Lieutenant Arkham: Elves and Bullets (32 page)

“Enough,” he said nonchalantly, finally abandoning his resting position.

“We… our
noble
bloodline… we are
parasites
!?”

“If magic were completely free, order in the world would disappear entirely. The number of sorcerers amongst the inferior races would multiply, with no control or discipline. This is the only way we can preserve our role as guides through the ages.”

“It’s a vile trick, Master. I cannot believe you would support this.”

Nylmeris did not second my rage, he chose to softly caress my face instead.

“You’re too harsh, my apprentice. We simply obtain fair compensation for our work as custodians. It’s what
they
would want too, if they were capable of rational reasoning. Be indulgent towards a strategy, even when it seems indecorous, which nevertheless is there for a higher good.”

I roughly brushed his hand away.

“You have shackled us in the darkness of ignorance all our lives!”

“We would have told you when you were ready. Once you became an adult, just as it was for all of us, children of the failed Apocalypse.”

“It is vile!” I exclaim furiously. “It is an arduous task to believe that everything… before they are even born, entire generations denied the power they deserve… You! You indoctrinated us with a completely
artificial
religion, with the sole purpose of concealing the monstrous truth…”

“You are mistaken, dear Gilder.” He tried to placate me with his seductive voice. “The core of our faith is as ancient as the world itself. The elders only concealed the devilish enchantment amongst the sacred liturgies. The ritual of sustenance was hidden in the gestures which introduce meditation, the words of power were inserted in the prayers.”

“Even more evil than the wickedness we are fighting, which I believed to be incomparable, yet I discover has reached new blasphemous heights
my own people
!” I bellowed in disgust.

Nylmeris, whom I loved like my own father, realised that our bond was severed. No words could have reconciled me to that abominable hypocrisy.

“I cannot remain indifferent to all this,” I threatened in a trembling voice, hardly able to contain my bitter salty tears.

“My soul already bleeds for the betrayal of my daughter. Don’t you punish me as well with this behaviour, I beg of you,” he shook his head sadly, “don’t make me kill you. “

“Kill me, you say, as though you haven’t just done so with your confession and your complete lack of remorse at behaving like a scheming tyrant... My faith in you has disappeared, along with the point of my whole existence. If you so desire, pardon this vestige of life which stands before you, you claim I am alive, but the opposite is true! Indeed, I beg you myself, do not leave me to melancholy wanderings! Do not let my agony insult the days to come!”

Nylmeris’ hand hovered on the hilt of the blade, echoing my request. Loyalty to his dark tradition dictated that he should execute me, but he didn’t have the strength to see it through. I waited, fearful of meeting his gaze, until he left, alone, in this way betraying his duty also. Then I waited longer, until the stars came back, for him to emerge from the horizon where he sank to make amends, to tell me that together we would have railed against that underground dictatorship, that astonishing injustice.

Since then fatuous hope burned brightly in this body, scorned by reason but alive nonetheless. I persisted season after season, but neither the adored master, for me, nor the affectionate father, for Inla, ever returned to that endless desert in Qari.

Nylmeris took the hate and suffering which afflicted him and infused it into the performance of his duties, degenerating into blind fanaticism. He lingered on the sadistic luxury of massacre until he became a vulgar terrorist at the service of the Federation, in the end the upper echelons relieved him of his duties. My beloved and I felt acute compassion for him, he had been ruthlessly stripped of everything he had ever admired, but we still stubbornly held hope, deaf to all words of wisdom.

Foolish was the hope that twice provoked an unseemly epilogue.

Finally last night’s dream starts to make sense. The message contained within it cannot deliver precise information, and the image sent to the recipient remains unknown to the person performing the spell. It combines thoughts and memories from both parties to achieve a general aim, such as, for example, arranging for them to meet. Powerful stuff, even if it is unpredictable.

“Why didn’t he try and kill you sooner?”

Gilder clears his throat and comes back to the present.

