The Iscariot Sanction (49 page)

The other seats at the table began to fill with strange-looking creatures that Lillian did not recognise. Throughout it all, Shah had not stopped his performance, drawing laughter and gasps from the crowd in turn, prancing back and forth along the stage like a music-hall comedian.

‘Please put your hands together for Count d’Aurenga of Montelimar, and His Grace the Bishop Ferdinand of Limburg,’ Shah was saying, as more of the Knights Iscariot’s membership took the stage, filling the final places.

Bishop?
Lillian thought, incredulous at the notion of a vampire inveigling its way into the church hierarchy in any nation. Perhaps the title was an affectation, taken through some tradition or historical technicality, much as de Montfort’s position seemed to be. Or perhaps even these depraved highborns had been able to disguise their monstrous nature to live among mortals, much as Cherleten had for so long.

It appeared that the assembled lords and ladies at the top table represented some of the more important figures in vampire society, drawn from around the globe. Their exotic accents and outlandish ornamentation gave them away as foreign-born, although their pale, scarred flesh and violet eyes lent them a homogenous appearance; one that Lillian realised, with some distaste, she now shared. She wondered if the vampires had their own society, away from the artificial distinctions provided by political borders and racial incongruence. She wondered if, should she fail in her mission, whether she would meet her end, or become instead inducted into that culture, eventually forgetting all that she had been previously. There was some dark comfort in this thought, in the idea of being embraced by a new family.

De Montfort was still inside her mind. He turned to fire her a glance as she thought these things, and with it sent a psychic progression of a single word. A name:
John
.

She looked away. Her brother was locked in some stinking dungeon and whatever happened, she would see him freed; she owed him at least that much. She owed it to the ghostly vestige of her humanity. These thoughts, and others, she buried deep, hopefully deep enough to be concealed from de Montfort’s mental prying.

The throne, and the seat to its right, were the only empty places remaining. Lillian noticed this only when Shah had ceased his droning, and the crowd’s laughter at his show had subsided. Her concentration upon guarding her thoughts had distracted her. She looked about, catching the eye of Collins briefly, before he turned away hastily, guilt and fear writ large upon his countenance.

The momentary lull was ended by another blare of trumpets, at whose signal Valayar Shah shouted to the chamber, ‘All rise for the Nameless King!’ The scarecrow-man bowed low, and fair scuttled backwards to the wings of the stage, as a heavy curtain behind them lifted.

All those at the table stood, as did every seated vampire within the hall. Lillian, reluctantly, followed suit.

From the shadows behind the curtain, dozens of pairs of violet eyes shone bright, and one by one their owners stepped out into the light of the hall; it was an entourage the likes of which Lillian had never seen—a gruesome, twisted line of creatures more removed from humanity than any vampire Lillian had encountered.

The procession of the Nameless King had begun.

The music recommenced, an assault on the senses. To its maddening strains, the procession took to the stage, a long line of bizarre creatures, some nimble and lithe, some shuffling and feeble. Concubines, half-naked vampiresses and slender, immortal youths, their skin scarred and powder-white, violet eyes dull, heads lolling upon their chests.

Each of the entourage was in some way misshapen, pierced with jewels and barbs, their pallid flesh like pin-cushions. Some were hunched, others had missing or withered limbs. Some were mutilated with bony crests beneath the skin or necks elongated by metal rings in the manner of the tribeswomen of the Dark Continent. Lillian wondered if, like Shah, these creatures were once those very people. It was impossible to tell now, for even if they had retained any features of their race, they were long subdued beneath sickening scars.

The leaders of the troupe were the sprightliest of all, shaven-headed women, though almost androgynous, ugly and somehow seductive, dancing in sinewy motions ahead of the others, swirling great veils about their slight, scarified forms. Their bodies twisted and contorted awkwardly, and with such immodesty that Lillian found herself averting her eyes more than once. The creatures hissed, and stretched out their malformed limbs to the crowd, extending long talons from fingers and toes. Lillian noticed, with growing distaste, that all of the creatures wore collars, and threaded between them was a silver chain, held by two guards who followed the cavorting slaves. Was this to be her own fate? A cavorting slave-beast, paraded naked before the King and his sycophants like so much cattle?

More servants came behind the procession, that laggard kind of human serf that Lillian had seen before. Their close-cropped scalps with their roughly sewn scars told another story; their vampiric masters had perhaps exercised the cruellest form of control over them. These liveried servants were big and strong, breathing in heavy grunts against the leather stocks about their necks. Lillian thought that they would be little use as guards in a hall full of vampires, and equally poor as servants for all but the most desultory tasks. They were doubtless nothing more than a vulgar display of power over humanity, akin to a fine pair of spotted carriage-dogs. Lillian remembered the servants she had seen in royal residences over the past few years, their ancestors taken from the furthest edges of the Empire as slaves, and now given an illusory freedom in the service of their supposed liberators. The vampire king was not so very different from English nobility perhaps.

As the dancers took up positions on the floor in front of the great table, seated upon velvet pillows, the liveried servants stood to attention on either side of the dais. Only then did four more vampires take to the stage.

The first two were the familiar sort, and Lillian took note of them especially—hunters, faces puckered where their flesh had necrotised, or else had been cut away deliberately in some ritual mutilation. They wore severely tailored coats, which flowed almost like gowns past the waist, while their high collars barely hid the brands that marked their throats and the undersides of their jaws. The other two creatures were women, dressed a hundred years out of style. Their waists were drawn in by impossibly small corsets, their bosoms pushed up outrageously, ghastly faces painted paler still, so that they fair glowed in the subdued light of the hall, and the whole arrangement topped with improbably tall powdered wigs. They fanned themselves and paraded around like music-hall viragos—parodies of ladies, perhaps intentionally so. One peeled away from the group and took a place near to Lillian, on the right hand of the throne. She smelled of iodine and arsenic powder, and smiled as though her features were incapable of change.

