Arcanum Read online

  Nikoleta stopped, and Büber, and the two Carinthians, and simply stared.

  What separated masters from adepts was a final surrender of pity. If a sorcerer could not put to death that part of them which made them feel sorry for their victims, then they were forever condemned to inhabit the lower orders. Great feats of magic, yes: true mastery of the art, never.

  Looking up at the walls of Obernberg and seeing its inhabitants strewn across them in a grotesque display of inhumanity was enough to kill off any remaining shred of sympathy within Nikoleta Agana.

  She marked stepping across the divide by shrugging off her heavy leather coat onto the wetly shining stones and throwing her hat to one side. Standing their, the rain beating down on her head, soaking the simple shift that she wore, she had never felt so powerful, so at peace, so certain as to what she should do.

  The ground trembled in anticipation.

  The women on the wagons, beforehand all catcalls and ululations, were suddenly silent.

  Nikoleta’s tattoos shifted in new, unknown ways as she walked towards them and raised her hands.

  about the author

  Dr Simon Morden is a bona fide rocket scientist, having degrees in geology and planetary geophysics, and is one of the few people who can truthfully claim to have held a chunk of Mars in his hands. Simon Morden lives in Gateshead with a fierce lawyer, two unruly children and a couple of miniature panthers.

  Find out more about Simon Morden and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  BY SIMON MORDEN

  The Petrovitch trilogy

  Equations of Life

  Theories of Flight

  Degrees of Freedom

  The Petrovitch Trilogy (omnibus edition)

  The Curve of the Earth: A Metrozone Novel

  Arcanum

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Orbit

  ISBN: 9781405516778

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Simon Morden

  Map by Anna Gregson

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Orbit

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Simon Morden

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Notes

  Map

  Cast

  Part 1: Fimbulwinter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part 2: Ragnarok

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Part 3: Ember

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Part 4: Ignite

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Extras

  To the Other Simon

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Pronunciation

  True story: for my entire childhood and more embarrassingly, into my PhD days, I’d always pronounced the name for the double-walled vacuum vessels used for storing cryogenic liquids – dewar – as dee-warr, because I’d only ever encountered the word in books. Of course, Mr Dewar who invented the receptacle, being Scottish, pronounced his name dew-er. Not as bad as believing that antelope and Penelope rhyme, but close.

  So in order to avoid any confusion – and honestly, you can pronounce these names however you like – here’s a very rough guide to names and places in the book.

  Pretty much everything is spoken like it’s written, which is one of the glories of German as opposed to, say, French. There are a couple of extra bits that’ll have you speaking like a native. Firstly, there’s no “th” sound, with that letter combination becoming a hard “t”. Which is odd, when you consider the Nordic languages (and Old English) had two different letters and sounds for “th” depending on whether it was “th” in “than” or the “th” in “though”. So Thaler’s name is pronounced tar-ler. The letter “w” is pronounced “v”. Wien (the German name for Vienna) becomes veen.

  The other bit is the umlaut, the double-dots above certain vowels which show that they’ve changed in sound. The most important one as far as this book is concerned is the “ü” – it changes “u” (uh) to “ü” (oo). So Büber is pronounced boo-ber, and München (the German name for Munich) is pronounced moon-chen.

  There are also bits in Old Norse, Icelandic, Greek, Italian and Yiddish. Don’t worry about those.

  Units of distance and currency

  The Germans mix their units up, taking what’s useful from both Greek and Roman systems as they see fit. A foot is pretty much a foot whether it’s a Greek foot, a Roman foot or a modern Imperial one; a stadia (Greek) is 600 feet, and a mile (Roman) is 5000 feet – shorter than a stat
ute mile.

  The use of cash can be fantastically complicated, especially when crossing borders, but a coin’s worth is nominally equivalent to the weight of the metal it contains rather than its face value. In Carinthia, the smallest coin is the “red” penny, made from copper. Six of those make a shilling, and twenty shillings make a florin. Florins are silver coins. No one but kings and merchants deal in gold coins.

