Everything but Sleep
by E. Buchner
There is a dead fly on the windowsill, lying in the dust where the glass meets the wood. It lies on its back with its legs a crooked sculpture, but otherwise looking little different in death to how it looked in life. It’s like an embalmed corpse, a perpetual reminder to the living that they too will die. There is, I think, a classical phrase that describes rather neatly what I mean. But I don’t recall it. I suppose it isn’t important.
I had gone over to the window to check the weather, and it seems fine. I leave my coat behind and head out into the sick heat of the evening. It’s late, the lamps along Rotstrasse burning brightly. Amelia contacted me this morning in the usual fashion. I awoke to find a sprig of wolf’s bane resting on my bedside table (how does she get into my room without waking me?). We always meet in the beer cellar beneath the Student’s Guild, though it isn’t the sort of place a lady would wish to be seen. I arrive to find her seated at a table near the centre of the room, eating a liver pie and smoking a pipe. A pipe! She’s the only woman in the packed cellar who isn’t a whore, yet she manages to blend in perfectly. She sees me, and gestures towards the only other seat at her table. There is a flagon of dark ale in front of me.
“Erasmus my dear! Your drink has been sitting waiting for quite some time. You are late.” She narrows her eyes as she says that last sentence and her voice gets a little cold. It almost makes me shudder. I sit down and take a deep gulp of the ale, which makes me feel slightly more brave.
“I’m sorry. I came as soon as I could.”
She smiles. It’s an ambiguous smile, one that would fit as well on a wolf as on a woman. She is not beautiful. She is a little too old and a little too confident, her eyes a little too hard. I can’t hold her gaze, and I can tell that pleases her. She returns to her pie, eating with all the enthusiasm of a campaigning soldier. When she’s finished, she takes a long draft of her pipe and offers it to me. I decline. It isn’t tobacco
“You are not making progress, Erasmus. All you give me are rumours and innuendos, when I must have proof.”
“I need more time! I watch him whenever I can, and he does seem to be much more energetic and, well, youthful than he was. But what is that? A holy miracle? Or just the natural effect of rest and good food?”
“Or something else entirely… We must know for sure. If you have been leading us on, my dear Erasmus, you are a fool indeed.” Her eyes are flat grey, cold as iron, sharp as a surgeon’s knife. I can feel my stomach leaping with panic. “You have taken our money. We have been generous, I’m sure you will agree.”
“What more can I do?”
She smiles again, broadly and wonderfully. Perhaps the smoke is beginning to affect me, but she does look beautiful after all. It doesn’t last. The words she says next are the ones I’ve been waiting to hear for the last week, the words that I fear the most.
“You must enter the vault.”
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That night I dream that I am standing before an iron door. I am naked and cold, my feet frozen to the stones of the floor. Slowly, stutteringly, the door opens inwards onto a dark space. There is a tall figure standing in the doorway, wrapped in a dusty burial shroud. It reaches for me with the talons of an eagle. The talons scrabble at my chest, above my heart, drawing blood that turns at once into dense vapour. Who are you, I call out, my voice echoing back on itself, who are you who are you who? It replies in a voice of such warmth and love that I feel tears begin to run down my face: it says, I am hope. Then the talons bite deeper, splitting my ribcage and tearing out my heart. Something small and dark flies out of the room behind the figure and lodges itself in the hole in my chest. I feel complete and alive, and I wake up.
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The light is cascading in from the open window when I awake. Elss is asleep beside me, deeply and peacefully asleep. I rise carefully, so as not to wake her, and go over to the mirror. I swear, I was half expecting to see bloody scratches over my heart, but the skin is smooth and whole. A dream is just a dream. I dress and leave the house. I wonder if Elss will be upset that I left without waking her.
The morning is pleasant enough, and I quite enjoy the walk. The streets are busy even at this hour. This city is so alive – it seethes with life like an ant’s nest. It’s difficult to believe that the walking dead stood at the gates so recently. What would it be like now if His Supreme Holiness has not turned them back? And this is the man that I am to betray! I stop dead, causing a street vendor to crash into me and spill his wares over the cobbles. He curses me as I help him gather them together. As I look up, I catch a glimpse of something tall and white in the corner of my eye – when I turn I think I see a figure swathed in dirty white cloth disappear around a corner. My imagination is getting the better of me.
