The Drawing of the Dark

'Yes, sir,' Shrub nodded, and darted through the kitchen door, eager to leave with the easier order.

Duffy looked up as Aurelianus pulled out the bench Mothertongue had vacated; the old man was paler than usual, but his eyes glittered with extraordinary vitality, and his black clothes seemed to fit his narrow frame better today. 'May I sit down?' he asked.

'Of course. Why leave those drawings on the walls?'

'Why leave your armor on in a fight?' He let out a bark of laughter. 'After all the trouble you and I went to, down below, to summon guards, do you want to erase their warding marks? Be satisfied with human adversaries - you wouldn't want to take on the... creatures that are repelled by those runes and cantrips and faces.'

'Oh.' The Irishman scowled. 'Well, for matter of that, I don't feel like taking anybody on, these days.'

Aurelianus laughed again, as if Duffy had made a joke. 'Eat up, there,' he said. 'I figure you and I can ride out this morning and bring the King inside.'

'An interesting idea,' said the Irishman, 'but no, I'm afraid not this morning. I don't feel well, and I'm supposed to visit Epiphany's crazy old father.' Actually he had no plans for the morning, and would have preferred nearly any activity to calling on the old painter - especially after having suffered those lake-hallucinations at his boarding house three days ago - but he wanted to test Aurelianus, see how much latitude and freedom his new position was to allow him.

'Well, I guess it doesn't matter too much,' said the old sorcerer with a shrug.

Duffy was pleased. I'm my own man at last, he thought.

'That's Gustav Vogel, isn't it?' Aurelianus asked suddenly. 'I remember him. He did me quite a service at one time - it's one reason I'm helping his poor daughter. Is he doing any paintings these days?'

Duffy thought about it. He couldn't remember the old artist working on anything but that pen-and-ink wall drawing. 'No...' he began.

'I didn't think so,' interrupted Aurelianus, who seemed to have no patience with slow speech this morning. 'But this is beside the point. I told you I've got a sword to replace the one you broke two days ago; come up to my room now and take a look at it.'

'You can't bring it down here?'

Aurelianus was already on his feet. 'No,' he said cheerfully.

Duffy stood and began unsteadily to follow the old man up the stairs. The action reminded him of having seen Aurelianus with Giacomo Gritti the night before, and he halted. 'Didn't you tell me in Venice that you can't speak Italian?' he asked suspiciously.

'Why are you stopping? I don't know; I may have. Why?'

'What's your connection with Giacomo Gritti? Or Jock, as you call him now? I saw you chatting with him last night. You had better tell me the truth this time, too.'

'Oh, you saw us? He's been in my employ for years. His name's not really Gritti, by the way. It's Tobbia. I have to have a lot of agents in that area - Venice, the Vatican. And I do speak Italian. If I told you I didn't, though, I'm sure I had some good reason.' He took another step up.

'Not so fast. If he works for you, why did he and his "brothers" try to kill me the night I met you?'

'Honestly, Brian, can't you trust me? I told them to provoke a fight with you so that I'd have an excuse to speak to you and offer you the job you now have. And they weren't really trying to kill you. I'd instructed them to make the skirmish look convincing, but to deliver no real, damaging blows. Besides, I knew you could take care of yourself. Now come on.'

He got three steps higher before the Irishman's hand on his shoulder stopped him again. 'What if I'd delivered a real, damaging blow to one of them? And what do you -

'If you'd killed one of them,' Aurelianus interrupted impatiently, 'I'd simply have phrased my proposal to you differently. Instead of praising your tolerant restraint in a fight, I'd have complimented you on your decisive, no-nonsense reactions. It doesn't matter. There are much more important -

'It matters to me. And what do you mean, you knew I could take care of myself? I thought that evening was the first time you'd seen or heard of me. Why did you go to so much trouble to get me here, when there must have been a dozen guys in Vienna alone that could do the job better than I can? Damn it, I want some explanations that don't raise a hundred more questions. I -

Aurelianus sighed. 'I will,' he said, 'explain all when we get to my room.

Duffy squinted suspiciously at him. 'All?' The old man looked vaguely offended as they resumed their ascent of the stairs. 'I'm a man of my word, Brian.'

Aurelianus' room at the Zimmermann Inn looked very like his room in Venice. It was a clutter of tapestries, books, scrolls, jewelled daggers, colored liquids in glass jars, odd sextant-like devices, and a cabinet of good wines. The curtains were drawn against the morning brightness, and the chamber was inefficiently lit by a half-dozen candles. The air was close and musty.

'Sit down,' he said, waving Duffy to the only chair free of piled clothing. Aurelianus lifted from a small box another of his dried snakes, bit the end of the tail off and lit the thing in a candle flame. Soon he was seated on the floor, leaning against a bookcase and puffing smoke contentedly.

'I'll try to start from some sort of beginning,' he said. 'I've mentioned that this brewery is, in a sense, the heart of the West, and the tomb of an ancient king whom your Vikings are not entirely incorrect in calling Balder. Suleiman is the spearhead of the eastern half of the world, which is trying to strike at us now, while we're in a state of discord and weakness.'

'Which is because the Western King isn't well...?' Duffy hazarded.

'Right. Or else he's not well because his kingdom is unsteady. It's the same thing, really. Cure one and you've cured the other. And he'll be strengthened and renewed in six months, come the drawing of the Dark. Suleiman, knowing that, is going to try to destroy this brewery, and take Vienna into the bargain, before then. Before long Ibrahim will make some efforts, I expect, to send supernatural combatants down on us, but the elf-signs and faces on the walls should guard us from that. See that Shrub keeps those markings from being cleaned off.