Powers, Tim - The Drawing of the Dark

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THE WAY OF THE OLD ONES

'What sort of creatures live down here?' Duffy whispered in the dark tunnel. 'Snakes? Trolls?'

'I suppose there may be snakes,' the old enchanter replied impatiently. 'No trolls. Not really

trolls.'

A hundred yards ahead, the Irishman noticed a hammock like bundle slung from the ceiling. The

bundle looked like a mummy bearing a sword. It struck him as a poor idea of a joke.

Then the thing opened its eyes. Duffy gulped and jumped backward.

The thing's mouth opened in a glittering yellow grin. 'Halt,' it said in an echoing whisper. 'For

The toll.'

'What price for passage?' the old enchanter asked. 'Nothing exorbitant. There are two of you...

I'll take the life of one.'

Tim Powers

The Drawing of the Dark

A MAYFLOWER BOOK

GRANADA

London Toronto Sydney New York

Published by Granada Publishing Limited in 1981 1S8N0583 133193

A Granada Paperback UK Original

This edition published by arrangement with

Ballantine Books, A Division of Random House, Inc.

Granada Publishing Limited

Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF

and

3 Upper James Street, London W1R 4BP

866 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA

117 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

1OO Skyway Avenue, Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 3A6, Canada

P0 Box 84165, Greenside, 2034 Johannesburg, South Africa

61 Beach Road, Auckland, New Zealand

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading

Typeset by Elanders Computer Assisted

Typesetting Systems, Inverness

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be

lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form

of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Granada (r)

Granada Publishing (r)

To Dorothea Kenny for measureless aid and advice, and, once again, to my parents, Noel and Richard

Powers

Contents

PROLOGUE

All Hallows' Eve, 1529

BOOK ONE

BOOK TWO

BOOK THREE 241

EPILOGUE

October Fourteenth

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381

If but we Christians have our beer,

Nothing's to fear.'

-Sir William Ashbless

Prologue

All Hallows' Eve, 1529

With almost ludicrous care the old man carried the pitcher of beer across the sunlit room toward

the still older man who reclined propped up in a bed by the window. A smear of dried mud was caked

on the foot of the bed.

'Here you are, Sire,' he said, pouring the black liquid into the earthenware cup which the old

king had picked up from the table beside the bed.

The king raised the cup to his lips and sniffed it. 'Ah,' he breathed. 'A potent batch this time.

Even the vapors are strengthening.'

The other man had now set the pitcher down on the table, pushing to one side a rusty lance head

that had lain next to the cup. 'It's a few ounces short,' he confessed. 'He sneaked down here

Easter evening and stole a cupful.'

The king took a sip, and closed his eyes rapturously. 'Ah, that is good beer.' He opened his eyes

and glanced at the other old man. 'Well, I don't think we can grudge him one cup of it,

Aurelianus. I really don't think, all things considered, that we can honestly grudge him it

Book One

'No familiar shapes

Remained, no pleasant images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live

Like living men, moved slowly through the mind

By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.'

William Wordsworth

Chapter One

All night the hot wind had swept up the Adriatic, and from the crowded docks down by the

arsenale to the Isola di San Chiara at the western mouth of the Grand Canal, the old city creaked

on its pilings like a vast, weary ship; and clouds as ragged as tatters of sailcloth scudded

across the face of the full moon, tangling with the silhouettes of a hundred fantastic spires and

domes.

In the narrow Rio de San Lorenzo, though, the smoky oil lamp at the bow of the gondola cast more

reflections in the water than the moon did, and Brian Duffy reached over the gunwale to stir the

black water with his fingers and multiply the points of yellow light. He shifted uneasily on the

seat, embarrassed, for he was travelling at someone else's expense.

'I'll walk to my boat from here.'

'Pull in to the fondamenta,' he growled finally.

The gondolier obediently dug his long pole into the canal bottom, and the tiny craft heeled,

paused, and then surged up to the embankment, its prow grating on a submerged step. 'Thank you.'

Duffy ducked under the awning of the felze and took a long step to a dry stair while the boatman

held the gondola steady.

Up on the sidewalk the Irishman turned. 'Marozzo paid you to take me all the way to the Riva degli

Schiavoni. Bring him back the change.'

The gondolier shrugged. 'Perhaps.' He pushed away from the stair, turned his craft gracefully

about, and began poling his way back up the glittering watercourse, softly calling, Stali!" to

draw any possible fares. Duffy stared after him for a moment, then turned on his heel and strode

south along the embankment calle toward the Ponte dei Greci, the bridge of the Greeks.