“The problem, from their point of view, didn’t exist until she fell pregnant. If two exiled cousins interrupt periodic meditation and start to age, nobody notices. They force you to move house often, so as not to raise suspicion from my own personal experience I have estimated that our lives should last approximately four times the lives of dwarves. I believe that they thought they could keep us hidden and avoid the shame of that vile murder.”

“Then what?”

“Naturally, we wouldn’t have subjected the baby to Lef Galandoras so our child, growing up naturally, would have been startling proof of the fraud. But foolish hope tricked Inla into believing that when faced with a sacred miracle, that defenceless bud of existence, her father would have come to his senses. It took years to understand the exact nature of that devilish witchcraft, but in the end she came to the conclusion that it was the reason for the demographic stagnation of our bloodline. By giving up eternal life, the elves could have gone back to being a
real
race.” A short pause to light yet another cigarette, by now the cardboard is a dump of cigarette butts. She smiled, she was so happy. “’Soon the nightmare will be cast out by the shining dawn’, she used to say to me, all the time. Mesmerised by her own delusions, she was hopelessly convinced that the combination of discovery and pregnancy would have finally shaken the dynasty out of its sterile decadence. I tried to dissuade her, oh how I tried. Impervious to advice, I called it.”

A flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder. The light goes out, leaving the embers all alone in the darkness.

“The power goes off a lot. When she revealed her unwise plan to me she was almost flying with happiness. She told me that her father, delirious with joy, had asked for her forgiveness, and swore he was filled with remorse. She fantasised about the dawning of a new era, painting vivid strokes like those in her canvases. In the end, her enthusiasm managed to obliterate my resistance, and I let her go. My stupidity is the cross I will have to bear forever. “

His regret-filled voice fades in sadness.

“Let’s say that I believe this bizarre story. However, they are right. We don’t have anything concrete. We can’t
prove
anything,” the silhouette of the stripper is silent as it breaks away from that of the armchair to nervously pace the room, “and seeing as there is no way of bringing Nylmeris to justice, there is nothing else left to do but cancel the magical contract. As long as both parties agree, right?”

“The contract does not specifically require that he be tried for murder. It’s enough that he is tried for his crimes, even just a fraction of his crimes. From this perspective, Arkham, we are anything but unarmed and defenceless.”

“How exactly. Let’s hear it?”

“Before she was killed, as I told you before, Inla managed to complete her studies. In her book she reconstructed the devilish ritual and, by comparing it with Lef Galandoras, she demonstrated its correspondence. She concealed it in my dressing-room, rightfully fearing that my house was no longer safe.”

“At Cicisbeo, I knew it.” I jump up too, in my excitement. ”Don’t tell me now that you don’t have it anymore, or I really will kill you.”

“It is safe.”

“Praise be the Father of bastards! Maybe we can pull it off… but before we skip off hand in hand, there’s still one thing. Why did you drag me into it? Why do you need me?”

“What do you think would happen if we made the truth public? All the world’s populations would unite against my people, it would be genocide. At best, we would be stigmatised for evermore, once we had been stripped of everything.”

“Right, well, to be frank, it sounds like a reasonable punishment for having stolen the magic for a thousand years. Quite generous, in fact.”

“Many are unaware of their crime. They do not deserve such humiliation.”

“I’d like to point out that you haven’t answered my question. Why me?”

“Your name is heard often amongst the Feltu family. You are skilled, you are familiar with elves. Lastly, your soul is afflicted by deep-rooted corruption, it is begging to be healed in any which way possible. Should I fail in this enterprise, you would be a pretty burden on my conscience.”

“Fuck you, patron saint of blow jobs.” I flip him the finger.

“You’ll have to negotiate with Valan on my behalf. I’ll turn myself in with the book once Nylmeris confesses the murder. I’m sure they’ll accept this compromise instead of condemning us all to ruin.”

I rake my fingers through my hair, speechless.

“Fucking mother bitch, what a demented idea!”

“It will work.”

“The fuck it will!”

“Tell them they have got one day to decide, and try and get some sleep, so that I can contact you via your dreams. I don’t want to risk calling that number a second time.”

He turns to leave but I catch hold of his arm.