I reach the cathedral in low spirits, climbing the steps slowly and reluctantly. Barthel greets me as I cross the threshold.
“Erasmus! A fine morning, is it not?” He smiles like an idiot. I smile back as best I can.
“Indeed it is. Forgive me Barthel, but I cannot stop to talk. I have a great deal of work to do today.”
“Ah yes, the war in Ostermark. A courier arrived an hour ago with an urgent message from the Graf von Stirland. You will find it waiting for you on your desk.”
I thank him and make my way to the office. The message is there, as he said. I read it carefully and then draft a reply. I have to wait until noon before I can take it to the Grand Theogonist to receive his seal, and when I do I find myself unable to meet his gaze. He is a changed man; that much is obvious to even the most casual glance. His features are still withered and thin, his hair still sparse and white, his hands still like claws of bone. Yet he no longer shakes. His eyes are very clear, his voice resonant and deep. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it is the Lord Sigmar, whose Strength is the Strength of Ages, that invigorates him. This is his final task before he passes from this world – a holy quest to restore The Empire to the greatness it has been so long denied. It must be so! I must be mistaken!
And yet there is something about him that strikes me as wrong, terribly wrong. There is a casual violence to the way he tears up the reports of Martin’s defeat at Udo’s Fall. A predatory sneer as he sets his seal on the order to dispatch another squadron of the Fiery Heart to Ostermark. When he looks at me, I can sometimes see a heavily veiled expression of contempt. He suspects.
So it is that I am forced to take action, though I fear my immortal soul will be the price of failure. As I help the Grand Theogonist into his carriage at the end of the day, I steal the key to the vault. Tonight, I will know for sure.
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I don’t remember when it first occurred to me that I was dead. I don’t remember the kind of lurching hollowness appearing in my stomach that you might expect – the feeling people get when they realise that something massive and irrevocable has happened, has changed. But it’s strange the things you remember, and the things you forget. I can recall the first time I ever heard a certain song – a melancholic old folk ballad that I have always loved – played in a tavern back home. Smoking Old Sparky with Leonora as the sun went down over the Reik. Forcing a laugh at some stale witticism of Father Quadt’s, Hiding from my friends and family at my fifth birthday party, too ashamed to come out after soiling myself with excitement. Yet I cannot picture my father’s face, though it is only a year since he died. I don’t recall the first time I slept with Elss. Some things that must have happened to me feel less real than things I know I only dreamed, and at times I am afraid that I might have made them up. But I remember the night I entered the vault below the cathedral, and at the same time I remember the dream I had the night before. I do not know which was which.
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Last night, and Elss is angry with me again. “Why do you let her do this to you, Erasmus? You let her treat you like a dog.”
“That’s not true… but even if it is. We need her money – their money – if we are ever going to get away from this city and live as we have always dreamed.”
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid you’ll be caught – you must know what will happen to you if you are!”
“I’ll be careful. This is the last time, I promise. Once I’ve done this, we’ll have enough Middenlander gold to take us to Marienburg, where even the Grand Theogonist won’t come looking for us. It will all work out, my love. Everything will be fine.”
I don’t think she is much reassured by my words, but at any rate she has accepted that I must complete my mission. She falls asleep long before I do, and I lie there listening to the steady ebb and flow of her breath. When at last I too find sleep, I dream of grave-cloth and scratching talons.
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It is the same door. This time I have to open it myself, and there is no spectre to greet me. The key turns smoothly – the lock is kept well oiled – and I step through the doorway into the darkness on the other side. And it is very dark indeed. I have a lantern with me, but even so I can see no more than a half-dozen feet in any direction. I have no idea how big the room is, but simply walking forward until I find something seems the best course.
I reach a large wooden bench covered with alchemical apparatus. It’s a tangle of glass tubes and copper pipes, rather like a still, though there’s no liquid in it. I follow along the pipes with my eyes, reaching a small tap with a flask below it. There’s some liquid in that: something thick and dark. It flickers with bright colour when I touch it. There’s a cap by the flask, so I insert it and put the whole thing into my pocket.
