Paul Kemp: The Hammer and the Blade

He had fifteen days.

He hurried through the dusty halls of the manse, the floors creaking under his feet. Years of filth stained the faded, peeling paint and cracked plaster. Trappings of the family's once-great wealth decorated the hall, the foyer, the library — lush tapestries, sculpture, thick carpets from Vathar — but the age of it struck him now, all of it old, tattered, tarnished. The house had fallen far, its wealth spent on tithes to Hell and the exotic ingredients and creatures needed to further magical pursuits through the generations. Under Rakon's stewardship the house had finally gained the power its patriarchs had sought for generations, but in the process he'd emptied it of wealth. He'd turned it into a shell.

Portraits of previous Norristru fathers hung from the walls in the grand hall — all of them similar in appearance to Rakon: narrow faces, overlarge mouths, thin lips, and deep-set, accusatory eyes that stabbed holes of envy into whatever they looked upon.

He walked past doors behind which foul things had occurred in years past, until he reached the door to his sisters' chambers, his accursed, dangerous sisters.

He stopped, stared at the door a moment.

What was he doing there? He had work to do, knowledge to gain. His feet had carried him to his sisters unbidden.

The need to see them had crept up on him like a slow fever, but now had firm hold. He licked his lips and skulked down the hall, hoping his sisters were asleep. He hadn't the strength to fight with them again. He just wanted to make certain they were there, confirm that his grip was not slipping from everything, that he still controlled something.

As he neared the door he walked with a furtive tread, as if approaching a sleeping beast. He put his ear to the enspelled wooden slab but heard nothing from within. After composing his mental defenses, he took the charmed brass key from the folds of his tunic, whispered a word of awakening over it, and with it opened the lock. When he heard the soft click, when he felt the wards subside, he pulled it open.

Fetid, organic air wafted forth. He imagined it loamy with ideas, carrying thoughts on unseen currents, freefloating notions waiting for someone to bump into them and think them their own. Sometimes after leaving his sisters he wondered whether the thoughts he carried with him were his own or something they'd pushed into his mind.

Could they even do that? He didn't know for certain.

And how would he know? Did a thought of theirs in his head feel different than a thought of his own?

He shook his head to clear it of such thinking.

He leaned into the room and could have touched the back of the enormous, bald eunuch who stood guard just within. The barrel-shaped man wore tentsized pantaloons and a shirt and leather jack stained with sweat. A wooden truncheon hung from his belt, a large curved knife, and a reel of thin line.

The eunuch did not acknowledge Rakon's presence, though he must have heard the door open. His eyes stayed on the room, as they should. He was a jailer, his sole duty to ensure that Rusilla and Merelda neither left their chamber nor harmed anyone or themselves.

A slit at the base of the eunuch's skull still seeped pink pus, the wound a consequence of Rakon's chirurgy. Perhaps it would never heal. After scalpel and spell had severed the eunuch's brain from body, Rakon had filled the fleshy shell with a memory eater. The incorporeal spirit controlled the body with intangible tendrils while it made a slow meal of the eunuch's memories. In exchange for a captive feast, the eater allowed a binding that made it a perpetual guardian for Rusilla and Merelda, its alien intelligence immune to their mind magic.

Rakon wondered in passing how much of the eunuch still existed. He hoped none, though he could not help but imagine the eunuch's consciousness caged in the cell of his own mind, railing at his captivity. He could think of few worse fates than a magical bifurcation, the slow death of a mind in a body no longer controllable by it.

"Are they asleep?" he whispered in the eunuch's ear.

The huge man did not turn. The memory eater caused the eunuch to shrug.

Embers from the large hearth cast the windowless chamber in soft light and deep shadows. Furs and polished woods abounded: twin beds, wardrobes, overstuffed chairs.

He did what he could to provide for their comfort.

The aftermath of a chess match sat on the small gaming table, the white king toppled. Rusilla always played black, and she won nine games of ten. Rakon hadn't played her in years. He'd given up trying to beat her when she'd still been a precocious adolescent.

His sisters lay in their beds, their backs to him, their forms lost in a mound of pillows and blankets. Rusilla's long hair made an auburn cloud on her bolster. He watched them for a time, noted the steady breathing that suggested they were asleep. He let himself relax, and the moment he did he tasted cinnamon and his thoughts scattered.

Why had he come to see his sisters anyway? He could not remember. In truth, he'd been unfair to them over the years and should His adrenaline spiked.

Those weren't his thoughts.

How long had he been standing in the doorway?

He recovered enough of his wits to recognize the velvety caress of Rusilla's mental touch in his mind.

She hadn't moved, her breathing hadn't changed, but her mental fingers were sifting through his mind, pulling on the threads of his thinking, searching his memories.

He grimaced, clutching his head, and took an involuntary step backward.

"Get… out," he said through gritted teeth, but still she clung to his mind, a cognitive leech, violating him.

He fought for clarity, thought of arcane formulae that his sister would not be able to parse, flooded his mind with them, incanted in the Language of Creation. When he felt her recoil at the alienness of the words and formulae, he reasserted his mental defenses, strengthened them.

The cinnamon taste faded. She was out.

He winced at the headache the contact had left in her wake. Each beat of his heart put a knife stab of pain in his temple. He wiped his nose and the finger came away bloodstained.

"I will punish you if you do that again," he said, his words loud in the silence of the chamber.

Rusilla shifted her legs under the covers but still did not show him her face.

"What could you do that's worse than what you've already done? That's worse than what you already plan to do?"

He growled in response, low and menacing, massaging his temple with two fingers.

"You might be surprised," he said.

"He does, you know," Rusilla said. He still could not see her face and it discomfited him.

Rakon licked his lips and lowered his hand. "He who? Does what?"

"The eunuch, or what's left of him. He screams in his head. It's constant. He hates you for imprisoning him in his own body."

The memory eater caused the eunuch to turn his head, so Rakon could see him in profile, and smiled. The expression did not reach the empty, glazed eyes.

Rakon swallowed, looked away.

"Just as we hate you for imprisoning us in our own house," Rusilla said. "Would you like to hear them? The screams?"

Merelda giggled viciously from somewhere within her blankets.

"I don't need to hear them," Rakon said. "I did what had to be done with him and I'm content with that. I'll do what has to be done with both of you also."

"And will you be content with that, too?" Rusilla asked softly.

Concealed in the shadows and blankets, Merelda said, "We're your sisters, Rakon."

"I know that," Rakon said. He clasped his hands behind his back. "And I'm sorry. But you're Norristru. And this is the Norristru house, the Norristru line, and I can't let it fall." He put finality in his tone. "The Pact preserves us all. You'll both do what you were born to do."