He was reeling just a little because of the quantities of valpolicella he'd consumed that evening,

and a sleepy footpad huddled under the bridge roused when he heard the Irishman's uneven tread.

The thief eyed the approaching figure critically, noting the long, worn cloak, evidence of

frequent outdoor sleeping; the kneehigh boots, down at the heels, and twenty years out of fashion;

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and the rapier and dagger which looked to be the man's only valuable possessions. Edging silently

back into the shadows, he let Duffy go by unaccosted.

The Irishman hadn't even been aware of the thief's scrutiny; he was staring moodily ahead at the

tall bulk of the church of San Zaccaria, its gothic design undisguised by the Renaissance

adornments that had recently been added to it, and he was wondering just how much he would miss

this city when he left. Only a matter of time,' Marozzo had said over dinner. 'Venice is more than

half a Turkish possession right now, what with that grovelling treaty they signed eight years ago.

Mark me now, Brian before our hair is completely white, you and I will be teaching the uses of the

scimitar instead of the honest straight sword, and our students will be wearing turbans.' Duffy

had replied that he'd shave his head and run naked with the jungle pygmies before he'd teach a

Turk even how to blow his nose, and the conversation had moved on to other matters - but Marozzo

had been right. The days of Venice's power were fifty years gone.

Duffy kicked a stray pebble away into the darkness and heard it plop into the canal after bouncing

twice along the pavement. Time to move on, he told himself morosely. Venice has done its

recuperative job, and these days I have to look closely to see the scars I got at Mohács two and a

half years ago. And God knows I've already done my share of Turk-killing - let this city bow to

the Crescent if it wants to, while I go somewhere else. I may even take ship back to Ireland.

I wonder, he thought, if anyone back in Dingle would remember Brian Duffy, the bright Young lad

who was sent off to Dublin to study for Holy Orders. They all hoped I'd eventually take the

Archbisbopric of Connaught, as so many of my forefathers did.

Duffy chuckled ruefully. There I disappointed them. As he clumped Past the San Zaccaria convent he

heard muted giggles and whispering from a recessed doorway. Some pretty nun, he imagined,

entertaining one of the Young moneghini that are always loitering around the grounds. That's what

comes of Pushing your unwilling daughters into a nunnery to save the expense of a dowry -they wind

up a good deal wilder than if you'd simply let them hang around the house.

I Wonder, he thought with a grin, what sort of priest I would have made. Picture yourself pale and

softvoiced, Duffy my lad, rustling hither and yon in a cassock that smells of incense. Ho ho. I

never even came near it. Why, he reflected, within a week of my arrival at the seminary I'd begun

to be plagued by the odd occurrences that led, before long, to my dismissal - blasphemous

footnotes, in a handwriting I certainly didn't recognize, were discovered on nearly every page of

my breviary; oh yes, and once, during a twilight stroll with an elderly priest, seven young oak

trees, one after another, twisted themselves to the ground as I passed; and of course worst of

all, there was the time I threw a fit in church during the midnight Easter mass, shouting, they

later told me, for the need-fires to be lit on the hilltops and the old king to be brought forth

and killed.

Duffy shook his head, recalling that there had even been talk of fetching in an exorcist. He had

scribbled a quick, vague letter to his family and fled to England. And you've fled quite a number

of places in the years since, he told himself. Maybe it's time you fled back to where you started.

It sounds nicely symmetrical, at any rate.

The narrow calle came to an end at the Riva degli Schiavoni, the street that ran along the edge of

the wide San Marco Canal, and Duffy now stood on the crumbled brick lip, several feet above the

lapping water, and looked uncertainly up and down the quiet shallows. What in the name of the

devil, he thought irritably, scratching the gray stubble on his chin. Have I been robbed, or am I

lost?

After a moment three well-dressed young men emerged from an arched doorway to his right. He turned

on his heel when he heard their steps, and then relaxed when he saw that they weren't a gang of

canalside murderers. These are cultured lads, clearly, he reflected, with their oiled hair and

their fancy-hilted swords, and one of them wrinkling his nose at the salty, stagnant smell of the

nearby Greci canal.

'Good evening to you, gentlemen,' Duffy said in his barbarously accented Italian. 'Have you seen,

by any chance, a boat I think I moored here earlier in the evening?'

The tallest of the young men stepped forward and bowed slightly. 'Indeed, sir, we have seen this

boat. We have taken the liberty, if you please, of sinking it.'

Duffy raised his thick eyebrows, and then stepped to the canal edge and peered down into the dark

water, where, sure enough, the moonlight dimly gleamed on the gunwales of a holed and rock-filled

boat.

