The Fall of the House of Cabal (9 page)

It took the best part of half an hour to explain the basic principles of what they would be looking for. (The overarching goal of an underlying principle of life that was called, for the sake of brevity, the ‘Fountain of Youth,' was explained to Zarenyia in perhaps thirty seconds. This was largely because she was stupendously uninterested. ‘Yes, Fountain of Youth. Very important. Understood. Yes.' She generally only perked up when the subject turned to possible threats and how they might be dealt with. It was plain she already had her strategies worked out for that.)

‘I have arranged transportation to the two nearest sites. Once those are investigated, we will each move on to the next site on our lists. We shall then rendezvous at a midpoint convenient for us all and compare notes.'

‘We shall?' Leonie cocked her head inquisitively. ‘Why doesn't one group go on to the fifth site?'

Cabal looked uncharacteristically sheepish, albeit in an officious manner, like a bureaucrat caught out on the exact wording of sub-paragraph 27. Leonie read the meaning in that expression with great alacrity.

‘Oh, my God,' she breathed.

‘Language, darling,' said Zarenyia, legs folded under her in a nightmare of knees.

‘You don't know. You don't know where the fifth site is. How can we do this if we don't know where all the threads of this great quest of yours dangle?'

‘Miss Barrow has a point.' Horst seemed slightly shamefaced not to be supporting his brother, but only slightly. ‘Surely if we miss any of the sites, it's all a bit pointless?'

‘The book contains no clues to the fifth site,' said Cabal. He had coloured slightly under all this uncalled-for criticism and was moved to straighten his cravat. ‘Only that its location and significance will become plain once the other four have been found. I strongly suspect that the fifth site is of a different sort to the rest.' He looked around their faces. ‘I believe it to be where the fountain itself exists.'

‘Oh.' Horst nodded. ‘That's all right, then.'

‘Is it?' Leonie wasn't having any of Cabal's vague hand-waving explanations. ‘Is that all right?'

‘Yes.' Horst nodded again, albeit a fraction less certainly. ‘I expect so. Probably.'

‘It is not in the nature of occult tomes to be blazingly transparent, Miss Barrow,' said Cabal. ‘We are seeking out the secrets of life itself, not assembling a bookcase. Those secrets are hidden, and hidden for good reason. Can you imagine the state of the world if the Fountain of Youth was signposted so that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could waltz in and help themselves?'

‘Happier?' suggested Zarenyia with practised ingenuity.

‘It would be chaos. People living forever left, right, and centre, the aged skipping around like new lambs. Think of the impact on the population demographics!'

‘Life insurance salesmen would be out of a job,' offered Horst.

But Cabal was not finished on his theme of keeping the wonders of the esoteric world away from the common herd who might do something ghastly and embarrassing, like use them. ‘Scavenger hunts would include the Holy Grail! Tourists trooping around the crystal cavern that holds Merlin! Immortality and godlike power bandied around amongst people I wouldn't trust with a freshly sharpened pencil!' He realised he had raised his voice. He coughed and looked away. ‘Chaos. It would be chaos.'

‘And we don't like chaos,' said Zarenyia firmly. ‘It's full of fish, isn't it, Johannes?'

This statement hung in the air for a long moment, partially due to the bafflement of Leonie and Horst, and also by the realisation that Cabal knew exactly what Zarenyia meant by it yet had no intention of elucidating.

‘Quite,' was all he said on the subject. ‘The book is in the nature of a key to an outer vault, represented by the four locations it describes. Those locations then constitute the key to the final, inner vault. There will be the Fountain of Youth.'

‘Delightful.' Zarenyia yawned delicately. ‘Now, let us address more important matters; what magnitude of frightfully evil, delightfully expendable enemies shall cross our paths?'

‘If we're careful,' said Leonie, giving Zarenyia a guarded look, ‘none at all. We can bypass most threats.'

‘Oh!' Zarenyia seemed to have a brief attack of the vapours. ‘But that will never do! Murders, Johannes! You said there would be murders!'