Finally, the music stopped and the crowd quietened to a reverent hush. Something changed in the very air, almost imperceptibly at first, and then more noticeably. Shadows gathered around the stage, the light from the torches failing to permeate them. Despite the heat of the packed hall, the temperature dropped to an icy chill—Lillian barely felt heat or cold any longer, and so she knew it must be a severe change. She saw the breath of the human serfs, Collins and the prince fog upon the air. The darkness intensified. Lillian felt the back of her head buzz, and a pressure grow about her eyes.

It is the influence of the King
, the voice in her head intoned.
Show no weakness—his chosen few are immune to these effects, but most are completely in his thrall.

Sure enough, Lillian saw dozens of vampires rubbing at their foreheads or dabbing themselves with kerchiefs as the malign influence of the King pervaded the chamber. She found herself craning about to look at the curtain at the right-hand side of the banqueting table, waiting with bated breath for the Nameless King to make his entrance. But he did not.

Instead, a collective gasp from the dance floor caused Lillian to turn back. From her vantage point upon the wide dais, she saw in the centre of the room a great shadow stretched out like an enormous spider. The vampires scurried away from the black, smoky void, pressing back into the crowd as the form coalesced and began to fold in upon itself. Tendrils of smoke and pure darkness retracted from floor and ceiling, taking shape within the centre of the hall. From the reactions of the vampire nobility, Lillian guessed few, if any, had witnessed this before.

It is a trick. Do not be afraid.

Lillian risked a glance at de Montfort, but his eyes were fixed ahead. She took a deep breath, trying her best to quell the discomfiting sensation in her head.

Finally, the shadows shrank and swirled further, as though a tornado of darkness were forming in the room, and reality seemed to snap back into place, violently. Onlookers ducked as a great chorus of shrieks and squawks filled the room, and from the darkness came a tide of blue-black feathers. A murder of crows, hundreds strong, erupted from the shrinking shadow. In their wake, a wave of dream-like energy crashed through the hall. Lillian felt it wash over her; her skin prickled with it, and the pressure that had steadily built within her head at last dissipated.

As Lillian blinked away the sensation, she saw that the disturbance had ended. The fires burned brightly once more; the aerial supplicants groaned their agony again, but now to the accompanying call of crows. And in the centre of the hall the Nameless King stood tall, his entrance complete.

Fear not, Lillian
, came the voice again.
It is naught but illusion. With my help, you will see through it all. You will see that he can be killed, just like any one of us.

The figure advanced. The Nameless King towered over the assembled courtiers, who stared up at him in both reverence and astonishment. He was tall and whip-thin, clad all in black. Across his shoulders was a thick mantle of crow feathers, from which a long cloak tumbled down to the floor, and was lifted as he walked by two cherubim-like vampire children. His arms were bare, ending at long, thin hands tipped with sharpened black talons. His dark flesh was marked with strange symbols, like an ancient script carved into his skin. A hood was pulled over his head, shrouding his face in darkness but for the gleaming eyes. Yet the hood could not mask the grotesque features of the King fully—his neck was unnaturally long and wrinkled with blue-tinged skin, which folded over myriad scars. His jaw was angular, jutting from the cowl to reveal a grinning mouth full of large, artificial teeth, black lips shrunken away from them. Lillian squinted at the creature, whose form seemed reluctant to become fully solid. Shadows clung to him, unwilling to relinquish the devoted embrace of their master.

All of the grotesque oddities that were present in Shah were apparent in the Nameless King too, but taken to the extreme. Taller, more severely thin, like a stick insect in a collector’s case. Lillian wondered just how old Shah must be, and whether all vampires grew to such stature and ugliness.

The Nameless King moved in measured strides, his body held rigid, his motions fluid and graceful. He covered the ground to the stage too quickly; he was upon the dais before Lillian had seen him take more than two or three steps, and he brought with him his own personal darkness. The snarling, naked child-things that held the King’s trailing cloak looked about furtively with sunken, violet eyes.

Shah welcomed the King to the stage, before bowing low and retreating to his place. The King looked towards Prince Leopold, and then at Lillian, holding her gaze for just a moment. His eyes were brighter than any she had seen before. She felt the blood in her veins move like a tide towards the waxing moon. She began to doubt that she could resist the power of this creature. She suddenly felt insignificant in the presence of this millennia-old immortal.

He welcomes you to his family. Acknowledge him.

Lillian bowed her head subserviently, averting her eyes from the King’s, and immediately feeling the pull of his presence subside. She knew not if she had done the right thing, but he turned away from her all the same, and looked at the quietened audience. As he raised his arms, all the vampires around the table, and those around the edges of the hall, took their seats; Lillian followed suit.

‘I bid you welcome to Scarrowfall, to my home, on this auspicious night,’ said the King. He did not speak alone. The entourage, the horrid vampire children and lithe women, all lent their voices to his, in a jarring chorus. His own voice was almost a croak; the skittering of loose rock down a quarry bank, presaging an avalanche. Yet through unknown means the unearthly choir of voices could be heard by all within the vast chamber. ‘For some of you, this is the first time you have spent this night in our presence. For some, it will be the last opportunity you have to make this pilgrimage. All of you, young and old, are welcome.