing down on her, stripped to the waist, tattoos plain to see on his muscular frame, face of thunder, covered in sweat and surrounded by a queer effluvium.
‘I was only–’ she managed to say, before Thaddeus grasped the newspaper that sat in the crook of her arm.
He held it up before her face and nodded his thanks, his eyes still burning in their deep sockets. She flashed him a bewildered smile as he slammed the door in her face.
Quickly he laid the newspaper out on the bare floorboards.
The Chronicle
was the most popular broadsheet in the Manufactory. In fact it was the only broadsheet in the Manufactory, its stories bearing a particular bias towards the Noble Houses that ran the city and the Sancrarium, the papacy to which they all paid a cursory tribute. In the metropolis that was the Manufactory, journalism was as functional a vocation as street sweeping or lamplighting. There was nothing that passed for freedom of the press, but right now Blaklok didn’t give a damn – he only wanted information.
The cover bore several headlines, and Blaklok was quick to rule them out as he scanned the crisp paper. A murder in the Cistern, the betrothal of two unexceptional nobles, a tower in the Spires finally completed. All trivial.
Then he saw it;
Key of Lunos on Display
.
A smile slowly crept across Blaklok’s face. That must be it! Though he had never been one for puzzles, this one seemed plain enough. He scanned the rest of the paper just in case. If he was wrong about this he would end up ‘procuring’ the wrong key, and that could never be good. But there was nothing, no mention of a key anywhere else in
The Chronicle
.
Once he had determined that this was the object of his task, he read further:
Duke Darian Hopplite, fortune hunter and explorer, heir to the House Hopplite fortune and eligible bachelor, has decided to show his recent procurement – The Key of Lunos – at the Manufactory’s Repository of Unnatural History. The Key, unearthed by Duke Darian on a recent expedition to the Moon, is an item of great value, and the subject of intense scientific and theological debate. Some say the Key is a vessel for the Almighty, while the scientific community argue the veracity of this, stating that the Key of Lunos is an item of “undeterminable extra terrestrial import”.
Duke Darian has declined to become involved in the debate, himself stating that the item: “Looks dashed nice on the old mantle”.
The Key of Lunos will be on display for one week, starting Thrivensday.
Thaddeus sat back in the small wooden chair that still leaned against the wall and rubbed his stubbly chin with one calloused hand. This could be difficult. An item owned by a duke of the Noble Houses. Not only would it mean a hanging offence thieving such an item, but now it was to be displayed in the Repository of Unnatural History. Everyone knew security within that monolith to all things weird and weirder was almost as tight as the Chambers of the Sancrarium. The place was full of dangerous flora and fauna, and the near impregnable aegis was there as much to keep the exhibits in as to keep the light-fingered out.
There was nothing else for it, he needed advice. First of all he needed to know exactly what he was dealing with. What was this bloody Key and why was it so important? The rest he would figure out as he went. After all, how hard could it be? The Repository’s safeguards might be considered insurmountable by its custodians, but then again they had never tried to stop Thaddeus bleeding Blaklok!
CHAPTER THREE
Castor Cage walked with purpose. He neither rushed nor tarried, but there was a definite sense of resolve to his long stride as he moved down the dank passageway. The High Priest had seemed almost feverish in his eagerness to get the ritual started, and Castor was very keen not to disappoint the High Priest.
With two other acolytes at his shoulders, the three of them cloaked from head to foot in scarlet satin, Castor felt his confidence rising. Soon the ritual would begin, he and his fellows would be gifted with a boon undreamed of, and he felt almost as keen as the High Priest for this to be underway.