“Pain is not an end-or even a means. Pain may be unavoidable, but surely it is not necessary?”
“Pain will save you. Pain is your future.”
“No.”
“Wish for pain,” the silver rider told him.
“I wish for victory,” Daniel repeated.
“Wish for pain.”
“No.”
“Pain will save you. Pain is your future.”
“Pain is not an end-or even a means. Pain may be unavoidable, but surely it is not necessary?”
The rider shook his head. “You say that, but true sacrifice is rarely voluntary-very few would ever take the pain that leads to true victory willingly.”
“Certainly. But I’ve given so much up already. .”
The dialogue continued, as logical as a dream, back and forth, oscillating, endless.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I
London, Westminster
It was an hour past midnight. This was the darkest time of the night and the quietest. He had come up near the Banquet Hall, nearly all that remained of the magnificent Whitehall Palace. It had burnt, of course; withering like everything withered in the furnaces of time. All was fire around him.
Ealdstan walked down the night streets of London toward Westminster, shining his silver lantern before him. His mood blackened as he looked around. Where there wasn’t ridiculous poverty, there was absurd excess. Where there wasn’t indifferent disdain, there was inebriation. The land was circling the gutter. No number of righteous warriors could stave English civilisation from rattling merrily and uncontrollably down the path of disaster. The whole nation in a runaway cart, with no man to steer it. His righteous warriors could not fight a lazy, loutish public spirit. Evil was not bold anymore, it was insidious.
Human and animal excrement ran through the streets, between the cobbles, along the gutters, and into the sewers. Just walking through the city was a defilement. He wondered how anyone could stand it, but then he realised that few knew anything else.
A horse-drawn carriage came along the cobblestones-a matched pair of greys pulling an elaborately styled box carriage with ornate decorations and velvet curtains shut tight. They were tied in place to avoid an accidental view of the outside world. This was how the rich coped with living in the city.
The carriage turned at the end of the street, passing a gang of drunken revellers who shouted and jeered at the vehicle and its driver. One of the drunkards dropped drawers and waved his private parts after it, to the loud amusement of those around him. The group then fell back into line and started a bawdy chorus as they processed down the road.
They passed close enough that Ealdstan could smell the beer on their breath and in their clothes, but due to the enchantment he wore they were never aware of his presence. As he walked away, he felt as if he were wearing the disgusting smell of old alcohol like a coat. Another layer of fetid filth, clinging to him.
Best get this over with quickly.
He made it, somehow, through the hell of modern London and arrived at Ashburnham House. He went up the drive and stood before the door. He knocked on it with his staff, and after a lengthy amount of time, the door was opened by a very tired and very annoyed-looking butler. The butler blinked and then walked past him to look up and down the street. Not seeing anyone, he grunted and, muttering oaths under his breath, pulled the door closed- although not before Ealdstan had stepped through it.
The butler went back to his bed and Ealdstan began to explore the house. He looked into most of the rooms before he found what he was looking for on the second story: a large, square room with bookcases arranged in a circular formation. The cases stood about five feet high and each had a white bust of some aged man’s head.
He raised his lantern and went from case to case, pulling the odd volume out and leafing through it. Disordered, jumbled. The fools didn’t know what they had collected and accrued. There were bits and pieces of everything; poetry, sermons, legal documents, books of the Bible in Latin and English-his English, not the corrupted, inane language they babbled now-histories, lives of the saints, letters, chronicles, psalters, and all manner of miscellany. Nothing like his own personal collection, but priceless, of course. Priceless pearls before swine.
He made a more ordered examination and found the volumes he had come for. There were only thirteen of them and he would be able to carry them easily. The rest. .
He looked around the wooden room. It was warm in here, but there was no fire, which meant that some nearby room of the house was being heated. He concentrated and felt the source to be in the room below this one. He muttered a spell that he had mastered centuries before and the fire leapt in its hearth, kindling the mantle and racing up the walls.
He left, clutching the volumes he needed under his arm, leaving billowing grey smoke issuing from the house behind him.
II
Berlin, Germany
“A beautiful machine, is it not?” the man seated in front of him was saying, his eyes darting looks at him in the rearview mirror. He spoke in a German that was not greatly removed from the language that Ealdstan had learned all those centuries ago, but it had gained a few idiomatic quirks, run in from impure dialects, he supposed. He had brought with him an enchantment, housed in a medallion that he draped around his neck.
“It is powerful, efficient, and all running in proper order. Just like the
The dark, winter streets were a blur around them as the car sped through the city. When did these cities become so big? “What if the machine breaks and fails to operate?” Ealdstan asked. He was using his broken and incomplete German that his sigil fixed, to prevent him from misspeaking as well as mishearing. He could have spoken English, but there was more to a language than just communication-the thoughts, ideas, and hopes of a people were tied into their lexicons. Ealdstan wished to understand the German mind, and not just their words.
“No, no, the machine, the machine. This!” Ealdstan rattled his stick and thumped the roof. “What if this breaks? Do you have the ability to fix it? It seems inordinately complex.”
The driver laughed. “I have some ability, yes, although I am no mechanic. Do not worry, it is a good engine!”
