Episode XL - Tiberius

            The sun was fading behind the shops and houses of the harbour district by the time the Former Baron led the way into his Grand Chateau on Tentacle Lane.  His expression, which Ellis both noted and sympathised with, was one of deep thought and bitter disappointment.  His companions all looked desperately tired and Siren’s beauty was marred, ever so slightly, by heavy shadows under her eyes.  Gulliver was limping.

            They had been forced to abandon the carriage halfway between the Borough and Tentacle Lane as one of the wheels slipped into the channel of the aqueduct, sending the wooden vehicle skidding along one corner and nearly dragging the horses to a miserable watery grave.  The Former Baron had generously handed over a large sum of cash to repay the driver for his troubles, in spite of the deadly stream of invective said driver had unleashed from the moment the carriage came to a halt until he was well out of sight behind them.

            The rest of the journey had been long and slow and their eventual descent from the aqueduct into the streets beneath was not without incident.  Siren had recommended a course of action that involved dropping to one of the slate roofs of a line of houses that ran underneath them.  The drop hadn’t been very far and so, cautiously, one by one, they lowered themselves down and then prepared for the next small drop onto a wooden balcony, then down a drainpipe and into the street.  This had gone well, until it became Gulliver’s turn to descend the drainpipe.  It soon became clear that the combined, successive burdens of each of his companions before him had been nearly too much for the ailing copper piping and as Gulliver climbed onto it there had been a horrendous creak, a puff of crumbling verdigris and a scream as the gangly pirate arced backwards through the air, before landing in a heap of clattering pipe in the middle of the street.

            When the others had run over to see if he was all right, lifting the corroded metal away to see the awkward shape he had landed in, they were relieved and surprised to discover that nothing was broken, but Ellis noticed that the strange medallion around his neck was glowing through his shirt and that, perhaps, things would have been a lot worse without it.  As it was, Gulliver was merely badly bruised and had been forced to hobble a little for the remainder of the journey.  He was relieved to find a seat in the Former Baron’s dining room.

            “So, that was a waste of time,” Ellis said as he settled in to lean against the dining room wall, “we chased Adelbert halfway across the city and he still got away from us!”

            The Former Baron was scanning his bookshelves, clearly looking for something in particular, and didn’t turn around as he replied, “Whilst it is indeed distressing that he escaped, you are wrong on two counts, Emery, my boy: firstly, Shadow covers this entire planet, so that was in no way halfway across the city and, secondly, it was not a waste of time.  We know where the Geist went and we know that he is likely to be welcomed there, which means we know we will see more of him in due course.  I do not doubt that my nephew will find a way to use Adelbert against me and so we must be prepared.”

            “What is it with this nephew of yours?”

            The Former Baron sighed and turned his head just enough to reveal to Ellis his weary eyes.  “It is a long story,” he said.

            “Well, I know that I would like get on with other things,” Siren said from her place at the dining table, “but I have to confess: I’m curious.  I think we could spare the time.”

            “Besides,” Ellis added, “if he’s as much of a problem as you seem to make out I think we need to know!”

            “I suppose you probably do,” the Former Baron agreed, turning fully away from the bookcase with a look of deepest regret.  “Please,” he said, gesturing at the array of chairs dotted around the room, “take a seat and I’ll begin.”

            The story that the Former Baron told was not a happy one.  It was a tragic tapestry, stained with bad blood and family betrayal, but it began, as with so many things, with something innocent, even beautiful – the birth of a child.

            Franck’s sister Gertrude, substantially younger than him and known amongst the nobility to possess a singular beauty, had married Cornelius Vitelius, a minor, untitled noble who had family ties to a small, but distinctive district of the city known as the Forum.  They had been happy for a while until it became clear that Gertrude was not bearing her husband any children.  One night she came to Franck looking dishevelled, with tear tracks across her powdered face and her hair in the kind of disarray that can only come from tugging at it fiercely.

            She had told her brother of the problems she was having and of the poor way she was being treated, but she loved her husband and when Franck offered to intervene, to defend her, she only cried more.    “I just want to make him happy again,” she had wailed, and Franck realised that he had the solution.

            Using his knowledge of Hypostatick Philosophy he created a draught for his sister that he knew would allow her to conceive, for a limited time.  She drank it as if it were ambrosia and ran back to her husband.  The child, a boy, was born prematurely eight months later.

            Tiberius Johannes Von Spektr-Vitelius was, unquestionably, a very strange child and everyone who saw him commented to this effect.  Of course, they did not do so to his face, nor did they mention it to his parents, but such confidential conversations did not remain so for long amongst the nobility and Franck soon heard more tales of the child’s strange behaviour than he cared for.

            The boy was noted to be quiet and withdrawn, taking little interest in his studies or his family, but he would sometimes demonstrate a tendency towards extreme cruelty, especially upon other children and animals.  One particularly disturbing tale that Franck head involved a visitor finding the boy leaning over the still-living remains of a small mammal which he had cut open methodically.  When asked why he had done so the child had merely shrugged.  There were no open books for him to have been learning form and he had certainly never taken an interest in anatomy before.  It seemed he was doing it for pure enjoyment, although his features – so the story went – remained utterly emotionless.

            Franck was justifiably concerned and spoke to his sister about it on one occasion when he was visiting the Vitelius Villa in the Former, but Gertrude would not hear a bad thing said about the boy.  “He makes my husband happy,” she had said, before adding, not wholeheartedly, “and he makes me happy.  He’s my son and that’s all there is to it.”

