Immortal Betrayal

By Daniel A. Willis

Only the good die young, except for Dano Varos. Part of a hidden branch of humanity fated with near immortality, he lives in the shadows.

Fleeing the 1400s Normandy of his youth, he makes his way east to Russia, where centuries later he confronts, first by accident and then by design, a menace from his past that threatens the Russian Crown itself. Watch history unfold, with real events and real people, through the eyes of a secret participant who saw it all.

The thrilling first book of the Chronicles of the Mages series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DX Varos Publishing
• Release date: Apr 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311669162

Daniel A. Willis

Daniel A. Willis is a noted royal author and genealogist of the noble houses of Europe. His previous publications have included genealogies of the Royal Family of Great Britain, the Imperial House of Habsburg, and the Royal House of Bourbon. Books currently in print: Romanovs in the 21st Century William IV, Mrs. Jordan and the Family They Made The Archduke's Secret Family A Reference Guide to the Royal Families (2012 edition) Mr. Willis lives in Denver, Colorado

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Immortal Betrayal

Copyright © 2013 by Daniel A. Willis

www.DanielAWillis.com

Published by Bygone Era Books Ltd.

Denver, Colorado

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover Art by Laura Givens

All Rights Reserved

Acknowledgements

I am eternally grateful to the Thursday Night Writer’s Group for their critiques and for suffering through my muddling of the English language and my dyslexia. Additional editing by Skylight Editorial was greatly appreciated. I am also indebted to the fabulously detailed research of the late Ronald C. Moe, which was published in Prelude to the Revolution, The Murder of Rasputin.

Chapter 1

"Grow a pair of balls! You’re a fucking vampire for Christ’s sake!"

I don’t usually yell at the television like this, but sometimes I can only take so much. I’m sitting here on the couch watching the latest incarnation of the teenage vampire. Which begs for the question: why would anyone want to turn a teenager into a vampire? That is just what the world needs, ultimate immortal killers with more hormones than sense in their systems, but I suppose having a character that can never die and who will go through life fraught with teen angst is good fodder for books and movies geared towards the younger crowd. And, I have to admit, the actors who play these guys are pretty easy on the eyes.

But vampires are supposed to be monsters; blood-sucking, supernatural demons that feed on small children and virgins. They’re supposed to be seductive, darkly appealing to the prey they hunt, not preppy-cute. And since when do vampires sparkle in sunlight? They’re not even supposed to be able to live in sunlight, let alone look like the inside of a diamond mine. Call me a traditionalist, but I like my vampires lurking in the dark.

And I do love my vampire stories. But they have to be traditional vampires. I guess I can identify with the beasts. No, I’m not a ferocious killer stalking the innocent, but I am immortal—well, almost. I do age, but very slowly, unseen to the normal eye. During an average human life span I may get one more gray hair, but even that is a more recent development.

So what am I? I am human in the biological sense of the term, but I am from a different species of humans. The members of my race who have gone into the biological fields have determined our physiology matches Homo sapiens with only minor exceptions. This closeness keeps us in the genus Homo but lands us in a different species category. Since official scientific circles do not yet know of our existence, they have not labeled us. Therefore, we choose to call ourselves Homo magus or mages for short. We refer to our human half-brothers as sapes, a nickname for Homo sapiens.

Our normal life span is somewhere in the vicinity of 1100 years, so I guess I qualify as middle-aged at the age of 591. Stating my age is easy enough, but my date of birth has a bit more of a story. I was born on the 19th of March in what is now northern France, which is straightforward enough. At the time of my birth, the year was 1419. However, at that time the year ended on March 25th. When the first of the year was moved to January 1st centuries later, my year of birth became 1420. I generally think of my birthday as March 19, 1420. It just makes the math add up better to my age. Time and space and the measurement of them fascinate me, but not many others, so I shall not dwell on it further.

The place of my nativity is Anglesqueville-la-Bras-Long, Normandy. The village itself is very much now as it was then, a sleepy farming community nestled in what is left of a vast forest. The village was originally founded by the members of my clan somewhere around the 10th century. When I was young, the forest was far grander and served to hide our farms from prying eyes. When the lands were cleared for farming, a thick wooded area was preserved between the village and the primary trade route from the coast, some 10 miles away. The largest city in the region, Rouen, was 40 miles to the south of us.

Anglesqueville-la-Bras-Long is a bit of a mouthful, so the locals usually pronounced it Ankleville, in keeping with the English lingual tradition of swallowing vowels and avoiding too much exercise of the tongue. Anglesqueville was one of several villages founded by mages throughout Northern Europe, and one of three founded by my clan, the mages of Normandy.

