The Grimoire of Yule Read online

  Adam Golden

  The Grimoire of Yule

  Copyright © 2018 by Adam Golden

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Adam Golden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  First edition

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  Contents

  Shadows Of Legend Book 2 Available Now!!

  I. OVERTURE

  The Teeth of Midwinter

  II. SEEDS SEWN

  A Wandering Stranger

  What A Hungry Beast Dares

  Those Truths Which Light Obscures

  Bourne Up By Low Secrets

  Old Ghosts Birth New Horrors

  The Substance of Justice

  Shadows of Doubt

  Wars of Spirit

  Of Finding and Seeking

  Of Escapes and Evasions

  A Little Learning

  Battle and Barter

  What Stares Back

  War at Pylae Wharf

  III. GROWING PAINS

  Blood Ties Bond Tight

  On Bearing Weights

  Under The Masks

  Upheaval

  Storms Swell

  Fresh Blood From Old Cuts

  Betwixt Two Shores

  Rocks in the Fog

  Call of Blood

  IV. TO BURN AND RAVE

  Clamor and Crash

  The Dark Dues of Deliverance

  Paths Dim and Dangerous

  War Winds Blow

  A Madness Less Discreet

  Deep into the Darkness Peering

  Dim Roads and Dark Days

  On the War Path

  Of Masks and Misdirections

  To Win All Battles

  Fog of War, Light of Hope

  Epilogue

  Continue the Adventure!

  Shadows Of Legend Book 2 Available Now!!

  CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE!

  I

  Overture

  The Teeth of Midwinter

  The boy skidded to a halt. His legs burned like the deflated lungs he was heavingly trying to fill. Wide, terrified eyes darted this way and that. Everywhere he looked he saw lurid orange light and leaping jagged shadows. The noise was terrible—a cacophony of shouts and singing, of instruments banged and bells rung—a thousand discordant sounds that mixed in the boy’s mind as the howling of hell.

  “Beatus.”

  The boy leapt and spun. It wasn’t a voice exactly, more as if his name were shaped by the wind itself, and it cut through the maelstrom of noise like good steel through cloth. He bolted, his bare feet slapping painfully on the uneven cobbles. He raced through a warren of narrow, twisting alleys and streets with the unthinking panic of a startled deer.

  He crossed himself as he ran, the way his mama did before she prayed. Pa kept the old gods and called mama’s Christ god a mewling foolishness, but Beatus didn’t know. The old gods with their cold drafty temples and hard stone faces frightened him. Mama’s prayer gatherings were always warm and inviting, and the boy felt comfortable and safe. How he wished for comfortable and safe!

  Huge monstrous shadows played on the walls of the alley in front of him, and fear clutched the boy around the throat. He made out the forms of a pair coming round the corner and moved against the wall. One of them held a flickering torch high and it’s sickly, smokey light illuminated a scene of nightmare for the boy.

  The pair were dressed in swirls of bright garish color that pulled at the eye and churned his stomach. They clutched at each other, moving in a jerking, uneven shamble. Their voices came as an alien, unwholesome series of growls and high squeals, but worst of all were the faces. Perched atop human shoulders were the cruelly beaked and feathered faces of giant birds.

  Demons! Mama said pagan demons walked on the Solstice. He hadn’t believed her. What could he do? Where could he go? The boy backpedaled madly, and, as he reached the opposite mouth of the alley, Beatus dove into a collection of barrels, crates, and refuse, holding his breath and begging every god and spirit that they would pass him by. He peered out—they were still coming. Had they seen? Did they know?

  How had he come here? Where was here? How did he get back home? He didn’t know the answers to any of that. His mind swam and seemed to skitter away from the questions. He was hot, dizzy, and confused. He clutched a toy soldier to his chest. It looked just like one of the Emperor’s Praetorians with its intricately carved and painted black armor and purple cloak. He remembered how foolishly excited he’d been to find it waiting outside the front door that morning. It seemed like a century ago. Now he hugged the wooden figure and fought back the tears welling in his eyes.