  The maps

  While it’s traditional for fantasy books to have a map, and have the principal characters go to every damn place mentioned on it, this is not a traditional fantasy book. So while the book refers to various places on the map, you don’t have to traipse around central Europe visiting them all. I’ve taken one or two liberties with distances, but mostly I’ve left them alone. The lines on the map, I’ve taken lots of liberties with, but then again, you can’t expect to end up with the same result after unwinding and replaying a thousand years of history. Borders are fluid.

  The history

  I’m not giving anything away by telling you from the outset that the book you’re holding is set in a world that plays by some very different rules while still having the same geography. The most significant – apart from the fact that magic is real, and it works – is that there was no new religion spilling out of Jerusalem around what we think of as the first century AD. There was no subsequent conversion of the Roman Empire, which remained polytheistic. And to keep things even, nothing happened on the Arabian peninsular in 622 AD either. There are Jews, though.

  The other chief event sort of happened. Alaric the Goth did indeed sack Rome in 410 AD, but he didn’t use wild, untamed sorcerers in lieu of siege engines to bring the walls of the Eternal City down. And while this didn’t mark the end of the Roman Empire in the real world, in this one it did. The Eastern Empire, centred on Byzantium, carried on, but in the west, the tribes north of the Alps carved out a patchwork of kingdoms roughly based on the old Roman provinces, remained true to the old gods and fought fractiously for the next thousand years.

  Which is where we come in.

  CAST

  The Palatinate of Carinthia

  THE LEOPARD THRONE

  Prince Gerhard V, the prince of Carinthia

  Felix, his son and heir by his first wife, Emma

  Caroline, his second wife

  Ulf, her son

  Trommler, his chamberlain

  Allegretti, Felix’s tutor

  Schenk,

  Ludl,

  von Traunstein,

  Hentschel, earls

  Wolfgang Reinhardt, sergeant-at-arms of the White Fortress

  Ehrlichmann, messenger

  Peter Büber, huntmaster to Gerhard

  Torsten Nadel, huntsman

  THE ORDER OF THE WHITE ROBE

  Eckhardt , a hexmaster Nikoleta Agana,

  Tuomanen , adepts

  JUVAVUM, PRINCIPLE TOWN OF CARINTHIA

  Messinger , mayor Schussig, metalworker,

  guildmaster

  Prauss, stonemason,

  guildmaster

  Emser, cabinet maker,

  guildmaster

  Seibt, journeyman carpenter

  Aelinn, maid

  Lodel , landlord

  Taube,

  Gertrude,

  Heinrich, townspeople

  Rabbi Cohen and Mrs Cohen

  Aaron Morgenstern,

  bookseller Sophia Morgenstern, his

  daughter

  Rosenbaum,

  Schicter,

  Eidelberg, neighbour to the

  Morgensterns

  Avram Kuppenheim , doctor

  THE LIBRARY

  The Master Librarian

  Erdlmann,

  Ingo Wess , librarians

  Frederik Thaler,

  Thomm,

  Grozer , under-librarians Glockner , head usher

  Goss,

  Fottner,

  Otto,

  Ernst Braun , Max Ullmann,

  Reindl,

  Manfred,

  Horst,

  Oswald , ushers

  OTHER CARINTHIANS

  Martin Kelner, woodsman

  Oktav Groer, resident of

  Hallein Wulf Thorlander, from the

  north

  Ohlhauser, farmer

  The Kingdom of Bavaria

  Leopold, the king of Bavaria

  SIMBACH, A TOWN IN BAVARIA

  Fuchs, earl

  Wiel,

  Spitzel,

  Metz , Kehle,

  Gerd and Juli Kehle,

  townspeople

  Bastian , smith

  ROSENHEIM, A TOWN IN BAVARIA

  Mr and Mrs Flintsbach,

  farmers Gretchen , their daughter

  Byzantium

  Spyropoulus, ambassador

  Agathos, slave

  Schwyz

  Tol Ironmaker, King of Farduzes

  Thorson Heavyhammer

  Franklands

  Clovis, prince, son of King Clovis of the Franks

  Vulfar, bargemaster

  Teutons

  Walter of Danzig, master of horse

  PART 1

  Fimbulwinter

  1

  As Peter Büber climbed, he left spring behind him. The mountain peaks, stark and blinding, immense and razor-edged, made him feel the most insignificant creature that ever dragged itself across the land.