            Gertrude’s invitations became less and less frequent after that and soon all that Franck knew of the boy’s development came from the grapevine of careless conversation.  There was little encouragement to be found in such gossip.

            The boy was fifteen when his father passed away and the responsibility of looking after his distraught mother did not suit him.  She grew more and more reclusive and, judging by the accounts of the few people she did see, more and more miserable, perhaps even mad, until she died four years later.  Her funeral was a quiet affair, but Franck remembered the dark shadow cast by Tiberius, looming over the grave in his black suit.  No one spoke to him there, least of all Franck.

He didn’t see or hear from him again for the best part of a decade, indeed, Tiberius was in his late twenties when he made his next public appearance, and this was to be the one which would be most fateful for Franck; the beginning of the end of his Barony.

Without warning, after years of isolation and wild rumours, Tiberius Johannes Von Spektr-Vitelius emerged onto the public scene to declare that he was going to hold a dinner party at the Vitelius estate.  He invited only the most influential people: the Fetton-Smythes, the Alhazreds, the Kobotis, the Von Syckles and many more besides, and, due to the mystery and mythology that had grown up around young Tiberius, not one of his invitations was refused.  Notably, however, Franck, his only living relative, was not invited, despite his strong standing amongst the members of the Academy of Hypostatick Philosophy and his recent chairmanship of the Official Committee for Investigations into the Strategies of the Lithoderm Race and the Search for a Way to Defeat Them, which had been showing some small signs of success for the very first time in its extremely lengthy history.

Understandably Franck had felt rejected, but he had soon been able to put it out of his mind and focus on the many other things that held his attention in those days.  The day after the party had been held, however, he found that he could no longer focus on anything, for everything had changed.

He woke up that morning to the sounds of angry shouting in the streets of Mistsrise, the Borough village which surrounded the Grand Cheateau Von Spektr.  Puzzled, he had thrown on a dressing gown and stepped out onto his bedroom balcony to look out over the village.  What he saw had appalled him.

The streets were packed with people, many carrying torches to light the early morning darkness and others were carrying weapons or tools and raising them above their heads as they shouted.  There was something odd about their shouts - about the way their eyes seemed to burn with their anger - which Franck couldn’t quite place, but it was clear that all of that anger was directed at him and he had no idea why.

Immediately he withdrew into the Chateau and arranged for his staff to barricade all the doors, then he descended to his laboratory to sit in fearful silence and think.

The messenger came in the early afternoon.  Franck had fallen asleep at his workbench and was awoken by the soft tapping on the laboratory door.  Absent-mindedly he had called for the visitor to enter and was surprised to see the door open upon the sight of a young man who he did not recognise at all.

Upon questioning the gentleman revealed that he was delivering a message from Tiberius.

“Your nephew,” he said with particular emphasis, “sends greetings and wishes you well this day.  He has been made away of the mob which stands at your door and, with your safety in mind, advises you to vacate the Chateau at once and retreat to somewhere more suitable, otherwise, he fears the mob will break in during the night and slaughter you in your sleep.”

“How did you get in?” Franck had demanded, “How did you get past the mob and my guards and my servants?”

“Leave this place,” the young man had said in a voice that was suddenly twisted with unnatural rage, “leave now or pay in blood!”

Franck picked up a poker that had been resting in his fireplace and charged towards the man, who he now feared might be a Daemon, or worse, but as soon as he moved the visitor vanished and the door he had propped open slowly closed.

Franck’s mood changed completely and no longer could he sit in his laboratory and tremble.  He marched out into the hall and began giving orders to further the defence of the his estate and then, once he was sure all that had been done could be done, he made his way to his balcony, unlocked the doors and stepped out into the amber evening light.  The mob was still there.

“I do not know why you are hounding my household,” he said, “but I ask you – no - command you as your Baron, leave now and go to your homes!”

The only answer he received was a feral howl, a single noise, yet using the vocal chords of the entire assembled throng.  Franck shuddered and returned to his bedroom, the door locked and warded behind him.

That night was long and tortuous and filled with all kinds of assault, physical, mental and spiritual.  One by one each of Franck’s household staff turned on him, then his rooms grew dark and unsafe and he was forced to retreat deeper and deeper into his family’s ancient homestead.  He could not recall all that took place that night after that point, but by morning he remembered the sight of Tiberius stepping through the doors with regal poise and his own form, scarred and forgotten in the street.

            “I have learnt a little more of what happened that night since then, having searched for and stumbled across some of the dark power Tiberius had access to.  What is clear is that he poisoned much of the nobility against me and the entire population of Mistsrise was ready to kill me.  Once he had the Chateau and claimed my title no one seemed to care about me at all, either in love or hate.  I went to the Academy of Hypostatick Philosophy, but it had burned down during the night, taking many great minds with it and then, after many long years in the street, I came here and began my collections anew.”

            “How did you get so much stuff back from the Chateau?”  Ellis asked, thinking of the paintings.

            “Much of it Tiberius just threw out and I reclaimed it as and when I could.  Anyway, it was many years ago and I have my ways.  I have rebuilt my reputation in some circles and  could care less about others.  Tiberius has tried to have me killed many times, obviously realising that I might be a threat to his title after all, but otherwise I have heard little about him.  He’s obviously been working behind the scenes all these many decades and that can only make me wonder the scale of whatever it is he has been working on.”

            “And now he has Adelbert,” Siren said with a sigh.

            “Yes,” the Former Baron agreed, “and whoever else he has picked up in this new ‘noble’ society.”  He shook his head, “but enough about the past.  This morning you mentioned an opportunity?”

            Siren nodded, then began to explain.

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