Read Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey Online
Authors: Forrest Aguirre
The man-slave had brought up both Al’ghul and Agha Beyruit Al Mahdr, who stood back with the Shadow Divan, behind Heraclix. Both of his compatriots were dressed differently than when Heraclix had first left them in the room downstairs, a strange fact to pick up when his mind had been so clouded. Hadn’t Al Mahdr left to attend to other business? How long, Heraclix vaguely wondered, had he been up on the roof?
He stared into the molten reflection, watching his grotesque face shimmer and swirl. Soon the silvery surface became troubled, sloshing and boiling, casting blobs of mercury into the air and back down again into the roiling eddy until the dark and light patches took on a life of their own, separating from one another, disintegrating and shape-shifting until they formed visions of the past. They came in rapid succession, a series of vignettes shining up from the metallic waves.
In a small, spartan room, Octavius Heilliger sat across a desk from Mattatheus Mowler.
“You agree to the terms, then?” Mowler’s voice crackled.
“Yes, of course.” Heilliger sounded rushed, almost desperate.
“Very well. Sign the paper.”
“But I have no ink.”
“You need no ink,” Mowler said, handing Heilliger a quill and a knife.
Candlelight flickered, revealing Heilliger’s bloodshot eyes. His lids drooped with fatigue, but he shook himself awake in order to concentrate on the papers on the desk beneath him. He took notes on a piece of parchment with a black-feathered quill, scribbling in a script unfamiliar to most human eyes. The words and symbols were almost an exact replica of those, inked in red, on the papers from which he read. Annotations in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic filled the edges of his transcription. He copied text and wrote his own in the marginalia with equal speed. He wrote almost frantically, in bursts, then suddenly dozed off. He awoke with a start and began writing again, picking up where he had left off.
A door creaked then closed in the distance. Heilliger suddenly stood up, knocking a pile of papers down from the desk. A look of panic washed over his face. He rearranged the papers, then took his own notes up in an armful, picked up the inkwell and quill with his free hand, and quickly exited the room.
Under cover of the night, a robed, hooded figure walked hurriedly down the streets of Istanbul. The gait was that of a man burdened down with a heavy weight. A large, ragged knapsack, caked with mud, straddled his back. It was clearly a traveler’s piece of equipment. The bag’s condition contrasted sharply with the man’s clothing. The robe and cowl were of fine, quilted black silk. A red hem bordered the button line and skirt. Strange writing was embroidered into the hem with indigo thread. Beneath the cowl one could see a simple black veil with two rough-cut eyeholes, like a highwayman might wear.
The figure looked over his shoulders with every few steps, sometimes turning completely around to get a clear look behind him.
It was during one of these turns that he back-stepped into a trio of figures, three pig-faced, cloven-hoofed demons, eyes ablaze with flames that flickered up into the night darkness.
“Going somewhere, Heilliger?” one of them grunted.
The other two laughed and squealed.
Heilliger backed away, holding his hands up as if he could stop the approaching demons with his bare hands. He fearfully muttered some gibberish, which gave the demons pause before they again walked forward, now much amused, to seize him.
Their chuckles turned to squeaking screams as the ground beneath them exploded into a fine mist of dirt. As the dust settled, one could see hundreds of long black tentacles had erupted from the ground, entangling the demons. If one looked closely enough, one would see tiny, needle-fanged mouths within each sucker.
Heilliger didn’t stay to admire his handiwork. He skirted around the demons, who shouted curses and damnation on him until their larynxes were shredded or crushed, then fled into the shadows.
The quicksilver settled; the visions abruptly ceased. Heraclix turned to look at his interlocutors.
The Raven spoke. “You have seen, now, what we have known for some years now. Mowler took on an apprentice, a prodigy who sought to bring his wife and daughter back from the dead. This savant learned so quickly that Mowler grew suspicious that Heilliger had read and stolen information from his most valuable books and manuscripts, the very information that Mowler used to sustain his unnaturally long life. The apprentice fled Istanbul when he thought that Mowler had grown too suspicious.”
“How do you know these things?” Heraclix asked.
“We know because both Mowler and his apprentice spent time here as members of the Shadow Divan.”
“What else do you know?” Heraclix asked.
“We know some things, but only suspect others. Mowler left the Divan soon after Heilliger . . . after
you
fled. Mowler went to Prague, spending many, many years there until, we have gathered, he left due to his notion that the bulk of the citizenry there was far too idiotic to see his genius. He then returned to Istanbul. This time he returned with another young man, a slave, not an apprentice, that he had picked up in his travels.”
Heraclix saw the Shadow Divan’s servant standing with his hands on the edge of the pool, staring wide-eyed into its reflections. He might have been there the entire time that Heraclix was caught up in his vision or he might have just recently taken his
place there. Heraclix had no way to tell. But the man was enraptured by what he saw in the pool, that much was clear. Tears streamed from his eyes.
The Shadow Divan didn’t seem to take much notice. Heraclix turned to scan all of them, finally looking into the Raven’s eyes. He noted that the eyes behind the mask were old, yellowed, and bloodshot. The skin around them was grooved and wrinkled, with veins embossed in relief like mountain ranges over canyons of age.
“What else . . .”
“Mowler stayed here a few months doing research in the Eye of Knowing, beneath us.” The Raven pointed to the floor. “But one night, while scanning the sky with our telescopes, he saw what he called ‘a fire like the midday sun’ over Vienna. He left immediately. We haven’t seen him since. It is presumed he found his apprentice, or at least enough of a lead as to be worth pursuing.”
