Heraclix and Pomp: A Novel of the Fabricated and the Fey (12 page)

“Where else have you been wounded?” the Serb asked.

Heraclix silently pointed to the other wounds he had received from Von Helmutter’s silver dagger. These the Serb also healed. Not only did the pain subside, then disappear, Heraclix also felt enervated, more optimistic, even enlightened, as if his soul had, to some extent, been healed along with his body.

“Try that,” Heraclix pointed to the stitched scar tissue connecting his neck to his body.

The Serb touched the scar, and others, in exactly the same way he had caressed Heraclix’s dagger wounds. He concentrated, seeming to grasp the necklace more firmly with his phantom hand, the effort showing in his gritted teeth and curled-back lips. After straining for some time, he sighed.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

“Neither have I,” Heraclix said.

The Serb chuckled, enjoying Heraclix’s glib sense of humor.

“No,” he said with a smile that quickly faded, “I cannot heal these scars. I should be able to, but cannot.”

“The others are much more recent,” Heraclix said. “Perhaps that is why you could heal them but not the old scars.”

“I wish the answers to these mysteries were so obvious,” the Serb said. “One thing is obvious, though: someone doesn’t like you much.”

“Von Helmutter is his name. Perhaps you have heard of him?”

“No, I can’t say that I have. Should I have?”

“Not necessarily,” Heraclix said. He felt that the old Serb was telling the truth. A slight shot of guilt passed through him, but he was here to pursue clues and find answers. He couldn’t afford to have his conscience get in the way of direct questioning.

“And what of the sorcerer Mowler? Surely you have heard of him?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid not.”

“No? Then to whom did you sell this?” Heraclix held up the left hand again, as if it would magically extract answers when held aloft. It did not.

“I am not sure of the name.”

“Not sure? You had dealings with a man whose name was unknown to you?”

“I don’t even know if it was a man, truth be told. It was an unusual arrangement, I’ll grant you that,” the Serb said.

“It was, indeed. Did you ever meet the man?”

“No, never.”

“And yet you trusted him?”

“I didn’t know the person’s, for the sake of conversation, we will say ‘the man’s,’ intentions. But I couldn’t assign evil intent to a . . . man who offered what I wanted most.”

“And how did you know that he could offer you what you wanted?”

“That, my friend, was a matter of faith.”

“Faith?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I was, first and foremost, a man of logic. I was well-studied in the art of war, which is no art at all. It is a calculated equation, but the variables are so many that the
outside observer sees war as a chaotic threnody. But I assure you, it is logical, calculable, and cold. Remove variables and you simplify the equations, no?”

“I wouldn’t know of such things,” Heraclix said. “But the logic seems sound enough.”

He paused for a moment, growing solemn, then continued.

“I was good at figuring the equation. So good that I climbed the ranks quickly after graduating from the academy. My birth assured that I would never rise too high in the courts, but my reputation became such that I did gain much responsibility in the field. I commanded irregulars on the periphery, the rabble who knew the terrain and had been raised fighting. The kind of hard, barely disciplined men that fought like wild dogs, vicious, unforgiving. We fought other irregulars in rough country, where borders aren’t so clear and allegiances fluctuated wildly. You can see how such an environment would change the equation quickly.”

“Yes, I could see that,” Heraclix said.

“No one could have solved the equation for long out there among such people, in such places. But I was very good at one thing: I was good at systematically eliminating variables by harnessing and directing that wild-man ferocity that simmered within my men. And that is just what I did. I believed that I was doing the right thing, setting aside sentiment for the sake of order, of justice. I was the equalizer—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand. And again, I simplified the equation, eliminated variables present
and
future, eliminating the very possibility that variables might crop up again in the next generation. I felt that I could do better than follow the rules and win the game, I could rewrite the rules themselves, change the boundaries of war, and assure my victory.”

“A very bad man,” Pomp said with a scowl.

“And yet,” Heraclix turned to the Serb and diplomatically interceded, “here you are with us, admitting that you thought you were doing the right thing.” He paused, then spoke again, this time more slowly. “By inference, your perception must have changed. What happened?”

“Clarity came to me, unbidden. I didn’t ask for it. That day was like many before it: nothing special. But for reasons unknown to
me, as I looked down my bloodied saber blade into the eyes of my next victim, the next variable to be eliminated, I was suddenly sick of the killing. My boots were sticky from walking through gore. I had swung my saber so much that day that I could hardly hold it up. My ears were completely deaf to the cries of the dying.”

“Then
she
looked up at me. Ten years old, no more. She had seen so much death in her decade that she had no fear of it. It was common to her, banal. She simply didn’t care. And now, after a career of killing, because of the emptiness I saw in her eyes that day, I did care. I understood that she was . . . another human being. One that might have felt emotion, love, happiness, joy, if war hadn’t cut these things from her heart.”

“But you couldn’t repair her heart,” Heraclix said.

“No, I couldn’t. However, I resigned my commission, took my pension, and began to build this place.”

“This fortress,” Heraclix said.

“Yes, this stronghold. A refuge from guilt I constructed using the spoils of conquest. But it wasn’t long after building it that I came to realize that some laws cannot be broken, some rules cannot change. My supposed elimination of variables was merely a shell game. I had hidden a side of the equation from myself. Eventually, the variables themselves crawled back out from under my manipulations and demanded that the rules be obeyed, that the balance be restored.”

