In their centuries together, Vlad had taught him to change his face, and the scent of his magics, so as to hide his origins from prying forces who would seek to use the secrets of his turning against him. Vlad had taught him to trust only his instincts, and to be true to his ambitions, wherever they led, to use his desires like a blade and buckler. And, in the end, Vlad had taught him the greatest lesson of all – that power alone did not shield you from weakness. It crept in, like a thief in the night, where you least suspected it, and it slit your throat as surely as any enemy blade – Nagash, Neferata, Ushoran and, in the end, Vlad himself had all been humbled by their weaknesses. And so too had Mannfred.
But unlike them, he had risen from the ashes, remade and all the stronger for his failure. And he would not fall prey to his weaknesses again. ‘I learned my lessons well, old man,’ he murmured as he opened his eyes. ‘I will be beholden to no man or ghost, and ambition is my tool, not my master.’
Something that might have been laughter floated on the dank air like particles of dust. Mannfred ignored it and continued on through the halls, his mind turning from the past to the future and what part his newfound ally would play in assuring that it came about.
He found the liche in the library, as Markos had said. Arkhan sat at one of the great tables, his fleshless fingers tracing across the page of one of the large grimoires that Mannfred had collected over the course of his life. His pet sat curled over his shoulder, its milky orbs slitted and its ragged tail twitching. He peered over Arkhan’s shoulder, and saw the complicated pictographic script of lost Nehekhara. ‘Dehbat’s Book of Tongues,’ he said. The cat hissed at him and he replied in kind.
Arkhan didn’t turn as he reached up to scratch the cat under the chin. ‘I knew Dehbat. He was one of W’soran’s pets, in better days,’ he said, as he carefully turned the page. The book was old, older even than Mannfred, and was a copy of a copy of a copy.
‘He was wise, in his way, if unimaginative,’ Mannfred said, circling the table and heading for the great windows that marked the opposite wall. It was dark outside, as ever, but the sky was alive with a hazy aurora of witch-light. The light was not of his doing, and he knew that it was bleeding through his protective magics from the world outside. Time was running short. Eventually, Sylvania would be shorn of its protection, but still trapped by the wall of faith.
‘W’soran did not choose his apprentices for their creativity,’ Arkhan said. He closed the book. ‘I cannot say why he chose them at all, frankly. They were all disreputable, undisciplined overly ambitious vermin, without fail.’
‘So speaks Arkhan the Black, gambler, murderer, thief, sorcerer, and secret animal-lover,’ Mannfred said. ‘I know of your history, liche. You are hardly one to speak of disrepute and discipline.’ He looked at Arkhan, and the latter’s jaws sagged open in a wheezing laugh that caused Mannfred’s teeth to itch in his gums. ‘Did I say something funny? Why are you laughing?’
‘I am laughing, von Carstein, because your misapprehension amuses me,’ Arkhan said. He hefted the book and tossed it to Mannfred, as if it were nothing more than a penny dreadful from a street vendor’s stall.
‘Enlighten me,’ Mannfred said. He caught the book easily and set it back gently on the table. His fingers curled in the fraying hairs that hung lank and loose on the cover. The scalp had belonged to some night-souled shaman from one of the tribes in the Vaults, who had copied the book into its current form, and then been gutted and scalped at his own command by the savages whom he’d ruled. It was a lesson in the fine line between dedication and obsession.
‘You assume that I am Arkhan the Black,’ Arkhan said.
Mannfred froze. Then, slowly, he turned. He said nothing, merely waited for Arkhan to continue. Arkhan watched him, as if gauging his reaction. The liche’s skeletal grin never wavered.
‘Arkhan the Black died, vampire,’ Arkhan rasped. He touched one of the other tomes. His skeletal fingers clicked as they touched the ancient bronze clasp that held it shut.
‘And was reborn, as I was,’ Mannfred said, trying to read something, anything, in the flicker of the liche’s eye sockets.
‘Was I? Sometimes, I wonder. Am I the same man I was then, the man who drank of Nagash’s potions, who chewed a drug-root until his teeth turned black, who loved a queen – and lost her? Am I him, or am I simply Nagash’s memory of him?’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Are my thoughts my own, or his? Am I a servant – or a mask?’
Mannfred said nothing. There was nothing he could say, even if he had wanted to. He had never had such thoughts himself. They smacked of philosophical equivocation, something he had no patience for. He saw a flash of something out of the corner of his eye, heard Vlad’s dry chuckle, and bit down on a snarl. ‘Does it matter?’ he snapped.
Arkhan cocked his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you asked what I found so amusing. And I have told you. You are missing several key pieces, are you not?’ He rubbed the cat’s spine, stroking the bare bone and causing the foul beast to arch its back in a parody of feline pleasure.
‘I am aware of the gaps in my collection, yes, thank you,’ Mannfred said acidly. He threw up his hands. ‘And were I not trapped here, I would have those items in my hand even now.’
‘The staff, the blade, the armour,’ Arkhan said.
‘And two of the Nine Books,’ Mannfred said slyly. ‘Or are you offering those to me, as a gesture of our newfound friendship?’
‘You said that with a straight face. Your control is admirable,’ Arkhan said. Mannfred grunted, but said nothing. Arkhan inclined his head. ‘And I am, yes.’
Mannfred’s head came up sharply, and his eyes narrowed. ‘What?’
‘The books are yours, should you wish,’ Arkhan said. He stood and drifted towards the window, hands clasped behind his back. ‘This place is as safe as any, for the time being, and we both desire the same end, do we not?’
Mannfred stepped back and looked at the liche. ‘Nagash,’ he said. Shadows tickled the edges of his vision, and he heard what might have been the rustle of loose pages as a draught curled through the library.
‘Nagash must rise. As you promised the sorcerer-wraiths of Nagashizzar, the black cults of Araby, and the ghoul-cabals of Cathay, when you sought their aid in gathering your collection, as you call it.’ Arkhan pressed a bony digit to the window, and frost spread around the point it touched the glass in a crystalline halo. He looked at Mannfred. ‘For you, he is a means to an end. For me, he is the end unto itself. Yet we move along the same path, vampire. We tread the same trail, and follow the same light. Why not do it together?’
‘We are,’ Mannfred said. ‘Have I not opened my castle to you? Have I not given shelter to your creatures?’ Though he meant the necromancers, he gestured to the cat, which glared at him with dull ferocity.
‘Yes, but you have still denied my request to gaze upon those items that are necessary to our shared goal. You have denied me my request to see those prisoners whose blood is the base of the sorceries that protect Sylvania – and trap you here.’
Mannfred tensed, as he always did when the wall of faith that caged the laughable cess-pit he called a realm was mentioned. Arkhan scraped his finger along the window, cracking the glass. He had allowed Mannfred to play the genial host for long enough. It was past time for action. The world was cracking beneath the weight of warring destinies.