Life as a child in this oddly-named agricultural setting was much like that of any other farm kid. We were expected to do whatever work we could as soon as we were old enough to manage it. Of course, for mages, that took several more years than it did for the sapes. Although our overall life span is roughly fifteen times longer than sapes’, we spend a smaller percentage of it in childhood. Sapes put a lot of emphasis on the age of thirteen to indicate when a boy becomes a man. Mages don’t assign an age, but rather consider that the change is marked by the ability to grow facial hair and for females by their first menstrual period. The average for this in mages is around twenty five. I was a bit of an early bloomer and had a moustache by nineteen and a beard a year or so later.

The early 1400s were quiet and nurturing for me. I spent the time growing up, farming, and learning more than I ever wanted to know about growing various types of beans and grains. As a child, and even a young man, I had never seen a city so I had no idea what they were like. Yet, I knew I would be far happier in a place where I could interact with different people on a daily basis. In Anglesqueville, it was the same people doing the same thing day after day.

Once I hit adolescence, I found the same distraction that alleviated most other men from the ho-hum life of farming: sex. By my early twenties, I was clearly focusing far more energy on getting laid than getting my chores done, much to the disappointment of my mother. But being in such a small village, finding willing partners for carnal adventures proved rather difficult. And it did not help that everyone knew everyone else and had known them for decades, if not centuries. But lack of adventure, both in and out of the sack, was about to become a memory.

One night at dinner, in the fall of 1443, we were joined by my father, a rare occasion. My parents did not live together because mages don’t marry each other. Parents will maintain lifelong attachments to their children, but very rarely with each other. The length of our lives is simply not conducive to life-long romantic relationships.

On this night, I was late getting to the table. A spirited village girl named Becky would likely be later to her table than I was to mine because women have more clothes to put on. Where you been, boy? my father bellowed with his usual good-natured bravado as I was trying to escape notice while slipping through the door. We came in from the field over an hour ago.

Just horsing around with friends, I said sheepishly, not exactly lying, as we had been in the barn and there were horses there. Okay, maybe friends should not have been plural.

Well sit down. Your mother and I have to talk to you about something. Uh-oh. Conversations that included both Mama and Papa were usually not ones I wanted to be a part of. But this one turned out surprisingly well.

Son, you’re a man now, Papa started, as if he had rehearsed a few times before coming over, and it is time you see a bit of the world outside of our villages.

Yes! I had been longing for some exploring for the longest time. This prompted a sudden leap from the table followed by an impromptu jig, what today would be called a happy dance.

Dano! Settle down and listen to your father! Mama spat out at me abruptly, causing me to stop in mid-step, nearly losing my balance. Mama was a formidable woman, rather tall, even for a mage, and blessed with a full-figured frame. But she was merely a large woman, not fat by any stretch. To go with this imposing exterior was a fiery temperament that could as easily come forth as an explosion of anger as a fit of laughter. She was not laughing now.

Papa continued as if nothing had happened. Dano, you have been chosen to go with the wagon to market this season. This much I had already guessed. Every spring and fall, our village sent a delegation with our harvested crops, as well as some crafted odds and ends, to sell at market in Rouen.

Your mother seems to think you may not be ready for this. She’s been telling me that you neglect your chores pretty regularly.

Fair enough, but there wasn’t going to be much more opportunity to go skinny dipping with any young women that year, the air was starting to get chilled more easily. I didn’t respond, sensing a but coming.

But, I think if you get a taste of what it’s like to have to pull your weight out in the world, maybe you’ll be a little more encouraged to do it here at home, too.

The only reason I am agreeing to this, young man— I hated when Mama called me young man, because it was usually in the middle of a lecture somewhere —is because I think you need a little distance between you and Becky Thatcher, or, perhaps more importantly, her father’s horsewhip. Damn! Busted! I hated this small little coven we called a village. There were no secrets here.

Now Essie, if Edgar took his whip to every boy who was sniffing around his daughter, we’d lose half our farm hands! This got my sister, Anna, giggling. Up to this point she had been sitting quietly, probably trying not to remind Papa she was sitting there. Becky was not the only one who’d been making the hayloft an extension of her bedroom. And the boys had not been very discreet.

Papa’s face began turning red enough to bring out the somewhat orange hues of the multi-tonal lion’s mane that circled his head from crown to chin. Mama, seeing that things were about to get derailed into a whole different, unpleasant topic, quickly piped up with, Now, Patrick, and just how many lashes have been added to your backside lately?

The noise that escaped Papa’s lips caused Anna and me to both jump, half-turning to run for cover. Then, I realized it was a roar of laughter, not anger, erupting from my father. After a good fifteen minutes of trying to get his breathing back under control, my father continued about the trip to market.

Dano, you will be going to Rouen with Tom Weatherby. He has done this trip several times, and the load will be light enough that only two should be able to handle it. This last point was not a good thing. It was a reminder that that year’s crops had not yielded as much as usual. The fields that were maintained by the men of the village were communal. All of the men worked together, and all of the families were given large enough portions of the harvest to feed themselves. Grain was stored to maintain the livestock. What was left after this was what was sent to town for sale. The proceeds of these sales were used to buy more livestock when necessary or to repair and maintain the village’s streets and our one communal building, St. Anne’s church.