“When was this?”
“Around three years ago, maybe more. Then, a few months back, we heard of the immolation of Mowler’s residence in Vienna. We thought that his demonic creditors had finally caught up with him.”
The servant, who had stood silently up to that point, collapsed with a groan.
Heraclix instinctively tried to catch him.
The man was sobbing.
“Now I have seen the truth,” the young man said. “Now I know.” His eyes took on a clarity unseen by Heraclix to that point. It was as if he had woken from a dream, as if the drugs that had so infused his veins and clouded his mind were washed away in a trice.
“The man who brought me here, this Mowler you speak of, he brought me to this city, introduced me to the brothels, to the opium dens. He corrupted me. I was so young and naive then, and I followed him willingly, letting him take me away from my mother with fair promises and enticement. Ah, my poor mother!”
“Who is your mother, man?” Heraclix asked, trying to help the man unload his sorrows.
“My mother is Lady Edelweir of Vienna.”
“Then your father is Lord Edelweir.” Heraclix asked.
“No!” the man said. “My real father is the man who brought me here, submerged my reason in pleasure and dreams, and sold me as a slave. My father is Mattatheus Mowler!”
Heraclix glared at the members of the Shadow Divan.
“We . . . we had no idea,” the Raven said. “Had we known . . . how could we not see?” The other members of the Divan broke out in an argument amongst themselves, but Heraclix had turned his attention back to the man-slave.
“What, then is your name?”
“I remember now. I am Viktor. Viktor Edelweir.”
“And you think that Mowler is your father?” Heraclix asked.
“I am sure of it. What I saw in there,” he nodded toward the quicksilver pool, “only confirms it.”
“Impossible,” said Al Mahdr, who had remained respectfully silent to that point. “Our spies in Vienna say that Viktor Edelweir is now their minister of defense.”
“What of Von Helmutter?” Heraclix asked.
“Von Helmutter died unexpectedly. Viktor Edelweir was chosen as his successor.”
A cry of rage erupted from a corner of the room, the corner open to the room below. All turned to see a thin, swarthy figure rushing toward Heraclix with a small silver knife in his hand.
“Mehmet!” Heraclix cried out.
Al’ghul tackled the man to the floor.
“Leave my friend alone!” Al’ghul cried out.
“Boy! How dare you! After all I did for you!”
The two struggled, wrestling for control of the weapon. Al’ghul found himself in a familiar position, riding Mehmet’s back just as he had done in dispatching the Cossack whose comrades had attacked his family on the plains.
“You did nothing of lasting worth!” Al’ghul shouted.
Heraclix, Al Mahdr, and the members of the Divan dodged the brawling pair. Viktor sought to reach in to wrest the weapon from Mehmet, getting cut on the arm in the process.
“You betray me?” Mehmet gasped, running out of breath. “But I loved you. I gave you everything you wanted.”
“You did
not
love me! You flattered me in my young pride, then gave me that which I hadn’t yet earned.” The accusation seemed to give him strength and leverage against the older man.
“You wanted the girl!”
“I wanted her to be happy, not my slave!”
“I’ll make a slave of you, whelp!” Mehmet shouted.
But Al’ghul was too strong for the old man. He guided the silver blade, still in Mehmet’s hand, over the sorcerer’s heart, then plunged the blade once, twice into the old man’s chest.
“I am tired of slavery. The world is tired of slavery.” Al’ghul said in a voice wearied beyond his years. Mehmet wheezed out his dying breath.
But the noise wasn’t ended for Heraclix, nor for the Shadow Divan, who heard what the other three did not: Mehmet’s ghost shouting “Master, I have failed you!”
Then the spirit fled the room through the opening in the ceiling, to the roof.
Heraclix took Mehmet’s silver dagger from the dead man’s hand. With it, he cut the money pouch from his own belt and slipped the weapon under the belt.
“Take this,” he said, proffering the gold-thaler-filled pouch to the Raven, “in exchange for the freedom of Viktor Edelweir.”
“And you, my friend,” he said, turning to Al’ghul, “meet me, with Graf Von Edelweir, in Vienna. Go secretly, arrive quietly, but notify me. I will send a message giving further instructions on where and when to meet me. Now I must take my leave quickly.”
The giant bounded to the hole in the floor. He swung himself down through the opening, avoiding the ladder altogether, then sprinted across the room and out the door, running through the streets of Istanbul.
T
he worried look that weighed down Emperor Joseph’s face betrayed the gravity of the situation. He paced around his desk in an oval, like a racing horse that thought it was running to freedom but was in reality trapped by its own path. There would be no winner in this contest, only a lesser loser.
“Inevitable?” the emperor asked.
“I’m afraid so,” a black-clad messenger said without a hint of regret. Von Graeb recognized the man as Rilke, one of Graf Von Edelweir’s most trusted toadies, a regular army major. Not a member of the imperial guard. Because of their differing regiments, neither truly held rank over the other. “Rutowsky’s spies have collected clear evidence that Prussia plans to annex Saxony within two weeks.”
“But sir,” Von Graeb interjected as respectfully as his growing impatience would allow, “How do we know we can trust Saxony? They vacillate between us and the Prussians on a weekly basis, it seems.”
“Have they ever made threatening moves toward us?” the emperor asked.