Vol.7, Ch.3, P.5
“But come. Onto the entrée,” frolicked the fidgeter’s words. “Rolf Buckmann, a question for thee!” Then, as one picking from a supper menu, he asked, “The Roun of Orisons—you’ve noticed, haven’t you?”
I deigned no answer, but stared instead at the man with surging suspicion.
“Talkative chap, are we?” he snorted. Then, flicking himself off the table, the man ambled a few paces hither. And in so bleak and cavernous a croft, his silvered footsteps stung like needles in the ear. “Well, all the better that you hadn’t babbled about it, I suppose, eh?” he continued. “Yes, yes: you knew, but you did not tell. A discovery kept secret… and a choice made oh-so judiciously.”
Taking that as a threat, I gripped the black hilt harder, and made no remark.
“Hence my choice to meet you,” the stranger said on, “for I needed, wanted to know, as well: about what you know—and withal about you, Rolf Buckmann.”
Flamboyantly then, he bowed and beamed a gleeful grin. Indeed, every gesture, every motion of his was disturbingly merry, as with a jester one discovers dancing deep in the dark.
“Well? How about it, then? Am I right?” asked the man. “I’ve come all this way for you, Rolf Buckmann. Pray squander not the occasion. Let us be candid, hm?”
“…True enough,” I groaned. “The Roun—a covenantal magick I’ve reckoned it to be.”
Hands slowly clapped. “Ripping. Brilliant. A bullseye for the rebel!” cried the cajoler, and rather unconcernedly, at that, as though it was only fair to confirm a correct guess. But to me, naught about this was fair; not the Roun, not this man—nothing.
“…And as well: it is a thing malicious to the utmost,” I added.
The man hoist his brows high, that they caught the light of the beggarly lamps. “What? No, no, no,” he grumbled, “naught of the sort!” And shaking his head aggrievedly, his gay smile soured to a simper. “Why, it sports nary a sponge to wash the brain with, nay! A little push for the suppressed heart; some volume for the long-silent voice—that’s all it gives, truly,” he expounded with thespian flair. “Quite alike a cup of… yes: smooth and sanguine wine.”
The Roun is as a crook, shepherding the thought of the masses. Albeit its potency does depend on the individual, a variance accountable to the character and constitution of the victim-mind. Such had been my going guess… but to hear it now likened to mere—
“Wine?” I said sharply. “What, paired with a rack of Religion? And withal a side of systemic Persecution? The sickest course ever served, if so.”
“Hahah!” cackled the man, as he clapped his hands again in unharnessed humour. For my part, I felt my bosom rumbling with anger. I should be wise to keep cool on this occasion, but this crack wasn’t making that easy. “O bless!” he soon said. “Come, do regale me, my sweet little rebel! How came you upon that conclusion, hmm? That the Roun should be a magick covenantal? A hint was it? Some hunch?”
“Hardly,” I said. “Its rites, its rituals; all of them possess the trappings of a contract. What’s more, no magick can confer a mote of odyl, much less inexhaustibly. No, none from any I’ve surveyed—save covenants in all their mysteries.”
“Oh? And it couldn’t be some secret, some arcanum? A spell simply kept long under the lid?” the man debated. “Like the very stairs you stumbled upon just this hour?”
“Even spells arcane can find cousins in today’s disciplines,” I reasoned. “That stair-spell of yours itself, that is but a subtlety, a deception of the senses, as you’ve said. But an ever-spewing spring of odyl? Now that is alien.”
Alien, that the Roun should bestow a Man a boon that missed him at birth; that a magick should provide him with the means to conjure even more magicks—that a fire should breed firewood. Indeed, no lineage of sorcery existed, whether practised or recorded, that could explain something so backwards, so eldritch.
“‘Divine’, you mean,” countered the crack. “The work of a godhand. For if not by Man, then by his Maker. ’Tis plain!”
“There is no god,” I returned. “My speculations, this dispute, they’ve all premised so, right from the start.”
“Hoh!” squawked the man. And with undiluted delight, his smile gushed with gaiety again. “Excellent. Marvellous!” he exclaimed, as though proud of a pup learning its first trick. “Very well, then. Your turn to order now.”
“The steeple sabotage,” I fast put forth, “were you its mastermind?”
No use pressing this palterer for a proper introduction; he’d only mince the matter again. Better, then, to seize the chance and find out more about this blasted conspiracy. For, as discussed with Björn earlier, the “ringleader” was finally out of the bag; and if he would not name himself, then like the ill-minded illusionist that he was, he might please more to spill his plot and purpose.
“Mastermind?” giggled he like a goblin. “Mm. Nay, not I, the chiefest cook in the kitchen though I be. Indeed, I doubted that ever could such reconciliation come about. But the warmongerers, oh! they were the lot of them champing at the bit, I’ll tell you what. So, I simply thought to throw them a bone… and ‘set the table’ for them, if you will.”
“And then serve them the princess on a platter?” I said. “Her death will’ve lurched all of Londosius to its knees. Am I to believe that wouldn’t have upset your schemes in the least?”
“Well, I shouldn’t put it like that,” said the man. “But supposing she were dead, I wager I shouldn’t be all too worse for wear, if you know what I mean.”