'You will want to know why we have done this.'

'Yes,' Duffy agreed, his gloved hand resting now on the pommel of his sword.

'We are the sons of Ludovico Gritti.'

Duffy Shook his head. 'So? Who's he, the local ferrier?

The Young man pursed his lips impatiently 'Ludovico Gritti,' he snapped 'The son of the Doge. The

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wealthiest merchant in Constantinople To whom you did refer, this evening, as "the bastard Pimp of

Suleiman"

'Ah!' said Duffy, nodding a little ruefully. 'Now I see what quarter the Wind's in. Well, look,

boys, I was drinking, and kind of condemning anyone I could think of. I've got nothing against

Your father. You've sunk my boat now, so let's call it a night. There's no -

The tallest Gritti drew his sword, followed a moment later by his brothers. 'It's a question of

honor,' he explained.

Duffy breathed an impatient curse as he drew his rapier with his left hand and his shell-hilted

dagger with his right, and Crouched on guard with the weapons held crossed in front of him. I'll

Probably be arrested for this, he thought; engaging in a duello alla mazza with the grandsons of

the Doge. Of all the damned nonsense.

The tallest Gritti made a run at the burly Irishman his Jewelled rapier drawn back for a cut and

his dagger held at the hip for Parrying. Duffy easily ducked the wide Swing and, blocking the

dagger-thrust with the quillons of his rapier, stepped aside and gave the Young man a forceful

boot in his satin-clothed backside that lifted him from the pavement and Pitched him with an

echoing splash into the canal.

Whirling around to face his other two assailants Duffy knocked aside a sword-point that was

rushing at his face, While another struck him in the belly and flexed against his shirt of chain

mail.

Duffy punched one of the Young men in the face with his rapier pome1 and then hopped toward the

other with a quick feint-and-slash of his dagger that slit the lad's cheek from nose to ear.

The Gritti in the canal was splashing about, cursing furiously and trying to find a ladder or a

set of steps. Of the two on the pavement, one lay unconscious on the cobblestones, bleeding from a

broken nose; the other stood pressing a bloody hand to his cut face.

'Northern barbarian,' this one said, almost sadly, 'you should weep with shame, to wear a

concealed hauberk.'

'Well for God's sake,' returned Duffy in exasperation, 'in a state where the nobility attack three-

on-one, I think I'm a fool to step outside in less than a full suit of plate.'

The young Gritti shook his head unhappily and stepped to the canal edge. 'Giacomo,' he said, 'stop

swearing and give me your hand.' In a moment he had hoisted his brother out of the water.

'My sword and dagger are both at the bottom of the canal,' snarled Giacomo, as water ran from his

ruined clothes and puddled around his feet, 'and there were more jewels set in their hilts than I

can bear to think of.'

Duffy nodded sympathetically. 'Those pantaloons have about had it, too, I believe.'

Giacomo didn't answer this, but helped his younger brother lift the unconscious one. 'We will now

leave,' he' told Duffy.

The Irishman watched as the two of them shuffled awkwardly away, bearing their brother like a

piece of 'broken furniture between them. When they had disappeared among the farther shadows of

the calle, Duffy sheathed his weapons, lurched away from the water's edge and leaned wearily

against the nearest wall. It's good to see the last of them, he thought, but how am I to get back

to my room? It's true that I have, on occasion, swum. this quarter mile of chilly brine - once, to

impress a girl, even holding a torch clear of the water all the way across! - but I'm tired

tonight. I'm not feeling all that well, either.

Heavy exertion on top of a full night of eating and drinking always disagrees with me. What a way

to end the evening - 'by the waters of the San Marco Canal I sat down and puked.' He shut his eyes

and breathed deeply.

'Pardon me, sir,' came German words in a man's voice, 'would you happen to speak the tongue of the

Hapsburgs?'

Duffy looked up, startled, and saw a thin, whitehaired old man leaning from a window two stories

above; diaphanous curtains, dimly lit from behind, flapped around his shoulders like pale fire.

'Yes, old timer,' Duffy replied. 'More readily than this intricate Italian.'

'Thank God. I can for the moment stop relying on charades. Here.' A white hand flicked, and two

seconds later a brass key clinked on the pavement. 'Come up.'

Duffy thoughtfully bent down and picked up the key. He flipped it spinning into the air, caught

it, and grinned. 'All right,' he said.