‘I don't know why you're so keen on that,' said Leonie. ‘Where there are murders, there are murderers. I thought we were trying to avoid trouble?'

‘Not murderers, silly.' Zarenyia fixed Leonie with a fond smile. ‘Murderer.' She held her hands out as if accepting applause. ‘Me!'

Leonie regarded Zarenyia stonily. ‘Cabal…'

‘Do not trouble yourself, Miss Barrow,' he replied. ‘You and Zarenyia shall not be travelling together. I shall be her companion.'

‘
Companion,
he calls it,' said the spider-woman, and smirked. It was an expression that actually looked quite good on her. Then, with a clatter of eight armoured legs unfolding in an arachnid bloom beneath her, she rose. ‘So I'm with you, and Little Miss Titian with the morals here goes with your brother—is that the plan, Johannes?'

‘It is.'

‘Perhaps…' Zarenyia looked speculatively at Leonie. ‘Perhaps I would prefer to travel with her, and you can go with your brother the deader.'

‘That is not the plan that I have formulated.' Cabal looked from Zarenyia to Leonie and back. Leonie caught his expression and noted some concern there. That, she felt, was reasonable.

‘But she's so
prissy,
' said Zarenyia, and pouted. ‘So holier-than-thou.'

‘As you're a devil,
everybody
is holier than you, Madam Zarenyia.'

‘Oh, you know what I mean.' She flexed her legs, lowering her forebody so she could look Leonie in the face. ‘Butter wouldn't melt.'

Leonie made a point of looking Zarenyia in the eye as she spoke, but inwardly she quaked. Yes, a promise to cause her no harm had been made, but weren't devils notorious for finding loopholes? ‘If you don't like that, why do you want to travel with me?'

‘I didn't say I didn't like you. You just need re-educating a little.' And Zarenyia smiled a smile that promised pleasurable damnations by the wagonload.

They matched stares for several long seconds, but it was Zarenyia who broke eye contact first, though her smile did not waver a jot. ‘Oh, you
would,
you know,' she said as she turned away. ‘You so very
would
. But not just now. I can wait. Johannes, my sweet. I believe you are to be my travelling companion?'

Cabal looked slightly confused by events, but replied promptly enough, ‘That is what I said.'

‘Well, let us trot along, then. I adore adventures; let us have one.'

 

The First Way: JOHANNES CABAL, THE NECROPOLITAN

It is traditional to explain, in great detail, the necessary preparations for a lengthy quest of any description. Supplies must be secured, routes decided, contingencies explored, dwarves fed, and so forth. Johannes Cabal, by contrast, bypassed the first largely by the use of finances transferred to banks along the way and the possession of letters of credit and cash in hand for more immediate use, while the second and third hands had already been decided in sufficient depth by Cabal himself without reference to anyone else, thereby forestalling any muddying of the organisational waters by bringing the opinions of others into the affair. As for dwarves, they could feed themselves as far he was concerned; he had no time for them or their interminable songs about gold.

There were, however, a few problems that he was unable to address until they became immediate and unavoidable.

‘I don't wish to be the gooseberry who spoils the party,' said Horst, ‘but Miss Zarenyia here is, by and large, a huge spider. I'm not sure they'll let you on a train looking like that, ma'am.'

‘Won't they?' Zarenyia was miffed at such impoliteness. ‘Well, that's prejudiced and barbaric of them.' She pouted and shook her head in a sharp little motion. ‘Does this mean I shall have to pass for human?'

‘I fear so,' said Cabal with uncharacteristic sympathy.

‘Oh, how utterly loathsome,' she said, and adopted an expression of great concentration.

In juddering degrees, she leaned back so that the tip of the great abdomen touched the stone floor and the legs on her right side drew together, as did the legs on her left. There was no gradual metamorphosis, nor even an instantaneous change, but rather the disquieting air of two figures being there, one far more substantial than the other, formerly the spiderish in the ascendant and then latterly the human, although even that pivotal moment was impossible to judge or even to perceive.