  Mama was right, bad things happened to boys who didn’t do as they should. He hadn’t meant to be bad. He still wasn’t sure why he’d placed his precious new toy so precariously on the window sill, or what had possessed him to crawl out after it fell. Only once he was outside had he realized the window was too tall to climb back into. Then came the voice.

  “Beatus!”

  What could he do but run? Something banged hard into the crates of his hiding place, bringing him back into the moment. He bit down hard on the scream bubbling behind his teeth. The male bird demon had pushed the other against the crates.

  The female’s dress was open to below her navel and the male had his feathered face down between her breasts. The she-demon trilled a screeching squeal that almost sounded like human laughter as its mate poured something from a jug the boy hadn’t seen before onto the exposed flesh and started to lap at it.

  Beatus heard himself squawk in disgusted horror, and then the sharp beaked face of the male turned to him.

  The boy screamed and burst from the pile of rubbish, running with all the strength he could muster. Far behind him the she-demon called out in a high warble, but the boy was long gone.

  “Beatus!”

  He was too frightened to run any longer, too confused to think clearly, and too angry to do anything other than vent his little heart at the cruel voice. “Show yourself, monster!” the boy shouted. His voice was shrill, slurred, and quivering so that the words were all but unintelligible. He held his toy centurion by the legs, brandishing it like a weapon.

  The light and demon noise were far away. The alley was wide and dim, lit only by the moon and stars. Heavy shadows hung all around and seemed to swirl, to pulse, almost to breathe about him. Something hit the ground with a dull thud in the dark, and Beatus jumped in spite of himself. “C-come on then?” his voice came out in a squawk and his teeth chattered painfully as he spoke.

  The growl started low, growing louder and closer in fits and starts.

  Beatus felt the spreading warmth down his leg and the wet pooling about his bare feet. Mama, Pa, Mithras, Christ . . . anyone . . . please!

  Red eyes appeared before him. Red, hungry eyes and sharp yellowed teeth materialized, snarling from the shadows. They boy’s last scream was a pitiful, short-lived thing, cut off by the sound of wet splatter on stone. The alley was still and empty save for a bloody wooden soldier lying broken on the cobbles.

  —

  The man in the red cloak wracked with silent sobbing. It had
happened again. He’d let it happen again and been forced to watch every second of the slow sadistic hunt. The paste had worked just as the vendor promised. It went on clear, and once dried it gave no sign. The substance made the quarry pliable, confused, and most importantly, afraid. It needed the fear, yearned for it. He wished he didn’t need to watch, wished It didn’t insist that he did. It was a cowardly wish. God forgive him, he’d done this, called It, bartered power for innocent blood. Watching was his punishment, and not a tenth what he deserved.

  He wrapped the amulets and totems in their red silk cloth and tucked them away. The candles and incense were doused and carefully added to the heavy trunk. He said the words, sheathed the viciously curved dagger, and laid it atop the bundle. Last in was the heavy blood red cloak, and with its ornate golden broach. As always, he felt diminished when he removed the talisman, but he could hardly be seen to wear the symbols of Heka in public. He doubted any closer than Constantine’s ‘New Rome’ would know the signs of the ancient eastern rite, but he wouldn’t risk it. The locks on the trunk were the best that could be bought, and the runes carved inside the lid would ensure that no power on this earth, save him, could open them. Once the altar was dismantled, the man turned to his wash basin and set to scrubbing.

  The eyes came back. They always came back. He splashed water on his face. He did good! Had he not healed? Did they not speak his name in the streets as a healer, a savior of souls? What was one life? Or two or . . .

  He looked at the shallow series of cuts on his forearm. Twelve? That many? He looked to the long, jagged scar on his other arm. No, thirteen. Not twelve. Memories of the first swelled as despair threatened to surge again. He stamped it down. No! What were even a dozen lives against the good work he could do with the power It gave him?