I’d like to leave now, but I doubt the flask will be enough to satisfy Amelia. I turn around a couple of times, debating with myself which direction to go, then decide on walking around the bench to my left. There’s a rack filled with parchment scrolls, and a writing desk. I’m about to examine them when I hear a low rustling sound off to the right. It’s coming from a book that’s resting all on its own on what looks like a stone altar. It’s a large book, bound in something that is clearly not animal leather, and I realise I am looking at the Liber Mortis. The cover is very slowly rising and falling, as though the book is breathing.
I cry out and turn to run, but I trip over something and go sprawling onto the floor, the lantern skidding away and going dark. I am beginning to realise that the thing I tripped over is a corpse when a light hits me and I hear a voice. His voice.
“Why are you here, Erasmus?”
He is standing in the doorway.
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Sixth months ago I am being recruited by Amelia. She draws me in gradually, meeting with me at first under false pretences. When I receive her message asking for my advice on a spiritual matter I am flattered and do not hesitate agree to meet. In time I learn that she is an agent of Ar-Ulric Waldemar, and she wants me to betray the Grand Theogonist in return for money. We rationalise it as a necessary evil, for if His Supreme Holiness is indeed corrupted then it is my sacred duty to expose him. But we both know that I am doing it only for the money, and her eyes always sparkle with amusement and ownership.
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“You know why. I had to see.” I sound a lot braver than I feel. I get to my feet and stand there, trying to think of a way out. I could overpower him easily enough. Couldn’t I?
The Grand Theogonist looks squarely at me for several minutes, his face illuminated from below by the powerful lantern he carries with him. Then, after a while, he shakes his head and looks away. I can’t be sure, but it seems that he shudders a little, as if with sudden cold.
“So now you have seen, and now you know. What do you intend to do?”
My throat has closed up. I swallow heavily, almost choking, and manage to gasp – “It’s all true then. You have betrayed the Lord Sigmar, just as they said you had.”
“I had thought that you might understand, Erasmus. The need was very great. And though the price was high… too high… it had to be paid.” He smiles weakly, “I have learned a great many things from the vampire’s books. Through consultation with the dead I am able to obtain precise information on the situation in Ostermark. More than that, by the distillation of the life essence I am able to delay my own death – but only until my work is done! It is a terrible duty, but is it not a vital one?”
I don’t answer him, but the look on my face must be answer enough. He says – “I have taken a few lives – the lives of criminals – to maintain my own, that is true. But how can it over-weigh the life of The Empire itself? The steps the Gräfin takes toward the throne of Ostermark are also the first steps toward a reunited Empire. If I can steady those steps I will do so, by whatever means the Lord Sigmar places at my disposal. So I ask you again: what will you do?”
I cannot speak. I can only shake my head, and I know he understands. He gazes at me sadly, and then something heavy hits me from behind. My eyes flash solid black, and in my mind a shrouded corpse tears out my heart. I am hope.
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Gradually, I awake. My skull is broken, I am drowned in blood. I cannot see, I can barely think. Somehow a single thought enters my ruined mind – the flask is still in my pocket. The cap almost defeats me, but I remove it and tip the liquid down my throat. It burns me all the way down, and I scream. There is a pause. Then my vision returned to me and I could see that I lay slumped in an alleyway near the docks. Why had the Grand Theogonist not made sure I was dead? Why had he not searched me and found the flask? Was it his intention to spare me, or the Will of Holy Sigmar? Cautiously I moved my hand over my head, feeling for injury. But the blood had stopped flowing and my skull seemed whole. Could it be a miracle?
When I had struggled to my feet it occurred to me that the alley was dark – utterly dark – and yet I could see perfectly. I looked down at the empty flask in my hand, watching as the last dregs pulsed and ran with brilliant colours. All the colours in the world. The flask! What had I done! I had drunk his distillation of life essence!
There was no longer any pain. I didn’t feel anything at all.
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When I returned to our home, Elss was not there. I looked at the unmade bed where we had slept, the mug she had drunk from that morning, the shirt I had torn days before and left on the sideboard to be mended, and I knew that I could not see her again. I could not stay here. I went over to the window, and sure enough the dead fly was still there, unchanged. But somehow it looked different to me now. It represented something new. Though I knew that it was dead, I also knew that it would endure - never to rot away, never to feel the horror of the grave, never to be forgotten and lost within the mouth of the hungry earth. It seemed to me a symbol of hope. It rested there, on the windowsill, like the body of a tiny saint inside a reliquary. Eternal. Incorruptible. Alive.
