BOUCONNE FRANCE, 2022
After a refreshing bath and shave, I dressed in my smartest emerald cloak over a blood-red velveteen waistcoat. Philipe wore a crimson and white hooded silk cloak over a matching velvet doublet with calfskin laces.
Philipe’s colour choice, of red and white, indicated he was looking to join the Red Lion Court. I couldn’t imagine a worse fit for him, but who am I to judge? Joining a court was something only those of noble lineage, even bastards, could do. Well, it was possible to join the Red Lions and work one’s way up, but it was brutal and likely required a certain enthusiasm for mass dismemberment. I wasn’t exactly interested in the harsh and spartan life of a soldier.
As a member of the merchant class, the best I could hope for was to become some sorcerer’s attaché, or perhaps attain a Court post which is similar. There were three main courts in that area of France, the Peregrine Court, the Red Lion Court, and the Serpentine Court.
The funeral was for an eminent member of the Peregrine Court, Charles-Francois, who had been an eminence-grise over the last hundred years. He had managed relations between our world and the various political regimes of the mundanes. Mundane is what we call the non-Eldritch folk. It had been the policy of our world to keep the mundanes in the dark about all things ancient and Eldritch.
The Forêt de Bouconne, where the funeral was to be held, was some thirty kilometres outside Toulouse which is in the south central region of France. Disapparating was a bit more than either of us could manage.
Since neither of us had ever been to Bouconne and couldn’t disapparate that distance anyway, we decided to go halves on a Coach. We walked south across the Allée Paul Sabatier to the Jardin Royal. We paid little attention to the mundanes that shuffled up and down the streets. They ignored us completely. Mundanes could see us, or some version of us, but the Seal of Westphalia prevented them from finding us remarkable in any way.
I sometimes wondered what they saw; only I knew their disinterest was proportional to the essence of whatever they were looking at. In my case, I doubt they perceived a short man with a goatee and the hoofed hindquarters of a goat. A part of me was glad they didn’t.
The Drow driver was wrapped up like a mummy atop the front of the Black Coach, made of wood and canvas, and smelled of perfume over sour sweat. Its wheels were thin. Soft rubber cushioned their metal on mundane highways.
Sorcerers had little use for horses, and even the carriages we still used a century after the mundanes had invented the automobile didn’t have any.
The lingering daylight was enough to be caustic to the driver’s dark skin. He must have been a half-breed. Otherwise, he would be sizzling like a dumpling, wrappings or not. Pure Drows have flat black skin, and never come out during the daylight hours. Cave-dwelling Elves you know.
The Drow’s eyes caught mine as I mounted into the carriage. There was a look of recognition in them and not a small amount of judgment. As if to say: “Who do you think you are, going to this funeral, dressed in your imitation velvet like a jumped-up plumber.” It put me off my mood for the ride.
The look from the Drow spoke volumes, not only of his judgment of me, but mine of him. I desperately didn’t want to end up another keno slaving away under the rich and powerful. Being a Drow, having to work during the daylight hours, was torture for them.
Trying to move up in our society was possible, even for a merchant, but failure lead to poverty and mediocrity. Or one could end up a familiar to a sorcerer. A familiar was a kind of servant, usually a mundane or a low sorcerer obligated to serve their master in exchange for scraps and protection.
The life expectancy of a familiar is very low, especially around that time of year. With the coming solstice, any sorcerer a little behind on their sacrifices with their patron deity was likely to sacrifice the nearest familiar.
To avoid that fate I would not only need to make strong connections with other sorcerers, but I would have to be accepted by a patron deity, one of the Elder Gods, or their priests, like Cthulhu. Having a patron deity enhances your power, and adds to your aura. I suppose no matter what you do you have to be a familiar to something, but being one to an Elder God had significant benefits. Without that, I couldn’t hope to have a court appointment.
The horseless carriage weaved through mundane traffic unseen and out onto the Perifique before exiting toward Auch on highway one-twenty-four.
The twenty-minute journey went smoothly with little conversation, which suited me to my hooves, for I was in a foul mood.
I resolved to push away my self-reflections and put on a cheerful face. I hoped to make fruitful connections with wealthy patrons. At the very least, I would finally experience the magnificent decadence and sensual pleasures of the exceedingly rich. Up until this point my association with Philipe hadn’t really paid dividends. Philipe’s father leComte de Mirar was wealthy indeed, but the stipend he accorded to his illegitimate son was modest by aristocratic standards.
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Twenty thousand votive candles lit the pathway. They bobbed in the air directing the mourners deep among the sessile oaks and aged alders until they broke into a hollow some fifty meters in diameter.
In the centre of the mourners was piled up a small bed of pine wood a metre tall. The body of his grace the Marquis lay in state upon it. He was dressed in cerulean and gold robes. Around the forest edge, standards of that same cerulean whipped in the moist air, prominently displaying the falcon crest of the Peregrine Court, of which Charles-Francois was formerly Head Sorcerer.