  He’d just slipped into a clean white tunic when a sharp knock sounded, a moment later his manservant, Tulio answered his call and bustled in.

  “Good morning Dominus,” the squat, efficient little man, who’d been his since childhood, said as he moved across the room and pulled open heavy drapes. “They await your coming already,” he announced as he helped his master slip into a heavier robe.

  Sliding into the elaborate vestments felt like donning armor. That armor helped keep the loathing at bay for a while, it let him forget for a time. In them he was not the man who poisoned children with toys painted with drugged varnish, not the man who lured them into the clutches of dark powers. In these robes he was the healer, the miracle man, the chosen of God.

  He stepped up to his cloudy silver mirror, let out a long calming breath and looked. He found, not the despicable murderer of children but the beloved Bishop of Myra looking back. Nicholas the Wondermaker, solid, humble, kind, and not yet forty-five, still young for a Bishop. Imagine what he still had left to achieve! What man was ever great without great cost? With a last look he turned away and swept out of the room into the crowds of priests, monks, and lay servants who spoke his name with awe and wonder, and already whispered of the great destiny of the man who they were sure would one day become Cardinal Nicholas. Pope Nicholas? Perhaps even Saint Nicholas?

  —

  II

  SEEDS SEWN

  A Wandering Stranger

  He could barely move. The hordes milling about the bazaar were so tightly packed their flow actually seemed to be hauling him backward. He shoved, weaved, darted, but was pushed back. He screamed, threatened, even struck out with fists and feet, all for what seemed like mere inches forward, only to be swept back again.

  The people closest to him in the press fell or moved aside under his assault, but there always seemed to be more, pushing on toward food stalls or merchants’ carts, crying out inquiries for things needed or prices demanded. The noise was nearly as bad as the press, and Arius found himself dizzy. He leapt, clawed, pulled, and finally managed to scramble over the shoulders of a pair of burly, roughly bearded men. Desperate, he kicked off his wobbly human platform and caught hold of a support pole for an awning stretched over a fruit stall.

  Arius clutched the pole for dear life, worried that even here he might be pulled down and swept away by the human current. From above he could finally see beyond the press. Where was she? Where? A spark of pale blue, like a sliver of clear sky amid the dirt, grime and riotous colour of Jerusalem’s largest Bazaar. There!

  ‘Chara!’

  He’d given her that head scarf himself. Even from a distance he could see her searching, twisting this way and that, frantically looking for something. Looking for him. Behind her the air seemed to darken as though a shadow had been drawn over the city, a shadow that was advancing toward his sister. As he watched, the darkness seemed to draw together, to coalesce and take form. In the space between blinks, the formless dark became a tall, broad-shouldered man, cloaked and hooded entirely in crimson. The apparition loomed behind Arius’ unsuspecting sister, shimmering with menace.

  He tried to scream, tried to warn her, but the din of the market ate his cries as they left his lips.

  He saw Chara go up on her toes, peering into the crowd, looking for him. He saw her eyes lock on to him and saw the beautiful innocent smile he knew so well bloom on her face.

  Arius pointed and waved wildly, he screamed wordlessly, trying anything to get his sister to turn, to see the danger as it loomed ever closer. His bright, gentle sister went on beaming and waved to him, the relief on her face like a knife in his guts.

  She was still smiling when the red cloaked figure drew it’s twisted black dagger. She had started to wave again when he drove the evil looking knife through her back. Her smile crumpled, her face twisted in a mask of fear, pain, and confusion.

  “Ari?”

  The whispered question floated on the air, reverberating like the gong of a bell. Time slowed, and Arius was forced to note every second as his sister fell limp as a wet rag at the feet of the crimson shadow clutching it’s bloody knife.