The stairway was dark and cold, and Smelled of mildewed cabbages, but the door at the top, when

unlocked and swung open, revealed a scene of shadowy, candle-lit opulence. The gold-stamped spines

of leather- and vellum-bound tomes lined a high bookcase along one wall, and ornate tables,

shellacked boxes, glittering robes and dim, disturbing paintings filled the rest of the room. The

old man who'd hailed Duffy stood by the window, smiling nervously. He was dressed in a heavy black

gown with red and gold embroidery at the neck, and wore a slim stiletto at his belt, but no sword.

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'Sit down, please,' he said, waving at a chair.

'I don't mind standing,' Duffy told him.

'Whatever you prefer.' He opened a box and took from it a narrow black cylinder. 'My name is

Aurelianus.' Duffy peered closely at the cylinder, and was surprised to see that it was a tiny

snake, straightened and dried, with the little jaws open wide and the end of the tail clipped off.

'And what is Yours?'

Duffy blinked. 'What?'

I just told you my name - Aurelianus - and asked you for Yours.'

'Oh! I'm Brian Duffy.'

Aurelianus nodded and put the tail end of the snake into his mouth, then leaned forward so that

the head was in the long flame of one of the candles. it began Popping and smoldering, and

Aurelianus puffed smoke from the tail end.

'What in God's name are YOU doing?' Duffy gasped, half drawing his dagger.

'I beg your pardon. How rude of me. But it has been a day of.. .dire gambits, and I need the

relaxation' He sat down and took a long puff at the emberheaded thing, letting aromatic smoke hiss

out through his teeth a moment later. 'Don't be alarmed. It's only a kind of water-snake which,

when cured with the proper - ahh -herbs and spices, produces fumes of a most.., beneficial Sort.'

'Huh!' The Irishman Shook his head and slid his dagger-back into its sheath. 'Have you got any

more mundane refreshments to offer a guest?'

'I am remiss You must excuse me. Extraordinary circumstances ..but yes, there is a fair selection

of Wines in the cabinet by your right hand. Cups behind you.'

Duffy Opened the cabinet and chose a bottle of sauternes, and deftly twisted the plug out of it.

'You know Your wines,' Aurelianus said, as Duffy poured the golden Wine into a cup.

The Irishman shrugged 'You don't happen to own a. boat, do you? I've got to get to San Giorgio and

three clowns sank the boat I had.'

'Yes, so I heard. What's in San Giorgio?'

'My room. My things, it's where I'm currently living.

Ah. No, I don't have a boat. I have, though, a proposal'

Duffy regarded Aurelianus skeptically. 'Oh? Of what?'

'Of employment.' He smiled. 'You are not, I imagine, as wealthy as you have been at times in the

past.'

'Well, no,' Duffy admitted, 'but these things come in waves. I've been rich and poor, and will

doubtless be both again. But what did you have in mind?'

Aurelianus too a long puff on the popping, sizzling snake, and held the smoke in his lings for a

good ten seconds before letting it out. 'Well - whoosh - by your accent I'd judge you've a good

deal of time in Austria.'

The Irishman looked annoyed, then shrugged and had another sip of wine. 'That's true. I was living

in Vienna until three years ago.'

'Why did you leave?'

'Why do you ask?'

'I beg your pardon; I don't mean to pry. I don't know why I have such difficulty in coming to the

point.' He ran the thin fingers of one hand through his hair, and Duffy noticed he was trembling.

'Let me explain: I have become the owner of the Zimmermann Inn.'

Duffy raised his eyebrows politely. 'Where's that?'

Aurelianus looked surprised. 'In Vienna,' He said. 'Don't you - oh. Of course. You've been away

for three years. Before I took over it was called the St Joseph Monastery.'

'Oh yes. Where the Herzwesten beer comes from. You haven't shut down the brewery I trust?'

Aurelianus laughed softly. 'Oh no.'

'Well, thank God for that.' Duffy Drained his glass.

'How in hell did you get the Church to sell the place?'

'Actually, I inherited it. A prior claim on the land. Very complicated. But let me continue - I'm

now running the place as an inn, and not doing a bad business. Vienna is a good location, and the

Herzwesten brewery has as good a reputation as the Weihenstepan in Bavaria. My problem, though,

you see, is that I haven't got -'

There was a hesitant rap-rap-rap at the door, and Aurelianus jumped. 'Who is it?' he called in an

agitated voice.

The answer came in a Greek dialect. 'It's Bella. Let me in, little lover.'

Aurelianus clenched his fists. 'Come back later, Bella. I've a guest.'

I don't mind guests. I like guests.' The latch rattled.

The old man pressed a hand to his reddening forehead. 'Go away, Bella,' he whispered, so quietly

that Duffy barely heard it.

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