“Wait, you’re not thinking about disappearing into the night without telling me where that fucking book is, are you? So if you die, which is probably what will happen, I’ll find myself bending over in front of a queue of your horny relatives? No way.”

“You ought to resign yourself. The book and I are inseparable. I won’t leave it as long as I’m alive.”

Abruptly, a third, dark figure appears, illuminated for an instant by the lightning.

Hearing the melodious voice of Nylmeris arranged into an evil symphony of hate chills the very blood in my veins.

“A negligible task, now that I’ve found you.”

Gilder tries to unsheathe his enchanted steel, but he is interrupted by the powerful will of his master. He tumbles and knocks over the Cromlech of books, and is momentarily put out of action.

I grip my Altra and take aim. Nylmeris writhes like a snake to stop me from getting a clear shot. I only just catch the movement at the origin of the impact in my stomach, which in a single movement projects me into the hall. In perfect harmony with my off-field twirl, the elf performs another spell while I’m trying to free myself from a pile of paintings which have fallen off the wall.

The Altra vibrates and hisses just before a thousand invisible injections of pain pierce my body, wrenching an animal-like howl from my body.

One of the runes has counteracted the magic, weakening its strength, even the smallest movement causes intolerable agony. In memory of the pest control guy, I deduce he wanted to paralyse me and kill me later, once he had seen to his blonde nemesis. Instead, thanks to the resistance from the pistol, I am only paralysed by the stabs of pain which punish even shallow breathing.

Now, I am a mere spectator of the duel.

The stripper has jumped back into the ring with an acrobatic leap, the two swords lash the air like whips, they court each other and clash. Master and pupil are enveloped in a steel turbine, closely entwined in a dance which is destined to satisfy the victor’s hunger for vendetta.

Nylmeris, as though possessed, mercilessly attacks Gilder’s defences, threatening his elegance and inexorably forcing him into a corner. The blonde is clearly in grave difficulty, he reminds me of the boxing match last Friday. Unfortunately, this time there’s no deliberation from the judges after a certain number of inconclusive comebacks.

I try and move my arm. The expansion of my ribcage which is needed to produce the howl of pain caused by my attempt provokes additional agony, and I fall into a spiral of suffering. This goes on for I don’t how long before I eventually focus on the fight again. Cohl will have been dead on the back seat of his car for some time now, so there’s no pressing need to shoot and inform Nylmeris that I am still capable to do so, in fact I’ll leave my police gun right where it is, in its holster. Even though I’m as rigid as a side-lined marionette, now I’ve got the Altra in my lap, halfway to being able to shoot.

The blonde steps up his execution, and gains some ground. Following a fluid downward blow to the left he seems to catch Nylmeris off guard with a sudden sweeping stroke to his ankle. Nylmeris falls to the ground in a somersault, and misses the blade of his adversary by the skin of his teeth. The tables have turned. From what I’ve learned from films I’ve seen, the style of a silk blade is best expressed when the swordsman has more space in which to manoeuvre his weapon. Not that this makes a closed environment like this living room any safer, but forcing one’s adversary into the corner does however further reduce his opportunities for a response. At least I think it does.

All I have to do is
slowly
lift my arm… ah! … more
slowly
… from this range, the Altra will do most of the work… ow… I just need to wait a minute…

Gilder’s burning determination requires substantial physical power. Despite the advantage he managed to obtain with his previous move, Nylmeris appears to outclass him in terms of performance as much as in ability. A formidable sequence of attacks, rather like a seamless wave, stuns the younger opponent, forcing him to retreat.

The colonel is practically in my line of fire… I just need to wait for a rare lull in the dance and stick a…

Now!

It doesn’t go off.

My finger ignores the order.

Fucking magic contract. If I kill him, the bond is automatically violated, Nylmeris will never be brought to justice. I’d swear if it didn’t cost me so much.

I can’t kill him.

But I could shoot Gilder, just to get my own back. It would be a real treat, it could also alleviate this frustrating feeling of uselessness, inevitability. Pity the stripper is my only hope of getting out of this mess.