How easily did that answer slither from his lips. Likely had he got layers upon layers of plans in the offing, just in case aught ran afoul.
“My turn again, at any rate,” he then said. “Answer me this: who am I?”
“…”
…This twisted trickster. His was a snake’s tongue, manyfold more so than Vilmar’s, that with a whisper could he sway the wills of men, it well-seemed. But to my ears, such speech did but spur my spite ever on. And it was amidst my rising ire that the princess’s own words echoed in my mind—the very last I’d heard from her before the fateful blast unfolded. And if memory served, it was…
‘…What… what evil…!
How becometh this
a cartaphilus…!?’
…Cartaphilus.
A man beyond Man. An endurer of endless time. Veiled, vagrant… and nothing but a vestige of tales antique. Indeed, one would think the princess had merely made a metaphor, but for the soul-startling sincerity with which she’d conveyed it; but for the man afore me in all his impenetrable placidity; but for the Roun that’d woven its wiles for centuries without cease…
…but for the blade girt at my belt, whose hilt had been seething hot ever since meeting this mummer, as though roused to a red-raving wrath. These and all gave me the answer to the aching question at hand.
“How now, I know you’ve guessed it, honed sleuth-hound that you are,” so spoke the spinner. “Even your sword has got something to say. Doesn’t it?”
Misgivingly I glowered. How deeply did this man see? Still, the answer sat uneasily inside me. It went against all wit, rioted against all reason. But as it was yet the truth—if even a cruel and crafty one, that had for so long shrouded all the world in shadow—I dared not deny it.
Balming my bated breaths and calming my gnawed-at nerves, I went out of turn to ask the man: “…What is your end in all of this?”
“Who knows?” he answered. “Who cares?” And with those curt words, he flapped a fed-up hand, and altogether displayed a deep disinterest in the topic. “I might be working towards a worldly peace, even, and still would you never suffer it aught, nor me, for that matter. Or… would you?”
“…”
“Well? Would you, now?” he pressed me. “Can you?”
In the corners of my mind, I recalled countless tragedies. Loved ones leaving and never returning; those remaining and for ever lamenting.
“Again with the glued lips,” remarked the man. “Come on. Look alive!”
“…”
“I can see it in your eyes, Rolf Buckmann,” he happily hissed on. “How you mark the man afore you the one who’s flooded full this world with woe and war.”
…And consigned even innocent children to loss and suffering; and stole from them asudden what fragile joy they knew—children like Mia, whose tears unto this moment were to me a bitter memory.
“And I can hear it in your breath, O little wolf,” the man continued to curr. “How you blame this beaming mummer for twisting aught and all into a waking nightmare.”
“…”
In my heart, I heard a little lass weeping herself wet. In my eyes, I saw a man smiling in the mirk. Smiling, smiling, ever smiling—from the very fathoms of his sick soul. And then, like a mocking owl, he craned his head, splayed his hands, and sneered at me from ear to ear.
“Hehe—correct!”
“Saint…
…Rakliammelech!!”
Blackness roared as I ripped the soot-steel from its scabbard, and bolted blade-first for the smiling scum. And mustering my every sinew as soldiers for battle, I brandished full the rememberer of dragons. The dim air darkened deeper as the blade sably swept; and then the stroke, straight as a line, sliced through the varlet’s bosom, heart and all. Sparks spat and blood burst; but a blink, and—
“Bad manners, my man.”
“Hh!?”
—I gasped and gaped, discovering the rascal smirking back unamusedly.
There was no mistake. I had cut him, clived him as to fell even a column of stone. I had even felt his flesh and bones failing against my blade. Yet there he stood. And at his breast was borne not a broken fleck of skin, much less a dinted speck of silver. Was he mending himself immediately? As Sven of the Salvators had done? Nay… nay, this—
“Sseaaht!!”
Dither now, and I’d be dead. Swiftly, I uphove the soot-steel and brought it brunting down upon the scamp’s skull. Blade bore through bone; pale pinkness spilt from brain; and in an instant, his head was hewn in half.
But relaxing not in the least, I pried the black blade free and readied it again, all the while fixing my gaze upon my mark.
“Well,” I heard him once more, “you certainly are as deadly as they say.”
“Kh!”
The man that ought be maimed—twice-maimed—remained as leisurely and unsevered as ever, even standing with a hand upon an apathetic hip. Forsaking this futility, I bolted aback to a safer distance.
“Oh, come, come,” cooed the cullion. “Let us be friends again. Mm?”
And with his other hand, the pervert gestured for peace. But it was needless as I stayed and sighed deeply, if only to restore my centre of reason. And looking upon him, no doubt lived in me: this foulness, this fustilarian afore me, was a foe. I had a mind to maim him once more, but lest some sleight come springing in answer, I leashed myself in.
Anger oft begets heat. But in my case, it rather coldens the blood. Now was no different, as I felt a frost filling all my senses. And whetted by this winter, I stared down the length of my blade and straight at the trickster saint.
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Notes
Cartaphilus
(Root: Greek) The “wandering Jew”; a name loosely meaning “dearly loved”. Legendarily heckled a crucifixion-bound Jesus, earning him a curse to tarry through all Time until the Second Coming. His name echoes the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. In Soot-Steeped Knight, a term referring to a holy and immortal being as told in tales.
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