Paul Witcover - The Emperor of all Things

‘ Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? ’ Quare demanded. ‘ I trusted you … looked upon you as I might have a father .’

‘ Yes, that made it all very easy, I must say. You would do well in the future, Mr Quare, to be a good deal less trusting. At least you need not search for a substitute father any longer. And after all, haven’t things turned out for the best? You retrieved the watch from the female masquerading as Grimalkin and returned it to me. I pricked my finger in examining it, and discovered the secret key I had looked for in vain all those years. Thanks to you, I have shed my ruined body and will soon enjoy a better one, along with the power to reshape the world. I owe you much – and never let it be said that I do not repay my debts .’

‘ How – by killing me and bringing me here? ’

‘ Did I not say that the hunter had saved your life? I sensed the moment Aylesford’s dagger slid into your heart, Mr Quare. I watched your essence – your soul, for lack of a better word – crawl like a moth from its chrysalis. I called it to me, and it came, a poor blind thing drawn along a bloody umbilical. I grasped it in my hand. I hold it still .’

At this, he extended one hand. There, on a palm as black as midnight, sat a fragile moth the colour of blood – the only bit of colour Quare had glimpsed since he had awakened here. The sight of it sent a shock through him; though he had never before seen such a thing, still he recognized it, felt instinctively that it was a part of him. The moth seemed to recognize him as well. It fluttered its wings but could not rise from Master Magnus’s palm, as if held down by an immense weight. Its blood-red colour flared as it struggled, like a cooling ember fanned by a breeze, but almost at once the colour ebbed, fading from scarlet through rouge to a pale rose, as the moth subsided in exhaustion. Magnus closed his fingers around it, caging it within.

‘ I know about the dragon Tiamat and the compulsion laid upon you. But I have broken its hold. That jealous creature has no dominion over you any more – not as long as I hold this part of you, and you hold the hunter. Thus joined, no man or dragon can stand against us. We are invincible, Mr Quare! I will protect you from your enemies. From death itself. In return, you will be my agent in the world. My protector. My voice. And more. For you see, I cannot hatch from this egg alone. I need your help. I must grow stronger, and for that I require sustenance .’

Quare felt a chill. ‘ You mean blood .’

‘ Only then will I be strong enough to hatch. You will be midwife to that birth. That is your purpose, your glorious destiny! ’

‘ Glorious? It is obscene. Is that how you would usher in your bright and shining age of reason? On a tide of blood? ’

‘ There is no birth without blood. But I will kill no one .’

‘ No, I suppose that is to be my task .’

‘ You will carry me across the Channel, into the thick of the war. There I dare say we shall find a sufficiency of blood – blood that will be put to a better use than fertilizing some farmer’s field .’

‘ I won’t do it ,’ Quare said. ‘ The Master Magnus I knew would never have considered such a vile scheme. You are no longer the man you were – no longer even human – you have become what the others called you: Master Mephistopheles! If you are trapped here, so much the better. I will not help to loose you upon the world. Kill me if you like – I won’t lift a finger to help you .’

‘ We are both part of something greater than we were ,’ Magnus replied. ‘ Embrace that truth or fight against it – in the end it matters not. Our wants count for nothing against the needs of the dragon. That, too, I have learned. Now you will learn it .’

With that, Quare found himself back in his body. How much time had passed, he did not know, but he was still seated at the Old Wolf’s desk, grasping the hunter in his maimed hand. But that hand was no longer bleeding, though the wound had not healed. He could see the raw, ravaged flesh, the white wink of bone …There was the stub of his finger on the desktop, just where it had been sliced away … but now shrivelled and dark as a raisin, as if every drop of vitality had been drained from it.

The hunter had lost its crimson glow and faded to a pale roseate hue, like the moth that Magnus had held in his hand. Quare could feel the flutter of its pulse, twinned to the rapid beating of his heart as if it were some kind of parasite sucking the life from him. The ornate hands of the watch were crawling in no ordered progression, moving neither clockwise nor counterclockwise but instead seeming to quest about the face of the timepiece like the roving antennae of a blind insect, pointing with unguessable intent towards those strange symbols he could not decipher … could barely even focus on, as if they, too, were in motion, squirming to escape his sight. Once he had gazed admiringly on those hands, carved with such exquisite craftsmanship into the shape of a dragon, but now he felt only revulsion. He tried to fling the hunter away, but his fingers would not open. They disobeyed his will; they had another master now, it seemed. Nor would his arm obey his command to smash the timepiece down upon the desk.

He pushed the chair back and stood … then froze.

Bodies lay strewn about the floor – including, beside him, that of the Old Wolf. The guards were down, lying motionless as dead men. Pickens, too. And Longinus.

Father …

Either Magnus had lied to him, or Longinus had. But which one? What was the truth? If Longinus was dead, killed by the hunter, he might never know.

Quare moved to the older man and knelt beside him. He was breathing shallowly, his eyes open, the pupils dilated. Quare shook him by the shoulder with his free hand. ‘Longinus – wake up. Longinus!’

A faint groan was his only answer.

And what of the others? Quare moved from one fallen form to another, finding that all of them were, like Longinus, unconscious. He took the opportunity to rearm himself, then hesitated, debating what to do next.

‘ Waste not, want not, Mr Quare .’

The voice was as intimate as his own thoughts, yet entirely unnatural. It was as if a worm had burrowed into his brain – or, no, a tongue … He could feel it rasping repulsively across the inside of his skull. He bent over, retching, his stomach emptying. But he could not purge himself of the invader. When he was done, the voice returned.

‘ These titbits will lend savour to the coming feast .’

Now, just as he had been unable to force his fingers to drop the hunter, so, too, was he helpless to resist as a will more powerful than his own exerted control over his body. He – or, rather, the puppet he had become – drew his dagger and proceeded methodically to cut the throats of the guards. Quare’s right hand did not so much as quiver as it went about its grisly business, though he fought against it with every ounce of strength he possessed.

As before, the hunter drew the streams of blood into itself; he could not believe how much blood a human body held … nor how quickly it could be drained. Not a drop was wasted. And also as before, the timepiece began to glow as it drank, until it hurt to look upon. Yet Quare could not tear his eyes away. The fierce light shone right through the skin of his hand, so that he could see the bones, the veins, the blood within the veins. All the while, in his head, he heard the dragon singing. That was the only word for it. It was the same song that had called him here, only indescribably more beautiful … and terrible, as if he were watching a ravishing maiden bathing in a pool of blood. He felt himself stiffen within his breeches. Then, as had happened in the bath, when he had conversed with Tiamat, he was spilling his seed, convulsed with a pleasure that overwhelmed but did not eliminate the shame he felt. And the horror. For just as it drank the blood of his victims, so, too, did the hunter take into itself this other vital essence. Tears ran down his cheeks.