  The valley behind him, narrow, deep and shadowed, was nevertheless showing the first flush of green. Ahead of him was nothing but white snow that stretched from summit to summit and covered everything between.

  Büber stopped and planted his walking-stick in the ground. He pulled on a pair of fur-lined mittens, sat a furry hat hard over his shaved scalp, and took up his stick again. The wind was tearing loose snow from the exposed upper slopes and trailing it like cloud in the blue sky. The higher he went, the colder and more open the terrain became.

  He aimed for the first cairn of rocks, a couple of stadia uphill – snow stuck to its top like a crown, but its flanks were dark and clear. His boots crunched through the crust of ice with every footstep, leaving a trail of holes through which poked the first moss and tough alpine grasses of the year.

  He reached the cairn breathing hard. He needed to slow down; it had been months since he’d been up this high. His rough stubble was already coated in moisture, and it was threatening to freeze. So he wiped at his scarred face with his sleeve and leant back against the cairn, letting the weak sun do its best.

  Recovered, he set off towards the second cairn, using a more measured pace. He planted the end of the stick, listened to the soft crush as it landed, then moved his feet, left and right. Repeat. There was a natural rhythm to his stride now, one that let him walk and breathe easily.

  Past the second cairn, and on to the third – simple to find as only black rock against white snow can be, but he knew from bitter experience how hard it was trying to keep on course when the clouds descended and the precipices shrouded themselves in fog. Not today though. Today was glorious, bright and clean, and it was a pleasure to walk to the top of the pass and check the snow depth. It didn’t even need to be clear, just shallow enough for the carts and wagons to wade through, and the short route to the Mittelmeer would be open again.

  Büber, thinking contentedly of olive-skinned women, missed the first rumble of sound. He caught the echo, though. He stopped mid-stride, as frozen as the air.

  Avalanches were common this time of year. He’d seen trees, buildings and people swept away and entombed in suddenly rock-hard snow that fell from mountaintops like a flood. They started with a crack and a whisper, then built like an oncoming storm to be the loudest thing he’d ever heard.

  The last of it faded away, and he couldn’t see the tell-tale sign of a plume of snowy air rising from the slopes. Everything was quiet again, the sound of even the wind muffled and distant.

  It was said that there were foolish hunters and old hunters, but never foolish old hunters. Büber wasn’t ol
d, not yet, but he had every intention of living long enough to prove both his friends and his enemies wrong.

  He stayed still for a while, scanning the east and west slopes with a practised, hand-shadowed gaze, but there was nothing he could spot. Perhaps it had been something in the next valley along, then, reverberating from peak to peak.

  More cautiously, pausing at every cairn to listen, he walked higher and higher. The gradient wasn’t that bad – the Romans who’d used it a thousand years earlier had picked out the route and built one of their wide roads south to north. Büber’s ancestors had made the reverse journey, on their way to crack Rome’s walls and set its temples ablaze. But up near the head of the pass, there were no smoothed stones or compacted gravel left. The via had worn away to soil and rock, just as it once was, and probably always would be.

  He looked behind him. The line of cairns stretched away into the distance. Looking ahead, he could see three more before the slope took them out of sight. Almost there.

  He trudged on. The snow rose over the turn-downs on his boots, and almost up to his knees. Not much, considering how high it would have been piled at Yuletide; warm air from the south helped clear the pass sooner. Difficult to walk in, all the same.

  Difficult to run in, too.

  The ground started to dip away to the south: he was there.

  He plunged his walking-stick down, pulled out his knife and bent low to notch the wood. His breath condensed about him as he marked the snow level, not as proof – any idiot could stand at the bottom of the valley and guess – but for tradition. He’d been shown how to do it by a man now five years dead, and at some point he’d have to show some other rough kid from the mountains that this is what happens when you want to declare the pass open.

  The flake of wood he’d cut fell to the snow. By the time he reported to the prince and the first ceremonial wagon was rolled up the via, even this covering would be little more than slush.

  When he straightened up, he saw them.

  They were in the far distance, coming down from the very top of the Aineck and almost invisible against the background: three large – and one of them was really very big – figures. They cast long black shadows that rippled against the contours of the snow, moving purposefully towards him.