Presently Miss Zarenyia was a fashionably dressed young lady with a small bustle where once she had sported a vast abdomen, a parasol, a hat, and even her hair had lost its gamine effect in favour of red ringlets that tumbled alongside the winsome face of the supernatural serial killer.

‘That's how
I
wear my hair,' said Leonie Barrow.

‘I know, darling.' The devil was unabashed. ‘It's
pretty
.'

Seeing no satisfaction imminent in that quarter, Leonie instead appealed to Cabal, who shrugged, and said, ‘It's pretty.'

So the matter was settled.

‘The first two points of interest are in Abyssinia and Constantinople. Does anyone have any particular preferences?'

‘Well, obviously Horst and Leonie shall go to Constantinople.' Zarenyia said it as a matter of indisputable fact.

‘Why?' said Leonie, disputing it.

Zarenyia regarded her as if addressing somebody at a cocktail party who has just been introduced as the village idiot. ‘Because Abyssinia is frightfully hot and sunny and so forth, and you're all pale and interesting. You'll fry like a sinner, and furthermore it will bleach that lovely straw colour out of your hair. It cannot be permitted.'

Leonie looked askance at Zarenyia. ‘You're pale, too,' she pointed out. ‘A redhead.'

‘And—important point here that bears remembering—a devil. Not human in any sense that would delight the heart of a doctor. Denizen of Hell and all that? Everything is a warm afternoon to me, from pole to equator.'

Horst considered this. ‘Doesn't that get boring?'

‘No.' A thought occurred to Zarenyia, and she partially lifted her skirt to show her ankles. She regarded them with dissatisfaction. ‘I am sure that you are all thoroughly delighted to be bipedal, but really, you don't know what you are missing out on. So wobbly.' She dropped the hem and looked around. ‘So the scorching plains of Abyssinia for Johannes and me, and the louche pleasures of Constantinople for handsome Horst and lovely Leonie, then.'

And so that matter was settled, too.

*   *   *

It is further traditional to explain, in great detail, every footling detail of the trip from here to there. Why this should be is a mystery; one suspects it has something to do with contractual obligations with regard to the number of pages for such stories. Given that it is a novel that you are currently reading and not, for example, a travelogue or a hideously inaccurate biography of Sir Richard Burton, we shall therefore dispense with the travelling beyond the following few points.

It took Johannes Cabal and Zarenyia six days to reach a small township in the northern reaches of the country.

The trip was wholly uneventful, apart from the business with the slave traders. That all worked out well in the end as Zarenyia was given the opportunity to kill a few men, which improved her mood immeasurably, the rolling of the ship and the reduction in the number of legs she sported having combined to put her in a mild dudgeon.

There was also an attempted train robbery, but those happen all the time, so it's hardly worth noting.

It would be remiss not to mention, albeit in passing, the affair with the tomb guardians. And now that it has been mentioned, we may pass on.

Also, a matter of some giant ants, but—given Zarenyia's true form and some chemical ingenuity of Cabal's part—dealing with them was a trivial matter requiring only the inflammation of some five thousand gallons of aviation spirit and the destruction of a dam.

Thus, after six days of restful travel, Cabal and Madam Zarenyia arrived at the small township in the northern reaches of Abyssinia, formerly described by some European observers as being the seat of Emperor Prester John.

This came as a surprise to the Abyssinians, who pointed out that they'd never heard of a ‘Prester John,' and that ‘John' was a fairly unlikely name for an Abyssinian in any case. Also, that they didn't really have an exact term for ‘Emperor' in the European sense, such creatures being surplus to requirements to the people of the region.
*
Therefore, of the name ‘Emperor Prester John,' the first word was redundant and the last unlikely. They didn't know what a ‘Prester' might be, either. Nor did the Europeans, but that didn't stop them from dismissing the Abyssinian protests as dilatory, distracting, and irrelevant. Wise heads in Europe had decided that—as it hadn't turned out to be somewhere in Asia after all—then here lay the empire of Prester John, and the locals were too ignorant to have noticed it, or they might possibly be hiding it along with the Ark of the Covenant in a hut somewhere.