  “Nooo!” The scream croaked from dry, cracked lips as Father Arius jerked up off his cot, panting and slick with cold terror sweat. Every night. Every night the dreams came. They were not always the same, but the result was as constant as the sunrise. Chara dead, him impotent to save her, and the faceless red clad monster with its bloody knife, forever looming and silent.

  It hadn’t really been like that. Chara had died near the great Bazaar, but it was night, the square was all but deserted, and Chara was in her shop. And, of course, there was the most important difference of all, unlike in his dreams, in reality, Arius hadn’t been there when his sweet little sister died. He wasn’t in the market, the city, or even the country. He was hundreds of miles away, preaching in Alexandria.

  The City Guard concluded that she must have surprised a thief. One witness described a man in his middle years, clean shaven with dark hair, who’d been in a loud argument with Chara that morning. Another witness told of a man, cloaked and hooded in deep crimson, fleeing the shop in the night while carrying a heavy sack. The Guard had never found any trace of him. Chara’s murder had gone unsolved, and mostly forgotten, for almost twenty-five years now.

  The old priest pulled himself up off the rickety cot to a chorus of creaks, groans, and pops in his ancient bones. He swayed and shifted to catch his balance on the rolling deck, but after an instant he moved across the cabin with the ease of a man who’d spent much of the last quarter of a century aboard ship.

  Atop the tiny cabin’s single trunk lay a battered and scuffed leather scrip. The homely old bag wasn’t large, but was packed near to bursting, in fact, the old priest had mended the seams himself more times than he could count over the years. Within were the entirety of the old man’s possessions, save for the tunic he wore, the sandals beneath his cot, and the gnarled walking stick leant beside the door. All that he’d been left, all that had not been taken. He might have been banished, mocked, even shunned, but he still had his tasks. For more than twenty years he’d slung that bag as he wandered the Empire, preaching of his God, expanding His
flock, and just as importantly to Arius himself, tracking any trace of the man who had taken his sister from him.

  The old man slipped the ties on the satchel with the unconscious ease of a thing often repeated, and gently drew out a folded square of sky-blue silk. He drew the soft shining fabric against his cheek in an attempt to sooth, and let out a ragged sigh.

  He’d been in Alexandria less than a year when he found it, it had cost him nearly every coin in his purse, but he’d known how Chara would have loved it. She’d only worn the scarf to prayer gatherings and feast days. She must have gone back to the shop after prayers for some reason, she’d been wearing the precious scarf when the Guard found her.

  Arius remembered the hot rage of the younger man he’d been when he read the letter from Chara’s husband. David was a good man, a gentle man, not one given to vengeance. He had opposed Arius’ crusade, begged him for years to seek peace in forgiveness. Arius had buried David beside his wife some ten years ago now, and with him, the last of his familial ties. David had gone to his rest in peace, a truly Christian soul. Far more so than Arius judged himself to be. The old priest, famed in many parts of the Empire for his theology, knew the darkness in his own heart too well. He’d spent too many years with it, alternately struggling against it and clinging to it as the only source of strength he had left.

  He set aside the scarf with zealous care and drew another object from the pack: a small double-edged dagger with a simple brass hilt. Inside its carefully oiled leather sheath was a shining blade which hadn’t known a day without polishing in ages, and which had an edge that could slice a shadow clean in half. The blade had been clutched in Chara’s hand and found bloody. His sister had marked her killer. She’d drawn his blood. Even after long years the thought brought a fierce smile to the old man’s lips.

  Through years of fruitless searching, endless questioning, and constant searching, the thought of that monster bleeding and scarred, and of his gentle quiet sister struggling fiercely to live, kept the priest on his path. His faith was for God, but his devotion, that was all wrapped up in his quest, his need for justice, for closure, for vengeance. For more than a year he’d searched Jerusalem and the lands around for any hint of the dark-haired man in the red cloak, convinced that the two witnesses had in fact seen the same man. He found little, and his hope waned, but in the end, it was Chara who gave him the clue he needed.