Barbara Hambly - Magistrates of Hell

Still, the terraced fields along the stream – wherever there was an inch of soil to spare – were all brown with the stubble of millet and dry rice; no land was yet gone to waste. The familiar stink of chickens and pigs, of charcoal fires and night soil drying, hung in the air above the smells of pine trees and the river; and a man who’d been checking bird traps in the woods, as the little cavalcade came around the last turn of the track, ran ahead of them, up the twisted streets and into the neat brick building beside the white church, calling out ‘ T’ai-t’ai! T’ai-t’ai . . .! ’

A woman who had to be Christina Bauer emerged, shading her eyes.

Asher dismounted at once and removed his hat. ‘Frau Doktor Bauer?’

‘I am she.’

Bavarian German, sing-song and slurred.

‘Please allow me to introduce myself.’ He extended the letter of introduction that Sir John Jordan had written for him the previous morning. ‘I am Professor James Asher, of New College, Oxford. This is my colleague, Professor Doctor Karlebach, of Prague.’ Sergeant Willard had sprung down immediately to help Karlebach dismount, and steadied him as he limped stiffly to Asher’s side and extended his hand.

‘ Gnädige Frau . . .’

Had she remained in Germany she’d have been a stout hausfrau surrounded by young grandchildren. China had made Dr Bauer thin, and had weathered a pink complexion to dusty brown, but she still had the broad hips and shoulders of her ancestry and the smiling calm of a peaceful heart in her eyes.

‘We are here to speak to you about the creature you found last spring in the hills,’ said Asher. ‘The thing you said the villagers called a demon, a yao-kuei .’

She closed her eyes, and her breath went out of her in a sigh of deepest relief. ‘ Du Gott Allmächtig . Someone believed me.’

Karlebach frowned. ‘I should think the remains would have convinced them.’

‘Remains?’ Her eyebrows arched as she turned to regard him. ‘That’s the whole trouble, Herr Professor. The remains are gone. Without them, no one will believe . . . Who would? But it means we can get no help.’

‘Help?’ Something shifted in Karlebach’s eyes. Wariness. Readiness.

Not surprised , thought Asher. Not even startled . Afraid with the fear of one who’s seen this coming.

Knowing it for the truth, he said, ‘You’ve seen more of them.’

FIVE

‘This is all that’s left.’ Frau Bauer shut the door of the workroom at the rear of her clinic building, crossed to the single window that looked out on the woods and closed the shutters, putting the room almost in darkness. Her dress was old and hadn’t been made for her – the seams bore faded lines where they’d been let out. Somewhere in Germany, a congregation read her letters aloud at ‘Missionary Week’ and collected clothing for her and her flock.

‘It weighed seventy kilograms when it was brought in. Whole, the relationship to humankind – homo sapiens sapiens – was obvious; it even wore clothing that I think it must have stolen from militia troops.’ She struck a match, lit a candle in a tin holder.

Lydia was right. She’ll have to come out here as soon as possible . . .

‘After the dissection it took me two days to realize that sunlight was destroying the flesh and the bones.’ Dr Bauer unlocked the wooden chest in the corner, lifted out a tin box, of the sort used to carry photographic supplies. ‘When I opened the box the following morning all the flesh and soft tissues were gone. Like a fool I left everything on the table, locked up this room and went out to question everyone in the village. Herb-doctors will pay for old bones, you understand: old writings, fossils, anything ancient to make medicine with.’ She shook her head. ‘Everyone swore they had not touched them and would not touch them. The fear in their eyes was real, Herr Professor. The bones showed no sign of decay when I came back that afternoon, but crumbled in the box after I locked them up again.’

She raised the lid, whispered, ‘ Verflixt! ’ and, with a pair of tongs, gently lifted out the contents on to the metal instrument tray. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not at all,’ murmured Asher. ‘This is fascinating.’

The skull reminded him of one he’d seen in London, when one of the fledgelings of the Master of London had been burned. Shrunken and discolored, the very structure of the bone had been unable to withstand the terrible changes that sunlight wrought upon vampire tissue. But slow this time , he thought. Slow and in darkness . . .

Some of the facial bones had dropped off it, and those that remained attached seemed to have grossly shifted their position and angle. A softening of the sutures? Is that possible?

Lydia would know .

He flinched at the thought of her riding that winding track through the hills, with rustlings and whisperings in the gorge below.

The pelvis had shrunk also, and only almond-sized knobs remained of the long bones of arms and legs. Teeth remained in the upper jaw. Not only had the canines developed into fangs – longer than those of the vampire, but as far as Asher could tell exactly similar – but other teeth had burgeoned into tusks as well.

Frau Bauer stirred with the tongs at the fine blackish dust on the bottom of the box. ‘Bits of the ribs remained, only last week,’ she said. ‘I put a few spoonfuls of the dust into two other boxes: one exposed for fifteen minutes to the daylight, one given no additional exposure. Both boxes were completely empty two days later. There seemed to be no difference between the rates of the dust’s decay.’

‘My wife is going to want a copy of your notes, if you’re willing to share them.’ Asher held up the tray, moved it about to further study its contents. ‘She is a medical doctor and deeply interested in . . . cases such as these.’

‘ Cases ?’ Frau Bauer’s eyes widened: shock, dread, eagerness. ‘There have been other such, then? Do you know what these things are?’

‘No,’ said Asher quickly. ‘My wife’s interest is in anomalous deaths: specifically, in cases of spontaneous human combustion, which this rather resembles. You say you’ve seen more of these things?’

‘Not I myself.’ The missionary moved the lamp closer as Asher angled the tray. ‘Liao Tan, the Number One of the village, saw one in the twilight, in the woods at the end of the valley, about three weeks after this one was found—’

‘Where did you come by this one?’ interrupted Karlebach. ‘In your so-interesting article you speak of peasants bringing it to you . . .’

‘Liao Ho – Number One’s nephew – has a house beyond the others in the village, on the track toward the mine. His mother – Tan’s sister – was a little mad, and in her later years she could not abide the noise of her neighbors. Ho kept the house after her death. He is something of an eccentric himself.’

She half-smiled at the thought of her cantankerous parishioner. ‘He keeps pigs and shared the house with three very fierce dogs. Tan told me the week before that his nephew’s pigs had been attacked in their pen by some animal: wolves, he thought. One night, Ho heard the dogs barking wildly out in the darkness and followed them to the edge of the marsh that lies below the old entrance to the mine. He found this thing there, horribly mangled. Later two of the dogs became sick and died as well.’

Asher’s glance crossed Karlebach’s and saw, behind the small, oval spectacles, the dark eyes fill with tears.

It had once been a man , thought Asher, setting down the tray with its fragmentary remains. A man with a wife and probably a child – like Miranda. A man who had loved and been loved, wanting only to get through this life . . .