But Gelt’s sorcerous cage wasn’t the only problem. Dark portals had opened in certain, long-hidden places within Sylvania, vomiting forth daemons by the score, and the distraction of putting paid to these incursions had eaten into his studies. After the last such invasion, Mannfred had resolved to find out what was going on in the rest of the world. The young acolyte of the Light College whom he’d used to fill his scrying bowl had been taken prisoner, along with a dozen others, including militiamen, knights and a few wayward priests, during Volkmar’s attempt to purge Sylvania.
Finding out that Sylvania wasn’t the only place afflicted by sudden daemonic sorties hadn’t quelled his growing misgivings. In fact, it had only heightened the pressure he felt to shatter Gelt’s wall and free Sylvania. The world was tottering on the lip of the grave and, amusing as it was to watch, Mannfred didn’t intend to go over with it. There were still things that needed doing. There were tools that he still required, and he had to be able to cross his own borders to get them.
Tools for what, boy? the voice asked. No, not ‘the voice’. It was pointless to deny it. It was Vlad’s voice. Mannfred leaned over the parapet, bracing himself on the stone, his eyes closed. Even now, even centuries after the fact, the shadow of the great and terrible Vlad von Carstein hung over Mannfred and all of his works. Vlad’s name was still whispered in the dark places and burying grounds, by the living and the dead alike. He had etched his name into the flesh of the world, and the scar remained livid even after all this time. It galled Mannfred to no end, and even the joy he’d once taken from his part in his primogenitor’s downfall had faded, lost to the gnawing anger he felt still.
He’d hated Vlad, and loved him; respected him and been contemptuous of him. And he’d tried to save him, though he’d engineered his obliteration. Now, for his sins, he was haunted by Vlad’s voice. It had started the moment he had begun his great work, as if Vlad were watching over his shoulder, and only grown stronger in the months that followed. He’d been able to ignore it at first, to dismiss the shadows that crept at the corner of his eye and the constant murmur of a voice just out of earshot. But now, when he least needed the distraction, there it was. There he was.
Do you still think that the design of the web you weave is yours, my son? Vlad hissed. Mannfred could see his sire’s face on the periphery of his vision, so much like his own. Can you feel it, boy? The weight of destiny sits on you – but not yours. As if to lend weight to the thought, Mannfred caught sight of his shadow; only it wasn’t his – it was something larger, and a thousand times more terrible than any vampire, lord of Sylvania or otherwise. Something that flickered with witch-fire and seemed to stretch out a long arm towards him, seeking to devour him. You speak of tools, but what are you, eh? Vlad purred. Who is that who rides you through the gates of the world?
‘Quiet,’ Mannfred snarled. The stone of the parapet crumbled in his grip. ‘Go back to whatever privy hole your remains were thrown in, old man.’ Without waiting for the inevitable reply, Mannfred drew his cloak about him and turned to go, not quite fleeing the voices and shadows that taunted him, but moving swiftly all the same.
He made his way through the half-ruined corridors to the great open chamber that crouched at the top of the southernmost tower of the castle. Once, it had been a meeting room for the Order of Drakenhof, a brotherhood of Templars devoted to eradicating the evil that they believed had corrupted Sylvania. Vlad had taken great pleasure in hunting them over the course of long centuries, Mannfred recalled. Every few hundred years, the knights of the order stirred in their graves, reforming and returning to their old haunts. The definition of insanity, Mannfred had heard, was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If that was the case, then the Drakenhof Templars had been quite mad.
While Vlad had been content to play with them, as a cat plays with mice, Mannfred had little patience for such drawn-out displays of cruelty. They served no purpose, and to have such a thorn work its way into his side every few decades was an annoyance he felt no need to suffer through. When he had returned to Sylvania in the wake of Konrad’s disastrous reign, he had immediately sought out every hold, fortress and komturei of the order and wiped them out root and branch. He had wiped out entire families, butchering the oldest members to the youngest, and leaving their bodies dangling from gibbets about the border of Sylvania as a warning to others. He had made a point – unlike Vlad or Konrad, Mannfred would not tolerate dissent. He would not tolerate enemies on his soil, worthy or otherwise. After the last knight had gasped out his final breath in a muddy ditch south of Kleiberstorf, he had reformed the order and turned it over to those of his creatures that found pleasure in parodying the traditions of knighthood.
Where once men had met to discuss the cleansing of Sylvania, Mannfred now stored the tools of his eventual, inevitable triumph, both living and otherwise. A ghoul clad in the remains of a militiaman’s armour and livery crouched near the entrance to the chamber, leaning against a gisarme that had seen better years. The ghoul jerked in fright as Mannfred approached and yowled as he gestured sharply. It scrambled towards the heavy wooden door to open it for him. As it heaved upon it and turned, something hurtled out of the chamber beyond and caught the ghoul in the back of the head with a sickening crunch.
The ghoul flopped down, its rusty armour rattling as it hit the floor. The chunk of stone had been thrown hard enough to shatter the cannibal’s skull and Mannfred flipped a bit of brain matter off the toe of his boot, his mouth twisting in a moue of annoyance. ‘Are you finished?’ he asked loudly. ‘I can come back later, if you’d prefer.’
There was only silence from within the chamber. Mannfred sighed and stepped through the aperture. The room beyond was circular and large. It stank of rain, fire, blood and ghouls, as most of the castle did these days. But unlike the rest of the castle, the stones of this chamber thrummed with a heady power that was just this side of intoxicating for Mannfred. It was the one place that he was free from Vlad’s voice and the lurking shadows that dogged his steps.
The room was lit by a profusion of candles, made from human fat and thrust into the nooks and crannies of the walls and floor. The latter was intercut by gilded grooves, which formed a rough outline of Sylvania, and a semicircle of heavy stone lecterns, each carved in the shape of a daemon’s claw, lined the northernmost border of the province. Giant grimoires, bound in chains, sat on several of the lecterns, their pages rustling with a sound like the whispers of ghosts.
At the heart of the chamber sat a plinth, upon which was a cushion of human skin and hair. And resting on the cushion was the iron shape of the Crown of Sorcery. To Mannfred’s eyes, it pulsed like a dark beacon, and he felt the old, familiar urge to place it on his head stir within the swamps of his soul like some great saurian. The crown radiated a malevolent pressure upon him, even now, and even as quiescent as it was. There was an air of contentment about it at the moment, and for that he was grateful. He knew well what monstrous intelligence waited within the crown’s oddly angled shape, and he had no desire to pit his will against that hideous sentience. Not now, not until he’d taken the proper precautions. He’d worn it, briefly, on his return from Vargravia, and that had been enough to assure him that it was more dangerous than it looked.