Son, this part is important, so please heed my words, Papa said, now totally serious. "There are many new and exciting things for you to see and do in the city, after you have sold our goods, of course. But there is also some danger to be aware of. You must remember to honor The Code. Here in the village we are all the same, so we have no need to hide our true natures. But, now you will be among Short-Lifers.

They are a suspicious lot. They easily fear what they do not understand. This is why we always send people about your age to the market. You are still a growing young man and will change slightly from year to year. This will not cause alarm among the Shorties. However, if I were to go to Rouen and encounter some lad I may have met on my last trip there, I would look the same to him, but he would be an old man now.

This was why we have The Code, our only real law. It was created before there was written history and essentially says only one thing: the sapes must not know we aren’t one of them. Just because we don’t appear to age doesn’t mean we can’t be killed. Our bodies are nearly as vulnerable as the sapes’. Sapes greatly outnumbered mages to the point that we would be threatened with extinction if the sapes were to ever discover our true nature and conclude that we were evil. So we went into hiding over a millennium ago and have remained there since.

I’ll be very careful, Papa, I reassured him.

And another thing. Shorties don’t drink blood. They consider it a sacrilege and will have you in a prison cell in no time if they catch you drinking it. So make sure you get a decent amount in you before you go that can last you till you get back home.

They don’t drink blood? No wonder they live such short lives, I pondered. Mages can get by without drinking blood for several days, even weeks if necessary, but we would grow weak over that time. We now know that this is caused by an acute iron deficiency that is endemic in our species and we no longer drink blood to cure it. We just take iron supplements instead. But in the 15th century, we didn’t have this knowledge, so we would regularly drain the cows and pigs of some of their blood, not enough to harm them, but enough to keep the village healthy.

Where I come from, the Short-Lifers caught some of our kind biting and licking up the blood of their lovers, Mama added. Within one of their generations, the story had been blown so out of proportion, they now tell stories about soulless fiends with all sorts of supernatural powers who prey upon small children. Mama’s native clan was settled in the Carpathian basin along what is now the Hungarian-Romanian border. Perhaps it is this side of my heritage that intrigues me so about vampires.

I’ll be sure to fill up before I go, I promised, still pondering why the sapes didn’t need to drink blood like we did. I almost envied them for that; cow blood is actually kind of gross. Pig was my animal of choice to fulfill this need.

The time to leave for market came about a week later. My traveling companion, Tom Weatherby, was still a young man, about a decade older than I. He had been on these trips a few times before, so he was expected to be the experienced one designed to keep me out of trouble. There was probably a better choice for that chore, but then I would not have had nearly as much fun.

We traveled in a flat-bed wagon built big enough to carry our wares, and would also serve as our bed during the two nights we would spend on the road, one going to Rouen and one returning. In the city, we would rent a room at an inn. After loading up the wagon in the predawn hours, we set off southwards for Rouen. Sadly, there was only one wagon this trip because the crops had been so scarce. This also meant there were only two of us going to town. In years past, there had been two or three wagons sent with up to half a dozen townsfolk attending them.

Tom started driving the two horses, but promised we would switch off from time to time. He was a pretty typical mage of our clan, about my height, maybe an inch shorter, with hair that weak shade of brown that isn’t quite blond enough to be called sandy, but not dark enough to be brunette either. His eyes were a pale blue-green. He was capable of growing a full beard but chose to keep it shaved. However, he did wear his sideburns long and thick, and a bushy mustache that partially covered his mouth.

The road out of our village going south turned a slow wide bend to the right as it wound its way around the edges of the woods that mostly hid our village from people coming from the west. A low but broad hilly range protected us from the north and east. No sooner had we gotten far enough around the forest to escape any potentially prying eyes from the village, than Tom pulled the wagon to halt. We had gone not even five miles yet, and there was another thirty-five and change ahead of us.

When I asked what he was doing, he said he had had too much to drink the night before and needed to let some of it out. While he was standing a little ways off, relieving himself, he started an odd line of conversation.

So, Dano, he said as if he was thinking of the best way to word this, haven’t heard much gossip about you. You must really keep it packed away in your pants.

What do you mean? I asked innocently, although pretty sure where he was going with it.

Everyone knows who’s banging who in our very little corner of the world. Man, he must have had a really full bladder. He was still standing there with his back to me. Haven’t heard a peep about you, though.

Feeling I had to defend my status as a man, even though I was barely more than a lad, I piped up, I’ve fucked Becky Thatcher a few times in the barn.

"Becky? Hell, that only means you have a pulse. She’s been under every man we