“The ghosts beneath us!” Heraclix said.

Pomp peeked around Heraclix’s shoulder at the trapdoor behind him, wide eyed.

“The same,” the Serb said. “I was, am, haunted by my victims. I knew that I wouldn’t be left alone until I could find a way to rectify things. There was no escaping it. But this wasn’t the primary reason for my next course of action. After the epiphany in the girl’s eyes, I wanted to do some good in this world and in the next, to try to undo what I had done, rather than merely drown out the guilt I felt.

“I studied, night and day, because I was kept awake, for the most part, by the ghosts of the dead. I studied and read the Gnostic texts, volumes of Sufi lore, the Hermetic traditions. I wanted to learn and practice the art of healing—spiritual and physical
healing. Never again did I want to see such an abyss as I saw in that little orphan girl’s eyes.

“My self-teaching, however, could only go so far. Books only show, they cannot mentor. I needed help beyond my own to seize my desires. So I left here, for a time, to seek wisdom and power to set things right.

“I spent some weeks with a group of monks not far from here, then headed toward Pest. I stopped at every church along the way, but found little in the way of enlightenment. Then, on the outskirts of Pest I stayed, for a time, in a gypsy camp. There I met some fortune-tellers, one of whom suggested that I allow her to take my needs to a man she knew in Prague who might be able to help. I agreed, thinking, after I left to return to my tower, that I had wasted my time, that I would never hear from her again.

“I began to despair, thinking that I might never achieve my aims, that I would die under the burden of guilt, haunted by ten thousand souls, then join them, forever to be tormented by their pleadings.”

“It is just,” Pomp said, clamping her hands over her mouth, surprised that she had said the words aloud. She thought she had spoiled everything. Now Heraclix wouldn’t get the help he needed.

“It
is
just, little one. But providence saw fit to bring me to my senses while there was still time left to try to balance the scales of justice. I just wasn’t sure how to proceed.”

“Then, a few weeks after I returned here, there was a knock at my door. It was the gypsy, with an unsigned letter that said, in substance, ‘I understand your dilemma and your desires. I can help, if the price is agreeable.’”

“Of course, money was no object. I sent her back with a response asking for terms. The gypsy never returned. Nevertheless, messengers were sent and returned, back and forth, until I had negotiated an agreeable contract with my mysterious business partner.”

“The exchange was this: my hand, the hand that had shuffled the shells, hidden the variables, done the evil deeds . . . in exchange for the ability to heal—to reconcile the equation.”

“Your necklace,” Heraclix said.

“The necklace, yes. This was the agreement. But there were some difficulties, as with any business transaction.”

“Difficulties?” Heraclix asked.

“I had thought we were at the conclusion of our business. I was awaiting delivery of the necklace, when the messenger I had sent with the hand arrived back at my tower with the necklace and a note. The note informed me that while the necklace would, as promised, impart to me the gift of healing, there was a certain key-word needed to actuate it. The key-word would be given to me as soon as I provided a piece of information, a lead, as it were, that my benefactor needed in order to finish a certain project.

“It seemed so strange at the time, his request. Yet, so simple. He wanted to know where the largest soldier on the continent would be found. It so happened that in my travels, I had heard rumors of a family of near giants, goliaths, living in Prague itself. I told my business associate to look close at hand and he would find his soldier.

“Of course, it was all a lark. I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of these giants, only a secondhand reference I barely recollected. Nevertheless, he gave me the word that unlocked the power of this necklace.

“I couldn’t have known his intent then, but now, in you, I see it, and it is good. You are good. I can say, now, that my overwriting of tattoos was justified. You are no avenger, no destroyer. I know this because you have come here and have let me heal you.”

Heraclix shifted uncomfortably. Should he let the Serb know what he had done with that hand, or what the hand itself had done to the young soldier? He thought it best to simply accept the compliment and change the subject.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now please tell me: how does my allowing you to heal me prove to you that I am good. I feel, a bit contrarily, that you are good for having healed me.”

The Serb smiled. “I have uncovered all the variables. But there is still much reconciling to be done with the equation. I have, through various means, sealed off the top of this tower from the spirits of the dead. But they are still outside, waiting, and it causes me great anguish to hear their cries and to know that I caused their suffering. But I have found that whenever I heal a living person, somehow, in a way I cannot understand, the wounds of a ghost are likewise healed, and the healed spirit leaves my tower. I
suppose they have what they want, and they leave. But there are still many to heal, and I am old. Very old. It’s difficult for me to get around, to provide healing as I wish, and no one comes here to visit except angry villagers who are eventually scared off by my ghosts. I suppose that when all the ghosts are gone, the villagers will be emboldened and burn me alive in my tower. But I am not so concerned with this, so long as I can hold out long enough to heal enough so that I can enter the eternal realms alone, without the dead clawing me down into a gulf of misery.”

“I sincerely hope that you meet your goal,” Heraclix said.

“You have allowed me to heal you, which, in turn, heals two more souls: my own, and that of one of my ghosts. I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you.”

Heraclix felt like he would blush, if such a thing was possible. Then an idea struck him.

“You can fully express your thanks, perhaps, by answering a few questions?” He asked.

“About the hand, yes. What do you wish to know?”