His successor and mistress of this sombre ceremony was her grace, the Marquise de Languedoc, Fulvia Deadlocke. Le Lys d’Or d’Elysée as she was named, the Golden Lily of Elysium. Names are important in magic, especially when Elder Gods give them.
Fulvia was an ageing Sorceress, impossibly buxom. Despite her age, I still found her beautiful beyond measure. Her azure robes whipped around elegant boots of tan lambskin and taut matching trousers. Her golden cuirass was ornamented with bas-reliefs of Fleur-de-Lys, emblems of French royalty. Her creamy locks flowed with a life of their own, a Potamou Charm, I suspected. Potamou is Greek for River; magic isn’t elemental so much as essential, like the essence of a river which is flowing and renews or the essence of a forest that is growing and verdant.
Her sparrow hands feathered a long aspen staff spiralled in sapphires set in Unalloyed Gold which she held straight up and down to match her proud posture.
Philipe tapped my shoulder, and my eyes moved to the extent of his gaze. There I found a wisp of a girl with pale skin. Her ebony hair was bound behind her almond-shaped head. Her eyes were a lifeless grey like the colour of moon craters. Her hooked but delicate nose and upturned goblin ears belied the Eldritch history of her family line.
Her robes were an inky forest green with subtle ornamentation in silver, the colours of the Serpentine Court, of which she was a notorious member. The Serpentine Court was known for its sadomasochistic aesthetic and practices. They were the court of authoritarian rulers, torturers, and fiends of distinction. They happily counted the Marquis Donatien Alphonse de Sade as a former member.
The wind beat against the short girl’s robes, revealing tennis shoes and black jeans gripping her spindle legs. Her black t-shirt had the name of some heavy metal band and stood in contrast to her companions' occasional leather jerkins or corsets.
She clung to her staff, a twisted and rough-hewn bough of wild Brazillian rosewood. She was staring at the body on the pyre. A single moist streak contorted its way down her cheek, whether a particularly daring raindrop or a tear, I couldn't tell.
Her name was Thea Umbra. She was the youngest sorcerer who’d received a name from the Elder Gods in three hundred years.
For millennia there have scarcely been two or three named sorcerers in a single century, and usually, they ended up killing each other. She was known as l’Augure de l’Ombre Tombé. The Augur of Fallen Shadow.
To my right stood a lithe man named Lefevre, clothed in a coal-coloured leather jerkin over matching kecks tied delicately above his knee-high soft-soled linen boots. He wore the lewdest codpiece one could imagine, which gave the image of a bestial organ in ludicrous contortions. His boots were split at the toes, which gave his feet a cloven appearance.
Lefevre had a wearied air, with an unshorn face and thinly set shoulders. His clothing and clandestine demeanour marked him as a Corvin, sometimes informally called the Raven Court. He was an expatriate like myself, though I was from Oxfordshire and he Liverpool. My family enjoyed a long history of Corvin patronage through my relations to one of their more famous members, the great Rasputin, who was my grandfather.
Lefevre wrapped his arms around himself and whispered under his breath. “It’s bloody baltic Boz.”
“Aye. They’ll light the fire soon enough, that should warm us.”
Lefevre snorted. “Wish she’d get onnit so I can get proper bladdered. All this Greek makes we want’a bifter and a pint.”
“Cold makes me want blonds, and blonds make me want a bifter and a pint,” I said.
Lefevre sucked in sharply. “Oh, bitten for her buxomness is it? Yer arms don’t reach that high son. Find yerself a nice plump wench fer a judy. S’bit more attainable for a gentlehoof such as you la.”
“S’a lot of opinions no?”
Lefevre chuckled, “fearless little git.”
I hadn’t meant to respond so sourly. My relationship with Lefevre was very amiable, but he was a professional murderer. Of course, now that I had said it, backing down would be a mistake.
“No disrespect meant, but I can look after my own attractions.”
Lefevre clapped me on the back. “Don’t get your cob on about it la, just sayin’ if you knew what I knew, wouldn’t fuck that one with a cock on a pole.”
“You could enlighten me?”
“Nah, s’more ‘n my life’s worth to gossip about Fulvia Deadlocke. Sides, you might succeed — I’d pay to see that.”
I liked Lefevre well enough, but what he said irritated me. As if to suggest I should just be happy with my lot in life. I was curious about what he said. It wasn’t like him to disdain an attractive woman. What did he know?
Fulvia droned the beginnings of the funeral rites in Koine, a language I didn’t know well. Her solemn chanting was breathy and coarse. Sometimes the words would catch in her throat, and I was moved as she approached the closing stanza, the only part I and all of the Eldritch world knew by heart.
From the void, we came.
To the void, we return.
Black unto black, ash unto ash,
into the rivers of time
to our sepulcher of grace.
‘til all the world falls from memory.
‘til no name is written, that can be read.
The funeral ceremony concluded, and the pyre burned itself out at midnight. The moon was full, and there was an oppressive silence to the forest night. No birds called or wolves howled.
A distant voice broke the stillness. It got closer. The shrill sounds of a man pleading. Pleading for something, but I knew not what. I couldn’t hear any response from who he was begging.